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« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
August 31, 2007
The [Friday] Papers
I'm not sure there's ever a better place to be on the planet than in the audience when The Detroit Cobras are playing - given that mere mortals like us can't be on stage in the band.
So I absolutely and unequivocally recommend the Cobras show at the Double Door tonight.
Resources:
* On Bloodshot.
* On Wikipedia.
* Rachel Nagy and Maribel Ramirez. Ramirez is the genius behind the outfit.
* With Wilco doing Volkswagen commercials (and truth be told, a history of spotty live shows), the Cobras are the best band going.
Appetizer
Before the show you may want to head over to Tiger O'Stylies in Berwyn for a Save the Spindle fundraiser.
Mmmm, car-kebab . . .
Wi Infidelity
By Fran Spielman.
May 2006: "Chicagoans may someday be able to access the Internet no matter where they are - indoors or outdoors - thanks to a long-awaited competition launched Tuesday that could be a gold mine for taxpayers."
August 2007: "Rising costs, declining demand and increased competition from private Internet providers have prompted Chicago to shelve its ambitious plan to build an $18.5 million wireless Internet access system with a reach that extends into the city's poorest communities."
*
May 2006: "After more than a year of study that included City Council hearings, the Daley administration finally issued a 'request for proposals' that invites technology companies to describe how they would build an $18.5 million wireless Internet access system that would extend into Chicago's poorest communities."
August 2007: "EarthLink and AT&T responded to the city's so-called 'request for proposals,' or RFP, but both companies reportedly demanded that Chicago become an 'anchor tenant,' paying an annual fee to use the WiFi network to support city services."
*
May 2006: "Determined to bridge the digital divide, Mayor Daley also demanded that Chicago's private-sector partner make a 'financial commitment' to 'digital inclusion programs.' They include affordable computers and software programs and computer training aimed at the estimated 22 percent of all households that remain without a connection to the Internet and its boundless possibilities."
August 2006: "When the city refused - and insisted that the system attached to city street lights and lamp poles be built, maintained and operated at the contractor's 'sole expense' - negotiations bogged down."
*
May 2006: "Once a winner is chosen, the system is expected to take roughly 18 months to install. 'We'll be the first major city to move ahead in [bridging] this digital divide. No other city has done that in America,' Daley said."
August 2007: "Further complicating the issue was the rising cost of building the network and the declining cost of private Internet access. That made WiFi even less attractive - and less likely to attract large numbers of subscribers. Demand has been disappointing in other cities that have tried municipal WiFi."
*
May 2006: "The new system would give Chicago a sorely needed revenue stream - and carry benefits far beyond the tens of millions it would raise. Instead of racing over to Starbucks to get wireless access from your laptop or paying a monthly fee to the phone company to get it at home, the Internet would be available almost anywhere in the city."
August 2007: "The new system would have given Chicago a sorely-needed revenue stream - and carried benefits far beyond the tens of millions it would have raised. Instead of racing over to Starbucks to get wireless access from your laptop or paying a monthly fee to the phone company to get it at home, the Internet would have been available almost anywhere in the city."
False Advertising
Ad Age: News of environmental problems is making headlines every day. Is it really such a good idea to still leave the light on?
Mr. Bodett: I know you're joking, but you'd be surprised how many people have pointed this out to us. For the record, and at the risk of exposing myself as a complete fraud, we don't actually leave the light on for you. We just say that to be friendly. You have to turn it on yourself once you enter the room. There. I've said it. Hmm . . . I feel oddly peaceful, unburdened.
Education Cuts
* "Former Ohio State President Rips Culture of Rioting."
Fans rip culture of reading.
* "Research: Kids Forget Quite A Bit During 3-Month Break."
For years after, too.
* "Joke's On High Schooler Who Had Fans Spell 'We Suck.'"
"A high school student who tricked football fans from a crosstown rival into holding up signs that together spelled out, 'We Suck,' was suspended for the prank, authorities said."
Suspended?! He should be fast-tracked to the college of his choice!
Sheesh, authorities. They're ruining it for the rest of us.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Remember, it's our time.
Posted by Lou at 08:40 AM | Permalink
Chicagoetry: The Moon Wanes Over The Lagoon
THE MOON WANES OVER THE LAGOON
A large face of white glare followed me,
Like eyes in a proper painting,
Up Kedzie Avenue
along the west side
Of the park boom boom black summer night, cool blue breeze, Grand Avenue
a corridor of light like the "Time
Tunnel." I smiled, morphed a bit into James Darren.
Boom that blistered, bald Madonna
Was my spotlight.
I jogged in rhythm with the stoplights.
Boom the black oaks along the lagoon
Became a sighing Stonehenge. The moon waned
Over the lagoon (stop) . . .
and then the earth swayed
Back toward autumn. The black oaks will break out in quiet fire, then the fire
Will die
and dissolve
into the lawns
-
J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
Posted by Lou at 07:04 AM | Permalink
The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report
I've heard commentators describe the pre-season this year as "a dress rehearsal for the regular season" so many times that I thought I was watching a high school play. And then I figured it out: Even our football analysts have High School Musical 2 on the brain.
And now, so do I.
Let's do a little casting.
*
Performer: Lovie Smith
HSM2 Role: Ryan Evans
Pro: Used to dealing with drama queens.
Con: Weak improvisational skills.
*
Performer: Jerry Angelo
HSM2 Role: Sharpay Evans
Pro: Owning a prestigious country club like running a football team.
Con: High school kids more mature than pro athletes.
*
Performer: Rex Grossman
HSM2 Role: Troy Bolton
Pro: Able to pass as star athlete at this level.
Con: Playing lead love interest a stretch; even high school girls know Sexy Rexy pulls out from center too soon.
*
Performer: Devin Hester
HSM2 Role: Gabriella Montez
Pro: First in Troy's heart is true to life.
Con: Can special teams guy cut it when he's grouped with the jocks ?
-
Sugar in the Blue and Orange Kool-Aid: 80%
Recommended Sugar in the Blue and Orange Kool-Aid: 50%
-
For more Emery, see the Kool-Aid archive, and the Over/Under archive. Emery accepts comments from Bears fans reluctantly and everyone else tolerably.
Posted by Lou at 12:11 AM | Permalink
August 30, 2007
The [Thursday] Papers
And the media still doesn't get it.
*
And the media still doesn't get it.
*
And the media still doesn't get it.
*
"8 of 10 Americans Know About Blogs; Half Visit Regularly."
And the media still doesn't get it.
*
The Tribune Company has closed bureaus in Johannesburg, Moscow, London, Beijing, Beirut and Islamabad. (Washington Monthly)
Guess who doesn't get it?
*
And the mayor doesn't get it.
*
"Florence fought the Chicago Outfit in the early 1960s. And the politicians on their payroll. Not to mention big business and real estate interests that saw a huge payday in gentrifying her neighborhood. And the genteel boards of upstanding civic organizations who sympathized with powerbrokers more than ordinary citizens. In her view, they all sold out the melting pot of immigrants whose modest houses and hard lives filled the enclave that was her community by never once consulting them."
*
The poverty rate in Chicago is 21.2 percent.
One in five.
Everyone in a newsroom, take a look around. What if one in five of you lived in poverty? That's the city you cover.
Get it?
*
He's your role model, folks.
*
Sam Zell isn't. He does not get it.
