Auto Show Spectacular #2: A week in the fastest production car on the road

     The Chicago Auto Show opened this weekend. To celebrate, I'm re-visiting some of my favorite car-related columns from years past. There are a few things that make me wince—those six dashes in a single sentence in the second paragraph. But generally I'm surprised and pleased at how much, at 24, my narrative voice was the same as it is now, and there are a few novel metaphors that I am proud to have coined.

     "Would you like a 1985 Corvette?" the Chevy man said, flashing a smile that was friendly and kind.
     "Yes, please," I answered, sensing my journalistic integrity melt away like a snowman in the spring thaw. I knew the scenario: they give me a new 1985 Chevrolet Corvette—fastest production car made—and I drive it around for a week —350 cubic inch V8 under the hood—and write an article—top speed of 155 mph—drooling with praise about this car, using phrases like "ultimate expression of man's love affair with the automobile" and "sleek styling that dropped jaws like a gallon of Novocain."
      Would I take the bait? Hell yes. Some cyborg might be able to pass the opportunity or, worse, drive the thing and then produce a dry essay on the perils of excess. Not this cowboy. Pleasures in life are to be taken and enjoyed, and driving a Corvette is about as pleasurable as something can be.
     WELL here goes:
     On Tuesday, I parked my little Citation—also a Chevy, but related to the Corvette in the same way Morris the Cat is related to a cheetah—in back of the office. Then I climbed int the cockpit of this metallic blue low slung beauty. I fired up the engine and gingerly, very gingerly, applied my foot to the gas pedal, my head smacking against the driver's window as the car bucked and surged around a corner.
     Driving in traffic was like trying to ice a cake with a shovel. I quickly discovered a thing or two about the Corvette. Hitting the gas pedal with any conviction caused the rear end to do a little jig, until the fat Goodyear tires managed to dig in and catch. Then zing. It was as if God grabbed the car by the belt and the scruff of the neck and heaved it forward into space. Almost as if you could project the car ahead by thought alone. One moment I would be idling at a stoplight, sneaking glimpses to the side to see if anyone was ogling the car. The next: hurtling forward, the digital dash ticking upward, my heart pounding as traffic became a bunch of specks in the rear-view mirror.
    The week I drove the car strange things started happening to my mind. Having been content to plunk along at a sane four-cylinder speed for years, I realized that incredible rates of acceleration were not at my fingertips.
     Then there was the thrill of being nestled in the middle of a command center of $27,000 worth of electronic goodies, from the all-LED digital dashboard that glowed a gentle gold and green, to the Delco Bose stereo system that had the friendly quality of extending the radio antenna whenever it was turned on.
     It was frustrating to lurch and crawl through downtown traffic. As soon as I got it out in the open and began roaring down the dark back roads of the northwest suburbs, I knew what was in store for me, sometime during the week. it would happen. The Total Speed Lust Experience. I saw the blank third digit of the speedometer, and knew what I had to do.
    But not the first day. I parked in my garage, and stood, waiting for the interior lights to click off. The lights stayed on for a few moments, to help the driver out of the car. Marvelous.
     The next morning, the day seemed unusually fresh. I dressed, grabbed a few cassette tapes, and vowed to push the car to its upper limits. I stood before the garage door a moment, musing on what was inside. Somehow, on that day, even the garage seemed like something out of an Andrew Wyeth watercolor. I pulled the door open, the ball bearings rattling an overture, and there is was. One new Corvette, all mine, temporarily, through the glittering generosity of public relations. The car's control panel gleamed through the back window, which popped up with a pleasing pneumatic "whoosh."
     The moment came that evening.
     I was traveling along North Avenue. It was dark, and I had finished a long day at work. Some plodder was creeping along, and I swung around and hit the gas to pas. Before I knew what was happening, the car had reached the range of unprintable speeds. Something urged me on, as if primal forces, or the car itself, had taken control. I rammed the accelerator down, and the engine emitted a joyful, fearsome noise. It sounded like the very soul of capitalistic techno-frenzy, screaming out a battle cry, as the lights along the side of the road blurred and fell past.
     Suddenly I was alone. For one glorious moment, nothing existed. Only silence. Top of the world.
     The the image of being dragged, in leg-irons, before a West Chicago judge filtered into my mind. Class X Felony Speeding. I shook myself, like a man fighting to wake up from a dream. I pressed the brakes, and watched the numbers slowly tumble down. Back to the world of normal speeds, like a diver rising up from the murkiest depths, leaving behind the wonder, back up to the dry, normal world.
    I checked my rear view mirror. No Mars lights. A sigh of relief. Can't let that happen again, I thought, picturing my lame explanation, "Well, you see, officer, ummm, I'm a reporter and, ah, I just thought I'd see just how, umm, fast..."
     I noticed that the people who I let drive the car always laughed. The raw power would make them giddy and, weaving their way around traffic, they would laugh and reflect back to the muscle cars they drove as teenagers—the Barracudas, Boss 429 Mustangs, GTOs and Z28 Camaros.
     The Corvette is out of the range of most people. Which is probably a good thing; if Corvettes became widely-owned, the roads would quickly become a chaos of rocket sleds explosively smashing together and flying off the road into drainage ditches. (Or, as a Journal photographer put it, shouting above the sound of screaming rubber. "If I had this thing I'd either be in prison or dead!")
      At the end of the week, it came time to give the Corvette back. This seemed so unfair. I had gotten used to complete luxury—the range indicator, telling me how many miles I had to go until the next fill-up. The variable-speed wipers, demurely pulling themselves out of sight when not in use. The electric windows, flip-up headlights, lighted vanity mirror, and a dozen other perks and fripperies. I would miss feeling like a god, snaking my way through traffic at will, blowing lesser beings off the road with a single undiluted blast of power.
     The Citation had sat for a week, in the cold, neglected and alone. I meant to start it up occasionally, to keep the battery charged, but with Corvette keys jangling in my pocket, who could think of a little front-wheel drive econobox?
     I parked the Corvette, ran my hand over the fiberglass fender, and climbed into the cold vinyl interior of the Citation. It felt odd to so suddenly move from the Corvette to this Spartan environment. No tilt-a-wheel, no tinted windows. Just an AM radio and the same linear speedometer found on every car since the Model T.
     At least it started right up, and I muttered a prayer of thanks to the Chevy Corporation as I took the Citation out into the night. I required a moment to get used to it again, riding way up in the air on this little four-cylinder toy, something like being perched on a concrete slab pulled by a donkey.
     I suppose there are people who can sit back, haughtily, and scorn something as common as a machine, as juvenile and artless as the love of a car. But is just that — a love — at the core of America's affection for automobiles, a fascination that causes monuments to excess, like the Corvette, to be adored by many and purchased by a few. And, like all loves, it is not really a good or bad thing. It just is.
     As time went by, the thrill of my week with the Corvette has faded into memory. And yet, sometimes, while I'm poking along through slow traffic in my Citation, I'll get a far-away look in my eyes, and suddenly Corvette thoughts will come racing back into my mind, like the remembrance of a brief, wonderful love affair, now long past.
          —Originally published in the Wheaton Daily Journal, Feb. 24, 1985

