Chicago - Music Playlist

Chicago

Chicago
By Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have
         seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the
         farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and i answer: Yes, it is true
         I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces
         of the women and children I have seen the marks of
         wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer
          at this my city, and i give them back the sneer and say
          to them:
Come and show me another city lifted head singing so
         proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
         here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft
         cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a
         savage pitted against the wilderness,
               Bareheaded,
               Shoveling,
               Wrecking,
               Planning,
               Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
           white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man
           laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never
            lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse and
            under his ribs is the heart of the people,
                  Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-
            naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker,
            Stacker of Wheat, Player with the Railroads and Freight
            Handler to the Nation.

Piece from Twenties

I wrote this this weekend. Another piece added to Twenties which still has a small way to go before being finished. To me this scene shows both how much crap the "heroes" of the story are in and yet how wily and ahead of the game they are (and maybe how out of they are at the same time):

INT. APARTMENT - DAY

THE CONNECTION
Okay, we have to assume this man is under surveillance by the FBI and that is a whole world we do not want to be in or even on their radar.

THE BRAINS
As far as we know we are still not even known to them.

THE PLAYER
All FOIA requests came back negative for us.

THE CONNECTION
So we know they will be onhim. We are going to need more noise than just the crowd although that is going to help a lot.

THE BRAINS
Small white noise emitters. Keep them on you and going at all times. Kind of fucks up surveillance. We hope.

THE JOCK
“We hope” doesn’t sound very hopeful.

THE BRAINS
Hey, doing what I can with the resources I have.

THE CONNECTION
You two will be on his guards. Keep an eye on them. All three of you have to be watching though for a pattern in the crowd. The surveillance team will be blending in, but they still are going to want to keep close. I am going to keep him on the move, with no discernible pattern.

THE PLAYER
Look at you with the big words and jargon. So what do we do, with us on his guys, not a lot we can do.

THE BRAINS
They will be looking for the same thing I am sure. They don’t want the FBI getting close to their boss. So follow them and their eyes and keep a look out. You see them heading into a certain direction or pointing someone out, you try and make a move the best you can. I will run interference where I can, as well as try and find their listening spot or van or whatever the hell they have set up.

THE CONNECTION
They will be there. We want them off of us. I will try and stay near groups to keep the sound going and talk as low as I can. But again, I can’t keep any kind of pattern going. Every time I shift us, you have to look.

THE JOCK
And what exactly do we look for?

THE CONNECTION
That is the hard part.

THE BRAINS
We don’t really know.

THE CONNECTION
You look for what feels wrong. Someone quickly trying to follow us. Someone almost running into the back of us but ignoring us. Home less people who don’t ask for money.

THE PLAYER
The thing which appears normal but is slightly off. The forgery.

Current Wallpaper - R.M. Guera's Blues Brothers

Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams

Dear Chicago,
You'll never guess.
You know the girl you said I'd meet someday?
Well, I've got something to confess.
She picked me up on Friday.
Asked me if she reminded me of you.
I just laughed and lit a cigarette,
Said "that's impossible to do."
My life's gotten simple since.
And it fluctuates so much.
Happy and sad and back again.
I'm not crying out to much.
Think about you all the time.
It's strange and hard to deal.
Think about you lying there.
And those blankets lie so still.
Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I've been thinking some of suicide.
But there's bars out here for miles.
Sorry about the every kiss.
Every kiss you wasted (bad / back)
I think the thing you said was true,
I'm going to die alone and sad.

The wind's feeling real these days.
Yeah, baby, it hurt's me some.
Never thought I'd feel so blue.
New York City, you're almost gone.
I think that I've fallen out of love,
I think I've fallen out of love . . . with you.

John Lee Hooker Blues Brothers

Counterfeiting Holograms

More research for Twenties:

Foiling counterfeiters

John Wallace, Senior Editor

Take any major credit card, hold it in the light, and tip it back and forth. There, on a patch of metallized plastic, a small image will shimmer and float, its eye-catching presence the salesclerk`s assurance--as well as the cardholder`s--that the card is not a fake. Similar holograms, durable and cheaply produced, are being used in increasing numbers throughout the world for security purposes, all based on the premise that holograms are hard to counterfeit. They are found on everything from whiskey bottles to ID cards, from concert tickets to price tags, from textile labels to government documents to money. Of all the security features added to credit cards over the years, holograms are what have best withstood the wiles of tamperers and forgers. But do they guarantee authenticity?

No, according to Steven McGrew, president of New Light Industries Ltd. (Spokane, WA), a company developing hologram anticounterfeiting technology. Although even the most-sophisticated hologram can be reproduced given enough time, money, and effort, the standard mass-produced hologram is, he says, rather easy to counterfeit. He reports that the Secret Service presented [at Holo-pakHolo-print 97, a conference on holographic security held in November 1997 in Orlando, FL] actual counterfeits of the dove found on the VISA card. "Most of them were bad, but some were very good, enough to fool some holographers," he says, adding that the better ones would easily fool any salesclerk.

