We Doo So You Don't Have To!

I wish there were some sort of long distance flaming bag of poo service.

You know, where you’d put a paper bag full of dog doo on neighborhood cranky old man’s porch and then light the top of the bag? Then when he’d stomp it out he’d get poo on his shoes.

I never did that as a child but now that I’m a vindictive adult, I do find myself returning to that idea. Something mostly harmless, but unpleasant. Something that sent a signal saying “we find your oppressive behavior so intolerable we felt we had no choice but to fill a paper bag with dog doo and set a match to it.”

Alas, most of the people I feel have earned such a treatment are out of comfortable driving range, so I’d need some sort of mail order service.

Any takers?

Bigfoot: Dead or Alive!

I’m always delighted when they come up with new Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monsters stories. They’re so charming! I also like reading about the hoaxes perpetrated mostly for kicks, like the famous Surgeon’s photo of Loch Ness or the guy who carved giant wooden feet and tromped around the California forest wearing them. I like those kinds of pranks.

Last week’s big shocker was a supposedly dead bigfoot huddled in a freezer. It does look pretty pathetic and the apparently the DNA analysis revealed nothing but human and opossum DNA. Which is, decidedly, the weirdest combination of DNA around. The article also describes an opossum as a “cat like” creature, which seems a wholly inaccurate description to me. “Giant rat” appearance seems more suitable. Bigfoot can be seen at www.searchingforbigfoot.com

I don’t see a whole lot of point to solving the mysteries, frankly. Suppose they discovered a school of unusually large sturgeons in Loch Ness that were responsible for all the sightings. How disappointing! Once you find an animal, they become simply an animal, like the gorilla or the rhinoceros. These animals were only rumored in Europe for centuries! Now we know they exist and there is definitely less excitement.

One that I find very odd is that of the Kraken. The kraken was a legendary giant squid, like the one in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I keep reading these odd things like could the kraken been inspired by The Giant Squid or the Colossal Squid? Okay, the monster is describes as a giant squid. It doesn’t have magic powers or is covered in fur or sprouts women shaped lures to tempt salty sea dogs. It’s a huge squid. Now it happens that we occasionally find the bodies of gigantic squids. They’re just like little squids, only huge. Can’t we fairly say that we’ve discovered the kraken? Of course, we can’t say that every time a rum soaked sailor spotted a giant tentacle it really was a huge squid, but come on! It’s more than a vague supposition.

The Puppet Bike!

Knut and I were going to the Kriskintel Market in Daley plaza Christmas of 2006 and we were instantly smitten.

We met the Puppet Bike.

I am a huge Puppet Bike Fan.

The Puppet Bike is a tiny puppet theater mounted to the back of a bicycle that weeds its way around Chicago delighting many and mystifying a few. It’s a brightly painted box just large enough for one person to stand inside with a tiny stage at eye level. There two frolicking hand puppets dance their way through blue grass, swing, or old favorites. They don’t speak, just dance. Their trademark is when the two puppets join paws and twirl forwards and then backwards.

So far I have seen a sweet little bunny, two tigers, a cat, a bear, and a monkey. If you show your appreciation for the dancing animals by putting a dollar in the little tip box on the front, a puppet will pop out of a side slit and wave enthusiastically. I highly recommend tipping such a great (but tiny) institution.

The Puppet Bike usually hangs around the Loop in all kinds of weather. I’ve mostly seen it on Lake or Michigan Avenue and if you want to take a photo with the bike, the puppets will gladly pose with you.

See The Puppet Bike Perform!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcPgTxbPdGQ

The Joys of Fireworks

Since it’s the 4^th of July tomorrow, I was thinking about the fun we used to have when we’d go to 7-11 to buy Snap Caps, Smoke Bombs, Snakes, and Witch Whistles. They started selling small fireworks like that in mid June and it was a time of excitement! My brothers kindly always bought me some of the girly fireworks like poppers and sparklers too. I love this Black Cat logo, but we never had that kind of fire power until we were adults.

The Smoke Bombs could be set off anywhere it was amusing to have a cloud of green smelly smoke. I do recall that you couldn’t throw them because they were made of something like pressed sawdust and would disintegrate upon impact. And it was hard to relight the pieces.

