Flashback 1992: Wisconsin Shakespeare Just Plain Delightful

     The blog comments were disabled Friday, for reasons mysterious, but returned Saturday morning. The lacuna, annoying while it was going on, proved valuable, in that it reminded me how important comments are. To be blunt, I missed you guys. Saturday, after my field report on Little Louie's hot dog stand, regular reader Tony Galati mentioned Wisconsin's Mustard Museum, which sparked an "I've been there!" reaction. Thirty-four years ago. I'd have sworn I gave it more than the final paragraph of a story, but that is not the case. I was something of a trendsetter — I really like mustard — as its owner wouldn't be on David Letterman for another three years. This is also notable because it is not a column, but a travel story, though you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. I did downplay my disgust at House on the Rock — I hated it so much I even hated my family, a little, for liking it, and only got through to the end by imagining calling in an air strike, the F-15s peeling out of the sky, in formation, firing their rampage missiles, me, from a safe distance, watching the whole thing go up with a satisfying "flumph!"

     The problem with getaway weekends is that everybody else in town seems to be always getting away to the same spot you are, so instead of escaping the city, you are only relocating a chunk of it.
     So it was with a certain amount of pleasure that I found myself in the decidedly unhip, genuinely off-the-beaten-trail town of Plain, Wis., with no noticeable points of interest other than being seven miles from Spring Green, where every vacant room was booked with urbanites flocking to the opening of the American Players Theatre's 13th season and to the pouting-puppy-in-stained glass, Emmett-Kelly-in-oils spectacle they call an art fair.
     All the Gothic mansion bed-and-breakfasts we would have normally booked ourselves into were filled, so we had to settle for the Kraemer House in Plain, which in its advertisements looks exactly like the regular, aluminum-sided, any-block-in-suburbia split level it is.
     I had my doubts, but the Kraemer House was a blessing in disguise. Since it was removed from the tourist-trap attractions of Spring Green, I instead had to explore the area around the house, which just so happens to be the sort of unspoiled farmland that makes us people who have at least four deadbolt locks on our doors feel we're really somewhere different.
     Early the first morning, while my wife slept, I took a stroll down Old Highway 23 and found myself walking through a landscape I had only previously seen in Marx farm playsets — mooing cows, flocking sheep, spindly windmills, old silos, growing corn.
     Equally uplifting is the American Players Theatre and its lovely outdoor venue, which also serves great, nearly homemade food and the always-welcome beer (try the Sprecher) and wine.
     I'll admit that, in my heart, I was torn between wanting to watch good theater and wanting my smug Chicago superiority confirmed by witnessing a lame Wisconsin stab at the Bard — a production that I dubbed "Cheesehead Othello."
     Thankfully, except for the costuming mistake of putting ridiculously huge musketeer hats on some of the principals, the production was first-rate: well-spoken, good swordplay, none of that standing-around-waiting-to-say-your-line body language that some regional productions feature.
     (The APT season runs through Oct. 4, alternating "Othello," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Our Town" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Performances are Tuesday through Sunday.)
     And, toward the end, when Desdemona says something about the heavens, there is the pleasure of angling your head up and taking in the stars, twinkling wildly, freed at last from the orange haze in Chicago.
     In addition to the theater we felt the need to take in the tourist sites of Spring Green. Having lived in Oak Park, we passed on Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, one of the 100 or so examples of his brilliance within spitting distance of Chicago.
     Instead we subjected ourselves to a two-hour forced march through the Jacobian nightmare of the House on the Rock, Route 3 in Spring Green (608 935-3639), an everlasting monument to the idea that if you collect enough mouldering junk, 600,000 people will plunk down $13.72 a head to see it.
     There is no way to adequately describe the House other than to say it is a condensation of the dark, horrific underbelly of American culture, an historical atrocity of unrelenting creepiness offering up unrelated garbage - doll houses, odd figurines, doll-head vases, costume armor, old carriages, ship models, carousel horses, pipe organs and strange plants.
     We fled to the infinitely more-attractive Mustard Museum, 109 E. Main St., in nearby Mt. Horeb. A cheery, small, bright yellow store that offers, in addition to hundreds of mustards, a nose-tingling assortment of sauces, spices, condiments, chutneys, dips and toppings, a dozen or two of which are set out for liberal tasting by the owner and founder, Barry Levenson, a former Wisconsin assistant attorney general. Admission is free. (608-437-3986)