The credit-card hologram is considered an optical variable device (OVD), a class of devices used for security and authentication that include gratings, conventional image-based holograms, and stereograms (which, as the observation point is shifted, can show action in the manner of a movie). At its simplest, an OVD is no more than a grating that gives rise to a colorful patch of light. In a more complex form, it may be made up of hundreds of two-dimensional computer-generated images, each viewable from a slightly different angle, the sum of which depicts a three-dimensional object created entirely in software.

Most mass-produced holograms are embossed on plastic, then back-coated with a reflective metallic layer (see Fig. 1, p. S23). Small embossed holograms can be produced for no more than a fraction of a cent each.

There is one characteristic that all OVDs share: they cannot be duplicated using conventional printing technology. The ubiquitous ink-jet printer, capable of counterfeiting currency and checks, is useless to the potential counterfeiter of OVDs. But although the equipment needed to forge an OVD is not offered at local computer stores, someone with enough knowledge and persistence can put together a setup good enough to be in business.

North Korean Counterfeits

From the New York Times (research for Twenties):

No Ordinary Counterfeit

By STEPHEN MIHM
Published: July 23, 2006

On Oct. 2, 2004, the container ship Ever Unique, sailing under a Panamanian flag from Yantai, China, berthed in the Port of Newark. As cranes unloaded the vessel’s shipping containers, which were filled with a variety of commercial goods, dockworkers singled out a container and placed it aboard a flatbed truck, which was driven to a warehouse a few miles away. There, F.B.I. and Secret Service agents, acting as part of a sting operation, gathered around the container and cracked it open. Beneath cardboard boxes containing plastic toys, they found counterfeit $100 bills worth more than $300,000, secreted in false-bottomed compartments.

The counterfeits were nearly flawless. They featured the same high-tech color-shifting ink as genuine American bills and were printed on paper with the same precise composition of fibers. The engraved images were, if anything, finer than those produced by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Only when subjected to sophisticated forensic analysis could the bills be confirmed as imitations.

Counterfeits of this superior sort — known as supernotes — had been detected by law-enforcement officials before, elsewhere in the world, but the Newark shipment marked their first known appearance in the United States, at least in such large quantities. Federal agents soon seized more shipments. Three million dollars’ worth arrived on another ship in Newark two months later; and supernotes began showing up on the West Coast too, starting with a shipment of $700,000 that arrived by boat in Long Beach, Calif., in May 2005, sealed in plastic packages and wrapped mummy-style in bolts of cloth.

In the weeks and months that followed, federal investigators rounded up a handful of counterfeiting suspects in a series of operations code-named Royal Charm and Smoking Dragon. This past August, in the wake of the arrests, Justice Department officials unsealed indictments in New Jersey and California that revealed that the counterfeits were purchased and then seized as part of an operation that ensnared several individuals accused of being smugglers and arms traffickers, some of whom were suspected of having connections to international crime rings based in Southeast Asia.

The arrests also prompted a more momentous accusation. After the indictments were released, U.S. government and law-enforcement officials began to say in public something that they had long said in private: the counterfeits were being manufactured not by small-time crooks or even sophisticated criminal cartels but by the government of North Korea. “The North Koreans have denied that they are engaged in the distribution and manufacture of counterfeits, but the evidence is overwhelming that they are,” Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes in the Treasury Department, told me recently. “There’s no question of North Korea’s involvement.”

Counterfeiting - Twenties - Research

How to counterfeit.

Wikipedia on counterfeiting

US Secret Service Counterfeit Division

Twenties - Last night

Yes I wrote. Just didn't feel like sharing that piece just yet. More later. More writing later. Things are pretty well. I am actually kind of happy with the way the rewrite is going. Actually ahead on the page count from the draft I am re-wriing from, and there is still lots to add in.

TWENTIES - ART INSTITUTE

Copyright 2008. Mine. There will be a scene added int he middle of this which is a daydream. Basically would be these two walking around discussing all of this:

CUT TO:

INT – ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO - DAY

The Connection and The Brains walk around. It is obvious they have been here many times before and know the works and their way around.

THE BRAINS

Want to go to the hall of manly shit?

THE CONNECTION

You know I gotta go see my Monet room.

THE BRAINS

Fucking gay.

THE CONNECTION

You know, some day we need to steal something from here. Or at least steal something significant

THE BRAINS

What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you not get enough hugs as child? Is that all you think about: crime? Why would we steal something from here?

THE CONNECTION

Besides the huge payoff.

BEAT

Just to do it.

BEAT

It doesn’t even have to be from here. I mean this is nice and in one room you can take enough to end it all. But I know this place in Connecticut with a couple of Monet’s and a Degas and it would be easy picking.

