For the uninitiated, Archer Avenue (also known as IL-171) is a stretch of road in the southwestern Chicago suburbs with an extraordinarily haunted reputation. From the legend of Resurrection Mary, the quintessential "ghost hitchhiker," to reports of mysterious chantings and ephemeral hooded figures gliding up a bluff at St. James Sag Cemetery, Archer Avenue is considered by many aficionados of the paranormal to be the "Ground Zero" of Haunted Chicago.



We visited St. James Sag (above, the bluffs where the mysterious hooded figures reportedly disappeared) right around Halloween, but the Willow Springs area is spooky year-round, from what we hear.

The intersection of Willow Springs Road and Archer Avenue, where we photographed these whimsical hearses outside the Ashbary Coffee House is a remarkably charming, quirky small town area near the Cook County Forest Preserves. If you find yourself at the Ashbary, be sure to check out the café library and upstairs meeting room - and try one of their delicious peanut butter lattés, a perfect warm-up for a chilly hike through the Willow Springs Woods.

(Be sure to click on the image for full resolution - the license plate reads "GREYL 80," and yes, the sign on the door does say, "Hearse Chicks Get More Stiffs". Claire from "Six Feet Under" would be proud!) For a fascinating look this eerie little corner of the Midwest's largest city, check out Ursula Bielski's excellent book Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City.

As Homer Simpson might say: "Mmmm...ghosts..."

Labels: chicago, culture, history, photo

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  Spotted recently on State Street in Chicago, across from Marshall Field's Macy's: an unusual use of our city's JC Decaux "Street Furniture" bus shelter ads, using real popcorn to fill the space where the electric advertising rollers normally reside.

Although poor old Orville (a native son of Valparaiso, Indiana, which hosts an annual Popcorn Festival in his honor) is long dead and gone, his Jimmy Carter-esque grin still adorns jars and bags of his company's corn products - but bus stops in Chicago?

There's just one small problem. If you view the full-size photo (go ahead, click - it only leads to the Flickr page), you may notice that the Orville Redenbacher popcorn, in the left bin, looks amazingly similar to the generic THEIRS popcorn in the right bin. So similar, you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference at all - in size, color, "lightness," or "fluffiness." It's the same damn corn on both sides! All they did was pour more of it in the Orville Redenbacher side!

Couldn't they at least emphasize their snack products' reputed superiority by tossing a few handfuls of "old maids" into the THEIRS bin? Maybe a cockroach or two for extra effect?

We, the Consumer, deserve more than more popcorn. We deserve LIGHTER and FLUFFIER POPCORN, especially if you're going to parade it out on State Street in Chicago for [insert Winter holiday of your choice].

Labels: chicago, culture, humor, photo

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  I'll believe it when I see it, but the scuttlebutt on the street is that the long-awaited (Note - 10 years is an eternity in TV-Land, C.C. - Ed.) sequel to the X-Files: Fight The Future movie is in the pipeline, slated for a July 2008 release.

Why now, after years of proposals and stalled contracts? Reports say the impending Hollywood writers' strike is pushing up production deadlines on a number of gridlocked projects, including XF2. According to Hollywood Insider:

...[Chris] Carter, who will direct the movie and co-write the script with X-Files exec producer Frank Spotnitz, [said] years of contract disputes with Fox were resolved when the threat of an impending writers' strike came to a head. "If we don't do it now and the strike was protracted, it would force the movie to come out several years from now," he says. "And that was too late. It was either now or never."

And, oh happy rainy day! The show's creators will apparently return to its moody Canadian roots to film the sequel, the Vancouver Sun reports:

David Duchovny will be reaching once again for his umbrella, and so will at least 100 crew members in the city as 20th Century Fox made it official: the sequel to 1998's The X-Files movie will shoot in Vancouver. The movie, as yet untitled, brings together Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as special FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) who, in the original television series and in the first movie, encounter paranormal activity in their investigations. Duchovny and Anderson starred in the long-running TV series The X-Files (1993-2002), which shot its first five seasons in the Vancouver area.

