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Posted by Lou at 08:36 AM | Permalink

Mystery Debate Theater 2007

I don't know whose idea it was - wait, yes I do, it was ABC News's idea - to hold debates at eight in the morning on a Sunday, but God bless C-SPAN and it's 5:30 p.m. rebroadcasts. Beachwood loves C-SPAN. Beachwood is not morning people.

So once again, the Mystery Debate Theater team of Andrew Kingsford, Tim Willette, and Steve Rhodes gathered at Beachwood HQ to bring you live commentary to better inform citizens about to make a momentous choice. Andrew brought the Spaten and a crappy little bag of almonds.

Also on hand was an expert sound engineer from Vocalo.org, which will produce an audio version of this episode - and future episodes - of Mystery Debate Theater. Details on where you can hear this will follow as soon as we get them.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: The podium order was determined by lot, but here's where they stand in Iowa, according to our latest ABC News poll.

At 27 percent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. New York Senator Hillary Clinton is at 26 percent, as is former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, also at 26 percent. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is at 11 percent. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware is at 2 percent, along with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, also at 2 percent. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd is at 1 percent. And former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, no support registered.

ANDREW: And with the margin of error, he actually could be minus 5.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is Barack Obama . . .

STEVE: . . . black enough?

STEPHANOPOULOS: . . . ready to be president, experienced enough to be president?

And can Senator Clinton, Hillary Clinton, in part because of your experience, bring the country together and bring about the kind of change that all of you say the country needs?

DODD: The point I'd make on that, when I disagreed with my colleague from Illinois, was about the issue of whether or not a speech, a prepared speech, which suggested here a hypothetical situation and a hypothetical solution here - that raised serious issues within Pakistan.

As I pointed out before, the only person that separates us from a jihadist government in Pakistan with nuclear weapons is President Musharraf. And, therefore, I thought it was irresponsible to engage in that kind of a suggestion here. That's dangerous. Words mean something in campaigns.

ANDREW: Words hurt, too.

* * *

RICHARDSON: You know, I think that Senator Obama does represent change. Senator Clinton has experience. Change and experience: With me, you get both.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

STEVE: His advisers finally wrote a good line for him.

* * *

OBAMA: Well, you know, to prepare for this debate, I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair, and . . .

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

STEVE: No, to prepare for this debate he had David Axelrod write that line for him.

* * *

OBAMA: I think that strong countries and strong presidents meet and talk with our adversaries.

ANDREW: And then they arm wrestle.

* * *

OBAMA: We shouldn't have strategic ambiguity with the American people when it comes to describing how we're going to deal with the most serious national security issues that we face.

STEVE: Just tactical ambiguity.

TIM: That's a very strategically ambiguous answer.

STEVE: Carrot Top is really buff. [at this point, conversation had turned to the recent Flavor Flav roast]

ANDREW: Yeah, without his shirt he's really ripped.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: So Senator Obama rules out using [nuclear weapons] against Al Qaida. You rule out using them against Iran. What's the principal difference there?

CLINTON: Well, George, you've got to put it into context. I was asked specifically about what was, very clearly, an effort by the Bush-Cheney administration to drum up support for military action against Iran . . . This was not a hypothetical, this was a brushback against this administration which has been reckless and provocative - to America's damage, in my opinion.

So I think there's a big difference, and I think it's a difference that really goes to the heart of whether we should be using hypotheticals. I mean, one thing that I agree with is we shouldn't use hypotheticals. You know, words do matter.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you accept that distinction?

OBAMA: There was no difference. It is not hypothetical that Al Qaida has established base camps in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. That was acknowledged in the national intelligence estimates. And every foreign policy understands that.

No military expert would advise that we use nuclear weapons to deal with them, but we do have to deal with that problem.

And so, this is part of what I think Americans get frustrated about in politics, where we have gamesmanship and we manufacture issues and controversies instead of talking about the serious problem that we have.

STEVE: So at first he was saying he was challenging conventional wisdom, now he says there's no difference.

TIM: He's running an unconventional campaign. There's no difference between them.

EDWARDS: I personally think, and I would as president, not talk about hypotheticals in nuclear weapons.

STEVE: Okay, hypothetically, if you had a hedge fund . . .

(APPLAUSE)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Gravel, then Governor Richardson.

ANDREW: Crazy Guy! He's all hypotheticals.

GRAVEL: I would say that, essentially, they're all wrong on this.

RICHARDSON: I wouldn't, as an American president, use nuclear weapons first.

ANDREW: They'd be my second choice.

* * *

OBAMA: I would not be running if I did not believe that I was the best person to do this.

TIM: I don't think anyone ever wins who goes, 'I can't believe I won, the other guy was so much better than me!'

EDWARDS: I don't believe you can change this country without taking on very entrenched interests in Washington, including lobbyists, that stand between us and the change America needs. And I don't believe you can do it by sitting at a table, negotiating with them and trying to bring them together.

These people will never give away their power voluntarily. We have to take their power away from them.

TIM: What if they hypothetically gave away their power?

EDWARDS: I have never taken money from Washington lobbyists.

STEVE: The Kerry-Edwards ticket never took money from Washington lobbyists?

TIM: He must mean this campaign.

ANDREW: He must mean this week.

STEVE: Some people may wonder how we can win by preaching change. Volume.

TIM: Hypothetically.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to move on to another issue we're hearing about a lot from the voters from Iowa in the poll. More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue.

They all wanted to know what your plans were to get out of Iraq, and to get out safely from Iraq.

Senator Biden, you've put up an ad, just this morning, here in Iowa, on that subject. Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We were leaving Baghdad and it was pitch black. As I climbed into the C-130, strapped into the middle of that cargo bay was a flag-draped coffin. It turned that cargo bay into a cathedral. And all I could think of was the parents waiting at the other end.

We must end this war in a way that doesn't require us to send their grandchild back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TIM: He was strapped to a coffin?

RICHARDSON: My plan is that, to end this war, we have to get all the troops out, all of them.

TIM: Even the Iraqis.

BIDEN: It's time to start to level with the American people.

STEVE: I thought it was that time in the last debate.

RICHARDSON: Many generals agree with me that we can complete this withdrawal within six to eight months.

TIM: As long as we leave all our troops behind.

CLINTON: Moving troops out cannot happen without careful planning.

ANDREW: We fly them through the air, we put them on trains, bicycles . . .

RICHARDSON: My point is that by taking them all out, all our troops are no longer targets. And then Al Qaida and the insurgents, both that see American troops as their prey, will now turn on each other.

And so . . . [blah blah blah]

TIM: You know, if you change the channel and change it back he'll still be on.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And I also want Senator Clinton and Senator Obama on that question.

ANDREW: Because they haven't talked enough.

BIDEN: Look, the fundamental disagreement I have with my colleagues up here is that . . .

TIM: I shouldn't be president.

ANDREW: My hair is not real.

BIDEN: Look, we've had 20,000 Western troops in a place where there's more sectarian violence - from Vlad the Impaler to Milosevic - than in 5,000 years of history in Iraq.

And what did we do? We separated the parties. There's not one single troop has been killed, not one, in the last 10 years. There is peace. There is a circumstance where the genocide is ended. They're becoming part of Europe.

Every troop must be out over time if there is not a political agreement.

RICHARDSON: Joe, answer my question.

BIDEN: But if there is a political - yes.

RICHARDSON: Why do you leave residual troops behind? Maybe if it's six months or eight months . . .

BIDEN: I leave residual troops behind because you're going to have a minimum of 4,000 civilians there. The military will tell my friend here it takes . . .

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: . . . it takes - no, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. You need combat troops, and you need them to protect . . .

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: . . . the 5,000 troops that are there.

STEVE: Look! A debate broke out.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama, How many troops are going to have to stay for how long?

OBAMA: I think we also can all agree that it's going to be messy, that there are no good options. There are only bad options and worse options . . . This is the equivalent of George Bush drove the bus into the ditch, and there are only so many ways you can pull that bus out of the ditch. That doesn't mean you don't fire the driver and it doesn't mean that you don't evaluate how we avoid getting in these same problems in the future.

STEVE: Actually there are pretty good options. You could call AAA . . .

TIM: You could set the bus on fire.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question - we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah.

STEVE: Oh no.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And he said, 'My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?'

TIM: Well, Seth, if I believed in the power of prayer I'd be president right now.

ANDREW: Is global warming really God's punishment for homosexuality?

GRAVEL: What I believe in is love.

ANDREW: And long deep kisses that last for weeks.

RICHARDSON: If I'm president, I'm not going to wear my religion on my sleeve and impose it on anybody.

ANDREW: I'm gonna wear it under my shirt. Then when I score I'm gonna rip it off!

OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer . . . We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan.

STEVE: And we've got the power to stop gay men from marrying.

KUCINICH: George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me.

ANDREW: And it didn't work! What does that tell you?

KUCINICH: I come from a spiritual insight which says that we have to have faith but also have good works . . . As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House.

TIM: Like voodoo.

ANDREW: And shamans.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's turn to another question from here in Iowa. It's on the subject of agriculture, close to a lot of Iowans' hearts. And it comes from Mr. Blaine Baincon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: I'm Blaine Baincon, a farmer from Massena, Iowa. I was wondering how you plan to help small farms as the large companies take over more farms.

ANDREW: And I love Jimmy Dean!

DODD: Well, George, listen, one of the areas we've got to have is a Justice Department that starts dealing with some of the antitrust issues in our country. It just doesn't cover agriculture, but also a variety of other things, including media concentration here.

The ability today of just concentrating power, allowing so much to be accumulated, is making it very difficult for the kind of independents and smaller interests, including small business and small farmers, to be able to grow and to have the kind of economic success they'd like to have.

Rural America needs additional attention, as well, here. I'm a great believer that we need to extend the broadband access to our rural communities.

Opportunity shouldn't require that you leave rural America to come to opportunity, but opportunity ought to be able to come to rural America, by taking advantage of the technologies we have today, so that people can stay on these farms and stay in rural parts of our country, including Iowa.

ANDREW: Like there's a direct correlation between corn yields and Internet access.

* * *

EDWARDS: In an Edwards administration, the first question I will ask in every single trade agreement we're considering is:Is this good for middle-class working families in America?

STEVE: Just like he asked for every investment he made.

(APPLAUSE)

TIM: The first question I'll ask is, Where's my room? I'm tired.

CLINTON: So we've got to do more to make sure trade agreements are not only good for the exporting of agricultural products from great, big agribusiness, but also for small farmers.

ANDREW: So they only hurt a little bit.

OBAMA: On the trade issue generally, we're not going to suddenly cordon off America from the world.

STEVE: He voted for that fence, though.

OBAMA: Globalization is here . . .

TIM: It's here, it's queer, get used to it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Richardson, we have 20 seconds left until a commercial.

TIM: I bet it's an ADM commercial.

* * *

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to go to a question that came in over e-mail. It was from Robert Malzarek of Montgomery, Alabama.

STEVE: He's got some Hoodia he'd like to sell you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: This question is for all the candidates. Unlike many others, I think that candidates may tell the truth, just not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For example, when advocating a position or action, candidates downplay or simply ignore the likely negative side effects . . .

STEVE: Is he being held at gunpoint? This looks like a hostage video.

QUESTION: . . . Can you name a major issue where you didn't tell the whole truth and describe what you left out?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE: I thought Biden was telling the truth. He said it was time to start doing that.

OBAMA: I think there are a number of issues where there are going to be some choices we've got to make and some sacrifices involved.

STEVE: Telling the truth just divides us.

OBAMA: I'll give you one specific example, and that's on energy. All of us on this stage have talked about global warming and how it is a moral imperative for us to do something about this, to ensure that we're passing on a livable planet to our children and our grandchildren.

There will be some costs involved.

TIM: For instance, we're going to have to put a quarter of the population to death.

STEVE: Hey, that's a hypothetical.

TIM: I watched Judgment at Nuremburg last night.

ANDREW: Who won?

* * *

TIM: I'd like each candidate to tell us the last lie they told us.

CLINTON: I, too, regret giving George Bush the authority that he misused and abused.

STEVE: Because I didn't know how much I'd be regretting it right now.

CLINTON: It was a very difficult decision, and I tried to weigh it as carefully as possible, talking to a lot of different people and being assured, both publicly and privately, by President Bush and the people close to him that they would use the authority to go in and get inspectors and try to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction and pursue diplomacy.

So, you know, looking back on it, I wouldn't have voted that way again, certainly, because obviously President Bush had no intention of doing what he said he was going to do.

ANDREW: She's lying right now or else she's retarded to have believed him.

TIM: If only somebody warned us that the president might not be completely candid. He had an otherwise unblemished record.

CLINTON: Well, as I saw it, yes, you know, similar to John. You know, when the president of the United States says, as he said publicly, and then as people around him said privately over and over again, "We're going to use this authority to get inspectors back in, 'We're going to go to the United Nations,' you know, at some point, you do have to make that evaluation.

And I thought that, based on what he had said and what we were talking about at the time in the Congress, that that would be an appropriate approach.

ANDREW: Oh, the anguish these people went through.

DODD: Well, I'll tell you one issue that I wish I had done more on, recently. And, I think, maybe one of the worst votes cast in the Congress, maybe in the last 20 years, was last fall, on the Military Commissions Act, in which we allowed the abandonment of habeas corpus, returning to torture, and abandoning the Geneva Convention.

I thought about filibustering that bill, and I didn't do it. I regret that deeply. I can't think of a worse vote we cast, to walk away from the Constitution of the United States.

ANDREW: Well, I had a tee time and The Sopranos were on that night.

* * *

BIDEN: Tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, my wife will walk into a classroom and teach for the 30th year in a row. And the one thing any teacher can tell you is that . . .

STEVE: These students are getting worse every year.

* * *

EDWARDS: We also need a home rescue fund for all the millions of Americans who are . . .

TIM: Stuck in their own homes. And need to be rescued.

ANDREW: We're taking you shopping!

OBAMA: We do need more liquidity, but we're going to have to not only help homeowners who are going to be losing their homes as a consequence of this; we're going to have to go forward and make sure that we've got the kinds of tough regulation when it comes to financial instruments to make sure that people who have saved and are trying to get their own home for the first time are not hoodwinked out of it.

TIM: I want everyone at home to reach under your chair - there's an iPod!

STEPHANOPOULOS: Congressman Kucinich, what's the decisive moment in your life?

ANDREW: When you called on me.

OBAMA: A decisive moment in my life was the transition from high school to college, because I had gone through a difficult time, not knowing my father, and was, at times, an angry young man.

STEVE: I wish he was angrier now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that is the last word.

-

BEACHWOOD ANALYSIS: This was the lamest of all the Democratic debates so far, and nobody was a winner. Which means Hillary comes out ahead by default. Edwards runs the risk of getting shrill in his smarmy way the more desperate he gets. Dodd has been unusually forceful - in a good way - the last two debates. The rest is a wash. Biden is Biden, which is just okay, Richardson is Richardson, which is way overmatched and out of his depth. This guy was a cabinet secretary? Kucinich and Gravel are being played as jesters even though they speak the truth more often than the others. Oh yeah, Obama was there too. His positions are still muddled. You can't claim you are challenging conventional wisdom when you are such a conventional pol. His message, instincts and actions are all at odds. George Stephanopolous isn't terrible but they should start giving those jobs to journalists or else will have Karl Rove moderating the 2012 debates.

*

See the entire Mystery Debate Theater collection.

Posted by Lou at 08:03 AM | Permalink

The Cub Factor

These are dangerous times for Cubs fans not used to following a first-place team, and we see danger signs ahead. Here are a few helpful hints that will save you from embarrassment both now and for the rest of your lives.

* Don't demand the first-place discount at Al Piemonte Ford, the Cubby Bear batting cages, or the Cook County Assessor's Office. You can, however, ask for it at home from your spouse.

* Do not name your new twin boys Len & Bob. Mike & Ryan are acceptable.

* Do not pull out that old Todd Hundley jersey to wear on Casual Friday. A Randall Simon jersey, however, would make you the coolest cat in the office.

* Do not paint your Escalade Cubbie Blue. Trading it in for a blue hybrid is acceptable.

* We do not have Wood. Trust us.

* Stop talking like Woo-Woo Wickers. Even the Cubs don't like that guy anymore. Talking like Steve Stone is acceptable.

* Home viewers should not throw garbage around their condos when they see a call they don't like. Er, wait. Yes, go ahead, have at it.

* You cannot now get your tattoo removed. Sorry Roger, you tiger now.

* Do not put Jacque Jones back on your Christmas card list. He didn't open your mail when you hated him and he's not going to open your mail now or at any time in the future.

* Do not shave the Cubs logo onto your head. Champagne glasses never go out of style, though.

-

Week in Review: The Cubs lost two of three to the Reds and took the first two games against the Cardinals before Sunday night's rainout. Looks like the Cardinals bandwagon broke down in Chicago and supplied the missing pieces that the broken Cub bandwagon needed. Good thing the Cards drive the same make and model bandwagon as the Cubs.

Week in Preview: The Cubs play one more at home against the Cardinals and then head west for three games each in San Francisco and Arizona. So adjust your schedule accordingly for another week of late night finals - just like college.

The Second Basemen Report: Mark DeRosa started six games last week; Mike Fontenot started one. So it's taken us until the middle of August for the guy who was slated to be the everyday second baseman to be the (close to) everyday second baseman. Expect this to stay the same moving forward as DeRosa is hot as an oven in hell. Or just wait 'til next week when Ronnie Cedeno will inexplicably get a couple starts. You know, just like Jim Hendry drew it up.