Chicago Auto Show Spectacular: #1. All revved up, nowhere to go

1948 Tucker Torpedo (Smithsonian Museum of American History)

     The Chicago Auto Show opens at McCormick Place today—assuming you are reading this Saturday, Feb. 10.   
      While I make a point of going to the housewares show, the auto show is such a mob scene that I studiously avoid it. Though occasionally the paper dispatches me, and I manfully try to do my best, such as this report—I'm proud for noticing the aspirations to elegance of any car can be gauged by the grandeur its makers lunge for when describing "white."
     But skirting the show doesn't mean I don't get excited about cars. I do, and have fun when the opportunity arises to write about them. The show is open until Feb. 19, and during its run I'm going to share some fun, auto-related columns from years past. 

     Some sort of cosmic malevolence has always kept me from appreciating automobiles.
     I want to. I try. But the effort inevitably falls flat.
     I just came from five hours of wandering around the Chicago Auto Show. There was only one car that I knew ahead of time I rather liked, just for its styling — the new Audi TT Roadster. Sort of like a Volkswagen Beetle for guys. When I realized that you could sit inside the cars, I opened the door of a very promising silver TT and got inside.
     Or tried to.
     The same cut-down roof that gives the car its low-slung line makes the car nearly impossible to get into. I had to fold myself in half and shove my body in, dragging my head against the frame. And I'm not quite 5 feet 9.
     In general, actually seeing the vehicles took the sheen off the idea of owning them. As rugged as the Hummers look, a peek inside shows that the driver and passenger seats are about a yard apart, separated by a chest-high central console. Your passenger might as well be in the next lane.
     As I strolled, I became more interested, not in the vehicles themselves, but in the ballyhoo used to push them. For instance: They seem to be running out of car names. The contender for the "Impact" award for a bad car name goes to the Chevy Avalanche, which denotes not just mountains, but mountains sliding down on top of you.
     The Echo Reverb — an economy model from Toyota—was runner-up, though I also appreciated the name of the sound system in the signature Sony vehicle from Ford: Xplod, pronounced "explode."
     I administered what I called the "white test." You could tell how pretentious a car is by what term the company applies to the color white.
     For instance, while Saturn calls white "white," Ford calls it "Oxford white." Moving up the scale, Cadillac has "white diamond" and Porsche, "Biarritz white." Rolls-Royce can't even utter the prosaic syllable "white." For them, it's simply "Artica." (And yes, it's true, the Silver Seraph does come with one of those little doughnut spare tires, as opposed to a full-sized spare).
     The color of the future seems to be yellow. Most every concept car is that hue. Saturn's concept car is the horrible gold of a 1959 refrigerator. Daewoo's Sporty concept is the same greenish yellow found on the reflective strips on firefighter turnout coats.
     The most arresting color I saw was a Ford Taurus painted "chestnut clearcoat metallic." It looks like radioactive chocolate pudding. Ford also has a jarring "autumn orange" that's hard to describe. Not quite a burnt orange. Maybe a little toasted.
     There is a good deal of inadvertent humor at the show. The centerpiece of Secretary of State Jesse White's display is a sort of shrine to White — his portrait, 2 feet tall, flanked by flags and mounted on a white wooden tableau.
     The highlight, for me, was noticing Trooper C.T. Pfotenhauer at the State Police display pushing sober and safe driving. The booth is located directly across from the 208 mph Lamborghini Diablo VT Coupe at Shell's exotic car display.
     "They do it to us every year," sighed Pfotenhauer, who was nonplussed by the speed of the Lamborghini, particularly compared with the range of a police radio. "The bottom line," she said, "is can they outrun Motorola?"
          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 15, 2000

"This is life most jolly"

     This storm is nothing. Then again, most winter storms are nothing, as Shakespeare reminds us, at least when compared to the storms of the heart. What wind can freeze you the way other people can? Anyway, I thought of this song of Lord Amiens, and decided to share it.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude.

