The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

BUGHOUSE! IS BACK. Haymarket Pub & Brewery. September 23rd (Monday) at 6:00pm. More info coming soon but I’m jacked up about getting the art of the dialectic, the spectacle of entertaining debate, back up on the stage where it all started.

INEVITABLE. Trump is a human turdburger but doesn’t deserve an assassination attempt. The worst I can wish upon the man is a too large bite of a Double Quarter Pounder that chokes him to death while gorging. The easy thing to forget is that these WWE-style attacks and counters, these rhetorical calls that he will end democracy and that Biden is one-inch from becoming one of the walking dead are not entertainment (even if it is, in fact, pretty entertaining). These are people. Anyone getting shot is a sick joke that gets caught in our collective throat. Anyone getting shot in a country not involved with on-the-ground war is both sad and ridiculous.

Despite his brush with death, Trump will always be Trump. “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” he added of an image of him pumping his fist before being escorted away by agents.

“They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture,” he added.

No, there is no conspiracy. He was legitimately shot by a would-be assassin with an AR-15 (still not banning these fucking things? Really?) and the only fault in the act lies with the kid who pulled the trigger. It wasn’t a hoax designed to make the man a war hero (although it certainly has the MAGA crowd ginned up, frothing at the mouth like fans of a favorite football team) nor was it something the MAGFU (Make America Great For Us) crowd was hoping for.

It was an asshole with a gun shooting at an asshole giving a speech.

The only winners here are the media conglomerates that will recycle this story every single day until November.

EXPANDING THE CHEESE COVERAGE. Sandwiches are so much a part of our foodie culture that you can't go to almost any restaurant in America and find no sandwich present on the menu. High end, bargain basement, organic, processed, grilled, raw—the variety is staggering. But no matter how you try to improve the cheese coverage, a sandwich is a sandwich is a sandwich.

For those who are devotees of the Art of Sandwich Making, however, the endless possibilities of breads, fillings and sauces would have them proselytize that a sandwich created by the right artisan can be more than a sandwich. After all, a Manwich is more like a meal, yes?

In the same vein, most commercial art is like a menu of exactly the same kind of sandwich and for those of us who are devotees of the Sandwich of Art Making, the possibilities within this narrow set of ingredients is endless.

To everyone else it's all just a bunch of sandwiches.

Some will tell you that by switching genders or empowering marginalized groups or subtracting the troped narrative, one creates something Other Than a Sandwich and More Like a NEW THING. But they are wrong. They're just creating a slightly different sandwich.

In all the hubbub in the past couple of years regarding new business paradigms, streaming platforms, new tribal approaches, new marketing techniques, and ways to reach new audiences rarely take a long hard look at the sandwich they're selling. It's just like the sandwich the guy across the street is selling. And the guy downtown. And the guy in the next city.

Most of these sandwiches are from recipes written by folks long since dead and, admit it, nothing tastes quite like a BLT but it's still a BLT even if you update it and change the gender of the casting. Even the chefs with little enough overhead to allow experimentation still end up with a sandwich and often with one that just doesn't taste all that good.

"It's so hard to sell our sandwiches," we cry. "It's impossible to make a living and it's not fair.  It must be the market or the lack of government funding or the cost of renting a sandwich cart! Perhaps if we rent a nicer cart or serve alcohol with our sandwich? Maybe if we "re-brand" our sandwiches and call them something else? How about if we work with the community and get them to participate in the making of their OWN SANDWICH?!"

Still just a sandwich.  All you're doing is improving the cheese coverage.

WHICH IS WORSE? I’m not completely convinced that we’ll have to endure four more years of Trump in office but things don’t look good for our side of the political fence right now. I can’t decide which is worse for the country—four years of Trump and his white America First populism or the inevitable reaction to it that fuels the Grievance Economy.

This is where the loudest 2% figured out that the best way to make a buck is by keeping everyone pissed off. They take your anger, bottle it up, slap a label on it, and sell it back to you at a premium. This is definitely a both sides-ism phenomenon.

They know exactly how to keep you glued to your screen, frothing at the mouth over the latest outrage du jour. They serve you up a steaming pile of anger with a side of indignation, and you keep coming back for seconds.

Politicians? They’re like used car salesmen in this game. They spin you a tale, rile you up, and get you to buy in. Votes, donations, and power—it’s all part of the con. And don’t forget the pundits, those professional loudmouths who get paid to keep the fire burning.

