After a brief flirtation with air travel last month, I find myself once again embarking on steel stretched from Illinois to Kansas.
The sky is smokey, filled with a soupy mixture of burning fields and dust kicked up from the lighted combine machines harvesting late this year. It’s quite a sight, and one that I had no time to capture. I’m running late, and I’ve already cost myself dinner.
—
In the observation car, there’s a boy and a girl conversing. The girl is giggling more than necessary; the boy boasting a bit too much. But this is flirtation, after all.
“I never asked you, but what’s your name?”
“John.”
She giggles again, until a lull forms, cloud-like. There’s a few moments of silence, the eye contact disappears, but they push forward and resume talk: of meditation, of ex-boyfriends, of curly hair and of mountains climbed.
Strange conversation – these strangers – as we lurch through rural Missouri via locomotive. Next stop: Lawrence, Kan.
Night harvesting in Western Illinois, shot at 70 m.p.h.
After a brief coquetry with air travel last month, I find myself once again embarking on steel stretched from Illinois to Kansas.
The sky is smokey, filled with a soupy mixture of burning fields and dust kicked up from the lighted combine machines harvesting late this year. It’s quite a sight, and one that I had no time to capture. I’m running late, and I’ve already cost myself dinner.
—
In the observation car, there’s a boy and a girl conversing. The girl is giggling more than necessary; the boy boasting a bit too much. But this is flirtation, after all.
“I never asked you, but what’s your name?”
“John.”
She giggles again, until a lull forms, cloud-like. There’s a few moments of silence, the eye contact disappears, but they push forward and resume talk: of meditation, of ex-boyfriends, of curly hair and of mountains climbed.
Strange conversation – these strangers – as we lurch through rural Missouri via locomotive. Next stop: Lawrence, Kan.
I’m supposed to reflexively raise a stink when pure artistry is adapted in the name of capitalism. Tainted! Ruined! Encouraging an evil. Yet Levi’s “Go Forth” commercial spots have such beautiful urgency, a haunting narration, that I cannot help but love them. Walt Whitman in any form, s’il vous plaît.
The cinematography is top-notch, cinéma vérité mixed with home movies. Sullen exposure that showcases the inky blackness. I’m reminded of Pavement’s album Terror Twilight, named after that uneasy time between sundown and complete darkness. Backed by both Whitman’s own reading of “America” (from a rare wax cylinder recording) and Will Geer‘s salute-worthy rendition of “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”, these spots make me lust for more Whitman.
Purchasing new jeans is a mere secondary effect, as a clear message emerges that Levi’s are built for certain things: trouncing about uninhibited, relishing nature, carpe diem.
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call–hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!–swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
There’s much joy in comparison. Inara George has a new online-only album about to drop this month titled Accidental Experimental. She has two previous albums under her solo belt, including an orchestral romp bearing the name An Invitation with arrangement stud Van Dyke Parks (remember the lush Beach Boys orchestrations?) On this brand new LP, she rehashes a Parks collaboration on the song “Accidental.” It flits and slides from key to key, a likely nightmarish sound for the general populace, but an aural treat for a difficult man like myself. And so, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get down to brass tacks:
[audio: https://ofadam.com/blogaudio/inarageorge_accidental_old.mp3] Old version: Orchestral arrangements automatically add a few points of musical karma to even the trash produced by the Lars Ulrichs and Metallicas of the world. It’s frantic, maybe detrimentally, but each listen rewards with a new discovery. Layers slide aside, revealing such brilliant dissonance that certain wrong notes resolve into something very right. It is a wild garden, untamed and unkempt.
[audio: https://ofadam.com/blogaudio/inarageorge_accidental_new.mp3] New version: The “remake” reminds me of an edited manuscript. The chaff is boiled away, leaving a malty substance that gets right to the point. Harpsichords enter at minute one, and the initial impression is extreme pleasure; this is musical velvet. It saunters onward, until the 2:50 mark, when the carousel runs out of gas and those with decent audio systems are gently massaged with a bass line stepping downward into the basement.
But like any contest, there must be a victor. You iron your cotton shirts, stack your dishes in neat piles and generally stay within the dashed lane markers while automobiling. That’s enough order in life; go for the pandemonium.
Feeling a little more zombie than human, Micah and I are riding the 7:30 a.m. train to Chicago. The train is packed full of red, white and blue Cubs fans (day game today at Wrigley,) so the thing feels like one of those damn party buses. Throw in a large contingent of hayseeds, and you get a sadly stereotypical train rolling into the big city.
One particular woman in a wrinkled jacket screaming 1994 had urgent phone business. Standing up, leaning toward this window or that, she loudly asked about someone’s hepetitis infection. Unfortunately, we never found out which flavor it was: A? B? C?
As I type this en route, we try dozing but will likely resort to chemical caffeination. Micah obviously needs it.
Grinding teeth, racing heart, short on time, missed dinners, no alcohol or coffee please, no time for friends, movies are too long, sun rising from my desk at work. All for a prep football scoreboard that we adapted and developed for pjstar.com. There’s also a photo blog I created, and the weekly River City Roundup episode (this time from a farm in Wyoming… Illinois.) On the plus side, I now have a rudimentary knowledge of Drupal.
So I’m checking myself into a work detox program. With all the OT I’ve earned the past two weeks, I’m afraid of turning in such a leaden timecard, possibly upsetting the delicate newsroom budget like heavy cargo on a listing ship. And since vacation time is in short supply, I’m taking comp time. See you in a week, newspaper ball and chain!
To celebrate such a miraculous break, there are two YouTube videos I need you to see.
First up: the Nicholas Brothers in “Stormy Weather.” Consider for a moment that this was filmed in the 1940s, a time before camera motion capture and fancy editing techniques. This is unmatched dance, especially that crotch-busting maneuver they perform over and over again.
