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May 31, 2007

The [Thursday] Papers

The Tribune calls it "A $100 Million Mystery" atop its front page today: A graduate of the University of Chicago has donated $100 million to the school "to eliminate student loans for hundreds of undergraduates," the paper reports.

The donor has asked to remain anonymous. Various news reports call the gift the largest ever to a university in Illinois.

"The cash gift . . . will provide full scholarships each year for about 800 students whose family incomes are less than $60,000," the Tribune account says. "Another 400 of the college's 4,400 undergraduates, whose family incomes are less than $75,000, will have roughly half their loans replaced with grants."

Facts On The Ground
This sounds fantastic:

"Chicago's public housing high rises were internationally infamous. Now they are almost all gone. Where did the residents go? What are the consequences of the demolition for Chicago and beyond? Explore these issues with We The People Media, publishers of Residents' Journal, a national award-winning news magazine written by low-income people.

"Sign up today for a We The People Media Bus Tour.

"Slots are available beginning June 1, 2007. Each journey of the The Bus Tour is hosted by Residents' Journal Assistant Editor Beauty Turner, a former resident of the Robert Taylor Homes, in its day the largest public housing development in the world. Beauty will take you to historic sites around the city, provide you with data and details about low-income families in Chicago, and introduce you to former tenants of public housing as well as families who live in the mixed-income communities which replaced the high-rises.

"Learn from the experts about the communities in which they live. At the end of the tour, Beauty will bring you to the Ghetto - Greatest History Ever Told - Gallery, which holds a unique display of photos, memories and artifacts. Schedule Your Tour Today!

"Contact Ms. Beauty Turner Call: (312) 745-2686 or write: beauty@wethepeoplemedia.org."

Betting Your Life
"I wish lawmakers would quit taking the easy way out and actually restructure the state's tax system," the Daily Southtown's Kristen McQueary writes this morning.

"I wish you, taxpayers and constituents, would give elected officials the cover to approve a moderate tax increase without running to the ballot box.

"Because if you think expanded gambling isn't going to impact your life or raise your taxes through more crime, more addiction, more foreclosures and higher interest rates, you're wrong.

"If you think the education of kids in Harvey or Dixmoor doesn't impact you, you're wrong.

"If you think you can just keep moving west to new subdivisions with rising property tax bills to escape faltering public schools, you're wrong.

"Illinois doesn't need more gambling. It needs elected officials who will listen to their conscience and voters who will keep them around."

Character Test I
"Imagine that the top presidential candidates are all at an airport, trying to get on a flight. There is one seat left on the plane, and there are six people ahead of them in line. What does each of the candidates do?"

Suggestions welcome for Illinois public figures.

Character Test II
"The Illinois House signed off on $150 million in school construction dollars late Wednesday, money intended to once and for fulfill the state's commitment to nearly two dozen school districts that were promised state building aid nearly six years ago but never received it because the state ran out of cash," the Daily Herald's John Patterson reports.

"However, as is often the case in Illinois government, there's a catch.

"The school construction money is part of a plan that also includes bigger paychecks for state lawmakers, among other goodies."

Bullpen Blues
Greg Couch explains how the Sox and Cubs took different approaches to their bullpens - and how both got it wrong.

Upside Down
Cubs fans like to say that despite their team's woes they are still just six games out of first place. They neglect to mention that they are just 2 1/2 games out of last place.

Brendan Natarus
What is Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) waiting for?

If the suspicion that he's going to allow the demolition of the Lake Shore Athletic Club, whose first floor has been boarded up and is rimmed with scaffolding, couldn't be "further from the truth," (third item) he might want to let us know.

The Reader's Ben Joravsky is the latest to be rebuffed by Reilly. Perhaps if Joravsky would have pretended that he was Rich Miller, who is a friend of Reilly's, he would have had his phone calls returned.

As Joravsky notes, Preservation Chicago has scheduled a rally for 1 p.m. this Sunday at 850 N. Lake Shore Drive.

Juvy
Would you put your child under the care of Todd Stroger's administration?

Dealt Out
Country Club Hills is the biggest loser in Emil Jones's latest casino shenanigans, says the Daily Southtown's Phil Kadner.

Downsizing Defender
The paper might become a weekly.

Thriller
The Internet is a Bounty of Goodness.

I-Man
Lee Iacocca really takes it to George W. Bush - and says you're not a patriot if you're not outraged.

Mighty Ducks
In case you missed it, there is a Stanley Cup Final underway. Our preview not looking so bad.

Rating Rod
Well, maybe Blago is the second-worst governor in the nation.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Looking for leaders.

Posted by Lou at 08:32 AM | Permalink

T-Ball Journal: No Cheering, Coach

Whatever you do, don't cheer. The kid has two strikes on him with two outs and runners on second and third. We are clinging to a small lead and if he strikes out, we have a real good chance to turn that lead into a win, our first of the season. But nobody is truly happy when coaches strike out the kids on their teams at this level. It is so much better when they hit it and we make a play on defense. So coach, don't cheer. In fact, don't move a muscle as the umpire cries out "Strike three!" But don't be too tough on yourself for feeling so relieved. It can't be helped.

Deciding just how much your T-Ball/coach-pitch team plays to win is one of the biggest challenges facing a coach at this level. It infuses every part of my son Noah's junior division games. Of course I'm not trying to win at all costs (Congratulations coach, your team just won the T-Ball championship! Thank you, thank you very much. I'm so pleased to accept this honor because it so clearly validates my entire life . . . I'd like to thank the grounds crews, the umpires, the bottled water distributors . . . ). But the "Can't we all just rise above this petty competition stuff?" approach doesn't work either.

There was a team in our league last year whose coach's daughter was a real good player. At the draft (before the season the coaches get together to form up teams - at our level teams usually pick a few friends of the coaches' kids and then use rankings to try to make sure all the squads are reasonably competitive), her team took as many girls as it could. But that meant taking kids from well down in the rankings with early picks. I'm sure there was a lot of fun female fellowship going on but the team lost all but one of its first 13 games.

When we played them late in the season, more than a half-dozen team members had simply stopped showing up. And when it came time for our game to start they only had seven kids (out of 16 on the roster). Five minutes later we could have called it a forfeit, but didn't (how can you not take the win right there coach? You could have improved your playoff seeding!). Ten more minutes later one more kid showed up to give the team the minimum. It didn't take long for us to build a double-digit lead and we eventually finished off a less-than-satisfying win.

