Category Archives: Entertainment

The Surviving Kankakee Gazebo

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One more thing about Kankakee: there’s only one surviving gazebo of the two that David Letterman gave the city. Of course I had to see that.

Kankakee Dave Letterman Gazebo, Cobb Park

It’s in Cobb Park, near the Kankakee River. Not the most impressive of structures, even among gazebos (this one’s better). It’s like something someone would buy at a DIY store and put in his back yard.

But that’s not so important. A sign inside the gazebo says, “this is one of the world famous [sic] gazebos as seen on the Late Show with Dave Letterman. Presented to Kankakee on air in 1999, in a spoof to nickname the city: “Home of the Twin Gazebos.” In 2015, the City of Kankakee returned their [sic] gazebo on air to Dave Letterman in the form of a rocking chair.”

Needed an editor, that sign. It meant that the city, at the suggestion of Kankakee high school students, tore down one of the two gazebos and used some of the wood to build a rocking chair for Letterman (to remind him of his retirement?). The other one still stands, or at least it did as of October 1, 2016, when I got out of my car — Yuriko wasn’t interested, and waited in the car — and crossed Cobb Park to see it. More detail is in the Chicago Tribune.

I vaguely remember Letterman making fun of Kankakee (“puts the ill in Illinois” and “puts the annoy in Illinois”) after the city ranked last in some places-to-live article. Giving the city a couple of gazebos was a Lettermanesque extension of the gag, I guess. Also, it doesn’t hurt that “gazebo” is simply a fun word to say.

The B. Harley Bradley House

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I wondered recently, when did I first hear about the small Illinois city — or maybe the large Illinois town — of Kankakee? (Pop. 27,000 or so.) Not a very urgent question, since there’s usually no reason to remember when you first heard of most places — and no way you can remember. With a few exceptions in my case, such as Stevens Point, Wis., which I never heard of till Mu Alpha Theta held its national meeting there in 1978, which I attended.

Even so, I’ll bet I heard of Kankakee because it was in the lyrics of “The City of New Orleans” in the early ’70s, so artfully written by Steve Goodman, so memorably sung by Arlo Guthrie. “Kankakee” makes a clever rhyme with “odyssey.”

All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passing trains that have no names
And freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobile.

A lot of people could probably say that’s where they heard about Kankakee. Even some Germans. Years ago, my friend Rich played a German-language version of the song for me. Apparently it too was popular. In our time, those lyrics are easy to look up.

Auf seiner Odyssee nach Süden passiert der Zug Kankakee,
rollt an Häusern, Farmen und Feldern vorbei,
passiert andere namenlosen Züge,
Abstellplätze voller alter farbiger Männer
und verrostete Autofriedhöfe.

More recently, the Bradley House in Kankakee came to our attention. In full, the B. Harley Bradley House, vintage 1900.
The B. Harley Bradley HouseIt doesn’t take too much looking to see that Frank Lloyd Wright did the house. One of the first ones — the docent claimed the first one, others claim differently — done in his distinctive Prairie School. I can’t comment authoritatively which was first, and I don’t really care, but even so the house was interesting enough for a day trip.
The B. Harley Bradley HouseThe house, and the one next to it — the Warren Hickox House (behind it in the pic above), another Wright design that’s still a private residence — are in the the western edge of the town’s Riverview Historic District. The neighborhood features large old houses in various states of repair, but no others like these two.

The Bradley House is also close to the Kankakee River.
Kankakee RiverDuring the tour, I asked the docent whether flooding had ever been an issue — as it has with the Farnsworth House — but apparently the Kankakee isn’t as testy as the Fox River, at least at that place.

The house has had a long string of owners over the last century-plus. Within living memory, for instance, it was a well-known local restaurant, The Yesteryear. For a considerable time in the early to mid-20th century, a wealthy man named Joseph H. Dodson owned the place. He was a bird lover and used the house’s stable, which is now the gift shop, as a bird house factory. It seems that Dodson bird houses were quite an item at one time.

Then there’s the sad story of Stephen B. Small. Another wealthy Kankakee resident, he acquired the property in the mid-80s and set about to restore it. That came to a halt in 1987 when he was kidnapped and buried in a box whose air tube wasn’t large enough to supply him enough air, and so he died (both kidnappers are still in the jug).

