Category: Uncategorized

I recently updated the structure and look of my personal website. The old site (shown below) was starting to look a bit dated. It had actually been in good condition for a long time, but Twitter decommissioned their API v. 1.0, which broke the only source of dynamic content on the site. I also started falling behind on updating my CV in the last couple of years when I was writing my dissertation.

Probably the biggest update was changing the markup to HTML5 and actually taking advantage of the transition property afforded by CSS3. The structure of HTML5 is a much better fit for documents like a CV.

I tried to showcase dynamic content throughout the new site. The home page has a section that imports the most recent post on this blog and grabs my Twitter feed. The CV has better formatting for the headings, a “sticky” navigation bar for the CV sections, and (most importantly) up-to-date information. I also added a portfolio page that better showcases some projects that I’ve been working on recently. It only has a video section right now, but I plan to add a graphic design section soon.

I made 56 57 total commits to my GitHub repository over the course of four years, but apart from a brief effort over the summer, most of the work was done in the last few weeks. In the meantime, I’ve guided hundreds of students on making their own websites. I’m reminded of an old adage: the electrician’s house has the most burnt out light bulbs.

Update: This blog post actually broke the spacing on the home page since the last post had a longer, two-line title. Nothing like one more commit!

Dir. Fede Alvarez, 88 min., City North 14

Mr. Alvarez’s bona fides at creating an exquisitely suspenseful situation are established when our “protagonists” (slightly ennobled theives) are up against the blind burglary victim after he cuts the lights in the windowless basement of his house: the tables have been delightfully turned as the burglars grope around attempting to avoid his line of fire. While the film thrills in that moment, it fails in it’s attempt to carry that sense of exquisite tension throughout the entire film, and it struggles when moralizing and (eventually) demoralizing the actions of each party: robbers and the robbed.

With horror master Sam Raimi listed as a producer, the physical beatings and gross-out comedy are upped to the max. Some characters take such a pounding that it’s beyond any strain of credibility that they could arise and function, regardless of any adrenaline (which has probably faded given the somehow long-seeming run time of 88 minutes). A single robber is punched in the face repeatedly by the blind robbery victim (a former marine, no less), whacked over the back with a shovel, grazed with a bullet, thrown out a window, and nearly choked out twice. Like the living dead, he is resurrected again and again to suffer more punishment. Perhaps if this were a Die Hard-esque protagonist, or even an unkillable villain (also represented in this film), his repeated reinvigorations would fit the genre mold, if not the threshold of disbelief.

As a heavy, Stephen Lang (credited, simply, as “The Blind Man”) cuts an ominous presence, partly through his imposing frame lurching from room to room and partly from the fact that he seems to magically appear around every corner of the dilapidated Detroit house where he hoards his million dollar cash fortune (discussing how he obtained it would be too much of a spoiler). He comes across as a monster of Greek myth: the Minotaur lurking behind the corners of his Labyrinth in the ruins of a great city. The setting is innovative, but, given the resurgence of Detroit, it seems like the idea came five or six years too late. While a great concept, the maze-like nature of the house made following the action a bit confusing; the irony and tension is only palpable when you can see the route of the protagonists on the way to their final mistake.

Most horror stories dispose with the cell phone, which could solve almost any horror movie problem, and this film is not the exception. Once the technology is dispensed with, Don’t Breathe becomes a reverse home invasion horror story where the invaded terrorizes the invaders. Although there were endless avenues that the advertised “twist ending” could have followed, the most obvious route was unfortunately the direction the director chose. Nevertheless, it’s a solid home invasion genre piece that has some suspenseful moments.

RT: 87%
AV Club: B+
Me: C+

Unfortunately, 2012 was another hard ass year after a hard year before. Fortunately, I was a better music listener this past year, so it’s time to announce my picks for the best songs of 2012, albeit very late as it is now well into 2013.

I listen to and critique about half of the albums that appear on my two sources of rock/indie/rap music reviews: the A.V. Club music reviews and the Sound Opinions podcast. Anything on local radio is also game. I don’t read music sites other than that, except occasionally Pitchfork and The Reader, so I don’t know any obscure/underground shit. Out of that, I have to say that I also get too busy due to work assignments or research requirements to listen to new music on a regular basis, so take this list for what it is.