"After apparent Tribune Company owner-to-be Sam Zell visited the L.A. Times a week or so ago, Publisher-for-Now David Hiller sent a memo to the paper's staff describing Zell as a '[h]igh energy straight-talking business owner' who '[b]elieves Los Angeles Times is very important and "has a great future,"' Mickey Kaus reports.
"[Kausfiles] hears Zell was rather more critical than that. In his talk to the assembled staffers, he said he found the paper 'pretty bland.' He pissed on the business section. He ran down the importance of foreign coverage as opposed to local news. Asked whether front-page ads compromised the integrity of the paper, he called that idea a 'crock of shit.'"
Because Sam Zell knows so much about newspapers and integrity.
"He made a big point of saying the paper had to print what readers wanted to read, not what LAT editors wanted them to read - an idea that's pretty much in complete conflict with the existing DNA of the Times (which deemed L.A. mayor Hahn's divorce while he was in office not worth discussing, and reported Lindsay Lohan's arrest, after she mowed down some bushes in Beverly Hills, on page B3). All in all, Zell studded his spiel with bad omens for the paper's entrenched twits."
This is what happens when a vulture with no interest in journalism buys your newspaper. Wake up, Tribbies. You still don't get it.
"P.S.: Whose account is more accurate - Hiller's or mine? There's an easy way to find out, since a video of Zell's talk was posted on the Times' internal network. Hiller could release it."
*
Whet Moser gets it, and I have to just tip my cap to him about the flair.
-
Booze Line
"CTA Adds Service For Bears Games."
Bar cars for players.
Beachwood Radio!
Vocalo.org has produced an abbreviated audio version of our Mystery Debate Theater.
We have a theme song!
Memory Hole
A faithful reader writes: "That Alzheimer's story on Page 1 of the Sun-Times Tuesday would have been much more compelling if the Tribune hadn't written about the same guy more than a year ago."
Sure enough . . .
And here too . . .
Fond Farewell
"Shortly after Katrina hit, former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert declared that a lot of New Orleans could be 'bulldozed.' He was shot down by an outraged public and media," Douglas Brinkley writes in the Washington Post. "Two years have shown that Hastert may have articulated what appears to have become the White House's de facto policy."
Honey, They Might Kill Our Kids
"This fall, CBS debuts a new reality series called Kid Nation, which is basically Survivor for kids. Parents had to sign a 22-page release absolving CBS and the producers of virtually any liability, including the death of their children."
- Mouseprint
Casino Royale
The Illinois Black Book.
Hey, should the mayor be in there because of his association with the Duffs? I mean, could the city actually qualify for a casino as long as Daley is mayor?
Joey the Clown's brother having a tough year too.
Sox Stopper
"Buehrle went off on this strange tangent, saying how the Oakland area creeps him out on the team bus ride from the hotel to ballpark; how the crowded streets and scarred neighborhoods make him feel uncomfortable. 'I don't want to start nuthin, I'm just a country boy, he said."
Flight Maneuver
QT's Internet Question of the Week:
"Have you ever noticed that the mission of the space shuttle is doing more repairs on the space shuttle?"
The Beachwood Tip Line: OMFUG too.
Posted by Lou at 08:24 AM | Permalink
Over/Under
If the Bush Administration ran the NFL.
*
The Offensive Surge: The five worst teams will be allowed 15 players on offense until they are ready to stand up on their own.
Reason: The league's losing teams aren't devoid of purpose, planning or passion, they simply need more people to execute the plan they knew would work all along.
Complication: Additional salaries cause spiraling deficits while teams become reliant on extra players. Biconference study group can't find way out.
*
No-Bid Contracts: Halliburton supplies game logistics and equipment.
Reason: Dick Cheney gets kickbacks, keeps antitrust litigation at bay.
Complication: Teams pay $10,000 for each set of shoulder pads, only half of which arrive before the season is over. Injuries strain players' union health insurance fund, resulting in lost pensions to make up the difference. Broken-down aging players sink into poverty, straining social services. Cheney dies a multibillionaire.
*
Fixed Elections: Head coaches win four-year terms in contests run by Diebold.
Reason: Democracy means ensuring the best outcome regardless of the people's will.
Complication: Suspicions will be raised when every head coach in the league is white.
*
Phony Ethics Legislation: Teams no longer accept corporate sponsorships. Instead, you just have to be spectacularly rich - preferably through inheritance - to own a team.
Reason: Return America to its roots.
Complication: Corporations always find loopholes. For example, Olin Kreutz suspiciously changes his name to Heinz.
*
The Flouting of the League Constitution: The president has inherent powers and he's gonna take 'em.
Reason: Because 9/11 changed everything.
Complication: Even the NFL base will call for impeachment.
-
For more Emery, see the Kool-Aid archive, and the Over/Under archive. Emery accepts comments from Bears fans reluctantly and everyone else tolerably.
Posted by Lou at 06:29 AM | Permalink
Chicagoetry: Me 'N Quetzalcoatl Like To Watch!
ME 'N QUETZALCOATL LIKE TO WATCH!
My Little Buddy and I
LOVE to
watch
TELEVISION!
"Caliente!,"
local news, "Project Runway,"
the Illinois
Lottry,
reruns
of "Friends"
this kind
of thing.
Very cozy,
very
companioning,
eh, fellas?
WOO-
HOO!
You get
me.
-
J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
Posted by Lou at 06:23 AM | Permalink
Blago's Alternate Universe
Paul Vallas is now the superintendent of New Orleans' Recovery School District.
Which got us to wondering: If Vallas had won the Illinois Democratic nomination for governor in 2002 and had gone on to become governor instead of Rod Blagojevich, what do you suppose Rod would be doing right now?
1. Screwing up a three-car funeral.
2. Running FEMA.
3. Subprime lender.
4. Heckling Jacque Jones from the right field bleachers at Wrigley.
5. Two words: Elvis impersonator. Two more: Carson City.
6. Driver and "body man" for Barack Obama.
7. Mowing Dick Mell's lawn.
8. Ho-Chunk blackjack dealer.
9. Mismanaging one of Tony Rezko's apartment buildings.
10. Divorced, unemployed and applying for state-subsidized health insurance.
Posted by Lou at 12:59 AM | Permalink
The Periodical Table
A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.
Fashion Flub
Neko Case appears in Men's Vogue wearing an Ann Demeulemeester vest, Juicy Couture jeans, and Calvin Klein shoes.
Noooooooooooo!
Say it ain't so, Neko!
Not only do we never want to see you in anything even closely resembing a fashion spread - which this isn't but still - but what you're wearing looks awful! You're better than that, Neko. Way better.
Bright Lights, Big City
"Vee-Jay Records of Chicago was not the first successful black-owned label - Duke-Peacock of Houston stakes a better claim to that title - but until Motown exploded, it was certainly the most successful," No Depression reports this month. "[Vee-Jay: The Definitive Collection] is unquestionably a definitive collection, far superior to 1993's three-CD The Vee-Jay Story.
"Vee-Jay never had a sound, like Atlantic or Motown," No Depression says. "Instead, it had a great A&R man in Calvin Carter . . . who had an astute sense of the marketplace and a keen ear, within those confines, for what made each artist different. Under his guidance, the lable moved into R&B and nascent soul, gospel, jazz and even white rock (Vee-Jay launched the Four Seasons and, more or less by accident, the Beatles' American career.) All these sounds get at least a little play here."