One thing a coach has to be real careful about at this level, and even more so in my daughter's T-Ball division, is that with some kids it doesn't take much to prompt them to bow out completely. Alana's coach talked recently about a kid who struck out early in the first game last year and just like that "we lost him. I pleaded with his parents not to let him quit, but he was gone."

The "how much do I care about winning" questions begin before the game. Should I use my favorite method of lineup creation, the one in which "the players who get here first bat first?" Or should I have a set lineup going in, with my best hitters always batting first, second and third? I don't do that in part because last year we always had a couple kids who surprised me by not showing up, despite my begging and pleading with parents to give me a heads up if they weren't going to make it. And of course because a pre-game lineup requires just a bit more pre-game organization. Have I mentioned that isn't my strong suit?

Usually my lineups are mostly based on order of pre-game arrival. I made exceptions last year to try to spread out my weaker hitters but this year we have more hitting parity throughout our roster. And the kids are aware enough of the rule this year that some are running from their cars to the diamond before games to try to move up a spot.

Before our third game, which eventually became our second loss to go with a tie, I noticed the opposing coach walking away from his bench with one of his players. This coach was seriously organized - enough to have his lineup posted on an erasable clipboard hanging above where the bats were stored. As he went he was explaining, in a very serious way, "I decided to drop you down two spots in the lineup and I just wanted to tell you why . . . " to a seven-year-old . . . I hate to second-guess another coach but my feeling is that sort of move doesn't quite require a heart-to-heart chat.

At that point I realized that coach was probably tilting a bit more toward the "win at all costs" model. I probably should have figured that out earlier, especially after Noah and I arrived a full half hour before game time and his team, the Cubs, already had eight guys there taking precision infield practice. And then there was the contest's aftermath, when I walked by their bench after talking to my team, giving my son enough time to wolf down two snacks, gathering my dust-drenched equipment and picking up trash, and the Cubs were still sitting there, listening to their coach's post-game analysis.

Then again, the game with the Cubs was more fun than our most recent outing, which actually resulted in our second victory (we went into the Memorial Day break with a 2-2-1 record). We had recorded our first win a day earlier in a competitive contest in which we built up a lead during the T-Ball innings, scored a few runs during coach-pitch and hung on. It was a real nice result and it was a relief - we were off the schneid.

The most recent game was against the Giants, a team we knew a little about going in. A friend of ours' twin daughters play for the Giants and when we talked to her she readily acknowledged the squad was struggling. My son heard her say this and when we arrived at the game and I reminded him who we were playing he immediately said "We're going to win." I admonished him not to jinx us and he responded "Dad, there's no such thing as jinxes." I told him not to be overconfident and let it go at that. It occurred to me that the concept of a jinx is not easily defended, even if they so clearly exist.

The game began and sure enough, the Giants struggled. We took an early lead due in part to aggressive base-running. Sometimes in these games the best base-running policy is to just keep going, trying to egg the other team into making bad throws. And a couple of the Dodgers employed it to great effect during the first few innings. Yet another conundrum by the way: should you stop your players from doing that and avoid embarrassing the other team? Or does doing so corrupt the game? And while I'm at it, there is the question of who plays which position when? The Giants switched their kids around every inning after the third, letting whoever wanted to play pitcher play there. It probably cost them a few runs but was that the best way to do it? I always tell our kids that I'm trying to put them in the positions where they have the best chance to succeed but clearly that is at least a little bit of a cop out.

The game took forever to finish, what with the Giant coaches seeming to make up the defense as they went along the last several innings. The sun had gone down and their coach pitcher was still having his kids take a half-dozen practice swings every at-bat.

In the end the competitive questions continued to nag, as did the fact that my pitching had been sub-par, resulting in one of my better players striking out twice (Doh!) and others not getting enough good pitches to hit. Do kids have more fun when they play the positions they want to play, even if they then struggle to make plays at those positions?

My friend, the mother of the twins, had noted that after an earlier game the Giants had lost, "they thought they won and we weren't arguing." So did an actual win matter? It would have if any of the Giants had tried to tell the Dodgers they had won this one. In my experience any efforts to downplay the actual score have always been defeated by players insisting (my man Noah in particular) on knowing what the numbers truly are. You can fudge the goal totals in soccer a bit but in baseball it is all right there in the scorebook. So many questions . . . .but hey, I'm sure we'll figure it all out by the end of the season. On the other hand something tells me a few more questions will probably come up.

*

Jim Coffman's daughter is in her first season of T-Ball. Her older brother is in his last year in the Junior Division. Coffman is chronicling his travails as coach of his son's team and observer of his daughter's initial foray into this slice of Americana.

Posted by Lou at 05:56 AM | Permalink

May 30, 2007

Reviewing the Reviews

May 26-27.

Publication: Tribune

Cover: Sara Peretsky sits on a table, for a review by Samuel G. Freedman of her latest, Writing in an Age of Silence. Didn't read the review.

Other News and Reviews of Note: The Sun Farmer: The Story of a Shocking Accident, a Medical Miracle, and a Family's Life-and-Death Decision. The Tribune headline: "What Price Life? This tale of injured Illinois farmer raises questions about science and ethics." Between that and the exceedingly long book title, I sense I'm being given a really hard sell about a book that doesn't live up to its billing.

Also: Former Tribune investigative reporter William Gaines reviews Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life. Interestingly, Gaines says Gup's book is "a frontal attack on secrecy" but that "Something is amiss. Journalism is supposed to be fair, and Nation of Secrets is instead a one-sided diatribe."

And: "Literary Editor" Elizabeth Taylor interviews Ald. Ed Burke (14th) and Thomas J. O'Gorman, authors of End of Watch, which reconstructs every Chicago police officer ever killed in the line of duty. This sort of exercise of a book makes me squeamish, like opportunistic enforced patriotism and nationalistic myth-making. I'm also not comfortable with interviews of political subjects on topics of their own self-interest who are otherwise generally unavailable to news reporters with tough questions at-hand. Fuck Ed Burke.

Finally: The Trib's Steve Mills serves up the second review I've seen of Kevin Davis's Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office that describes the book's real life characters as hardly being the idealistic people's lawyers we might hope and presume work in that unit. "Indeed," Mills writes, "the book sends a signal that many readers will find troubling: that defense lawyers simply want to win - rather than vigorously challenge the state's evidence and protect their client's rights - even when the evidence is overwhelming that their client is guilty." Public defender Marijane Placek is the book's main protaganist.