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho, the holly.

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot.

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho, the holly.

This life is most jolly.

                                       —William Shakespeare

                                          As You Like It

                                          Act 2, Scene 7

If you can't come to the gas station, the gas station will come to you

Jacob Menard

Miguel Anzo

     Jacob Menard is a lanky 25-year-old who works for his uncle Gerald at Amazing Lock Service. He sports a stainless steel post through his right eyebrow, a number of tattoos, and an understated blue stocking cap advertising Cresco, a Chicago medical marijuana dispensary.
     The young man drives a gray 2013 Volkswagen Passat. On Monday, he contrived to get the car’s gas tank filled without the vehicle ever leaving its parking space behind his uncle’s shop at 3165 N. Halsted Street.
     This feat was achieved through Yoshi Inc., a new automobile fill-up and maintenance service that began operating last year in Atlanta, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles and San Francisco, expanding into Chicago on Feb. 1.
     They approached me to cover their launch last week. I asked if I could instead see an average customer.
      “You do have customers, right?” I said.
     I expected a corporate lawyer having his Land Rover topped off in a downtown office building parking garage while he racked up the billable hours. 
     I didn’t expect a fresh-faced kid who works as a service technician and sings hip-hop on the side. Why would a guy like that pay $20 a month for a service to deliver gasoline to his car? (the first month is free) charging the average per gallon rate AAA is reporting that day? What’s wrong with gas stations?

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"We are all people"

   





     Chicago has its share of great museums.      
     There is the Art Institute of Chicago, of course, a world class institution, up there with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre and the British Museum. You can visit it again and again and never get tired of going.
     There is the Field Museum of Natural History, certainly worth regular visits, particularly for the special shows, like the recent Tattoo exhibit, or the one on Haitian voodoo.
     Even the Museum of Science and Industry, though it tends to cater too much to popular tastes only vaguely related to science—relics of the Titanic!—and has a tendency to lean back and let corporations have their way.
     Those three are enough, and both visitors and local residents have a tendency not to stray much beyond them.
     Which is a shame. There is a a galaxy of what I think of as The Lesser Museums that warrant periodic visits. Places like the Museum of Contemporary Art, or the Oriental Institute, or the National Museum of Mexican Art. 
      Not to forget the Chicago History Museum, the former Chicago Historical Society, where I stopped by Monday because I was in the neighborhood, reporting on a story, and had seen an email about the museum's exhibit on race. That's a big target, and I figured, it being Black History Month, and race being a constant source of societal agita, I should swing by and give it a look.
      "Race: Are We So Different?" was designed primarily for school groups. Lots of text. Lots of open space. Short on the artifacts that we older folk like. Some slave manacles. 
     Not a lot of surprise. The emphatic answer —spoiler alert!—to "Race: Are We So Different?" is no, we're not, at least not physically. Socially, yes, economically, big time, and that is certainly a lesson worth conveying. Although my hunch is that the city school groups coming through already have a pretty good idea about how the American deck is stacked against minorities, who are blamed for failing to thrive at a game where the rules are written against them at the start.
    Otherwise, the points the displays were making—race is a social construct, not a biological fact; you can't tell a person's race from his skeleton—were not earth-shattering. Good if you didn't know it; sort of preaching to the choir if you did. At best a worthwhile reminder.
    One aspect of the exhibit did stick out from the homogenized, run-through-the-museum-exhibit-machine texture of "Race: Are We So Different?" Students were asked to fill out blank index cards.
    "What's your story?" the display inquired. "Do you have a story or idea about your varied heritage you'd like to share? Jot it down, drop it in the slot, and we'll add it to the comment book."

      The students shared, not so much stories, as unvarnished expressions of pride and enthusiasm.
      I found myself reading card after card, enjoying the wide range of ethnicities and nationalities mentioned. They were kashmiri and Japanese/Mexican, "Afro-Latina,"  They drew flags, portraits.
      Many expressions of enthusiasm. "I am PROUD to be PINOY!" 
     You could see the way racism—perhaps inspired by our current president—filters down to children, the seismic rumbles it sends.

"I am an 8th Grader who is very ready for high school – a new start. I am a girl, but my best friend used to be a guy. Recently though, he has changed. He is making Hitler jokes, black jokes, and gay jokes of the worst kind. He will not stop, even though I have confronted him about his racism at school."

     Most evocative were these tales of bigotry, brief, almost poetic, heartbreaking narratives: "I was at the beach and somebody whispered, don't go by him because I am black."
     The sort of incident you just know stays with a person for a lifetime.
    "I have been told to 'go back to Tokyo' by a stranger on the train. I’m Vietnamese and French-Canadian."
    "I was called Frijalero" refers to a Spanish word, "frijolero," that literally means "one who prepares beans," or "beaner" something you would fling at at Mexican to suggest they haven't advanced far from whatever village they may have come from.
     But generally they were positive, proud, hopeful. A reminder that just as hatred has to be taught, so does shame. The natural thing is for people to feel good about their heritage, whatever it is. 
    Some were so simple and forceful, it was almost poetry: "Ignoring it won't make it go away." 
    Won't make what go away? Hate? Racism? Difference?
    Racism always feels antique—we ask ourselves, how can this be, in 2017? Just as people marveled at what was happening in 1962 an 1937. 
    Hate is both very old and very current. In November, 2016, those in our country who fear more than love grabbed the wheel. The kids filling out notecards at the Chicago History Museum are a reminder that someday soon those who love more than hate are going to grab the wheel back.
    Or as one visitor wrote:
    "We are all people." 
    That's such a simple lesson. Why do so many have such difficulty understanding it?