(Check out the Beatles' 45 "From Me to You" in our very own Don Jacobson's item about the retrospective, in the second item from this June Root Cellar column.)
Saramago!
Forgive my literary blind spots, but I'd never heard of Jose Saramago (and believe me, I sufficiently feel like a dope) until last Sunday when this headline in The New York Times Magazine caught my eye:
"The Portugese Novelist And Nobel Prize-Winner Jose Saramago Is A Stubborn Atheist, An Unreconstructed Communist, An Ornery Political Polemicist - And The Creator Of Some Of The World's Most Magical, Imaginative, Sweetly Lyrical Fiction."
How can you not want to read that?
And that grumpy photo! Very inviting!
Pull Quote: "Saramago's novels are endlessly inventive, endlessly good-natured, endlessly skillful," the literary critic Harold Bloom says. "But it baffles me why the man can't grow up politically."
Worldview: "If Saramago and his narrator are not quite the same person, they do, however, share a fundamental pessimism. 'I'm not delivering any news if I tell you the world is a piece of hell for millions of people,' Saramago said to me. 'There are always a few who manage to find a way out, humans are capable of the best as well as the worst, but you can't change human destiny. We live in a dark age, when freedoms are diminishing, when there is no space for criticism, when totalitarianism - the totalitarianism of multinational corporations, of the marketplace - no longer even needs an ideology, and religious intolerance is on the rise.'"
Marshall Amp
"Even at the time, not everyone in the United States was convinced," Niall Ferguson writes in The New Yorker.
Convinced of the Marshall Plan, that is.
"'We are through being Uncle Sap,' Senator Alexander Wiley, of Wisconsin, declared. To Senator Homer Capehart, of Indiana, the Marshall Plan was 'state socialism.' To congressman Frederick Smith, of Ohio, it was 'outright communism.' Not to be outdone, Senator Joseph McCarthy, of Wisconsin, later called it a 'massive and unrewarding boondoggle' that had turned the United States into 'the patsy of the modern world.'"
Print Is Alive
A few selections (none yet online) from Print's September/October issue:
* " Stop Making Type. A group of type-industry rebels in the '20s had a startling idea: to cease all production of 'modernistic' and 'freakish' new faces and stick to the classics."
* "Suspiciously McSimilar. The mysterious case of McSweeney's and the corporate publications. Also: a guide for imitating. And: Whither McStyle?"
* "The Dark Side of the Glow. Radium's shining promise was embraced by the ad world, scientists, and the public at large - but that enchanting glimmer would turn very sinister."
* "Subtle Tea. How a '70s-era brand updated its hippie-kitsch identity to appeal to more modern tastes."
Play On
The excellent Play, the monthly New York Times sports magazine, also has a multitude of riches this month.
* "Back To You, You Lecherous, Micromanaging Desk Jockeys: When it comes to the job of being a sideline reporter, it's not the women who don't get it."
Answers the questions you always had about what seems like a mostly inane function.
* "The Outcast: In the wake of the most scandal-ridden year in Tour de France history, Floyd Landis remains where he has been all along: waiting for redemption, which may never come."
Even if you don't care about cycling and Floyd Landis - like me - this is one of the more riveting profiles of the year and one-stop shopping to get caught up on all the fuss.
* "Just Live, Baby!: Over the course of four decades, Al Davis built the Oakland Raiders in his own image: militant but inclusive, radical but tender-hearted, a band of outre warriors who took the NFL by storm. But in an increasingly buttoned-down league, can one man's peculiar vision survive?"
A fun, fascinating and thoughtful portrait of a famous figure whom we don't know much about, and how he has shaped his pirate franchise for good and ill.
Posted by Lou at 12:49 AM | Permalink
August 29, 2007
The [Wednesday] Papers
So I've learned something valuable from Lance Briggs this week:
If I'm ever driving while royally stinking drunk and I total my car on an expressway at three in the morning, my best strategy is to flee the scene and report the accident later - maybe even report my car stolen first - because apparently lying to and evading the authorities is just a measly misdemeanor unlikely to result in much more than community service and a fine of a couple thousand dollars. Who knew?
Not that I know Briggs was royally stinking drunk, but then we'll never know will we?
And that's the point of the lesson habitual drunk drivers, teenagers fearing their parents' wrath, and, well, the rest of us can take from this: Evade the police at all costs in the aftermath of a crackup. Sober up. Take your chances later. Briggs is free on a hundred-dollar bond and faces a maximum of one year in jail and a $2,500 fine. That's a much better proposition than the one he faced had he stuck around.
He will not spend a year in jail. He will likely not spend any time in jail. Either way, he's way better off than having to answer a bunch of questions and face a DUI charge. And you'll be better off too.
Who says athletes aren't role models?
Lovie Dovie
Lovie Smith says there's no reason to discipline Briggs because he hasn't violated any team rules. (second story)
So leaving the scene of your own accident doesn't violate team rules?
Cool rules!
The Tribune's Rick Morrissey has it right:
"Some of us still are trying to figure out what Lovie Smith's threshold for poor behavior is when it comes to his players. Is there anything that makes him mad?
"Does it take a felony? Or would, say, four misdemeanors and a Denver boot do the trick? What about some combination of speeding tickets, court fines and a citizen's arrest? Would that bring a snarl to his lip?
"Tank Johnson's problems with guns, pit bulls and late-night carousing didn't seem to hack off the Bears coach publicly in any appreciable way. Smith acted more like a disappointed favorite uncle.
"Ricky Manning Jr.'s troubles with the law brought bouquets of forgiveness from Smith.
"Lance Briggs totals his car the other morning, abandons it, calls 911 to say it has been stolen, then calls back to say, no, it hasn't - and Smith doesn't blink, unless it's to wipe away a tear of thanksgiving that air-bag deployment wasn't necessary.
"But ask Smith if he had inquired of his linebacker whether alcohol might have been involved in the one-car accident in the wee hours, and the guy gets snippy and dismissive with reporters . . . Imagine the positive public response if, for once, Smith said he was getting sick of dealing with these problems."
Exactly. Instead, Smith has lost us.
Lame Lovie
"As he did Monday, Bears coach Lovie Smith did his best to wipe away any suggestion that Briggs might have been drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel," the Sun-Times reports.
"Hearsay," Smith said. "The facts haven't come to me that way."
Oh? Care to share?
Lame Lance
"Briggs' rambling 2-minute-35-second statement raised more questions than it answered," the Tribune's David Haugh writes. "He may have sought to set the record straight but only made it seem more crooked."
Brian's Song
"Urlacher believes it has been and will be overblown," the Tribune reports.
"He got in a car wreck," Urlacher said. "I got in a car wreck two years ago too. Some lady ran into me. I'm just glad Lance talked to the fans and let them know he's OK. That's a good thing."
Yeah, that's pretty much the same thing. I hate how the media overblows spoiled multimillionaire athletes endangering innocent lives only to see teammates rally around like the insulated self-absorbed brats that they are. Wanna go electrocute some dogs?
Bonding Over Briggs
How disgusting is this?
"It's all about finding the positive in professional sports, so there can be little surprise that Briggs' near-disaster left some Bears with a sense of euphoria," the Sun-Times's Mike Mulligan writes.
"The feeling was that Briggs got away with one by hightailing it out of the accident site before police had time to question him about drag-racing, drinking, speeding or just what the heck he was doing on the Edens just after 3 a.m. the morning of a practice."