More recently, through various twists and turns, the house came to be owned by a nonprofit that’s aiming to pay down its mortgage. Our little part in that was paying for the tour, along with buying a postcard an a refrigerator magnet.

I did not, however, want to pay $5 to take interior pictures, which wouldn’t have turned out all that well anyway. The interior restoration, completed only in 2010, restored the place to its 1901 appearance. A nice bit of work: long halls, spacious rooms (except for the servants’ quarters), wooden floors, art glass in the windows, and the kind of alcoves and recesses and the like you associate with Wright, though few low ceilings. Guess this was before, as The Genius, he could insist on ceilings fit only for short people.

Thursday Natterings, But Not From Nabobs of Negativism

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I woke the heater up yesterday from its summertime hibernation, mainly to see whether it would wake up and blow hot air, which is all I ask of it. Fortunately, the machine snapped to its single job without any complaint, such as some weird noise I don’t want to hear. The previous night had been quite cool, as they are starting to be, lowering the house temp to 69 F. My test took it up to 70 F. Normally I keep the house at 68 F. when it’s cold outside.

I saw the first Halloween decorations in the neighborhood the other day when walking the dog. It was a small faux cemetery in a front yard, featuring hand-painted sturdy cardboard (or cheap wood) tombstones. I don’t remember what any of them said.

Probably not Here Lies Les Moore. No Les, No Moore. I think I saw that in a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not collection years ago. That one I believe. Sounds like frontier humor to me.

Another remarkable collection of recent space photos from the Atlantic. As the intro notes, “We [as in, mankind] currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, a comet, Jupiter, and Saturn; two operational rovers on Mars; and a recent close flyby of Pluto.”

Closer to home, here are two signs I saw recently in Chicago.

That’s a little alarming. I can think of a lot better places to pass the future. The only future I want from McDougall’s are occasional breakfast sandwiches.

Dirt cheap, eh? And what do your beneficiaries get? Enough to pay for the dirt that covers you, maybe.

The last Weaver is gone. Fred Hellerman died recently, I just learned. Time then to listen to the re-union Weavers sing “Get Up and Go.”

One more thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen olives packed this way before. A Trader Jose offering, as the package tells us.

olives

I opened them today at lunchtime. Not bad at all.

Items from the (Very Large) Dustbin of TV History

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I happened across a YouTube video the other day called “11 Intros to Tacky 80s Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV,” and decided to watch it. Not sure that “tacky” is the right word. Maybe “short-lived” or “justifiably obscure” or some such. But the thing that surprised me — though it shouldn’t have — is that not only had I never seen any of them, I’d never heard of any of them.

That might sound like bragging. Actually, I will brag a little. I didn’t own a TV in the 1980s, and with certain exceptions, such as the last episode of M*A*S*H or the airing of The Day After, I didn’t watch much. I’m certain I’m better for it.

(Then again, the ’80s had no monopoly on TV SF failure: these are intros from 1975-80, all of whom failed. I watched much more TV then, but only vaguely remember Time Express and Buck Rogers, and watched Battlestar Galactica for a short while, until its stupidity got to be too much to take. Whoever complied the video left out Quark.)

The 11 shows in the video from the 1980s are Automan, Manimal, The Wizard, Wizards and Warriors, Misfits of Science, Shadow Chasers, The Phoenix, Powers of Matthew Star, Starman, Outlaws, The Highwayman. I wonder what kind of coke-bender decision-making allowed some of them to go on the air, just judging from some of their ridiculous — that’s the word, “ridiculous 80s Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV” — intros.

I recognized a handful of the actors. The Wizard’s David Rappaport was easily the best-known dwarf actor of his generation, and I remember he did a good job in the underrated Time Bandits (need to see that again; maybe I overrated it 30 years ago). Glad to know Rappaport had his own TV show, even one that didn’t last long. Sorry to learn that he didn’t last long, since he shot himself to death in 1990.

Robert Hays is instantly recognizable in Starman, though there’s no way he’s getting away from Ted Striker and his drinking problem.