 

Republicans deny just about everything EXCEPT the Holocaust. Generally.

      We don’t have accent marks in English. None of those little slashing lines peppering French — the accents aigu and grave. None of those rumbling double-dot umlauts found in German.
     Thus people could almost be forgiven for mispronouncing “Holocaust denial” by stressing the first word: “Holocaust denial.”
     That rolls off Republican tongues. Pronounced that way, the Illinois Republican Party can muster indignation that perennial candidate Arthur Jones is an admitted anti-Semite as revealed in the Sun-Times by my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main. Jones is a man who denies the Holocaust, and yet is on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for the 3rd Congressional District since he is running unopposed.
     If only refusing to acknowledge unpleasant facts were limited to anti-Semites blind to the historical end product of their hatred. To those who, perhaps through a lingering vestige of humanity, flinch at seeing their philosophy put into practice, squeezing their eyes shut to what is actually the best-documented atrocity in history, thanks to those meticulous Germans.
     But denial is a big tent. Lots of room in there.

     To continue reading, click here.

Rules of the Road: Slow down at Yield signs, Nazis

     Kudos to my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main for tracking down Republican candidate for Congress Arthur Jones, flipping over his rock, and hearing what is on the mind of the Holocaust-denied and Nazi. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Reading their piece, I noticed that Jones protested the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in 2009. Which means he's an unnamed member of the supporting cast that inspired this column, one of my favorites. Yes, I noticed that Bill Clinton's quote describes much of Donald Trump's base. It was at a time when my column ran over an entire page in several parts, with a joke at the end, and I've kept that structure.





OPENING SHOT . . .

     Today is Adolf Hitler's birthday — it does creep up on you, doesn't it? And here I am without a gift or anything.
     He would have been 120, for those keeping count. It's also the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School.
     Not a coincidence, of course — the teenage killers planned it that way. Hitler is a magnet for the unstable, the weak-minded, the cruel. It isn't hard to imagine why. Talk about a boost to the old ego -- the biggest loser in the world can suddenly have a historical giant as a personal pal, with an entire cast of suddenly subhuman inferiors to scorn.
     You can just see today's celebrants, gathered in windowless rooms, lighting the candles on their homemade sheet cakes (those swastikas are tough to make in icing!) for a quick round of "Happy Birthday to You!"
     What should we, the non-crazy, do to mark this special day? Well, I would be so bold as to suggest that we, too, consider a bit of celebration. Because Birthday Boy once conquered much of the world, his fascism was triumphant. Then Hitler was crushed, thanks in great part to the good old U.S. of A, and his beliefs were exiled into the realm of mental illness. His followers are scattered, marginalized, and the sort of people who don't realize that getting a tattoo on your neck is a bad career move.
     Every year that's still true is a happy birthday, in my view.

'I HATE ILLINOIS NAZIS'

     Driving requires split-second decisions—who yields to whom when merging onto the highway, whether to speed up through the yellow light, and of course what to do if there are Nazis.
     It has been a while since I've studied my Rules of the Road, but instinctively, you see Nazis, you slow down and try to find a place to park.
     I had just hopped into the car after four hours outside in the penetrating cold at the dedication ceremony for the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and was not keen to return to the cold rain.
     But Nazis! How often do you get to talk to Nazis? Maybe a dozen of them, in jackboots and black cargo pants, waving red and white swastika flags at the corner of Harms and Golf roads Sunday afternoon. I slowed, leaned over, gazing carefully, locking eyes with a round-faced, heavy lad of about 14.
     Just as I was about to ease the car onto the shoulder, a different emotion kicked in — screw 'em. Who cares what they have to say? Why give Nazis the platform they seek, so they can spout their pathological philosophy?
     I kept going, slowed down, thought of doubling back, kept going.
     On the one hand, you can't make up the kind of twisted psycho spew these people serve up—they indict themselves, if you let them.
     On the other, happy is he who didn't have to go to hell to know what the devil looks like. There is something perverse in shucking two hours of earnest, intelligent speechifying by leaders and politicians, only to turn around and collect the thoughts — to strain the term — of a gang of jackbooted yahoos protesting a museum.
     Besides, confronting a gang of Nazis at the side of the road might not be smart, from a practical point of view. "Columnist in bloody brawl with neo-Nazis." Can't have that.
     What kept me driving was remembering something former President Bill Clinton had just told the crowd of 12,000 people. He explained these Nazis more clearly than they could ever explain themselves:
     "The capacity for evil has to be stirred," Clinton said. "Folks who are ripe targets for the stirring are people who are insecure -- insecure psychologically, insecure financially, insecure politically. They are more vulnerable to false claims by power mongers. . . . The neo-Nazi groups in Europe and other hate groups around the world, if you really look at them, they basically were made up of angry, uncertain, insecure people looking for someone else to blame, cultivating, in their own minds, a phony victimhood to justify hurting others."
     The only word of Clinton's I'd quibble with is "were"—the neo-Nazis aren't a "were," alas, but an "are," as was clear Sunday to anyone passing the corner of Harms and Golf roads. They may be a rarity, but they are still with us, and while they are so far from their Nuremberg glory days as to be almost laughable, what they represent—the idea that the life of Person A is diminished by the polluted presence of Person B — is a philosophy by no means limited to those wearing jackboots, brandishing swastikas and eating birthday cake today.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     Guy and Gary, cold, soaked to the skin but giddy with excitement, return to their Cicero basement and drape their big Nazi flag over the sofa to dry.
     "Well, I think that went extraordinarily well, wouldn't you say?" says Guy, putting up the tea. "I'm glad those Jewish vermin at least saw that we were out there!"
     "Indeed," replies Gary, who suddenly looks troubled. "Although. . . ."
     "Although what?" Guy asks, laying a concerned hand on Gary's shoulder and squeezing.
     "Wouldn't the presence of Nazis down the street dramatically underscore the need for a museum like this in the first place?"
     The two young men gaze at each other.
     "Oh," Guy says. "Those wily rascals!"
     "They tricked us into showing up, and we didn't even know it!" says Gary.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times April 20, 2009

