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Cheese alert in G

rant Park, new audiences for old soul stars, the Stella M

cCartney

rush at H&

M, did senators screw

consumers to spite the the governor? and m

oreP

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The Wizards of iZ

The br ain trust behind one of the season ’s hot testtoys lives in a W

est Loop warehouse.

By Susannah J . F elts

BooksSoldiers’

mem

oirs ofIraqp XX

BooksSoldiers’m

emoirs

of Iraqp 28

Restaurants

Where to

eat goatand other M

exican regional delightsSection 2

ChicagoA

n tisocialJonathanA

dler’sinappropriatebehaviorp 10

Ar t

Kim

Joon at Walsh G

alleryp 24

November 18, 2005

Section One Letters 3Columns

Hot Type 4The New York Times hits a nerve.

The Straight Dope 5Was there a fascist plot to take over the White House? In 1934, we mean.

The Works 8What made Dems turn on Marty Cohen?

Chicago Antisocial 10Insulted by Jonathan Adler!

The Sports Section 12The ho-hum hockey season so far

Our Town 14Really? Our very own Hollywood-style walkof fame? Plus: at H&M for the launch ofStella McCartney’s line and a proper send-off for a west-side blues institution.

ReviewsArt 24Kim Joon at Walsh Gallery,Matthew Cox at Aron Packer

Theater 26Sam Shepard’s Buried Child at Mary-Arrchie

Books 28My War by Colby Buzzell and The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell by John Crawford

PlusBoutique of the Week 16WillowInk Well 31This week’s crossword: Dinner With the Family

ON THE COVER: PAUL L. MERIDETH

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Robert Civettini, Dino Crisanti, Todd Kurtzer, and Kris Paulson

TheWizardsof iZ

In September Kris Paulsonattended the “worldwidelaunch” of an animatronic crea-

ture named iZ at the Toys “R” Us inTimes Square. Nine inches tall andshaped like a squat bowling pin, iZhas big wide eyes, trumpetlike ears,three legs with disk-shaped feet (itcan balance on any one of them,appearing to be in mid-sproing),and—maybe most significantly—aline-in jack for an iPod or othermusic player. A store employeeshowed Paulson how you couldplay music through iZ, how the toycontributes its own sound effectsand commentary, how its built-inbeats and lead and rhythm trackscould be used to make music, howit giggles wildly when its belly is“tickled” or tapped rapidly.

Paulson listened politely. Thenhe told the demonstrator, “Yeah,I made that.”

Paulson is aninventor for BigMonster Toys, an in-dependent toy-design firmthat occupies an 18,000-square-foot convertedtrucking garage in theWest Loop. From thelooks of the place youmight guess he was

the oldest: A toy train runs abovethe main workspace on a tracksuspended from the ceiling, andthe kitchen looks like a caboose.Around the perimeter of a large,open area enlivened by pottedpalms, employees sit in brightlycolored cubicles with workbenchesthat look like oversize Playskooltoys. On the outer wall of the oth-erwise unmarked building, facingRacine, there’s a window built tolook like a big yellow door straightout of Toontown, with a furry pur-ple monster peering out of it.Once inside you can see that themonster, a little guy reminiscentof Sendak’s Wild Things, is bal-anced on alphabet blocks so hecan get a better view.

Founded in 1988, Big MonsterToys is a direct descendant ofMarvin Glass & Associates, whose

windowless companyheadquarters were

at LaSalle andChicago. Some of the

most famous toys of the past 40years were dreamed up by Glass’s

team: Lite-Brite, Operation,Mousetrap, the original

rubber puddle of vomit.Glass, who died in 1974,was known

By Susannah J. Felts

Meet the boys at Big MonsterToys, birthplace of the Furbyfor the iPod generation.

continued on page 20

iZ

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for being paranoid, intenselysecretive, and obsessively com-mitted to toy invention. He wasone of the first independents topitch products to companies thathad previously relied exclusivelyon their own employees for newideas. Glass in effect founded thesmall community of indie toydesigners that’s still centered inChicago today. BMT’s founders—Jeffrey Breslow, Rouben Terzian,and Howard Morrison—allworked for Marvin Glass &Associates for more than 30 yearsbefore starting their own firm.Terzian and Morrison retired in2003; Breslow now heads upBMT with three new partners.

BMT’s 30-odd inventors turnout four to five hundred proto-types a year, anything from plas-tic clothing for miniature dolls toaction figures to board games—but no video games, and nothingviolent. A small number of theseinventions—maybe 20 to 25,Breslow says—end up gettingsold to companies like Matteland Hasbro, and of those only atiny fraction go on to becomehousehold names. Timing iseverything, Breslow says. WhenBMT developed an electronicboard game based on TheApprentice for Hasbro last year,he got the Donald to record thevoice track, on which Trumpboasts that this is the “best gameever invented” and, inevitably,breaks the news when players getfired. “A very sophisticated toy,”Breslow says fondly, but it hit themarket nine months too late anddidn’t become the smash hitBMT or Hasbro had hoped for.“It’s a business where you have tolearn to accept failure,” he says.