In former second basemen news, Neifi Perez was suspended for failing a third drug test. He will be missed for 80 games.

Sweet and Sour Lou: 75% sweet and 25% sour. Lou is up one point on the Sweet-O-Meter with the Cubs persevering through a tough week. Like your real crazy drunk uncle, Lou didn't fly off the handle when you kids stole his lawnmower and broke the blade running over a big rock. Lou knew you felt bad and that you would fix it before the grass got too long.

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 there is still a lot of season left.

Over/Under: The amount of money it will cost to get a seat at Wrigley Field for the stretch run: +/- a crapload

Cubs Fans Theme Song: "Please Stop Believin'"

The Cubs Answer Men: 1 and 2.

The Cub Factor: Catch up with them all.

Mount Lou: Stays at yellow as disappointment magma slowly cools just under Lou's surface. Interdivision pressure could cause a minor tremor in the upcoming weeks.

Posted by Lou at 07:19 AM | Permalink

Chicagoetry: Great Moments in Rock Dancing, Number Two

GREAT MOMENTS IN ROCK DANCING, NUMBER TWO

J. Geils
Band

at Soldier
Field,

1977:
Sly Stone

failed to
show

at Petrillo
Bandshell

in '71, and live
music

was BANNED
on the

lakefront (can you IMAGINE?!)!
Until 1977, and, ladies and gentlemen,

"The Super Bowl
of Rock!"

FELLAS!
Number One (of

four):
Emerson, Lake

& Palmer
with a 60-piece

orchestra!
But Peter Wolf

stole
the day!

Frug-ing, Ponyi-ng,
Shimmy-ing, Monkey-ing

his brains
out,

boog-a-
loo-ing, man, and lookin' lookin' lookin' lookin'

foh a
LUV

to call
his own!

Probably fried
to his hat

on every drug
imaginable, too,

but MAN,
you shoulda

been
there.

-

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 07:14 AM | Permalink

August 18, 2007

The Weekend Desk Report

We've been laying low this week, the better to monitor the world while you relax.

Market Update
Apparently, "stability" now means vertiginous stock market upswings built on unsustainable foundations that don't really make most people feel any better. So now that we have stability, go on out and buy a house!

Snow Job
Let's just get this straight: it's not the waking hell of spouting an endless stream of lies for a historically unpopular administration that's finally melted Tony Snow; it's the need to provide for his family. Congratulations, Latrell. You've just out-scumbagged the king himself.

The Parent Trap
Well, thank God that long, national nightmare is over.

Power Hungry
The Chinese government this week took radical steps to protect its population from sky-rocketing commodity prices. Hey, take heart China: at least it's not corn. Or gas. Or corn and gas.

Olympic Trials
As Beijing prepares to host the 2008 Summer Games, its goal of providing almost no breathable air has been reached well ahead of schedule. Officials with Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid committee would like to assure the public that local energy producers are doing their bit to keep pace. Furthermore, BP has generously pledged to deprive potential visitors of potable water as well if it helps to land the Games.

Falling Through the Cracks?
The leadership at Metra has fired off letters to state lawmakers detailing their concern that the Chicago Transit Authority's needs will supersede those of suburban commuters. In response, Governor Blagojevich has pledged to do just as much for Metra riders as he has for the city: sweet fuck-all.

And Finally . . .
So how much of a co-pay do you think they'll charge for this at Stroger?

Posted by Natasha at 07:30 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2007

The [Friday] Papers

1. "Astronomers have discovered that a giant star that has been studied for centuries is streaking across the sky trailing an enormous, cometlike tail," the New York Times reported this week.

"Scientists said Wednesday that they were stunned to learn that the giant red star, Mira, zipping through the Milky Way galaxy 300 times faster than a speeding bullet, has a turbulent tail stretching trillions of miles across space."

Just to keep things in perspective.

2. "Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners' expectations, died early yesterday in Manhattan. He was 83," the New York Times reports.

3."In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. This label released a record of a concert, billed and widely considered as 'the greatest concert ever,' called Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Mingus and Roach. Also released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation," Wikipedia says.

"In 1960 he composed the We Insist! - Freedom Now suite with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Using his musical abilities to comment on the African-American experience would be a significant part of his career. Unfortunately, Roach suffered from being blacklisted by the American recording industry for a period in the 1960s."

*

"Roach surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert, featuring the artist-rapper Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. He expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the outpouring of expression of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life."

*

"Roach also appeared on Rush drummer Neil Peart's Burning For Buddy performing 'The Drum Also Waltzes,' Part 1 and 2 on Volume 1 of the 2 Volume series during the 1994 All-Star recording sessions."

4. A selected discography.

5. Why doesn't someone say something like this to the mayor? And I don't mean about the shirt.

6. Product Placements of the Week.

7. "I know this dates me a lot, but there really shouldn't be any tollways anymore. When the tollways were first installed, it was with the understanding that they would eventually become freeways. Giving up money, of course, is not the Illinois way, so we have permanent tollways now. I ride them as little as possible in a silent protest for another broken promise to the people of Illinois."
- Marilyn Ferdinand

8. Missy and Sissy are back. Kill me now.

You be the judge of who turns out more dog poop: The Schmichs/Steinbergs/Roepers/Sneeds/Trices of the world or any random blog by any random blogger.

9. "Just months after agreeing to settle a long-running court battle over politics in city hiring, Mayor Richard Daley's administration submitted a plan Thursday that critics say violates the agreement and would limit the role of the city's inspector general in policing hiring," the Tribune reports.

Gee, what took them so long?

10. The Tribune's love letter to the retiring Dennis Hastert makes sure to mention the former Speaker of the U.S. House's days coaching wrestling at Yorkville High School 27 years ago - apparently reporters are mandated to do so in every story about Hastert under penalty of a choke-hold - but fails to mention the Hastert Highway which will no doubt help fund his golden years.

11. A graphic depiction.

12. "The American people would like to see a war of three months and drop a bomb from 40,000 feet and say,'We've done the job,' Hastert said. "But to really make changes in government in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan is a long, hard, dirty process."

The American people, who are paying for this war with their lives and treasure, weren't sold on a long, hard, dirty process, Coach.

13. The Trib article not only allows Hastert to make that remark unchallenged but leaves out his stated opinion in 2004 that Al Qaeda wanted John Kerry to win.

14. "Hastert led the opposition in the Bill Clinton years to the then-first lady's national health care plan and contended that she holds a "wrong philosophy" that "government is there to take care of people and the bigger the government is, the better people are taken care of, and that government can make better decisions for people and government can spend their money better."

So . . . Hastert believes that America can't run a health care plan but can turn Iraq into a democracy?

15. Former Chicago gangbanger Jose Padilla convicted of being a mope.

"In the end, it was a case that bore little resemblance to the Justice Department's original accusation that Padilla was a locked-and-loaded Al Qaeda agent ready to rain destruction upon an American city," the Tribune reports.

"The attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, publicly labeled Padilla a 'known terrorist' who had trained with Al Qaeda. 'We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb,' Ashcroft announced.

"Padilla [an American citizen] since has claimed that while in military custody he was abused and interrogated unlawfully. His lawyers argued the resulting mental damage made him unfit to stand trial. And at one point during his military detention, the Justice Department admitted that the information obtained from Padilla could not be used in court to prosecute him."

16. "The dirty bomb accusations were not mentioned during Mr. Padilla's three-month trial here, nor was his military confinement," the New York Times reports.

17. "It is that [Justice Department] approach, according to critics such as [constitutional scholar Jonathan] Turley, that led the government to spend five years and untold dollars shifting Padilla around, only to convict him of something 'they could have charged him with a week after his arrest,'" the Trib account says.

18. "It is hard to disagree with the jury's guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber. But it would be a mistake to see it as a vindication for the Bush administration's serial abuse of the American legal system in the name of fighting terrorism," the New York Times editorial page says.

"On the way to this verdict, the government repeatedly trampled on the Constitution, and its prosecution of Mr. Padilla was so cynical and inept that the crime he was convicted of - conspiracy to commit terrorism overseas - bears no relation to the ambitious plot to wreak mass destruction inside the United States, which the Justice Department first loudly proclaimed. Even with the guilty verdict, this conviction remains a shining example of how not to prosecute terrorism cases.

19. Cardinals-Cubs.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Even things up.

Posted by Lou at 08:50 AM | Permalink

Chicagoetry: That Better Be The Goddam Air Show!

THAT BETTER BE THE GODDAM AIR SHOW!

My Bro
was killed

at the
Pentagon

on
9/11.

I get NO
KICK

from being
STRAFED! . . .

-

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 06:55 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2007

The [Thursday] Papers

You know, I still don't have a firm grip on the Elvira Arellano situation. My instinct is that the authorities should let her go to Washington, D.C., to make her case, and then arrest her upon her return.

I'm pro-immigrant. I'm pro-illegal immigrant too. I tend toward the open borders end of things. But I'm also disgusted with the way American companies depend upon and exploit cheap illegal labor to the detriment of all workers.

Arellano's particular case is complicated. Maybe an arrest after going to Washington would best put her in a position to more effectively pursue reform while accepting the current letter of the law the way figures of civil disobedience must.

Oscar the Clown
It was all just an act, Joey Lombardo says.

Golden Nugget
Lombardo denied Wednesday taking part in the 1974 murder of Daniel Seifert, his partner in a Bensenville fiberglass-molding company.

"[Lombardo said he] had an alibi: At the time of the murder of his good friend Danny Seifert, he was in the Chicago Police Shakespeare District station, filling out a report that his wallet had been stolen," John Kass writes.

"What neither prosecutors nor Lombardo's defense mentioned is that the commander of the Shakespeare District was the then-heroic cop William Hanhardt, who later and quite magically became chief of detectives, with so much clout he could make or break every cop on the police force.

"Where is Hanhardt these days? He's in federal prison, serving a 12-year sentence for running an Outfit-sponsored jewelry heist ring with one of Lombardo's co-defendants, Paul 'The Indian" Schiro, who was also convicted of the jewelry robberies. When Lombardo's Shakespeare District alibi came up, the Indian stared a hole in the floor."

Special Forces
"The U.S. attorney's office has joined the ongoing criminal probe of an elite squad of the Chicago Police Department, working with Cook County prosecutors to investigate why police officials did not stop rogue officers who allegedly robbed and kidnapped civilians over at least four years," the Tribune reports.

Non-elite cops just beat the shit out of civilians in bars.

The New Math
"Count Of 24 Homeless Was Based On Just 12-Block Area."

So instead of there being just 24 homeless people in all of downtown Chicago, there are actually two per block?

Silly String
"The headline [in the Sun-Times's original story] left the impression that we believe there's only 24 homeless people in all of downtown," Acting Housing Commissioner Ellen Sahli told the paper. "That's not what we believe. That's not our contention. That's just silly."

You know, at this point I don't know whether to credit silly contentions to the city or the Sun-Times.

Chicago Syndrome
"Beijing Launches 'False News' Crackdown."

A) Will no longer accept Chicago City Hall press releases.
B) Officials will cut Sneed's column out of all newspapers before distributing to citizens.
C) The Onion becomes only allowable American news source.

Judge Fudge
"U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan ruled Timothy Degnan, a former top Daley aide, and Degnan business associate Thomas DiPiazza do not belong as defendants [in a civil lawsuit against the city] because they are not public officials and do not have the power to make governmental decisions," the Tribune reports.

Der-Yeghiayan must be new to town.

Toll Call
"The Illinois tollway hasn't sent out violation notices for almost a year, allowing thousands of scofflaws to drive Chicago-area toll roads each day without paying missed tolls or a $20 fine per offense," the Tribune reports.

Officials say they will recoup the lost money when they start sending out notices this month to catch up. But "the toll authority never will be able to recover the bank interest lost from not collecting fines as violations occurred," the Trib notes.

Joey Lombardo never would have let it get this far.

*

The tollway generally collects about $15 million a year in fines, so you do the math to figure out the lost interest.

Elvis
Rick Kaempfer's Media Notebook has ABC News video reporting Elvis's death 30 years ago today, as well as BBC video from his funeral and Geraldo Rivera interviewing folks who were with him on his last day.

Bear Down!
Football is back - and so is Over/Under. See how many wins Eric Emery sees for the Bears this year.

Democracy in Progress
"Rumsfeld Quit Before '06 Election."

"In his four-paragraph resignation letter, which emerged after multiple Freedom of Information requests by The Associated Press, Rumsfeld does not mention the war in Iraq."

You know, in a real democracy we wouldn't have to file Freedom of Information requests to know what our government is up to. We too easily accept that politicians spin, lie, and withhold from the public that which we are entitled to know because that's just how "the game" is played. Democracy is not a game.

Marketing Miss
Memo to the Sun-Times: I'm pretty sure you're not going to sell more papers off the newsstand by with front-page claims such as "The Liveliest Editorials In Town" and "Our Editorials Are Better Than Theirs."

Especially when it's not true.

It just makes you look silly and desperate.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Your very own sanctuary.

Posted by Lou at 09:52 AM | Permalink

Party Maker Announces Record Growth

The following press release announcing the growth of the Party Maker franchise, may be of interest to your audience. Any editorial comment or mention that you may give this press release would be greatly appreciated.

*

Dateline: August 15, 2007
Contact: Customer Service
E-Mail: CustomerService@PartyMakerDiscountMegaStore.com
Web Address: www.partymakerdiscountmegastore.com

*

PARTY MAKER ANNOUNCES RECORD FRANCHISE GROWTH

Myrtle Beach, S.C. - Party Maker is a full-service party store company headquartered in Myrtle Beach, SC, with two corporate stores. They are reporting 2007 record growth of over 43% in their Franchise business expansion. New Party Maker franchise stores are now operating in several Mid-Atlantic States, with additional growth in the Midwest, as well as multiple franchisee interest internationally. For all the areas not covered by stores, shoppers are going online to purchase their favorite party supplies at discount prices, from all 50 states, and from over 113 countries and territories world wide. Internet party supply shoppers have increased at a phenomenal rate of over 50% per month on their website so far this year.

PartyMakerDiscountMegaStore.com carries more than 6,000 quality products, many of them made in the US. The web site offers party supplies at discount prices, with over 39 categories of products.

These categories include birthday, wedding, solid color tableware, balloons, and everything else needed for the big day. Birthdays are well represented on the site, offering everything from 1st Birthday to 68 Over The Hill items alone. This site takes the stress out of planning special events. For example, a First Baby Shower has everything from centerpiece decorations to party favors, Mom To Be sashes, invitations and coordinating balloons. Shoppers can easily find what they're looking for at this well-designed website. In addition to products for any type of theme party you can imagine, there is also an extensive selection of all-occasion party supplies, personalized gifts, and custom invitations. So whether you need purple metallic table skirting or a white aisle runner, PartyMakerDiscountMegaStore.com has discount party supplies for every occasion.

Party Maker also offers a comprehensive "turn-key" Party Store Franchise opportunity that is truly unique. A very competitive one-time franchise fee with no additional or hidden charges gives you the rights to operate your own Party Maker Party Store Franchise. Included with this comes two weeks of in-store training at their corporate store. This hands-on training, as well as all the other assistance provided is what makes a Party Maker franchise opportunity more valuable. In addition, the owners of Party Maker are experienced professionals at franchising. They have launched some of the most successful franchises in business today, including a well known world wide franchise store chain operating in more than 88 countries! For more information on a Party Maker Party Store Franchise, visit their website: www.partymakerdiscountmegastore.com/_Franchise Info.html

*

About PartyMakerDiscountMegaStore.com: Party Maker is here for one purpose, to provide you with quality party supplies at discount party supply store prices, ensuring your party will be fun and remembered by all!

We know the party business: from birthday parties to corporate parties, we do it all! We have a full line of party supplies and have been in business since 1998. Order with confidence, knowing that you will receive quality party supplies at discount prices. We look forward to serving you for all your party supply needs!

Thank you for shopping at our store, we sincerely appreciate your business!

PartyMakerDiscountMegaStore.com is a division of Party Maker, with stores across the USA. Party! Party!

Posted by Lou at 07:54 AM | Permalink

Over/Under

In American society, we spend inordinate amounts of time determining who is right. But who is always right? Some people say "The customer is always right" but most customer service departments nowadays don't seem to think so. My wife believes she is always right, but winning every fight doesn't make it so. I'd humbly submit that only one entity is 100% right:

Vegas.

Especially during football season. Which has arrived.

Let's review.

Clue #1: I was just there and received a beating like I was a rented mule. Clue #2: Every bet receives a house edge. In general, a winning bet receives 90% profit, but a losing bet nets a 100% loss. So in other words, insofar as the sportsbook gets the same amount on each side of a line, the only guaranteed winner is Vegas.

I came to this realization while Vegas held my ass in their hands and said to me "Mr. Emery, here is your ass." So instead of making the following bets in Vegas, I decided the potential financial loss remained less palatable than a free public embarrassment. So as part of my preseason predictions, here are a 10 Vegas Over/Under Lines, my predictions, and the Beachwood's Over/Unders.