‘Time on Fire’ shares cancer’s lesson: Life is ‘the sweetest candy’

Station Hospital, by Robert Sloan (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Distant friends are like distant comets. Gone for long periods. Then suddenly back, lighting the darkness for a time before looping out of sight again.
     Which is why a friend who retired to Florida, but in November was in town and stopped by the newspaper — whoops, multi-format storytelling platform — surprised me by phoning last week. Off-schedule. I was puzzling over this when she texted: Where are you? That got me on the phone, the cold hand of unease squeezing my shoulder.
     Some preliminary chat. Then she let it drop: cancer, one kidney already gone, a pea's worth of Mr. C. discovered in her lungs. Chemo started.
     My turn to say something.
     "That's terrible," I began, then tried to reel it back. "Losing a kidney . . . well, humans are designed for that. That's why we have two. And cancer . . . people shrug off cancer nowadays. It's like having an unpleasant hobby."
     I told her about one of my older son's best friends since kindergarten, now 22. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August, back at school, prognosis good, by January.
     "What's your address?" I asked. "I'm sending you a book."
     The book I send to all my friends facing cancer is "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors," by Evan Handler, a 1996 memoir that begins this way: 

     "I'm afraid it is not good news," is what he said. "It is bad news. It is in the bone marrow. It's an acute myelogenous leukemia."

     And just like that, Handler, then a young Broadway actor, is exiled to the land of sickness.

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Trump flips over the board when he's losing

"Checkerboard and Playing Cards," by Juan Gris (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Simple question:
     Remember the presidential election?
     Of course you do. 
     Might take a moment, with all the craaaaaazy bullshit that has happened since. Hard to think this is still the United States of America.
     But it is.
     Anyway, think back to the end of the campaign, oh, 18 months ago.
     A lot of people thought Donald Trump would lose.
     Including Donald Trump.
     And what did Donald Trump do when he thought he would lose? What did he say? 
     Remember?
     He claimed the system biased against him.
     "Election is being rigged by the media," he tweeted, "in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!"
     He said that over and over and over and over.
     Until some people believed him.
     The election was a fraud until he won it, barely. Then it was great.
     It's happening again.
     This time the FBI and the Justice Department are in league against him. He's striking out at them because he feels he's going to lose.
     Almost as if he knows he's guilty. 
     And Republicans, to their undying shame, generally support him.
     Even though a lot of them must think he's guilty too.
     For one simple fact:
     He is guilty. 
     I certainly think so. He acts like someone who's guilty.
     If he succeeds in selling this latest spin, and the investigations are scuttled, then suddenly the FBI and the Justice Department will be fine again. 
     He's like a toddler flipping a game board over when the game goes against him.
     An embarrassing quality in a child. Disturbing in an adult. Unacceptable in a president, even a president as spurious as this one.
     Though a lot of folks seem eager to accept it.
     It's so obvious, it hardly needs to be pointed out. To half the country. To the other half, or 40 percent, or whatever, you could write it on a 2x4 and hit them between the eyes with it and they still wouldn't get it. 
     That is, to me, the most disturbing part of the whole Trump phenomenon.
     Not that the man's a fraud. He is. Big time. And a liar. Continually.
     But that he is a not-very-good fraud. And a shabby, flimsy, obvious liar.
     Yet people fall for it.
     Not so much fall. But dive for it. They lunge to believe Trump. And having believed, they stick with it. Through everything. 
     I'll never understand why. 


     

It's mailbag time, unfortunately

The World Perishing Together with Knowledge and Love, by Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert; 1550 

                                                  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

     God, Friday was depressing.
     Just reading the emails in reaction to my column on Trump slurring immigrants in his State of the Union speech.
     All day long. Snide, confident Republicans regurgitating Fox talking points. I could barely read them, never mind react to them. It just gets wearying, and what would be the point?
     Every once in a while, though, I just couldn't resist.
     Such as this email, from Thomas P. Cernek. A single sentence:

     "We enjoy our freedoms, because it was the White Male who won WW II."

     I replied in kind:

     "It was also the White Male who started World War II. Something to think about. If possible."

     It deteriorated from there.  He seemed to think that the Japanese began World War II, and that the Germans were our allies. It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure I want to understand his point. 

     Moving onward, there was this, from David Kozak:

     "I read your article this morning and it contains the same old line that immigrants are vital to America. Never mentioning illegal. No country in this world can let people flood into a country unchecked and undocumented. They have broken a law. I believe any citizen arrested for any crime in this country should sue the U.S. until all laws are upheld. Why have any laws if they are not enforced."

