The [Monday] Papers

I don't have HBO so I've only had the opportunity to see The Sopranos a few times, though I have to say it was every bit as good as billed.

But having read enough in advance of last night's finale and then the papers this morning, I have to say I find it a perfect ending. Life goes on, as usual. Same-old, same-old.

The Cub Factor
Now this is more like what we expected out of the Cubs: Alfonso Soriano knocking the snot out of the ball and Jason Marquis and Ted Lilly slouching into mediocrity. Same result, but still. It was confusing losing the other way.

TV Guide
Face the Nation: Joe Lieberman.
This Week: John McCain.
Meet the Press: Pre-empted by tennis.
Fox News Sunday: Tony Snow.

You'd think the war was popular. I guess the French Open was the antiwar guest.

- Tim Willette

Street Sense
Sun-Times transportation reporter Monifa Thomas retypes the press release from Ald. Manny Flores's office about those new street cleaning lights that signal when the street sweeper has been by and it's safe to park again.

Question: Why are these lights necessary?

Official Answer: So residents can park their cars right away after the street sweeper has gone by and not wait until the end of the proscribed no parking period.

Follow-up: Why can't the police just not issue tickets after the sweeper has been by?

Official Answer: Well, there can't be an Official Answer if the question isn't asked.

I live on one of the streets in question, and this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The real problem is that everyone is getting tagged (at $50 a shot) because the city no longer puts up those temporary orange signs alerting us to street sweeping days.

"Installing a total of 500 lights should cost the city $150,000," Streets and San spokesman Matt Smith says.

Not only will it cost more - it always does - but at the end of Thomas's piece we learn the lights aren't even working properly.

Landmark Ruling
"I'm not convinced that the Lake Shore Athletic Club has the stuff to qualify as an official Chicago landmark," the Tribune's Blair Kamin wrote on Sunday, "but it clearly brings value to the cityscape."

I can't say whether the building meets landmark requirements, though I suspect it does, but it doesn't matter. Not every building worth saving is an official landmark.

Kamin praises the building's "solid urban design, turning the corner with sharply cleaved wall planes and deep recesses that give it the feel of a stripped-down castle . . . Inside is the kind of quality they don't build anymore - a lobby sheathed in marble, plus a swimming pool adorned by colorful murals of golfers, runners, high jumpers and other athletes in the heat of competition.

"The Fifield-LaGrange plan would wipe out all that for a luxury condo . . . "

And what will that condo look like? We don't know, because the drawings with the city are just "place-holders."

Where does Ald. Brendan Reilly stand? Kamin says he's "hedging."

We all know how that tends to turn out.

Birthday Bash
"A newspaper that speaks for so many years can fall in love with the sound of its voice," the Tribune said on Sunday, proving its own axiom as it marked the paper's 160th anniversary.

Wilco World
If Jeff Tweedy is trying to break our hearts, he's finally succeeded.

Tweedy and his bandmates have licensed songs from their latest release for a bunch of Volkswagen TV commercials.

"With the commercial radio airplay route getting more difficult for many bands (including Wilco), we see this as another way to get the music out there," the band explains on its website.

You know, some things in life are more important than getting your songs on the radio.

And if that's the goal, write different songs. Maybe collaborate with Gwen Stefani. I mean, what was the lesson of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Was Reprise right after all?

Mob Squad
Sun-Times reporter Steve Warmbir called Al "The Pizza Man" Tornabene and asked if he was now running the Chicago Outfit. Tornabene hung up without answering.

Incentive Pay
A Christian Science Monitor article reprinted in the Sun-Times's Sunday "Controversy" section asks: "Pay the Poor to be Good?"

Maybe we ought to pay the rich to be good. Like pay them to stop looting corporate treasuries in the form of obscene executive compensation, and pay them to stop seceding from the public school system, and pay them to stop buying off politicians and rigging the system in their favor. You know, stuff like that.

Just a thought.

Hata Playas
"What is a Hate Crime?" the Tribune asked in a "special report" on its front page on Sunday. The story explored a case in Knoxville, Tenn., touted by conservative media as a hate crime ignored by the mainstream media because a white couple were the victims, allegedly brutalized and killed by four black men.

The fact that there is no evidence of racial motivation strikes me as a reason to frame the story differently: Look at what's captured the conservative media's attention and why. If you take a deeper look, you'll see where the racial animus really lies.

Rape Victims
"Investigators working with the sex crimes unit of the Cook County state's attorney's office seized hundreds of untested rape kits scattered throughout the Harvey police station basement, the Daily Southtown has learned."

The City of Harvey had no response.

Danny the Lip
Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-Chicago) spent the most of anyone in the Illinois delegation on taxpayer-funded mailings to . . . taxpayers, touting all those great achievements of his. By contrast, colleague Don Manzullo (R-Rockford) has returned $1.1 million in mail funds in his 14-year congressional career, never once using (or abusing) the privileges.

"Rep. Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican, considers the mass mailings 'self-promotion' and has repeatedly introduced legislation to ban the practice," the AP reports.

Art in the Dark
A coalition of artists will rally in Daley Plaza today at 5:30 p.m. to protest the mayor's attempt to remove the public from public art.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Disinfected.

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