Snap caps were generally reserved for stomping on in the driveway, but we did occasionally put them under the tires of the neighbor’s cars. They never noticed. You could also pop ‘em between your fingers, which hurt a bit but was totally worth it to see other kids’ expressions. The really brave kids (I think Jamie did this) would pop snap caps with their teeth, which is probably not a hugely clever idea.

Snakes are interesting. They were these little black tablets and when you touched a lighted match to a side long coils of stinky black ash would push forth, looking appropriately like snakes. You got maybe 18 inches of ash from a tablet the size of antacid. They were pretty cool and left permanent char marks on the front steps.

The Witch Whistles were the most memorable. They were these orange waxy tiny rockets, about the size of a golf pencil, and when they flew off they emitted a high pitched screech that was highly appreciated by the adults in the neighborhood. We would set them off in the alley and every so often they’d backfire and we’d go tumbling out of the way. Good times! Once in a while we’d try experiments with them like, could you tie one to a popper and have it pull the string? They never worked, but we were all very good in high school Physics.

Sparklers were just for pretty, mostly, and running around with after dark.

That was fun. Knut and I checked and they don’t sell any of those things any more, not even Sparklers. In fact, the Park Ridge Fire Department sign now reads “Protect your family and friends by avoiding fireworks and sparklers.” You know, in case you stick one in your eye or something.

I think that’s sort of sad. I mean, I suppose we could have gotten burns or cause minor property damage, but it was so interesting! You got to experiment with something and cut it apart to see how it works and learned what it could do.

I feel a little bad for today’s kids. Many of the parents I know are scared to let them out of the house or do anything even a tiny bit dangerous. They probably don’t have much alternative to video games or tv.

Media

I am convinced the media creates most of the fear in the world. I mean, if you just go along from day to day, you worry about things like getting hit by cars, leaving the stove on, or getting catching a cold from your colleagues. Watch CNN for an hour and your simultaneously worried about drought, floods, serial killers, bioterrorism, zombies, giant subterranean man eating clams, rabid gila monsters, glue sniffing teens, monogamous gay couples, and japanese long horned beetles.

Most of these are either not really a threat or strictly the kind of threat that we can figure out how to defend ourselves against, except for gila monsters and gay couples. They just want to be allowed to be themselves and live comfortable productive lives.

Which leads me to this great page!

Benjamin Radford writes great essays dealing with the slight of hand of the media, the hype, and the misinterpretation of data. He also contributes to Skeptic Magazine (look for his hilarious account of a haunted house investigation!)

The book is great, and he has several essays posted for free. Here are some of my favorites:

The Today Show's Fake 'Stranger Danger' Test

A Closer Look at Internet Predator Laws

Is Barbie Really an “Ideal”?

Predator Panic: A Closer Look

Chilling Tales for a Hot Day Redux!

It’s a hot sunny day, but I still think we could use the chill… of a GHOST STORY!!

This is my personal ghost sighting! I have seen one ghost and one UFO and I’m always disappointed when people don’t treat me like a crackpot whenever I tell the stories. When I see Bigfoot, someone better treat me like a crackpot! Possibly my otherwise rational and practical outlook is unfairly shielding me from the outraged reactions I deserve.

*grump*

Here goes! Imagine I’m holding a flashlight under my face…

Blind Turn

July of 1999 was warm and humid in Illinois, even at two O'clock in the morning.

I was reasonably carefree 19 year old girl behind the wheel of my grandmothers 1985 blue-rinse Oldsmobile with my friend Ryan beside me. We had had a fun evening with friends, first going to a movie at the big Randhurst theaters and then having a midnight snack at a 24 hour restaurant before heading home.

Ryan and I were busy talking and laughing and gossiping about friends from high school when I decided to take a shortcut.

We lived in the old Northwest suburbs of Chicago where the rich folks of the city built their summer places before urban sprawl set in and engulfed them. The short cut I had decided to take was through the old Lutheran campgrounds, a leafy, unlit, heavily forested site on the bank of the Des Plaines river consisting of perhaps 15 white painted cabins, a small swimming pool, and lots of privacy. Churches and other organizations often had day camps there, but very few of the cabins were in use these days. It was a lovely alternative to drive along that quiet path rather than go past all of the Dairy Queens and gas stations that littered the major roads.

Ryan and I, still talking and laughing, turned off Busse Road, making the sharp turn downward sloping path that led under the overpass by the river. The road had gone into a blind turn when I interrupted Ryan’s chatter by hitting the brakes and shouting "Oh My God, that woman is going to get herself killed!"