Almost every part of toy proto-typing is done in-house at BMT,from programming and sounddesign to the molding of plasticpieces. All the employees know

how to work the lathes and millingmachines lined up at the back ofthe room. There’s a woodshop anda room dedicated to equipment formaking rubber molds. Upstairs,shelves are stacked with plasticbins full of prototypes that didn’tsell; every so often one getsexhumed and reintroduced orreworked for a client.

Usually after BMT sells a toy toa manufacturer, the buyer’s in-house designers will tweak it sothat what ends up on the shelvesmay bear scarce resemblance tothe prototype. iZ, however, is aspecial case. “This is our baby,”says Robert Civettini, a nine-yearemployee of BMT who workedon the project with Paulson andtwo other inventors, ToddKurtzer and Dino Crisanti. “Wereally had 100 percent controlover what it did and what it

looked like and sounded like.”iZ is the lead toy for Zizzle, a

new toy company based in thenorthern suburbs. RogerShiffman, who founded Zizzle inJanuary of this year, has been abig-league player in the industryfor decades. His former company,Tiger Electronics, gave the worldFurby, which had mothers fight-ing in the aisles. Shiffman soldTiger to Hasbro in 1998, workedfor them for a few years, and wentinto early retirement. In 2002 hewas diagnosed with a braintumor; it was removed and he’ssince made a full recovery. Beforelong he was thinking about get-ting back into the toy biz. LastDecember, before he and his part-ners had even decided on a namefor their new venture, Shiffmancalled Breslow, who’d handedTiger hits in the past.

Breslow knew Shiffman wouldwant something electronic andcharacter based. “He had donethat before and he had beenenormously successful, but hewasn’t going to buy Furby again,”he says. “Talk about pressure.Because if we didn’t give it tohim, somebody else would.”Breslow sat down with Paulson,Civettini, Kurtzer, and Crisanti,who had contributed to anothertoy design he’d taken a shine to—one that did some of the samethings iZ would eventually do,but wasn’t character based.Breslow told the guys to see whatthey could come up with, fast.

For toy mock-ups BMT design-ers will often poach parts fromexisting toys, a process they call“kit bashing.” Kurtzer, forinstance, has an iDog—a canine-shaped speaker for an iPod—on

his bench right now, ripped topieces. “We take everythingapart,” he says. “We were thosekids who took apart TVs andmanaged not to kill ourselves.”One of the first things thedesigners did to create the iZmock-up was buy a bunch oftalking Bill Clinton dolls and dis-mantle them. They knew theClinton dolls had a mechanismthat was “very quiet, very respon-sive,” Crisanti says. MeanwhileCivettini ripped up a plush pur-ple monkey and put its feet onthe new character.

iZ, which went on sale at thebeginning of October for $40,has an irreverent sense of humor.It farts, burps, and shouts recog-nizable phrases like “Oh yeah!”as well as strings of nonsense youcan’t help but attempt to trans-late to English. (Its parting shot,

Big Monster Toys

Big Monster Toys headquarters

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CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE 21

audible every time you turn it off,sounds to me like “Good-byedon’t catch your boned up mid-night.”) Its eyes jump up anddown and the horn in its mouthflashes colored lights. Commandcentral is the belly, a circularpanel not unlike the iPod’s clickwheel; from here you adjust vol-ume and tempo, select a beat,and save any musical (or cacoph-onous) mix you’ve come up withwhile noodling around. By turn-ing the ears you can choose fromseven different rhythm and leadtracks. Hitting the rubberyappendage on the creature’s headgenerates scratching and othereffects. (Throughout the designstages the guys at BMT referredto the appendage as the dingle,

but it’ll be hereafter known tothe public as the flicker.)

Paulson, who is both theyoungest (28) and newest BMTemployee (he celebrated twoyears there in late September) towork on the project, is exclusive-ly responsible for iZ’s final aes-thetics. It’s the first toy he’sdesigned that has made it to finalproduction, he says. He used amodeling program called Rhinoto design it entirely on the com-puter, which nobody at BMT hadever done. For inspiration hetried to imagine what an iPodmight look like if it was a cutecharacter. And he tried to give ita look that might appeal to olderkids. “There’s really nothing likethis on the shelves,” he says.

To create the iZ mock-up’ssound effects, the guys playedwith Apple’s GarageBand soft-ware. (Later they would hireRoger Ruczanka, a local musi-cian, to do the music, the onlypart of the design that wasn’tprovided in-house.) They all con-tributed some starter voicetracks, but Kurtzer eventually ad-libbed most of iZ’s vocals single-handedly. “He’s the most ener-getic of us,” says Crisanti, who’sbeen with BMT for 14 years. “Hekind of spazzes out in front of themike.” Kurtzer’s voice was then“warped electronically” andcoded so that the pool of phraseswould be pulled from randomly.

A few weeks after Shiffman’sinitial call to Breslow the guys

had a prototype ready—admit-tedly crude, and more eggshaped than the final version,but with the basic technology inplace. Breslow and his partnersagreed that it was strong enoughto show Shiffman. Crisantirecalls that Shiffman took onelook at the prototype and said,“We’re gonna make this.”