It’s a vicious cycle: your outrage equals their profit. They keep you mad, you keep consuming, and they keep raking it in. Meanwhile, the real issues? They get swept under the rug, buried under a mountain of manufactured grievances.

This grievance economy doesn’t just line pockets—it tears society apart, making us all a little more miserable and a lot less united. So next time you find yourself boiling over the latest scandal, remember: it’s all part of the game, and you’re the one getting played.

REWARD OR PUNISHMENT? Blues Fest, day three. An estimated 22,000 in the park, swaying and drinking to some of the best blues anyone could imagine. Later, we would all dig one of the final public performances of Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy.

The woman, a few inches shy of five and a half feet, is spitting mad.

“There are these two drunk women,” she yells over the music and the crowd. “They won’t sit down, they won’t shut up, everyone around are furious because we can’t enjoy the concert!”

I lean in, not so close as to violate some invisible boundary but close enough to be heard. “What would you suggest I do about them?”

“Kick them out!”

“Unfortunately, there is no rule in the park against being an asshole. If I 86’d everyone here for being annoying or rude, there’d only be six of us left.”

“So, they just get away with this?”

I look up and spy the two women. They are the only two people standing, dancing in their seats amongst a sea of seated folks. “No, ma’am, but what I’m going to do is not going to make you happy.”

“You’re not going to tell them I said anything, are you?”

“Nope. But you aren’t going to like my solution.”

I stroll the the crowd up to the aisle and wave over to the two women. “Hey! You two wanna sit up front?”

They’re both thrilled and immediately grab their bags and beers and step all over the people seated to get to me. The wave of silent ‘thank you’s’ from those around them is obvious.

FREEDOM TO BE WRONG. There are those who follow a religious belief with a sense of proportion and interpret the texts with a reasonable mind—Christians, Muslims, and a hundred other groups who worship their beliefs in the spirit of charity and a focus on being better within themselves.

Then there are the fundamentalists who, rather than use these stories to shape their worldview into a notion of good will and compassion, see things in black and white like a call for enforcing laws that existed a thousand years ago. This world view—one with a God (in the image of Man) on top and any creature that does not resemble this God as increasingly lower on the scale, is the source of more relentless horror than almost any other specific paradigm in existence. Most prophets of religion tended to teach about love, empathy, and sharing our wealth with those less fortunate. The best of us go with that version. Most that picked things up after these prophets died (or were murdered and martyred) wrote things that edged over the line from those teachings into control. Most believers in a fundamentalist view—of any religious teaching—have fashioned a belief system that promotes a definitive Right and Wrong, a God of vengeance and petty vanity versus a debauched Satan, equally angry and vain.

This world view can be handed partial responsibility for slavery—not just the kidnapping and transport of native Africans in order to fuel the Industry of America 400 years ago but ALL slavery (there were slaves before pre-Civil War United States, after all)—the horrifying treatment of animals, the destruction of the environment, and, of course, religious wars from the beginning of recorded history to the present. This false hierarchy is responsible for the systematic brutalization of women (after all, women in this, most enlightened democracy, have only been granted the right to vote the last 90 years) and the secret societies that populated the South during the 1960's (never saw anyone burning just a tree on someone's lawn...).

I don't want to live in the Middle East. It's hot, sandy, and filled with religious intolerance. Likewise, I'm not interested in living in Europe (maybe France because they smoke and like cheese) because of the dominance of the fundamentalist Roman Catholic Church. I want to live in the country that grants freedom of religion and allows me to be a non-affiliate to any church or religious dogma.

Now—if there was a cult residing in our country responsible for encouraging the subjugation of women, the inferiority of black and brown peoples, the subhuman nature of homosexuals—we'd want them out, right? We'd call them anti-American or anti-Democracy, right? Or maybe we’d just put them on the Supreme Court…

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Last night, we had 16,000 people descend upon the park to hear the orchestra play a greatest hits of John Williams with the second half entirely music from Star Wars. It was overrun, plenty of people behaving like children when we had to close access to the park because we hit capacity. There were also a whole bunch of folks who had a grand time (including myself). Watching my ushers exceed expectations was as fun as tearing up to the music. Excellent night and one to remember in the nostalgia bank.

This weekend is the 20th Birthday of Millennium Park and we’re busting ass to keep the huge crowds safe and having a damn good time. If you’re in Chicago, come on out and enjoy the free concerts. If you’re not in Chicago, you can safely assume we’re all going to get shot in the midst of a tornado while clearing out homeless immigrants eating deep dish pizza.

Have a fantastic weekend!