*

Publication: Sun-Times

Cover: Somewhat nonsensical but not entirely aesthetically unappealing art to decorate the pairing of reviews of two books about the rich: Robert Frank's Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and The Lives of the New Rich; and Frances Kiernan's The Last Mrs. Astor.

Scott Jacobs, a Bucktown writer who, we are told, summers in Highland Park, does a nice job with Frank's book, including nuggets such as:

"Being rich is not as easy as you may think. When you have mansions in Chicago and Palm Beach, a yacht in St. Marten and a ranch in Montana, just getting from one to the next on your private jet requires a fair amount of scheduling.

"To be certain they are the residences of your dreams - and that you have the right clothes, toiletries and other assumed comforts when you get there - you can easily maintain a staff of 100 employees.

"The first thing Frank discovered is that, when you are rich, you are not a family anymore. You are a small business."

-

I didn't read Lisa Lenoir's review of the Astor book; no reason other than disinterest. It doesn't appear to be available online.

Other News and Reviews of Note: The S-T also reviews The Sun Farmer.

Also: The rest of the S-T's reviews are more intriguing than what the Trib offers up this week: The Other Woman, a collection of 21 true stories; The Entitled, by Frank Deford; Presence, by Arthur Miller; Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje; and an interview with Marco Pierre White, author of The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef.

*

Publication: The New York Times

Cover: An arresting piece of art based on the iconic 9/11 photo of the man falling from the World Trade Center, with the body now a smudge. For a Frank Rich review of Don DeLillo's Falling Man. Didn't read it; grew weary of Rich a long time ago, and from what I've read elsewhere, this isn't a particularly transcendent work.

Other News and Reviews of Note: The Times also reviews Devil in the Kitchen; Steven Pinker likes Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science.

Also:

- The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co., under the headline "Bankers Behaving Badly." By William D. Cohan.

Pull Quote: "For more than a century, Lazard Freres engendered awe among Wall Street insiders; not anymore." Reviewed by Richard Parker.

- The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War. By Dan Gilgoff.

Pull Quote: "Dobson conferred with Karl Rove about a Supreme Court nomination; he received a thank-you note from Samuel Alito." Reviewed by Jacob Heilbrunn.

- The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. By Ali Allawi.

Pull Quote: "Who are Iraqi's leaders? They are warlords living in compounds walled off from the rest of the country." Reviewed by Edward Wong.

- Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. By Nancy Isenberg.

Pull Quote: "The Burr you know is the bad boy of the early Republic. The one Isenberg knows is witty, wise and sexy." Reviewed by Jill Lepore.

Charts: Subjects of the top three best-selling non-fiction books.

1. Einstein.
2. George Tenet.
3. Chef Paula Deen.

God slips to No. 4.

Posted by Lou at 01:29 PM | Permalink

The [Wednesday] Papers

The provision in the gambling expansion bill now before the General Assembly that would reimburse a star-studded cast of political insiders for their lost investment in the failed Emerald Casino has been removed, and the excessive cash the legislation would deliver to Chicago State University has been trimmed back. But this is a bill that keeps on giving. Call it an Emil Jones Special.

Carol Marin writes this morning that "The proposed legislation provides for four new casino licenses, one of which would be for the south suburbs, specifically designated to be within 'eight miles from the Indiana border.'"

You don't need to consult Mapquest to figure it out. As Marin notes, the town of Dolton, ruled over by the notorious Shaw brothers, fits the bill.

"And the Shaws still have powerful friends in high places, not the least of whom is Senate President Emil Jones, an ardent fan of gaming, a 30-year friend of the twins, and a ferocious supporter of a south suburban casino location," Marin writes.

"There is plenty of concern down in Springfield that the Brothers Shaw might be holding a fistful of aces on this deal."

State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) confronted Jones, Marin reports.

"Jones told him, 'This would not be a Dolton boat.' Was that assurance enough for Meeks that a riverboat is not going to Dolton? 'I am not convinced it's not,' was the senator's grim response."

Ebert's Bad Review
John Kass weighs in on the casino legislation from Hapless Taxpayer World, focusing on the now-disappeared Emerald investor bailout.

"Another investor is Chaz Ebert," Kass writes, "wife of the renowned Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert. I wanted to feel sorry for her too. Then one day, after one of my columns ran on another bailout attempt, she called to complain about my tone, while she was en route to the French Riviera."

Party Pattern
Funny how state and national Democrats could hardly have been given a better opportunity to lead following the George Ryan Era here in Illinois and the historically failed Bush Administration in Washington, and in both cases they have fumbled it away.

Kucinich-Paul is looking better all the time.

Corporate Ruling Party
"The four-figure checks taxied into Rep. Jerry Costello's campaign account in the final weeks of the 2006 congressional elections: $5,000 from American Airlines, $3,000 from United, $1,000 each from Delta, Southwest and a trade group for private jet ownership. Together, they could have funded a few television commercials and helped in a tight race," the Tribune reports.

"Too bad Costello was running unopposed."

ObamaCare
Barack Obama released his health care plan on Tuesday and its hardly an exercise in transcendence.

"The presidential candidate and Illinois Democrat placed himself in the center of his party's mainstream with a plan that relies heavily on the promise of cost savings through a big investment in technology," the Tribune reports.

Um, technology to come up with a better plan?

"He's talking about something that takes the existing system and makes it work," a Harvard professor of health policy told the Tribune.

On what planet?

"Like Edwards, Obama would preserve the current employer-based health insurance system and so reduce the risk of stirring opposition from those who are satisfied with their health coverage," the Tribune says.

Like senators and their major benefactors.

"The financing of Obama's plan depends heavily on often-elusive cost savings, which he said would result in the average family saving $2,500 a year in insurance premiums," the Tribune reports.

Problem solved.

Charlestown Chief
Sun-Times sports columnist Greg Couch has lunch with Steve Carlson of Slap Shot fame - "You know, the guy who beat up the Coke machine because the ''[expletive] machine took my quarter," Couch writes.

Be a Patriot
Smoke the weasel out.

O'Hare Syndrome
"Canadian National Railway Co. chief executive Hunter Harrison voiced frustration over the congestion his freight trains have been experiencing in Chicago, saying he did not see things improving at North America's largest rail interchange hub any time soon," the Financial Post reports.

"The outspoken Tennessee born chief executive said moving goods from the south side of Chicago to the north side sometimes takes as long as it would to move them to Winnipeg, while speaking to a group of analysts in Toronto yesterday."

Product Placement of the Day
A new restaurant in Darien!

