Seven Red

1) When you fuck up the opening of a Cling Wrap box, you have to live with that fuck up for two months. When you fuck it up three consecutive times, it follows that you have six months of Cling Wrap hell on your hands. How does this happen? You know that last bit of Cling Wrap is limp, and goes nowhere, so you’re smart enough to anticipate and buy some Cling Wrap at the store, probably opting for the Glad brand because you watch Top Chef, even though the store brand does exactly the same thing, there being only one way of making Cling Wrap, really, even if it’s called Stick-To Plastic Wrap, or whatever. But you reach the end of that old Cling Wrap, and pump your fist triumphantly because you knew enough to anticipate, but then you’re all excited and the damn packaging doesn’t tell you fuck all about how to open it, so you start pulling on tabs and other loose cardboard, only to realize that you’ve fucked up the opening of the Cling Wrap box yet again. They should have a big goddamn red star on the packaging warning you not to fuck up the opening of the Cling Wrap. This is basic technical writing that any sophomore would be able to tell you.

2) The best two moments on Girl Talk’s All Day are Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Shimmy Shimmy Ya over Radiohead’s Creep (roughly 20:30-21:45) and Fabolous’ (Holla Back) Young’n over INXS’s I Need You Tonight (28:45-29:40). There are a lot of other good moments, but these are the most surprising and well-executed, I think. Ending with Imagine was, however, lame. I mean that in the most high-schoolish way. At some point, I’m going to have to admit that my preference for East Coast and specifically New York hip hop over all other varieties is mere provincialism.Two points here: a) An easy experiment: Put any “old school” hip hop song (defined here, as something produced between 1987 and 1995) up on YouTube. Let’s say, EPMD’s Crossover, for example. Within two days, you will get a comment stating that EPMD was a’ight, but Li’l Wayne is a better lyricist, followed by about 300 comments stating that Li’l Wayne is total shit, and commercialized crap, and can’t even hold a candle to the lyrics of X Old School hip hop, in this case Parrish Smith and Erick Sermon. In the first place, this is strictly speaking true: EPMD is objectively better than Li’l Wayne. But the real issue is that hip hop spoke to these commenters more when they were 15 or 16 or 20, back in 1992. Today’s hip hop doesn’t speak to me not because it’s bad (I really wouldn’t know), but because I’m not hanging out in parks, drinking beer, a twenty sack in one pocket and a can of Rusto in my coat, NYPD rolling by slow with the dash flashlight, EPMD banging out of somebody’s trunk. Funk mode, yeah kid, that’s how the squad rolls. Maybe Li’l Wayne would be just as good if that’s what I was doing now. Instead, I get a small rush from having correctly timed the running out of Cling Wrap. b) And on a related note, whenever I see something advertised at the supermarket as 2 for $5, I secretly mouth the dialogue intro to Wu Tang’s C.R.E.A.M. It’s an embarrassing admission, but that’s what blogs are for.

3) Political Axiom: Talking to the public about deficit spending during the middle of the holiday season is inherently stupid. Deficits only make sense in January.

This will be the first in the series “Kids These Days!,” in which Seven Red rants and raves about the things the kids do these days, and general problems of raising kids, well, these days. The rhetorical form is simple, and can be summarized as follows: What the fuck is this shit, now? The primary sense will be that these kids do something that we didn’t do back when we were kids, all those ages ago in the 1970′s and 80′s. With the series thus explained, I’ll proceed with the first installment, Tiny Bubbles.

So, can somebody explain to me why I have giant fucking plastic containers of bubble producing fluid all over my goddamn living space? These containers come with an implement, apparently known as a “wand,” which you dip into the bubble fluid, then blow on to produce some stream of bubbles in the air. Yes, you know what I’m talking about because we had bubble-producing shit of the same sort when we were kids. Here’s the difference: it came in a tiny little plastic bottle that held maybe 4 ounces of said fluid, and which never, ever turned up in your house after its use. The shit would appear when you were out somewhere, it would run out, and that would be the end of the effin’ bubbles. Now they come in plastic containers that could probably be used to clean up the BP oil spill. One of these has three wands and notes, I think ironically, “Three Kids Can Play!” Play? Three kids can live in that fucking container. It’s an aquarium. And because no normal kid could run through bubble fluid equivalent to a full tank of fuel for a fucking aircraft carrier in one day, these goddamn giant florescent plastic bubble fluid containers end up sitting around here and there in the house, plastic all back-alley-of-a-laundromat-oil-soap-slicky from whatever noxious shit they use to make this crap.

