By J. Bird

For once, the boss is behaving in a reasonable manner toward me (“Pat” is getting the brunt of his moody weirdness today) – he even bought me lunch! So I can’t gripe too much about him, and I’ve been cranking through my workload at a steady pace, so I’m in a nice space right now. Earlier, I got to be Delivery Bird, which was extremely cool – getting outside on a beautiful day like today is always a treat, and a rare one, at that. I’m sure such errands will suck in February, but for now, I’ll take Delivery Duty any day.
The quirky thing that I’ve noticed about today’s swarm of office workers is that it is almost unilaterally blue shirt and yellow tie day downtown today. Nobody sent me the memo, but that’s just fine – I’ve never been a bandwagoneer. But I was on the elevator earlier and there were four guys on there in grey pants, blue shirts, and yellow ties. The guy in the grey pants, blue shirt, and red tie stuck out like a sore thumb. I like to think I was a vision of “fashion forward” in my black suit and shirt, but they were probably whispering about me as soon as I stepped off.

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Posted on September 6, 2006

By J. Bird

First off – Crazy Sign Spotted Downtown Today: “God Told Satan to Go To Hell and Take Bush With Him!!”
While Bird agrees in principle, the theory is pretty quacky, since the whole God casting ol’ Lucifer Morningstar from the Heavens would, theoretically, have happened billions of years ago, and, well, Bush ain’t that old.
But enough about religion and politics. Or rather, enough about those kinds of politics.
Let’s talk about office politics.

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Posted on September 5, 2006

By J. Bird

Aug 28 – Sept 1, 2006
THURSDAY –
Sometimes you think you’ve gotten a lucky break. Your boss is out of the office and you’re not expecting him or her back anytime soon. It’s the beginning of a long weekend, and things are winding down. You’ve got time on your hands. You can catch up on your instant messaging, surf the Web, go for a walk around the block and get some fresh air.
It’s inevitable that at the very moment you’re about to do something you know someone higher up wouldn’t approve of, the phone rings. It’s the boss, wanting to know how that project you finished an hour ago is coming along. And you make the fatal mistake of saying you’re just finishing it up. You’ll come to regret this more than you can imagine when you hear what he has to say next.

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Posted on August 31, 2006

Date: August 30, 2006
From: Wicker Park
To: Humboldt Park
The Cab: Neat and clean. I was surprised to see the seatbelts prominently displayed in the back rather than tucked away under the seats. Then the driving began and I understood.

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Posted on August 30, 2006

The Beachwood Board Games Affairs Desk

Much to the chagrin of the good people of Atlantic City, N.J., Hasbro is remaking its classic Monopoly board to better appeal to upscale customers insufficiently impressed by Marvin Gardens and Baltic Avenue. Late this summer, Hasbro will announce the makeup of the new board, as determined by voters choosing from among three landmarks in 22 cities somehow deemed more amenable to fantasy property acquisition than the home of the Atlantic Palace Suites and Trump Taj Mahal.

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Posted on August 20, 2006

Now this is a game board.

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Posted on August 20, 2006

By Scott Gordon

As I shook off the museum fatigue that had settled upon body and soul while visiting the Museum of Science and Industry, one question about what I had just seen lingered: Where in Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous notebooks did they find a design for a giant rotating horse head placed in the middle of a planter?

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Posted on August 19, 2006

By Marilyn Ferdinand

I was in Rogers Park for the usual dinner gathering of the Wednesday Night Crowd in a mediocre Korean restaurant the inner circle had glommed onto. There was a fairly large group that night – maybe eight in all. One of our number, a single female with a rather jaundiced view of men, started to complain about the hard time her boss had been giving her that day.
The details of the conversation escape me, but the content is irrelevant. What matters is how the discussion proceeded. Each of the men at the table would, in turn, offer a helpful suggestion to Ms. D. She would listen patiently and then reply, “Yes, but I tried that,” or “But she’d never agree to that,” or “But that’s not how we work there” or some other rebuttal. All of the men at the table prided themselves on being exceedingly clever, boasting advanced degrees and advantageously chosen spouses. Nevertheless, after about 20 minutes of “problem-solving,” the table fell silent, a cloud of defeat and gloom hanging over the vinyl tablecloth. Perhaps only I noticed the triumphant smirk upon Ms. D’s lips. I felt exhilarated! I had just seen a classic game of “Why Don’t You, Yes But (YDYB)” played before my very eyes!

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Posted on August 2, 2006

By Tim Willette

In 1957 the Brazilian visual poet Décio Pignatari turned a famous marketing slogan against itself by manipulating the Portuguese translation of “Enjoy Coca-Cola” into repulsive word-shapes like “drool” and “cesspool.” Pignatari’s work has been on my mind recently, ever since a peculiar ad campaign for Snickers candy bars hit town.
The concept is simple enough: invent new, hunger-inducing words from pieces of other words and deploy them in Snickers’s iconic font, thereby inspiring the target with an irresistible desire to buy and eat delicious Snickers candy. For whatever reason the bright lights at Snickers settled on using CTA buses to carry their neologism-ads to Chicagoans. I’d like to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting. (“Hey, buses are kind of shaped like Snickers bars! And our research indicates 73% of commuters eat candy!”)
A week ago I encountered my first Snickword, “PEANUTOPOLIS,” rolling its way down Milwaukee Avenue. This seemed like a cruel method of transporting the mentally ill – Nuthouse Express, please watch your step! – but the passengers looked comfortable with it. Actually, my opening impression was that “PEANUTOPOLIS” was as good a description as any for our schizophrenically-run city on the make. It also conjures dystopian visions of a citizenry scraping by for peanuts meted out by mad, stingy overlords. Crazy, I know. Further deconstruction yields a single “NUT” connected to a stretched-out “PE-N-IS.” Taxpayer-funded studies disproved the nipples-in-the-ice-cubes effect decades ago, but here it lives – on the side of a city bus, no less. I guess sometimes a candy bar is more than a candy bar.

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Posted on July 28, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I took a journey through the savage heart of the Chicago dream recently. I visited Millennium Park.
I remain baffled. Is it just me who doesn’t see what’s so great about Millennium Park? Is it just me who thinks it fails as both art and a park, which pretty much invalidates the whole enterprise? Am I the only one bored with the spectacle and unnourished by the park’s tease?
I returned to the park recently to make sure I wasn’t crazy, pig-headed, blinded by antipathy to the Daley Administration. I wanted to see. I really did.
I was in and out in 30 minutes. I tried. But the truth is that Millennium Park sucks.

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Posted on July 17, 2006