Last year I tried to identify one song per week that I thought was fabulous, but I failed to keep vigilant on my list-making duties, and there were also a lot of weeks this year where I thought nothing particularly good was released, so I only ended up with 43 finalists. Note: I considered songs released starting in November 2011 provided I haven’t heard them until the year under consideration.

I picked 15 songs. Without further justifications, here they are (my list also available via Spotify):

15. “Thread” – Now, Now [listen]

14. “Myth” – Beach House [listen]

13. “Dog Days” – Arms [listen]

12. “The Full Retard” – El-P [listen]

11. “I Bought My Eyes” – Ty Segall Band [listen]

10. “No Future/No Past” – Cloud Nothings [listen]

9. “Hey Jane” – Spiritualized [listen]

8. “About to Die” – Dirty Projectors [listen]

7. “Midnight City” – M83 [listen]

6. “Tiny Arrows” – The Jayhawks [listen]

5. “My Eating Disorder” – Titus Andronicus [listen – sort of]

4. “Endors Toi” and “Apocalypse Dreams” – Tame Impala [listen and listen]

3. “My Revolutionary Mind” – Jay Farrar, et al. [listen]

2. “Younger Us” – Japandroids [listen]

1. “Gun Has No Trigger” – Dirty Projectors [listen and look]

Not selected, but my honorable mentions:

* “Around My Way [Freedom Ain’t Free]” – Lupe Fiasco [listen]

* “We Can’t Have Nice Things” – Kelly Hogan [listen]

* “Might Find It Cheap” – Blitzen Trapper [listen]

Dir. Oliver Stone, ~59 min., free screening at Illinois Institute of Technology

Based on the book of the same name by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, this series is a revisionist history of pivotal American historical events in the same vein as Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Loewen’s Lies my Teacher Told Me. The episode screened at IIT concerned the United States’ development and use of nuclear weapons against imperial Japan at the tail end of World War II.

Stylistically, the film barely stops to take a breath. The tapestry of period footage (including battlefield footage) and newsreel films (including both implicit and explicit propaganda) paired with Stone’s rhythmic narration give the film a perpetual motion. The narration pauses only briefly for Stone’s own selection of culled scenes from period films, which (often humorously) comment on period culture and provide a respite from the dense, fact-filled narration. Those clips are a much needed break and feel like a look inside the director’s private film vault. Unlike the sometimes stuffy and static style of Frontline or documentary films that overuse the Ken Burn’s effect on still shots, this film represents the history of World War II as fluid and intertwining streams of historical reporting and pop culture; as Stone said in the Q and A following the film, he applied “his style” to the project.

From what I could gather at the Q and A, Kuznick brought the historical research and he and Stone revised the book and film as they went (similar to Kubrick and Clarke). The overarching goal of the series is to question the dominant narrative of American exceptionalism, reexamining history from a global perspective and turning the critical lens on our treatment of fellow humans. Chapter 3 was certainly successful at that, bringing to light evidence that calls into question the true motives of the United States for using nuclear weapons in wartime (a show of force to deter Soviet expansion rather than a peace-bringing strike to force an unconditional Japanese surrender).

For as much as you might call this film a documentary, however, it presents a distinct viewpoint which it overtly advocates; it’s more of a historical essay than a documentary. Stone remarked that he hoped people would recognize the points where the authors are expressing opinions, and indirectly stated that their prerogative as filmmakers allowed for such insertions: as he said at the Q and A, “We can do it because it’s our film.”

At one point during the film, Stone unabashedly cuts to a review of the HBO film Truman, stating that portrayals of Truman’s aides were “wrong” and that Truman himself was depicted inaccurately in the biopic. I personally found the film to be refreshing in that the agenda was displayed quite prominently. Other so called documentary films I have seen in the past have tried to hide the filmmaker’s agenda behind the deceptive screen of objectivity or a “balanced” perspective. This film lays it all out, though it was troubling to me that Stone referred to the film as a documentary.