Why, people?

In addition to my many other Annoying Writing Quirks, I always find myself starting off these posts with “So,…,” as if we’ve been having a conversation. But the conversation’s been sparse of late, I’ll admit. It was the summer, and I’ve been – despite that – pretty busy, but also feeling pretty drained. This combination yielded this result: I slogged through all the work I had to do, and really couldn’t bring myself to get to the stuff I want to do. One of which, of course, is updating all my fine reader. Ahem, readers. Also, our digital camera broke, so both kidpics and Graffiti Fridays became undoable. Ah well. In any case, now that the school year at Unnamed Employer Institution is kicking up again, I’ve decided that I will commit to frequent updates here, as it keeps me sane and let’s me spout off without spouting off on stuff that I shouldn’t be spouting off on, identifiably speaking. Pure semi-ano0nymous outlet, in other words. Part of that means that there will probably be a lot of posts like this, in which I essentially say nothing of interest, but simply post to post. Eh, it can’t all be wedding cake. Expect the Evil of Banality series to multiply substantially.   I do like the word “uninteresting,” though. In my line of work, I think it may be the supreme insult, even worse than saying something’s dumb. Something can be smart, but uninteresting, and that’s really the killer. I’m reclaiming uninteresting!

Some of my facebook friends and others have been posting and reposting this email exchange between an NYU Stern School of Business professor and an MBA student. To summarize the exchange, the MBA student showed up for the first day of the professor’s “Brand Strategy” class an hour late, apparently because he or she was “sampling” the first day of other courses in an effort to determine which course to take. The professor sent the student away immediately, since he has a standing policy of refusing entry to anyone who is more than 15 minutes late for class. The student, who could not have known of this policy (not having the syllabus), complains to said professor in an email, explaining the situation, even though he or she has decided against taking the class. It shall be left at that, yes? Oh, no it shan’t. For the professor suddenly feels the urge to demonstrate how much bigger he is than the student, and fires off a rousing, caustic email upbraiding the student for all sorts of shortcomings, and suggesting that he or she get his or her collective shit togevah, like, yesterday. The email finds its way on to the intertubes, whereupon a cheer erupts, and all us betrodden professor-types are meant to fist-pump vicariously through the emailing skillz of our Stern Professor friend, hereinafter, Professor Bickdick (on account of his having such a bick dick). Take that, former abusive student-types!

Now, far be it from me to choose sides between an MBA student and a business school professor (I also don’t adjudicate the relative ethical merits of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, for instance), but there is an odd irony involved in the exchange that most have failed to notice. To get to it, you have to follow the logic of Professor Bickdick’s reply, which I’ll repost here in its entirety:

Thanks for the feedback. I, too, would like to offer some feedback.

Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.

Correct?

You state that, having not taken my class, it would be impossible to know our policy of not allowing people to walk in an hour late. Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.). I hope the lottery winner that is your recently crowned Monday evening Professor is teaching Judgement and Decision Making or Critical Thinking.

In addition, your logic effectively means you cannot be held accountable for any code of conduct before taking a class. For the record, we also have no stated policy against bursting into show tunes in the middle of class, urinating on desks or taking that revolutionary hair removal system for a spin. However, xxxx, there is a baseline level of decorum (i.e., manners) that we expect of grown men and women who the admissions department have deemed tomorrow’s business leaders.

xxxx, let me be more serious for a moment. I do not know you, will not know you and have no real affinity or animosity for you. You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. It’s with this context I hope you register pause…REAL pause xxxx and take to heart what I am about to tell you:

xxxx, get your shit together.

Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Professor [Bickdick]

Wow. That’s a big dick he swinging around, no? But we should notice a few things about this argument. Professor Bickdick first deploys the usual language of business discourse, suggesting that our hapless student should have performed a risk analysis, and probably would have been wise to hedge his bet. Well, that’s why he’s a business professor type: he can call up the most banal jargon for every situation. But the question is in fact central here: Professor Bickdick is actually quite serious (despite his protestations that he will only get “serious” later) – he’s quite serious, that is to say, that the student should have deployed precisely these decision making devices “in the face of substantial uncertainty.” What we know about Professor Bickdick is that he seeks, at least at the level of his instructions here (I won’t pretend to read his mind) to transform all aspects of life into business decisions. Can we go further? I think so. Apparently, before becoming Professor Bickdick, the good “doctor” (well, I wouldn’t go that far – ahem) made his name by starting a fun little internet site. I won’t link it here, since I’m not in the business of sending more hits to such venues, but suffice it to say that it involves envelopes that are red, and is primarily concerned with leveraging the gift relationship in the service of high priced commodities, to wit:

You give to affirm a friendship, to celebrate a new beginning, to thank a colleague, to honor family, to connect with a loved one, to commend successes, to mark passages, to give a little encouragement — or just because it’s a joy to give.

Put another way, there’s no aspect of your life or relationship in your life that can’t be translated (through the mechanism of Professor Bickdick’s brilliant web site) into a luxury item, like, for instance, a mother’s birthstone necklace ($95 USD), a silk and cashmere cardigan (when your friend or loved one is sick! – $150 USD), and etc. Everything – and especially the gift relation – can be commodified. Finally, Professor Bickdick was teaching a class on brand strategy. Now, I couldn’t find a direct description of a course called “Brand Strategy,” but what would seem like a similar course, “Brand Planning for New and Existing Products,” lists part of its goals as the following:

Creatively explores multiple ways that the branded product experience can create associations in the mind that may develop into mindshare (e.g., the immediate and preferential recalling of your brand when a need arises). Measures the knowledge effects of brand awareness, disposition, propensity, expectations, attitudes, and behavior and discovers the resulting level of brand equity.

Yummy mindshare! If I may risk a lay translation: the class that the student was sampling is concerned with hooking people affectively to a particular brand, or set of brand signifiers, at basically every level of their existence (disposition, propensity, expectation, attitude, and behavior). Or, simpler still, the guy teaches people how to create desiring consumers. So, to summarize, not only does Professor Bickdick instruct his almost student to treat decisions on attending classes as risk analyses; not only did he make his bones (and probably his substantial fortune) transforming the gift relationship – which is structurally immeasurable – into a calculable commodity relation; but the very class that the student had the gall to interrupt is directly involved in the production of a consumer subjectivity. And what is Professor Bickdick upset about?

He’s upset that this student acted like a consumer! He’s upset that this student treated his class as nothing more than another product on a store shelf, to be sampled at one’s leisure, tried out, inspected, and bought – or not. The “lucky lottery winner” that is the student’s Monday evening professor is not a lottery winner at all, but the brand that won the market share.

Oh, but wait, you say. Isn’t there all that stuff in there about “disrespectful behavior” and “decorum (i.e. manners)?” Isn’t there all that stuff in there about “respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility?” Doesn’t that count for something? Why, yes. That is where Professor Bickdick is at his most inconsistent. It is here where we see that all the blathering about risk analysis and all the background on brand building and mindshare never really cut it even for Professor Bickdick. Never mind that Judgement (sic) and Decision Making – presumably based on some derivative of rational choice theory that remains the grand fetish in our business schools – operates in direct contradiction to a notion of mindshare, which seeks to eliminate precisely such analytic calculations in the commodity’s consumption phase. You can’t square “immediate and preferential recalling” with the putative neutrality of risk analysis, however deluded both positions may be. But no matter. As we know from one of Deleuze and Guattari’s pithier aphorisms, nothing ever died of contradiction.