*

Atlanta: 7.5 wins
Prediction: Under
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of times ESPN implies "The Falcons would have won if Michael Vick played" - and still is wrong: +/- 242.5

*

Cleveland: 6 wins
Prediction: Under
Beachwood Over/Under: Difference between attendance between at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Cleveland home games: +/- 1,800,000

*

Dallas 9 wins
Prediction: Over
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of times CBS uses the theme from Dallas as they show Terrell Owens yelling at Tony Romo: +/- 110.5

*

Indianapolis: 10.5
Prediction: Over
Beachwood Over/Under: Money lost on Colts when Manning remembers he is actually a playoff choke artist: +/- $1.6 billion

*

New York Jets: 7.5
Prediction: Over
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of times Bears fans say "We'd have won that game if we had Thomas Jones.": +/- 1.4 million

*

Oakland: 5
Prediction: Under
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of games Oakland really should bother playing - 0.5

*

Seattle: 9
Prediction: Over
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of times the NFL broadcast will show stock footage of fish-throwing at the market: +/- 14.5

*

Tennessee: 7
Prediction: Under
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of fans who invoke the Madden Curse after Vince Young tears his ACL: +/- 800,000

*

My Pittsburgh Steelers: 8.5
Prediction: Way Over
Beachwood Over/Under: Time wasted by ESPN to find a replacement for the "Bill Cowher Chin Shot" when showing Steelers new head coach: +/- 3.5 hours

*

Your Chicago Bears: 10
Prediction: Under by one game
Beachwood Over/Under: Number of times fans gasp when Devin Hester is crushed by a defensive back: +/- Every Damn Time

-

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 07:22 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night

"I wonder if they can put vodka in Starbuck's coffee," wonders Stephani, one of this week's featured brides on We TV's Bridezillas. This is a request we've all wanted to ask our local barista at one time or another, but not while we're downing a Xanax for the umpteenth time that day, in front of a film crew whilst our portly fiance is driving the car.

This is de rigeur behavior for the bitchy, demanding and just plain classless brides-to-be on this show. The cameras capture every pout, snit, tear, questionable fashion choice, and general bad behavior. Two brides are featured each week and their bitchfests usually take up two or more episodes.

In past episodes, Bridezillas introduced the TV viewing public to an alcohol-swilling Mormon with a potty mouth, a teen-queen bride whose behavior blackballed her from most of the caterers in Bakersfield, and one who prided herself on being "Trailer Fabulous."

Stephani, however, tops 'em all. The other bride on the show I don't even care about. Why? Well, Stephani is the girl of anyone's dreams. She starts her day with a plethora of pharmaceuticals like Xanax and Klonopin, she carries a large switchblade in her purse, and her fiance paid $13,000 for her boobs. She is klassy with a 'K,' my friends. The 13 grand for her boobs is just part of her charm. Her fiance offered to put the money down on a Porsche Cayenne, but she wanted boobs instead - and what girl wouldn't? I don't see what the big dilemma is here: big hooters or a car that is just big enough to haul you and your two new girls around town?

Another thing we discover about Stephani is that she has a baby girl with her fiance. She got pregnant within a few months of meeting him. We also learn from Stephani that one of the best things about being pregnant was how huge her boobs got - hence the aforementioned boob job. She now wants to have another child so she can get a tummy tuck.

"If I had to pick between my fiance and my boob job, I'd have to pick my fiance because he paid for my boobs," says Stephani.

What a keeper.

When Stephani found out that the budget for her wedding was a mere $10,000, she cried, pouted, and didn't talk to her parents for two days. Finally, her parents upped the budget by 50 percent. To insure that she would have a 'klassy' wedding, Stephani and her fiance (okay I don't know his name since it's all about Stephani) tailored their guest list to only include very wealthy friends. Doing it that way, Stephani reasons, will guarantee expensive gifts.

There's more, thank Jah. Stephani will also be on next week's episode of Bridezillas and I'll be right there, front and center, staring doe-eyed at the TV ready to report on Stephani's special day, dammit. After all, how could I refuse? Stephani "doesn't like hearing the word no from anyone. At all."

*

For more What I Watched Last Night, see our fabulous WIWLN archives. And don't be shy: Submissions welcome.

Posted by Lou at 07:01 AM | Permalink

August 15, 2007

The [Wednesday] Papers

Given his documented history, Joey "the Clown Lombardo" is going to be destroyed on cross-examination. But it's going to be fun.

Lombardo took the stand on Tuesday in his own defense and played the part of overgrown street kid.

"At times, Lombardo meandered in his testimony, like the man at the dinner party who doesn't realize his story has gone on too long," Steve Warmbir of the Sun-Times reports.

But Joey knows the score, though I think he's a bit stuck in the past.

"There are 50 bosses in Chicago," he said. "If you want anything in this city, you go see the alderman. If you want a zoning change, you go see the alderman. If you want a card game going, you go see the alderman. If you want a dice game, you go see the alderman. If he tells you to stop, you stop."

There is only one boss in Chicago now. And he and his minions are more interested in condo games than card games. But still.

How Rich
"Tuesday's development shifted focus off of Blagojevich's late-night approval of 9.6-percent pay increases for himself and lawmakers Monday night - a move that broke his 2006 campaign pledge to veto the pay hikes," the Sun-Times noted deep in its story about the governor's latest legislative manueverings - the same way the Trib did.

I thought it was up to the media to decide where to put the focus.

"Blago Raises Own Pay" might have been a good front-page headline.

Beachwood Video
Tony Rezko Had a Crush on Obama.

Though I still like this one too.

Inside Out
"Obama is merely doing political business as usual. At the same time a central theme for Obama on the stump is that his campaign is different," Lynn Sweet writes today.

Christian Coalition
Obama is campaigning as a Christian.

Mayor Manager
"Very few people are good managers," the mayor said on Tuesday after hiring his 11th chief of staff in 18 years and finally appointing a new head of the scandal-wracked transportation department.

Cheese Whiz
Fran Spielman calls Sadhu Johnston, the city's environment czar, a "whiz kid," but the last time I saw him he was getting worked over for spouting bullshit by Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne on Chicago Tonight.

So let's not be so easily impressed.

Pot Shot
"A backlog of 3,500 unfilled potholes has been reduced to a mere 188," Spielman reports.

Yes, they were reclassified as green spaces.

Paper Tigers
* The Sun-Times Media Group stock fell to a record closing low Tuesday at $2.80, down 50 cents or 15 percent, the paper reports.

* "Tribune Company shares fell as low as $24.46 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, nearly $10 below the $34 a share that investors are receiving as the company goes private," Crain's reports. "Shareholders have been pushing down the stock, fearing that the company's worsening performance and a crunch in the wider credit market could endanger the deal."

* Meanwhile, analysts are high on The Beachwood Media Company. Investor inquiries welcome.

Peter Piper
"Karl Productions, headed by former Channel 5 reporter Peter Karl, has been awarded a $414,600 contract for the coming year by the Chicago Park District board. The Chicago-based company will produce public service programming for cable access - at $37,500 per episode," Robert Feder reports (fourth item - right after the one about Amy Jacobson selling her house).

Memo to Park District: I'll do it for half. Even less if I get to tell the truth.

*

Karl, you may recall, is the same guy whose company pulled in $468,000 a year from the Chicago Police Department to produce Crimewatch even as he reported on unsolved murders for Channel 5.

Inspector Peraica
How hard will the Daley Machine work to keep Tony Peraica out of the State's Attorney's Office? Harder than they've worked at anything to date.

Chicago Rocks
Some of us have been saying it for years: Chicago has one of the nation's best local music scenes - if not the best - and the mayor not only doesn't care, he's at war with it.

Over the last 15 years, the city blew its chance to nurture the Wicker Park neighborhood and its collection of artists as well as other aspects of the indie, jazz, and alt-country communities and instead has smothered it with a thousand lead pillows.

Let's face it, Richard M. Daley doesn't rock.

The Daily Hypocrisy
"Paddock Publications President and Chief Executive Doug Ray and his senior managers have declined comment on the layoffs at the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald in recent days, the first in the family-owned paper's history," Phil Rosenthal reports (second item).

Apparently commenting to newspapers - or working for them - is for suckers.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Suckers welcome.

Posted by Lou at 07:46 AM | Permalink

Chicagoetry: Coked Up Cops

COKED UP COPS

Fellas! Sorry!
We're good, we're

cool, come on
man . . . JESUS! . . .

-

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 12:48 AM | Permalink

Billy Bob Country

1. Billy Bob, Billy Bob. How much cooler can you get? In the mostly pathetic pantheon of movie types who grab a mike and a guitar, saunter onstage with an All-Star pick-up band and think they're rock stars, Thornton rates highly - a near-miss. And that makes him the best member of that company I've ever heard. Way, way better than someone like Keanu Reeves, and not just because Billy Bob plays thoughtful alternative country instead of Keanu's party-on alternative rock, although it helps. No, it's more because he brings that same kind of barely un-ironic, effortless redneck intellectualism that I love from his best movie roles into his songs as well. Billy Bob's the real deal - if he could sing just a little bit better he'd make a pretty good living out on the high-end country bar and festival circuit.

Listening to his fourth album, Beautiful Door, and the podcasts he's done to accompany it, the Billy Bob music experience is actually much more Jim Reeves than Keanu, at least as far his songs' channelings go. Like Jim Reeves (whom Thornton counts as one of his earliest musical influences), most of his compositions are meandering and reflective, and at the same time moody, frequently somber, and tinged with angry political lyrics that liberal alt-country types can get behind. Billy Bob's singing voice is not what I'd call professional quality, though. Tantalizingly close, but no cigar, I'm afraid.

And in that purely technical sense, what works for him in the movies doesn't quite translate into similar success for what he says is his true passion, music. From many of his best film roles, we know that his style often features lots of emotional repression, sometimes almost comically so (see The Man Who Wasn't There, for example). In these movies, he usually bottles up his feelings until at some point they all come out in shrieking, terrifying bursts. The problem with doing that in music is that country songs are like three-minute short subjects instead of feature films . . . no time for the kind of lengthy character development that is tolerable onscreen thanks to various forms of eye candy and storytelling magic. On record, an emotionally restrained singing voice is a tough trick to pull off - I'm not saying alt-country singers have to gush to be good, but in general, I think, it's an art form where the emotion kind of needs to be much closer to the surface.

Unless, of course, you're Kris Kristofferson, whom Billy Bob also identifies as an early taste, along with the usual assortment of Sun Records giants (Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, and later, the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five, because Clark, like Billy Bob, was a drummer who led a band). Billy Bob's a crackerjack drummer whose work on the skins pretty much shines, while his whole persona as a singer/songwriter really resonates on a Kristofferson level to me. He's got the same kind of low-key, rough-edged delivery and lyrics dripping with stoned-out, bittersweet wisdom on the full range of country music topics: busted romance, battles with the bottle, the political plight of the powerless, and occasionally the cultural imperative of hell-raising. It feels like it should work but it doesn't, although it comes about as close as a movie star has gotten so far, I believe.

Even so, you could do worse than Beautiful Door if you're in the mood for a pensive trip down the spooky side of alt country.

2. Remember last May when I talked about Clear Channel making a rare move-against-type by taking one of most venerable, most formulaic classic rocks stations in the country, Dallas' KZPS-FM, and turning it over to an eclectic alt-country/Texas roots rock format? I applauded that move with the hopes that Clear Channel and the handful of other giant corporate radio chain owners are learning something from the Internet music revolution - namely, that music fans are tuning out for good reason. Their microscopic playlists are killing terrestrial radio dead.

There are high hopes for the new Lone Star 92.5. If it succeeds in attracting even a few listeners with its adventurous record choices and its "no spots" advertising style, Clear Channel is likely to invest more resources into an effort to develop eclectic niche formats, which for the most part it's targeting for HD Radio side-channels but could, as is the case with Lone Star 92.5, move over to the big stage.

So it's pretty cool that the station's first big event went swimmingly last month. Its Lone Star Fandango concert attracted 12,000 fans (many, I'm sure, lured by dinosaurs ZZ Top, but still . . . ), and its bill featured the kinds of deserving bands who have always been relegated to the sidelines thanks to the policies of companies like Clear Channel. I also like that ZZ Top, even though they're relics of the stadium-rock 70s, are still hip enough to embrace and help champion a new generation of country rock outcasts and are willing to help torpedo those selfsame tiny playlists that have kept them in beard pomade for decades.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

"If anyone thought Lone Star KZPS/92.5's format change from classic rock to Texas roots rock was going to bomb, Sunday's Lone Star Fandango concert reiterated the opposite: People are sick and tired of hearing Boston.

"With a crowd of about 12,000 at Smirnoff Music Centre, it's safe to say that the Fandango, the station's obligatory fan-appreciation summer concert, was a gratifying success - gratifying for them because it drew so many people, gratifying for the audience because the lineup was so good.

"The bands mirrored the station's playlist: Perennial Houston faves ZZ Top headlined a mostly Texas bill that also featured the Old 97's and Eleven Hundred Springs from Dallas, the Drams from Denton, and Shooter Jennings, the son of Littlefield-born Waylon. But even the non-Texans - David Allan Coe, Bottle Rockets and Drive-By Truckers - sound like they're from Texas.

"And who turned out for the show? Who's listening, in other words, to Lone Star? It was as if a few John Mayer fans got lost and stumbled into a Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. Guys in polo shirts were sitting next to guys in no shirts. Cologne mixed pleasantly with body odor."

OK, I was alright up until that "cologne and body odor" part. Maybe it's a Texas thing?

*

Toss a message down the steps into Don's Root Cellar.

*

Catch up with with the Root Cellar archive.

Posted by Don at 12:32 AM | Permalink

Joel Osteen

Who: Joel Osteen.

Organization: Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen Ministries.

Book: "Your Best Life Now"

Website slogan: Discover the Champion in You

Fire and Brimstone: Joel is too much of an optimist to believe anyone would ever end up in Hell.

Style: A picture-postcard of perfection, from his engaging smile and expensive suits to his blonde bombshell wife, Victoria. Joel is a believable, secure, mellower Kevin Trudeau - in fact, he's everything Kevin Trudeau would be if Trudeau actually believed in anything. The tinge of Joel's drawl adds to his unique quality of being incredibly likable for an optimist. A gentle preacher. Keeps the religiosity to a minimum, even as he's quoting Scripture in the most non-threatening way possible. Does seem to know a lot about God's intentions, though. Doesn't seem to have ever considered that God could be a tyrant or a bumbler.

TV Quote: "Quit comparin' your life and run your own race . . . The moment we start to compare, it steals our joy and spoils our day."

Daily E-Mail Devotional: "Inspiration In Your Inbox."

Politics: Can't we all just get along?

Prayer Requests? Yes.

Merchandise: Hats, shirts, and other apparel coming soon.

Evaluation: An Osteen/Obama ticket in '08?

Home Court: Compaq Center.

Hallelujahs: 10

- Steve Rhodes

*

See our TV Preacher Review archives.

Posted by Lou at 12:30 AM | Permalink

The Periodical Table

A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.

Vanity Ad Fair
* P. 185: "Knowing the Rules Makes Her a Schooled Musician. BREAKING THE RULES Makes Her a Jazz Musician."
- Diana Krall for Rolex

* P. 253: "Whatever's on your list of things to do in life, do it better with Visa Signature."
- Elvis Costello for Visa

Do they really need the money that bad?

Fashion Fair
From the "Fashion Rocks" fashion supplement to the new Vanity Fair (isn't that redundant?):

* Mall punk Avril Lavigne in an $1,845 top and $980 Christian Louboutin Madison boots. Photographed with skateboard and skull helmet.

* Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy in a $725 Calvin Klein sweater.

* Alicia Keys in a $1,800 Junya Watanabe coat.

* Carrie Underwood in a $2,825 circus skirt.

* Sean Lennon in a $1,565 Dolce & Gabbana suit.

* Amy Winehouse in a $1,235 Blumarine dress.

* Model in Punk spread: $1,250 Vivienne Westwood Sex Pistols T-shirt.

* Model in Goth spread: $21,475 Calvin Klein dress.

* Model in Rave spread: $1,495 Manish Arora Space Station short-sleeved jacket.

* Model in Mod spread: $3,910 Thom Browne stripe wool jacket.

* Model posing as Janis Japlin, "Folk Hero": More than $1,300 in jewelry.

Fashion Rocks TV special hosted by Jeremy Piven on Sept. 7. Brought to you by Chevrolet, Citi, Dillard's, Nexxus, and Revlon.

Secret Tech
The new Victoria's Secret catalog (hey, it landed in my mailbox by accident) introduces "The world's first bra of its kind to provide both coverage and lift."

Huh, I would've thought they'd have invented that by now.

Newlywed Game
Fair Warning: The payoff to The New York Times Magazine's cover story, "Can This Marriage Be Saved? A year in the life of a couples-therapy group" is disappointing.

Chicago Sub
"So I'm a substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools," Mr. E writes Lumpen 105. "It pays a little under a hundred bucks a day, you only have to work when you want to and all you need is a degree in whatever. It's either sort of hard which means it's hard but you're kind of good at it and you like it, or it's really hard which means you should do something else. I'm really glad I do it; it's one of the least evil steady paying jobs I can think of. There is some evil around, though."

Duke Debacle
"The roar began on March 24, 2006, when Raleigh's News & Observer broke the news on its front page that 'all but one member of the Duke lacrosse team had reported to the Durham police crime lab' for DNA testing," American Journalism Review reports in an examination of what went wrong with the media coverage of the Duke debacle.

Whatever happened to the rule that you don't report on investigations and allegations until someone is actually charged? That's what I was taught, and the reason is because of just what we've seen over and over again, whether in this case or, say, Richard Jewell and many others. Any of us can be investigated. There has to be a threshold for making it news, and actually being charged ought to be that threshold.