PR Arms
It's no coincidence that when NBC Nightly News broadcasts from Chicago on Thursday the show will include a profile of Michelle Obama. The campaign has been spoon-feeding Michelle Obama profiles nationwide as part of its media strategy. Even the most vaunted of media outlets happily go along; seeing as how they have no strategy of their own, they're thrilled to have one provided for them.

25 Strikes and You're Out
Why is this man still driving?

Dumb Cubs
Both the Sun-Times and Tribune take up the continued stupidity of the Cubs today without getting to real issue: The fact that general manager Jim Hendry has made a habit of acquiring players lacking in baseball smarts (not to mention fielding skills).

Michael Barrett, Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, Jacques Jones, Matt Murton, Cesar Izturis, Mark DeRosa . . . these guys and those before them didn't come out of the Cubs crappy farm system - a problem in its own right - but were brought in by Hendry.

And after an off-season spending spree, what does it say when manager Lou Piniella says of using a set lineup every day, "I don't think we have that type of situation"?

It says Hendry spent $300 million and still didn't give his manager a starting lineup.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Scouts?

Posted by Lou at 08:04 AM | Permalink

Day in the Life: Downtown Chicago

I don't get downtown much, but I was downtown recently and had some time to really take in my surroundings. A few observations.

1. You know those those big electronic street kiosks with ads that keep changing? Every time I passed one along my route between the Randolph Street Metra station and my first destination at Monroe and LaSalle, Tea Leoni kept popping up in the same ad for Di Modolo jewelry. It was like those eyes kept following me, kind of like that 3D picture of crucified Jesus in Born In East LA. If I was paranoid, I'd have thought maybe the Chicago Police Department was using her ads for streetside surveillance work.

2. A window in the Tribune Tower has a moon rock brought back by the astronauts from the Apollo-whatever mission in 1971. It looks like lava from Hawaii, but still, how fucking cool is that?

3. I'm almost tempted to say the bicycle art along Michigan Avenue sucks. I know: Why don't we scour the suburbs on trash day for a boatload of rusty old bikes, do some wacky things like weld a few frames to each other, put the handlebars on backwards, paint them Day-Glo colors, stick them in the middle of some tulip gardens next to the curb, and call it civic art? I've seen collisions between two bike messengers that were more inspiring.

Every single one of whoever made these artifacts missed the boat by making them civic art instead of putting them all in the middle of Atlas Galleries on North Michigan Avenue and charging $42,000 a pop. I don't know - maybe the hunger from being starving artists makes you not think straight or something.

4. Speaking of Atlas Galleries and things inspired, if the funky-coyote art of Markus Pierson in the north window doesn't make you even the teeniest bit amused, you need to march your cynical-ass life out to Michigan Avenue and push it in front of the first speeding cab you see so you can get a new one.

5. There are a lot of crummy places to work in the city. Take your pick. My leading candidate is the Garrett Popcorn store. I passed two of these places and instead of thinking, "Hey, that's some great-smellin' popcorn, I think I'll get me some," I ended up pondering whether it might be possible to develop contact-high diabetes. I'm not sure which would be worse, working at Garrett's and overdosing on the sickly, overwhelming aroma of caramel all day, or working at a notions shop and overdosing on the sickly, overwhelming aroma of potpourri all day.

6.Seen one escalator, seen 'em all. But when was the last time you saw how one works? Maybe I'm just easily fascinated, but I thought the uncovered, moving innards of the escalator between the first and second floors of the Crate & Barrel on North Michigan Avenue was pretty neat. There didn't appear to be any escalator repairman-looking people working on it and none of the other escalators had their innards exposed, but the thing was moving, so I wasn't sure whether it was in the middle of regular maintenance or the Crate & Barrel folks just thought it might be a nice touch for customers to be able to see escalator guts.

Mundane stuff like that may not fascinate many adults other than me, but if you have an 8-year-old kid in tow, seeing moving escalator innards might be one of the higher points of his day. Because I guarantee that any 8-year-old getting dragged around the Magnificent Mile isn't in it for the entertainment. Only problem is, you'd have to ride the floors all day to get more than one passing glance at moving escalator guts. Even I'm not easily-fascinated enough to do that.

7. Along with stuff like bricks from Hans Christan Andersen's house and the house in Holland where the pilgrims gathered to pray before sailing over on the Mayflower, the Tribune building has a bent ribbon of steel from one of the World Trade Center towers stuck into its wall on the Pioneer Court side. I'm not much on patriotic symbolism, but I kept thinking of the parallel of this ribbon of metal to The Wall in Washington, D.C., in that you didn't have to actually be there to be able to appreciate the gravity of either one afterward.

8. My job makes me design the endless river of boring-ass institutional marketing shit banks insist on putting out. Which means I find myself wishing several times a week that someone would just put a gun to the back of my head and pull the trigger. That's why I'd love to buy whoever came up with Washington Mutual's "Free Range Checkin" window banners (the photos of baby chickens pull it together: checkin', chicken, get it?) in the the 230 West Monroe building a drink or three, because creativity and wit like that doesn't get rewarded enough.

9. My train was about to leave, so I didn't have any time to catch the name of the flute-playing musician at the entrance to the Randolph Street Metra station at 12:30 p.m. But this guy deserves a whole pile of spare change for putting out some totally bitchin' jazz instead of being some guitar-playing rummy doing off-key Hank Williams at the bottom of the stairway.

*

Share your Day in the Life, be it People, Place or Thing.

*

Photos: 1. leonionline.com | 2. Chad Kerychuk | 3. Eric Pancer | 4. Atlas Galleries | 5. JellyBeanJill13 | 6. Paul Fontana | 7. Chad Kerychuk | 8. Janet Dong | 9. Beachwood Reporter file photo.

Posted by Lou at 12:50 AM | Permalink

TV Plot Keywords Vol. I

According to IMDB.com.