The real incoherence comes when Professor Bickdick tries to mix in remnants from what are essentially dead social formations (decorum, manners, respect for institutions, and the like) with his otherwise formulaic and predictable capitalist jargon. The professor is actually upset that the student treated his class like any other commodity on the market, but he’s equally upset that the sacred unity of his lecture was disturbed. Notice that Professor Bickdick never once suggests that other students themselves may be disturbed by late-comers, an easy enough argument to make, and the only real pragmatic objection to the student’s actions. Rather, the late-comers’ “behavior” is inherently “disrespectful.” It fails to pay due tribute to the eminence that is the professor, or acknowledge the size of his massive, er, congregation. In this sense, Professor Bickdick is quite right to introduce a paragraph break between his nonsense on “substantial uncertainty” and his real lance thrust on a supposed “code of conduct.” The first is the capitalist explanation of how the student erred. The second is the feudalist explanation of the same. We also know from Deleuze and Guattari, however, that the first effects a universal decoding – and indeed, it is precisely such a decoding that all Professor Bickdick’s activities actually serve to produce. It’s all the same to his “gifting” website if you’re celebrating a marriage or consoling the bereaved or honoring a colleague or whatever: it all translates into money, the universal equivalent, and all the dense cultural codes associated with these particular activities fall by the wayside. If there’s a better example of universal decoding than Professor Bickdick’s website, I’d certainly like to hear about it. What Professor Bickdick, in his dick-swinging zeal, doesn’t seem to understand is that such decoding would include his sacred “codes of conduct.” We have, then, the odd presentation of an MBA student who behaves in precisely the way Professor Bickdick teaches people to behave – in the mode of capitalist production, as a consumer, and etc. – but who Professor Bickdick must also sternly lecture (with the joke sent out to friends, no doubt) for violating in that very decoding behavior some archaic mode of feudal respect.

And we’re supposed to cheer about this? Even if we put Professor Bickdick’s incoherent email aside, we might at least say that, yes, yes indeed, we’ve all been tempted to write such emails. And we’ve all been tempted to do so precisely because we teach in this fraught context, where we’re constantly negotiating between the the decoding effects of the classroom gone commodity and the recoding or residual coding of the classroom as hierarchical institutional space. It is in that conflict that the desire to respond in these ways almost always erupts. So, why do most people I’ve taught with not write this email? Is it because we’re still mostly untenured, and such emails would look egregious to a tenure committee? Yes, certainly. Our labor interests are not spared the decoding. Is it because we generally don’t have time to compose such emails, given all our other work and interests? Yes, that too. But there may even be a simpler explanation – however complex the context in which such desires emerge and decisions are made.

Probably, unlike Professor Bickdick, most of us actually like our students.

1) Random Things I Don’t Want to Say on Facebook

A. I’m pretty happy about all the snow the South is getting, since we’ve barely had eight inches in Chicago this winter, total. Every time they describe another southern snowstorm, I smile, and even chuckle a little.

B. When foodies tell everybody what they’re making for dinner, I kinda roll my eyes a little bit and mouth the words “Fuck’s sake.” Also, people who post which bar or restaurant they’re going to. I know people probably roll their eyes when I post more 50-picture albums of my kids, though, so I guess we’re even.

C. Some people I know and respect are, surprisingly, name-dropping motherfuckers. Really. It’s beneath you.

D. Whenever Project Runway is on, I want to post “I have to question the taste level” as a status update, but then I forget, and then I don’t care.

E. Some people I know and respect are, surprisingly, pretty self-congratulatory in a way that makes me mildly uncomfortable. Isn’t it a little like walking into a crowded room and saying “Hey everybody! Here’s this thing I want to say that shows you all how great I am!” Or are people supposed to behave this way? Have I been wrong all along that there’s something distasteful and anti-social about that? Cuz it seems like people do it, like, ay-lot, and it seems like I always scrunch my nose up and pull my shoulders in when they do.

F. I’ve hidden posts on Mafia Wars and other such shite. Now they’re starting to use their status updates to tell me about it. I feel like joining the game. To kill them.

G. I’m kinda pleased that some people who always struck me as affected IRL retain their affectations in Facebook prose, but the sudden seeming authenticity of that renders their previous affectation less annoying, even though it remains affectation. Curious.

H. Facebook Axiom: You’re the only one of your high school friends who has really changed.

I. The way some people post music videos, it reminds me of that friend you had in high school (who hasn’t changed, by the way) who always tried to put music on in the car because he wanted you to like it too, and he’d play it off like he was trying to have a conversation with you, but would really be waiting for you to comment on how good the music is, which was always clearly signaled by the fact that he kept nudging the volume up a little for every minute you ignored the awesomeness of his new favorite song, even while acting all casual about it, so you finally had to say “Oh, what’s this?” and “It’s pretty good,” just to get him to stop that annoying behavior. Yeah, some people who post eight or nine music videos a day are like that.

