It's great when you go to give blood and they have a Twilight movie on TV.

I have no idea how many other old stories have received this treatment. But hey, the new one is shorter and takes less time to read, so yay!

What The Heck Was Shrimp Wiggle? - The Takeout When the "Joy of Cooking" was updated in 2019, some old recipes were cut - including something known as shrimp wiggle. But what is shrimp wiggle anyway?

The current version:
www.thetakeout.com/what-is-shri...

They used my old photo, though.

Exciting and thrilling news: The Takeout, where I worked from 2019-2021, has decided to start rewriting my old stories and reposting them under the old URLs! This is the work of Static Media, which pays writers 8 cents a word. Huzzah!

The old story: web.archive.org/web/20191024...

PS: When I was reviewing plays, the only places I could afford to eat were McDonalds and Potbelly. But Petterino's provided snacks once, and they were pretty good.

TIL that WGN is owned by Nexstar. That is a major reason why I won't be going on tomorrow morning to talk about restaurants in the theater district.

I know it's a super, super small thing. But it did make me feel like I was doing something.

I Found the Nicest Group of People in America. Their Secret Obsession Is Now Mine. Maybe it goes without saying that these collectors had happy childhoods.

I’m Jewish. After one day at a convention of Christmas fanatics, I now believe in Santa. slate.trib.al/3Of70sm

This is like how one year in h.s. English we had to read two books IN A ROW by women. How the boys all suffered! They whined and complained and threatened to go on strike. It was a terrible, terrible time for them, and they begged for our compassion.

There is nothing wrong with charming domestic horror! This is a genre that should be more widely explored.

Other examples: the first part of Fates and Furies, Amy's diary in Gone Girl, The Hating Game (though it's unaware that that's what it is)

Book people: can we talk about "Consider Yourself Kissed" for a second? Like, why is it billed as a love story when it is clearly a charming, funny horror story about a compulsive people-pleaser who is slowly sucked dry, to the point of madness, by her family? (Not a spoiler, it's on page one.)

History of Air Conditioning Learn about some of the key milestones in one of the most important inventions of modern times -- air conditioning.

Today let all praise and thanks be due to Willis Carrier, inventor of the air conditioner, and also to Dr. John Gorrie who conceived the idea 50 years before Carrier but who never marketed it because of the death of his financial backer.

www.energy.gov/articles/his...

I love this story of how "Lift Every Voice and Sing" became the Black national anthem. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46549/...

I have just found the Wikipedia entry for the 1930s conman Napoleon Hill (real name, Oliver Hill), and it may be one of the great entries of all time.

'His father was a dentist, at first unofficially...' Yikes.

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

Had the most astonishing Red Line ride today. The train was clean! No one was having loud phone conversations! No one was sharing their music with the rest of us! And no one was smoking! Plus, there were no ads covering the window, so I got a good view of Graceland. What celestial alignment is this?

I have one, too! I reserve it for running.

And maybe Pope Francis would still be alive.

We are. I was shamelessly piggybacking on the comments.

An add for an event called Jazzin' at the Shedd [Aquarium] featuring a front on a black background with a strip of its chest and one its legs visible, a parody of the poster for the 1995 movie Showgirls.

Although I won't pretend I don't miss some parts of the old-school alt-weeklies, especially the ads, like this one from the Chicago Reader ca 1995

Don’t Mourn the Death of Alt-Weeklies. They’re Alive and Well. In some communities, alt-weeklies have outlasted the daily paper.

This debate is so last week, but it took a while to finish writing and editing this: www.cjr.org/analysis/don...

Don’t Mourn the Death of Alt-Weeklies. They’re Alive and Well. In some communities, alt-weeklies have outlasted the daily paper.

THEY'RE ALIVE!!!!!! ALIVE I TELL YOU!
www.cjr.org/analysis/don...

Of course! The train's coming! Are you really going to let a human-sized Pizza Rat be the reason you waste 10 minutes standing on a subway platform?

I still think the best idea for progressive donors is to just revive every alt-weekly in the country and staff them with 10 reporters each.

I'm sure the Chicago Reader and Illinois Times (Springfield) wouldn't turn down any of that sweet progressive cash.

Journalism Dreams I wrote about the "Heat Index" scandal and why it may not matter

A good piece by @marthabayne.bsky.social about how AI is taking over journalism (in part because freelancers get paid so badly, putting in the work isn't worth the effort), the death of a great journalist and friend, and maybe a whole way of life. open.substack.com/pub/marthaba...

If you want to help out the good people of St. Louis, @lonesometoast.bsky.social, another good person of St. Louis, is collecting supplies.

Maybe that's why pull-ups and bent arm hangs were part of the Presidential Physical Fitness tests. If only they'd explained.

Pope Leo’s Former St. Louis Residence Could Be Yours | St. Louis Magazine If you are so inclined, you could own the building where Pope Leo XIV lay his head almost half a century ago and where he (perhaps) decided to dedicate his

Of course the pope has a connection to St. Louis… www.stlmag.com/news/pope-le...

Now coming to communion cups across the world!

Revenge for how meeting with him killed the last Pope.