1. M*A*S*H
Army Nurse | Clairvoyant | Ignorance | Alcoholic | Immaturity | Alcoholism | Strait Jacket | Satire | Surgery | 1950s | Anti War | Army Life

2. One Life to Live
Soap | Sex | Multiple Personality | Borderline | Personality Disorder | Human Relationship | Interracial Relationship

3. MacGyver
Science | Spy | Gilligans Island Character Similarity | Improvisation | Espionage | Hero

4. The Price is Right
Shopping | Non Fiction

5. WKRP in Cincinnati
Workplace | Radio | Sitcom | Cincinnati Ohio | Disc Jockey | Radio Broadcasting | Radio Station | Radio DJ | Radio Personality | Radio Reporter | Rock 'n Roll | Rock And Roll | Secretary

6. Chicago Hope
Surgery | Neurotic | Chicago Illinois | Doctor | Eccentric | Black Comedy | Gambling Addiction | Hospital | Surreal | Medical | Brain Surgery | AIDS | Heart | Leech | Medical Research | Revival | Tracheotomy

7. The 700 Club
Christian | Prayer | Christianity | Fundamentalism | Religion | Conservative | Evangelical Christianity | Antichrist | Republican | Televangelist | Fundamentalist Religion | Money

8. The Rockford Files
Sting Operation | Malibu | Detective | Hollywood Sign | James Rockford | Private Detective | Famous Opening Theme | Camaro | Ex Convict | Father Son Relationship | Los Angeles California | Police | Trailer Home | Cult TV | Cult Favorite | Answering Machine | Different Gags During Credits

9. Soap
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder | Shell Shock | Ventriloquist And Dummy | Homosexual | Mafia | Spoof | Possession | Ventriloquist | Alien Abduction | Cult Comedy | Cult Favorite | Cult TV | Gay Slur | Gay Stereotype | Soap Opera | Connecticut | Soap Opera Spoof | Gay Son

10. Family Guy
Irish American | Theme Song | Famous Opening Theme | Male Nudity | Dog Driving Car | British Tourist | Obese | Animal That Acts Human | Father Son Relationship | Homicidal Baby | Obesity | Spoof | Politically Incorrect | Sex | Talking Animal | Baby | Dog | Father Daughter Relationship | Surreal | Ignorance | Stupidity | Vulgarity | Cartoon | Talking Dog | Depiction of God | Rhode Island | Small Town | Talking Baby | Boy | Girl | Kid | Unaired Pilot | Sitcom | Cult Favorite | Matricide | Golf | Adult Humor | Controversial | Evil Child | Dysfunctional Family

Posted by Lou at 12:28 AM | Permalink

May 29, 2007

The [Tuesday] Papers

State legislators, public interest groups, and reporters ought to read the 218-page gambling expansion bill now before the General Assembly - and supported by the governor - awfully closely, because state senate president Emil Jones is at it again.

The Sun-Times reports this morning that "tucked within" the bill is a $32.8 million bailout of the female and minority insider investors in the failed Emerald Casino.

Apparently the politically connected - including Chaz Ebert, Connie Payton, and former Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle - expect to be granted risk-free investment opportunities when the fix is in, even if the fix goes kerflooey.

"Jones (D-Chicago) is believed the driving force behind the language protecting Emerald investors," the Sun-Times account says.

This on top of last week's report that the bill was also a bonanza for Chicago State University, one of Emil Jones's favorite pork bellies.

"Republicans attacked the proposal, in part, because it would divert 2 percent of revenues from the four casinos to Chicago State University, potentially handing the school a $40 million windfall that would double its take from the state," the Sun-Times reported.

"The university has been a Jones favorite. He has steered state funds to the university when other colleges faced deep cuts, and Chicago State has named a building after Jones and given him an honorary degree.

"This week, the university was hammered by Auditor General William Holland for misspending funds, including on a pair of 'leadership seminars' its president attended on cruise ships in the Caribbean and Mediterranean.

"In committee, Jones initially said Chicago State wasn't in the legislation. But the GOP pointed out the specific language in the 218-page bill that would assure the university a multimillion-dollar windfall, prompting Jones to quietly tell a dissatisfied and surprised Senate Democratic colleague that the bill could be amended."

So who is the fabricator now?

*

Meanwhile, Rod Blagojevich's total lack of effective leadership has consigned the state to yet another year in which education, health care, and mass transit will remain unaddressed in any significant way and House Speaker Mike Madigan is content to sit back and protect his fiefdom.

Welcome to Illinois, where governing is child's play.

Gucci Governor
"When Gov. Rod Blagojevich's proposal for a new $7 billion business tax crashed in the legislature, he railed against the influence of high-powered, arm-twisting lobbyists who 'eat fancy steaks' and 'shuffle around in Gucci loafers,'" the Tribune reports.

"But the cadre of influence-peddling lobbyists at the Statehouse includes some of Blagojevich's closest political allies, including chiefs of staff during his tenure as governor and congressman, the current and former chairmen of his now-subpoenaed campaign fund, a campaign spokesman and one of his top fundraisers."

Piniella's Pen
Like Don Baylor and Dusty Baker before him, the Cubs' roster limitations are bringing out the worst instincts in our fair manager.

We have a few suggestions.

Train Pain
"While Loop stations were being beautified for the benefit of tourists, the overall infrastructure of the CTA rail lines deterioriated and commuters shared the pain of service cuts, interruptions and derailments," Avery S. Buffa of Chicago writes today to the Tribune, which is calling on riders to "share the pain" of additional fare hikes.

Avery goes on to blame the mayor.

Dumb and Rich
More millionaires live in Cook County than any other county in the country except one. Paige Wiser has a few questions for them, including "What are you still doing here?"

Parking Posse
I found it hard to be outraged about the city's top parking ticket scofflaws profiled in the Sun-Times on Sunday. I'm kind of rooting for them.

Consider: "Revenue from parking has increased since at least 1999 - $77 million that year, compared with $106.3 million in 2006 - even as the number of tickets written has decreased."

I'm surprised that the number of tickets written has decreased - that doesn't sound right to me - but collecting more than $100 million to firm up the mayor's budget is nothing but a corruption tax.

What those figures confirm to me is that the fines have been increased to unreasonable levels - a lot of $50 violations that are out of whack with reality and the marketplace.

Worse, vehicles are now bootable at three violations instead of five. It's a cash cow for the city.

Let's face it, the last thing the mayor wants is a violation-free city; he'd have to pare back a few contracts to his buddies in order to balance the budget.

Campaign Coincidence
I've lived in the First Ward far beyond the tenure of Manny Flores so I can report first-hand that there's been a noticeable uptick in the amount of literature hitting our mailboxes here from the alderman's office.

Can it just be coincidence that, after years of paltry communications and low-visibility, the alderman is getting in touch with his constituents just as he embarks on a congressional campaign?

The latest was a postcard announcing that new light poles are coming with 250-watt fixtures and 50-watt ornamental "piggyback" features.

You know what? Our light poles are fine. Spend the money on the schools or the CTA.

This on top of new gadgets that will signal via red or green light if street sweeping has taken place and it's safe to park your car again.

