The [Thursday] Papers

Worlds are colliding today, so no column. Here are a few other new offerings, though:

* Don Cornelius Was One Cool Cat: A lot is being written about the suicide of Soul Train conductor Don Cornelius, who grew up on the South Side, was once a Chicago police officer, and started the seminal show here at WCIU. I've gotten to maybe half of what I hope to read, though my interest now is less in the show's history, of which I'm pretty well-versed (and I watched a fair amount myself growing up; the visual of a young Chaka Khan doing "Tell Me Something Good" is still etched into my brainpan), but in the latter part of Cornelius's life and the depression that led to that self-inflicted gunshot.

Nonetheless, I aggregated a bit of what I thought stood out among the writings and constructed a brief narrative of sorts.

Oh, and this happened. Here's some video.

And here's some non-Tribune embeddable video:

-

* Six More Years Of Shadowy Government!: Some of this is funny but I'm not sure the piece totally hits the mark overall. I just thought of it this morning when I saw some Groundhog Day news on the telly and wrote it up myself. These things are always better when they go through the Beachwood e-mail chain and together our team writes comedy.

For example:

Me to Beachwood Humor Committee:

"Exelon Energy officials say they've traced a power failure at a nuclear reactor in northern Illinois to an electrical insulator in a switchyard. The insulator failed Monday, causing one of the reactors at the Byron Generating Station to shut down automatically."

Dammit, Marty, I told you to fix that insulator!

Tim Willette reply:

Sorry, guys - I was trying to make it blow up, not shut down.

Well, it's funny to us.

(I thought about doing something with the State of the State, and I still might, but my attempt to read the transcript fell short. I mean, ugh. Is such an address really necessary anyway? Don't we all know what the state of the state is? Is it anything more than a political speech? It's not like legislators need to be told what's up. A total waste.

(Here was my tweet on it: "Quinn: State of the State is A) Lincolnesque B) Quinny C) Not as bad as it would be if Bill Brady got elected governor D) Bad unless u r CME")

* A Call To Bikers: Boycott The Chicago Motorcycle Show?: I went back and forth (I'm still not great about knowing when to use hyphens) on whether to post this. I'm not sure it's discrimination, unless the point is to keep bikers out and regular ol' motorcycle enthusiasts in. I guess that is the point being alleged. At the same time, I can see why not allowing colors at a motorcycle show could be a public safety precaution. So I added the question mark to the headline and included a counterpoint and some links. This is how the sausage gets made. (God, I hate that cliche.)

-

The Beachwood Tip Line: Take the train.

© 2006 - 2012, The Beachwood Media Company