Zizzle had planned to intro-duce iZ as its lead toy next year,but retailers pressed Shiffman toget it into stores for thisChristmas. So BMT went fromthat first crude prototype to pro-duction in nine months, recordtime for the firm.

Designed to appeal to a broad-er market than most toys—fromfive-year-olds to the mercurial

tween market to toy-collectingadults—iZ has a multimillion-dollar promo campaign behindit. Breslow says it’s almostunheard-of for a toy to have ahuge release party like the onethrown for iZ in Times Square(pop stars Rihanna andLifehouse performed, and therewere three eight-foot iZs on dis-play); Crisanti says that in all hisyears at Big Monster Toys he’snever seen anything like it. InOctober iZ secured a covetedspot on the “Hot Dozen” holidaylist in the trade magazine ToyWishes. That list soon showed upin dailies nationwide, and Toys“R” Us and KB Toys also includ-ed iZ on their lists of winners.continued on page 22

22 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Rubbing shoulders with iZ on allthree lists is Hasbro’s revampedFurby, which now has facialexpressions and, in addition toits own garbled language,“Furbish,” the ability to acquirebasic English skills from itsowner. It’s still too early, howev-er, to judge whether sales of iZor any of the other hot-listerswill live up to expectations;some reports suggest it’s goingto be a tough season.

As for the non-character-basedtoy that helped inspire iZ, theguys from BMT won’t say wordone, because it’s different enoughthat it might yet find its way intoproduction. Neither will they sayanything about the other toys

they’ve already sold to Zizzle(there are four or five) or any-thing else they’re presently work-ing on.

“You can’t talk about anythingwith anybody until it’s public,”Kurtzer says.

“We’re secretive because wewant it to get made and get pro-duced and we don’t want to jeop-ardize it by talking about it,”Crisanti says. Not even to theirfriends and spouses, apparently.

“They don’t even know wherewe work,” Kurtzer says,straight-faced. “Our names arealiases, actually.”

Paulson adds, “We drive toO’Hare and then fly intoMidway, and then take a trainto work.” v

moneygrubbing outsiders withneither pedigree nor apprecia-tion for Parisian values. Thisechoes the classic attack on Jewsas stateless “cosmopolitans.” (2)The Madwoman’s nostalgia forthe Romanovs, who instigatedpogroms and blood libelsagainst Jews and were toppled—in the anti-Semitic view—by“Jewish” bolshevism.

Anti-Semitism is often com-municated in code, and this stuff,taken together, struck me as amessage. So I did a little researchand turned up the informationthat went into my review. I can’tagree then that Giraudoux’s big-otry is “in no way. . . expressedwithin the text of this play.” It

was the text that brought his big-otry to my attention.

A PartisanDiffersHello,

I wanted an opportunity toshare my opinion of JessicaHopper’s review of BellOrchestre [“Nu Age,” November11]. While it is her right not toenjoy or appreciate the album, Ifind her comments and attackvicious. Often, most feedbackreveals a lot about the persongiving it. To quote her, the review“drops like a wet turd from the

sky.” After having attended two oftheir concerts recently, at whichmany other artists were presentas well, their excellent skill andtalent shone through. I find itreally unfortunate that they wereblinded by hype and did not dis-cern Ms. Hopper’s insight thatthey witnessed “the push-buttondynamics and overwrought ges-ticulation of a Billboard-chartingemo band with the edginess of aWindham Hill sampler.”

A critique “doesn’t get muchworse than that, rest assured:you are correct.” Being witty andmean does not ensure a goodreview. By the way, BellOrchestre are not a side projectof Arcade Fire. They are “someSuzuki-method yo-yos from

Big Monster Toys

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Letters

Montreal.” Maybe you shouldlearn more about them beforemaking such proclamations.

Raphael Amato Ottawa, Canada

Jessica Hopper replies:Bell Orchestre shares three

members with Arcade Fire:Richard Reed Parry, SarahNeufeld, and a man the letterwriter shares a last name with,Pietro Amato. Parry and Neufeldare full-time members of ArcadeFire. Amato is just a touringmember.

Rock CriticCritiqueDon’t go bashing trendy bandsjust for the sake of bashing trendybands [“Nu Age,” November 11].You [Jessica Hopper] write forthe Reader, not the Wire. If youhad read just the slightest bit ofmaterial from [AnimalCollective]’s own mouths youwould realize that they don’t evenstand for the new “freak-folk” tagthat they’ve been pushed into.And you writing a full page accus-ing them of exactly that only per-petuates this ignorance and putsyou in the same wagon as every-one else. I’m not saying you haveto like a 42-tracked, layered songwith delay, but at least don’t go forthe easy cop-out by comparing itto your first bad acid trip. Andhow about a band’s fifth or soalbum progressing from theirlast one? Ever think of that?Again, you whining about howthey didn’t regurgitate SungTongs just further categorizesyourself as a close-minded review-er. And isn’t it f-ing, not effing?

Alee PeoplesChicago

CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 18, 2005 | SECTION ONE 23