Siftings
Apr
09
Not Existential Enough
Economic Development Program Manager Gloria Stearns asks if we can have fifteen minutes of music playing before the General Plan meeting on art on Monday. Of course. Then she asks me to assemble the playlist and Saturday ends with an iPod and sore thumb.
Randomize the songs and let the iPod...
Apr
04
Points of Reference
Warning: Slight length alert.
Mount Crumpit. It’s what we call the first half mile of 126th Street off Highway 92 in Andalusia, Illinois. It’s a joke, as many things are between the Malin boys, referencing the steepness of a short stretch of road rising above the Mississippi River to...
Mar
31
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Happy DP Places
Cold rainy days in rust-belt cities are an acquired taste. Renewing the plates on the Ford has me in downtown Davenport at Scott County’s admin building. The building is architecturally depressing, particularly in context of the County’s historic (unfortunately, long ago torn down) courthouse and...
Mar
24
Bonus Countdown - Lala Names
The 2017 lineup for Lalapalooza is announced and thus ... the annual top ten band names:
10. Mondo Cozmo
9. Alison Wonderland
8. (tie) Joey Badass / Flint Eastwood
7. The Pretty Reckless
6. Car Seat Headrest
5. Max
4. Cheat Codes
3. Hippo Campus
2. Lard...
Mar
24
Craig’s Friday Countdown - 1 Adverb, 9 Adjectives
The Alfa 4C, the most wonderfully unusable car I’ve driven since the first one I owned (metal flake purple Meyers Manx), in ten words:
ridiculously beautiful
ridiculously small
ridiculously loud
ridiculously uncompromising
ridiculously quick
ridiculously...
Mar
18
Lighten Up, Francis
Stay in the dugout. As the season started, I was quite explicit about it. “This isn’t Little League, guys. We don’t leave the dugout to congratulate teammates who hit home runs”. What some of them – the ones who didn’t play for me as Little Leaguers - did not know was I had the same rule in...
Mar
10
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Chucks
Chuck Taylors are the perfect shoes for everything except professional baseball, football, mountaineering and firefighting. Everywhere else, they work flawlessly. Light, reasonably cheap, comfortable and not overly padded, so you can actually feel what’s going on. And age only makes them...
Mar
03
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Sanctuaries
As the Seaside City Council waits for a draft of a “Sanctuary City” resolution from me, the grey matter ponders “sanctuary” as a word and concept. Rather than try to ascribe ordinal or ratio precision to what constitutes sanctuary for me, here’s an either / or collection:
Not Sanctuary – Wine...
Feb
20
Wash Me
The Jeep bludgeons through the rain. There are more aerodynamic and far less skittish vehicles to wrestle with on a wet highway at speed but, as I recall (here), those engender polite chats with the highway patrol. Out of its element at seventy something on the rain slick 201 snaking across the...
Feb
16
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Superfast?
So inspired by Ferrari's newest reason to question this whole public sector work is meaningful thing, the Countdown is a day early this week. Here's a dozen names I imagine they scratched off on their way to "812 Superfast".
812 Promptlygo
812 Rapidthing
812 Speedyquick
812...