I purchased the companion book and I will comment more after I have read it. On a related note, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick were quite affable and Stone even signed my DVD copy of Platoon which I have shown to many students over the years. This was by far the best organized and most enjoyable speaker series event at IIT that I have attended.

Blackhawks 2012-13 tickets go on sale this upcoming Monday and they are probably the most expensive tickets in town of any kind. Separate of any success on the ice, the price of tickets is the ultimate validation of a five year plan by management to transform the organization. According to their new pricing plan, rear 300 level seats (where you definitely need to know your player numbers) are $54. Standing room only tickets are $27 (where you are basically paying for the privilege of attending the event, but you really shouldn’t hope to make out most of the action on the ice). Sitting anywhere other than the 300 level will cost you in excess of $120.

To put this in perspective, the United Center seats somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,500 spectators and the Hawks play around 42 home games per season. Theoretically, you could top 850,000 in ticket sales in a given year if you sell out every game, which the Hawks have done for a few seasons now.

By contrast, Soldier Field, where the Chicago Bears NFL franchise plays, holds 61,500 spectators and the Bears play eight home games each year; if the games sell out (which happens frequently) the Bears will never exceed 500,000 tickets sold, the fewest possible among major sports teams in Chicago.

If you consider the potential for selling tickets only, the Bears tickets should be many times the value of the Hawks tickets, but they aren’t. Cheap seats for the Bears tickets are only about $100 dollars, and all but the most expensive tickets are under $200.

Five years ago, before the Hawks were marketed by John McDonough, you could only watch a handful of home games on television because their much maligned owner, Bill Wirtz, wanted to drive up the market for ticket sales. It was an idiotic and greedy strategy that only discouraged fans from attending. Bill Wirtz was so hated in Chicago that during a eulogy before the 2007 Hawks home opener which I attended—a ceremony, mind you, where his recently bereaved family was present—fans actually booed during the moment of silence, loudly.

Keep in mind you could literally show up to the box office with a student ID the night of a game and get $8 seats; not standing room tickets, actual seats.

I agree that Bill Wirtz was a money-grubbing fool, but I also remember that tickets to that 2007 game were $25, less than half the current price. Poor sales accounted for some of that low pricing, but keep in mind you could literally show up to the box office with a student ID the night of a game and get $8 seats; not standing room tickets, actual seats. There’s something to be said about frugality when it keeps the cost of tickets down.

What we’ve exchanged with the new ownership (the much-loved Rocky Wirtz) and new president (John McDonough, formerly employed by the Cubs) is a more talented team with bigger salaries that wins much more often. However, regular season wins came for Hawks teams in the past under “Dollar Bill” Wirtz (the 91-92 team went to the Cup finals) and there is no sign that the Hawks will be in prime contention for a Stanley Cup championship this season unless something changes significantly. While the Cup win was extraordinary, the Hawks are not the Yankees and any chance of a dynasty era was crushed the minute the salary cap driven fire sale started post-championship. In a way, we can thank Bill Wirtz for that fire sale as well, since severe public backlash to his policy of trading top echelon players directly influenced management to adopt the reverse policy of paying top dollar for current fan favorites.

McDonough’s policy was always to make the Hawks into the Cubs of the west side of Chicago, with tickets sold to wealthy urban professionals and suburbanites who can afford to bring their kids to the game. People pay for the generic experience of going somewhere to drink and possibly keep their kids mildly entertained; the quality of the team and facilities becomes optional, as do the wins (eventually).

Tickets to sit in the first row on the glass are now $450, more than the most expensive Bears ticket and, in all likelihood, the most expensive ticket of any kind in town. By way of comparison, first row opera tickets at the Lyric, on opening night, when the show is sold out, go for $400. I can’t think of anything more expensive, can you? Possibly there is some kind of secret society of billionaires who gather to watch two men fight each other to the death.

