Urban Adventures in Gingerbread #2

December 18, 2006 by Wendy

So, yeah: I made a CTA stop out of gingerbread. It would have been much more ambitious if I’d modeled it after one of the actual elevated platforms, but I decided to do one of the ground-level stops in my neighborhood.

The platform was the trickiest part, since it was one long piece that I had to bake myself (the building is made from prefab gingerbread house pieces). But it held, and it’s strong enough to hold dozens of gingerbread people as they wait for the train that never comes.

Also, the Helvetica font is awfully hard to render in frosting. I don’t recommend you try it.

The rest of the photos are here. Please admire the painstakingly constructed candy-cane turnstile or else, I swear, I will wither and die inside.

Somebody please talk me out of doing another one of these next year, okay?

Gingerbread Watch '06!

December 5, 2006 by Wendy

Just because I’m not going to bake this Christmas season* doesn’t mean I can’t watch demented Food Network shows about gingerbread, right? After discovering the wonders of competitive gingerbread last year we decided to make this a holiday tradition, albeit a really lazy and cheap tradition, and we set up the Tivo to record this year’s extra-pathological gingerbread challenge, in which five past National Gingerbread Champions were given only eight hours to work their compulsive gingerbread magic. They had to work side-by-side and scurry around with their cooking tools. If Santa had a meth lab it would look a lot like this show. Awesome!

I was excited that the main objective for the contestants was to “create a gingerbread showpiece that best portrays their favorite childhood holiday memory.” So we were really hoping to see gingerbread scenes like “Daddy Was Sober for Once” or “The Dog Pooped Tinsel” or “I Played With My New Atari and Ignored Everyone.” Just think of the possibilities! But unfortunately they all sort of ditched the memory theme, because surely Valarie E. of Sanford, Florida did not grow up in a chalet perched in a giant chocolate tree. Not even if she had hippie parents. Everyone’s creations were confusing, really. But anyway (SPOILER ALERT! GINGERBREAD SPOILERS!) we were rooting for Jim R., who I think was the guy whose all-candy-moving-parts carousel was sadly overlooked in last year’s competition, and this year (SPOILER) he was robbed. It’s a shame, really, that the gingerbread world has no place for a man with power tools.

And don’t even get me started on the winner, who (SPOILER) is the same asshole who won last year with the same kind of inedible-looking knickknack made from sugar paste and only two little strips of gingerbread. I call bullshit. Bullshit on you, Christina B, and your fakey fondant McMansions.

*But oh yes, I’m going to build something again this year. I’ll put up pictures if it turns out okay…

Idi bitty tidbits of my week

October 4, 2006 by Wendy

Oh my sticky stars, I’ve had so much catching up to do now since I’ve gotten back from the prairie. I’ve gone from whispering into my cell phone and having cicadas chirp me to sleep at Ragdale to going out almost every night to attend various reading/party thingys. Somehow we are lucky enough to know people like Alpana Singh, Andi Zeisler and Lisa Jervis from Bitch, and John Hodgman, all of whom had reading thingys here in Chicago this past week. Somehow we are lucky enough to not know people like Idi Amin, because last night we went to a preview screening of The Last King of Scotland, which had just about everything you could reasonably expect from a movie about Idi Amin. It was a good movie, though of course it had moments where I couldn’t cover my eyes enough, not even if I had three dozen hands, not even if Idi Amin himself provided three dozen hands in a handy wheelbarrow for my convenience. Those scenes were definitely more unpleasant than drinking Malort, and that is saying A LOT.

Speaking of disgusting things, I thought I had a pretty high threshold of tolerance when it comes to freaky reality show antics, but that was before I watched the new season of America’s Next Top Model and saw Monique sprinkle furniture and housemates with her alleged Moniqueness. (I am talking about both the time she “marked her territory” on one of the beds, which involved just waterâ€”but still, the idea was thereâ€”and the incident where she subjected Melrose to That Shower-Fresh Feeling. I do not know how to relate it any more delicately. If you don’t watch the show, I assure you that whatever foul thing you have imagined will likely suffice.) And while I have not watched Flavor of Love this season (I caught a little bit of the first season, and I’ll watch again only if Sister Souljah guest-stars and storms the house and punches Flav somewhere below his timepiece), I have heard that one of the contestants left an even more substantial mark on the stairs, just for you-know-whats and giggles. To all this I say: Dear Hostile, Bodily-Substance-Flinging Reality Show Contestant, if your excuse for acting like an crazed macaque is that it “gets attention” and makes for “interesting television,” then it ought to be okay for the camera crew to shoot tranquilzer darts at you whenever necessary, because that would make for interesting television, too.

Finally, the little radio segment I did for Writer’s Block Party last week can be found online here. It’s supposed to be sort of funny, though I think I sound oddly mournful on audio. Oh, well.

The prairie hasn't yet killed my need for self-promotion

September 22, 2006 by Wendy

If you’re in Chicago (or want to listen in from elsewhere), you’ll be able to hear me on WBEZ Monday morning sometime around 9:45 am CST. It’ll be on this show, where they’ll be airing a short piece I recorded for Writer’s Block Party.

At some point, it’ll be archived online, in case you forget to listen in or have lined your hat with tinfoil to avoid radio waves.

It’s rainy today, which means I should be working, right? RIGHT? Okay then.

The weekend and beyond

September 7, 2006 by Wendy

You have better things to do than stalk me, but I’ll make it easy and let you know that I’ll be at the Touch and Go Fest for most of this weekend, especially Saturday, when I’ll be a volunteer beer-ticket-seller. The volunteering is on behalf of Literacy Works, a fine organization which believes in the power of learning. Learning and beer. While I work I may be wearing my Fuck Macy’s T-shirt, since Saturday is the day the Marshall Field’s name dies. (And yes, I know it’s just a department store and I almost never shop there anyway, but at least half of my earliest memories of Chicago are set in the State Street store, so do not underestimate my hoary nostalgia for this stuff.) Anyway, I’ll be volunteering at the fest until about 3 PM, at which time Chris will insist that we go see The Ex perform. (Which is a band, not a person. And not, you know, a band I used to date, or a band made up of people I used to date, which would be a nightmare, since they’d probably write songs called “She Always Interrupts Herself (And Goes Off On Some Weird Tangent)” and “Too Much Diet Coke.”)

And hey, I’m doing a Ragdale Residency again. As of next weekend I’ll be there until the end of the month, writing some new stuff. I wrote part of INTNM there in 2004, which was helpful because I was trying to finish the book, but this time, I don’t have any kind of deadline. To be honest, I’m sort of terrified. I want to work on new things, but I also want to play house with my boyfriend and watch Robot Chicken. But it’s only two weeks, and I have nothing to be afraid of except the contents of my head, right?