A vicious ham-handed attack was recently perpetrated on the troubadour of the knife and fork and minstrel of all things food – Charles Ferruzza by the humorless militant organized fat people.

I hate to break it to the fat people, but sitting around and reading the Pitch in search of things to be offended at is not a healthy activity you should be engaging in to become less fat.
I don’t have any use for organized anything – labor, religion or fat people. No matter how many politically correct titles you invent for yourselves or how much you lobby to be considered normal size, all you have managed to do so far is to take the livelihood away from the people who made a living working for freak shows.

There are two kinds of fat people – the ones who have a sense of humor about their size and the ones who are angry and bitter. The ones who can laugh at “yo mama” joke and the ones who are offended at a drop of a cupcake. I belong to and know plenty of the former but have no desire to associate with any of the latter.

So the next time you are sitting with another chubby young woman “who seems mortified at having to spend another Friday night with (you) instead of being on a real date”, don’t blame Ferruzza for noticing, with this attitude you’ll spend every Friday night there for the rest of your sad life.

Order some broccoli and lighten up.

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One of the reasons I visit the Russian store so rarely is my complete inability to stay away from Russian candy. They have chocolates, boxed and bulk, non-chocolate candy and other sweets. No matter how much I buy, they are gone within few days and no gimmicks or rationing tricks work to keep me from eating handfuls of chocolates until they are all gone. The only souvenir I brought from my last trip to New York was a suitcase full of Russian chocolates. Russian chocolates are tastier and more creative than their American mass-produced counterparts, they seem to use real chocolate and at $5.69/lb are a bargain. At the store you can grab a few pieces out of every bin, they are all conveniently priced the same.

Another favorite of mine is Zefir. Calling it a marshmallow is a blasphemy but there is no better English word to describe this airy, light, sweet and slightly tart dessert, which doesn’t need to be melted, burned or otherwise abused to make it edible.

There are two Russian stores in the area: European Delights and Taste of Russia. Note that European Delights moved to the shopping center on the Southwest corner of the 95th street and Antioch, pretty much across the Antioch street from where it used to be and Google maps may not be current.

UPDATE: DLC, the eating force behind Kansas City Lunch Spots, visited one of the stores in this post and bravely ate lunch there. Please read his review and my comments there.

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Just in time for the Cosmonautics Day from my Father’s archives – a never before seen this side of the Iron Curtain newspaper published on April 13, 1961. (click photos for a readable version).
This extra edition is titled “It Happened!”. On the right side with the subtitle “In history – forever” there a story and a time-line of the flight. On the left there is an official announcement from the Government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party titled “Listen, Planet! – to the progressive humanity”.

In the middle there is a short telegram to Gagarin from Nikita S. Khrushchev titled “Hugs!”

Dear Yuri Alekseevich (Gagarin)! I am extremely delighted to congratulate you with your outstanding heroic accomplishment – the first space flight on the spaceship “Vostok”.
The entire Soviet people admire Your brave deed, which will be remembered for centuries as an example of bravery, heroism and courage in service to all humankind.
Your flight opens a new page of the space exploration in the history of mankind and fills the hearts of the Soviet people with joy and pride for their Socialist Motherland.
From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you with the safe return from space back to Earth. Hugs.
See you soon in Moscow.
Signed “N.Khrushchev” April 12, 1961.

On the reverse side there are articles “We Did It!”, describing how the three main social classes – workers, peasants and intelligentsia contributed to the triumph of the space flight;”Minutes that shook the world!”;”Earth gave us wings for the flight” and other small items and poetry.

Bonus: A newspaper published on May 4th, 1961 titled “First Mayday of the Cosmic Era”.

And now we dance:

This song is called “Gagarin,I loved you” by Russian band Undervud.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEgl4Q-G6eY

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“Sunset Over A Sea of Corn” would have been a title of a picture I should’ve taken but waited just long enough for the sun to finally dissolve in the eight-feet-tall waves of corn somewhere between Bowling Green and Laddonia.

