Dave Awl

@daveawl

Writer/Performer in Chicago. Early Neo-Futurist. Once & future Pansy King. Host of the Partly Dave Show. Russell Hobanologist. Old New Waver, erstwhile DJ. GNC/Queer. He/Him. I fly through the dark and I sing with the bees.

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Dave Awl@daveawl· 25d

Current reading in Chicago. I honestly didn't know a 500 was possible and am not sure if I want to know how much higher it can go.

Screenshot of a weather app showing an air quality rating of 500, Hazardous, and adding, in a droll understatement, "which is worse than yesterday at about this time."

Dave Awl@daveawl· 27d

Thinking about this paragraph from Bread of Angels by Patti Smith.

Screenshot of text about a family taking a photo in front of a lighthouse, which reads as follows. A family gathers before the lighthouse. The father says stand next to Mommy. Okay, big smiles, he says. The little girl says, I don’t want to be smiling. Why, asks the mother. Because I don’t want to be seen in the future with a big smile, she says. She couldn’t be more than six years old.

Dave Awl@daveawl· 28d

I don't know who made this, but thank you for your service

Image that appears to show Mitch McConnell as he appeared in his proof-of-life photo, except that he's now surrounded by Elvis Presley, JFK, Abraham Lincoln, and a green space alien, all posing for the camera. McConnell is holding a vintage copy of the New York Times with headline, Japan Surrenders, End of War!

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jul 4

I don't see how you can say that when they invented second breakfast

Screenshot of a CNN news headline that says, Hobbit-like human relatives may have been on a less advanced evolutionary path

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jun 23

Update: this may be a spontaneous, miraculous manifestation of the Ecology Flag

The Ecology flag, with green and white stripes and a yellow symbol that looks like the Greek letter theta on a green field in the upper left corner

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jun 23

Opened a bag of frozen onion rings and in addition to the rings and fragments of rings it contained a single perfect Onion Theta. Trying to figure out what this might portend

An onion ring on a green plate. It is shaped like the Greek letter theta, an O with a horizontal crossbar.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jun 13

Bisexual sunset clouds over Chicago. Happy Pride!

Photo of an urban landscape taken from a back porch in Chicago. Above a jumble of buildings and an alleyway, there are fluffy clouds in shades of pink and purple in a blue sky fading toward sunset.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jun 7

“Well, are you just writing a novel or are you—if you’ll excuse my expression—trying to prove something?” — from The Letters of James Schuyler to Frank O'Hara (p. 25)

Screenshot of text with a highlighted passage that reads as follows. The night before last, a banker from Baltimore assured me that he thought writing poems must be much more difficult than banking; and last night a lady from L.A. asked me, Well, are you just writing a novel or are you—if you’ll excuse my expression—trying to prove something? All either of them got from me was my Mona Lisa laugh.

Dave Awl@daveawl· May 4

Lines from the poem ""STELLA’S BIRTH-DAY. 1724-5" by Jonathan Swift, the basis of the Fellow Mortals song "With These Eyes" from the preceding post. Swift wrote these poignant birthday poems for Esther "Stella" Johnson, his "close companion and rumored partner." 2/3

A screenshot showing lines of poetry, which read as follows.
But, Stella, say, what evil tongue Reports you are no longer young;
That Time sits with his scythe to mow Where erst sat Cupid with his bow;
That half your locks are turn'd to gray?
I'll ne'er believe a word they say.
'Tis true, but let it not be known, My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown;
For nature, always in the right, To your decays adapts my sight;
And wrinkles undistinguished pass, For I'm ashamed to use a glass:
And till I see them with these eyes, Whoever says you have them, lies.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Mar 29

The Edgewater neighborhood No Kings in Chicago!

Photo of a crowd of people at the corner of Sheridan and Berwyn in Chicago, participating in the Edgewater No Kings protest. A young person holds a sign with Trump depicted as a clown.

