Calendar Round-Up

Are you counting down the days until you can get a Chicago Graves Calendar in your hands?

The Calendars will be available starting October 4th at the  Artwalk Ravenswood. The good folks who organize this artwalk have graced me with some wall space at the corner of Berteau and Ravenswood. Come find me and your calendar both Saturday, October 4th, and Sunday, October 5th, from 11am-6pm. (I will remind you all about this plenty!) I will be standing by some unrelated paintings of mine trying to explain why I dressed people up in costumes, drove them to a patch of grass in a graveyard and why there’s this polka dot car always in the background…and this will help you keep track of your days throughout the year, too. Makes sense to me! So what is to be expected in this calendar?… let’s see, you might recall sneak peaks of Resurrection Mary (vanishing hitchhiker), Frank and Peter Gusenberg (gangsters), the Clowns (clowns), Oscar Mayer (sausage maker), Enrico Fermi (father of atomic bomb.) Also expect great months of the year that will feature: the famous ghost of Inez Clarke, Ignaz Schwinn (bicycle maker), Mrs. O’Leary (whose cow did NOT start the Great Chicago Fire-the family has officially cleared her name,) Marshall Field (department store maker,) Emma Goldman (troublemaker,) Chester Gould (DIck Tracey cartoonist,) and the 12th mystery grave???? You will have to buy the calendar. If you can not make it to the art walk, you may find me crashing your holiday parties with calendars in my trench coat. If you don’t throw a party, I will have them for sale at my etsy store. So many options.

 

Clown car

Finally, it’s appropriate to call the polka dot car a clown car. It was full of clowns this weekend! I took some clowns to visit Showman’s Rest of Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, IL. Yes, this blog post, among many of late, are shameless attempts at promoting my forthcoming 2009 Chicago Cemetery Calendar. These are just sneak previews of what is to come. These clowns–this is not their day job– just looked so good I had to share some pics before the calendar debut! Meet the cemetery characters pictured below: (L-R: Vivian, Alan, Erin, Dave, and Scarlett.)

The whole crew got suited up at Alan and Erin’s place in the neighboring town of Berwyn. (They did not know me and my project until the day of the photo shoot; this speaks volumes of their character.)

You know you have good models when they come with sketchbooks of their own face paint designs!

We headed over to Woodlawn Cemetery to pay our respects to some circus performers. See the whole train wreck story of 1918 here. or at findagrave.com here.

There are so many amazing pictures of this photo shoot I am tempted to purchase a “Pro” account at Flickr and share them all. I’d like to think my 200 picture limit on my free Flickr account keeps my picture sharing to a finely crafted and curated venue of only my best. Otherwise, I fear my pictures would be interred in its own vast, unvisited cyber graveyard. These are the decisions of our generation, folks, to go “flickr pro” or not…

Amazingly enough, that same day, The Creature (himself!) from the Black Lagoon (remember him?), was signing autographs at “Horrorbles,” The Sci-Fi movie memorbilia store in town. “The craziest things happen in Berwyn.”-Scarlett. So clowns got in on that, too:

And what better way to end a perfect clown day then with a perfect Italian ice from Gina. I’m not sure Gina fully understood our clown agenda but that’s okay, she gave us free refills.

 

Stovetop Potpourri

I’m trying to do little winter remedies like, organizing my iTunes categories, lining up my jars of paintbrushes in really straight lines on my desk but not actually painting with them, and contemplating how dry and gross everything is in winter. (I received a radio-controlled clock for Christmas that displays the temperature and the humidity indoors.) I have never been so conscious of my temperature and humidity levels. This is like looking up symptoms on WebMD and realizing that you have 4 fatal illnesses. Apparently I have alarmingly low levels of humidity in the apartment so I’m making something that could help, at least psychologically.

Simmering spices!

Take a big pot and place it on top of the part of the stove where the flames come out…Dump a lot of water inside the pot. Then dump a lot of spices inside. If you are listening to winter-defiant music, the spices are more likely to come alive. Let the pot just simmer with the spices in there: Lots of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, anise seed, (okay, I didn’t have anise seed so I put coriander in there because apparently coriander has anise seed in it somewhere,) oh! and put ground up ginger in there, too. I hear orange peels are good but I don’t have any. Get in touch with the right side of you brain (not to mention your slumbering sense of smell) by shaking it in there until it feels right and then stop. Do NOT take out measuring spoons. Spices hate it when you measure them.

Fill the pot with more water as needed. I hear you can use this same pot of spices for up to a week. Lather moisturizing lotion on your hands, sip hydrating herbal tea, and stare at the clock as the humidity levels rise.

