CHEKIT: Kid Stuff

All my people are havin' babies and it's freaking me out! Little toddlers sproutin' up like drooly, onesy-clad weeds! It seems like they're everywhere!

Well - as long as you folks are set on fornicatin' and populatin', here's some stuff to introduce your kid to. Get him or her growin' and brainin' proper. (And I promise that will be the last injudicious use of apostrophes in this post.)

The graphic designer in me thinks this book rocks. The storyteller in me tells me this book rocks. And something else in me wishes I was five and seeing this guy's cute little snout for the first time. Buy the book here.

Now, this book I'm not so sure about. With the appearance of several magazine pieces, a segment on The Show and a new book about the author Dare Wright's life, you'd think this story of loneliness, friendship (and corporal punishment) would be flying off the shelves. And it is getting snapped up - but by parents who decide, after rereading a few pages, to keep the strange little book to themselves, out of the hands of their children - and wonder what it was that enchanted them all those years ago. The NYT thinks Jean Nathan's got all the answers.

As far as other questionable material for children goes - you could find less disturbing fare than this fellow's work. Yet, perhaps because his ofttimes dark and cruel but eventually just and funny and sweet stories are equally comforting and surreal, they've endured - thankfully so. I only hope Johnny Depp and Tim Burton don't mangle the first movie and the book in the process of honoring both.

CHOW: Burritos as big as your head

Sorry I've been away for a bit, kids. Suckah MCs tried to step to me - I had to represent. I'm sure you understand.

Anyway -


There are three guys in my office absofukinglutely obsessed with Chipotle Mexican Grill. I mean, I have my favorite lunch places, but my enthusiasm for Panera is nothing compared to these guys near-religious fervor for the ubiquitous burrito chain. Understand, I enjoy Chipotle, too - but I never liked the fact it was half owned by McDonald's and, well, giant burritos for lunch twice, sometimes four times a week sounds like my gastroenterologist's wet dream. It sounds like they're doing something right, tho - and who knows? Maybe Ronald can learn something valuable - and we'll all end up eating better.

In the meantime - If you want to really get down to work, modern health concerns be damned - punch your time card here.

CHEKIT: Sara Z

She used to live here. She used to live here and be lovely and rock my sweet yellow ass with her kickass mixtapes (on CDs, of course, but it'll always be "mixtape" for me, and I suspect, for a lot of you, too.) I miss her wry sense of humor, sensible and silly - all the while, brilliant besides.

Brooklyn's got her now. I fear, now that it knows what it has, it will never let her go.

I still get to see what she's up to, tho. So I've got that going for me.

DESIGN: Fontleech

Free fonts. An assload of free fonts and the blog's just started and I'm diggin' every minute of it - every minute I'm not doing this.

If you're a designer with a little time and a lot of bandwith - keep up with this one. I get the feeling he's gonna do right by us. If an embarassment of fonts is supposed to be the androstenedione of graphic design, well then - call me Mark McGuire.

CHEKIT: BBC + Infocom + Flash = mess in my pants.

I'm gonna totally nerd out here and tell you that if you dug those old-school text-based computer games - especially if you liked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - well, you're gonna love this.

I just about crapped myself. I'm not gonna lie to ya.

LL&CB: Private parts

I'm finding myself in the very strange position of feeling sorry for Paris Hilton. Okay, yes, she's a media whore in every sense of the word, and dresses only slightly better than this woman. Some would say that the thousands of web pages documenting her poorly-lit sex tapes, sartorial foibles and conversational hiccups are exactly what she deserves. But with the Sidekick drama unfolding, we may have to rethink what does, and does not, comprise a reasonable expectation of privacy, for someone as apparently unconcerned about it as Paris - and for the rest of us as well.

If you haven't heard, the hotel heiress was either allegedly duped into giving up her T-Mobile Sidekick account information to someone with clearly dubious intentions, or her account was hacked via more sinister technological means. Logs of her SMS text messages and stored cameraphone pix have now been broadcast everywhere. Alien astronomers performing a spectrographic analysis of data transmissions from planet Earth this week would have undoubtedly seen a gaudy electromagnetic pink-and-platinum ring leaving our atmosphere, threatening to engulf the universe.