The Trib's Haugh concurred.
""Monday, after learning Briggs was safe, many Bears even seemed to enjoy it."
That's Lance!
"Briggs has a rocky driving history - at least in Tucson, Ariz., where he played for the University of Arizona," the Sun-Times reports. "From 2000 to 2003, he was hit with four speeding ticketsin the area and charged with driving with a suspended license, no insurance and failure to appear in court. He still owes $1,024 in fines in Tucson, a court official said.
Briggs was driving a $400,000 Lamborghini and just signed a $7.2 million contract.
Traffic fines are for the little people.
Improper Charge
Are the police charging Briggs with "improper lane usage" just out of deductive reasoning? Because, um, there weren't any witnesses, were there? Did he admit to weaving or something?
Then again, maybe it's always improper lane usage when you leave them.
Second Life
LanceBriggs.com is currently being updated.
God bless Wikipedia, which is already there.
LanceCam
NBC 5 has video from the accident scene.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Riding shotgun.
Posted by Lou at 09:15 AM | Permalink
And Then There's Maude: Episode 2
Our tribute to the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude continues.
*
Season 1, Episode 2
Episode Title: Doctor, Doctor
Original airdate: 19 Sept 1972
Plot: Carol's eight-year-old son Phillip is caught playing doctor behind the garage with the next-door-neighbor's granddaughter. Series regular Conrad Bain makes his first appearance as Maude's ultra-conservative neighbor Arthur. It's quickly established that he's the bane of Maude's existence. Arthur is disgusted by the boy's behavior and demands that Phillip be punished. Carol and Maude refuse, calling it "adorable" and defend it as lovely expression of the human body. Arthur becomes incensed and drags homosexuality, wife swapping, and sex education in schools into his argument that this is just another example of how "This country is going to hell on a toboggan!" He storms out.
Later, Arthur and Walter get shit-faced in a bar where Arthur confesses to his best friend that he's got a bit of a hang-up about sex. Too much information! Walter orders another round before heading home. At home, Walter makes a beeline for the minibar. He and Maude get into an argument when she claims to be free of sexual and physical hang-ups and he calls her on it by stripping down to his underwear in front of his wife and stepdaughter. As Maude and Carol attempt to get Walter's pants back on, Arthur walks in on them in a compromising menage-a-trois and proclaims them all degenerates.
Hot button social issue: Sexual "hang-ups" vs. a permissive society
Fashion statement: Mother and daughter argue over the length of Carol's mini-dress.
Neckerchief count: Two, including one worn by Arthur. I wonder if he and Maude swap.
Decorating tip: Wow, I've paused the DVD and captured a frame that has Maude standing in front of two walls, each with a clashing style of wallpaper, one gold and olive plaid, the other a silver reflective lace pattern. The gold foil lampshade in front clashes perfectly. This was such a heinous decade for domestic decor.
Cocktail hour: Vodka and lots of it.
Welcome back to 1972 pop culture reference: What's that noise? Is a smoke detector going off? No, it's Arthur's new-fangled electronic bleeper. When a patient needs him, his answering service "bleeps him."
Number of times Maude looses her cool: 4
Memorable quotes: Two gems from daughter Carol to her mother:
* "Maybe you'd feel better if you went upstairs and put your face on."
* "With my generation, it's peace, love, and back to nature. No hang-ups here."
References to Nixon: Maude answers a question from Arthur with "No, and let me make that . . . perfectly clear."
Wow, did they just say that? Maude fondly recalls buying Carol her first bottle of Midol.
-
Previously:
Season 1, Episode 1: Maude's Problem
Posted by Lou at 12:55 AM | Permalink
Connie's Corner: Heavier Than Air
Connie Nardini begins her occasional series of book reviews and other news as she sees fit.
-
Heavier Than Air: A Collection of Short Stories
By Nona Caspers
-
Short-story writer Nona Caspers creates a tapestry of small towns - mostly of her native Minnesota - and chronicles the lives of people living there who have a hard time coming down to earth. They either don't want or seem to know that they're "heavier than air" because they live in unreal worlds of their own making.
For instance, in the title story, a mother is so hell-bent on keeping Satan from taking her over (she's the wife of the Pentecostal minister of the Sacred Life Church in St Cloud, Minn.), that she is often oblivious, for example, that her children desperately need a meal. Her funeral opens the story, and one of her daughters says, "She'll go up to the Lord like a helium balloon." The daughter, telling the story in flashback, visits her mother at a "home" just before her death, and she relates, "I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her . . . I made myself a weight around her hips, as if with my body I could hold her to the ground."
This daughter finds it hard to forgive her mother for not being grounded in love for children instead of fear of the next world. Caspers begs the question, "Which is heavier?"
A bit later, in the 1960s-set story, "Wide Like an Eagle's Wings," the temporariness of life comes home to Mannie, a fifth-grader (and a fervent Democrat in a family of Republicans), when her little sister drowns before her eyes. While she tries to resuscitate her, she imagines carrying her sister back home and laying her "on their old snagged brown couch, where there had never been a dead body." She realizes then the fragility of her own breath. "It was as small as that. Breath." (Caspers' own brother had spina bifida, so death was always present in her home, just waiting to arrive at any moment.)
Mannie had hoped for the election of John F. Kennedy because, "He was the one who was going to change their lives the one who would make things different," and the story is full of reasons why she so furiously wants things to be different, including a 10-year-old neighbor boy who appears naked in a tree, getting ready to fly away because he believes he's an eagle.
Caspers received an MFA from the University of Minnesota and after starting many careers, like being a waitress, she decided to become a teacher of writing. She is now an assistant professor at the San Francisco State University. She has had poetry and essays published, won many literary awards and received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction for Heavier Than Air, her first collection.
She said many of her friends criticized the stories in this book for their lack of happy endings. There is one exception - the tale called "The EE Cry," about a man who finally learns that fat can be beautiful. Caspers believes that happy endings or final resolutions, can "kill off" characters because there is no further action possible. Real life, she says, is far too ephemeral to be resolved so neatly. And, she adds, resolution doesn't leave a character space for further possibilities, like maybe a realization that free choice can alter so-called inevitable consequences, or perhaps that their actions might lead to bad consequences. We can lose track of ourselves - that's why we can hide the facts of who were are and what we should be doing in the rollercoaster of daily life.
This collection gives voice to the imagination of a small-town girl who, like the figure in the cover art, leaves town striding on steady legs and bare feet feeling their way through shifting sands.
Posted by Lou at 12:33 AM | Permalink
August 28, 2007
The [Tuesday] Papers
There will be no column today as I have business to attend to, but everything from Monday's column, posted below, is still true.
Also, Beachwood Laboratories has released a new study about the Class of 2011, our TV Desk has started to countdown the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude with a very special episode guide, and The Political Odds have changed. Will we see two ex-governors in the same prison? You'll have to read it to find out.
Plus, take the Bears Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Quiz! And the Meetup Match Game Quiz!
And what do Cubs players do during rain delays? We found out!
The [Monday] Papers
BREAKING NEWS 8:12 A.M.: "Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington," the New York Times reports.
BREAKING COMMENTARY 8:04 A.M.: (Our very own Natasha Julius is that good; this arrived before the Times story): "As the Weekend Desk Editor, I just want to say that I am going to miss Alberto Gonzales. He could be relied upon to do something ridiculously villainous on an almost weekly basis. As a U.S. citizen and ardent fan of the Constitution, I just want to say it's about frickin' time. Geez.
