So Who's Taking Me Out To Dinner?

Tomorrow is my sixty-freaking-sixth birthday, but a very old friend of mine sent me well wishes today. I think he was trying to beat everyone else. He also sent along this photo of a bunch of colorful straps that he took during one of his many trips to third and fourth world countries. They can be found in a Central American town with a name that trips off the tongue and tumbles down the stairs -- Chichicastenago -- Guatemala. The main reason he sent the picture wasn't the myriad colors on display or the fact that no two straps seem to be alike, but probably because he just wanted to use the name Chichicastenago correctly in a sentence. He also hoped that the next twelve months would be full of surprizes, intriguing pleasures, and wonderful moments -- with my new knees.  Since it's the thought that counts, I'm not sure whether I should tell him that I have new hips, not knees.

The Poop on Emergency Bathrooms

So you're about to have an attack of diarrhea. You're in your car and there's no way you're going to make it home. No problem!!!! Get out your iPod and google Imodium.com. Enter your zip code into their handy dandy "bathroom finder" -- yes, you read that right -- and you can find out where the closest toilets are located before your Corinthian leather seats are history.  
     Here's proof I'm not making this up:

     Some day there's gonna be an app for this.


     P.S. Most of the bathrooms I found were at Starbucks. Duh. 

Taking It To The Bears

I love the Bears, but from time to time even your favorite teams could use a spank. And they're getting it today against the Bengals -- the team that gave Chicago running back pariah, Cedric Benson, a job after he was released. He's been playing like they made a huge mistake, ever since. Of course it helps that his current QB is Carson Palmer and there are All-Pro receivers like Chad Ochocinco and Laverneus Coles.
      It's 28 to zippola this close to halftime. That's right. A four TD lead. There are two more minutes and the Bears have the ball, but no way they're are going to score. Oh, look, the Bears just got intercepted. Told ya. 
      Now it's 31-0 Bengals. And halftime is still over a minute away. So far Cincy's first five possessions have ended in four touchdowns and a field goal. The Bears haven't done squat.
      Anyone who thinks the Cover Two is a good defense should be watching the Bengals stomp the yards, ten at a time. Benson has almost 100 yards already. 
      Anyone who thinks that the Bears can judge/manage/coach player talent should check out Benson's stats now that he's with Cincinnati. Check out how Thomas Jones is doing with the Jets. Check out Bobby Wade, Al Harris, Bernard Berrian and what's his name, Kyle Orton. As for the coaches, I have just two words: Ron Rivera.
      Anyone think the Bears can score a TD with eleven seconds left in the half? They have the ball. But that doesn't mean much. I only give them two chances: slim and none. Told ya -- Gould is going for a field goal. Rats, he scored. I was hoping they'd head into the locker room with a bagel. Bagel = zero. It's a tennis term. When someone loses a match 6-0, 6-0, they got bagelled. I was cross-pollinating my sports there. So we go to the locker room 31-3. 
      Bears get the second half kick off. They're moving the ball. Got some MO-mentum. Oops penalty. That means no mo' MO. Mrs. Linklater predicts -- the Bengals will now recoup and get the ball back. Fumble. Bears recover. Third and 21. Pass complete. Fourth and 5. Going for it. Interception. Ta-da! Cutler threw to Bennett who was in more traffic than a Bruce Springsteen concert. 
      Six minutes left in the third. It's all Bengals all the time. 
      This game is over. No really. It's O-VER.


      Nice game, Cedric.  

Pretty in Pink and a Little Orange

This picture was shot in Oregon, but it sure looks like the color we have around here. This is why I can't understand people who live where the seasons don't change. Aside from the whole freezing cold winter problem.