"One of the biggest complaints we hear related to street sweeping is from residents who avoid parking for the duration of posted street sweeping parking restrictions because they don't know whether the sweeper has come by yet and they don't want to risk a ticket."

I'd have to say that's, um, bullshit.

Once a month, city workers used to tie orange signs around trees a day or two in advance to signal that street sweeping was about to commence and parking was prohibited on this side or that side of the street.

Residents could clearly tell when the sweeper had already been by and would often go ahead and re-park on the prohibited side. It was never a problem.

Now most of the ward is coping with permanent signs about monthly street sweeping dates - signs that blend into the visual clutter and, due to their permanence, became forgettable. This is what I hear the biggest complaints about.

While residents have made some adjustments, for at least the first few months pretty much every car on every block on the streets in my neighborhood was getting ticketed - at $50 a crack. The number of residents still getting ticketed seems to my eye to be more than what it used to be. And for what?

The old system worked; the new one doesn't. That's what residents - including myself - complained about. All I got was a snotty e-mail reply about how the alderman would prefer city workers to actually be working instead of posting street sweeping signs once a month.

I thought that was working. Somebody's got to do it.

I wonder how much money has been spent on this new system - and why the police couldn't just agree to not ticket anyone after the sweeper has been by. Though that's never really been a problem.

But then, reducing tickets isn't the goal. Apparently it's up to us to, as Avery Buffa points out, "share the pain."

I just wish we could share it with Emil Jones and Manny Flores instead of with ourselves.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Come to the light.

Posted by Lou at 08:39 AM | Permalink

Cab #4856

Date Taken: 5/23/07
From: Wicker Park
To: Navy Pier

The Cab: Well-kept, clean, nondescript. A weird circular interior roof light above the fare meter. Efficient use of visors for printed materials.

The Driver: Greeted me with a silent nod. Wore stylish rectangular sunglasses. Remained calm and oblivious throughout the trip as if we didn't nearly hit a car, a school bus, and a trolley. It was only when his crappy jazz-samba Muzak ringtone rang a couple times that I realized he had been engaged in low-volume secret conversations the whole ride.

The Driving: Erratic. As noted, chock full of close calls. We almost got into a major conflaguration at the tricky Milwaukee & Wood intersection that would have likely caused at least three other drivers to exchange insurance information. Then we nearly smashed into the back of a school bus as we drew close to Navy Pier. Finally, we almost took out one of those trolleys down there, which would have been satisfying and even anticlimactic. The main issue seemed to be Driver #4856's depth perception. It was only at the end of the ride that Driver #4856 spoke, and it certainly wasn't to apologize. "Is this Graduation Day for students or something?" he said, eyeing all the teenagers at the Pier. I got out before he mowed any of them down.

Overall rating: half an extended arm.

- Steve Rhodes

*

There are more than 6,000 cabs in the city of Chicago. We intend to review every one of them.

Posted by Lou at 12:31 AM | Permalink

May 28, 2007

The Cub Factor

Lou Piniella has reached the stage of Ultimate Cubs Flummoxation in record time. It took Dusty Baker, for example, three years before he was really so beside himself that he started mumbling incoherently. Don Baylor before him got a couple years in before acquiring that thousand-yard Cubs stare. Jim Riggleman was the stalwart: He lasted five seasons and appeared to leave the job with his sanity intact.

Truth to tell, Uncle Lou came into the job already a little unbalanced. But he's gone from angry to resigned in record speed, uttering the phrase last week "What're you gunna do?" three times after yet another heartbreaking loss and getting a sympathy quote from Cliff Floyd, who assured reporters that Piniella "doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for him."

Jay Mariotti suggested one thing Piniella could do: "How about bailing while you still have your health and mind?"

The Cub Factor has some additional answers to Lou's query.

* Drive a new route to the ballpark to change your luck.

* Shave your head.

* Never use Scott Eyre in any situation in which the game is remotely on the line.

* Stop using all of your position players before the 8th inning.

* Manage one game from the bleachers.

* "Accidentally" give Jacque Jones the wrong flight number for the next road trip.

* During mound visits, discuss possible wedding gifts for soon-to-be-married teammates.

* Wait for Prior and Wood to save the season.

* Put Eyre, Bob Howry, and Will Ohman into the starting rotation so you have nowhere to go but up after the first inning.

* Throw a damn base already.

* Start making out the lineup in pen.

* Switch places with Bob Brenly.

* Call Yankee manager Joe Torre and set up new reality TV show called Manager Swap.

* Switch places with Joe Girardi.

* Blame reporters for asking the same questions after each game, like "What're you gunna do?"

* Switch places with Dusty Baker.

* Let Cliff Floyd fill out the lineup card.

* Do your homework better before taking your next job.

-

Week in Review: Because the Cubs were playing on the West Coast, you saw the Cubs win four of six if you went to sleep at a reasonable hour. If you stayed up late to see the games in their entirety, you saw the Cubs lose four of six. In their series' against the Padres and Dodgers, the Cubs lost three more one-run games. It's like the Cubs have intimacy issues; the closer you get to them, the more they fall apart.

Week in Preview: The Cubs come home for a six-game homestand with three against the Marlins and three against the Braves. So it's back from the road for some home cooking. Except it's a broken home and the food sucks.

The Second Basemen Report: DeRosa started four games at second, with Theriot handling the other two. Almost the exact opposite of the previous week. What're you gunna do? Like most Nicholas Cage movies, Uncle Lou's handling of the second base position has little rhyme or reason.

In former second basemen news, Bobby Hill played his last professional baseball season in 2005 with the Pirates. He was cut by the Padres in spring 2006. He played in 249 games in his career and had a .262 career batting avg. His whereabouts are unknown. He is missed.

Sweet and Sour Lou: 42% sweet and 58% sour. Down six points on the Sweet-O-Meter this week. Like your real aging bitter uncle, Lou doesn't like any of the birthday gifts he got this year and he's not being nice about letting you know.

Beachwood Sabermetrics: A complex algorithm performed by the The Cub Factor staff using all historical data made available by Major League Baseball has determined that the law of averages does not apply to the Cubs bullpen.

Over/Under: Total number of "boos" heard this week at Wrigley: 62,520.

The Cub Factor: Catch up with them all.

Mount Lou: Mount Lou continues to hold at yellow but be wary. Continued bullpen breakdowns are bringing molten anger to the surface. The alert system is likely to skip Orange and go straight to Red sometime Wednesday night while the Marlins are completing the sweep.