Another photo of a crowd of people at the corner of Sheridan and Berwyn in Chicago, participating in the Edgewater No Kings protest under a bright blue sky.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Mar 28

My favorite sign from the No Kings in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood today was refreshingly blunt.

Photo of a person holding a sign that says, See you in Nuremberg, fuckers.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 27

This seems like the best avenue of hope right now. Every Democratic state AG needs to make every possible effort to block the merger, or delay and drag it out as long as possible.

Screenshot of text that reads as follows. Yes, the decision would be left in the hands of courts, which at the highest level is tilted to the right. But state AGs could steer the initial case to favorable jurisdictions and draw out the process for years. We saw many proposed mergers blocked in the Biden years that led to the merging parties abandoning the effort, rather than waiting for the Supreme Court to maybe get involved.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 17

Jesse Jackson's "your patch is not big enough" speech from the DNC in 1988 is still one of the best political speeches I've ever heard—and was the first time in my young life I'd ever heard a politician mention gay people in an affirming way, out loud on TV. Full text: wwnorton.com/college/hist...

Screenshot of an excerpt from Jesse Jackson's 1988 DNC speech that reads as follows.

America's not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, S.C., and grandmother could not afford a blanket, she didn't complain and we did not freeze.

Instead, she took pieces of old cloth—patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crocker sack on the patches—barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with.

But they didn't stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt.

Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right, but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough. Workers, you fight for fair wages. You are right. But your patch labor is not big enough. Women, you seek worth and pay equity. You are right. But your patch is not big enough. Women, mothers, who seek Head Start and day care and prenatal care on the front side of life, rather than jail care and welfare on the backside of life, you're right, but your patch is not big enough.

Students, you seek scholarships. You are right. But your patch is not big enough. Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right, but our patch is not big enough. Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and cure for AIDS, you are right, but your patch is not big enough. Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, right-wing, left-wing, hawk, dove—you are right, from your point of view, but your point of view is not enough.

But don't despair. Be wise as my grandma. Pool the patches and the pieces together, bound by a common thread. When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground we'll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our nation. We the people can win.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 10

I knew Miss Pickerell. Miss Pickerell was a friend of mine. And you, sirrah, are no Miss Pickerell.

Cover of Miss Pickerell on the moon, with a smiling Miss Pickerell in a spacesuit holding her cat, also in a little spacesuit, and also holding a box that says SQUARE TOE BAKERY, while walking on a lunar landscape as another astronaut watches her from a short distance.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 8

Friends and gentlebeings, I hereby give you this handy reference guide to the Smith/Smyth Television Nexus

A table entitled The Smith Smyth Television Nexus. Clip and Save.
The table has four rows, each beginning with the name of a musician, and ending with an arrow pointing to the next row, suggesting a logical flow. The table reads as follows.
Fred Smith, bassist for the band Television, who is not to be confused with ...
Fred Sonic Smith, guitarist who played with the band MC5, and who collaborated with and married ...
Patti Smith, poet, author, and musician of the band Patti Smith Group, who collaborated with guitarist Tom Verlaine of the band Television, and is not to be confused with ...
Patty Smyth, singer-songwriter who performed with
the band Scandal, and who was briefly married to
Richard Hell of the band Television,
who played alongside ... return to beginning.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 4

In honor of Russell Hoban’s 101st birthday, I’m currently rereading his eerie and poetic 1996 science fiction novel Fremder, so I thought I’d share a few favorite quotes from that. #SA4QE @russellhoban.bsky.social

Cover of the first edition of the novel Fremder by Russell Hoban, with a design of green spirals based on the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.

Quotation from Chapter 2 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows.
You know how it is when you’re sitting in a bar somewhere dark and quiet just breathing in and out and maintaining neutral buoyancy and a stranger starts talking to you and after a while he brings out of his pocket a letter coming apart at the creases; he brings out this letter to show you that at one time he mattered more than he does now and he tells you the story of his life. At first you wish he’d go away but perhaps you say to yourself, Maybe one day I’ll want somebody to listen to my story. Never mind. My name is Fremder Gorn. Fremder means stranger in German.