 

Remembering Someone Who Made Things

I went over to my father’s place to make marinara sauce Monday night. We had to measure stuff so it was good in a quantifiable way but not in an intuitive hummus way. It was then that I learned that my Great Uncle Bob had passed away Sunday night at the age of 81. Bob Cunniff was a writer for Sesame Street, The Dick Cavett Show, The Today Show, and others. He won an emmy for his Sesame Street writing. Pardon my youtube-ing here:

or who could forget one of his classics: C is for Cookie? (Watch the whole thing, you know you want to blast C is for Cookie in the workplace right now.)

In 2004, I met up with Uncle Bob in NYC and we walked around Greenwich Village sharing stories and noticing all the pigeons in Washington Square Park, not unlike the pigeons gracing Sesame Street. He interviewed many famous people for his other shows as well. Uncle Bob tells one story, “This man calls me up and says, ‘Mr. Cunniff, I just got back from Vietnam and I’d like to go on your show and protest the war.’ So I agreed and let John Kerry have his television debut.”

I don’t want to name-drop here but you only get one Uncle Bob. He interviewed Dr. King, made phone calls to Charlie Chaplin, was a pal of Barbara Walters and his daughter is the singer, Jill Cunniff of Luscious Jackson. Yup, he’s good peoples.

During my road trip across the country, I wrote long emails chronicling the journey. My dad fowarded them on to Uncle Bob to read. I am very proud to say an Emmy Award-winning Uncle liked my writing and thought it was “breezy.” I’ll take it. I don’t know what Uncle Bob would think of this blogging business though. Please have a cookie today in honor of Uncle Bob.

 

First off, feel good hummus

I think it was John Cage who said, “Not knowing where to begin is a form of paralysis. Begin anywhere.” So that’s where we’ll begin.

I made hummus yesterday for the soul collage group (more on that another day) that comes over every other Sunday. I’ve been making this hummus in its current form for several years and don’t remember ever using any measuring tool for god knows how long. This might go a little like those grade school assignments where you had to write out a how -to manual for something useless using appropriate grammar. First, you gather your ingredients, Furthermore, you spread the peanut butter onto one piece of bread…..Finally, you eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Yum!

With that fine primary education under my belt, here goes how-to hummus-

I like to use the larger 29oz. can of garbanzo beans/chick peas. You can buy them cheaply from Chicago’s finest: Harvestime foods on Lawrence, just west of Western. You can also use 2 smaller 16oz cans. This would cost you about 40 cents more than the big can and that’s just a sin. But I won’t judge; you’re already saving heaps by not buying the tiny preservative-ridden store bought containers at outrageous prices. Since they’re already soaked and need no cooking, open a small hole in the can and drain the water out. Then open it completely and dump them happily into the food processor. In no particular order, drizzle tahini paste (ground sesame seeds found in the Mediterranean aisle) into the processor. Then drizzle olive oil in there, too. I don’t know the difference between extra virgin and the unchaste stuff, so pour some slutty oil in there. Maybe two tablespoons? Pour in what feels right. I’m serious. Then take 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, and take off its skin. Throw them in there and let them get chopped up. Don’t be afraid of garlic! It’s great for the immune system and makes you feel alive in more pores then usual. Pour in about a quarter cup of lemon juice. You can always pour more as you go if it’s too stiff or dry.

This is where it gets really fun: Add these spices in whatever amount the spirit moves you to shake in there….cumin, coriander, paprika, salt. I like to make a dusting all around the surface of the mixture already sitting in the processor. Paprika is a good red color. Fresh parsley is the best but I rarely remember to pick it up at the store so I have stale Jewel brand parsley flakes sitting in the cupboard…possibly from two roommates ago. The parsley is purely for color quality now as I think plastic confetti has more flavor at this point. Shake that parsley in there very liberally, like you’d want to vote for Kucinich again. Or for you foodies (who are gagging reading this) get your damn fresh parsley and toss in the whole leaves and stems.

Now if you’re like me, you dropped your food processor from the top of the cabinets and the lid is cracked. So lock everything into place and cup your hand over the huge crack so hummus doesn’t take flight in your kitchen. Let her chop away until it is a creamy smooth paste. Because color counts, dust that paprika on your finished product and maybe drizzle more olive oil. Pretend you own a Lebanese restaurant as you cut tomato wedges and display them artistically around the perimeter of the bowl. Dip with crackers, pita, carrots, etc. If it’s lacking something, add more of one of the above ingredients in an intuitive, one-with-the-universe, manner.