     That too enticed me to respond:

     "Your concern for the law is touching. Shame it doesn't extend to treason with Russia. 'Illegality' is the word people throw around until someone tries to fix the system. Then they switch to 'amnesty.' I wish I had the power to make you understand. Alas, I don't."

      That should suffice. Enough is as good as a feast, as the Irish—also despised as unfit interlopers—like to say. Although I will add this, to those who think that Trump supporters have to be wooed, that their fantasies must be clucked over and their fears massaged: you are living in a dreamworld. Poisonous people loaded for bear. Nothing to be done but defeat them, ignore them, and let time bring her revenges. Stop your ears against their cries of righteous agony as we link arms with the future and march briskly away, leaving them to decay with their hallucinations and hatreds. They never will grasp what they've done to the country. They think all this is great. 

Trump demonizes ‘passionate, caring, compassionate’ health care workers

Nurse in Distress, by Gordon H. Coster (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  
      Let’s say I want to convince you that most dogs are German shepherds. So I buy a pair and parade them around the block, and pepper my conversation with tales of police K-9 units and Rin Tin Tin.
     Does it work? Or at some point do you reflect back to your own experience and think, “Gosh, you know, most dogs actually aren’t German shepherds. Most dogs are other breeds.”
     It’s an important question, because the logic above, so easily seen as flawed — well, easy for some; others just don’t get it — is what elected Donald Trump president. He tarred Mexicans as rapists and criminals with his first words as a candidate, and rode the deep fears and hidden hatreds — and not-so-hidden-hatreds — of half the country right into the White House.
     This cracked reasoning permeated his first State of the Union speech Tuesday. Lauded for lacking the malice and pettiness of his endless tweets, it was also a thinly-disguised appeal to racial hate. Frankly, I prefer when he’s candid.
     Trump spotlit the weeping parents of youngsters murdered by immigrant gangs. Exhibit A and the last word in his argument to slam the door on immigration so we can all live in the white country club country where Trump and his ilk feel most comfortable.
     He mentioned the word “safe” or “safety” 11 times, four attempting to justify barring immigrants.

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Stop thief!

     A monkey grabbed my iPhone.
     Just after I snapped the above photo, it reached out and wrapped its lithe little fingers around the brushed aluminum case. 
     A brief struggle ensued.
     We were in Belize, at the Community Baboon Sanctuary, so named because it is run, not by the government, but by seven communities which banded together in 1985; 240 landowners agreed not to cut down trees that house howler monkeys. 
     Now there are thousands of them. The sanctuary is run by a women's cooperative. The monkeys are called "baboons" in the local Creole, even though they are not what the rest of the world considers baboons.
      Our guide was a woman with an official-looking ID tag who approached us in the parking lot. She identified herself as "Geraldine the Jungle Queen" and escorted us to a spot just within a wood, across the street from the parking lot. 
     A half dozen monkeys, one with a baby clinging to her dark brown fur, appeared above our heads. Geraldine instructed us to take leaves and feed them to the monkeys, which we did. She also imitated their distinctive roar—they're called howler monkeys for a reason—and the dominant male answered back. Later, I recorded the sound at the Mayan ruin at Caracol, and you can hear it here.
    Geraldine was one of several guides in Belize to tell us that the howler monkey cries were used to vocalize the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park," though a bit of digging showed that to be a slight exaggeration: howler monkey cries were used for only for one dinosaur, the Dilophosaurus, and then they were mixed with hawk screeches, rattlesnake hisses and swan calls.
     Most of the monkeys tentatively accepted leaves from the others in our party, but mine got down into my face. I'm not sure if it was because he identified me as strong or weak, the Alpha Male or a straggler from the herd. Maybe he just liked the phone.  
     The monkey grabbing my phone was strong. Geraldine said that howlers are known to take a 16 gauge shotgun and bend it in half. I don't believe that—the creatures can't weigh more than 15 or 20 pounds—but the guy did have a tight grip. I must have wanted the phone more, however, and after we met eye to eye a moment, gazing at each other in mutual incomprehension across a chasm of biological time, I pulled the phone away.
    Relief that my iPhone wasn't being born up and away into the trees was replaced in a moment with a kind of regret. Losing the phone to a monkey would have made a better story. Imagine explaining that to the tech folks back at the Sun-Times. "I need a new phone ... because a monkey stole mine." I'd have to get a new iPhone, the 8, with its vastly improved camera. As it was mine had difficulty photographing the very dark monkeys against the light leaves, seeing their faces and small hands.  
    Thankfully, my older son has an actual camera, and captured me with the monkey. No doubt humans interacting with monkeys is bad for reasons that will be explained, huffily, to me very soon. But we felt thrilled and grateful to make their acquaintance. And I was relieved and sorry to still have my phone.