Restaurant field notes: Little Louie's

 

    So what was my most read post this past week? My take on artificial intelligence? My thoughtful dissection of the abortion issue? No. The visit to Culver's, top post of the week, third this past month. Apparently politics is out, eateries are in. 
    Okay, I can work with that. It happens that Tuesday I met a neighbor at the Bean Bar for coffee at 11 a.m. (ordered a flat white; the place was well-populated, sad that Northbrook, in its general mismanagement, will wipe it away to build apartments). We finished about a quarter to 12, and I ambled over to Sunset to pick up some pumpkin puree for the dog (we add it to her meals; aids the digestion). I love being in a suburb where I can walk places, though I'll be down a few important destinations — a coffee shop, a bookstore, a hardware store — after that building goes up. Dumb.
     So I thought I would treat myself by sliding by Little Louie's, Northbrook's beloved hot dog stand since 1967. I wasn't planning to write about it — didn't even snap a shot of the interior. But when my jumbo kosher hot dog arrived, it was such a thing of beauty, I had to take its portrait. I ordered it with mustard and grilled onions. While those onions are more ... substantial than I expected, they added a whole new dimension to the dining experience, and I did not mind them. You'll notice that I didn't order it with ketchup — while I hate the "you're not a Chicagoan if you put ketchup on hot dogs" idiocy, that doesn't mean it's my go-to move (though I did add a dollop from the red container on the table, for just a taste. Mmmm.)

     Little Louie's has a deep menu, for a hot dog stand — I sometimes pair a hot dog with a strawberry salad — and a wide array of Mexican items I have yet to try. 
     The owner since 1999, Pete Weiss was behind the counter, and we exchanged greetings. Through an act of will, I skipped fries. The Little Louie's fries are epic. They're also probably 800 calories for a weighty brown paper bag's worth. I did upscale my dog order — usually I get a regular char dog, but, perhaps because I was going fryless, I went for the jumbo kosher dog, even though it clocks in at a surprising $11.75. It was worth it: the dog, almost needless to say, was hot and delicious. The bun, fresh and fantastic. 

     Honestly, knowing how jarred the place was by COVID, I considered the steep fee a donation toward the continuing dynamism of my leafy suburban paradise. I can struggle forward without the Bean Bar — it only opened a few years back. But Little Louie's is essential.

     So much so that, Friday, I ambled over to grab a shot of the interior. I was going to ask Pete to pose, but he wasn't there. Maybe next time.

     

Celebrate jobs — while we still have them — on Labor Day

     We lose jobs, find jobs, love jobs, hate them, sometimes all at once.
     A lucky few snag their dream, early, then work with growing satisfaction and success.
     But most of us are like English poet Philip Larkin who, at 31, was stuck in his fourth year as an assistant librarian. He saw his job as a fat frog, plopped atop his true spirit, crushing it, and wrote the poem “Toads,” which begins:

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

     No, he couldn’t. Larkin was a librarian for 30 years. We need that job, Larkin writes, “Just for paying a few bills.”
     With Labor Day this Monday, and the future of employment in question, thanks to AI and other disruptions, it might be worth pausing to consider the central role work holds in our lives.
     Our jobs define us. You can’t call someone “a housewife” in an obituary anymore — it’s considered demeaning. She “manages a household.” But nobody is “a person who plumbs.” We are plumbers, accountants, newspaper columnists.
     We also define our jobs, if we can, molding them to our purposes.
     “At first I was impressed with the time he spent in his office, arriving early and leaving late,” said Larkin’s employer. “It was only later that I realized that his office was also his study where he spent hours on his private writing as well as the work of the library.”
     For many, a job is the most significant part of their lives, second — maybe — to family. In that light, Labor Day should be more than a long weekend. It should be a big celebration, and once was, with Labor Day parades filled with professions, proud street sweepers in their dress whites, carrying their brooms like rifles.
     But machines sweep streets. Technology, that great job killer, looms over employment, threatening “the AI jobs apocalypse.” Half of white-collar jobs could be taken over by AI, according to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, with unemployment at 20%. Some think that view too dire.