THE BRAINS

Fuckin killin me.

THE CONNECTION

Look, when you enter a building you see the architecture and the engineering of it. When I enter a building I don’t see that. I see how to control the room. I figure out how many men it takes and what they need and when they need to do it. I look at the security of the place: where are the guards? How many entrances? Where are the alarms and cameras? It’s just natural to me. It’s in my blood. It’s my DAN. Like engineering is in your people’s blood. And really weird 3 hour musical action films where all they do is kiss.

THE BRAINS

Really, fuck you. Why? Why take the risk? We get caught we go to jail. Is the payoff worth that?

THE CONNECTION

The payoff is always worth it. We pull something like this off, and we are set for a while. Hell we move to Mexico and we are set for a good portion of our life! Do you want the rest of your life to be the fucking daily grind?

THE BRAINS

No! I want the rest of my life to be hot Asian chicks on a beach at our bar in Mexico. But I also don’t want it ot be spent hustling those two pretty boys behind bars so I can stay a tight end.

THE CONNECTION

Look we are not going to jail. We make this a simple job; real small. We hustle some electronics stores either out of town or somewhere far away from us in town. Places we don’t ever return to again. Hell if we go into some of those small towns near you in Wisconsin its not like some backwoods clerk is gonna have a clue about what the new 20’s look like let alone what a counterfeit twenty is like. We get what we want and we’re out. Easy.

THE BRAINS

Yeah, well it’s a long way from there to where we want to get. And it becomes more and more escalation with bigger and bigger risks. Why do I see this ending badly?

THE CONNECTION

We can do it. You work out what we need and how to do it. The making of the art. I will work on the performance. It is a cake walk. We get some experience, and maybe learn something we need for later on. Plus, you know who you can get to help you?

THE BRAINS

Who?

THE CONNECTION

Jade. She’s a fucking wiz at this shit. She does all their graphic design shit there. Hell, I will even make a trip and talk to my dad and find out what else we might need. Supplies wise. Then we go for it.

THE BRAINS

Jesus this is gonna fucking hurt.

BEAT

Alright. I am in. Now how do we get the other two fuckers to go along with this bullshit.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Twenties - Get Yer Ticket

What I wrote last night. Copyright me 2008. Enjoy. ome vids below for atmosphere for the movie:

THE CONNECTION

No. No jail time.

BEAT.

We can do it.

BEAT

Look, its not like we got in here by the most legal means available. I mean hell, none of us actually paid for a ticket.

CUT TO:

EXT – SIDEWALK BY WRIGLEY FIELD – DAY

A guy is on his cell phone talking very loudly and holding two tickets.

RANDOM ASSHOLE ON A CELL PHONE

MAN I GOT US TWO TICKETS! GET YOUR ASS DOWNHERE! COME ON! SKIP ON WORK!

The Connection walks up and bumps into the guy whose tickets fall to the ground. THE Connection leans down and picks them up, and hands them to the guy.

THE CONNECTION

Oh damn man! I am so sorry. Shit here are your tickets. Sorry bout that.

RANDOM ASSHOLE ON A CELL PHONE

Hey man. No problem. See you in the bleachers. You can buy me a beer.

THE CONNECTION

Yeah. Sure man. Later.

CUT TO:

EXT – THE GATES INTO WRIGLY – DAY

SECURITY GUARD

I am sorry sir, but these tickets aren’t valid for today.

RANDOM ASSHOLE ON A CELL PHONE

WHAT! I JUST BOUGHT THEM!

The Connection and the Brains walk in through another gate in the background.

CUT TO:

INT – BAR – DAY

A hot blonde is chatting up some guy at a bar.

HOTTIE BLONDE

Hey there sexy? Can I see those tickets.

STUPID GUY # 2

Sure. Say what’s your name?

Hands her the tickets

Amber silly. We meet out the other night and you said you were gonna be here for the game. Guess you don’t remember. That makes me sad. Why don’t you buy me a drink?

Guy turns to order her a drink. As he does The Player walks by and the girl slips him one of the ticket.

HOTTIE BLOND CHICK

Well looks like I will be seeing you in the bleachers.

As she says this she slips the ticket into his pocket.

Thanks for the drink.

CUT TO:

EXT – THE GATES- DAY

Stupid Guy # 2 is at the gate and can’t get in.

STUPID GUY # 2

Baby, I had it right here. I don’t know what happened to it.
The Player and the hot blonde walk in.

CUT TO:

The Jock walks up to the ticket counter looking heavier than normal and flashes his security credentials. He has on the same garb as we have seen on the other security people. They just nod and let him in.

CUT TO:

INT – BATHROOM – DAY

The Jock is throwing away what he came in wearing and is walking out looking fitter and in different clothes.

CUT TO:

INT – ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO - DAY

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Clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off