The questions I've got for you lawyers out there are these: while it's clearly too late for Paris to get those pictures back, does she have any recourse at all, assuming she can track down the individuals responsible? Does the alleged inadvertent handing-over of her login information comprise a tacit approval for the (mis)use of the info and images contained therein? Can public figures (especially those of Paris Hilton's curious meta-celebrity nature) retain any rights to privacy? Does the pilfering of the pix and logs violate any telecom law? Do even these materials, so clearly unintended for public consumption, still fall under the purview of the public interest?

Law-pimp Postscript and I were having a conversation recently regarding whether or not telecom companies had a responsibility, legally or ethically, to reveal the identities of individuals sought by law enforcement for copyright violations or other criminal acts - whether the business conducted between customer and provider were as private as the conversations/data transmissions those transactions facilitated. Right now, if I got the gist of his argument correctly, few phone/internet service contracts provide for such protections - though the argument could be made that the market will dictate an inclusion of such protections as privacy concerns escalate (though how those contractual obligations will hold up against the legal juggernaut of Homeland Security is anyone's guess.)

While I support the efforts of law enforcement (even their headline-grabbing, idiotic pursuit of Metallica fans trying to save a little cash), it seems as if these practical pursuits, as well as the development of a relatively recent, seemingly society-wide confessional-exhibitionist streak, are promoting an erosion of respect for privacy rights, on an emotional level, for the nation at large. We wouldn't even be having this discussion if the messages and digital pix were instead letters and photographs removed from albums and desk drawers by a housekeeper or ex-boyfriend with a spare key. It seems to me we wouldn't even be having this discussion if our penchant for reality-based television, memoir and tell-alls hadn't reached fever pitch in the last few years. And none of this woulda happened at all if Al Gore hadn't gone and invented that damn Internet. Crazy-ass chump.

I don't understand how easier access to the information we choose to withhold from other people makes the sanctity of that information any less relevant.

Even Paris Hilton - yes, Paris Hilton - deserves a portion of her life to belong only to her - even if the boundaries of such begin and end at the keypad of her cell phone. It could happen to any one of us - and you and I don't have the luxury of an nine-figure inheritance to take the edge off embarrassment on a global scale. In a way, we are all Paris Hiltons - living to keep private certain things in a world increasingly interested in exposing them in service of truths disproportionate to the pain their exposure causes.

Hopefully, however, the rest of us are less likely to wear super-low-rise jeans and mesh tank tops to work.

CHEKIT: Japanese Arcade Games

I don't normally go in for the ignorant lookit-thuh-crazy-fer-ners kinda humor, but where Lost in Translation left off, this continues: take, for instance, the game pictured: from Konami, the company that brought you the seminal ass-whuppin' simulator Street Fighter II, comes DogStation, where you and your friends can finally throw down and see who can type the fastest (98 WPM, biz-natch! I went STEN-O-LICIOUS all over yo' punk ass!)

And other fun from our friends across the sea.

CHEKIT: Tontie

I don't know who these people are or what kinda crack they're on - all I do know is that if you'd better make some time in your schedule for this one. You'd think that an increasingly difficult whack-a-mole game played with your keypad wouldn't be that hard - or this addictive.

And you'd be wrong.

POLITIK: Henry Kissinger - almost as hot as the Wonkette

Well, not really. At all. I mean, I know you can't even see her face in this picture. But trust me - if you haven't already heard of her, either from her Gawker Media site, or MTV's election coverage, or from the hundreds of articles about the future of political blogs - she's hot. And clever. And, unlike the former Secretary of State, much more likely to make ass-fucking jokes.

Henry, however, is, possibly, not above the occasional fellatio reference.

CHOW: Quite possibly, too pretentious...even for me

So there's this chef, Grant Achatz, who made a splash during his tenure with Trio - this restaurant in Evanston that, thanks to Grant, garnered all these awards from foodie mags from all over. Since he left many months ago, he's been working on the concept for a new place.

I thought all the behind-the-scenes and agonizing was a little spin-your-own-top, but from what I heard from the lucky few who got to dine at Grant's former digs, Alinea may just live up to the hype.

At least, I used to think that. Until I saw this, and realized what it was. And now I wanna shoot Grant's PR people in the neck.