Getting Cranked Up

I am a cranky pants. Once in a blue moon I'll be patient. But mostly I'm cranky. 
      Today I got cranky at the post office. I know, could there be a shorter trip? I was there to pick up a package that was too big for my PO Box as well as mail something to my daughter in London. Before getting the too big package, I received a notice that the yearly payment for the box was due by the end of the month. So after mailing my daughter's stuff, I tried to pay the box fee, but the computer sent back a message saying no can do. Nothing could convince the computer that I was a renter in good standing who just wanted to pay my yearly fee. Instead, I was being accused of all sorts of quasi-criminal activity in terms only postal personnel can understand.
      The good news is that because this was the post office, the employee helping me could by-pass the high tech computer by looking up a low tech card with my name and payment record on it, written by hand. So quaint. Upon inspection, there was no reason for my payment to be denied. [Only the post office would refuse to take money someone is trying to throw at them.] The bad news is that the employee will have to talk to the technologically-challenged person who incorrectly inputted the wrong info into the high tech computer. So the mistake can be fixed and I can be allowed to throw money at them again. Of course, none of this can happen until Monday.
      Stuff like that makes me cranky. 
      But I got cranked up even more when I opened up the package that was too big for the PO Box.  It was my new checks with a brand new three ring binder I didn't order.  I had distinctly said, "No new binder," when I was ordering my checks. I wasn't talking to someone on the phone. I did this in person. So you'd think. . .
      Anyhow, after declining the offer for a new binder, I remember asking the girl poking the screen why it was now going to cost me so much for the few checks I ordered. "Well the price has gone up," I was told. Apparently the price had gone up because I was paying for a new binder I didn't want. 
      Makes me cranky.  

Running running running running running running

My younger daughter just ran her personal best at a marathon in Holland -- 4:09 and change. Looks like her time is getting close to breaking four hours. Not bad for someone who works full time, often in other countries. I think she does her training in airports and hotel lobbies. I wonder who that guy is?

Suddenly, It's 1969

In 1969 the young and fetching Mrs. Linklater was in the Touring Company of Second City. We toured Beloit, Wisconsin, on this occasion. 
     Can you identify a young and skinny Harold Ramis? Here's an older, heavier clue:

     Can you pick out the young and handsome Brian Doyle Murray [Bill's older brother]? Here's the older, grayer version:

     Can you spot Gerrit Graham of Star Trek and Phantompalooza fame? He still looks a lot like he did back then, only without the moustache, like this photo of him as "Q" from one of the many Star Treks:

Screen grab from www.gerritgraham.com

     The other two guys are David Bloom [sideburns] and Eric Ross [the other moustache]. I don't know where David and Eric are now. They have no idea where I am either. 
     In fact, Harold didn't know WHO I was when I ran into him at my swank health club a couple of years ago. Hi, Harold, it's me, Mrs. Linklater. Remember? Second City? 1969? He looked at me like I was a stalker. The weird thing is that when he came back to the Chicago area in 1995 or '96, I ran into him at a children's toy store and HE recognized ME. Go figure. 
     The other young woman is Sherry Nerins -- that spelling will have to do. She's probably married to a dentist and a nana to a dozen kids by now. 
     That night we performed in an old church building, packed with students from Beloit College, some of whom invited us to an after party that consisted of sitting in a ganga filled room, passing around a joint until it burned down to a nub. I said, thank you so much, but I don't do no farking drugs. Besides, there was enough dope in the air to knock me on my butt. 
     You can pretty much tell from the photos that my acting style was better suited to silent movies. So choosing advertising became the wiser a career move. 
     Where did all these pictures come from you might ask? An old boyfriend who was an attorney by day and an amateur photog by night emailed them to me last weekend. He drove up to Wisconsin in the snow to see me perform, stood in the back of the church and shot the pix. While going through his archives he found them again. I can have the negatives in exchange for a small island in the Bahamas. Thanks Hume.

Jump the Shark

This was forwarded to me today from a guy I know. I thought it was good enough to post.


After a recent series of shark attacks in Australia, a local newspaper requested readers to create the next tourism slogan for Australia. Here are the best entries:

 - "What happens off the coast of Australia, stays off the coast of Australia."

 - "We'll throw another limb on the barbie!"

 - "Australia: Disarmingly beautiful."

 - "Our visitors: the other white meat."

 - "Not quite heaven, but you can get there from here."

Hanging around the Hood

When I think of Portland, Oregon, I think of the Willamette River, which runs the length of the entire state like a major freeway. A ground level experience. For some reason, I never realized that if I looked up, Mt. Hood looms much larger in its legend, until I recently went to visit a friend in a little town outside Beaverton, just down the road from Portland. You can say it -- apparently I'm geographically challenged. We were coming up the country road, about to turn into the driveway of my friend's house, when someone in the car said, "Look, you can see Mt. Hood today." 