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Flashback 2000: Flying without the greatest of ease

Jon Weiss does his job (photo courtesy of ABC News)

     Labor Day is this Monday, and I've been thinking about jobs, and the meaning of work, and what makes an occupation interesting. Which, strangely, made me remember this column.

     The Human Cannonball hasn't called yet.
     He was supposed to phone at 1 p.m. Now it's 1:30. Another professional milestone: waiting by the phone for the Human Cannonball.
     Excuse me: "Clown 'n Ball." Jon Weiss, the "Human Clown 'n Ball." He's with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which pulls into town next week.
     I will admit I am a sucker for the circus. I would go every day. I think that's the problem with days like today: a heightened sense of circuslessness.
     I did not ask to talk to the Human Cannonball — excuse me, Clown 'n Ball — because he blasts 65 miles an hour, reaching 5 Gs of force as he leaves the 9,000-pound device.
     I wanted to talk because of the Supreme Court case.
     What, you don't remember Zacchini vs. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Company? It's one of my favorite cases. The right to privacy is not guaranteed in the Constitution, but was cobbled together through court cases, and it is one of the minor glories of America that a landmark of privacy law developed from a man being shot out of a cannon at a state fair.
     Hugo Zacchini's act consisted of being shot out of a cannon into a net 200 feet away.
     In the fall of 1972, Zacchini was performing at a county fair in Ohio. A reporter from a local TV station showed up with a camera, and Zacchini asked him not to film his act. The reporter didn't but, pressured by his boss, returned the next day and secretly shot Zacchini being shot out of a cannon. The 15-second act was broadcast that night on the 11 p.m. news.
     Zacchini sued, claiming "unlawful appropriation" of his "professional property." He won, then lost on appeal. After only five years the case wound its way to the Supreme Court. Justices White, Burger, Stewart, Blackmun and Rehnquist sided with the human cannonball.
     "The broadcast . . . goes to the heart of petitioner's ability to earn a living as an entertainer," wrote White, ruling for Zacchini, a decision which, in my layman's eyes, seems to touch upon this whole Napster mess.
     Just now the phone rang. Jon Weiss, the Human, er, Clown 'n Ball, calling from Cleveland.
     "I've always admired the cannon act," said Weiss, who joined the circus as a clown in 1982, then shifted to the cannon. "In 1987, one of the double-barreled cannonballers decided he'd had enough — it's very stressful. You have to have a lot of confidence in your ability to do it. Once you lose that confidence, that's it."
     So how do they shoot a man out of a cannon?
     "We try to keep it a trade secret," he said. "It's almost like a magic trick; everyone wants to know how it's done, but we try to keep it within the circus industry. It's very dangerous."
     He hadn't heard of the Supreme Court case, but he was familiar with Zacchini.
     "He's from a very famous family," Weiss said. "Mariel, Hugo, there's a bunch of them. They invented the repeating cannon — it shot one person, then a second person."
     Weiss told me he has been shot out of a cannon nearly 5,000 times. Does it, I wondered, ever get dull?
     "It's never the same," he said. "I try not to make it dull. You always try to improve what you're doing, trying to fly further or straighter or land different."
     Weiss has three young children — Jonny, 5, Nicole, 3, and Max, 8 months. How does being shot out of a cannon — which Weiss likened to being in a car wreck or getting punched in the kidneys_compare to raising small children?
     "What I do for a living is not work," he said. "Work is raising kids. It is a lot easier being shot out of a cannon than raising kids."
     Sure, but how many stay-at-home dads could fill the Allstate Arena? Not that they'd want to. They'd probably get stuck having to clean up afterward.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 26, 2000

Summer of 2026 wasn't total loss — at least there are tomatoes

 