Posted by Lou at 01:04 AM | Permalink

Friday Night Beachwood

Jukebox run, 5-25-07.

1. Shining Star/Earth, Wind & Fire. So funky smooth and glide-y.

2. Scarborough Fair/Simon & Garfunkel. For some reason this song led to a debate about the name of the crime dog, determined to be McGruff. Says Beachwood Bob: "Did you play this Joe? Don't ever play it again."

3. El Condora Pasa/Simon & Garfunkel. Sparks debate about the song title. At one point I suggested it was "Ticonderoga or something." Preferred consensus: The I'd Rather Be a Hammer Than a Nail Song.

4. Last Train to Clarksville/The Monkees. CTA jokes ensue.

5. Sloop John B/The Beach Boys. We liked it better when it was Sloop John A. During this song I learned that Will Patton does the Al Gore audiobook. Will Patton kicked butt as the villain in The Postman. He was the copier clerk turned militia general.

6. Give A Little Bit/Supertramp. The orignial version, not the freakin' Goo Goo Dolls cover. You can make the tambourine sound if you have the right combination of change and keys in your pocket.

7. Lonesome Loser/Little River Band. Have you heard about the lonesome loser? Yes - whoever played this song.

8. Jah Live/Bob Marley.

9. Fat Bottomed Girls/Queen.

10. Orange Blossom Special/Johnny Cash.

11. Jolene/Dolly Parton. Apparently a true story.

12. Small Town Saturday Night/Hal Ketchum.

13. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet/BTO. Ugh.

14. Baby Come Back/Player. Wearing a mask of false bravado.

15. Give a Little Bit/Supertramp. Again, original version. Again.

- set by Joe

*

1. Australia/Kinks. Because Andrew is from Australia.

2. Smokestack Lightning/The Yardbirds.

3. Complicated/Rolling Stones.

4. Red Red Wine/UB40. Eh.

5. Shake a Pal/Stooges.

6. Let the Good Times Roll/Cars. Saw some live Cars footage recently. Has there ever been a more boring live band? Some quirky singles, but on the whole, totally overrated.

7. I Wanna Be Sedated/Ramones. After this set, yes.

8. Sex Machine/James Brown. Another song I just don't need to hear again.

9. Hey Joe/Jimi Hendrix. Already too widely available elsewhere, like Classic Rock radio.

10. Baby, You're a Rich Man/Beatles.

11. Golden Years/David Bowie. People who like the Kinks and the Stooges tend to like Bowie too.

12. Bohemian Rhapsody/Queen. Playing this in a bar is a major faux pas at this point, but there was a night a few years ago when me and Cub Factor writer Marty Gangler did all the voices and all four people in the video just right. We nailed it. The bar was floating off the earth's surface that night.

13. Radio/Elvis Costello.

14. Jailbreak/Thin Lizzy. Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town. I'm not sure where. It could be at the 7-11, or the Walgreen's, or City Hall. It might even be at the jail.

15. Back in Black/ACDC. Never. Gets. Old.

16. Welcome to the Jungle/Guns 'n Roses. I hate G 'n R, and I hate this song. It's so cloddy and thick and ham-handed. Or do I mean plodding?

17. Brown-Eyed Girl. There is so no reason to ever play this again. I'm aborting the rest of this set list.

Celebrity Note: Sideshow Bob is in the bar tonight.

- set by Andrew

*

1. Ain't Even Done With the Night/John Cougar. Possibly his best song. From before he became Mellencamp. This video doesn't do the song any favors, though.

2. And It Stoned Me/Van Morrison.

3. Welcome Back/John Sebastian. Signed, Epstein's mother.

4. Tonight's the Night/Rod Stewart.

5. She's Gone/Hall & Oates. What went wrong?

6. To Be With You/Mr. Big. Feel it tooooo!

7. You're So Vain. Don't you! Don't you! Don't you!

8. American Girl. Raised on promises.

9. The Joker/Steve Miller Band.

10. Rocky Mountain High/John Denver. I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky.

11. Only the Good Die Young/Billy Joel.

12. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around. This doesn't have to be the big get-even.

13. Shooting Star/Bad Company. Love Me Do, I think it was; from there it didn't take too long.

14. Is She Really Going Out With Him/Joe Jackson. There's something goin' wrong around here.

15. The Candy Man/Sammy Davis Jr. You can even eat the dishes.

16. Keep On Lovin' You/REO Speedwagon.

17. Drift Away/Dobie Gray.

18. Sara Smile/Hall & Oates. If you feel like leaving, you know you can go. Why don't you wait until tomorrow?

19. Lights/Journey. The White Sox ruined Don't Stop Believin'.

20. Even the Losers/Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Well, it was nearly all summer we sat on your roof/Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon/And I showed you stars you never could see/Babe, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me.

21. Friends in Low Places/Garth Brooks.

- set by Steve

*

Amiable Dunce
I just can't get past the fact that even while he was president, Ronald Reagan called Nancy "Mommie." I mean how creepy is that? He did so in writing too, according to Nicholas Lemann's account in this week's New Yorker of The Reagan Diaries. In conjunction with a dip into The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism, Lemann offers a fairly rich portrait of someone who is utterly and undeniably an inscrutable simpleton.

ALSO: New Yorker editor David Remnick's devastating piece on how the Six-Day War shaped Israel's political culture is a stiff dose of reality to those whose sympathies lie with the tiny Jewish nation, the Palestinians' horrific blunders notwithstanding.

Rudy's Republic
I have absolutely no interested in reading The New Republic's cover story about "Why The GOP's Future Belongs to Rudy" Giuliani, by former Washington Post political writer Thomas Edsall, now of The Huffington Post. Just another piece of useless punditry posing as reporting that will be forgotten by next week with its assertions never held to account.

ALSO: The magazine features a story about the guy who is taking care of our veterans because the government isn't, in another in a decades-long attempt by the magazine to prove it's not liberal, this time assuring us that it really does support the troops.

RECOMMENDED: Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago turns in a terrific and terrifying review of Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Zimbardo's argument turns on the idea that perpetrating evil is not a matter of one's predisposition to do harm, but situational response largely due to our instinct to obey authority.

One of the most famous examples of this phenomenon tested by social scientists was the shock experiment of Stanley Milgram, which caused Milgram to state that "if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."

Guilt's Goals
Soccer goalies facing penalty kicks often end up prematurely leaping in the wrong direction as a strategy to outguess the kicker. But according to Psychology Today, "A study reveals that the optimal goalkeeper strategy is to stay centered - at least until kickers switch their strategies, too. So why don't they? Unlike most situations, the researchers say, goalies feel more guilt for failure after inaction than after action."