From the back seat I looked out at a hazy collection of low slung hills and wondered which one might be considered a mountain. There's a bump, maybe that's it. My standards were too low it turns out. I continued scanning the horizon half-heartedly, until I was stopped cold by the sudden appearance of a snowcapped mountain peak. A huge snowcapped mountain peak, rising up 11,000 feet from sea level it turns out, heading straight to the sky. 

We do not have one of these in Chicago.

I wanted to get a picture but there wasn't time, so I put it off until the next day. By then the clouds and rain, which seemed like a daily ritual around there, had settled in and ruined my chances. Until I met one of my friend's neighbors at a soiree. She offered to send me a photo she took from her house of the sunrise over Mt. Hood, since the weather wasn't cooperating for me. Because her view is almost the same as the view my friend has, I asked her to send it. Lucky me, she sent two photos: the promised one taken at sunrise; and one that looked a lot like what I first saw from the back seat of the car, if you used a telephoto lens.

That is one huge piece of granite.

NOTE: The thoughtful woman who sent the photos offered this interesting piece of information after reading my blog: ...I know you were just speaking metaphorically about "one huge piece of granite". Mt. Hood is a dormant volcano, and so it isn't granite but mostly andesitic  basalt and there are still fumaroles emitting steam, although the last eruptions were in 170-220 years ago. It is one of the volcanoes of the Cascade Range, like Mt. St. Helens, which erupted in 1980.  It is a spectacular mountain and great for downhill and cross country skiing, hiking, camping, and fishing.   Mt. Hood  also has Timberline Lodge,  a National Historic Landmark, built by the WPA in the 30's...

Snarks On A Plane

When I got my new hips there was a lot of talk about not being able to have any more MRIs because the magnet would rip the implants right out of my body. Turns out not to be true. There was also talk about carrying a card saying I had implants, since they would set off security devices at the airport. I remember wondering why anyone would need to show a card. Couldn't you just tell them?

I haven't been on a plane since January, something rare for me. So I was happy to discover that getting through security at O'Hare was still as much fun and easy as ever. 

Take off your shoes. Don't put them in a container anymore, because now they go through like little soldiers, all by themselves.

Take your computer out of its bag. Put it into a separate container all by its lonesome. How nice, it looks just like those other six computers going through at the same time.

Put your computer's bag in yet another container with your jacket, your purse, your staying alive machine [c-pap] and all your clothes. Okay, not ALL your clothes.

Now try to keep track of $4000 worth of personal belongings as they roll out of sight, while you wait in another line to go through the scanner.

Which, in my case, sets off the alarms. DING DING DING!

"Do you have any change in your pockets?" No. "Does your bra have any metal?" No. Are you wearing any jewelry."  No. "Earrings?"  Isn't that jewelry?  "Just answer the question, please."

I went through again. DING DING DING!

This time I turned my pockets inside out. DING DING DING!

Now, I'm annoyed. C'mon, just let me try one more time.  DING DING DING. @#$%&$*@#*!!!!

In a show of genuine concern, they bring over some guy with a machine that checks out the accuracy of the scanner. He pushes a few buttons, writes down something and I go through one final time.

DING DING, etc. [You know where this is going don't you?]

"Step over here m'am, we have to use the wand." I don't particularly like the wand. Or being called m'am.

Luckily I wasn't in LA, where using the wand is license feel you up like a bad blind date. Even worse, they announce what they're going to do. And you're expected to agree with them. "I am going to touch your body now."  Touch my body? Okay, sure. And they really touch you in ways that used to get guys like Ralphie Regabutto slapped upside the head.

Thankfully, at O'Hare, they only attempt to get to first base.

As I sat on the chair about to be "wanded", I craned my neck, trying to keep track of all my containers as they were rent asunder by the TSA agents. The fine men and women of this semi professional law enforcement agency generally pounce on my staying alive machine like dogs on a bone. Within a matter of seconds, my stuff has been scattered all over the place. My computer is bouncing around at the end of the belt, my shoes are nowhere to be seen, and my breathing machine has been taken apart and whisked off to their makeshift lab for bomb residue. They do a CSI number on it. Using industrial strength Q-tips, the kind usually reserved for removing elephant earwax, they wipe the surface of the machine, then check to see if anything starts to glow in the dark. Meanwhile, as I try to keep my eye on things, I'm not paying much attention to the felony assault taking place on my body.

