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Chicago Punk Rock Journalist Dan Sinker Revealed as @MayorEmanuel Author

Psychedelic candy corn. Hallucinogenic baby food. A mustachioed, singing duck with a penchant for the Beastie Boys. The multiverse, containing an infinite number of Chicagos. A trans-dimensional time portal inside City Hall. Celery Salt. A beat-up Honda Civic with poor man’s air conditioning. Journey. A giant champagne slide. A gin jacuzzi. (Whiskey wasn’t available.) And […]

Psychedelic candy corn. Hallucinogenic baby food. A mustachioed, singing duck with a penchant for the Beastie Boys. The multiverse, containing an infinite number of Chicagos. A trans-dimensional time portal inside City Hall. Celery Salt. A beat-up Honda Civic with poor man's air conditioning. Journey. A giant champagne slide. A gin jacuzzi. (Whiskey wasn't available.) And an uncountable number of cold beers and F-bombs.

Every so often, a work of art is created that is so new, so utterly at home in its medium, that you realize that you've just witnessed a genuine cultural event.

Such is the case with the saga of @MayorEmanuel, the brilliant -- and completely fictional -- Twitter account that led thousands of followers on a psychedelic, months-long journey through a parallel Chicago filled with rich allusions to the city, as well innumerable other pieces of culture, both high and low.

At once profane, lyrical and heartfelt, @MayorEmanuel amounted to a hypergranular dive into the culture and history of Chicago. What emerged in the end was something like a months-long love letter to the city combined with a rage-filled jeremiad against, well, everyone who is not down with Rahm Emanuel, the former White-House-chief-of-staff-cum-Chicago-Mayor and member of the Emanuel power troika. (His brother Ari, the well-known Hollywood agent, features prominently in the Twitter stream. The third brother, Zeke, is a very prominent physician.)

Without a doubt, @MayorEmanuel is the greatest satirical Twitter account in the microblogging service's short history. But it's something much more than that, as well. Clocking in at nearly 2000 tweets -- or something shy of 30,000 words, @MayorEmanuel is the first, truly great piece of literature to be produced using this micromedium that's rapidly transforming communication in the digital age.

Here's an archive of @MayorEmanuel in chronological order, beginning with the epochal first Tweet: "fuck you right in your fucking face-hole." And here's a reverse-chronological order archive of the stream (.pdf), which concludes with the immortal line: "And now all I can hear is that music, and suddenly everything just fucking..."

What occurs between those lines cannot be adequately described in a short blog post. Therefore I encourage everyone to check out those links, and read the stream, when they get a few minutes.

So who is the mind behind @MayorEmanuel? Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, and former Wired.com staff writer, has the scoop.

Why, it's none other than Chicago punk rock journalist (and journalism professor) Dan Sinker, the man who founded Punk Planet in 1994, and a veteran of leftist politics. (He once interviewed Noam Chomsky and the founder of the Ruckus Society, Madrigal points out.)

In addition to reading the stream, I'd encourage people to read Tim Carmody's excellent SnarkMarket post on the subject, and of course, Madrigal's scoop revealing Sinker, which provides some great literary and philosophical context.

I was going to post some of my favorite @MayorEmanuel tweets, but really, the list would be too long to display here. So, I'll just post what Madrigal reports is Sinker's favorite moment. (The tweets have been combined.) And when you read the stream, you'll understand why. I don't want to spoil the climax, but it involves a moment between @MayorEmanuel and "Richard M. Daley," a character based on the outgoing mayor of Chicago who, along with his father Richard J. Daley, ruled the city for a combined 40 years.

And Daley's gesturing for me to follow him, and suddenly we're out a window and heading up a motherfucking fire escape. We're on the roof of City Hall. The wind is fucking strong and the snow stings when it hits my face. Daley heads into a glass dome. It's so warm and beautiful in the dome--green everywhere--and the air is pungent with the smell of... is that fucking celery? Daley fucking plucks a stalk. "Care for these. Let flowers bloom. Dry them. Harvest the seeds. Grind them. Mix with salt." He hands me a small pinch of powder and the sharp taste of celery salt crosses my lips. "Our legacy," he says, and points to the stalks.

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