ALSO: Words I never thought I'd see in large print in this far-too-sedate magazine: "AJ=The intern in my office whom I want to fuck." They left it off the web version of the story.

Newspaper Trade
You know things are bad in the business when the trade journal for the Society of Professional Journalists includes "Tips For Throwing a Mixer." I don't see it online here, but trust me, you're not missing anything.

Green Scene
I pretty much skipped the entire issue of last Sunday's green architecture-themed New York Times Magazine, though it was kind of interesting to see how Ed Begley Jr. lives.

The Game of Life
In last week's New Yorker, the story of Milton Bradley and his game Life was so surprisingly boring I barely got through the first page. On the other hand, Connie Bruck's profile of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is fascinating even to, I think, only the mildest political junkie.

ALSO: "Chinese universities may not have produced Great Wall specialists, but a small community of wall enthusiasts has developed outside academia. They tend to be athletic - a rare quality among the Chinese intelligentsia. And the Great Wall attracts obsessives. Doug Yaohui, a former utility-line worker, left his job in 1984 and doggedly followed wall sections on foot for thousands of miles across China."

- "Walking the Wall"

AND: It turns out God isn't that great.

Posted by Lou at 06:31 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2007

The [Thursday] Papers

Teenagers have the Tribune to thank this morning for making their lives even more miserable than they already are when it comes to overbearing adult supervision.

As a result of the paper's teen driving series, both the Illinois House and Senate have now approved legislation that "would make Illinois' licensing program among the nation's most stringent," the Sun-Times reports.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected to sign the measure into law.

Not everything in the bill is objectionable, though it hardly seems as if a Teen Driver Safety Task Force convened by Secretary of State Jesse White 10 months ago was really necessary.

Then again, White and state legislators weren't about to look a cheap political gift handed to them by the state's biggest media concern in the mouth. Not only is this apple pie legislation, but teens don't vote.

The three key provisions cited by the Tribune are the ones that are most unreasonable.

Consider:

* Driving curfews for teens under 18 will switch from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays through Thursdays, and from midnight to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

"Why?" the Tribune explains. "Research shows risk of fatal crashes for 16- and 17-year-old drivers increases after 9 p.m."

I have a feeling research also shows that the risk of fatal crashes increases for all drivers after 9 p.m., but that just begs the question: Why not start the curfew at 9 then?

Wait, what am I saying? Teen driving curfews? I hate to switch into "when I was young" mode, but when I was young growing up in suburban Minneapolis, there was no such thing. I can't imagine not being able to, say, drive my friends home from a movie that ends at 11 on a Thursday night. And other things.

* For one year, instead of six months, drivers under 18 will only be allowed one teenage passenger.

"Why?" the Tribune again explains. "Statistics show the risk of fatal crashes for 16-year-olds climbs with each additional passenger."

For the rest of us, too. But we've had our fun. I mean, Baby Boomers had their American Graffiti. Look at how much they swoon over Grease. Those are high school kids cruising. Many of them are under 18 - and out past 11 on a Friday night. Please. If you really want to eliminate risk, lock them in their rooms. But make sure they don't listen to that rock and roll while they're in there!

* The learner's permit stage will be extended from three months to nine months.

"Why? Experts say more adult-supervised driving makes for safer teens at the wheel."

Why not a year, then? Why not forever?

Sometimes I think adult legislators ought to be supervised by teens for at least a year. Adult journalists, too.

*

It's not that I'm oblivious to the tragedy of teen driving deaths - though the Tribune's own reporting shows how rare they actually are - and that there is no upward trend.

There are all sorts of things we can do to improve road safety. I'm not sure clamping down on teenagers is among the most important and effective in a world filled with drunk driving adults and in a state where unqualified truckers were put on the road in exchange for campaign contributions for years and driver's licenses were had for five bucks on the seat.

I'm always more concerned about what the adults are up to than the kids.

Listen Up!
Our very own Natasha Julius discusses Taxi Cab Journal this morning at 10 a.m. on Vocalo.org, the new radio project from Chicago Public Radio. Natasha will also read her latest cab review, in the first of a series of audio reviews we'll be putting on the air.

Where's Blago
Not really, um, around. The Daily Herald this morning went big on its front page with a story headline "Stay-At-Home Governor?," detailing the reclusiveness of Rod Blagojevich.

The portrait the paper paints is of a governor rarely in Springfield but often spotted jogging near his home in Ravenswood.

The governor is also curtailing his availability to the media, though it's not clear he's even calling his own shots anymore.

"During his most recent public appearance at a health care rally, Blagojevich asked a staff member if he should answer reporters' questions, but was told no," the DH reports.

Meanwhile, the Sun-Times today followed the Tribune's story on Wednesday about one of the continuing federal investigations surrounding the governor by asking in a headline if Blagojevich was "The Next Ryan?"

That's Todd!
If Blagojevich is The Next Ryan, Todd Stroger is Baby Ryan.

Illinois Idol
I feel a competition coming on where Illinois pols compete to best represent our culture of sleaze. Oh wait, we already have that. It's called Election Day.

Immigration Nation
Another idea.

Trump Slump
Only eight condos sold since January at his prime riverfront project that is rising from the ashes of the late, lamented Sun-Times Building.

Black's Flat
"A lawyer for Conrad Black said the former press baron spent nearly $4.6 million renovating and decorating a New York apartment where he lived just 60 days of the year," the Sun-Times reports.

Don & Con
"When Conrad Black needed someone to help fend off a group of angry shareholders in 2003, he turned to a professional: Donald Trump," the Toronto Globe and Mail reports.

Daley Dose
"The City Council will hold hearings on a special prosecutor's 'whitewash' report into alleged police torture by former Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge, thanks to a resolution co-signed Wednesday by 26 aldermen," the Sun-Times reports.

The mayor pretended not to care - but not very well.

"They can look into anything they want," he said. "It's up to them. I was not mayor or superintendent during all of that time."

No. He was the Cook County State's Attorney.

Tax Crack
"The caucus results do not bode well for the so-called tax swap proposal pushed by Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) and Rep. David Miller (D-Calumet City), which would increase the income and sales taxes in exchange for lower property taxes," the Tribune reports.

"Everyone wants to go to heaven," Miller said," but no one wants to die."

The Beachwood Tip Line: Heaven-sent.

Posted by Lou at 08:30 AM | Permalink