Public Information Officers
"Among [Chinese] party officials responsible for media content, the word xuanchuan, or 'propaganda' does not have a negative connotation," the Committee to Protect Journalists reports in Falling Short. "In recognition of the discomfort it evokes among foreigners, however, the department overseeing China's media was renamed in 1998 - in English only - from Central Propaganda Department to Central Publicity Department."

How cute. They're learning.

*

Journalists imprisoned in China. (pdf)

Posted by Lou at 12:19 AM | Permalink

I Had a Crush on Obama

You act like I'm no longer alive
Helped buy your house in 2005
Well our land was side by side
We were neighbors, my friend

* Available on YouTube for your embedding needs.

* Obama on the run.

* Beachwood's Obama coverage in Obamathon.

* Also available from Beachwood Video: "I'm the Tribune/I'm the Sun-Times."

* New from Beachwood Audio: "Cubs Fans: Please Stop Believin'."

I Had a Crush Credits: Tony Rezko/Marty Gangler; Music/Tom Latourette; Porch Girl/Jenny Sturrock; Woman in Yellow Hat/Herself; Direction & Editing/Tim Inklebarger; Videographer/Shawn Girvan; Executive Gaffer/Steve Rhodes.

Posted by Lou at 12:00 AM | Permalink

August 14, 2007

The [Tuesday] Papers

"As a 19-year-old working in Illinois, [Karl] Rove used an assumed name to gain access to the headquarters of Democratic state treasurer candidate Alan Dixon," the Tribune notes this morning. "He made off with campaign stationery, which he used to print 1,000 fliers promising 'free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing' at Dixon's Chicago office. The fliers were given to homeless people on Lower Wacker Drive. Years later, Rove expressed regret for the 'youthful prank.'"

People are who they are.

Clowning Around
Rick Halprin, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo's lawyer, "denied his client took part as charged in the massive criminal conspiracy but admitted he had one connection to questionable activities on the West Side," the Tribune reports. "'He did, in fact, run the oldest, most reliable craps game on Grand Avenue,' Halprin said with a smile."

So that's where I've seen him.

Cookie the Clown
* "We've always carried celebrity news," Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown writes this morning in what could only be described as a missive at editor Michael Cooke's schoolboy Brangelina fixation. "It's just that in the past we usually managed to carry it off without wetting our pants."

* "We have met the circus, and it is us," Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper writes this morning in what could only be described as a missive at editor Michael Cooke's schoolboy Brangelina fixation.

* "Obsessed with Brad, Angelina? Get a life," say eight Sun-Times readers representing thousands more in what could only be described as a missive at editor Michael Cooke's schoolboy Brangelina fixation.

Parking Passes
"Last fall, Chicago aldermen held their noses and expanded a residential permit parking system gone wild - by creating a $300-a-year parking permit for real estate agents, social workers and home health care providers," the Sun-Times reports.

"It was either that or blow a $2.4 million hole in Mayor Daley's 2007 budget.

"Nearly a year later, all but $15,900 of that $2.4 million hole remains. Only 53 real estate agents and home health care providers have bought the new stickers."

The city will now propose a new sticker if you park anywhere near real estate.

Meter Maids
Uh-oh. Don't tell Da Mayor.

Existential Meltdown
"Insurers Shy Away From the Geico Guy."

Barack Blame Game
"Sen. Obama sneaked in through the backdoor of the Mysore Woodlands Restaurant on Chicago's famed Devon Avenue and claimed that he has been misrepresented by the media," New America Media reports. "He said those who are protesting his remarks haven't read his exact remarks and were instead relying on twisted reports. Obama said that he did not advocate outright military action but that in case the Pakistani government was unable to take out known Al Qaeda targets in its territory, then the American military could launch targeted attacks."

I'd score this one 50-50.

Here is the original remark:

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharaff won't act, we will."

1. Obama never said he would invade Pakistan, as has been widely reported. The implication from the start was about targeted strikes.

2. In backtracking, however, Obama has carefully shifted from "if Musharaff won't act" to "if Musharaff can't act." That may seems like splitting hairs, but the difference is huge. The first statement rests on Musharaff's belligerence to America's wishes in favor of the political balancing act he's performing to retain power. The second statement allows for Musharaff's political and/or military inability to act - which sounds an awful lot like current U.S. policy.

Lovable 'L'osers
"In The [Monday] Papers, you mentioned Chicago's loyalty to the CTA:

What's so maddening is that the CTA has a product that so many peoplehave been so loyal to for so long despite the fact that it doesn't work very well.

"I find it quite humorous that you can say almost the exact same thing for the Cubs. There hasn't been a World Series win in almost a hundred years and the city is still bleeding Cubbie blue and proclaiming that this is the year."

- Michael Pfammatter

Surge of Stupidity
* Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley on Sunday: "We've been hearing more positive reports about the military surge strategy implemented by Gen. David Petraeus - and they're coming from unlikely sources.

"Perhaps the most influential assessment came in a New York Times Op-Ed titled 'A War We Just Might Win,' written by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the prestigious liberal-leaning Brookings Institution. Well-known for their fierce criticism of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, O'Hanlon and Pollack said they were surprised by the military progress they saw during eight days in Iraq and 'the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.' They said Congress should sustain the current strategy into 2008.

"A measure of the significance of this report surfaced immediately in the eruption of rage in the netroots anti-war blogosphere."

* Salon's Glenn Greenwald on Sunday: "Last Wednesday, I interviewed Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution regarding the trip he recently took to Iraq and the highly publicized Op-Ed in the New York Times about his trip, co-written with his Brookings colleague, Ken Pollack. The full transcript of the interview, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, can be read here.

"O'Hanlon's answers, along with several other facts now known, demonstrate rather conclusively what a fraud this Op-Ed was, and even more so, the deceitfulness of the intense news coverage it generated.

"To his credit, O'Hanlon acknowledged (in my interview with him, though never in any of the media appearances he did) that many of the descriptions applied to him - including Dick Cheney's claim that the Op-Ed was written by 'critics of the war' - were inaccurate," Greenwald writes.

"But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented - both by Pollack/O'Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military - a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them."

Western Union
* Jim DeRogatis hands it to Perry Farrell.

* Tracy Ibgui hands it to Neil Steinberg (last item).

The Beachwood Tip Line: Send a message.

Posted by Lou at 08:50 AM | Permalink

Chicagoetry: CSI Chicago: The Murder of God

CSI CHICAGO: THE MURDER OF GOD

I discovered
A white fingerprint

Across the breadth
Of the Humboldt Park

Sky. The DNA
Is definitely

Male. I recognized
The signature

Patterns.
Right

Under my
Nose!

Goes right
With the

Death
Smell.

I knew
It!

To the
Batpoles!

-

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 07:03 AM | Permalink

August 13, 2007

The [Monday] Papers

"Rock 'n' roll is a spectacle, and what more grandiose show is there than a raw descent into hell?" Oak Park writer Emily Hauser writes on today's Tribune Op-Ed page. "Here's the thing, though: The drugs, as The Verve once sang, don't work."

Master Merv
Merv Griffin not only invented Jeopardy!, he wrote its iconic theme song and musical phrase.

El Story
"People are passionate about the El," says Greg Borzo, the author of a new book about the famed Chicago train system.

Yes, they love the El, but hate the CTA.

What's so maddening is that the CTA has a product that so many people have been so loyal to for so long despite the fact that it doesn't work very well. How many companies would kill for that kind of customer base? And yet, the CTA has managed to screw it up.

Of course, it's not just the CTA's fault. It's the mayor's fault for not safeguarding, nurturing and innovating such a vital city asset, though sometimes I wonder if he wouldn't rather see the El go away (he's currently enthralled with buses), outside of luxury express service to and from O'Hare, Midway, and the North Shore.

That would be a shame, but I have never seen in my measly 15 years in Chicago a time when so many folks, including myself, have just completed bailed on the El.

Bush's America
So it wasn't just Pearl Jam. Let AT&T know how you feel.

Truth Tour
The truth as Beauty Turner sees it vs. the truth as Mary Schmich and Kate Grossman see it. Discuss.

*

I'll tell you this: the Tribune metro section would be a helluva lot more interesting with Turner in it than Schmich.

Polympics
"I really believe the Olympic movement sets aside politics. Otherwise, we would never have an Olympic movement. They'd be caught up in politics."
- Richard M. Daley, Tribune, July 26

"For about as long as the modern Games have existed, they have served as a stage for politics as much as sport. Berlin 1936 was Hitler and Jesse Owens. Helsinki 1952 was the beginning of the Cold War. Mexico City 1968 was the Black Power salute. The blood of 11 slain Israeli athletes stained Munich 1972. Moscow 1980 meant boycotts, as did Los Angeles four years later."
- "Beijing '08: Let the Politics Begin," New York Times, August 12

Fifth Column
The Tribune's Patrick Reardon, who once wrote "In a two-party city, debate would happen. Things wouldn't run as efficiently. That might impact garbage collection and snow removal. Not so many flowers might be planted," comes out in favor of the media conspiring with political image-makers to deceive the public.

Market Madness
"If the goal is to make products safe, the best hope lies with companies eager to protect their profits."
- Edward A. Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

"Oh, you left out a bunch of stuff. First of all, you have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Then there's the kickbacks to the carpenters. And if you plan on using any cement in this building I'm sure the Teamsters would like to have a little chat with you, and that'll cost you. Don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. There's the long-term costs, such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the Boy Scouts."
- Thornton Mellon

*

"The next question for us is where to build our factory."
- Business school wanker

"How about Fantasyland?"
- Mellon

Street Tax
So . . . if we all obeyed the parking and traffic laws to the letter we'd blow a big hole in the city's budget? What an efficient, well-managed city.

* "Mussolini would be proud of Chicago's parking system," declared David Gorodess, whose sedan was towed to the Wacker Driver pound last month from a spot on Lake Street, where he said he has parked every day without problem. "Certainly, cars are towed on time."

* "Heather Thome thought she scored 'rock star' parking when she grabbed a coveted open spot last April on inner Lake Shore Drive at Addison Street. But she was dismayed when she returned to find a police officer had just written a ticket for violating a parking ban from 4 to 6 p.m.

"'I asked him where the sign was,' said Thome, 35, a temp worker. 'He said there use to be a sign on "that" pole, and it hasn't been there for two years. My logical question was, 'How can you write a ticket?' And he told me he doesn't want to, but his boss tells him he has to go out every day and write tickets.'"

Ticket Tax
Memo to the mayor: Cops work for the police department, not your budget office.

No Worries
Mixed Grill now on Wednesdays at Outback.

I've just gotten a kick out of the phrase "mixed grill" ever since I read The Corrections.

World's Envy
"U.S. Life Expectancy Slips to 42nd Globally."

Bush plan to slow immigration working.

Sick Country Syndrome
"Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th," the New York Times editorial page noted on Sunday.

Shoulder Burden
The Sun-Times editorial page on Sunday repeated the paper's reporting from earlier in the week that Aaron Harrison was shot in the shoulder and not the back, supporting the police version of events that the 18-year-old had "turned a weapon on police before he was shot."

How does that support the police version?

I'm not taking sides, I just want it explained to me. Was it the angle of the wound that indicated Harrison was turning when he was shot? Because I don't see the difference between being shot in the shoulder, the back, the butt, or the calf when it comes to the police shooting someone facing the other way.

The Beachwood Tip Line: In the form of a question.

Posted by Lou at 08:47 AM | Permalink

Cab #21

Date Taken: 08/10/07
From: Wicker Park
To: Greektown

The Cab:
Cab #21 apparently dates back to the days before their were dividers between passenger and driver. Ah, those good old days of innocence, when passengers could be counted on to not stick a shiv in a cabbie's ribs or throw up on his iPod.

But could this really be Cab #21? The 21st cab license handed out by the city? I mean, that'd be really cool, but is there a missing number or two? Maybe this is Cab #2112. How cool would that be? The Rush cab.

No such luck. The Hits & Hip-Hop of B96 should have been clue enough, but the Braille label thingie cinches it. I'm pretty sure two dots followed by one dot is American Sign Language for 21. But will it be Lucky 21?

The Driver: Slightly trendy, with slighty trendy spiky hair, slighty trendy glasses, and slightly trendy jeans.

The Driving: An aggressive but smooth freeway lane-changer. We made three lane changes to the left to maximize movement and manage time with the utmost efficiency, yet somehow made our right exit without seeming to ever change lanes back. Maybe I drifted off.

We did get to experience one of those cute little yellow emergency state tow vehicles responding to a fender bender in the Kennedy tunnel. Driver #21 tells me they have state police badges to they can make people do what they want. Why do I smell a story here?

As I exit the cab, I swear I hear a rapper say he goes deep like Michael Vick.

Overall rating: 4 extended arms

- 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 04:45 AM | Permalink

Hey Gov, Let Us Have Tito Ortiz!

With the Illinois General Assembly and Gov. Rod Blagojevich still engaged in a pissing contest over the proposed state budget, there is something the Gov could do to make the gut-wrenching wait more bearable: he could put his signature on HB 1947. This proposal would allow mixed martial arts (MMA) bouts to be held in Illinois. Not only would it bring big, hulking, modern-day gladiators with cauliflower ears to the state, but also huge profits as well.

When MMA, or cage fighting, burst onto the scene in 1993 and the Ultimate Fighting Championship was created, it was largely unregulated. The "no holds barred" style of fighting was a huge hit in the pay-per-view arena but since it wasn't regulated, mainstream vendors and venues wanted nothing to do with this sport.

When former amateur boxer, Dana White and casino businessmen Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta purchased UFC in 2001, it was almost bankrupt. White was made president and the UFC soon became a hugely popular and started to make money-lots of it. The Fertitta brothers and White had another problem; MMA had a horrible reputation of being deadly and dangerous. So, it got a major clean up and as of today, no one has died or has been gravely injured in the octagon. Sure, folks get hurt but a 2006 study in the Journal of Sport Science and Medicine states for every 100 MMA fighters, there are 29 injuries. Boxing is slightly lower with 17 injuries for every 100 fighters.

For those who don't know what MMA is, it's a full-contact combat sport that incorporates Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muy Thai, boxing, wrestling, kickboxing, grappling and striking. However, fighters cannot use fishhooks and eye gouging. Biting and knees to the groin are major no-nos. Also, kicking or kneeing someone in the head when they're down on the mat, is prohibited. Fighters cannot act timid and no one is allowed to throw in the towel. The fight ends by either TKO, submission or if the referee deems it necessary.

Yes, there is blood and lots of it.

Illinois already has a few MMA fighters in residence. Hillsboro native, Matt Hughes, has stated on several occasions that he would like to fight in front of a home state crowd. Also, former Russian policeman Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski, lives and trains in Chicago. Arlovski is a building with features. He's huge and imposing and it was mesmerizing to watch him work out at Jabb on the west side. No wonder he gave Tim Sylvia a run for his money. Former cast member of Spike TV's The Ultimate Fighter, Stephan Bonnar also lives and trains in Chicago.

Twenty-two states have sanctioned MMA and the UFC troupe hopes to hold bouts throughout the state, not just in the Chicago area. Even if the Gov signs the proposal today, it is doubtful that any fights will see Illinois before the end of the year since staging these fights takes a great deal of organization.

It's good that the Illinois General Assembly finally got something right. Now, all we need is for the Gov to step into the ring.

*

Julia Gray is a mixed-martial arts fan with no other interest in this legislation. She just likes blood and guts.

Posted by Lou at 03:41 AM | Permalink

The Cub Factor

The Cubs are in a dog fight (and I mean that in the fighter pilot way not the Michael Vick way) for supremacy in the National League Central division. This oughta be fun, right? So why am I nostalgic for the days when Carlos Zambrano was introducing Michael Barrett to his fists and Derrek Lee was punching air like a girl and Lou Piniella was one passed ball away from a major cardiac event? Sure it was fun when the team started to win, but now that they've settled into an incredibly mediocre pennant race, it's just getting frustrating. Here are few scenarios we'd like to see in the upcoming weeks to spice things up.

* Kerry Wood falls out of another hot tub but this time after he falls out he falls into a well.

* Mark DeRosa starts helping out in the bullpen too.

* The subprime lending market crisis claims Wrigley Field. They can continue playing there, but only if they become the Chase Bank Cubs.

* Jim Hendry keeps claiming "the surge" is working even though it's clear the roster is depleted.

* Jacque Jones changes his name to Jack.

* Powderpuff football game between every Cubs catcher this season and every Cubs second baseman.

* Mark Prior falls in well.

* Ryan Dempster's Harry Caray impersonation gets so good that he retires to join Steve Stone as new Cubs announcers.

* Cubs marketing department adds Fourth Inning Stretch.

Week in Review: The Cubs were swept in Houston and split four games in Colorado. The bandwagon has a flat tire, the engine is overheating, and the AC is on the fritz. Time to get off?

Week in Preview: The Cubs get a much needed day off today and then start a seven-game homestand against the Reds and the Cardinals. Hey, I can see the Reds team bus and they have some fix-a-flat, a new thermostat, and a couple cans of freon. How 'bout that.

The Second Basemen Report: Mike Fontenot started six of the last seven at second. Old favorite Ronnie Cedeno got the other start. The Cub Factor would like to welcome Eric Patterson to The Second Basemen Report. Patterson has been used out of position in the outfield so far, but it won't be long, trust us.

In former second basemen news, the whereabouts of Enrique Wilson are unknown.