Speaking of which.

2) Search Engine (or, The Hard-Headed Never Learn) – Some of the search terms that people use to find their way to Seven Red are hilarious. But my favorite so far is the person from Albuquerque who typed the following into Google: ‘”method man” “carpet get” explain.’ That led our New Mexico friend to this post on The Wackness, which cites the lyrics from Biggie and Method Man’s song The What?, to wit, “No question, I be comin’ down and shit / Yo I gets rugged as a muthafuckin’ carpet get.” Now, it would seem to me that the “explanation” for this verse could be pretty clear. Carpets get tore up (from the floor up, as it were). But more, no? In the early-to-mid 90′s, the term “rugged” was much favored in East Coast hip hop. Often paired with “raw” (as in EPMD’s Crossover “I speak for the hardcore/ Rough, rugged, and raw…” and later in The What, “Ninety-four, rugged, raw/ Kickin’ down your goddamn door”), the term was both a synonym for “tough,” and designated a style of rap that hadn’t yet been assimilated by the music industry. Its use in this case could also be a typical Method Man joke, switching from the signified to the signifier mid-line: “I gets rugged” turns back to the signifier (“rug”), from which it’s a short step to the new signified (“carpet”). We’ve already seen something like this in the lyrics from Protect Ya Neck (I mean ooh/ Yo check out the flow/ Like the Hudson or PCP when I’m dustin/ N*ggaz off/ Because I’m hot like sauce/ The smoke from the lyrical blunt makes me *uunh*), where the last word should be the word “cough” (rhyming with “off” and “sauce”) but Method switches it up to the actual sound of a cough (“uunh”), which rhymes with blunt, thereby introducing a new rhythm.  I’ve mentioned this moment before, largely because that simple transformation from the word cough to the sound of the cough is, for me, one of the singular genius moments in the maturation of hip hop lyrics, together with Rakim’s development of multi-word, multisyllabic rhymes that extend past the couplet (“The only time I stop is when/ Somebody drop and then/ Bring ‘em to the front cuz my rhyme’s the oxygen”). So that’s my explanation for our Google friend, but far more amusing is the situation that would have caused the search in the first place. So, our friend is sitting around listening to the song, hears the lyric “Yo I gets rugged as a muthafuckin’ carpet get,” and says “Hmm. What does that mean? I know, I’ll go Google it! Maybe somebody will be able to explain!” I kinda love that. So, there you go if you’re still searching, New Mexico.

Is this really going to be a weather post? A weather post? No. I guess I shouldn’t do that, not least because it really means we’ve hit bottom on subject matter – the worst kind of uncomfortable small talk: “Cold enough for ya?” Yeah, well. But it is winter, finally, after a mild November, so we’re just hoping to get our trips off OK out of the sucking pit of O’Hare. We have quite a few. The whole fam will fly to Albany, and from there the short drive to Schoharie to see Granny and everyone else. Then we drive to Queens, spend some time with the NYC famiglia, then back to Schoharie. Then she and the kiddos make the solo flight back to Chicago, while yours truly takes the Amtrak to Philadelphia, where I have some – ahem – business to take care of. No, not that kind. The other side of the table kind. The asking the questions kind. Should be interesting. Then I fly back to O’Hare, and then it’s New Years. So, winter, finally. I suddenly remembered that we’re leaving from Midway.

Has this been pointless enough for you? Good. Because it was all a thin ruse, a mere delivery device for these adorable pictures of the kiddos in and around various signifiers of the season.

1. Series Match-Up – I like a Yankees-Phillies series. First, it’s old school. I don’t know what a Colorado Rocky is, but its only barely a baseball team. In general, I don’t trust baseball teams that purport to represent entire states. That’s right. I said it. A baseball team should represent a city, not a state. Now, before you go off all half-cocked telling me that the New York Yankees and the New York Mets represent the state of New York, let me just stop you. The Yankees were founded long before such nonsense existed – when all teams were indexed to a city. The Mets, for their part, could never be mistaken for representing, say, Watkins Glen, New York, first because they are the Metropolitans, and second because their colors very obviously refer to the colors of the City of New York, and not the state of New York (the nonsense about the Mets colors referring to the Giants and Dodgers old colors is just silly, and hardly worth a mention). So much for that. But Florida? Arizona? Texas? Colorado? This is some new and painfully corporate contrivance meant to produce wide demographic identification (the worst offender appears in another sport – the Carolina Panthers: they don’t even bother restricting themselves to a state). I like World Series when they are Philadelphia v. New York, or Chicago v. Boston, or Detroit v. Los Angeles. This Colorado v. Texas shite has got to go.