"Are we seriously going to have to live through 17 more months of this? Seriously? It's like W is the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He's just a head and a torso, rolling around and screaming at everyone. And guess what? His torso just resigned!
"Come back here! I'll bite your legs off!"
Neurotic Nation
"Flour at IKEA Leads to Terror Alert."
Look, if Al Qaeda wanted to strike again in America, they wouldn't target an IKEA in New Haven, Connecticut. They'd go after Home Depot.
ALTERNATE: They'd buy up a bunch of subprime mortgages and not pay them back.
*
The point of terrorism is to put fear into one's enemies. Al Qaeda has done that quite nicely, no? We have given control of our safety, our politics, our sense of well-being to the enemy. We have been terrorizing ourselves for six years, scared witless by cartoon characters and baking ingredients. Let's put the color code at Gray Matter, meaning All Citizens Should Return To Their Senses, and get a grip.
Master Plan
"Waukegan Eyes Artist Colony."
Would be replaced by Yuppie Colony once property values rise.
Instructional League
A CTA train derailed Sunday near 14th Street and Wabash. "No customers were on the train, which was on an instructional trip for employees," the Tribune reports.
Workers practiced not keeping invisible riders informed.
Bridges Blagojevich
"Gov. Blagojevich apparently wants to repair half a bridge," the AP's Christopher Wills reported on Sunday. "Blagojevich's cuts to the state budget include at least two cases where he rejected a request for half the money for a bridge repair project but approved another request for the other half of the money.
"That wasn't the only odd result of his budget decisions."
Page 24A, Sun-Times.
Front page? Exploiting personal tragedy to sell papers.
"How a Marriage Spiraled Into Murder" isn't unworthy of a story, but its front page presentation is strictly a commercial decision by amoral editor Michael Cooke.
Hillary Hating
On the Tribune's front page on Sunday: "Vast Army of 'Hillary Haters' Has Claws Out."
I'm wondering how vast. The story is centered on the site StopHerNow.com and its proprietor.
This site, the Trib says, gets 3,000 hits a day, which is hardly impressive enough to merit a story except that it fits into the media's predetermined narrative.
Hits is a meaningless term, though uninformed reporters insist on using it. A "hit" is recorded each time an element - text, image, what have you - is called up. So if a site has one story and four images, five hits get recorded. Which means that, for a site with as many elements as StopHerNow, basically nobody is reading it. Or was until it was featured in the Chicago Tribune.
Just to illustrate further, the Beachwood had about 50,000 hits on Friday, pretty much a typical day, but only about a thousand unique visitors (we've had 34,000 unique visitors this month - a Beachwood record!). So this guy isn't gettting much for the $400,000 he says he's spent (On what? Tech help isn't that expensive.)
Compare for yourself. Just plug in beachwoodreporter.com in the second box.
You could fairly speculate that our Obamathon series has more readers. But the media loves Hillary Haters stories.
Standard Disclaimer
Memo to Obamaphiles: I am not voting for Hillary Clinton. But as a matter of objective analysis, your man has gotten the freest ride of any presidential political candidate in memory while Hillary Clinton - and Bill - has been battered more severely than any political figures in memory by a right-wing media machine with the aid of a compliant press.
Beyond Politics
Sun-Times outdoors writer Dale Bowman turns in the best BP commentary I've seen.
Winning the War
The surge is working.
Target Market
"There's no doubt about it: Reality television is changing, in ways both trashy and desperate," Paige Wiser reports. "And that's not to say I'm complaining. That's my favorite kind of TV."
Dress Code
Illinois State's business school is instituting a dress code - for its students. While the Sun-Times story fails to, ahem, question the premise, I have to wonder if ISU administrators have been asleep since the 80s. These days folks in the most exciting sectors of the economy are likely to wear T-shirts to work, and even Bill Gates doesn't wear a suit.
Old Playbook
Newspaper folk have a list of stories they write every year regardless of reality. For example, flooding? Let's wheel out the everyone-is-calling-a-plumber story! And the Sun-Times put it on front page on Saturday - a photo of a plumber with his tools. And not even a funny photo. (I wonder if it was a file photo of a plumber)
Meanwhile, on page 3, the S-T had a pretty amazing photo of a tall tree split right in half, presumably by lightning. That should have been front page.
Speak of the Devil
I wrote that before seeing the Trib's front page with a photo of the same split tree - described as a 70-foot elm. And a couple folks pushing a canoe filled with sandbags down a waterlogged street, and a half-sunken bicyclist trying to pedal through a flooded intersection.
I would have had a mind to run a front page photo gallery, skip the stories, and put the pertinent facts in a few boxes and graphics. Traditional weather stories are usually filled with nonsense. No offense, but do we really care that Kathy Marston of unincorporated Lombard, as noted in the S-T, was in "a good mood" but facing a power outage for the next couple of days.
Humanizing stories is nice, but useless trivia is a waste of precious and dwindling space.
Weather Channel
The Trib also ran a series of storm radar shots on its business front. Here's the thing about a newspaper: It's a visual medium. See, people look at.
iTeen
My new hero.
Liquid Diet
So that's what's wrong with the Sun-Times: It's subprime.
Vick's Vapor Rub
At what point did we equate athletic ability with model citizenship? I thought high school taught us all otherwise.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Rub it in.
Posted by Lou at 07:24 AM | Permalink
And Then There's Maude: Episode 1
Thirty-five years ago this September, Maude Findlay threw open the front door of her Tuckahoe, New York home, her floor-length vest billowing behind her as she strode into America's living room for the first time. Like the theme song says, she was "uncompromising, enterprising, anything but tranquilizing. Right on Maude!"
Right on indeed. This popular sitcom, a hallmark of topical comedy, ran from 1972 to 1978 and touched on everything from the Vietnam War to abortion. The show was funny then and it's funny now. (Unavailable in syndication, Maude finally became available on DVD in March.)
In honor of it's 35th anniversary, we begin today an episode guide to one of TV's most groundbreaking shows.
So, step on up to the living room wet bar, pour yourself a tumbler of vodka, and enjoy.
*
Season 1, Episode 1
Episode Title: Maude's Problem
Original airdate: 12 Sept 1972
Plot: Carol (Adrienne Barbeau) is late for dinner and has been every Tuesday for the past month. Maude (a pre-Golden Girls Beatrice Arthur) jumps to the conclusion that her daughter is having an affair. Never one to let something go, Maude confronts her daughter and is shocked to learn Carol is seeing a psychologist. Maude becomes defensive, assuming (again) that the therapy is all about her and presses Carol to remember all the good times when Maude was nothing less than Mother of the Year. Carol claims she can't remember anything from ages 3-10. Maude visits the shrink to defend her mothering skills and ends up on the couch herself.
Hot button social issue: Therapy
Fashion statement: Floor-length vests, wide lapels, and neckerchiefs make Maude a distinctive fashion icon of this, or any, decade.
Neckerchief count: 3
Decorating tip: Burnt orange kitchen walls and chocolate brown appliances. Throw in some avocado green and squash yellow and you have the complete 1970s kitchen color palette. The wide-striped wallpaper in the dining room boggles the eyes.
Cocktail hour: Vodka, straight up with a twist. Make that two.