Maybe I am compensating for not having a car for the first 23 years of my life and never taking a real road-trip until I was a grown man but I’ve been doing a double-duty putting some miles on my car driving around these here United States. It also helps me maintain a healthy-sized carbon footprint, adding my little share to the global warming and destroying the environment. Luckily my daughter doesn’t mind hours of driving as long as I don’t sing in the car, which is hard because the seemingly omnipresent country station is pumping out things like:

She thinks my tractor’s sexy
It really turns her on
She’s always starin’ at me
While I’m chuggin’ along

You should hear this stuff with the Russian accent, it will really “turn you on”.
Over the past weekend we added another 1,200 miles to my car’s odometer, going to Chicago and back. This time we took a different route cutting through the South-Central-Eastern Missouri and Central-Western Illinois in order to make a stop at Springfield,IL to check up on the Land Of Lincoln. Driving on the rural highways has a more intimate feel since you actually have to slow down in each little town on the way, you get to see people’s houses, rusted farm equipment, smell the manure, and pass a tractor or two on the way. Somewhere between the anti-abortion billboards, entertained by a single country radio station, another breed of American people goes on about their lives unconcerned by their standing in the social media.
We took our time driving through this area and if I actually stopped and took every photo I wanted to, we’d still be on the road. So here are a few I actually had a chance to take.
The General Store in Atlas,IL has this sign that is the most concise restaurant review I’ve ever seen: “Eat Here – Get Worms”.


Pike County Courthouse in Pittsfield,IL

Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, IL.

Lincoln’s Home is just a part of a larger historic site which preserved Springfield as Lincoln would’ve experienced it, sans tourist crowds. In front of his home Lincoln Troubadours perform the period songs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvshZW_Zfik

Next the Illinois State Capitol (compare to the Kansas State Capitol):

Chicago always has the neatest-looking sculptures. This one looks like alphabet soup on acid:

Chimpotle’s likeness scares customers away near some local bar:

Obligatory skyline shot:

I guess you can find peace and quiet even at the busiest corner in the middle of the busy city:

This could be Chicago’s mayor and his wife, or KC’s mayor and his wife (after skipping a dinner or two).

Lincoln’s body is still there, tourists disappointed by the lack of a souvenir shop wandering around the cemetery.

View of the Mississippi from Louisiana, MO.

Louisiana turned out to be a very nice small town with several streets lined with Victorian mansions overlooking the river. Some in better condition than others.

Health-care debate goes on here as well.

After watching the sunset we finally got back on I70 and the countryside disappeared in an unending strobe-lights of trucks and road construction cones. We were almost home.

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These old photo posts are probably not my most popular posts but definitely some of my most favorite. I usually start with a random query, then something attracts my attention and turns into a short lesson in history. This time, almost by accident, I found a few photos of Charles Binaggio and of course had to find out who Charles Binaggio was.

Charles Binaggio (January 12, 1909 – April 5, 1950) was a Missouri gangster who became the boss of the Kansas City crime family and concocted a bold plan to control the police forces in Kansas City, Missouri and St. Louis, Missouri.

On the night of April 5, 1950, Binaggio and his underboss, Charles “Mad Dog” Gargotta (a notorious enforcer within the Kansas City family), were called to meet some unknown persons at the First Ward Democratic Club near downtown Kansas City. Binaggio left his driver/bodyguard, Nick Penna, at a tavern owned by the mob, saying that he would return in a few minutes. Binaggio and Gargotta then borrowed a car and drove off to the Democratic Club.
Shortly after eight pm, residents in apartments above the Democratic Club heard several shots. Eight hours later, a cab driver going to a nearby cafe noticed that the club door was open; he also heard water running inside. The police were called and they found the bodies of Charles Binaggio and Charles Gargotta inside the club. Binaggio was seated at a desk and Gargotta was lying inside the front door. Both men had been shot in the head four times with separate .32 caliber revolvers. The police theorized that Gargotta had been trying to escape the club when he was shot in the back of the head. As for the running water heard by the cabbie, it came from a broken toilet and was unrelated to the hit.

Some people theorized that Binaggio and Gargotta were murdered by St. Louis gunmen; others said the hitmen came from Chicago. However, it is most likely that the two mob bosses were killed by members of their own crime family under orders from the Mafia Commission in New York The probable organizer of the hit was Gizzo, who no doubt received the leadership of the Kansas City family as a reward. In any case, the murderers were never found.

Charles Binnagio’s grave is at the Mount Saint Mary’s Cemetery.
Murder on Truman Road – an article in Time from April 1950.

I have a lot more of the Life Magazine photos bookmarked and I intend to share them  mostly on weekends, so if this is not something you enjoy feel free to skip these posts in the future.

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