Second, these teams are pretty evenly matched. Yankee fans who think the NL team will be a push-over this year, in the style of the hapless 99 Padres, have another thing coming. Indeed, I’d say that Philly is the stronger team at this point, largely because the Yankee offense has been so uneven, especially with runners in scoring position. When the bottom of the line-up hits, and the top of the line-up do their thing, the 09 Yankees are essentially unstoppable. We saw this on display in Game 4 – with all pistons firing, the Angels looked like what they were: a pathetically outmatched team. But there have been real offensive problems, and I don’t just mean Swisher’s performance (though his defense has certainly argued for his continued inclusion in the line-up). The Yankee bats have been iffy at best, which of course can’t be said of the Phillies. NY has been saved by three factors: opponent errors, stellar pitching, and clutch A-Rod. (For just a signal of how A-Rod smacked down Mike Scioscia’s strategy, he was on base five times last night, with two singles and THREE walks, all of which involved Angel pitchers trying to keep the ball the fuck away from his wheelhouse, which itself seems massive at this point. They even walked in a run pitching around A-Rod. Compare games 1 and 2, when Scioscia tried to pitch Rodriguez with impunity, hoping to break his confidence. Bzzzt. Try again next year.) On the other side, of course, is Ryan Howard, who has been tearing up anything in his path since Game 1 of the postseason. Clutch v. clutch. Tight pitching v. tight pitching, and even the Phillies pen didn’t seem all that bad. And Jeter v. Rollins? This should be interesting.

Scene 1: me at computer, actually typing up the grocery list. she folding laundry on the sofa.

she: Hey, on the April baby boards, one person has a kid named Wolfgang.
topspun: I like that.
she: Yeah, Wolfie.
topspun (being pedantic, as per usual): Volfie.
she: Yeah, Volfie.
topspun: I once knew a guy named Helmut.
she: What’s short for Helmut?
topspun: Nothing. If a man’s name is Helmut, you best damn well call him Helmut.

Scene 2: About 2:30 Friday afternoon, me walking out on to back deck to take a writing break; three gangbanger dudes who moved in next door about two weeks ago walking down their back stairs.

topspun (making eye contact, lifts hand in greeting): What’s up, man.
gangbanger dude (looking genuinely surprised and delighted to finally be addressed by whiteboy neighbor): Hey man! (holds up a twelve pack of Modelo). You want a beer?
topspun: Nah. I’m working. Thanks, though.
gangbanger dude: Cool, man.

Scene 3: Jewel-Osco at Foster and Pulaski, check out line.

ellie: I want to press the button. Hey, I can’t reach it!
she: OK, but wait until the lady is done scanning all the groceries.
ellie: I know, but I want to press it!
cashier in next aisle (to Ellie): Do you have enough money for all those groceries?
ellie: I wasn’t talking to you.

It’s getting a little heavy in here, I’ll admit, so I want to lighten the mood a little with story time. Every night, as part of the going-to-bed ritual, I have to tell Ellie a story. Note that I didn’t say I have to read her a story. No. I have to make up a story for her, on the spot. So, a few of the story series:

1) The Good Witch – The Good Witch stories always start off the same way. Ellie is watching TV with her daycare friends (Elliot, Gwendolyn, Zoe, Sadie, and MaeBelle), when the Good Witch comes on the television and proposes some adventure. Ellie and her friends have to help out some other kid in trouble in some part of the world. So, in one, they brought water across the desert to a village. In another, they saved a town from a giant snake. And the like. They always get to the place by saying the place name three times, and get back by saying “Chicago Chicago Chicago.”