   Did your tomatoes come in this year? Yes? A bountiful crop? That’s too bad, because wastewater from cooling the giant AI data centers being built all over the country has gotten into the national aquifer, and the flesh of tomatoes is particularly adept at soaking up microplastics and neurotoxins. Best to let them rot on the vine this year, or better yet, dig a pit and bury them, just to be safe.
     Kidding. None of the above is true — there is no such thing as a “national aquifer” — though at this point it feels like anything is possible, in the bad news department, after a summer of serial tornadoes, massive wildfires and nightmare glacier-melt flash floods blasting mountain towns. Plus wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine and probably a few places I’m forgetting.
     Meanwhile the same ongoing opera buffa plays out in Washington, where paying attention to any specific jaw dropper — wait, he told a lie? — seems an act of raw naivete. I wouldn’t be surprised if the president declared a crazy trade war with our good friend Canada, slapping it with a 50% tariff that it would immediately slap back on us, then rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” in a fit of toddler pique that had people all over the world shaking their heads in a blend of amusement, pity and disgust.
     Oh wait, that really happened.
     Back to tomatoes. Records are spotty, but for the past five years it’s been a sorry sight at my place — hard little green spheres of shame that never ripen. To make matters worse, it’s been a perpetual tomato-palooza over at my brother’s house. He would meet me for lunch with a grin and a shopping bag filled with ripe red beauties, any one of which would have made my season. I tried to convince myself that he merely stops at a farmers market and loads up, just to stick it to me the way only a little brother can. But I know his wife is tending the garden back home, so I cannot suggest deception.
     “What’s Japanese for ‘tomato shame’?” I asked. My sister-in-law is from Osaka.
     “Tomato no haji,” he said.
     I distracted myself by focusing on the Japanese word for tomato — tomato — which seems odd, since the fruit came to that country in the 1600s with Portuguese traders. So how did Japanese tomatoes end up tagged to an English loan word name? The short answer is: They didn’t. Both Japan and the United States borrowed the word from the same source. Tomatoes are thought to have originated in South America, probably Ecuador or Peru, then found their way to the future Mexico, where the Aztecs named them tomatl — kind of cool that, magically transported to Tenochtitlan in 1400 and hungry after a morning building pyramids, you could ask for a fresh tomato and have a reasonable expectation of getting one.

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Restaurant field notes: Culver's

 

A Double Deluxe Butter Burger

  
     Readers have made it abundantly clear that I can come off as ... what's the word? ... I was going to say "toff," but that is someone who dresses very well, which I do not. Or a "ponce," which sounds right but turns out to mean a "pimp."

     Someone affected in their regard for the finer things, with my opera and my Dante and my fancy restaurants. And while I do enjoy those things, I am also a salt-of-the-earth, non-nonsense union man who puts my L.L. Bean lined pants on one leg at a time, like everybody else. I like country music and candy corn and make a point to go to the local fair, Northbrook Days, to wander around, gape at the rides, grab a Northbrook PD chip clip, maybe enjoy a corn dog or, this year, the falafel offered up by my friends at Chabad Northbrook.

     Being open, generous, community supporting sorts, my wife and put down $20 on two raffle tickets, as we do every year, even though we never win. Though this year we were called and told we did win, not one of the cars or a big pot of money, but a year's worth of a) free oil changes at ProAuto and b) a year's worth of monthly Double Deluxe Butter Burgers at Culver's.

     Now I'm a little reluctant to go anywhere other than the dealer to have my oil changed, speaking of putting on airs, but I was willing to try out Culver's. I am not a fast food guy. I will go to a White Castle and order three cheese sliders every few years, and sometimes sigh, passing a McDonald's, that I wouldn't mind ordering one of their distinctive cheeseburgers, with their yellow paper and all important pickle slice. But I've been saying that for at least 10 years and at this point probably never will.

     Culver's, I have no preconceptions toward whatsoever. Their advertising is water off a duck's ass. What glimmer I've taken away is that they seem to focus on their founder, or CEO, or whoever he is, a mistake that Wendy's used to make. If I want to think about a porky middle older man when I'm visiting their establishment, I'll look in a mirror. Give those people a cartoon cow or something.