Directly in front of us, hidden previously by the concrete wall of the overpass, was a woman bicycling almost in the center of the right lane. She shone whitish in the brightness of the headlights, a thin older woman in a floppy knee length skirt on an old fashioned bicycle without reflectors or any lights. I was furious, not only because she was bicycling on such a deserted road at that time of night, but because she made no indication that she had seen or even heard my car.

I passed by her carefully in the dark, giving her a wide berth. I looked in my rearview mirror a second later just to make sure that she was okay. She was no longer there. I yelped in surprise. Ryan turned around to look for her too, but she had vanished. We looked at each other in shock. There was absolutely nowhere where she could have gone. One side of the road was thick rough Mid-Western forest that was hard to navigate even on foot and impossible by bicycle; the other side was a 10 foot high wall of concrete that held up Busse Road. Behind us was only the Des Plaines River lapping at the bank and there was not a soul in sight.

I don't think I've ever driven quite as fast or quite as badly as I did driving the rest of the way home that night. The only thing we, two normally chatty and unsuperstitious people, said to each other during the drive was "What happened back there?"

We've talked about it since and Ryan definitely is still shaken by it. We still don't understand what happened or where that woman could have gone or who she might have been.

I've been down that road dozens of times since and nothing else has ever happened.

Has your blood turned to ice? Good to hear!

Cubbies!

We went to the Cubs game last week. Cubs vs. Dodgers. It was a pretty tense low scoring game, but the Cubbies managed to win in the 10th inning. Go Cubs!

Knut, surprisingly, seems to be the cure for the Billy Goat Curse. He’s never been at a game where the Cubs haven’t won. Unfortunately, no one’s offered to pay him for this service, but we have high hopes. Personally I find it too difficult when the Cubs do well. Last year, they threatened to get into the World Series and they’re famous for not having won since 1908. On one hand, I love the Cubbies and want them to do well. On the other hand, I think it’s awesome that a team with their record still sells out all the time. That’s devotion!

For you southsiders, here’s

The Legend of the Billy Goat Curse

The Cubs were in the World Series again in 1945. During the game 4, Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern (made even more famous by the John Belushi SNL skit featuring “CHEESEBOOGER CHEESEBOOGER NO FRIES CHIPS!”), bought two box seats. One was for him; the other was for his goat.

However, goats tend to smell pretty bad, even those who have box seats, and the management insisted that the goat leave.

Billy paraded the goat around a few times, but he was angry that his beloved mascot was so insulted.

As he and the goat left the field, he cast the curse, “"the Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more."

And they haven’t been back to the World Series since.

Mysterious, isn’t it? The Cubs are a very old team and Wrigley field has an old fashioned picnic-like atmosphere adored by the Northsiders.

The mascot is, of course, the Cubbie Bear! There have been many incarnations of him, including this rather peculiar hat I’m wearing. In shape, it’s much more like the 1910s style, but the bear looks more like the 1960s Cubbie Bear. The inside is marked “Cooperstown Classic” but I can’t think when it’s from. Last year, a hot dog vendor and I had quite a long discussion about it.

Check out the guys behind us in this photo! Great old school fans. They gave the best running commentary during the game and hooted and booed appropriately. The older guy was going into the hospital the next day for gout surgery. Hope he’s okay! Knut told him it was the disease of nobility!

Go Cubs!

BRAAAAAAAAAINS (And Beer)

Saturday was the First Annual Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl! Yeah!

We had been excited about it for weeks, carefully deciding what kind of zombies we wanted to be, fervently hoping there would be more people that just the four of us.

The day of, Knut, Lauren, Eli, and I got together to do our makeup. I don’t think any of us had ever worn zombie make up before, so it was a little challenging.The website for the crawl had some handing tips, including spreading gelatin on your skin and letting it dry for a weird cakey scabby look. I smeared myself liberally and gave Lauren a huge gross head scab. Initially, we were going to wear flat white face paint, but once Eli put it on, we realized it was a little too harsh for today’s modern zombie on the go. I hunted around for my barely used foundation for an age, but never found it. However! I had some super concentration concealer-like stuff meant to go under eye makeup, so I mixed it with the face paint for a slightly more subtle pallor. I dusted my whole eye area with a combination of iridescent green and black eye shadow and used a bit of blue to highlight my skin scabs. A little fake blood and I was ready for BRAAAINSSS…

Knut’s makeup was pretty subtle. He wanted to be a researcher from 28 Days Later, so I applied the face paint very thinly, gave him pale green under eye circles, and lined his eyelashes with red liner. Showtime!

