(no subject)

It took me all of ten minutes and probably about fifteen words total to get my new social security card. All I have to do now is wait for it to arrive in the mail.

On the way back I thought I'd stop and try the panaderia near the apartment; M recommended it as being tasty and cheap. It's pretty neat -- you walk into a room full of cupboards with glass-fronted windows, and you pick up a tray and a pair of tongs from the front of the shop and load up from the cupboards with whatever catches your fancy. Nothing has a price on it except the beverages in the back fridge, so I grabbed what looked like about $10 worth of food -- a loaf of bread, a croissant, two cookies, and a sweet bun. Pause here and think about how much all that would cost you at, say, a grocery-store bakery. Because it ran me exactly $3.10.

Anyway, I'm home and I have the day off until about three, when I'm heading downtown to volunteer at an arts event. I watched House last night, though I haven't caught up with Heroes or Grey's Anatomy yet. And thusly:

( Sam's Three Things About House )

3a. Tesla was robbed.

(no subject)

I am home from the land of Ush.

I was ushering tonight at the Cool Globes Auction downtown. Cool Globes are kind of like the cows they did a few years ago (and the various animals and flora that they've done in other towns), only they're meant to raise awareness about the environment, while the cows were presumably meant to raise awareness about the deliciousness of t-bone steak. They are giant fibreglass globes about five feet tall, and they were given to a group of artists in the Chicago area to decorate as they please. There were also a series of smaller basketball-sized globes given to local celebrities and et cetera to decorate, including the Blue Man Group, Mayor Daley, and Al Franken, who was hosting the auction.

The problem with the Cool Globes is that they're like some junior high school project run horribly amok. There was so much talk of The Environment tonight but absolutely no coherent statement of just what it is about the environment that we want to be aware of. I'm pretty sure that in general people are aware of The Environment, seeing as how we all live in it. What concerns me is that a lot of these globes are going to be donated to parks or schools and end up being landfill themselves in a few dozen years when they fall apart and are thrown out.

Anyway, I ended up handing out bid catalogues to people who had come to bid or to watch -- and yes, quite a few of them were obviously coming from some other, cooler party with hard liquor or possibly meth instead of red wine, which is what we were serving. I didn't see anyone terrifically famous, though there was some player from the Bears there. I don't follow football, I don't know who he was, but he was huge.

Al Franken was hosting the auction but some terribly unskilled auctioneer from Sotheby's Midwest was actually auctioning off the globes. So it was a combination of hilarious and tedious, which is an interesting mix, really. The auction opened with speeches by some people who organised the Globes and also Mayor Daley, which was vaguely interesting; I've never seen a major political figure speak in person before, at least not that I can recall. Then the lights went down, and I kid you not, two bodybuilders came out on the stage in spandex shorts.

That was a little bit weird.

I thought they were going to do some kind of dance performance, but instead they struck a pose on a podium while dramatic music played, which was even weirder. All became clear when an image of the earth appeared on the screen behind them and suddenly they looked like they were holding up the earth, but I should point out that this was still very weird. Later, the bodybuilders came out holding the smaller globes, so people could see what they looked like.

Anyway, Al Franken came out and did a bit, and some auctioning happened, and then Al Franken came back out with a big easel and drew the entire united states from memory, which was kind of neat. He signed it to the woman who won the globe he decorated, and even wrote YOU LIVE HERE and drew an arrow to where she lived.

When I left, which was before the auction ended, the most expensive globe had gone for $22,000, and it was painted by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (you can see it here -- click on the red globe with white dots). It didn't actually look like a globe, which I think was the appeal. Because the globes, no matter how skilled the artist, mostly looked like giant dust-gathering junior high school projects. And seriously, what do you do after paying eight or nine grand for a five-foot-tall globe emblazoned with the words SAVE THE EARTH SAVE YOUR HEART RIDE A BIKE?

I sat there in the midst of all these wasted, wealthy people who had been plied with free food and booze all evening and who were now paying minimum three thousand dollars for a giant fibreglass ball, and I envisioned them taking it home and installing it in the gardens of their palatial estates. I will admit I grew just a tiny bit bitter.

The money's going to a good cause, of course; Educating Children About The Environment in school programs. I'm just hoping the programs are more thorough than tonight's speeches, or else the kids will end up being told "The environment is good. RIDE A BIKE."