Among the 11, the prize for most ridiculous concept (according to me, and it’s a tough competition) goes to Outlaws, whose intro explains that a gang of Texas outlaws from 1899 is magically transported to the late 20th century, along with the sheriff who was chasing them. More than time travel magic, too, since they somehow or other ended up on the right side of the law in the 1980s. You’d think they’d take to knocking over convenience stores and passing bad checks in our time. Also, one of them is black, perhaps the most improbable plot element of all. Played by Richard Roundtree, who will never get away from John Shaft.

The prize for bad intro writing goes to The Highwayman. They are supposed to be supernatural guardians of the world, or something — and if so, why did the producers pick a word that means bandits on the road? Anyway, the intro, which sounds like it’s read by William Conrad (a job’s a job), goes like this:

“There is a world, just beyond now, where reality rides a razor-thin seam between fact and possibility. Where the laws of the present collide with the crimes of tomorrow. Patrolling these vast outlands is a new breed of lawman, guarding the fringes of society’s frontiers. They are known simply as Highwaymen, and this is their story.”

The “razor-thin seam between fact and possibility”? Whoever wrote that was trying for Rod Serling, and failing.

The Last Days of Kiddieland

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Once upon a time, Kiddieland Amusement Park in west suburban Melrose Park featured rides and amusements for small fry, and somewhat older children, for a not-too-outrageous price. The park was around long enough for parents who had been taken as children to take their own children, and come to think of it, grandparents who had been to take their grandchildren.

Not being from around Chicago originally, I didn’t have that experience, but I did take my children three or maybe four times in the late 2000s. I don’t remember for sure, but I think one of Lilly’s friends originally suggested that she go. It was a little far to go very regularly, but not too far for an occasional visit.

Kiddieland was an unpretentious place, with rides such as a small but fast wooden roller coaster, a modest-sized Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, a Tilt-A-Whirl, small car rides, small boat rides, other things that went up, down and around, and a 14-in. gauge miniature railway (always enjoyable to find a miniature railway; the Brackenridge Eagle rides on a 2-ft. gauge, just to compare). I won’t say Kiddleland was a one-of-a-kind place, because it used to be one of a class of locally owned, pre-Disneyland amusement parks. Yet it was a survivor, in the 21st century, from an earlier time.

I can only speculate why. The park wasn’t that expensive or unmanageably large. The staff seemed well trained and polite. Soda — all you wanted — was part of the price of admission (imagine, say, Six Flags doing that). The rides were entertaining even for small children, a real place in an age of electronic faux places.

Kiddieland might still be around but for a dispute among cousins who owned the place, the grandchildren of the founder. Seems like a strange division: One group owned the amusement park; the other owned the land. When push came to shove, the amusement park owners were shoved off the land, and the park closed for good in late September 2009.

When it was clear that Kiddieland was going to close, seven years ago this month, we went one more time. I think Lilly and her friends ambled around themselves, while I took Ann around. Here’s Ann and a couple of the small-fry rides.
Kiddieland 2009Kiddieland 2009There’s a Costco there now. The land owners were clearly looking for bigger bucks. Generally I’m for the highest and best use of real estate, and I like Costco well enough, but still. Something that could be anywhere replaced something distinctive about a particular place, so the world is slightly poorer for it.

A Reg Manning Travelcard — No. 15

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Lately, thanks to the Special Collections & University Archives of Wichita State University, I’ve learned that “Reginald Manning was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 5, 1905. He moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1919 and studied art in high school. Shortly after graduation, Reginald began working for the Arizona Republic, starting work on May 1, 1926. He worked there for the next 50 years.

“Manning’s job at the newspaper originally was a photographer and spot artist. Before too long, he was drawing daily editorial cartoons and a weekly full-page review of the news called ‘The Big Parade.’ He quit drawing the ‘Parade” in 1948 in order to devote more time to his editorial cartoons. In 1951, Manning won a Pulitzer for ‘Hats.’

“In addition to his lectures, Manning has published many books. Some of the books that he produced are A Cartoon Guide to Arizona (1938), What Kinda Cactus Issat? (1941), From Tee to Cup (1954), and What Is Arizona Really Like? (1968).