LL&CB: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

When Douglas Adams passed away in May of 2001, I found, unexpectedly, that I'd never left his strange little universe of books and readings and radio productions - I'd just forgotten it for awhile. All the intervening "important"-book-reading years fell away, and visions of neurotic, fate-tossed earthlings and compulsive-depressive robots were renewed - and I opened my copy of Hitchhiker's and read, with a small, sad smile:

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."

I'd met him, once, when I was 12 - my Dad took me to see him at a Kroch's & Brentano's in Evanston, where he was signing copies of "Last Chance to See," a collection of essays about endangered animals he'd traveled the world over to observe, and hopefully, enlighten the rest of us about. The book was that rarest of accomplishments - a charming mix of wit and sympathy - and in the wee hours of the morning, as I closed the back cover, I stopped being a fan of Arthur, Zaphod and Marvin, and thought that I wanted, more than anything, to carve cleverness out of the air like this man - this brilliant, funny bastard.

He'd been trying to bring the movie to the big screen for years, and his frustration with Hollywood was well-known. The project was attached to Ivan Reitman's production company for a time, where it languished, wandering in production limbo, along with the prequels to Star Wars for many years.

And now, here we are, with the last of Lucas' craptaculars ready to hit the big screen - and finally, Douglas has his grand vision. He would've been pleased to see most of his original screenplay brought to bear - and perhaps appreciated the luck of the delay - a script so strange and funny and epic that only digital special effects and Sam Rockwell could have made it possible.

I like to think that, in some alternate universe, Douglas never had a heart attack, but was, now, fretting over the reworking of the original eyeless green logo that the original book and sequels bore, wondering how the hell he got talked into allowing the casting of Mos Def as Ford, and, looking up at night, wondering about an alternate universe of his own, where he never got piss drunk under a tree so many years ago and boozily wished into the world a brilliant, funny universe - and instead, pursued chicken farming.

I'd exchange the greatest cinematic adaptation in the history of film for more stories, more laughter from our Douglas. I wish he was here to see all this.

And all this, too.

LL&CB: Not enough room for these on the front of the tablets

Thou Shalt Not wear parachute pants, even ironically.

Thou Shalt bear a mullet unencumbered by self-consciousness or taste.

Thou Shalt encourage women to press lips with other women, and encourage those who witness such events to take pictures.

Thou Shalt email such pictures to god@thelord.com.

Thou Shalt Not covet thy neighbor’s doobie.

Seriously. Puff puff give.

Thou Shalt boogie oogie oogie until thou just can’t boogie no more.

Thou Shalt Not lip synch on live TV and then blame it on your drummer.

Thou Shalt Not thrice write and direct prequels to one’s own successful science fiction franchise, especially if thou is determined to fuck it all up.

Thou Shalt Not covet thy neighbor’s wife, unless she is Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Thou Shalt Not say “the secret ingredient is love.”

Thou Shalt Not think impure thoughts about SpongeBob SquarePants.

Thou Shalt Not marry thine own backup dancer while wearing a velour track suit.

Thou Shalt Not keep insisting my son’s middle initial is H.

Thou Shalt Not lie, with the exception of saying someone's haircut is "not that bad."

Thou Shalt smack it up, flip it, rub it down.

Oh no!

Thou Shalt Not take all the crab legs at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

Thou Shalt stop thinking I give a damn about football games.

Ditto on gay marriage.

Thou Shalt Not sing “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” on Karaoke Night.

Thou Shalt provide more than one ketchup packet with a large order of fries.

Thou Shalt find nothin’ wrong with a little bump ‘n grind.

That Ali G is a pretty funny guy. Booyakasha! Ha ha ha.

Thou Shalt Not make multiple sex tapes, several bad cameo appearances and two inane reality shows and expect Me to respect you in the morning.

Thou Shalt take thy poultry numbering three, each of successively smaller size, and thou shalt cleave them from their bones and stuff one into the other, and those together into the last, and it shall be called "turducken" and it shall be pleasing unto My Eye and My Belly.

Thou Shalt pour out one for the homies, yo.

Thou Shalt Not hog the covers.

Thou Shalt Not wear Ugg boots.

Thou Shalt have thy pets spayed or neutered.

Thou Shalt Not wear pleated jeans or braided leather belts if one hopes to ever experience the touch of a woman.

The line for ten items or less shall be for ten items or less. It shall not be for fifteen, or twelve, or even eleven. Not even if five of the items are “practically the same thing.” I am in all things.

