Happy Sad

Well, Travis has moved to Seattle, and suddenly Chicagoland feels much lonelier. I couldn’t be more excited for him: he’ll be working with (and living next door to) nice guys that he has known for years. His job is right up his alley, a management position in a young up-and-coming company. He’ll be surrounded by people much like himself, who appreciate good coffee, fresh sushi, outdoor exploration, progressive legislation, and Rainbow brand flip-flops.

But, oh, I miss him so much it hurts, and he’s only been gone a week! Luckily, I foresee a quick trip to Seattle in the near future, so I won’t have to be away from him for long.

I love you, Trav. I miss you. And I’m so proud of you. Enjoy the rain!

I'm still a Mac girl...

... but you have to admit, this new Microsoft Surface (originally codenamed Microsoft Milan) looks really sweet. Check it out!

TrendWatch

Fads, Crazes, and Other Things Wealthy Celebrities Do with Money They Don’t Need, by Film Crew Trends Editor Kevin Murphy

Welcome back to TrendWatch. As the Film Crew Trends Editor, it's my job to periodically slip the cuff on the upper arm of the celebrity corpus and take its trend pressure. Rest assured, the pacesetting behavior of people unnecessarily lauded for their desperate grasps at attention is as robust as ever. To wit:

Infants, those living, breathing stabs at immortality are trending toward an all-time craze. Portable and generally cute, infants hold the promise of an endless battery of accessories: nannies, baby stylists, infant caterers, in utero psychologists, and robotic wet-nurses are among the hottest sub-trends focused on privileged loin-fruit. But the highest high-profile sub-trend remains as always Stupid Baby Names, of the variety once foisted only on purebred dogs and race horses. The ever popular last-name-as-first (Sutton, Maddox, Ripley, Truman, Zola) and more recent place name trend (Brooklyn, Madison, Shiloh) have been eclipsed by the far stupider Abstract Naming Craze (Apple, Pirate, Blanket, Willow, Banjo, Dixie Dot) Not yet taken: Hammer, Lefty, Barrage, Chin-stripe, Throttle, Arugula, Lush-Red Lychee, Fornication, and Pomegranate.

Cabbage is back with a vengeance! The cruciferous leafy cousin of mustard is the basis for the diets of dozens of those who want to be known. Award season always finds emaciated gown-hangers at local delicatessens slurping bowl after bowl of the famous watery soup, and on Thursdays (“banana day") one can delight in observing Andersonville-thin starlets forcing banana after banana down their throats.

Adjunct to the cabbage diet is the burgeoning trend of Flatulence. Stars are ripping them with rapidly growing frequency, and the particular tang of sulfurous bowel-breath produced by the dicotyledonous diet flower is known to burn the eyes of guests at the best of parties. Cabbage-gas redolence has become such a sign of status that many Tony party-throwers have taken to hiring emaciated models to come in and pre-fart the house before an important soirée.

The dependable alternative to any diet, Starvation, is trending up for the autumn and Important Film Premiere Season, causing more than one well-heeled luminary to find herself treated at the emergency room for injury caused by bones breaking through papery, overbuffed skin.

Of course these high-profile waifs wouldn't be caught dead in anything less than the latest in health care, the Designer Hospitals. The posh emergency room at Karl Lagerfeld / St. Jude is bedecked with original Warhols, and the beds sport pima cotton sheets and vomit towels. The waiting room boasts WiFi and a Dean & Deluca snack bar. In Miami Beach at Ian Schrager's exclusive hospital and club sic/well, the rooms are appointed with Barcelona chairs, iPod docks, and tanning beds, and offer round-the-clock nurse, concierge, and laundry, while downstairs at Club Morgue guests can dance or linger over organic vodka martinis while keeping their IV meds connected through convenient tableside drip stations. Club Morgue is fast becoming the town's hottest club, but you have to be admitted to be admitted.

The Short List: Among the trends currently trending up are vintage Australian bowling shirts, tooth shortening, wearable skin-toned latex phones, and Egyptian pork, which is smoked, seasoned, mummified and packed in a sarcophagus for a year before serving. Personal hovercrafts are bouncing back, as are individual made-to order tequilas, blended by the bottle, which include a drop of the client's sweat. On the bleeding edge you'll find RAID-configured redundant hearts, fuel flavorings for the biodiesel set, and talking credit cards.