“Reg Manning was one of the most prominent conservative voices in cartooning and has won numerous awards for his work. Besides winning a Pulitzer Prize, he has also won the Freedom Foundation’s Abraham Lincoln award two years in succession.”

He died in 1986. Somehow I missed knowing a thing about him until recently, when I was looking through some cards I’d bought at a resale shop. Seems that he did gag postcards, too. At least 15 of them.

regmanningHis style seems familiar. Probably I’ve seen his work without attaching a name to it. The card I have, copyrighted 1942, was mailed from Flagstaff in March 1946, addressed to a Master Georgie, so I’ll assume it was from a relative or family friend to a child — no one signed the card.

He or she did check off some of the lines on the card, which is amusing. Guess that was the intention. Wonder whether Georgie — later George — kept the card his whole life from the age of around 10 (say) to much more recent times, when it wound up in a box of cards at a resale shop. Maybe George, lately around 80, passed on not long ago, and his heirs had no use for gag cards from the 1940s. All speculation, but sometimes that’s just the thing for a found object in your possession.

Schaumburg Town Square, Augmented

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Before she left for school, Lilly told me that people spend time at Schaumburg Town Square on warm evenings — all of them, this time of year — playing Pokemon Go. Not long ago I took a look myself, to see if she was pulling my leg.

She wasn’t.

Playing Pokemon Go at Schaumburg Town Square 2016Among other things, Schaumburg Town Square, which includes the township library and some retail space, features a small grass-surfaced amphitheater, and the game seemed especially popular there. I watched for a while to make sure that’s what they were doing, and confirmed it for certain when I heard a couple fellows talking about it. These guys.

Playing Pokemon Go at Schaumburg Town Center, 2016As The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy said about Earth, “mostly harmless.”

The Wheeling Superdawg ’16

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More than six years ago, I wrote, “What to do after touring a mansion exuding poshness, if you happen to be hungry? Go to a hot dog stand.

“Not just any hot dog stand, but the drive-in Superdawg. Not the original, which is on the Northwest side of Chicago, but the Wheeling, Ill., iteration that opened in January. It was on our way home.”

On Saturday, I noticed that the Wheeling Superdawg was on the way to the Chicago Botanic Garden, more or less. So we went again, the first time in more than six years. Before we got there, Yuriko said she didn’t remember any such place. But as soon as we arrived, she did. It’s hard to forget these characters.

Wheeling Superdawg 2016Those are the rooftop boy and girl dogs — awfully heteronormative of them, some nags might say — but they’re also featured in a lot of other places, including on the packaging and the napkins. They’re also on the sign that faces the road (Milwaukee Ave. in Wheeling). These anthropomorphic hot dogs rotate slowly, unlike the static ones on the roof.
Wheeling Superdawg 2016This time I had the original Superdawg. I forgot to order it without mustard, but other than that I liked it. Yuriko enjoyed her hamburger.

Back in ’10 I noted: “Each order station also has a sign that says: ‘We’re super sorry, but we’re unable to accept credit cards because of our unique drive in/carhop service…’ We went inside anyway, and they don’t accept cards there either. Retro indeed.”

I can report that in 2016, inside the restaurant at least, all manner of credit and debit cards are now accepted. Guess they figured the all-cash model was losing them some customers.

One more thing today: I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, though I have only the vaguest memories of it as a prime-time show in the late ’60s. One of the stations in San Antonio started showing it in the after-school slot in 1973, when I was in junior high. That I remember. The first episode the station aired was “Devil in the Dark.”

The series, and all its successor iterations, have been hit or miss over the years. Its starting concept — the pitch Roddenberry supposedly made — was “Wagon Train to the Stars.” Does anybody remember Wagon Train any more?

My own fondest memory of the show I’ve written about before: “More than 30 years ago, I spent a few days camped out in a dorm room at MIT. I noticed a few things while there, such as that everyone on the hall went to the common room to watch an afternoon showing of Star Trek, and everyone knew the lines. (The original series; because this was 1982, the only series. Patrick Stewart was still just a Shakespearean actor who’d played Sejanus for the BBC.).”

Medal Counts and Other Distractions

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Just got around to looking at the final Olympic medal totals today, because what’s the hurry? Also, I was intrigued by a headline in The Sporting News — something I rarely look at — that said, “The biggest lie of the Rio Olympics? The medal standings, as usual.”