Photo by Ross Steinberg

   

Washington woes dissolve at your favorite Chicago restaurant

  

     Food is comfort. And my guess is, a lot of Chicagoans will wake up Wednesday morning and want nothing more than to drop their faces into a plate of warm solace and briefly forget the travesty unfolding in Washington.
     Luckily, it’s Chicago Restaurant Week.
     The event, now in its 11th year, paradoxically runs two weeks, and focuses on the new and the hip. I’m not much help there. I never want to go to a new restaurant. I prefer the same old restaurants. New places tend to be split between those I can’t get into and those I’m sorry that I did.
     So allow me to share my top seven Chicago restaurants — I tried to do a Top 10, but couldn’t jam them in, so plucked out my favorites from the suburbs. (Sorry Prairie Grass; apologies Psistaria). In alphabetical order, so no feelings are hurt though that might be inevitable, since I’m including a downside for each, lest this devolve into press-agentry.
     Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co., 2121 N. Clark: Can you love a restaurant just for its salad and bread? That’s the main meal when my family rush here to celebrate being all together again. The Mediterranean bread, a warm disk of Parmesan-dusted freshness overflowing the plate. Poppyseed dressing. This one of two restaurants I go to knowing we’ll have to wait 45 minutes to get in. Downside: the “pot pie pizza,” a cheesy, overturned bowl of glop.

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What do Ohio and Belize have in common?

     Knowledge imparted second-hand—through books, say, or photographs displayed in airports—is inferior to knowledge that is imparted directly, through experience in the living world.
      I encountered a noteworthy example of this during my visit to Central America last week.
     One of the first things I saw in Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport in Belize City, steps away from the tarmac, lining up to go through security, was a large photograph, suspended from the ceiling, of what looked like Amish children.
     Being as instinctively arrogant as any American, I automatically assumed it was some kind of general photo of a scenic local, a banner from Pennsylvania perhaps, somehow scavenged, mis-directed here, and repurposed to decorate this very Third World airport.
      But I passed under it, a caption said something about Mennonites in Belize. 

      I thought no more about it until a few days later, driving out to the Mayan ruins at Lamanai.
     Suddenly the road was busy with horse drawn carts. On either side, fields being tended by men in beards and suspenders, by women in long, homespun dresses and bonnets. 

     And I thought, with genuine surprise: "Oh, there are Mennonites in Belize."
    You'd think that the big honking photo at the airport would have been a subtle tip-off.

     But wasn't.
     The obvious first question is: how did they get there. 

     The short answer: circuitously.

     What started as an offshoot of the Anabaptists in Europe in the 16th century found their way to Russia, then Canada and the United States which, in the 1950s, tried to get the Amish, et al, to enroll in their Social Security program. 

     Which inspired communities of Mennonites to emigrate to Belize in 1958, where they farm and raise animals, as well as build vessels. There are some 12,000 living in Belize now, and I saw quite a bit of them, even at resorts, family groups hanging together, the father with his inevitable beard and suspenders, mom in her handmade dress and bonnet, and a few boys with big straw hats, staring in unashamed, slack-jawed curiosity, almost wonder, at us, as if they had never seen outsiders before.

     Leading to a second question that had never crossed my mind before. I knew of Amish from travel in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And I had heard of Mennonites. They obviously shared social traits—in dress, in speech. Both speak Pennsylvania Dutch or Low German. But what is the connection between the two? Are they rivals, like Shi'ites and Sunni? My uninformed guess was that "Amish" was the larger, general term, and Mennonites were a subset of that, the way that Hassids are part of general Jewry. 

      The truth, as usual, is complicated.

      There are dozens of sects of "Plan People" who avoid the modern world and embrace less complicated lifestyles. The Amish—followers of Jacob Amman, who felt that non-believers should be shunned—split with the Mennonites, who didn't, in 1693, and thus the Mennonites are more receptive toward modern conveniences such as telephones and electricity, and also have an evangelical aspect that tends to send them further afield. 

     I always thought that the Amish/Mennonite model is one that fundamental Islam might want to consider as it continues butting up against the West. Rather than trying to undermine what they consider a hopelessly sinful society, it might work better if they just formed their own enclaves, where they'd be free, more or less, to seek a life they consider ideal. 

Vacation's over.

     Upon reflection, of course a dusty grocery on a congested street in unlovely downtown San Pedro, Belize, was not going to have actual Cohiba Esplendidos sitting in a box on the counter for $10 a stick. 
     But in the moment, as I fingered the substantial cigar, that chip of larceny jammed in the heart of so many men gave a little shiver, and I ponied up $20 Belize—the smallest Central American country prudently pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar at a convenient 2-to-1 ratio.
   The cigar looked real enough, with its shiny label proclaiming "Habana, Cuba." And like dupes everywhere, I wanted to believe. The stogie was tucked away for the perfect moment, when the rains subsided Saturday afternoon, before the final dinner of our luscious 8-day excursion among rainforest, rivers and ruins.
     It was only when I popped the thing unlit in my mouth, and tasted a certain ... green sourness ... did I think, "Duh. Smart move Neil." Okay, I thought, deflecting self awareness, putting the bright spin on things, too mellow to allow myself to be annoyed. Nothing to do but shrug, snap it in half and throw the fraud away. A sophisticated man would have known better, but I am not a sophisticated man And anyway: what's another 10 bucks down the tubes in the cost of a vacation like this? In the money-burning potlach of squiring me, the wife, the two boys around the Yucatan peninsula, with drivers and guides and boat captains? Besides, what choice is there? Not too smart to smoke a fake cigar. God knows what's in it, chemicals and such. It could be dangerous.
     And yes, that's supposed to be ironic.
     But I didn't throw it away. I tucked the cigar in my shirt pocket. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said, and while it probably wasn't a Cuban, it still had a certain well-packed quality to it. It had to be good enough to fool people. I try to be fair, even to questionable cigars. Figuring it made sense to give this fellow a chance, I walked it out of the house, down the beach, and to the end of the pier, where the obligatory grass hut looked out over the requisite flat horizon. I settled in a white wooden chair and fired the charlatan up.