Number of times Maude yells: Four, including an argument with husband Walter (Bill Macy) sparked by Maude biting him in the hand.
Keep an eye out for: Ed Begley Jr., with a bad Southern accent, as a door-to-door magazine salesman posing as a struggling Vietnam vet; William Redfield (who portrayed snooty inmate Harding in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next) stars on the other side of the lab coat as Carol's shrink.
'70s slang: Carol tells her mother to "bug off."
Times the live audience breaks out into spontaneous applause: 2
References to the Vietnam War: See Ed Begley appearance above. After Maude scolds him for impersonating a veteran and doing it so horribly, ("You should have seen the con men who came around after World War II. They were artists!") she slams the door in his face, shaking her head. "Vietnam. God, what a lousy war."
Wow, did they just say that? Maude and Walter discuss a friend's hysterectomy. ("They do hysterectomies like tonsils today," says Walter. "She'll be fine.")
Next: Episode 2, "Doctor, Doctor"
Posted by Lou at 06:54 AM | Permalink
Worldview: The Class of 2011
"Each August for the past decade, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. Its 70 items provide a look at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today's first-year students.
"Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.
"They've never 'rolled down' a car window, and to them Jack Nicholson is mainly known as the guy who played 'The Joker.'
"As usual, they remind their elders how quickly time has passed. For them Pete Rose has never been in baseball. Abbie Hoffman's always been dead. Johnny Carson has never been live on TV, and Nelson Mandela has always been free."
Which is all very interesting, but not exactly scientific. For that, the good folks at Beachwood Laboratories have sprung into action and divined their own Mindset List for the Class of 2011.
1. Michael Jackson has always been a white man.
2. O.J. Simpson has always been famous because he's a double-murderer.
3. Ralph Nader has always just been some dude running for president.
4. American cities are sometimes wiped out by hurricanes, and bridges fall down.
5. All presidents are named Bush or Clinton
6. The richest man in America has always worn a sweater.
7. Oprah has always had a book club.
8. The Real World has always been on, but it's never been as good as it used to be.
9. Flavor Flav has always been a cable-TV star.
10. The Daily Show has always been "the news," and the Onion has always been "the newspaper."
Posted by Lou at 06:17 AM | Permalink
August 27, 2007
The [Monday] Papers
BREAKING NEWS 8:12 A.M.: "Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington," the New York Times reports.
BREAKING COMMENTARY 8:04 A.M.: (Our very own Natasha Julius is that good; this arrived before the Times story): "As the Weekend Desk Editor, I just want to say that I am going to miss Alberto Gonzales. He could be relied upon to do something ridiculously villainous on an almost weekly basis. As a U.S. citizen and ardent fan of the Constitution, I just want to say it's about frickin' time. Geez.
"Are we seriously going to have to live through 17 more months of this? Seriously? It's like W is the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He's just a head and a torso, rolling around and screaming at everyone. And guess what? His torso just resigned!
"Come back here! I'll bite your legs off!"
Neurotic Nation
"Flour at IKEA Leads to Terror Alert."
Look, if Al Qaeda wanted to strike again in America, they wouldn't target an IKEA in New Haven, Connecticut. They'd go after Home Depot.
ALTERNATE: They'd buy up a bunch of subprime mortgages and not pay them back.
*
The point of terrorism is to put fear into one's enemies. Al Qaeda has done that quite nicely, no? We have given control of our safety, our politics, our sense of well-being to the enemy. We have been terrorizing ourselves for six years, scared witless by cartoon characters and baking ingredients. Let's put the color code at Gray Matter, meaning All Citizens Should Return To Their Senses, and get a grip.
Master Plan
"Waukegan Eyes Artist Colony."
Would be replaced by Yuppie Colony once property values rise.
Instructional League
A CTA train derailed Sunday near 14th Street and Wabash. "No customers were on the train, which was on an instructional trip for employees," the Tribune reports.
Workers practiced not keeping invisible riders informed.
Bridges Blagojevich
"Gov. Blagojevich apparently wants to repair half a bridge," the AP's Christopher Wills reported on Sunday. "Blagojevich's cuts to the state budget include at least two cases where he rejected a request for half the money for a bridge repair project but approved another request for the other half of the money.
"That wasn't the only odd result of his budget decisions."
Page 24A, Sun-Times.
Front page? Exploiting personal tragedy to sell papers.
"How a Marriage Spiraled Into Murder" isn't unworthy of a story, but its front page presentation is strictly a commercial decision by amoral editor Michael Cooke.
Hillary Hating
On the Tribune's front page on Sunday: "Vast Army of 'Hillary Haters' Has Claws Out."
I'm wondering how vast. The story is centered on the site StopHerNow.com and its proprietor.
This site, the Trib says, gets 3,000 hits a day, which is hardly impressive enough to merit a story except that it fits into the media's predetermined narrative.
Hits is a meaningless term, though uninformed reporters insist on using it. A "hit" is recorded each time an element - text, image, what have you - is called up. So if a site has one story and four images, five hits get recorded. Which means that, for a site with as many elements as StopHerNow, basically nobody is reading it. Or was until it was featured in the Chicago Tribune.
Just to illustrate further, the Beachwood had about 50,000 hits on Friday, pretty much a typical day, but only about a thousand unique visitors (we've had 34,000 unique visitors this month - a Beachwood record!). So this guy isn't gettting much for the $400,000 he says he's spent (On what? Tech help isn't that expensive.)
Compare for yourself. Just plug in beachwoodreporter.com in the second box.
You could fairly speculate that our Obamathon series has more readers. But the media loves Hillary Haters stories.
Standard Disclaimer
Memo to Obamaphiles: I am not voting for Hillary Clinton. But as a matter of objective analysis, your man has gotten the freest ride of any presidential political candidate in memory while Hillary Clinton - and Bill - has been battered more severely than any political figures in memory by a right-wing media machine with the aid of a compliant press.
Beyond Politics
Sun-Times outdoors writer Dale Bowman turns in the best BP commentary I've seen.
Winning the War
The surge is working.
Target Market
"There's no doubt about it: Reality television is changing, in ways both trashy and desperate," Paige Wiser reports. "And that's not to say I'm complaining. That's my favorite kind of TV."
Dress Code
Illinois State's business school is instituting a dress code - for its students. While the Sun-Times story fails to, ahem, question the premise, I have to wonder if ISU administrators have been asleep since the 80s. These days folks in the most exciting sectors of the economy are likely to wear T-shirts to work, and even Bill Gates doesn't wear a suit.
Old Playbook
Newspaper folk have a list of stories they write every year regardless of reality. For example, flooding? Let's wheel out the everyone-is-calling-a-plumber story! And the Sun-Times put it on front page on Saturday - a photo of a plumber with his tools. And not even a funny photo. (I wonder if it was a file photo of a plumber)
Meanwhile, on page 3, the S-T had a pretty amazing photo of a tall tree split right in half, presumably by lightning. That should have been front page.
Speak of the Devil
I wrote that before seeing the Trib's front page with a photo of the same split tree - described as a 70-foot elm. And a couple folks pushing a canoe filled with sandbags down a waterlogged street, and a half-sunken bicyclist trying to pedal through a flooded intersection.
I would have had a mind to run a front page photo gallery, skip the stories, and put the pertinent facts in a few boxes and graphics. Traditional weather stories are usually filled with nonsense. No offense, but do we really care that Kathy Marston of unincorporated Lombard, as noted in the S-T, was in "a good mood" but facing a power outage for the next couple of days.