Labels: canada, culture, movies

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  Today is Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Raise your glass, sing a song, crunch a sugary skull and remember those that have passed before us. Wikipedia sums it up:

Though the subject matter may be considered morbid from the perspective of some other cultures, celebrants typically approach the Day of the Dead joyfully, and though it occurs roughly at the same time as Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls Day, the traditional mood is much brighter with emphasis on celebrating and honoring the lives of the deceased, and celebrating the continuation of life; the belief is not that death is the end, but rather the beginning of a new stage in life. In Mexico and Mexican immigrant communities in the United States and Europe, the Day of the Dead is of particular cultural importance.

It's also celebrated in Eastern Europe (albeit in a slghtly less colorful way); Czechs know it as Dušičky. Memento Mori.

Labels: culture, history

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  Pardon my French, but I find this just f---ing creepy and beyond the pale. The BBC reports that a pilot interactive surveillance camera program - with remotely monitored units that not only observe, but verbally reprimand 'bad public behavior' - will be extended to more locations [via Kottke.org]:

"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff. About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.

Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should be "very careful" over the cameras. Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, "in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions...But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can't go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people," he added. [emphasis mine]

What really upsets people is their night out being destroyed or their environment being destroyed by a fairly small minority of people. The talking cameras did not constitute "secret surveillance", he said. "It's very public, it's interactive." Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.

Er, no, it's not "interactive" - unless you can talk back to the cams and tell them to sod off. You've got to hand it to the government officials, though, on what I like to call the "Ronald McDonald Effect": win the hearts and imaginations of children on an idea, and you've all but insured public acceptance. Plus, wouldn't you rather have a sweet-voiced primary schooler tell you "Place your trash in the bin! Yes, you - the portly bald gentleman!" than a mechanized Orson Welles? "It puts on the lotion!" indeed. Ahem...and Chicago, let's not give Da Mare any interesting ideas:

• Chicago plans advanced surveillance
• WIRED: Chicago's Spycam Force
• Daley wants security cameras at bars
• Surveillance cameras soon will monitor high-crime areas of Durham as part of a $133,500 pilot program approved Thursday.

Unfortunately, this wasn't just a backdated April Fool's gag.

Labels: chicago, crime, culture, privacy, UK

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  Some thoughts on public shock surrounding voluntarily bald women: baldness in women connotes undesirable states like desexualization (as tonsure in religious contexts), shaming (in repressive regimes like Nazi Germany and witchhunt-era Europe (and modern-day Asia), women frequently had their heads shaved in public as punishment), disease (anything from “treatment” of head lice to hair loss associated with cancer, etc.), or “sexual nonconformity.”

We also recall the bizarre photos of the female members of Charles Manson's "Family" showing up in court with shaven heads, freshly-scabbed-over swastikas carved on their foreheads - and the bald psychopathic LSD badtrippers in "Blue Sunshine." A bald-headed woman is clearly seen as somehow evil, dehumanized...or just plain nuts.

We’ve made some progress in the past few decades - Natalie Portman’s baldilocks for her recent film role in V for Vendetta were considered slightly less shocking than the late Persis Khambatta’s in the late-seventies Star Trek films - but unfortunately we’ve still a long way to go before women can wear stylishly shaved heads without arousing pity, scorn, or bewilderment:

"Some people will think I'm a neo-Nazi or that I have cancer or I'm a lesbian," so supposed the actress Natalie Portman, who has shaved her head for her next film role in V for Vendetta and debuted the look at Cannes [May 2005], to the consternation of many. Portman is the latest in a relatively small procession of anti-Rapunzels - Sinead O'Connor, Demi Moore, Sigourney Weaver, Skin, and the model Eve Salvail being the most well-documented. Despite the fact that we can digest all manner of unorthodox hairstyles and outlandish beauty trends, a shaven head on a woman is still a look that causes shock.