Quotation from Chapter 7 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows.
Holding on to the world is mostly an act of faith: you see a little bit of it in front of you and you believe in the rest of it both in time and space. If you’re scheduled for a jump to Hubble on Tuesday you believe in you, in Hubble, in the jump, and in Tuesday. Sometimes it was hard for me to believe all of it.

Quotation from Chapter 5 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows.
I think about the dead a lot, their wants and their needs and their unfinished business; I suppose it’s because of the way I came into the world. The dead prodigiously outnumber the living, and although their lives have stopped their action hasn’t; they are with us always, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. As a child I used to think about my mother and about her grandparents who died in Auschwitz. And my unknown father, I mostly thought of him as dead too. The dead are with me in the ordinary moments of every day--sometimes I see my hand lift a cup of coffee or sign my name and I feel ghost hands moving with mine, lifting their no-coffee, signing their no-names. And when I flicker they're always with me. Other deep spacers have told me they never dream in flicker--how can M-waves dream?--but I know that I do. I always come out of it with a deep sadness, half-remembering blurred faces. Each of us is the forward point of a procession stretching back into the darkness. And even within oneself, every moment is a self that dies: the road to each day's midnight is littered with corpses and all of them whispering. As I write this I'm listening to Beethoven's F Major Quartet, Opus 59, No. 1, the first Razumovsky, while thousands of my dead selves hum along with it, sometimes weeping for times that are gone.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Feb 1

From the Irish Times: "The Lie" by Mary O'Malley (via The Irish Centre for Poetry Studies on FB)

Photo of page from a newspaper with the poem "The Lie" by Mary O'Malley. Text reads as follows.

The lie that a protester shot dead by ICE in Minneapolis was a terrorist, the lie that killers set loose on their own cities are victims, the lie that a poem is a gun.
A poem is not a gun, though a poem from the pen of Akhmatova or Neruda or Mandelstam, not one of whom ever to my knowledge fired a shot, might
in certain conjugations of the stars lodge in the heart and spread out across mountains and borders across languages and the sea and you
can't shoot it down, or lock it up or alter its pixels. It is played on the hollowed reeds of dead bones.
A poem like that is a bomb.

End of poem. Bio after the poem reads,
Mary O'Malley's most recent collection, The Shark Nursery, published by Carcanet, was winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2025.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jan 23

Bovino: "Here in the US Border Patrol, I will say unequivocally that we are experts in dealing with children"

Still photo of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, driving his scary little wagon with two screaming children behind bars.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Jan 23

What is "your" Newbery book? So many good choices, but I'm going to say "It's Like This, Cat" by Emily Neville, which I read again and again as a kid. I reread it a few years ago and it still holds up. It's one of the books that really helped me feel less alone in resisting the pressure to conform.

Cover of the book It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville, illustrated by Emil Weiss. There is a sketch-style drawing that shows a young man standing on the porch of a city street. A tabby cat is sprawled contentedly on top of the baluster at the bottom of the railing for the porch steps.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 17

I've been trying to figure out all day who all of these photos of Susie Wiles have been reminding me of, and then I suddenly twigged

A montage of six photos of Mollie Sugden as Mrs Slocombe in the classic British sitcom Are You Being Served

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 14

This is absolutely spot on, but also: the best children’s books are written for kids and adults simultaneously. I read The Wind in the Willows as a kid and loved it; but I read it again in college and it spoke to me in a whole new way. 1/3

Screenshot of a post that reads, Jesse Hamm had the take to end all takes on children's media. "People who disdain writing ‘just for children’ fail to realize that those children will remember what they read, maybe for the rest of their lives. You’re not writing for permanent children; you’re getting an early start on adults.”