In any case, the enduring success story for Blackhawks was not the turnaround of the team and quality of play, but the way they were able to take a franchise desperate to sell tickets and use brilliant marketing to jack up prices and sell out games. The Cup win was, in some ways, the ultimate marketing ploy as it will continue to fill seats long after the team disintegrates.

I don’t usually clog up my blog with personal anecdotes (I find them tedious to write about), but I have been reading the really excellent blog written by Dmitry Samarov (Hack: Stories from a Chicago cab) and it inspired me to share some recent stories of mine about driving in this city.

I used to bike and take public transit for the most part, but I hurt my right knee bicycling a few years ago and I have never really been able to recover (my cheap-ass student health insurance does not pay to fix things like this). As such, ever since my knee injury a few years ago I have been mostly a driver, sometimes taking public transit. To get to work, I have to take the green line on the CTA, and, due to my late hours, there are a lot of interesting characters (some drunk, some violent) on the trains when I go home. As such, I have pretty much settled into a much loathed routine of driving to work.

This summer, Nicole and I are both teaching six-week summer session courses. She teaches on the far north side, and I teach on the south side. We settled on trying to car pool on days when we teach, even though her class is later than mine so there is a lot of time spent waiting around. The sad fact is that with our Ultralow Emission Vehicle (which is consequently very fuel efficient at around 32 mpg city) it is cheaper to drive than to take any other travel option. Consider the following:

Nicole Drives and pays to park, I take the CTA	$7 + $5.00 = $12.00
Nicole and I both take public transit	$5.00 x 2 = $10.00
I drive Nicole to work, drive to my office, pick her up later and drive home	(~15 mi. [max] / 32 mpg) x $4.59 (avg. gas price/gal) = $2.15

Anyway, now that I’ve justified my laziness and ruining the planet, here are my stories:

***

I almost hit a pedestrian yesterday. I was driving up Loomis from the south side on my way home and I was passing through Pilsen. As I was going north through 22nd street, I saw a girl with a huge fro dart behind a car stopped in the opposite lane of traffic that was waiting for a pedestrian to clear the crosswalk before executing a right-hand turn. Luckily I had my full attention on the intersection (there is a school nearby and there are usually a lot of kids crossing the street) and I caught her out of the corner of my eye as I was in the intersection. I was probably doing about 30 mph (the speed limit) which, given the length of the intersection, gave me about 2-3 second to react. I thought she couldn’t possibly decide to run in front of my vehicle, but she did, and I jammed the breaks, screeching to a halt and narrowly missing her. Judging from her pace she was either late or trying to make a bus. She didn’t even look at my car or seem to notice how close I came to hitting her.

***

I almost ran over someone’s dog today. I was up very late last night and as I was driving home, I missed my alley so I had to circle back around onto a street that is midway between two arterials. Chicago has major arterial streets (with two lanes in each direction) spaced roughly every eight blocks (or about one mile). In between those arterial streets are halfway streets, which are wider and could thus still accommodate a street car (or trolley as some might call it: Chicago once had the largest network in the world).

The street was torn up. I had seen a large number of vehicles yesterday when coming home from work (the street was closed) but I thought it was someone shooting a movie, which seems ridiculous given where I live (East Village). Judging by the strip of pavement ripped up down the middle of the street and filled with quickset, it must have been a water or sewer issue.

I weaved in an out of the massive potholes and construction equipment and pulled in the H-shaped alley from the side street just south of where I missed the first entrance. As I turned the corner of the H, I saw someone’s dog almost run directly into my car. A long-haired man with no shirt on came out and shouted, “I got him, I got him!!” I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me, but he couldn’t have had cause as I was probably going less than 5 mph (the alley hasn’t been paved since I moved in almost 5 years ago, and the hard winters have disintegrated it). After I passed I noticed in the rear-view mirror that he released the collar on his dog and let him run down to the end of the alley where cars regularly gun it.

***

I saw someone being a dick to a bicyclist today. Driving up Sheridan Road towards the far north side I was stopped at a traffic signal in the left-hand lane. The road is two lanes in either direction and it’s an urban feeder that carries traffic flow from Lake Shore Drive, Marine Drive, and Broadway up to Uptown and Edgewater after Lake Shore Drive ends.