Thou Shalt check out Sleater-Kinney's last record. It totally rocks.

Thou Shalt Not worry, but rather, thou shalt be happy.

Thou Shalt accept the truth of one Word, and that Word is "mackadocious".

Many thanks, again, to Pascale, Rob, Secret Squirrel and Maggie.

CHEKIT: Cats and Dogs

Personally, I was rooting for the Pekingese - I thought I was gonna pee my pants watching that thing schlep around Madison Square Garden like a legless, waddling turd-colored mop. Oh well. Congrats anyway, Carlee.

Don't get me wrong - I like poker. And I like dogs. Still - that's not enough to get me to shell out that kinda money for this kinda thing.

Think your cat's litterbox smells?

And for all you Jayhawkers out there - I'd like to point out the fact that when it came to mapping the cat genome for the first time ever - they picked a kitty from Mizzou.

CHEKIT: This is Grand

The romance of Chicago's mass transit system - of any train, really - is the sensation that fate, not the thousands of volts running through the third rail, is what has brought you and everone else together for the minutes you'll spend sharing space and glances. You can't help but watch and wonder at the luck of it all, of all the stories, unspoken but glimpsed - in a wet kleenex clutched in a trembling hand - in a brilliant bag and horrible shoes - in the slurred, murmured pleas of late-night drunks to stomachs, to deities, to this GODDAMN TRAIN TO STOP SHAKING SO MUCH. In an interview, the poet, John Ashbery, mentioned that he found himself embarassed, but unable to stop himself from working his craft between Berlin and Paris - self-conscious about being a grown man earnestly scribbling sentiment while on a train.

It's easy to understand the impusle, though, doncha think?

These people certainly do.

LL&CB: Rejected Conversation Hearts

BARELY LEGAL

YOU WERE FINE. IT WAS GREAT. REALLY.

I LOVE YOU...AND THE FLAT TAX

PAROLEE ON THE PROWL

YOU REMIND ME OF IMELDA MARCOS

HUNG LIKE SOMEONE WITH AN ABOVE-AVERAGE-SIZED PENIS

IT'S EITHER YOU OR MENOPAUSE

GOD IS DEAD

ARE YOU MY DADDY?

YOUR MOM IS HOT

CONSIDER THIS A VERY SMALL RESTRAINING ORDER. MADE OF CANDY.

I'M PRETTY SURE I GOT IT FROM YOU

NADER IN 2008

IT BURNS

MUZIK: Dark and Simple, Calm and Quiet

Play all the ponderous, litling guitar chords you like - unless you've got a lead singer with a good set of pipes, your post-folk, ultra-twee band of navel-gazing acoustican'ts aren't gonna get any farther than the crowded corner of your local independent coffee shop. These folks have been doing it for a while now, however - and if this is any indication, they've deserve a second, third and fourth look. "Moon...River...wider...than a mile...."

In a similar but darker vein, check out Iron + Wine's last album. Bleak rural landscapes and tumblers of bourbon recommended, but not necessary.

CHOW: "If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving."

Normally, I'd make fun of these wine dorks stomping around California wine country drinking every bottle of Pinot Noir that's not nailed down...if I wasn't too busy surfing Orbitz for good fares to Santa Barbara.

The Greatest Wine Store in the Entire World is having a gigundo sale on, well...it looks like everything. Which wouldn't be such a big deal except that this place is already cheap as is - remember (one) of our mottoes here at Dispatches - In Vino Veritas - In Vilis Vino, Plura Veritas.

Nice wine glasses are too damn tall - especially those superfancy, superpricey Riedel bowls - they're accidents waiting to happen. Until now.

I don't normally drink whites, but I have a special place in my heart for this Fumé-Blanc. Don't drink two bottles of it in a hopsitality suite in Washington D.C., however, no matter what the circumstances. It doesn't sit well. Or so I've heard.

CHEKIT: Debbie Gibson! Almost Nekkers!

She prefers Deborah now, thank you very much. And a lot has changed since the late 80s, when she was all winsome smiles and writing and singing insidiously catchy pop tunes. She's ditched the stupid hats and the cloying ballads, and through the years racked up a few well-received stints on Broadway and plugged away at a modest musical career.

And all the while, she's really worked on those glutes.