Sweet and Sour Lou: 74% sweet and 26% sour. Lou is down five points on the Sweet-O-Meter due to lack of offensive production, bad pitching, and losing. Like your real crazy drunk uncle, Lou isn't happy when the kids don't behave. But he's not flying off the handle right away, no. Lou is going to get his favorite lawn chair out, sit in the garage, and throw down way too many Falstaffs. What happens after that is anyone's guess.

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 Brewers only need to be one game less worse in the standings than the Cubs to win the division.

Over/Under: Number of experts who said that the Cubs would win the division two weeks ago who will doomsay this week: +/- all of them.

Cubs Fans Theme Song: "Please Stop Believin'"

The Cubs Answer Men: 1 and 2.

The Cub Factor: Catch up with them all.

Mount Lou: For the first time in weeks Lou moves to Yellow. Mount Lou has shown little activity on the surface, but deep down in his core there is anger magma beginning to stir. Expect disappointment lava to slowly leak to the surface first; that will be the sign. Keep your eyes on the Alert System when the Cardinals get to town for further developments.

Posted by Lou at 01:51 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night

When I heard that Kimora Lee Simmons and her husband, hip hop mogul and satchel-ass pants designer Russell Simmons were getting a divorce, I was hoping that Kimora's 15 minutes would finally be up. Why such vitriol you ask? Well, her first offense was taking over the Hello, Kitty icon and turning it into expensive jewelry for her line of clothing and accessories, Baby Phat. Then, in an article in Vanity Fair, she compared herself to the late Coretta Scott King. Seriously.

The Style Network's new reality series Kimora: Life In the Fab Lane is an inside peek at Kimora's world. Last night's episode featured Kimora planning an ad campaign for her Baby Phat line. There's a hitch, though. The chosen theme, Russia, does not exactly reflect the pink T-shirts and hip sweat suits that are Baby Phat's signature. I don't remember seeing photos of Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front festooned in pink sweats or prisoners in the gulag trying to keep warm in dolman-sleeved tees. So, Senior Director of Marketing James (serfs aren't allowed last names) has been assigned the task of making new designs to match the theme, not go over budget and most importantly, not let Kimora know there's a problem.

James's slow-motion meltdown and teeth-gnashing are intercut with Kimora berating the ad agency she's hired about being over two hours late for a meeting, as well as her praying with her employees and doing an odd type of touchy-feely yoga with creepy yoga guru Jules. We get a twofer of Jules when Kimora later enlists his help to calm down her staff. James, who claims to weigh over 300 pounds, is skeptical of the guru and his full-body relaxation tactics. His uneasiness is evident during his session, but it's nice to see that he has indeed relaxed, even if for just a nanosecond.

We also get to see Kimora talking with Russell about the Kimora Barbie Doll and playing with her two adorable daughters, Aoki Lee and Ming Lee. Most of the voice-over is Kimora philosophizing about life with such gems as "Money comes and goes and husbands come and go." We also witness Kimora "trying to deal" because she's "trying to diet, find the proper pill," and quelle horreur, declaring that "the granola's not cutting it."

When the troupe heads to L.A. for the long, one-day shoot at the Orpheum Theatre, the West Coast is not without drama. We see James and Kimora in a catfight over the non-existent budget, which leaves James in tears and on the verge of quitting. "If you quit, then you'll be a quitter," snaps Kimora. Wow. However, they make nice and Kimora sings his praises in a voice over with words like "sensitive and so smart." After that ugly scene, it's nice to see that James did not quit because if he had, it's evident that Kimora would be up the well-known creek without a diamond-encrusted paddle.

The day of the shoot finds Kimora and her entourage without the appropriate designs for a few hours. Eventually, James is presented with very cute clothing and accessories with Russian-esque colors: gold, red, black etc. When the items arrive, Kimora is none the wiser about what her employees went through to get the appropriate look for the shoot and after witnessing her behavior thus far, she probably wouldn't care.

The best sequence in the episode is Kimora's two daughters making cupcakes for her with personal Chef Hassan while she's at the shoot. It's fun to watch the girls mix and eat the dough, pour sprinkles all over the kitchen and just generally act like little kids. Even Kimora seems appreciative when we see her return to the house, read the "I love you Mommy" notes, and actually eat the cupcakes. A former supermodel eating carbs, now that's fab.

*

Enjoy our fabulous What I Watched Last Night archive.

Posted by Lou at 12:49 AM | Permalink

Reviewing the Reviews

August 11 - 12.

Publication: New York Times

Cover: A bunch of very tall, thin Harry Potters. For "The Boy Who Lived," Christopher Hitchens' review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Yes, that Christopher Hitchens

And that's the only reason why I read this. True, Hitchens has gone 'round the bend. But he's still a formidable intellectual force and, besides, you really wouldn't want to know his take on Potter?

Suffice to say, Hitchens' opening references Hitler, Stalin and Orwell - probably the only Potter review in the world to do so. So it looks like this might be fun.

Hitchens is most immediately puzzled by the genre of English boarding school literature. "I would give a lot to understand this phenomenon better," he writes. "Part of it must have to do with the extreme banality and conformity of school life as it is experienced today, with everything oriented toward safety on the one hand and correctness on the other. But this on its own would not explain my youngest daughter a few years ago, sitting for hours on end with her tiny elbow flattening the pages of a fat book, and occasionally laughing out loud at the appearance of Scabbers the rat."

I guess the popularity of Potter among the kids of writers demands attention. It threatens to send Hitchens' review into the ordinary, but he recovers quickly. Consider:

"The repeated tactic of deus ex machina (without a deus) has a deplorable effect on both the plot and the dialogue," Hitchens writes. "The need for Rowling to play catch-up with her many convolutions infects her characters as well. Here is Harry trying to straighten things out with a servile house-elf:

"'I don't understand you, Kreacher,' he said finally. 'Voldemort tried to kill ou. Regulus died to bring Voldemort down, but you were still happy to betray Sirius to Voldemort? You were happy to go to Narcissa and Bellatrix, and pass information to Voldemort through them . . . '

"Yes, well, one sees why he is confused."

Yet Hitchens isn't entirely disapproving. While he says that "I honestly think and sincerely hope that [a sequel] will not occur," he concedes that decades from now, "there will still be millions of adults who recall their initiation into literature as a little touch of Harry in the night."

Other News & Reviews of Note: In his delighful "Inside the List" column, Dwight Garner recalls a time when the capsule descriptions that ran in Times's best-seller list were far from the sterile entries of today.
www.nytimes.com

From the Aug.13, 1972 Fiction list:

1. The Exorcist. Blatty. Somewhat crude occult exploitationer about a little girl who is possessed by a devil.

5. The Godfather. Puzo. A kind of bloody fairy tale about the Mafia which leaves the stage littered with rubouts.

From the General list:

4. The Happy Hooker. Hollander. A former prostitute tells all: liberally dosed with sex fantasies for the retarded.

Today we would call that adding value. Back then, it was just called journalism.

*

Publication: Sun-Times

Cover: Amerigo Vespucci (founder of America) standing in a toilet (not invented by Thomas Crapper. For a review of The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong.

I wasn't convinced by this write-up that the book delivers.

*

Publication: Tribune

Note: Why does the Trib even publish a book review anymore? If their aim is to phase it out, just kill it outright now and get it over with. What a total waste.

*

CHARTS

1. Navy Seal
2. Tony Dungy
3. God (A Not-Great One)

Diana is 7th; Gore is 8th; Novak is 10th; Einstein is 11th.

Posted by Lou at 12:41 AM | Permalink

Chicago In Song: Street Signs

Most blues and rhythm and blues songs prior to the 1970s - when Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and James Brown pioneered a socially conscious black music - rarely had any topical references in them. Thus, references to Chicago in early R&B and soul music, even from records made in the city (and there were tens of thousands of them) are not commonplace. The geographic references mentioned in the following records seem ordinary but they are invested with a lot of meaning for the listener, who can vividly see and acutely hear the images and sounds conjured from the simple references.

Snooky and Moody's Boogie/Snooky Pryor and Moody Jones
This downhome blues number from 1949 swings with verve, and Snooky Pryor with his piercingly sharp harp sound blows with elan. Guitarist Moody Jones strums with a robust boogie beat. The number is mostly instrumental, but Pryor talks the lyrics in places, opening with an evocative reference to his neighborhood:

One day
I was walking down Sedgwick Street
I heard a boogie right 'round the corner
Boys, it took me off my feet
And I had to boogie, too.

At 941 N. Sedgwick, Chester and Clara Scales operated the Northside Playland and Record Shop, and owned the Planet label that released "Boogie." The shop was right in the midst of a small African-American community, at the intersection of Sedgwick and Division, with several blues clubs nearby, notably the Square Deal at 230 W. Division. Snooky and Moody, as did many transplanted southerners, were not yet union members and played on the street instead of in the clubs. "Boogie" could have been about them.

When interviewed by Blues Unlimited in 1980, Pryor said it was Scales who discovered him on the Near North Side - first while playing outside his store with a guitarist named Grey Haired Bill (Johnson), and then playing with Moody Jones and Floyd Jones in a nearby club on Sedgwick.

James Edward "Snooky" Pryor was born on Sept. 15, 1921, in Lambert, Miss. He got the idea of amplifying his harmonica while serving in the military during World War II, and in 1945 began performing at the Maxwell Street Market with a portable PA system he purchased at a store at 504 S. State St. As the first to amplify a harmonica, Pryor should rightly be recognized as a blues pioneer. As he boasted to Living Blues, "I started the big noise around Chicago."

Indeed, he makes a plausible claim. "Boogie" represents one of the earliest sounds of the postwar Chicago blues explosion, in which rural southern bluesmen electrified their country blues and created a whole new blues dynamic that helped give birth to rock 'n' roll. Among Snooky's postwar Chicago cohort were Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley, and in one small way, this rich blues heritage began on Sedgwick Street.

Hitch Hike/Marvin Gaye
This early Marvin Gaye song on Tamla Records, a Motown imprint, was a nationwide hit in the winter of 1963. The first verse takes Marvin to Chicago:

I'm going to Chicago, that's the last place my baby stayed
I'm packing up my bags, going to leave this old town right away
I got to find that girl, if I have to hitch hike round the world

Chicago city limits, that's what the street sign on the highway read
I'm going to keep moving, until I get to that street called 63rd

The song was written in the Motown hit factory, so we can assume that the song's character began his trek in Detroit and that heading west to Chicago would be his next move. But what is the significance of the street, 63rd?

Back in 1963, when this record was released, probably a large percentage of the African-American listening audience would recognize instantly the significance of the reference. Sixty-Third Street, especially at the intersection of Cottage Grove, was the center of black night life in Chicago. Chicago throughout its history has had several notable black entertainment districts - they were called "strolls" then - beginning with 31st & State in the 1920s, and then moving south to 47th Street & Garfield Boulevard (55th Street) during the 1930s and 1940s, and then to 63rd Street in Woodlawn.

Sixty-Third Street was bisected by Cottage Grove Avenue, and for a couple of decades it was the dividing line between the black and white sections of Woodlawn. The black nightclubs first arose on the west side of Cottage Grove, south and north of 63rd, and then a string went from Cottage Grove along 63rd west to South Parkway (now King Drive). When the color line of Woodlawn broke in 1951, black nightclubs then blossomed on the east side of Cottage Grove and east on 63rd to Stony Island Ave.

One of the most famous clubs on 63rd Street was the Kitty Kat, established in 1953, and which featured King Fleming, John Young, Ahmad Jamal and other more art-oriented jazz musicians. On the west side of Cottage Grove could be found another legendary jazz club, Basin Street, with such stellar acts as Johnny Griffin and Eddie Vinson, and about a block south at 64th Street was the Pershing Hotel complex of venues - the ballroom, the first-floor lounge and the basement club called Budland, which at first was a jazz club featuring such acts as Arnett Cobb, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday, but later was booking rhythm and blues acts.

On the west side of the Cottage Grove was the Trianon Ballroom, where teenagers saw huge rhythm and blues stage shows, and McKie's Lounge, which booked a host of great sax blowers. Further east on 63rd Street was the famed Crown Propeller Lounge, which booked both jazz and rhythm and blues acts. The 63rd-Cottage Grove intersection was anchored by the largest theater on the South Side, the Tivoli, which put on rhythm and blues shows as well.

The 63rd Street Stroll also emerged as the South Side's new "sin strip" during this period. The attraction of the area was "the forbidden," where one could find not only jazz and rhythm and blues, but smoking, drinking, dope dealing and women. The area attracted not only ardent music fans, both black and white, but also those on the lookout for "action." The newspapers of the day would periodically send reporters down to 63rd to expose the prostitution going on there. Listeners of "Hitch Hike" in 1963 certainly understood that ol' Marv was going to a street filled with excitement.

(Native Girl) Elephant Walk/Donald & the Delighters
Vocal groups have always been a huge part of R&B, and Chicago was producing more than its share. Among them, released in 1963, was this incredible record, "Elephant Walk." The echo-enhanced haunting vocals by lead Donald Jenkins; superb chorusing by his singing mates, Ronald Strong, Walter Granger, and William Taylor; the clashing cymbals; plus the addition of jungle sound effects, all added up to a song atmospherically evocative of its subject. Composer Jenkins tells of a dream by a South Side boy of a native girl in Africa doing a seductive dance called the Elephant Walk. The second verse begins, thusly:

And woh woh, the swaying hips, they put me in a trance
Ummmh, and all at once, I began to dance
The feeling, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, is paradise I know
For an American boy, from the South Side of Chicago

Elephant Walk, ooooh, lord lord, lordy Lord
Crazy memories, lord lord, lordy Lord.

The record was strictly an R&B hit, and was virtually unknown in the crossover pop market, including Chicago. Top 40 powerhouse WLS never played it. The record was not a hit nationwide across all markets, but it sold solidly in some areas, notably Chicago, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. The record has since become a standard in several locales. In the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles, it is considered a low-rider classic, and in Pittsburgh the record crossed over into the pop market and has become a Pittsburgh golden oldie. And of course, in Chicago the record has been continuously played as an oldie now for more than 40 years, particularly on Herb Kent's weekend dusties show on WVAZ.

Donald Jenkins, the writer of the song, began singing doowops in the hallways on 47th Street in 1955. This was an era when doowop groups would stake out their neighborhoods and would compete in song battles with their wonderful street vocal creations. "Elephant Walk" comes out of that tradition. Jenkins was indeed an American boy from the South Side of Chicago, and he was one of the city's standout representatives in the creation of an original American folk art form: doowop.

Southside Chicago/Otis Brown & the Delights
In 1966, "Southside Chicago" from Ole Records got good play on WVON, Chicago's premier radio outlet for black listeners in the city during the heyday of soul music. With its gentle lope, the young Otis Brown sings his verses bragging that he is from the South Side of Chicago over a persistent chorus chanting throughout the record, "South Side Chicago." The second verse begins:

When you, you wanna to go to a swinging place
The Southside Chicago, girl, you know it's the place
I can hear it in the morning, yeah
I can hear it in the evening, yeah
I can hear it all the time, yeah yeah, yeah

What he was hearing on the South Side was the city in song, and Brown and his ad hoc group the Delights are so delighted about coming from there they sing "South Side Chicago" some 38 times through the record. While the South Side was in decline at this point, there were still a lot of entertainment venues that kept the African American community vital in 1966. The legendary Regal Theater, at 47th and South Parkway (now King Drive) was still putting on monthly soul shows (where you could see six to nine acts singing all the latest soul hits for a buck-fifty), and such nightclubs as the Sutherland on 47th, Algiers on 69th and the Bonanza around 77th and Halsted were also active. In these showcases, soul music fans could see many of the same acts they heard on WVON, such as Otis Brown.

Olé Records was owned by King Bevill and operated out of his home at 9734 Princeton on the South Side, one of the innumerable small mom-and-pop record labels that helped put Chicago on the map as a soul music center. Bevill and Brown, who experienced the South Side during the latter stages of its glory years, created a fitting paean to the section of the city they so loved.

*

Robert Pruter is the author of such books as Chicago Soul and Doowop: The Chicago Scene. He can be reached at pruterro@lewisu.edu.

"M" writes: My summer reading program for school includes Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. How can I concentrate on Mark Twain when the Cubs are winning?

R&D: If it makes you feel any better, Mark Twain might have been a Cubs good luck charm. In his lifetime they were a powerhouse. In fact, during the last five years of his life they were in the World Series four times. (He died during the Cubs World Series season of 1910.) Their bad luck started shortly thereafter. They lost the series in five games to the A's, they broke up the double-play combination of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, and the star pitcher on that Cubs team (King Cole), went to Africa after the series, contracted malaria and died.

"X" writes: I know Al Capone was a fixture in the stands during the 1929 World Series, and there have been other gangsters at the World Series during the 30s and 40s, but what are we going to do this year? It seems like all of our gangsters are tied up in that Mob Secrets trial. Who will be the enforcers if the other side gets out of hand?

R&D: Not to worry. We've got those 80-year-old ushers making sure nobody sits in the good seats. Everything should be fine.

"G" writes: Do you think that we can convince any of the Cubs players to call a home run shot in the World Series, so we can finally stop talking about Babe Ruth's called shot?

R&D: Absolutely. However, let's make sure it isn't Kerry Wood. He'll probably throw his arm out pointing.

"L" writes: I've got Zambrano pitching in Game 1 of the World Series, followed by Lilly, but I can't decide who should pitch Game 3. Who would you choose right now?