Humanizing stories is nice, but useless trivia is a waste of precious and dwindling space.
Weather Channel
The Trib also ran a series of storm radar shots on its business front. Here's the thing about a newspaper: It's a visual medium. See, people look at.
iTeen
My new hero.
Liquid Diet
So that's what's wrong with the Sun-Times: It's subprime.
Vick's Vapor Rub
At what point did we equate athletic ability with model citizenship? I thought high school taught us all otherwise.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Rub it in.
Posted by Lou at 08:38 AM | Permalink
The Cub Factor
As Chicago was getting pummeled with wave after wave of unending rain, we here at The Cub Factor wondered how players waiting out rain delays occupied their time in the clubhouse. It can't all be card games and exchanging hot investment tips. Here's our best guess:
* After helping the groundskeepers with the tarp, Mark DeRosa goes inside to collect towels for the dryer, start a couple pots of coffee, change everyone's dinner reservations, and then heads up to the WGN booth to help Len and Bob kill time.
* Cliff Floyd regales the youngsters Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot about his favorite stints on the DL. Then he gets hurt getting out of the rocking chair.
* Jacque Jones plays cards with Lou Piniella, but Lou only lets him in the pot when he has a good hand. Lou sits in a lawn chair while he plays and drinks Falstaff.
* Kerry Wood hangs out in the trainer's room. That's where his locker is now.
* Carlos Zambrano heads to the team chapel.
* Daryle Ward goes back to the players' buffet for seconds. And thirds. And fourths.
* DeRosa, Fontenot, Theriot and Alfonso Soriano reminisce about playing second base this year. Ronnie Cedeno and Cesar Izturis join in my conference call.
* Ryan Dempster does a long comedy routine including his infamous Harry Caray impression that goes on and on - you know, because he has trouble finishing sometimes.
-
Week in Review: The (now in) first place Chicago Cubs went 3-3. As a friend of mine says, the Cubs "Meatloafed" the Giants and then were Meatloafed by the Diamondbacks. And just like Meatloaf, this Cubs team doesn't look that good a lot of the time but they put on a good show and sell tickets.
Week in Preview: The Cubs come home to start a 10-game home stand against the Brewers and Astros. This could be the Brewers' season. If the Cubs sweep or "Meatloaf" the Brewers, it could be the end for them. If the Brewers were a baseball robot, the robot would have a lot of firepower but no arms. And it would be shaped like an Italian Sausage.
Second Basemen Report: Mark DeRosa started four at second with Mike Fontenot starting the other three last week. At first glance, this still looks to be an issue of having too many second basemen. A closer look, however, reveals the fact that the Cubs just don't have a good enough outfielders to let DeRosa sit a day or two a week to get Fontenot a couple games at second. And then the Cubs go and get Craig Monroe, who is another outfielder who isn't as good as DeRosa. You know, just like Jim Hendry drew it up.
In former second basemen news, the mostly third-base playing but this is the Cubs second baseman Bill Mueller is now the hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is missed.
Sweet and Sour Lou: 78% sweet and 22% sour. Lou is up 3 points on the Sweet-O-Meter this week due to late inning heroics, good pitching, and the failure of the Brewers to capitalize on a Cubs squad that is really just a .500 team - and playing like it. And just like your real crazy drunk uncle, Lou appreciates it when you kids get another glass-blown cow paperweight for Aunt Millie's collection. He just wishes you guys didn't wait until the last minute to get the gift because you were lucky the store was still open.
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 success of the Brewers pitching staff is not affected by the results of that day's sausage race. Weirdly, correlations show, however, that the success of the Cubs pitching staff may be. Further study is warranted.
Under/Over: The number of Brewers fans who come to Wrigley this week and remain sober: +/- 6.
Cubs Fans Theme Song: "Please Stop Believin'"
The Cubs Answer Men: #3 is in the building.
The Cub Factor: Catch up with them all.
Mount Lou: The Alert System remains at yellow due to offensive frustration lava that continues to brew right under Lou's surface. Expect a minor eruption as changes in the "playoff atmosphere" raise the barometric pressure, increasing the chances of ignition.
Posted by Lou at 12:39 AM | Permalink
Reviewing the Reviews
August 25 - 26.
Publication: Tribune
Cover: "Assault. Murder. Corruption. The mob. DNA. Death Row. Does it all add up to a compelling tale in The Chicago Way?"
It turns out the answer is No.
"The Chicago Way does not sufficiently distinguish itself from its forebears to exist on its own as either great literature or essential popular-genre fiction," reviewer Adam Langer writes.
"[T]he novel's derivative and schematic nature deprives it of much suspense, and the intermittent references to classical philosophy and revenge sagas are not developed to the point that they give the novel the heft it could use to compensate . . .
"At times, I found myself wishing [author Michael] Harvey had heeded another of Heraclitus' tenets: 'To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom; it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do' . . .
"[T]he author rarely allows the reader more than a glimpse beneath his characters' surfaces . . .
"[T]he Chicago he writes about, much like the characters in it, never fully comes to life as a wholly authentic and readily identificable place."
So what the hell is this book doing on the cover?
Sure, some books deserve such placement by dint of their significance in the culture or the public forum whether panned or praised. This is hardly one of them.
The best the Tribune book review has to offer you this week is a novel it thinks is terrible that is in no other way worth your consideration. Tribune book review, you're fired.
Other News & Reviews of Note: No.
*
Publication: Sun-Times
Cover: Ike: An American Hero, by Michael Korda. Reviewed by Sun-Times general manager John Barron.
"Korda shows how a supremely self-confident Ike was never at a loss to exercise his expertise in organization, planning and logistics," Barron writes.
Other News & Reviews of Note: No.
*
Publication: New York Times
Cover: "Family Blessings," a review of Circling My Mother, by Mary Gordon.
Other News & Reviews of Note: "Lying and One-Night Stands: Women describe their transgressions, large and small." A review of Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave.
Sounds promising, doesn't it?
It doesn't deliver, unless you think skinny dipping and reading sex scene at a school assembly qualifies as bad girl behavior. Maybe in the 1950s, but c'mon. And these are writers?
*
CHARTS
1. Dog Chapman
2. Tony Dungy
3. Navy Seal
Alan Jackson's wife is 4th; God (the un-great one) is 5th; child soldier is 6th; Diana is 12th; Novak is 15th.
Posted by Lou at 12:25 AM | Permalink
Buddy Greco: Buddy's Back In Town
Old Rat Packers never die . . . they just move on to new generations of admirers who are perhaps better able to separate the obnoxious cultural norms of the era from the music itself. God knows I wasn't able to do that for most of my life. "Swinging" meant drunken, sexist escapades to me, gotten away with only because they happened at a time when women were not yet in a position to say "no." But damn, thanks to the bargain bins, it's clear to me now the Rat Pack crowd made some awe-inspiring sounds, none more so than Buddy Greco, who's swinging furiously on 1960's Buddy's Back In Town, part of which was recorded live at Chicago's Le Bistro.
Greco, of course, wasn't an "official" Rat Packer, or even a "semi-official" one like Joey Bishop. He was actually more of a Rat Pack colleague, someone who ran in the same club circuit and Las Vegas circles, shared an attitude, but, in all honesty, was more talented than any of them. He sang like Sinatra did when the Chairman wasn't phoning it in, but unlike Frank and all the other Rats, he was also a tremendous musician. As a piano player with Benny Goodman in the post-war '40s and for years afterward, his jazz-pop style was considered groundbreaking and has been credited with being among the more important precursors of acid jazz.