Debbie Gibson: Shake Your Love (nothing too doity, but almost NSFW) [via Pink is the New Blog]

LL&CB: Optimus Prime’s Valentine’s Day Dos and Don’ts.

DO try to make your own Valentine’s Day card, perhaps composing a poem or an expression of love that expresses your personality.

DO NOT ingest unstable energon, as it may cause your servos to malfunction.

DO create a recollection collection scrapbook filled with favorite photographs, love letters, keepsakes from special occasions, and cherished mementos.

DO NOT let your guard down for one minute around Starscream, even when he says he no longer works for the Decepticons.

DO buy a heart-shaped locket and put a picture of yourself in it. Personalize the locket with your loved one’s initials so she’ll have something to wear that’s hers alone. Package it in a heart-shaped box or tied to fresh flowers.

DO NOT fall for that Cybertronian Law mumbo-jumbo if Megatron challenges you to a duel. He’s ALWAYS up to something.

DO make a CD of your favorite songs as a couple including love songs that you both enjoy listening to. Buy some romantic CDs, classic videos or DVDs and wrap them all together with red ribbon.

DO NOT allow that dumbass Grimlock anywhere near your music collection. He never puts the CDs in the right cases. Ever.

DO prepare your loved one’s favorite dinner and serve it on a romantically set table and dine by candlelight on Valentine’s Day. For the sweetheart with a sweet tooth, make a decadent dessert such as a chocolate fondue with melted chocolate mixed with a touch of heavy cream, and serve it with fruit or cookies.

DO NOT take Sparkplug along while running reconnaissance missions on the Space Bridge. He’ll only get his tiny human ass blown up. Again.

DO take the time to appreciate this day, and all the other special days you spend with your special someone.

DO NOT try to assemble your own “special someone” from extra parts lying around Autobot Headquarters. It will only end in tears. Trust Optimus on this one.

CHOW: Which came first: the pretentious foodie or the egg?

Once you’ve eaten a freshly laid egg, I’m told, there’s no going back. The “farm fresh” labels you see on grocery-store egg cartons are, for the most part, misnomers – often, there is at least a week between the hen in question and the three-scrambled-with-cheese on the menu. When put up against the right-out-of-the-nest variety, your average store-bought egg is a rubbery, mealy, pale orange alternative – which is to say, no competition at all.

William Grimes, of the New York Times, can attest to the joys of egg farming – his introduction to the enterprise came one morning with the serendipitous arrival of a Black Australorp to his backyard in Queens. After wondering how such a thing was possible in that, the least chicken-friendly of environments, he stopped looking a gift bird in the beak and began to count, collect and eat his never-to-be-hatched chickens with relish.

Sadly, most of us will never wake up one day and discover, perched between the birdbath and the garden gnome, a healthy, egg-laying animal capable of making even the dorkiest sustainable-lifestyle-food-nerd-breakfast-enthusiast’s wishes come true.

However - if you live in the UK, and have $678.72...The Omlet Eglu

MUZIK: Beck, and the glory that is Stereogum

Dudes and Dudettes: I give you Stereogum - and if you're into good tunes and the occasional foray into celebrity snarkiness, you probably already know about this blog run by a VH1 employee and self-styled Britney-hatin' taste-vigilante. Always plugged in - but not so cooler-than-cool that he's gonna block your IP address just cause you're not so frosted-doughnut over The Arcade Fire - check in regularly and impress your younger brothers and cousins.

I only mention it now because, well, the new Beck video for "Black Tambourine" is ASCII-Licious. RealPlayer and a new pair of dancing shoes, and a fast connection, if you please.

Video: "Black Tambourine" [via Stereogum]

CHEKIT: Cool Clocks

Wholly impractical, brilliant and fun.

Human Clock

INDUSTORIOUS CLOCK

Fuzzy Clock (for OSX only)

Less cheese, more funk!

Okay. So I've been slacking. But I figure with this shiny new interface and all sorts of stuff in the works, Dispatches could, with a little work, become your one-stop-shop for all your disjointed narrative needs! I'll be posting new work, funktastic links, the return of Lava Lamps and Cheap Beer and more Q&A from people you've never heard of. So come back. Come back to Dispatches. I've missed you as I've missed no other.

Dispatches - Everything that's come before.