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 11

Movie poster for Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere

The film poster for Steve Schapiro, Being Everywhere, featuring a handful of the photographer's famous images on the wall above a white sofa and a camera resting on a small table in front of it. The tagline says, the history of a nation through the lens of a legend.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 8

My contribution to the Paul Dano discourse is that pretty much every time I eat a potato, I think about him in that BBC adaptation of War and Peace

Paul Dano staring avidly at a potato on his fork in the 2016 BBC adaptation of War and Peace.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 8

You might also need to enable Qobuz via the Last.fm website or at least check to make sure that Qobuz is enabled there. To do that, log in to the Last.fm website and go to Settings > Applications. Here's what that looks like. (2 of 2)

A screenshot of the Last dot FM website showing the Applications tab in the Settings area. Qobuz is listed as one of the Connected Applications, and there is a Disconnect button next to it.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 8

Hi, Thiago! It looks like this might need to be done using the Qobuz website instead of the mobile app. Try signing in to the Qobuz website in a desktop browser and go to Settings > My External Services. I think you should be able to add Last.fm there. Here's what that looks like. (continued 1 of 2)

A screenshot of the Settings area of the Qobuz website showing the My External Services tab with the Last dot FM application displayed.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Dec 2

I will never see the word Stylophone without thinking of this ad ...

Vintage black and white ad with the headline David Bowie plays stylophone on Space Oddity. There's a small, charmingly dorky photo of early 70s Bowie with his stylophone, and an illustration of a stylophone sort of blasting off into outer space from planet Earth.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Nov 27

I remember having fun writing the copy for this one. Vintage Nightspots magazine ad for Thanksgiving new wave dance night with DJ Dave Roberts, at Planet Earth Chicago back in 2002. #NewWavers

Magazine ad from 2002 with photos of a New Romantic club kid with an exuberant hairstyle. Text reads, Planet Earth Thanksgiving.
A New Wave Feast with All the Trimmings! Your Menu. Thursday, Nov. 28th.
The Main Course:
DJ Dave Roberts spins
New Wave, Punk & Ska till 4am

Appetizers:
Pretty Boys. Pretty Girls.
Elegantly Seasoned with
Glitter, Eyeliner & Safety Pins.

Side Dishes:
Spiky Hair. Skinny Ties.
Wild Dancing. Mad Glamour.

Dessert:
Warm Devo Cobbler with a Delicate Ramones Sauce!
Flaming Duran Duran Pudding Surprise!

No Turkeys Were Harmed in the Making of This Ad.
Neo, 2350 North Clark. No cover before 12 with ad.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Nov 17

Bonus shot: the bottom panel of the Marvel Super Heroes lunchbox from 1976, featuring Iron Man and the Falcon. 2/2

Bottom panel of a vintage Marvel Comics lunchbox from 1976, showing Iron Man and the Falcon, and for some reason the superhero Falcon is accompanied by an actual bird Falcon flapping its wings next to him.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Nov 17

For some reason people seem to be sharing photos of old lunch boxes — so here's the one that was my pride and joy as a fifth grader circa 1976, and which miraculously I still have, though it's a little rusty in places. 1/2

Photo of a vintage lunchbox from 1976. It's rectangular and made of metal, with a black plastic carrying handle at the top. On the front panel there's a design showing Thor, Spider-Man, and Captain America, with the words Marvel Comics Super Heroes.

Another photo of the same vintage lunchbox from 1976, seen from a different angle. The design on the back panel shows The Fantastic Four, and it's rotated so you can also see one of the side panels, which shows Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk.

Another side panel from the Marvel Comics vintage lunchbox, showing Daredevil, The Scarlet Witch, and Yellowjacket.

The top of the Marvel Comics vintage lunchbox, which is resting on its side, featuring Hawkeye, the Vision, and the Wasp, all partly obscured by the plastic carrying handle and the metal clasp.

Dave Awl@daveawl· Nov 12

Yeah, I'll admit I didn't think I'd be able to see the aurora here in Chicago so was pretty shocked when I stepped out on my back porch