2) Brooklyn Stories – These are a subset of the Good Witch stories. Rather than have a different kid-who-needs-help and place for each one, however, all these stories take place in Brooklyn, and involve the same kid and antagonist. Ellie has requested these almost non-stop since we got back from our trip. They start off with the Good Witch coming on TV, as per usual. The kid-who-needs-help is their friend in Brooklyn, Pinky McCoy, who has a green-haired dog named Punkrock. Pinky is plagued by the Meanest Boy in Brooklyn, a little jerk named Meanie Meanie Roger Marini, who is constantly stealing her shit and otherwise effing with her. How is he the meanest boy in Brooklyn? One time, he jackhammered the sidewalk so no kids could ride their bikes. One time, he stole all the balls in town and sunk them in the Hudson River, so no kids could play ball. One time, he glued the doors of the aquarium shut so no kids could see the fish. But he’s got a special vendetta against Pinky McCoy. In one story, he kidnapped all her dogs, including Punkrock. Another time he flooded her basement and put a shark in it. They funneled it out with the help of the New York Aquarium, which didn’t particularly like Meanie Meanie Roger Marini anyway, on account of the door-gluing incident. And etc. Each time, the kids have to say “Brooklyn Brooklyn Brooklyn,” at which point they are transported magically to Pinky McCoy’s house, where they solve some problem caused by Roger Marini. When they’ve solved the problem (for instance, rescuing Pinky’s tent so they can camp out in her yard), Roger Marini always says “Drat! Foiled again!” Ellie loves saying this. One more twist to the Brooklyn series. After they’ve foiled Roger Marini, Ellie insists that they all visit Aunt Allison and Zio Fredo’s apartment, at which point Ellie has to recount what happened to Aunt Allison (which turns out to be a nice little test in comprehension), and then has chocolate milk made for her by Zio Fredo: first you pour the milk, then you squirt the syrup…and then what? “Stir! Stir! Stir!” Two weeks of these.

3) Stuffed Animal Series – Then there are the stories deriving from Ellie’s stuffed animals. First, the Gypo the Giraffe stories. Gypo is sitting at home one day, when he suddenly gets a call from his friend DeeDeeDee the Lion. There’s going to be a dance party at the townhall! But poor Gypo doesn’t know how to dance! First he watches a dance show on television, but when he sees the people dancing he says “I…..don’t like that dance!” then he watches a dance movie DVD. “I…..don’t like that dance!” So he goes to the movies to learn to dance from a movie in the theater. But he doesn’t like that dance either (you always have to say “I…..don’t like that dance!”). He goes to a ballet studio. “I…..don’t like that dance!” He goes to a dancehall. “I…..don’t like that dance!” But finally, it’s time to go to the dance party at the townhall. He meets DeeDeeDee the Lion and Ellie, and then the music starts. He didn’t like any of the dances by themselves, so he combines them all together, at which point DeeDeeDee says “I…..don’t like that dance!” There’s a variation in which he pays a dance instructor, but doesn’t have enough money, so he goes to work at various businesses in the neighborhood. When he comes back with the money, the dance instructor informs him that he already knows how to dance, because that’s what he’s been doing all day: Gypo’s dance is sweeping and folding, and watching dishes, Mr. Miyagi-style, and so forth. Then there are the Henry the Parrot stories, in which a city parrot always longs to fly to South America, but makes some mistake that prevents it, like trying to follow Canadian Geese south for the winter only to learn it is spring, and they are flying back north. Then there are the Slippo the Hippo stories. Slippo is an entrepreneur who makes the best tasting mud pies ever, so Ellie gets the back story on how he got the recipe and ingredients together, like when he met a little man who lived in a tree who made the best cocoa in the whole world. On and on like this.

What I’ve learned: It’s pretty goddamn hard to make up a new story every night.

On Saturday we took a trip down to the Taste of Lincoln Avenue festival. Luckily, we ate before we left, so there was nothing much to do but drink beer and bump into too-rich twenty-somethings. Oh, and the Kids Carnival.

  she and Ellie have quite the conversation on the El.

  But Ellie wasn’t really happy until she got to go down the giant slides.

   But that wore her out, which of course meant it was time for…more beer!

  This is the part of the story where the kids are asleep so I’m standing around drinking beer.

Then back on the train, Rafe in tow.