I started reading that article, but the page started playing a damned video ad that had no mute function. I could have shut it up by muting all the volume on my machine, but I object on principle to videos that play on web sites without being asked, especially those you can’t shut up. So I quieted the thing down by closing the page.

In any case, I’m less interested in the top nations than those who won few or zero medals. Eighty-seven teams won something, a bronze at least, out of 207 participating. Thus the clear majority of teams won nothing to hang around their necks. So it goes.

As for nations that got exactly one bronze, they’re a divers lot: Austria, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, Morocco, Moldova, Nigeria, Portugal, Trinidad & Tobago, and the UAE. Countries that won one silver and nothing else included Burundi, Grenada, Niger, the Philippines and Qatar, and there were even a few countries that won a gold and nothing else: Fiji, Jordan, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and Tajikistan.

The Telegraph did some interesting comparisons: medals per capita and medals compared with GDP.

“Grenada is top when it comes to total medals per capita,” The Telegraph noted. “The country has only won one silver, but its small population means that it has won 9.4 medals per million population… Great Britain has achieved one medal per million people, while the USA won 0.4 medals per million and China — the world’s largest country in population — gained 0.05 medals per million.”

Compared to GDP, another small island nation comes out on top: “With its silver medal, the Bahamas comes top for medals compared to its GDP. It has won a rate of 102 medals a per $100bn GDP — despite just winning just one overall. The United States and China perform poorly when comparing their medal count to GDP, with 0.7 and 0.6 medals per $100bn of GDP respectively.”

The Telegraph is distracting. Soon I found myself not reading about the Olympics — a little of that goes a long way — and turned to the obits. Forrest Mars Jr. died this month; I’m surprised there’s enough public information about him to publish a full obit, but here it is.

Also passing this month, David Huddleston, better known as the Big Lebowski. He was definitely not the Dude.

Togo, Lesotho, Tuvalu and Other Olympic Teams

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Spent some time on Friday watching the Parade of Nations. This time around, NBC didn’t seem to cut anybody out, so it was quite long, and I didn’t sit through it all. Even so, it’s the part of the Olympics I usually get around to watching. Everything else, not so much.

As usual, I’m pulling for Togo in the Games. Along with Lesotho, with their wonderful hats, and other small teams, such as Tuvalu, Bhutan, Chad, Dominica, and Equatorial Guinea, just to name a few. I’m sure the U.S. athletes will do well, and I wish them well, but any fool can get behind a large delegation.

But what about Tuvalu? Good old Tuvalu, which has sent exactly one athlete to the Games this time around, former footballer Etimoni (Reme) Timuani, who will be in the 100 m sprint. This is the third Olympics for the Pacific nation, which as yet has won no medals. Hope they win something while their country is still above sea level.

As for Togo, it’s sent five athletes to seek Olympic glory and swat mosquitoes in Rio: a couple of sprinters, a couple of swimmers, and a competitor in women’s single sculls. Does NBC pay any attention to single sculls? I suspect not so much. Why bother with someone like Gevvie Stone (who’s on Team USA just as much as a swimmer or gymnast) when you can spend hours talking about Michael Phelps?

At least NBC’s coverage of the Parade of Nations seemed to a little less annoying this year than before. The announcers’ subtext wasn’t quite so, “Golly, I don’t know where that country is! Do you? It’s so little, it’s hard to believe it’s a country. Go Team USA!”

Naturally, unheralded writers at NBC did their research, so that the announcers could tell heartwarming stores about some of the athletes. “That’s right, his family was so poor they couldn’t afford oxygen when he was growing up in such-and-such TPLAC. But he had a dream, and he began training by running up and down burning trash dumps without shoes.”

No doubt they told true stories, and I’m glad that some of the participants in the Games were able to overcome awful conditions to get there, especially the Refugee Olympic Team, which is a new thing this Olympiad. I don’t mock them. NBC, on the other hand, deserves to be mocked for the dumbed down coverage the network is sure to provide to American audiences. Am I merely being nostalgic in remember that ABC knew better how to cover the Olympics? I don’t think so. The network had better ideas about international sports coverage.