• A Rare 45 single by Peoria, Illinois post-garage-rock, proto-punk band, Luft Waffle, fetched a surprising record $21,000 for an obscure band at a recent specialist vinyl auction at the Bonhams global pop culture auction house in New York. It beat the record price of a previously unknown – and at that time unsigned – David Bowie & the Lower Third record [$19,000] at this auction the year before. “I Want Your Love” was recorded by the iconic Bowie and bandmates in 1965, four years prior to his first popular single, “Space Oddity.”

Luft Waffle apparently put out only one single before they broke up and disappeared from the face of the vinyl planet. “Pee-or-DiarRHEEa” b/w “Pee Instru-Mental” appeared on the super obscure Peoria Pamper Records label, a vanity label, which was named, it is said, in honor of the fact that Peoria, Illinois was once a testing site for Pampers diapers in the late 1970s.

Those who have heard the 45 describe it as a “loving diss of their hometown, Peoria.” IRS and state Chamber of Commerce records do not reveal any business ever named Peoria Pamper Records. Alas the names of the band members of Luft Waffle have long ago entered our collective amnesia. Which is too bad because the musicianship was sharp and perky and the lyrics quite charming: “Peoria I once did adore ya / But that ended when mom and dad tested Pampers on me / Sore ass, crying on mom’s knee / Peoria, you never knew I had to pee.”

Despite contacting various Illinois late-garage-rock bands from the same early- to mid-70s era such as Tamara Ecknogel, lead singer of Tamara & the Hood Winx, Jackie Cots of Jackie & the One-Eyed Jacks, and bassist George Nomane of Miss Heard as well as the musicologists at DownState Sounds and amateur researchers at 2-Car Garage, the search has thus far yielded nothing of substance. Online, the Luft Waffle rumors proliferate. Additionally, numerous names and theories are tossed around, including the conservative-leaning 1966 garage band Ice & Howard, who lamented the disappearance of Eisenhower as a conservative moral force, and Pere Ubu, the art-punk band that emerged from the Cleveland mid-70s rock scene. Pere Ubu, in several interviews, claimed the Peoria sound as essential to their development.

• The annual human Dagwood Sandwich pageant on Lincoln Park Beach features Chicagoans dressed as either a slice of bread, a tomato, luncheon meat, lettuce or cheese slice piled one on top of the other. The 46th pageant of 2019 featured heated discussions of who would get to be the coveted top slice of white bread. The pageant has been held annually since the death of Chic Young, comicstrip creator of the Blondie strip that also starred husband Dagwood who knew only how to construct these giant sandwiches. In 2019, Alice B. Walker, a 32-year-old, became the first African-American woman to serve as the top slice of “white” bread. The bottom slice of white bread is the most difficult role to play and has for the past 24 years been reserved for one volunteer, “Illinois Strongman Beefcakes Champ” Robert S. Kelly. Some in the community have pointed out within some annoyance that never before has a slice of dark rye served as the honored top slice. Parks & Recreation spokespeople have pointed out that this has less to do with the color of the bread and more to do with the odd shape of most dark rye, which makes it a poor fit for the more standard square white bread slices.

• The difference between millipedes and centipedes is not 900 legs as most assume. In all actuality, millipedes have only up to 200 pairs of legs – that’s 400, not one thousand. A centipede, meanwhile, has anywhere between 15 and 177 pairs of legs. Centipedes and millipedes do not interact, despise one another and even more strangely, are never born with the same number of legs. Just imagine if humans could have different numbers of limbs. Webcam night-vision cameras placed in an area where both centipedes and millipedes thrive – in the moist hollow of a rotting log, for example – show them attacking each other and eating the legs of their opponents. This is something humans would never stoop to because humans are smarter and guided by moral principles.

• There is a 2018 law on the books in Switzerland that allows the police to check to see whether citizens are wearing Left-Right marked socks [aka “asymmetrical fit socks”] and, if so, whether they are being worn correctly – left sock on left foot, right on right. Swiss research has shown that people wearing these L-R-marked socks on the wrong feet have a higher dysfunction frequency, more accidents, and are more likely to be involved in public space infractions such as jaywalking, littering, riding a bicycle against traffic, yelling incoherently in public, etc. Independent podiatric clinic researchers dispute these claims, calling them Unsinn, or nonsense. In 2019 alone, 22,000 pedestrians’ socks were checked and 2358 warnings and citations were handed out under a statute that controls asymmetrical sock violations. The standard national fine of 70 Swiss marks [$75] is on par with other non-victim violations of the law and has shown promise as an effective public space behavior violation deterrent.