We parked a little farther up Clark Street and hurried towards the meeting spot, pretty nervous. We didn’t see any other zombies. Had they left without us? Was it the wrong date? Were we the only ones who showed up? Then we turned a corner and were nearly crushed by a wave of 50 or so zombies heading for the bar. Excellent.

The PH group who had organized the event gave us our t-shirts, our zombie pins, and helped anyone who needed it with their make up. Got your goodies? On to the bar!

While we were waiting in line to get in, a non-zomb asked to take a picture of us. We put our arms around each other and posed. Then he showed us the photo. I was the only one in it! Huh. Simon’s a small kind of dank bar. Fortunately, zombies like dank as much as they like $2 beer, so we packed ourselves in. This was much to the chagrin of the non-zombs sitting and drinking at 5pm on a Saturday. A little row of hecklers commented about everyone who came in, coming up with exceeding clever nicknames like calling an awesome girl dressed like a 1980s aerobic instructor “Volleyball Zombie.” It strikes me that when you’re in a bar that has rapidly become 95% or more zombie, you are no longer the cool ones. Once inside, we hung around, admired each other’s wounds, and chatted. With the exception of one guy who wanted to talk about soviet experiments involving extreme animal cruelty, it was a lovely bunch. However, zombies are not content conquering only one establishment. On to the next bar!

Charlie’s Ale House is an airy bar and grill and we frankly adored the expressions of their dinner salad consuming patrons and zombies flooded the bar. Our little group leaned onto a group of regular humans at a little table and they fled through the window! Ha! This gave us the perfect vantage point. Here we could grab at passersby moaning “braaaains” from the comfort of a bar stool. We also got to chat with our awesome new zombie friend, Zombie Steve! The zombie party really hit its peak here. First Knut randomly yelled “Braaaaains!!” and the whole bar followed suit. Seven or eight times. A seven foot high Grim Reaper waved and spoke to us. A zombie performed a spectacular robot dance on the sidewalk. Zombies began running out and pressing themselves on stopped cars. Humans took photos of us from the other side of the street. Awesome.

After our tenure at the bar, we shuffled en masse to Hamburger Mary’s attic. The music was an odd choice (Zombie Abba?) but they eventually figured out what we wanted--- Thriller on repeat! Yeah! We danced, we drank beer, and we groaned on sofas, zombie boys nicely let zombie girls use their bathroom. It was probably the best party night I’ve ever had.

My favorite part though, was in the first bar. We were chatting to this charming zombie couple (I didn’t get their names! Darn!) and he was telling us how worried he was that they would be the only two who showed up. I love the thought of 100 people putting on their dead makeup, worrying they’d be all alone and finding at least 100 of their zombified peers ready to toast their lack of health.

If you'd like to see more photos (we've got lots of great ones!) go here.

Pranks! An Etsy Blog Carnival

New at my etsy shop!

April Fools! Just Kidding!

I would never assault innocent lamps with puffy paint and flower decals. The honor goes to a friend’s step mother, who specializes in adorning glassware. The flower decals are also present on her washing machine, dishwasher, shower, and cabinets. They must have come by the yard.

I’ve never done a huge amount of pranking myself, although when I do, my 6 foot high stuffed werewolf from Six Flags Great America is usually my conspirator.

My husband won him for me in a shooting game and I did goofy things like sit him next to me in the little cars, poke kids in line, seat him next to us at the picnic tables, etc. People loved him.

He’s also incredibly scary if you happen upon him by accident. I had him sitting on a desk chair at my parent’s home and they made me remove him for fear of heart attacks. Little kids wouldn’t come up to the house on Halloween because he was sitting in a lawn chair by the front door. They thought he would jump up and come after them.

My favorite pranks (okay, I am juvenile) are when people rearrange the letters on signs. They’re usually pretty filthy, so I won’t show any here, but many fine examples can be found on http://www.ilovebacon.com/home/index.shtml

I also like amusing graffiti. I remember someone telling me about a Mormon temple that always was lit up at night with green lights. Someone wrote on the overpass, “Surrender Dorothy!”

How great is that?