The Sears Tower is missing!

Not a good day to go up to the Sears Tower observation deck

Chicago is Gotham City

Although not as common as in New York and Los Angeles, movie filming does happen quite a bit in Chicago. It's not too exciting to watch since it progresses very slowly (except for the time I saw a mob screaming and running up La Salle street one weekend afternoon) but occasionally you see a celebrity (I saw Sandra Bullock in the Santa Fe building once) and you get to wonder how the little bits they are filming will show up on screen.

Last year large portions of the latest Batman movie were filmed here. The visualization of Gotham City under Chistopher Nolan's leadership shows the fictional city as very art deco. Art deco is a great design style since it can be both very modern and very evocative of the 1920's. For the first Dark Knight movie (Batman Begins) some filming was done in Chicago - enough so that some iconic buildings (like the Chicago Board of Trade) could be seen. This time around a lot more filming was done here.

The now vacant 1920's post office downtown (which, in Sears catalog heyday, was the busiest post office in the wold) was used as both the "Gotham National Bank" and the "Gotham City Police Department." I got to see first hand a little movie magic. They added an addition to the building, that from the front looks very real and part of the building, but the side shot shows how fake it is.

Also a bit of Hollywood fakery were signs posted around the city pointing out filming locations and parking available for crew members. The signs pointed out the filming for "RFK" or "Rory's First Kiss" the title Dark Knight was filmed under. I wonder if false names like that ever work since we all knew what was going on. I do know, however, some people who never noticed the temporary name change on the post office.

Chicago White Sox

Our annual work outing lately (for the past five years at least) has been an afternoon spent in a skybox at US Cellular field (fka Comisky Park) to watch the Chicago White Sox play.

Most people spend their time eating the free food the dessert cart is a particular highlight), drinking the free beer, and not watching the game. But its a fun relaxing day away from the office either way.

This year the game coincided with the week of the Chicago Air & Water show, so there were some parachutists in town - this group, who landed in the field before the game, are Navy SEALs - I for one, didn't know they had a demonstration team. They had a target set up in the outfield, and although none of them hit it, they made dramatic entrances, some with the American flag hanging from their feet.

I have a couple of pictures of the game, and while it was exciting (the Sox slaughtered the Royals, with three home runs in a row one inning, something I've personally never seen) it is very hard to get good pictures, so I'm just showing a couple representative shots. One of the shots is of the ground crew doing their thing, which I always find fascinating.

Looking at the stands you can see that it's a good crowd for a Thursday afternoon. Although, the Sox are doing well this year I can't help but wonder if all these people are playing hookie from work - or if they don't have anything better to do than go to a ball game during the week.

Reason #1 for why I carry a camera!

Sometimes you see something in passing that you just can't help but document.

I don't mean to make light of someone's misfortune, but this image is too classic not to have taken it. How often do you see Rolls Royces broken down in Taco Bell parking lots? You would think Rolls came with their own on-call repair guy, and that their owners could do better than Taco Bell.

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park

If you have a few hours to kill in western Michigan, this is a place to visit. It’s a botanic garden with a twist: sculpture, lots of sculpture! This summer they also have a special exhibit of all of Degas’ sculptures.

Today the weather was terrible, on and off rainstorms and sticky humidity otherwise) and I’m walking (limping) around with a broken toe, but I’m glad I came.

A centerpiece of the sculpture garden is 24 foot “American Horse,” by Nina Akamu (1955), which pays homage to Leonardo Da Vinci’s 24 horse model which was never cast in bronze.

A lot of the other stuff is really modern and inexplicable to me, but I did like the head with a book tied to it: “Listening to History,” by Bill Woodrow (1995), I think the title sells it. I also like “I, you, she, or he…” (right) by Jaume Plensa (2006), but I'm not sure what it means - if you can't see from the picture (click on it to enlarge) the figures are made up of metal letters.