Suddenly, I set off the wand as it makes its way around my right hip. The agent looks as me. I roll my eyes. Crap.

"Oh, sorry. I've, uh, got two hip implants. You see, this is my first flight since the surgery. And BLAH BLAH BLAH. . ."

The woman looks at me like she could stick the wand where the sun don't shine. "You forgot that you had hip implant surgery? Really? You forgot."

Yep. I totally, completely, forgot. The good news is I don't notice the new hips at all, unlike some people, who are always aware of them.

The bad news is that I don't know whether the TSA peeps are going to be laughing at me because I'm a dumb blond or a sad, demented senior.

The Boys in Vietnam's Band of Brothers

Willem Dafoe is in town for the Chicago Film Festival. Last night he walked the red carpet prior to the premiere of his very controversial new film, Antichrist. But don't blame him if you have a beef with the movie, assuming you've got the cajones to sit through it -- which I confess, I don't.  The director/writer, Lars von Trier, gets all the credit for the execution of the film's difficult subject matter. Dafoe is just a really good actor in it. I've heard from people who have seen it that no one walks out of the theatre unmoved. Most people are emotionally shaken for days afterward. 

Along with several other media outlets, we interviewed Dafoe in the afternoon and again right after he received a lifetime achievement award from the head of the festival, Michael Kutza, whom I keep calling "kudzu". After taking plenty of time for questions from everybody, Dafoe also took time to let the fans have their pictures taken with him. He's a great actor; he does a great interview; he's got a good sense of humor; he's polite and considerate; in short, [he says he's 5'9", but I think 5'8"] he's like most people who are well versed in their craft-- he is unassuming and rather humble, considering how big a star he is. Good hair, too. Dyed a very natural color. Hey, the guy is in his fifties. 

He's made over 70 movies, more than 20 since 2002. And he's often played the villain. But no matter how good he is, I still go back to his Oscar-nominated performance in Platoon, where he got to be the good guy and Tom Berenger, as Southeast Asia's most menacing version of Scarface, was one of the best bad guys whoever strapped it on. Platoon was the movie that gave Oliver Stone permission to make statement movies, even though some of his statements have seemed fabricated. 

Oddly, a youthful Charlie Sheen, standing in the back row of the looks-so-real-you-can-almost-smell-the-napalm picture [above] that I scammed off Google images, got top billing in the film. I'm sure you can pick out Berenger [middle top] and Dafoe [top right]. And the guy on the right in the front row is Kevin Dillon. But who the heck is the guy on the lower left [not in the picture below, the picture above]? 

Berenger looks so young. Dafoe looks the same now as then. 

Future Olympians of America

These are just a few of the many photos my brother sent of "AuntieGrandma's" niece playing soccer with her teammates. They are at the gender neutralized age when boys and girls are allowed to play together. Before they learn about gross boy germs and icky girl cooties. I understand that the concept of fierce competition eludes my niece's benevolent nature so far. She's more inclined to introduce herself to her opponent rather than try to beat him to the ball. "Hi, my name is Ann, what's your name? Wait! Where are you going?"

Oops, Sorry Chicago, Just Kidding About The Olympics

Well, that was embarrassing. I thought the IOC was going to give Chicago the 2016 Olympics on a platter, if you believed the hype here. I think da Mare had already spent the money. 
     I woke up at 1 AM and caught Chicago's final presentation LIVE to the IOC which, I can say in all candor, was very BORRRRRRRRRR-ING!! None of this would have happened if they'd let me do the videos.  No, seriously, I was watching that crap mumbling to myself the whole time. Hey, I didn't write and perform in the winning homecoming skit competition when I was at Duke, not to mention write/produce/perform and WIN Northwestern's May Sing [small group category] two years in a row. So there. 
     And how about the president's inspirational speech? "Yes, I hope Chicago gets the Olympics so I can walk to the opening and closing ceremonies from my house."  Z-z-z-z-z-z.
     Way back, when this all started, I learned that there had never been an Olympics in Latin America. So I wondered, why are we even in this thing? Just give it to RIO and let everybody save all that pitch money trying to win something they'll never get. The final nail in the coffin was yesterday when I heard this was Rio's third try. I thought, you're kidding right? How can they NOT win the bid. 
     Gee, I'm a farking genius apparently.  

This logo was better.