Gentleman Unafraid

Still available at Lulu.com!

Haunted by Gretchen Dow Simpson, by Chris Ware

Also from the site that stole/mistranslated my article.

A Google search revealed an array of spam sites (I think that’s the term) that grabbed and posted my Gapers Block Portage Theater article to their grubby little domains. I’m annoyed, but short of tracking down each and every instance and e-mailing a nasty letter to the spambot in charge, I’m not sure what I can do about it.

At least there’s the amusement value of the poor and inexplicable translation on one particular page. Inexplicable because it seems like my piece was translated into another language—perhaps Martian—and then retranslated into English. Some samples:

You can never ideally record a building’s story in an letter or article. You can attend in it, live in it, or representation it, nonetheless a building itself can’t be presented in difference alone. When it’s gone; when it’s demolished or nude of participation and purpose, a story is over.

*****

Last September, 45th Ward Alderman John Arena was visited by members of a Chicago Tabernacle Church, who asked for his support in posterior a squeeze and acclimatisation of a ancestral theater.

*****

Mr. Lindley Phelps Rowe was a ideally excellent designer hexed of a splendidly primitive name.

*****

Per a Sep 1920 emanate of Engineering World: A Journal of Engineering and Construction, a museum retard was finished during 4042-60 Milwaukee Ave.

*****

To their credit, MR’s changes postulated a Portage’s lifespan, given many bondage were using for a suburbs and selling malls. They’re also obliged for branch a former Studebaker Theater into a Fine Arts in a ’80s, changing it from porn residence to art house.

*****

While a Portage’s bequest as a china shade residence can’t be exaggerated, notwithstanding some reports, it’s critical to discuss that a box for refuge extends over ensuring a cinephiles can continue to suffer their celluloid fantasies in correct and plush context.

*****

More seriously, holding out my hotel Bible, we looked adult a sold section that’s always stranded with me. In section 9 of a book of Luke, before revelation his apostles to go onward and to evangelise a Word. Jesus pronounced (among other odder admonitions not to container an additional shirt or move walking-around money):

Luke 9:5 “If people do not acquire you, leave their city and shake a dirt off your feet as a testimony opposite them.”

Still welcomed to a village by a theater’s many supporters, one has to consternation because a church nonetheless wishes to disquiet a chronological dirt of a Portage Theater Building.

*****

Truer words were never written.

Question: How does Googlefly eat?

It is I. I am listening to Krautrock.

I have nothing worthwhile to say, apparently. Say, what did you think of my Portage Theater article? Thanks to Whet Moser of Chicago Magazine and Kate Dries of WBEZ for pointing it out on their blogs.

Just had a filling.

My Gapers Block article about the Portage Theater is now up. Read it, and please attend the zoning board meeting today at 9 a.m.!

Publication is always a thrilling yet stomach-churning experience for me. I love releasing my work into the wild, but I dread what will happen next. Mostly, I’m waiting to hear from “that guy.” I don’t have a specific “that guy” in mind. He’s more of an archetype; a self-taught scholar who becomes filled with righteous rage whenever a writer doesn’t meet his criteria for good work. See, if the writer doesn’t get a piece exactly right, it’s a slap in the face for “that guy.” Seething in his attic apartment, he hammers out a persnickety e-mail or letter explaining how I failed him.

Then, when I finally sneak up on him and spin his chair around… IT’S ME!

Or Hitler. It varies.