R&D: Three Fingers Mordecai Brown. He's been there before, understands the pressure, and throws the best spitball in the league.

*

Previously:
- The Cubs Answer Men #1: Rule changes and parade seating.

*

Originally appearing at Half Empty. If you have any other questions about how to handle the World Series, feel free to send them to Rick and Dave. Between now and the big parade they'll try to get to as many of your questions as they can.

Posted by Lou at 04:49 AM | Permalink

T-Ball Journal: Scene of the Crime

By 7 a.m. Saturday, when my picnicking co-conspirator arrived at our home park, some of the prime spots were gone. But he moved quickly - busting out crime scene tape, small posters and clips. And soon he had set up a perfect perimeter. It was close to the area where the trophies would be handed out but not too close. The signage was clear and concise - there would be no doubting our claim. And we had a wonderful mix of shade and sun, or at least we would have, if the day hadn't been so overcast.

Our T-ball (and coach-pitch of course - don't ever forget the coach-pitch) seasons ended with a picnic and awards ceremony last week. And somehow the event has evolved into a sort of miniature North Side land grab. I suppose it's a chance to play Sooner (those enterprising Oklahomans who, when given the chance to settle some land north of Texas left early and grabbed the prime real estate) for a few hours anyway. People arrive early in the morning on the day of the event (I'm guessing some even get out there the night before) and, yes, string up lengths of the distinctive yellow plastic from tree to garbage can to tree to try to ensure their teams have the perfect picnic experience.

The event has become ingrained enough that first thing in the morning on a path near the portion of the park in question there were more than a dozen garbage cans lined up where usually there are none. The cans with wheels were obviously there to help everyone define their space. We later learned the organizers didn't even want us to put garbage in those cans for fear they would overflow (people put garbage in there anyway and by the time I was leaving at around 12:30, the refuse was already approaching the rims). The picnic area is not far from a park district fieldhouse and we were urged to bag up our garbage and take it to the spot behind that facility where a couple big ol' dumpsters are parked.

In terms of marking our territory, crime scene tape definitely beat at least one of the alternatives. Next to us was a piece of land roped off with only thin string. It was up high enough that us sub-six-footers were OK but I was worried that at some point some former power forward was going to come along and get garroted. I suppose the thinking behind all of this has something to do with good fences making good neighbors, but one couldn't help looking around every once in a while and feeling slightly uneasy about what our fervor for private property hath wrought.

My cohort even divided our temporary homestead into two halves, one for the Rookie Red Sox (my five-year-old daughter Alana's team) and one for the Junior Dodgers (eight-year-old Noah's squad). Alana's team was scheduled to claim their trophies at 9:30 a.m. and the ceremony began right on time in a little out-of-the-way parking lot next to one of the park's youth diamonds. That's the place where no one is allowed to leave their car except district employees, inspiring an occasional vision of a foul ball soaring up and out away from home plate only to eventually crash down on one of the chosen vehicles.

The bats were silent on this day. There were only kids and parents and coaches, who uniformly kept it brief before handing out special T-ball trophies. Alana was happy to get hers but I was guessing it would soon be forgotten amid the clutter (clothes and toys and books and school projects and art projects and camp projects and all of the other little items that pile up on every last one of our open surfaces - the dining room table, the kids' desks, etc.) of a busy childhood.

An hour later, it was my turn to hand out the precious mementos. Only half my team showed up (14 of 16 had been there for the last playoff game so I suppose if late-July/early-August vacations had to happen I was glad they happened after the post-season rather than during it) but it was a good half. My remarks were completely forgettable but I did manage to go 8-for-8 getting first and last names right. I forgot to thank the mom who organized the snack schedule (shame on me!), but she did a nice job of pretending she didn't mind (let's be fair, there's a very good chance she indeed didn't mind).

After Noah and I returned to our picnic area with his award, I realized I might have been wrong about his sister's reaction to her new trophy. She immediately noticed that the metal figure on top seemed slightly more golden than the one on hers. A little bit of sulking ensued but was quickly forgotten when the Dodger parents began to lay out the food.

A cupcake, three homemade cookies, fruit salad and some cherry/blueberry pie later, a little contentment kicked in. I thought about asking Noah and Alana what they had learned from T-ball but I was confident there wouldn't be terribly satisfying answers. I hope there were a few lessons along the lines of concerted, consistent effort paying off in satisfying achievement and about how much fun collective, competitive endeavors can be.

Allowing myself the slightest bit of sappiness, the best part of the experience for me was several months worth of watching kids try hard to master some of the awkward baseball skills so many of us American sports fans so admire, and then watching at least one of them display newfound mastery in just about every game and practice. That and all those delicious snacks.

*

Jim Coffman's daughter played her first season of T-Ball this summer. Her older brother played in his last year in the Junior Division. Coffman chronicled his travails as coach of his son's team and observer of his daughter's initial foray into this slice of Americana. Thanks, Coach! (That's Coach Jim in the mug shot at the top of the story, and Coach Jim on the mound while his team wears rally caps in the photo above.)

Posted by Lou at 12:45 AM | Permalink

August 09, 2007

The [Thursday] Papers

Memo to Cubs fans: Please Stop Believin'.

Toy Story
I was struck by a couple of oddities in the Tribune's lead front-page story this morning, "Toymaker Knew About Lead."

"In researching its records after inquiries from the Tribune, Jim Leonard, the company's chief operating officer, said Schylling found a June 2002 test report showing that the Thomas & Friends top contained lead paint on its wooden knob," the paper reports.

The company researched its records at the Tribune's request? As if it has a civic responsibility to be reasonably transparent about its operations?

For all I know, they fought the Trib tooth-and-nail and they're royally spinning, but on the face of it, it looks like Schylling, a family-run operation doing business around the globe, stepped up in the face of shameful past conduct.

After the test that found lead paint on the top's wooden handle, the company switched the handle to plastic. But it did not recall the wooden-handled tops.

"Asked why the company did not recall the toy at the time, Leonard said, 'I can't answer that . . . I had just started here.'"

Leonard, the chief operating officer, said that? You mean this hasn't been routed through a PR professional whose job is to obscure the truth?

Again, Schylling is guilty of, well, endangering children. They're wearing the black hat. It was just nice to hear even a little bit from someone in a position of responsibility.

It's too bad it's so unusual that it jumped out at me.

Pork Rinds
"Most rank-and-file lawmakers rejected the idea that so-called 'member initiatives' are dangled by legislative leaders or Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a quid pro quo for their votes," the Tribune reports. "But a number of legislators said they think the only way to ensure they will get their district allotments is to support a full-year spending plan expected to be voted on Thursday."

So quid pro quoish.

Delivery Rout
Is this a step toward becoming a one-newspaper town? Or to a dreaded JOA?

The Tribune Company is set to begin delivering the Sun-Times and 10 of its sister suburban papers.

Tribune does have a massive distribution network at its disposal. How 'bout dropping off coffee and donuts with the paper too?

Tower Failure
Do you think this morning's piece about a video "captivating" viewers is the Tribune editorial board's way of saying, Hey, we've heard of YouTube! in light of this embarrassing revelation first noted here?

Daley Dose
The mayor says the Chicago police are "not out of control."

Isn't that the problem? That this is just the way they operate?

Tony's Trial
A federal judge on Wednesday told the lawyers in the Tony Rezko case to shoot for a Feb. 25 trial date. Which is good news for Barack Obama. Under the scheduled to take the witness stand next week in his own defense. Now we know why Lombardo's lawyer, Rick Halprin, delayed his opening statement. Halprin can lay the groundwork to try to rehabilitate and introduce his client and aim for finding one sympathetic juror who can hang the case. Seems to me that's the only chance he's got, given the evidence we've seen so far.

Circus Act
Speaking of Clowns, the increasingly weird and distressingly desperate front page of the Sun-Times features the content-free arrival of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in town to make a movie.

At least they haven't tracked down some Chicago guy named Brad Pitt and asked him what it's like to share his name with a celebrity. Yet.

Hey, if you really wanna milk this thing, get creative. Why not try to enlist Jolie in a Chicago cause with big freakin' headlines like:

* "Save Chicago's Kids, Angelina! TIFs stealing from their education"

"Angelina: Help Save The CTA!"

"Please Find Out, Angelina: Who Hired Angelo Torres?"

Or better: "Angelina, Buy Our Newspaper!"

Sticker Shock
Seems to me the "Save Darfur" sticker did its job; it reminded a columnist and his readers of the horror still underway.

Kung Fu Et Tu
So an exchange between congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and a Nebraskan congressman got so heated that Junior asked the other guy if he wanted to step outside the Capitol and settle the matter.

But here's the good part:

"[T]he matter has received quite a bit of attention on Capitol Hill and in Omaha, Neb.," Mark Brown writes. "It might have never filtered back to us here, though, if it weren't for some eye-opening photos of Jackson demonstrating his kung fu moves, which became fodder Tuesday for the bloggers."

Because pokey old Chicago can't exactly be expected to cover its congressional delegation, even if one of its members threatens to clock the distinguished gentleman from the great state of Nebraska.

Role of a Lifetime
I am so game for this. Who's with me? Angelina?

ZOMBIE FILMS!
Reply to: gigs-390273235@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-08-05, 11:46PM CDT

I'm a film maker about to make a short zombie film and I'm looking for some one to collaborate with me. Not to help with my film but to make their own. I plan on putting a DVD together with my zombie film along with 3 or 4 others and sell them. The zombie films can be completely different then mine or they can have similiar plots or they can tie in directly. In fact if you want to tie your film in directly, I think that would be a lot cooler. I'm shooting my zombie short next week or so. I'm going to ask anyone who is doing a film to have it be no less then 15 minutes long. Ours is only going to be 20 minutes, but with three or four others it will be worth buying in a DVD. Before shooting the film I will ask that you clear the script with me and get the paper work done for it so we can distribute it. There will be percentages involved. Thanks!

Mmm, zombies. Seriously. Who's with me?

The Beachwood Tip Line: Undead or alive.

Posted by Lou at 08:32 AM | Permalink

RockNotes: From AT&T to Visa

1. The webcast of Pearl Jam's performance here at Lollapalooza last weekend was censored by AT&T.

"After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the 'Blue Room' Live Lollapalooza Webcast," Pearl Jam says on its blog.

"When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them," the band says.

"During the performance of 'Daughter' the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall' but were cut from the webcast:

- 'George Bush, leave this world alone.' (the second time it was sung); and

- 'George Bush find yourself another home.'"

Do we still live in America? Or is this what we should expect in a world of corporate-sponsored rock?

2. Watching Eddie Vedder sing the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley last Friday was quite amusing. He sang with such conviction! This is the way it sounded to the Beachwood RockNotes staff:

"Take me out to the ballgame (MY FATHER WHO I NEVER HAD!)
Take me out to the crowd (THE MADDENING CROWD OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND!)
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks (AS IF RAGING CONSUMPTION IS WHAT OUR LIVES SHOULD BE ABOUT!)
I don't care if I ever get back (KILL ME! KILL ME NOW!)"

Let's get some runs.

3. Lee Hazlewood is not to be confused with Lee Greenwood.

Hazlewood is the guy described on one fansite as "one of the most ingenious, inspired and impressively stubborn sons-of-a-bitch the music industry ever saw. His career - a word that Hazlewood himself scorned - saw him take on almost every aspect of the music industry - a word that Hazlewood himself was equally dismissive of - and come out on top every time."

Greenwood is the guy who plays at Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts.

Guess which one we prefer?

So it was with great sadness that we took the news recently that Hazlewood died of cancer at 78.

Hazlewood wasn't exactly a household name, but his work is familiar to most Americans - he wrote and produced "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'", for example, among other hits he delivered for Nancy Sinatra.

Here's what the Beachwood's Matt Cook and John Door wrote about Hazlewood last February:

"Hazlewood is one of America's most important and strange musicians. Giving us 'These Boots Were Made for Walking' and then walking away from stardom, ["Cold Hard Times"] is from the Cowboy in Sweden record. He recorded it when he was in Stockholm working on a Swedish television series, also titled Cowboy in Sweden (let me know if you know how one might track down a copy of any/all of this series - I've been looking for years with no luck), the whole record features some of his strongest lyrics and melodies to go with his always complex arrangements. The song "No Train to Stockholm" is one of my favorites of all time but it is "Cold Hard Times" that fits into this playlist's theme best. Special thanks to Steve Shelley for releasing a number of Hazlewood's out-of-print records on his Smells Like label."

And here was Cook and Door in June:

"You either dislike or are obsessed with Lee Hazlewood. Put me in the latter. "Six Feet of Chain" is from a record I believe was the third that I had bought by Lee and I just couldn't believe that he had made it. All the songs have long talking intros that set up the song before breaking into it. Talk about a recipe for not having a hit. All of the material is set in Lonesome Town and populated with criminals, beautiful pre-adolescent women, and our hero, Lee Hazlewood. The instrumentation is quite light for a Lee record, usually just acoustic, bass, and drums. But as with all of his recordings, Lee comes out. "Pray Them Bars Away" is from Cowboy in Sweden, which is a serious contender for being one of the best records that I've ever heard.

4. The local label heroes at Thrill Jockey are celebrating their 15th anniversary with two shows in London. A Chicago show in December is in the works.

5. "Janis and Tina at Madison Square Garden, 1969."

6. State Fair Smackdown: A comparison of acts coming to Midwest grandstands (and Leinie Lodges) near you.

7. " American Idol Contestant Auditions While She's in Labor."

8. "Common Creams Korn."

9. Rock and roll according to Wikipedia.

10. "The Other Side of Summer" by Elvis Costello, now only accepting Visa, for whom he's also appearing in magazine ads:

The sun struggles up another beautiful day
And I felt glad in my own suspicious way
Despite the contradiction and confusion
Felt tragic without reason
There's malice and there's magic in every season

From the foaming breakers of the poisonous surf
The other side of summer
To the burning forests in the hills of astroturf
The other side of summer

The automatic gates close up between the shanties and the palace
The blowtorch amusements, the voodoo chalice
The pale pathetic promises that everybody swallows
A teenage girl is crying cos she don't look like a million dollars
So help her if you can
cos she don't seem to have the attention span

From the foaming breakers of the poisonous surf
The other side of summer
To the burning forests in the hills of astroturf
The other side of summer

Was it a millionaire who said imagine no possessions?
A poor little schoolboy who said we don't need no lessons?
The rabid rebel dogs ransack the shampoo shop
The pop princess is downtown shooting up
And if that goddess if fit for burning
The sun will struggle up the world will still keep turning

Madman standing by the side of the road saying
Look at my eyes, look at my eyes, look at my eyes, look at my eyes
Now you cant afford to fake all the drugs your parents used to take
Because of their mistakes youd better be wide awake

From the foaming breakers of the poisonous surf
The other side of summer
To the burning forests in the hills of astroturf
The other side of summer

The mightiest rose
The absence of perfume
The casual killers
The military curfew
The cardboard city
An unwanted birthday
The other side of summer

The dancing was desperate, the music was worse
They bury your dreams and dig up the worthless
Goodnight
God bless
And kiss goodbye to the earth
The other side of summer

*

See the RockNotes catalog. It's free!

Posted by Lou at 01:23 AM | Permalink

Pool Daze: It Happened One Summer

There is something to be said for the effects of hard work. Real sweat, even bloodshed; putting food on the table and pouring your last into the American Dream.

I started working at the age of 13, keeping books for a branch of ServiceMaster. My mom was able to locate this gig for me through one of our church-going acquaintances. Goddamn that post-worship church coffee hour, for allowing my mom to whore me off into her sugar cookie networking, as only a post-worship coffee hour could. That place was crawling with women looking to get rid of their children for an afternoon, my mom obviously included.

This short-lived employment involved me commuting a few miles, via car and licensed adult driver, to the home of our church friends; appropriately on Sunday afternoons, following coffee hour. Just what I needed as a teen; one more reason to hate Sundays.

Once my mom peeled out of the driveway and gunned it down the street to my place of employment, I was escorted downstairs to the basement, where a sort of office existed. I call it an office because there was a computer on the desk, a small copying machine, a file cabinet, and most importantly, a pen cup. But given the closet-like dimensions of the room, as well as the rigid cement design, I would just assume call it a cell.

The cell bore no vents, nor natural light. The temperature remained the same all months of the year - somewhere between 60 degrees and fucking cold. I was forced to remove my shoes upon entering the household, way upstairs ago, so I always sat teeth-chattering in my socks, using my butt cheeks as temporary foot heaters, rotating when my circulation slowed to tingling paces.

I can't say I enjoyed my work there, balancing the company checkbook and processing invoices, but it did adequately season me to hate bills and all related financial matters, which I still demonstrate monthly via my payment procrastinations. Every time I see a bill in my mailbox, a strange chill appears in my feet.

* * *

After my brief ServiceMaster stunt, I took a well-earned leave of absence from the world of labor. It wasn't until the age of 16 that I deliberately sought out an employer. But even then, my mom willingly steered the car that took me to the application. This time, I found myself at one of Chicagoland's most privileged shopping malls, where I did hard time for The Gap.

The job seemed like fun at first, but looking back I realize that the only fun part about working in yuppie retail is receiving some form of compensation, even if it is just a company discount and a measly paycheck that fittingly supports your company discount. My co-workers were the only highlight of this job; a younger group of attractive people, all khaki-ed out and swing dancing around the place . . . pretty much what you'd imagine.

The Gap lacked any . . . connection to me, I suppose. Something was missing and it wasn't just a clever name.