     Driving over, my wife asked me if I had any idea what a double deluxe Butterburger cost — what was prompting this foray. I said if a McDonald's cheeseburger is, what, $2, and a Big Mac is $4.50, then it might be $6. She said prices had been skyrocketing and I was underestimating

     "You have a phone," she said — she was driving, as I'm still in a sling. The average national price for a Big Mac is $6.12, and my free Double Deluxe Butter Burger cost $7.99. I had done my research — into what it was, not what it cost — so knew to order it without mayonnaise. I indulged in a medium onion rings and a black coffee.

     I almost informed the server, "This is our first visit to Culver's!" but decided to show off my shutting up skills instead.

     My wife had been agonizing whether to order lettuce on her single burger — the various plagues criss-crossing the country — and at the last moment decided to throw caution to the wind.

     "Let's make a meal of it," she said, meaning the lettuce, not realizing she was checking a box in the order taker's mind, initiating the "meal" sub-circuit to initiate and he added fries and a drink to her order. That was sorted out, eventually, though the poor man was obviously rattled, and we took our number, 23, and went to sit at a table. They bring the food to you, a pleasant touch of humanity on par with the frosty glass mug at A & W Root Beer.

     The place had a pleasant, deep blue color scheme, and was clean and populated with families and kids who had all finished their Sunday soccer games. My wife went up to get water and I noticed the man at the next table was wearing a "Friends of Taiwan" baseball cap and as I noted it, he saw me seeing him and nodded and I drew in breath to say, "I've been to Taiwan, to interview the vice president, Annette Lu, and talk to her about soft power. The Taroko Gorge, very impressive..." but caught myself at the last moment and I shut up, an art form which, as I sometimes say, I struggle to master, and merely nodded back.

    Very quickly a server came by with a tray containing my wife's single Butter Burger, my gratis Double, the onion rings and coffee. The BB was quite edible, enhanced by lettuce, tomato and raw onion. The meat had a pleasant, sirloin steak quality to it, though the cheese wasn't melted. At least the coffee wasn't burnt, as coffee even at fine restaurants can be, and I drank the whole cup without having to mask the taste with cream or sweetener, as I sometimes have to do. The onion rings were real, but treated so you could bite them easily and not have to gnaw through a thick loop of onion, and there was a good number of small ones that fit nicely into the little cup of Heinz ketchup. The batter held its own as well.

     All told, we left without dreading the 11 more monthly trips we're signed up for. Though my wife did dismiss her burger as "greasy," she will try a grilled cheese sandwich — a rarity in the fast food world — or even a cup of frozen custard, an item that Culver's seems to pride itself in.     

Maybe we need to pass a law conferring personhood onto women

   

"Women and Dog," by Marisol (Whitney Museum of Art)

     Women are human, right?
     I’m fairly certain they are. They’ve got all the telltale signs. Complex thought processes. Self-motivation — and by that, I mean they can move, physically, although the other meaning, doing things of their own volition, is also a factor.
     Now that I’m trying to define what being human means, I’m sorry for starting this way. It is fraught.
     Next I almost suggested “bilateral symmetry” — meaning if you draw a line down the middle, we’re the same on both sides — then thoughtlessly elaborated with “two arms, two legs” but realized, in the nick of time, I’d end up getting chewed out by amputees who are, of course, still human despise their losses. A big tent, people.
     Honestly, I feel like tossing the question to AI, after having looked askance at it last week. Contradictory, we humans ... oh heck, why not? Everybody else does. Hey AI. what does being human mean?
     “Being human means living as a blend of biological existence, conscious self-awareness and emotional connection to the world and others.”
     Sounds right to me. And I did I hit the first two, physical and consciousness, on my own. As far as emotional connection... well, I’m not so sure about that. Could be more AI fantasy. Emotional disconnection seems all the rage nowadays — in fact, tossing people over the side of the humanity boat might be a defining mark of humanity. Everybody’s doing it.
     Immigration papers not in order? You can be guiltlessly shipped to some hellhole in Texas or Uganda.
     On the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle? Why you and everyone like you can just... magically vanish. In fact, that’s the plan.

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