Those are all the trends we can fit in the space allowed, but watch this spot as we keep a keen eye on the things idle people do to ward off despair. Salud!

More Twist!

I am pleased to announce that after some more designing (and much public outcry), Santiago Calatrava has redesigned the look of the Chicago Spire (2010), completing the spiral and giving it a much more natural look:
From this (primary design B)


to this (final design).


Check out the building's official website for some nifty concept pictures of the building and the surrounding park. Sophie and Dev - I'll have to take you by the building site when you're here to visit.

A Good Five Minutes

... of pure hilarity. Mike Nelson always cracks me up.

Adventures of the Mildly Dim

When I first started working here at PHC, I had to go through the customary (and much dreaded) safety orientation session, headed by Bob the Safety Manager. As I left my desk that morning, Marilyn wisely advised me to take a pad of paper and a pen, knowing the delight I take in writing down stories about the ridiculous events in my life. I was not disappointed – I found a stockpile of derisive cannon fodder during those three hours.

I will not bore you with some of the more minor amusements, but the greatest source of hilarity was, without a doubt, the safety video we were forced to watch. Filmed in 1983, this video tape assaulted our senses with synth music rejected from Miami Vice, pixilated visual effects, and an overdose of fluorescent color schemes. The cast was your traditional 1980’s staple of actors -

- Tony Danza-boy – Not quite as handsome, but passable
- Prince-woman – The resemblance is uncanny, with only the breasts creating any telltale difference between the two
- Frito Bandito with a gland problem (or an unhealthy addiction to bacon)
- Boss-man – Typical white man; comes complete with his own power tie!

Although no backstory was provided, I can easily imagine one – the Gambino family, using a chemical storehouse as a front for drug operations, realizes that the FBI has caught on to them, and they need to destroy the place in a hurry. But they need to do it in a legal fashion, so what do they do but hire the above listed individuals (already known for their blatant disregard of OSHA regulations) as workers in the storehouse, hoping that they will destroy the building and themselves in a single day.

As for the video itself, we the viewers were shown a variety of dangerous situations, and repeatedly told how these situations could have been averted if people only would read MSDS books. The actors committed acts of folly that you would think atypical of anyone with an IQ over 5: playing with broken bottles, spilling 50-gallon drums of corrosives, and (my personal favorite) deliberately inhaling poisonous vapors. The vapors scene also wins the award for the goofiest CPR scene ever – the ur-Frito Bandito laying on the floor, Prince-woman doing speed push-ups on his chest, and Boss-man calling paramedics on a cell phone the size of a bread loaf.

After an hour of the characters coming close to killing themselves and demolishing the building with acid, fire, flooding, and runaway forklifts, the movie mercifully ended. I assume that the characters survived, though given their track record, they probably didn’t last long afterwards.

Somnambulist

My family and old roommates can all testify that I am what is called an “active sleeper”. I frequently talk, kick, and walk (and occasionally clean) in my sleep. Sometimes I can remember my sleepwalking experiences – like when my parents woke to find me emptying my mother’s makeup drawer searching for a part of my ear, or when I started shouting gibberish at Marcie when we were rooming together freshman year. During these moments, I was conscious of what I was doing, but unable to do anything about it. Other times, I am completely oblivious to my actions. Travis will happily tell you about the night in the Oregon coast hotel when he saw me give CPR to my pillow, and Marcie will admit to locking me out of the dorm room when I went on a sleepwalking search for my tennis shoes; the morning after both of these events, I didn’t remember a thing.

Although it is inconvenient for everyone else, there is something comforting about having someone witness these events. That way, I could always be sure that someone would stop me should I wander into traffic or near the edge of a cliff.

Last night, I’m sure that I had one of those semi-conscious sleepwalks. I “saw” a spider the size of a rubber ball lowering itself from the ceiling directly onto my bed. I leapt up, stripped my bed of all the covers, tossed the pillows around the room, and dug under my bed looking for the spider. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that I was behaving irrationally but that I couldn’t stop myself (a sure indicator that I was sleepwalking). After some more searching, I reassembled the bed and went back to sleep.

As usual during these remembered sleepwalks, it felt like an out-of-body experience. My mind recognized what was going on, realized that it was irregular, but was unable to control my body’s actions. It’s a strange sensation to feel relief in your mind when your body stops acting independently. I wish that I had a roommate to make my body behave during these episodes.