When I was 17, I was more or less done with occupational clothes-folding. I quit the job, but re-appeared for seasonal work later that year, only to learn that working the retail holidays is comparable to carefully jamming ice picks into your asshole. I was hardly able to legally drive a car by the time my first homicidal thoughts occurred, one day in the fitting rooms, to the blaring tune of N'Sync's Home for Christmas. I knew I had to leave the scene, so I again returned to unemployment, sanity shakily in tow.

It wasn't until this time that I finally learned what a real job was, what it felt like to put in 40 hours, oftentimes more. My friend Kathleen stumbled upon a gig at a local apartment complex, the home of her now seasonally Chicagoan grandparents, as a pool attendant. Before I get into all the hard labor details, I should take a moment to paint an image; a setting, if you will.

The Betsy Courts pool boasted a depth of six feet. The length of the pool ran a screaming 30 feet. The six-foot metal gate that captured the white cement deck could maybe have kept someone out on a snowy winter day when the bars were icy . . . and no one wanted to swim. There were long chairs, 20 of them, that also happened to colorfully align with the dark blue tile that lined the inner wall of the pool. There were massive planters scattered here and there around the deck, but they were poorly kept and mostly just attracted the bugs and evil August bees. Not to mention the inevitable lack of space that came with them, and summers full of scraped knees in eager passes by.

On the shallow west end of the deck was the pool house, a small shack complete with tubs of chlorine, an enormously loud and superbly faulty heater, a few pipes and gauges, and shit I knew nothing about other than what it looked like running properly. When I didn't see that, I was instructed to just call Steve. Attached to the front of the poolroom was an old pay phone and a drinking fountain with a sign that said not to drink. Even if you missed the sign, the warm brown water spewing from the hole was a pretty solid warning. The pay phone became Kathleen's and my second line; this back in the unfortunate days of teenagers without cell phones.

The east, deep end, was the primary pool attending hangout during our shifts. It kept the only table in the area, with a big blue umbrella that gave the gift of shade on hot Chicago days. Plus, we were seated in reach of the life-saving hook mounted on the fence behind us . . . a tool that we used exclusively in the event that Kathleen's future brother-in-law came to visit. Not because he was a bad swimmer and the six-foot deep end threatened to do him in, but because he would entertain us by running around the deck with the tool, towing Kathleen or me through the water, while we clung limply to the hook end.

But before your imagination gets away, and I am mistaken for once having been a lifeguard, I must clarify that Kathleen and I were no such certified creatures; don't let our proximity to the hook mislead you. Our list of chores included measuring the pH and chlorine levels every two hours, vacuuming the pool in the morning, skimming the pool when necessary (open to interpretation), checking pool passes, and just flat out holdin' down the fort.

Kathleen and I had mild modifications to the job. We figured the pH and chlorine rarely changed in a two- or even eight-hour period, so we usually checked it once a day and then wrote in the rest of the numbers. The temperature reading we actually did perform bi-hourly, but only if the hour didn't interfere with our under-the-tree naps and 7-Eleven runs, during which we would delegate a regular poolie to keep an eye on the place.

We also made sure to add the task of having friends come by and hang out with us and bring us foodstuffs. Sure, they didn't have pool passes, per se, but that was another slight variation - Kathleen and I together, in a combined seven years of pool-attending, checked a total of four passes. You could say we were liberal with the gate. I say we didn't sit close enough to give it much thought.

To an onlooker, we may have seemed like merely a couple of lazy bums, getting paid $8.50 per hour to be best friends and nap in our sunny employment bliss. But to Kathleen and me, the pool was our hang-out, our summer home away from home, our subculture. We ran that pool the best way we knew how, with pure passion, loyalty, and killer tans that held on until the chill of Chicago winters set in.

*

To be continued.

Posted by Lou at 12:51 AM | Permalink

Cubs Fans: Please Stop Believin'

Just a baseball club, known as the Chicago Cubs
They haven't won anything, since 1908
It's like their fate is sealed, playing there in Wrigley Field
Fans pray and wait in vain, since 1908

Please Stop Believin'

Ivy growing on the outfield walls
Fans pee in horse troughs
They've got no stalls
Eamus Catuli
It says there in right
The years go on and on and on and on

Cub fans. drinking
All around the Friendly Confines
Yuppies, stumbling in the night
Bleachers, hot chicks, living for inebriation
Showing, great sets of ta-tas

Lou's kicking dirt all over the place
Zambrano's punching Barrett's face
Hendry paid millions for this year's team
Results will be the same

For a few short days, they're in first
But don't you know, these Cubs are cursed
Wait till next year never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

D-Lee, fighting
Couldn't land his girly punches
Don't give, Ryan Dempster the ball
Right quad, Soriano
Your heartbreak's just around the corner
Santo, still waits for the Hall!

Please stop believin'
And wake up from your dreaming
Lovable losers, they're the Cubs
Please stop believin'
For 100 seasons
It's Gonna Happen, Who You Crappin'
They're the Cubs

-

More From the Beachwood Audio Division:

* Oklouhoma and Ozzie Cabana
* Dusty Must Get Fired

-

And don't forget The Cub Factor and The Cubs Answer Men.

Posted by Lou at 12:51 AM | Permalink

August 08, 2007

The [Wednesday] Papers

I'll be tending to business today, so no Papers.

We do, however, have a new Mystery Debate Theater from last night's AFL-CIO Democratic forum, as well as a report from our man at Soldier Field.

Plus, send us your submissions for Existential Rock.

The [Tuesday] Papers

"Congress is concerned that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not telling the truth. The best way to get the truth from Gonzales is to subject him to waterboarding or another equally forceful means of getting people to talk," James K. Gendon of Evanston writes to the Sun-Times this morning (last item).

"While squeamish civil libertarians and bleeding-heart liberals might object to this, claiming that such practices are methods of torture, Gonzales himself would not agree. As the president's legal adviser, he argued that such tactics are perfectly permissible in interrogation."

Rip Van TribCo
Maybe the Tribune editorial page shouldn't feel so bad about just discovering Daily Kos last week. The Trib's sister paper in Los Angeles just discovered the influence of the Drudge Report.

Perhaps we should mandate a cultural literacy test for all journalists before bestowing upon them the privilege of explaining the world to those who actually live there.

I Feel Goodish
"DNA tests on a dozen people who say James Brown was their father has found that at least two are telling the truth," according to wire service reports.

Please be me! Please be me!

READER COMMENT 12:13 P.M.: A quick note, Steve. Re: James Brown, it should have been "Please, please, please, please be me."

Of course. I am ashamed. My apologies.

In Today's Beachwood
* A whole lotta surging going on. In the latest episode of Mystery Debate Theater.

* Led Zep at the Stadium, Easter Sunday, 1977. In Chicagoetry

* Asking life's most important questions. In Existential Rock. Submit your own!

Plus, Rod Heath takes another look at Ingmar Bergman's Persona at Ferdy On Films.

Jottings
* Baseball USA. (via Chicagoist)

* Study: Parents watch more media than kids.

* "Dodd has seen the Tribune Company gobble up news outlets in Connecticut and is unsettled by the monopolization of the industry."

Porno Perry
"The alternative-rock icon [Perry Farrell] favored oldies by his earlier bands, Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros, over his new material, an odd move for a former groundbreaker. But even more curious was a comment he made to the crowd of about 20,000," Jim DeRogatis writes.

"'You guys want me [Lollapalooza] to come back next year, don't you?' Farrell asked to muted applause. 'The Sun-Times doesn't want me back! They don't think we have good manners!'

"Farrell was referring to an interview I'd conducted earlier in the day, asking about Lolla's policy prohibiting bands on its stage from performing elsewhere in Chicago for 60 days before and 30 days after the fest - which has had a negative impact on the rest of the city's summer concert calendar - and the fest's creation of an exclusive VIP area where wealthier concertgoers pay more than $1,000 a ticket to enjoy catered food, shaded lounge chairs and massages."

In a separate entry on his Lolla blog, DeRogatis recounted:

"During our brief chat following the non-press conference, I also asked Farrell about the two-tiered, VIPs vs. regular concertgoers dichotomy at Lolla.

"'Are you saying that you don't like rich people because they happen to be rich? Farrell replied. 'Well, that's screwed!'

"I told Farrell I was just asking if the VIP sections aren't a bit un-democractic and anti-rock 'n' roll, a la Lennon's famous comment about clapping vs. rattling one's jewelry.

"'What are you talking about?' Farrell said. 'Democracy is based on capitalism, and if you don't have capitalism, you have communism. And capitalism is going to help the world beat these assholes, because you have the right to take the money out of your pocket and say, 'I don't agree with you, I don't like foreign oil and I'm not going to use it. I'm going to take my money my capitalistic dollar, and put it down here.'

"'All the people that come here are putting their money down here and saying, I like it here, so I don't know what you're on about, Jim.'"

The gentrified commodification of alt-rock is complete; now it's just capitalism with a "cool" face.

Zell's World
An insight into the mind of Sam Zell through his year-end gifts. Click on the images. (via Dan Mitchell's What's Online at the New York Times)

Tribocrisy
From Michael Miner's Hot Type:

"Here's some of the boilerplate a former Tribune employee had to agree to in order to collect a buyout:

"Non-Disparagement. You will not in any manner whatsoever denigrate, disparage, or otherwise convey or cause to be conveyed an unfavorable impression of the Company to a third party or parties."

So the Trib is now issuing gag orders.

Complicated Conspiracy
Paul Kuntzler, the president of Miller Reporting Company, a court reporters services firm, took out two full-page facing ads in the New York Times recently in the guise of a letter to Washington Post Co. CEO Don Graham for not returning to Kuntzler some apparently valuable materials. Here is my favorite paragraph:

"President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered by Vice President London [sic] Baines Johnson in a widespread, incredibly complex and brilliantly planned conspiracy that involved the Federal Bureau of Investigations directed by J. Edgar Hoover, the CIA directed by David Atlee Phillips, The Secret Service, elements of the United States Air Force, including General Curtis LeMay of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States Army, the United States Navy, Henry R. Luce's LIFE Magazine, The Ford Motor Company, the Dallas Police, including Dallas Mayor Earle Cabel, big Oil of Midland, Texas, the Texas political establishment, the mafia, the anti-Castro Cubans, Southern racists, including retired General Edwin Walker, and others. President Richard M. Nixon was also involved."

Wow!

Setting up the conference calls must've been a bitch!

You know what? Many - if not most - Americans are already skeptical of the official explanation of JFK's assassination. There's really no need to throw the Ford Motor Co. into the mix.

Buyout Briefing
Catching up with Bob Reed's take on what new ownership will mean for the Reader.

Union Label
"You are going to have a friend in the White House who believes that workers can organize," Mr. Obama shouted to the workers. "Who believes in union."

Except when it comes to endorsing pro-Wal-Mart Dorothy Tillman over union-backed Pat Dowell.

Slow-Motion Suicide
Russell Baker writes:

"The Times-Mirror Company had itself been collecting newspapers (Newsday on Long Island, The Baltimore Sun, and The Hartford Courant, among others), and these all tumbled into Tribune's basket in Chicago. Tribune was obviously a mammoth financial organization and hence extremely vulnerable when the market bubble broke and stocks, especially newspaper stocks, began declining. [Editor John] Carroll had the Times cruising successfully and was amenable to economizing when his Chicago bosses began asking him to cut editorial costs in 2003. Then he was asked to cut again. And again. He began objecting that the cutting was seriously damaging the paper, but Chicago insisted on more cuts. Eventually, in 2005, he resigned. The editor succeeding him was soon told that still more cuts would have to be made, and he resigned too.

"Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product. Papers everywhere felt relentless demands for improved stock performance. The resulting policy of slash-and-burn cost-cutting has left the landscape littered with frail, failing, or gravely wounded newspapers which are increasingly useless to any reader who cares about what is happening in the world, the country, and the local community. Cost-cutting has reduced the number of correspondents stationed abroad, shriveled or closed news bureaus in Washington, and crippled local reporting staffs which once kept an eye on governors, mayors, state legislatures, small-town rascals, crooks, and jury suborners. It has also shrunk the size of the typical newspaper page, cutting the cost of newsprint by cutting news content.

"Newspapers report their own erosion in the business columns, doggedly recording inch-by-inch shrinkage of page sizes and job-by-job shrinkage of news coverage, but statistics alone cannot convey the true loss to the country. Besides the Los Angeles Times, the papers showing the ravages of extensive cost-cutting include many once ranked among the country's finest: The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Des Moines Register, The Hartford Courant, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch."

The Beachwood Tip Line: 10 percent is fine.

Posted by Lou at 08:16 AM | Permalink

Mystery Debate Theater 2007

I guess the price we pay for a presidential forum at a football stadium is Keith Olbermann comparing the debates to the NFL exhibition season. It's gonna be a long night; moreso because Steve Rhodes is the only one watching from Beachwood HQ. Tim Willette is reporting live from Soldier Field. Andrew Kingsford is on assignment trying to convince some very wealthy strangers that he is heir to their charcoal fortune. As always, this transcript is edited for length, clarity and sanity.

*

OLBERMANN: What should we not build, what should we not be funding to see to it that our highways and our bridges and our tunnels and our mines are all properly maintained?

DODD: Well, thank you, first of all. And thank you for the warm welcome this evening. I'm a union guy - (cheers) - proudly a union man, and thank you for inviting us to be here tonight.

Let me first of all say that all of us here on the stage at this very moment are thinking about those six mine workers in Utah that are struggling, and their families, this evening. I can't begin without mentioning them and what they're going through this evening.

I happen to believe that putting our country back to work begins by cutting the funding for the war in Iraq. (Cheers, applause.) Spending $12 billion every month, spending $2 billion every week has got to stop if we're going to have a different set of priorities in our country.

CLINTON: Well, Keith, I want to thank the AFL-CIO and MSNBC for having us here. You know, my late father was a fanatic Bears fan and the idea that any of his children would be on the 10-yard line in Soldier Field is an extraordinary accomplishment, as far as I'm concerned.

STEVE: Oh Lord, she played the Bears card.

Hottest Debate Ever From our man at Soldier Field.

TIM (imagined): And my mother was a Giants fan!

CLINTON: And I am very much in mind of those miners in Utah.

STEVE: Is everyone gonna have to mention the miners? We support the miners. You can be against the mines and still support the miners!

CLINTON: We have to make investments in infrastructure. It's not only for the reasons that Chris was talking, as important as they are. This will create jobs, not only if we once again focus on our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports, our mass transit . . .

STEVE: Our dungeons, our torture chambers.

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I want to welcome everybody to Chicago, home of the NFC - (cheers) - champion Chicago Bears.

STEVE: Christ!

OBAMA: Look, I don't believe that we are safer now than we were after 9/11 because we have made a series of terrible decisions in our foreign policy. We went into Iraq, a war that we should have never authorized and should not have been waged. (Cheers.) It has fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

STEVE: Just look at Pakistan!

OBAMA: It has, more importantly, allowed us to neglect the situation in Afghanistan. We know right now, according to the National Intelligence Estimate, that al Qaeda is hiding in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And because we have taken our eye off the ball, they are stronger now than any time since 2001.

As president, I want us to fight on the right battlefield, and what that means is getting out Iraq and refocusing our attention on the war that can be one in Afghanistan. And that also will allow us to free up the kinds of resources that will make us safer here at home because we'll be able to invest in port security, chemical plant security, all the critical issues that have already been discussed.

STEVE: Wasn't the question about the Minneapolis bridge?

ANDREW (imagined): Obama would bomb it.

* * *

OLBERMANN: How would you convince [the American people] that these inconveniences are necessary to maintaining our infrastructure and making us collectively safer?

STEVE: Force them to plunge to their deaths into the Mighty Mississippi?

EDWARDS: Given what's happened in Minneapolis, given what's just happened in the mine in Utah, the American people understand how serious this is.

STEVE: Was it a Mormon mine?

EDWARDS: We should say, this game is over; the system is rigged in Washington, DC. It is not working for you; it is not working for the American people. And we're going to stand up to give the power in America back to you and back to all Americans who deserve it by saying no forever to lobbyist money in Washington, DC.

STEVE: Back to the people? Like the ones at Taste of Chicago? Because that's who the people are.

* * *

OLBERMANN: Congressman Kucinich, we're here tonight in this beautifully and recently renovated Soldier Field, partially renovated due to about $400 million in taxpayer money.

STEVE: Say it! Say it!

OLBERMANN: Should state and local and, in some cases by proxy anyway, federal governments subsidize private businesses like sports teams by building them stadiums, when perhaps that choice is being made at the expense of infrastructure and bridges?

KUCINICH: I've actually been involved in that argument for many years. And I think that - here's what I said in Cleveland. Instead of spending $400 billion or more for a stadium, why don't we just buy the team?

STEVE: [dumbfounded]

ANDREW and TIM (imagined): [dumbfounded]

STEVE, ANDREW and TIM (imagined): Why don't we just buy the team? Of course!

STEVE: Out of the mouths of babes.

* * *

KUCINICH: I want to see America take a new direction in trade as part of this, and that means it's time to get out of NAFTA and the WTO - (cheers) - and have trade - and have trade - and have trade that's based on workers right: the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike, the right to decent wages and benefits . . .

STEVE: The right to join the mob.

* * *

OLBERMANN: In this case, I'm going to take one of my discretionary follow-up questions and ask Senator Obama particularly about this stadium. You were in the Illinois legislature when Soldier Field was funded. You voted for it, although you seemed reluctant at the time.