The author, in an uncharacteristic pose.

     Not bad. Not bad at all. It burned unevenly, and didn't seem what I remembered Cohibas to be. Yet a mild, serviceable cigar. I didn't fling it away. And a reminder that when the best isn't available, a reasonable facsimile will often do. 
     Just as the vacation might not have really been the rich man's idyll I pretended it was. Certainly an acceptable imitation. It would do. I'd always wanted a vacation where I did nothing, stared at the water, and relaxed. Thinking nothing is actually wonderful, and while I don't want to make a career of it—too many Americans have staked out that territory already—it does make for a welcome change of pace. I even took a cigar-smoking-selfie, as a tribute to my reader Chris Wood, whose Facebook page is studded with them.
     Not that the whole trip was sitting around doing nothing. There was the lovely family wedding that drew us all down there in the first place, and many memorable moments that might bear relating: the unexpected appearance of Mennonites. That larcenous monkey who tried to steal my iPhone. I'll see if my writing engine hasn't seized up from neglect and try to get the thing to turn over, setting a few of those down tomorrow. We got in late, after 10 p.m. Sunday. I wanted to say ... something ... to show I hadn't forgotten you ... at least not completely. I did forget you for long stretches, which was sort of the idea. I hope you didn't forget me too thoroughly, not so much that you won't wander on back. See you tomorrow. 

1990sFest: Day Nine—More than an attitude, big-headedness hurts

     I've been on vacation the past week, handing this space over to chestnuts from that distant era, the late 1990s. This is one of those topics that I'm half-amazed, half embarrassed that I wrote about. I'm flying home Sunday, and hoping to have some fresh content up tomorrow. Thanks for your patience during my absence. 

     The television reporter followed me out into the street.
     "You and your big head were blocking two cameras!" she fumed. I gave her my widest "I don't care" smile and entered into a brief conversation that quickly devolved into a mutual exchange of obscenities.
     Now, I didn't mind being cursed out by a TV reporter — TV reporters are the lowest, rudest people on earth; their cameramen would just as soon club you to the ground with their 20-pound battery packs as ask you to step aside. I was glad I blocked two cameras.
     But the "big head" comment really hurt — as the most painful insults always do — because it is true. I've got an enormous head. Always have. "I had to give birth to that head," my mother said, on too many occasions, never completing the thought because nothing further need be said. Nobody follows up, "I climbed Mt. Everest" with "quite a feat since it is really tall, you know." The listener is expected to understand.
     My head stands out in school pictures, as if a character greeting patrons at Disneyland had slipped in among the normal-headed children.
     I try not to think about huge-headedness. But there are always reminders. The recent redesign of the Sun-Times features section, lovely in every other respect, abandoned my suave "I've got a regular head" column photo for the above Wizard-of-Oz-like orb.
     Or hats. I used to buy normal hats and try to stretch them out. But that was torture — I could feel the headband squeeze every time I moved my jaw. So now I limit myself to Kangol caps, which come in XXL.
     "They also make XXXL sizes," said Edwin Urrutia, manager of Hats Plus on Irving Park Road, who confirmed my suspicions that we melon-heads are a forgotten lot.
     "Most companies don't even go up to an 8," he said, noting that many broad-pated customers find his store only after being turned away elsewhere.
     "I've had customers look all over the place — many stores won't even go as far as extra large," Urrutia said, noting that, as an extra large himself, he knows first hand the pain of trying to find a nice topper.
     "You see a product you like, but they don't even have it in your size. You spend 20 minutes waiting. It's frustrating," he said.
     His pet peeve is baseball caps, which, rather than recognizing the rights of the Brobdingnagian-beaned to boost their teams, instead seem to be shrinking.
     "Fitted baseball caps used to go up to a size 8. Now they only go as far as a 7 3/4," he said. And forget those adjustable caps.
     "One size fits all is actually one size fits most," said Urrutia, who keeps a waiting list of customers to be called when certain styles of hat arrive in the jumbo sizes.
     Richard Alcala, of Alcala's Western Wear on Chicago Avenue, said keeping the largest hats around the store costs a lot of money in inventory, and many stores don't bother, since just one customer in 50 has truly gigantic noggin.
     "We have a hatmaker in Texas who can make a size 9," he said, with a certain pride. "Most people stop at 7 1/2."
     For some reason — chauvinism, I suppose — I assumed Mardi Gras float heads were a male problem, but Alcala finds both sexes are afflicted.
     "This is definitely not confined to men. A lot of them are women," he said. "Hair is a factor, but not only hair. It's not unusual to get a woman in here with a really large head. Of course they don't like to admit it. Who does?"
     Not me. Though I'd would have guessed that women wouldn't mind much. Big-headedness is a central element of being cute, is it not? Think of Charlie Brown, Hello Kitty, baby ducks, etc. All with big heads, proportionally.
     Men don't want to be cute, however. They want to be rugged, handsome, regular-headed. And here I can offer a bit of comfort from the highest authority: Roger Ebert, who once claimed on his television show that movie stars tend to have these really large heads.
     He showed a clip of Clint Eastwood standing with a crowd of people on a courthouse stairway. Clint was a few steps behind the crowd, Ebert pointed out, so his head should have seemed smallest. Yet it loomed above those tiny-headed people around him, demanding attention, creating a focal point for the star.
     So maybe there's an upside to this. Maybe, as a column brand image, my nearly size-8 head will work to my advantage. It's about time.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 20, 1997