Above all, Greco was hard-driver whose vocal style was very, very aggressive for the era. He didn't fool around on his songs. Rather than "belting" them over, however, he did what Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. did, only more consistently - focusing his violence in certain spots where it worked the best to produce a satisfying emotional ebb-and-flow within the stories that made up the songs. He fused the Rat Pack's swaggering schtick with a jazz combo sensibility, and was also smooth at throwing in witty asides and topical humor puns. And right there to remind us, on the back of the album, is a long testimonial from Swingin' Sammy himself, babe.
Dig the man:
"Buddy Greco's world is a swinging world. Whether he sings a great standard, whether it's an instrumental with the trio or a big band, whether he is singing the music or writing the music or writing the arrangement (for he is prolific in all three departments), the world of Buddy Greco is a very, very swinging world.
"Now, you folks take this record out, put it on your hi-fi stereophonic big tweeter-woofer type set and lean back. You'll tumble headlong into Buddy Greco's swinging, wonderful world."
I actually did just that and, my God, it did swing. Buddy's Back In Town was the third in Greco's Epic Records period, following My Buddy in 1959 and Songs For Swinging Losers earlier in 1960. It was recorded in four club venues: Le Bistro, The Roundtable in New York, The Flamingo in Vegas and The Cloister in L.A. These Epic albums cemented Greco's longest-lasting reputation as an expert interpreter and updater of the Great American Standards catalog. In fact, probably his most famous recording was his version of "The Lady Is a Tramp," first done on vinyl on My Buddy - also a live album.
Buddy's Back was recorded with just he and his trio, but according to some sources, Epic later added in horns and big band instrumentation. Greco unleashes his talents on such standards as Cole Porter's "You're the Top"; "One For My Baby" by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen; the Gershwins' "They All Laughed"; and "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Mack Gordon and Josef Myrow. No matter how familiar the tune, Greco delivers a classy, jazzy punch-up to it.
For instance, on "You Make Me Feel So Young," his piano phrasing is playful and powerful, and his climactic vocal sequence soars into the outer limits. On "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," he puts an oh-so-hip emphasis on the word "dig" in the lyric:
You're walkin' along the street, or you're at a party,
Or else you're alone and then you suddenly dig,
You're lookin' in someone's eyes, you suddenly realize
That this could be the start of something big.
On slow numbers like "You Better Go Now," Greco croons like nobody's business, a smooth warble that Dino would be proud of, as a tinkling xylophone gives a subtle counterpoint. He brings it all back home at the wrap with "One For My Baby," a generally somber tune that he turns into a blast-your-socks-off tour de force.
Greco, at age 81, is still at it. He and his wife, Lezlie Anders, a few years ago opened the apparently successful Buddy Greco's Dinner Club in Palm Springs, moving there after all those years in Las Vegas. His time in SIn City came to an unfortunate end in 2002, when the couple filed for bankruptcy (second item), claiming up to $1 million in debts, including unpaid taxes of $96,000, and a total of $55 of cash on hand.
The other interesting thing about Buddy's Back In Town, is, of course, its Chicago connection. Where Rat Packers went, the Mob and the FBI were never too far behind. One of the venues Greco performs at on this disc, Le Bistro, was a Rush Street entertainment hot spot in the early '60s. Its manager was Irving "Buzzy" Rifkin, who according to documents released with the Warren Commission report, told the FBI in 1963 he was a close friend of Jack "Sparky" Rubenstein, a.k.a. Jack Ruby. Rifkin told the FBI that he met Ruby when they were students at Marshall High School and that, as far as he knew, Ruby was not connected to the Mob, but was a "legitimate" dealer of "low cost merchandise."
Oh, yeah, there was that time Ruby brought in a "seven- or eight-year-old Negro boy" for whom he was acting as "a manager." The kid even got onto local TV for whatever it was that he did. And, oh yeah, Rifkin did "refer female friends" to Ruby's Dallas night club, and "vice" versa. There was that. But I think Buzzy and Sparky (dudes!) were just talking about the tourist trade, maybe even Buddy Greco fans.
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From Tommy Cash to Blue Oyster Cult, Bin Dive reveals rock's secret history through the bargain bins and your old stack of records. Comments - and submissions - welcome. You must include a real name to be considered for publication.
Posted by Don at 12:11 AM | Permalink
August 25, 2007
The Weekend Desk Report
We're playing hurt this week, but that won't stop us bringing you the stories that matter most.
Axis Update
President Bush this week once again urged the nation not to let Lindsey Lohan turn into another Nicole Richie. This warning came even as party stalwarts appeared to signal they were not willing to subject the nation to a Paris Hilton-style engagement. Meanwhile, Britney Spears has reached a new level of devastation.
Coalition Fractures
Despite a serious friendly fire incident, Amy Winehouse this week insisted she is standing by her coalition partner and that all damage was self-inflicted. And you know what? She's got a point.
See No Evil
Shaken by criticisms and accusations of abandoning six Crandall Canyon Mine workers, Murray Energy Corp chief Bob Murray vowed this week never to return to the "evil mountain". No word yet on whether he will return to any of the other evil mountains around the country in which he owns mining concerns.
Happy Returns
We bid a very happy birthday his week to the Big Mac, McDonald's signature outsized sandwich. Packing a robust 30 grams of fat and 1010 milligrams of sodium, the middle-aged burger is set to eclipse the life-expectancy of its average consumer sometime in the next 20 years.
Sabanic Cults
Finally, critics of the University of Alabama's controversial hiring of professional dirtbag Nick Saban have at last been silenced. It appears the shameless football coach is already making his mark in Tuscaloosa.
Posted by Natasha at 07:21 AM | Permalink
August 24, 2007
The [Friday] Papers
1. This was the lead image at the top of the Sun-Times's website at the height of yesterday's storm.
Storm clouds roll over the Chicago Loop in this July file photo.
A file photo from July? They couldn't just stick a camera out the window?
2. On the other hand, the Cubs' acquisition of outfielder Craig Monroe was top of the page "Breaking News" on the Tribune's website.
4. Sun-Times front page today: "BP Listens To Chicago: The Sun-Times led the charge to stop BP from further polluting Lake Michigan. Yesterday, BP backed off."
More like the Sun-Times piggybacked on the reporting of the Tribune's Michael Hawthorne, who broke the story to begin with.
5. Besides, it's not clear yet exactly what BP's intentions are. The company is not intending to amend its new, controversial dumping permit and the new dumping wouldn't occur until 2011 (though the associated refinery expansion would begin soon). So there's plenty of time to build political cover and do the public relations spadework it almost got away with not doing.
6. Memo to new Sun-Times editorial page: Yelling does not make your arguments stronger or more persuasive. Quite the opposite.
7. "Gov. Rod Blagojevich slashed $463 million from the state budget Thursday and pressed forward his health-care plan, selectively cutting what he views as legislative pork-barrel initiatives backed by his political foes and preserving most projects pushed by friends and lawmakers he needs in his corner," the Tribune reports.
That about sums it up.
Several reports noted the irony of the governor cutting funding for several health-related projects in order to fund his pet health-care plan.
"Overall, there are $90 million in cuts for hosp