STEVE: 'Gee Davey, I don't know . . .'

OLBERMANN: Was it the right call?

OBAMA: Absolutely, it was the right call because it put a whole bunch of Illinois folks to work, strong labor jobs were created in this stadium, and at the same time, we created an enormous opportunity for economic growth throughout the city of Chicago. And that's good for the state of Illinois.

* * *

OLBERMANN: Let's move on to another important topic for this audience in particular, the subject of trade. Senator Edwards had touched on this, Senator Clinton. Over the weekend, this past weekend, you expressed some disappointment that NAFTA, in your words, did not realize the benefits that it was promised - it promised, rather.

How would you fix it?

CLINTON: Well, I had said that for many years, that, you know, NAFTA and the way it's been implemented has hurt a lot of American workers.

OBAMA: I would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada to try to amend NAFTA because I think that we can get labor agreements in that agreement right now.

STEVE: After I get off the phone with Kim Il-Jong and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

OLBERMANN: Congressman Kucinich, scrap NAFTA or fix it?

REP. KUCINICH: In my first week in office, I will notify Mexico and Canada that the United States is withdrawing from NAFTA. I will notify the WTO we're withdrawing from the WTO.

STEVE: How very Bush-like.

ANDREW (imagined): And then I'll withdraw from the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest and the International Strongman Competition.

STEVE: Is Olbermann going to do Worst Person in the World now?

* * *

OLBERMANN: How do you convince a working family that's struggling to get by on a tight budget and in part makes ends meet using $10 t-shirts for their kids, that buying American is still best for them no matter what the price is?

SEN. OBAMA: The question is, on whose behalf is the president negotiating? Is he or she negotiating on behalf of the people in this stadium, or are you only negotiating on behalf of corporate profits?

STEVE: Or, to put it another way, are you negotiating on behalf of the corporate profits of the team that plays in this stadium or of the taxpayers who paid for it?

* * *

GOV. RICHARDSON: China is a strategic competitor. And we've got to be tougher on China when it comes to human rights and trade. We've got to say to China, you've got to stop fooling around with currency.

You've got to find ways, too, to be more sensitive to your workers, and you've got to do more, China, in the area of human rights around the world, like put pressure on the Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur. (Cheers, applause.) So we have to have a relationship with China that is realistic. We have to have a relationship that involves both strategic competition and common interests.

Here's what I would do. I would . . .

MR. OLBERMANN: Governor, I'm going to have to cut you off, or we're not going to be able to get to everyone on the line here.

STEVE: And if you could just move your stuff to Storage Room B, that'd be great, mmkay?

* * *

OBAMA: It is my strong belief - and I introduced legislation back in January - that the only way we're going to stabilize Iraq and make sure that al Qaeda does not take over in the long term is to begin a phased redeployment so that we don't have anti-American sentiment as a focal point for al Qaeda in Iraq.

STEVE: We'll keep it in Pakistan where it belongs.

BIDEN: I'm the only one on this stage that has a detailed political plan how to get out. Separate the parties. Let them be in regions.

STEVE: Like the NCAAs. There can be a civil war every March.

* * *

OLBERMANN: Senator Dodd, last week you have said that Senator Obama, quoting you, 'His assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused'; you added, 'He should not be making unwise categorical statements about military options.' What, in your opinion has been confusing?

DODD: Well, let me say on these matters here, I've spent 26 years on the Foreign Relations Committee dealing with these matters here on almost every major foreign policy debate; words mean things. We've got to be very careful about language that's used in terms of the danger and harm it can do to our nation.

STEVE: Oooh, the split screen!

DODD: My view was when you raise - issues are being raised about Pakistan, understand that while General Musharraf is no Thomas Jefferson . . .

ANDREW (imagined): He's more like a John Quincy Adams.

DODD: . . . he may be the only thing that stands between us and having an Islamic fundamentalist state in that country. And so what I'd like to see him change - the reality is if we lose him, then what we face is an alternative that could be a lot worse for our country.

I think it's highly responsible - or irresponsible for people who are running for the presidency and seek that office to suggest we may be willing unilaterally to invade a nation here who we're trying to get to be more cooperative with us in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

So my views - and I say this respectfully to my friend from Illinois here - I think it was wrong to say what he did in that matter. I think it's important for us to be very careful about the language we use, make it clear that if this United States is going to build the relationships around the world, we're going to have to do so with allies, in some cases allies that we may not particularly like.

OBAMA: Well, look, I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.

And, Chris, respectfully - and you and I are close friends - but the fact is you obviously didn't read my speech. Because what I said was that we have to refocus, get out of Iraq, make certain that we are helping Pakistan deal with the problem of al Qaeda in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, Chris, if we have actionable intelligence on al Qaeda operatives, including bin Laden, and President Musharraf cannot act, then we should.

STEVE: He switched it from "won't" act to "cannot" act, as if now we'd have tacit approval. He's walking it back.

OBAMA: Now, I think that's just common sense.

STEVE: Apparently not so common.

CLINTON: Well, I do not believe people running for president should engage in hypotheticals.

STEVE: For example, let's say that . . .

CLINTON: And it may well be that the strategy we have to pursue on the basis of actionable intelligence - but remember, we've had some real difficult experiences with actionable intelligence - might lead to a certain action.

But I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that and to destabilize the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamic extremists who are in bed with al Qaeda and Taliban. And remember, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. The last thing we want is to have al Qaeda-like followers in charge of Pakistan and having access to nuclear weapons.

So you can think big, but remember, you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president, because it has consequences across the world. And we don't need that right now. (Chorus of boos.)

STEVE: Barry Bonds just showed up.

DODD: Well, I just want to say, look - and Barack, you know, I've certainly said, look, I made a mistake in that vote in 2002. I don't deny that. But when you make a mistake, as you run on something like this, I think if I had the courage, I made a mistake on the vote in 2002; if you're making a mistake today, you ought to stand up and say so.

It was a mistake, in my view, to suggest somehow that going in unilaterally here into Pakistan was somehow in our interest. That, I think, is dangerous. And I don't retreat from that at all.

OBAMA: I did not say that we would immediately go in unilaterally. What I said was that we have to work with Musharraf, because the biggest threat to American security right now are in the northwest provinces of Pakistan and that we should continue to give him military aid contingent on him doing something about that.

But the fact of the matter is that when we don't talk to the American people - we're debating the most important foreign policy issues that we face, and the American people have a right to know. It is not just Washington insiders that are part of the debate that has to take place with respect to how we're going to shift our foreign policy.

STEVE: I thought we just spent the last six years debating unilateral strikes.

BIDEN: Folks, I got to say something here. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The truth of the matter is, none of what you heard earlier is correct. It's already the policy of the United States, has been for four years, that if there was actionable intelligence, we would go into Pakistan. That's the law.

* * *

OLBERMANN: The next question will from you from our audience - or for you from Jorge Mulasano.

JORGE MULASANO: I'm from Argentina, and six months ago I proudly became citizen of this great country.

STEVE: Now I want out. Can any of you help we with that? You know, the paperwork?

* * *

BIDEN: I terms of walking the walk, let's make something clear here. For 34 years, I've walked with you on picket lines. 25 years ago with Reverend Jackson - he and I walked on picket lines together. And the fact of the matter is, it's not where you've been the last two years. Where were you the six years you were in the Senate? How many picket lines did you walk on?

How many times - look at our records. Look at our records. There's no one on this stage, mainly because of my longevity, that has a better labor record than me. The question is, did you walk when it cost? Did you walk when you were from a state that is not a labor state? Did you walk when the corporations in your state were opposed to you? That's the measure of whether we'll be with you when it's tough, not when you're running for president in the last two years, marching on 20 or 30 or 50 picket lines.

EDWARDS: Yeah, I mean, every president of a union who's here today and their membership knows exactly where I've been. Two hundred times I've walked on picket lines. I was on a picket line on Saturday. I was on a picket line on Sunday. I have been in organizing campaigns all over this country.

Here's the America that I believe in. I believe in an America where anyone who works hard is able to earn a decent wage. I believe in an America where somebody who works hard doesn't have to worry about whether their child has health care. I believe in an America where anybody whose been with a company for 20 years has a pension and it can't be taken away. And finally, I believe in an America where if you have to go out on strike, no scab can walk through that picket line and take your job away from you.

MR. OLBERMANN: Senator Edwards, you're from a right-to-work state, though, are you not? In 15 seconds, are you not from a right- to-work state?

MR. EDWARDS: I am. And I have been a leader on the issues of organized labor and the issues of labor unions for years and years and years.

[POST-DEBATE FACT-CHECK: The Biden campaign says that Edwards supported North Carolina's Right to Work law when he was running for the Senate in 1998. Edwards also voted for NAFTA.]

* * *

OLBERMANN: Senator Obama, I know you and Senator Edwards have taken a firm stand against accepting money from lobbyists, yet you allow them to raise money for you and, as the phrase goes, bundle it. What's the difference between those things?

OBAMA: No, no, I do not have federal-registered lobbyists bundling for me . . .

STEVE: I use state lobbyists for that.

OBAMA: Just like I don't take PAC money.

STEVE: I just spend it.

OBAMA: And the reason that's important is because the people in this stadium need to know who we are going to fight for.

STEVE: The stadium owners!

OLBERMANN: Senator Edwards, trial lawyers are now contributing significantly to your campaign. How is that any better than lobbyists?

STEVE: Because they don't have to register.

* * *

OLBERMANN: Senator Obama, were you president of the United States today, would you honor Barry Bonds at the White House?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, he's still got to hit one more, and it's been taking a while. And I had the opportunity to meet Hank Aaron just this past weekend. It reminded me of what sports should be, and that is something that young people can look up to.

Now, Barry Bonds has been a remarkable baseball player, and I honor his achievements. But I hope that all of us are focused on making sure that sports is something that kids can look up to, not something that they start feeling cynical about. We've got cynicism in politics without having cynicism in our sports teams as well.

OLBERMANN: Is that a no, sir, or a yes?

OBAMA: Well, like I said, he hasn't done it yet, so we'll answer the question when it comes.

STEVE: He's punting on Barry Bonds?! A profile in courage! At least put your hands in your pocket when you're doing that.

*

BEACHWOOD ANALYSIS: Obama connected the crowd emotionally even if he was wrong on substance. Hillary once again showed she is the toughest, smartest, and most disciplined candidate. Dodd was unusually forceful, and Biden had a good night. Kucinich was a crowd favorite he's likely not going to expand his base of support. Edwards seemed to say the right things for this event but came off oddly unmemorable. Was Richardson there? Gravel was missed.

*

See the entire Mystery Debate Theater collection.

Posted by Lou at 06:35 AM | Permalink

Hottest Debate Ever: A Field Report

Unlike the rest of the Mystery Debate Theater team, who on this muggy 90 degree afternoon had the sense to watch Tuesday's debate on television, I scored a ticket from a friend in the musician's union and headed down to Soldier Field to catch the performance in person. From my spot in the stands it wasn't always easy to hear what was being said, and I was a little delirious from the heat, but I've transcribed my notes as best as I could in order to give you, gentle reader, a first-hand account of the action:

OLBERMANN: Welcome to the 23rd Democratic presidential debate in big, hot Soldier Field, sponsored by the AFL-CIO and the number 7. I have a lot of questions I want to ask the candidates tonight, and I'm wearing a suit, so let's get on with it. I'd also appreciate it if the members of the audience would keep their fucking yaps shut so we can get through this thing without killing each other, etcetera.

VENDOR: Hot dogs! Hot dogs here!

OLBERMANN: The order of the questions was chosen completely at random, and to prove it for the first one I'm going to ask a guy who doesn't stand a chance of winning this race.

RICHARDSON: I resent that, Keith.

OLBERMANN: I was talking to Sen. Biden.

Mystery Debate Theater The view from home.

BIDEN: Hey!

RICHARDSON: Did I mention what a great vice president you'd make, K.O.?

OLBERMANN: Sen. Biden, let me start out with this: is it fucking HOT or what?

BIDEN: It sure is, Keith. It's like being trapped in an aluminum tube. And speaking of aluminum tubes . . .

OLBERMANN: Excuse me, Senator, I forgot to mention that this isn't Meet the Press.

BIDEN: What do you mean?

OLBERMANN: I mean we don't have all fucking day, Delaware!

BIDEN: In that case, let me rephrase: Yes.

[applause]

OLBERMANN: Sen. Clinton, if you were a popsicle, what flavor would you be?

CLINTON: Cold, clear icewater, Keith. The flavor of common sense, nurses, and freshly-baked bread.

DODD: Excuse me, Senator. Since when does freshly-baked bread taste like icewater?

CLINTON: Since "who the fuck are you, 4%?" That's when.

[commercial break, followed by argument about how much
tea there is in China]

OLBERMANN: The next question is for Sen. Edwards. Senator - hey, is that Jesse Jackson down there?

ALL: Yes.

OLBERMANN: No, right down there in front, I swear, that looks just like Jesse Jackson!

ALL: We know, Keith!

OLBERMANN: I'm just sayin' . . . Sister Souljah moment up for grabs here, gang - any takers? No? Okay, then. Where were we? Shit almighty, it's hot out here. Edwards, did you answer?

EDWARDS: You haven't asked me anything yet.

OLBERMANN: Oh, right. Okay, here's one: Sen. Edwards, it's so hot today . . .

EDWARDS: Mmm hmm.

OLBERMANN: No, help me out here. It's so hot today . . .

EDWARDS: Oh, good grief. "How hot is it, Keith?"

OLBERMANN: It's so hot, for a split second, I thought I saw John Edwards's hair misbehave!

[laughter]

RICHARDSON: Yow!

BIDEN: Walked right into that one, mill-boy!

EDWARDS: At least I have hair to misbehave on me, Biden! Christ, it's so fucking hot out here.

BIDEN: Hey, fuck you! I've been hot a lot longer than you have!

CLINTON: I think we can all agree that no matter who is hottest, every one of us would benefit from a nice, cool breeze off the lake. Did I mention I was born here?

OLBERMANN: In Soldier Field?

CROWD: Woof! Woof! Woof!

OLBERMANN: Now cut that out.

OBAMA: Hey, wouldn't it be great if my ears were two enormous fans?

DODD: Keith, I'd like to get back to your earlier question and say that, indeed, it is extremely goddamned HOT out here, and also - whoa, what's that noise?

OBAMA: It feels like an earthquake!

CLINTON: Oh my god! We're moving!

RICHARDSON: Look! Up there on the stadium monitor!

MONITOR: That's right, fools! Mike Gravel at the controls! And I'm taking this spaceship-stadium far away from here, where none of you evil sellouts can ever again compromise away our country's hopes and values and . . .

OBAMA: Holy shit!

CLINTON: We're doomed!

BIDEN: Dennis, do something! He'll listen to you!

RICHARDSON: He's right! You're the only one pure enough!

KUCINICH: Your attention, please. We are experiencing a delay. The driver is off the train and is working on the problem.

ALL: Huh?

BIDEN: What the hell is this?

CLINTON: I don't believe it. That asshole scribbling in the stands must have mixed up his notes.

DODD: You mean, this is from the ride home?

OBAMA: Welcome to Chicago.

[end]

Posted by Lou at 06:22 AM | Permalink

15 Meetups

1. Chicago Fire Tamers (4 members)

2. The Chicago Cashflow Meetup Group (148 members)

3. The Lincoln Park Cashflow Meetup Group (39 members)

4. The Carol Stream Ghost Tracking Meetup Group (New)

5. The Chicago Ex-Jehovah's Witness Meetup Group (59 members)

6. Chicago Permaculture Meetup Group (46 members)

7. Dating for Nerds (65 members)

8. The Chicago Baby Boomers Meetup Group (22 members)

9. The Chicago Bastards Meetup Group (7 members)

10. The Chicago Expat Aussie Meetup Group (44 members)

11. The Chicago Freemasons & Eastern Star Meetup Group (142 members)

12. The Chicago Vampire Meetup Group (193 members)

13. The Chicago Young (21-35) Hippies Meetup Group (135 members)

14. Chicagoland-Indiana Interracial Erotic Singles Meetup Group (New)

15. The Chicagoland Ex-Southerners Meetup Group (20 members)

Posted by Lou at 06:15 AM | Permalink

August 07, 2007

The [Tuesday] Papers

"Congress is concerned that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not telling the truth. The best way to get the truth from Gonzales is to subject him to waterboarding or another equally forceful means of getting people to talk," James K. Gendon of Evanston writes to the Sun-Times this morning (last item).

"While squeamish civil libertarians and bleeding-heart liberals might object to this, claiming that such practices are methods of torture, Gonzales himself would not agree. As the president's legal adviser, he argued that such tactics are perfectly permissible in interrogation."

Rip Van TribCo
Maybe the Tribune editorial page shouldn't feel so bad about just discovering Daily Kos last week. The Trib's sister paper in Los Angeles just discovered the influence of the Drudge Report.

Perhaps we should mandate a cultural literacy test for all journalists before bestowing upon them the privilege of explaining the world to those who actually live there.

I Feel Goodish
"DNA tests on a dozen people who say James Brown was their father has found that at least two are telling the truth," according to wire service reports.

Please be me! Please be me!

READER COMMENT 12:13 P.M.: A quick note, Steve. Re: James Brown, it should have been "Please, please, please, please be me."

Of course. I am ashamed. My apologies.

In Today's Beachwood
* A whole lotta surging going on. In the latest episode of Mystery Debate Theater.

*