In the nearest lane opposite me I saw a bicyclist with his left arm outstretched, properly signaling a left hand turn. This area of Chicago is home to the petite bourgeoisie: a lot of people too old or too poor to live in the Gold Coast or Streeterville. The numerous condominium buildings on the east side of the street have circular driveways (the bicyclist was trying to turn down a street that runs to the lakeshore parks).

When the wealthy retirees want to turn in from the southbound side without any left-turn lane, they back up traffic on Sheridan for miles. The bicyclist happened to be blocking a motorist who wanted to go through the intersection, and in less than half a second after the light turned green (the cyclist had appropriately waited for his traffic signal) the lady in her black Mercedes laid on the horn with a look of utter contempt, probably angry she couldn’t make headway two blocks further south where she would jam up traffic for a mile trying to turn into her luxury condominium circle drive. To his credit, the cyclist was patient and stoically posed with his left arm outstretched.

***

The last vignette seems a bit vitriolic rereading it, but if I haven’t seen the worst driving, I’ve come close.

I worked for two summers as a manager at a state-funded traffic study organization, collecting traffic data in suburban Cook and the collar counties. I alternated between taking the CTA to my loop office and driving 4-6 hours a day visiting field sites, collecting data, and checking up on interns in the field to make sure they weren’t drinking on the job or otherwise endangering their lives or wasting company time.

In that occupation I saw a lot of silly behavior and one death on the road. However, in the past few years driving to and from work in Chicago I have never seen such anger in other drivers to the point where one wonders about the sanity of their fellow motorists. Take this bit of old-man sounding advice from me Chicago motorists:

I’ve seen a lot of accidents and even been in a couple, and I can assure you no one ever thinks that he or she is going to be the cause of a life-ending maneuver on the road. It sadly happens every day. Recognize that you are operating a lethal weapon when you drive, and remain vigilant. Most accidents happen because of the complaisance that we are all guilty of (including me).

Watch for pedestrians and respect their right of way in the crosswalk, no matter what the dick behind you starts honking about. Stay off your mobile phone, especially when making a turn (I almost bought the farm down by Union park four years ago when a motorist executing a left turn nearly hit me while talking on his phone).

Remember that bicyclists have the same right to the road as you, and give them a break as you are driving a half-ton or better machine and a collision with them will most likely be fatal.

No one lives to get out on the road and drive. Everyone just wants to make it home (even people who drive for a living). Pay attention, remain calm, and give the non-drivers a break.

As you probably noticed I have not been writing, and I’ve determined that my blog is on de facto hiatus.

My father took seriously ill on a visit to Chicago, so I have been helping my family deal with the many complicated and time-consuming tasks associated with prolonged illness and recovery.

When I come back, I plan to tell my story of the great achievements of modern medicine as well as it’s faults and failures, the essential need for family to supervise and assist in care for loved ones, and the many frustrations and indignations that my family and I suffered at the hands of the health insurance system. The only reason I have refrained from writing is that I am devoting all of my energies to my family, work, and trying to retain some semblance of normalcy in my life.

Thank you to all–family, friends, co-workers, students–for your kind wishes and for keeping my family in your thoughts.

I was doing some (very light) research on Labor day yesterday because I was not really sure what the origins of the holiday were. I knew that it had something to do with organized labor unions, but I was a little off in my assumptions as it had more to do with an appeasement strategy to prevent further nationwide strikes and disruptions in big industry (see the Wikipedia article). The obscurity of history prevents us from learning the origin story of such holidays.

It is the universal right of workers to organize, collectively bargin, and strike, no matter their profession and what a government determines is legal.

In this work environment, which is all too reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath where employers cheat their workers out of the basic rights of laborers through systematic oppression, we have to remember that we may collectively and righteously employ the tactics of so many ignorant legislators to stop this country and force the government and employers to recognize the power and value of labor.

Finally, to demonstrate that I am a dangerous, leftist radical, here is a Woody Guthrie song about striking workers. Happy Labor Day everyone!