Second prize: a terrifying Betty Boop cartoon mixed with Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.” What a find! In a late-night daze, I saw a Facebook post from a friend with Hugh Laurie’s version, but soon went down the long and winding road of Internet linkdom. I can’t come up with a modern equivalent to this seedy, creepy, very adult bit of cartoon. [update from the web: The Fleischer Studios were renowned for their use of Rotoscope – a process they patented – used sometimes in the Betty Boop cartoons. The Old Man of the Mountain dancing is actually Cab Calloway doing those smooth moves, drawn over by the animators.]
As you can imagine from such a pretentious blog title, I’m about to spend several paragraphs making this T.S. Eliot title relate to my mundane everyday life. Grab some java and pin those eyelids up A Clockwork Orange-style.
This actually isn’t going well at all. There’s a beautiful woman manning (or womaning?) the counter at Barnes & Noble at the moment. She’s single-handedly threatening to derail this entire entry. Don’t I need to buy something? Anything? I did just acquire my first blue-ray player not so long ago, so maybe I should load up a shopping cart full of overpriced discs. She’s staring RIGHT AT ME from 50 feet away. Wait, can you tell the direction of a gaze from 50 feet away?
Well, this is unfortunate. Due to the expensive costs of electronic ink, this will have to be cut short. I traveled to Chicago in early July, not for my usual urban meandering, but to meet an old friend I’ve known for 8 years yet have never met. And since this blog was at one time the official diarist of my life, I feel a sense of duty to document the occurrence. With a 10mm fisheye lens.
Of course, she also documented our touristy adventures. The Bean was not to be missed (and really, still draws me after dozens of visits.) And a simple quest for self-rising flour capped a rather lovely day.
My father, upon seeing her photos, send me an email remarking on my rolled-up pant legs (due to fountain-splashing.) And that’s how we get to the excerpt from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” below.
Nice to finally meet you, Laura.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
ADAM/JOURNAL STAR Tim Wells, center, and Rich Pletz, right, both of Canton, lunge forward in hopes of netting flying Asian carp with other teams during Friday afternoon's Redneck Fishing Tournament in Bath.
BATH, Ill. – Some folks said I had a fish shape imprinted on the back of my t-shirt. An 8 pound silver Asian carp flying at full speed into your back will do that, I suppose.
Welcome to the 5th annual Redneck Fishing Tournament, a unique experience in the seen-better-days town of Bath. Each year, dozens of teams from Illinois and even as far beyond as Washington state come here to bag as many of these flying fish as possible. Actually, nets and hands are the only tools allowed these anglers. But even those prove unnecessary, as these suicidal fish often pile into your boat on their own accord.
Scud clouds hang over a farm on the outskirts of Glasford, Ill.
We finally had our first tornado warning of the year here on the outskirts of Peoria last week. The area is fringe at best for the rotating bastards, and they never approach the insanity that they do in Kansas. I chased the system for a while, only catching wispy glances of anemic funnel clouds.
So I made a movie anyway. It’s nothing great, and some would say downright sucky, but here it is no less.
Also notable was the fact that it happened mere minutes after our aborted aerobatic flight. That might have been slightly terrifying if we had actually left the ground.
So there I am, being strapped into a harness in the back of a single-engine Beechcraft with the back doors off. A reporter of ours gets fitted with parachute and squeezed into his aerobatic plane. This has been a long time coming, much like any airborne experience. Instead of being at the mercy of commercial gridlock, we were suddenly spending a whole day trying to film this piece after rain and the Thunderbirds (yes, the F-16 planes) delayed it. All for some loops and rolls. The postponement was giving us too much time to think.
So we’re finally strapped in, with our pilots looking anxiously at the black clouds closing in on us and their red and orange-covered radar screens, and that’s when I pretty much just gave up. We’re going to do this, there’s no turning back now. The propellers whirled to life, and I look over to see Gary in his “I’m ready to die” position.
I don’t want to spoil the fun, so you’ll need to watch this week’s episode of River City Roundup for all the details. We’ll just say that things went awry. You know what they say: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.” Or something.
Panorama from several images during a tax day rally at the Peoria County Courthouse.
April 15, 2009 – PEORIA, Ill. – Populism was back in style. “Over 500” gathered in downtown Peoria for a rally against taxes. Well, against government spending to be more exact… but you could find a hundred different reasons why people were missing a few hours of work on a brilliant spring day. The signs said it all: “What would Jefferson do?,” “Bailouts tea me off,” “Save trees, stop printing money,” and the somewhat off-message “Liberty says NO to Big Brother.” It was a cornucopia of dissent, with the financially worried walking hand in hand with the anti-Federalists. A tax day tea party.
The multitude gathered near the public library, with the leader addressing the crowd about their intent. A message was decided, although this splintered once marching commenced into chants of “U.S.A.!” and “No more taxes!” This was obviously incorrect, and a small portion of the group noticed and chuckled, trying to correct the error with their own: “No more spending!” Anti-Obama messages were few, surprisingly, with “Obamunism” being the most common.
Peaking in front of the Peoria County Courthouse, the leader bellowed through a megaphone: “The answer to 2009… is 1776!” Fists pumped in the air, Courthouse security stood by nervously, and it was officially a block party.
There was plenty to look at, but I kept looking at one unique sign, carried by a middle-aged man who didn’t stay around long to talk with me. “Atlas will shrug,” said the lettering on his foam board sign. In competition with such beautiful weather (and a hunger for lunch), it seems like Peoria was doing the same.
* I say “over 500” because the accounts varied widely. Police said several hundred, while the Journal Star thought there a few more. Event organizers and attendees were optimistic at “several thousand.”