I think part of the reason Britney’s new ‘do is making headlines (besides the other recent publicized events in her life, like her separation and rehab ’stint’) is its chronological proximity to Anna Nicole Smith’s death. One American starlet “goes down in flames,” and another one is starting to act mighty peculiar. The tabloid media is waiting for Britney’s other shoe to drop.

(P.S.) Joan Jett shaved her head (briefly) at the turn of the millennium, partly as a personal "turning point," partly as part of her role in the Broadway version of Rocky Horror Picture Show; few people gave a hoot. Did anyone care when Howie Mandel shaved his head? Nooo. Then again, unlike Britney Spears, he wasn't captured on video exposing his genitalia in public.

Labels: culture, gender, politics, soapbox

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  I confess I never really noticed Hello Kitty® until three years ago, when I adopted Snoë, a large entirely white cat who bears a striking resemblance to the cartoon character. With a real-life version in-home, I now see how pervasive the Hello Kitty® franchise really is: she's bigger than Mickey, but without a mouth she can't swallow the Mouse.

The Bizarro Empire of Hello Kitty (Corina Zappia in Village Voice):

In their book, Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon, authors Ken Belson and Brian Bemner describe Hello Kitty's ability to appeal to all: "With few exceptions, her creators at Sanrio Ltd. have shied away from developing any story to her life, instead leaving her personality to the eyes and minds of the beholder. This Zen-like technique, intentionally or not, has allowed Kitty to become at once the princess of purity to toddlers, a cuddly playmate for young girls and a walk down memory lane for adults yearning for another taste of childhood."

Sanrio itself ties Kitty's lack of mouth in with her universality: "Hello Kitty speaks from her heart," the official Sanrio FAQ says, explaining Kitty's mouthlessness. "She is Sanrio's ambassador to the world who isn't bound to one certain language."

Without a mouth, Kitty can exclude no one. But on the other hand, do we really want more women, even if they're cats, unable to speak up for themselves? [keep reading]

Chanpon: Hello Kitty Has No Mouth by Mizuko Ito:

A discussion of Hello Kitty is nearly impossible without an explanation of kawaii and the culture that surrounds the term. Historically, the rise of cuteness is traced back to the 1970s, with the popularization of cute handwriting and manga and disillusionment with earlier student riots and subsequent capitalization of those trends by the fancy goods industry (Kinsella, 1995:225). Though the general meaning of the word is “cute,” the qualities and connotations associated with the term are many. As Kinsella writes, a survey among men and women in 1992 revealed a number of other terms associated with kawaii, including: childlike, innocent, naïve, unconscious, natural, emotional contact between individuals, fashionable, associated with animals, and weak (1995:237-240). Kawaii is a produced style and aesthetic as well as an inherent quality a person, place, or thing possesses.

The rise of Hello Kitty in the global consumer market, like other successful pop cultural imports, may be attributed to the process of removing traces of Japanese origin. Iwabuchi has coined the expression "culturally odorless products" to describe the ways in which Japanese products erase their "Japaneseness" in order to be more successfully marketed overseas (Allison, 2000:70). Moreover, "effacing the identity—the Japaneseness—of Japanese products appears to be even more prominent in the US Market" (Allison, 2000:70). Making a product "culturally odorless" somehow reduces resistance to a product through its reduction of difference. [read full article]

And, the $64,000 Question: If Hello Kitty® has no mouth, is she also missing the opposite end of the digestive tract, another (perhaps more literal) manifestation of "cultural odorlessness"?

"Hello Kitty Has No Mouth" - the poem
Sanrio Hello Kitty® FAQ
["Darth Kitty" costume image found on Linkbunnies]
Also see Sanrio's "grown-up" Hello Kitty® line, Momoberry

Labels: culture, hellokitty

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