The [Tuesday] Papers

So maybe the financial meltdown was important enough to skip a debate over.

Bank Head
Public art of the day. And the poem that goes with it:

They said
I had a head
for business.
They said
to get ahead
I had to lose
my head.
They said
be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.

Naming Names
Paul Newman was 19th on Nixon's Enemies List.

Which means he was also 19th on Moe Slezak's Enemies List.

Roger, Over
I got that Newman tidbit from Ebert. So good on film, such a blowhard on politics.

Color Update
Today is Wear Blue for Obama Day. It's also Wear Black for the White Sox Day. It's also the day the Sun-Times reprinted its Cubs newsprint poster thingie to tape up in your window in Cubbie blue instead of Northwestern purple, like they did yesterday.

Bipartisan Bailout
"Obama, McCain Must Lead On Rescue Plan."

What if we put Obama and McCain in a room alone together and told them not to come out until they had an Obama-McCain or McCain-Obama bailout bill.

*

But really, whose name would go first? You'd have to call it something like the Presidential Arrangement To Rescue Investors' Overextended Tail Act.

Bar Wars
"Bars and restaurants surrounding Wrigley Field on Monday reluctantly agreed today to stop serving alcohol after the seventh inning of potential title-clinching Cubs playoff games, but only after City Hall made a last-minute concession: The prohibition will end if the games go into extra innings," the Sun-Times reports.

Drinking will be halted at the end of the seventh inning, the paper reports, and last for about an hour. Maybe depending on who's on-deck.

The seventh-inning stretch suddenly takes on new meaning.

Dirty Sox
The mayor says the same ban will apply to any bars that can be located near the Cell or, in lieu of that, in people's private homes, as well as in local police lock-ups.

Clinch Pinch
Why, then, have orders not gone out for tonight's Sox-Twins game?

The View From Minnesota
"Our guts told us it would come to this, sure as mended bones ache when storms approach," writes Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "The Twins and White Sox will play today to decide the championship of the American League Central while resuming the best rivalry involving the Twin Cities since the Vikings stopped beating the Packers.

"Visitors to Yankee Stadium in the '70s had to contend with a contentious collection of talent dwelling in The Bronx Zoo. The Twins know today they're entering the Southside Asylum. If the Sox argued any more with each other, they'd be called The View."

Missile Man
Alexei Ramirez is so skinny that when Greg Couch told a fan he'd asked Ramirez if he was on steroids, the fan said "He's barely on food."

Phone Home
"A.J. Pierzynski relishes the chance to face the Twins at U.S. Cellular Field instead of at the Metrodome and its artificial surface," the Tribune reports (second item).

"You can ask Minnesota how much of a different team they are at home," Pierzynski said.

I keep hearing this as a complaint and find it odd because the Sox have the same home record as the Twins.

*

Why is this a home game for the Sox? Because they won a coin flip, though I think Ozzie was calling someone an ass during the proceedings and league officials took that as a "tails."

Garbage Goal
"Mayor Daley will eliminate 3,000 vacant positions and lay off 1,000 city employees - 735 of them union members - to solve Chicago's worst budget crisis in a generation," the Sun-Times reports.

And yet . . . "all but six of Chicago's 50 aldermen plan to accept a 6.2 percent cost-of-living increase that will boost their annual salaries to $110,556 Jan. 1."

Buy each of these six aldermen a beer:

1. John Pope
2. James Balcer
3. Scott Waguespack
4. Tom Tunney
5. Helen Shiller
6. Mary Ann Smith

Geez, Ed Burke, you've got more money in your campaign chest - despite never having anything close to a serious challenger - than some entire neighborhoods have in their savings accounts combined. I mean, really.

*

On the other hand, the notion that the mayor asks each alderman to sign an affidavit pledging to reject the money is something he must have learned in Beijing.

Visiting Fee
"Republican congressional candidate Martin Ozinga III said Monday that he donated $10,000 to Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign fund so that he and other concrete industry officials could have a private audience to express their concerns to him about state construction projects," the Tribune reports.

Geez, I had to pay $15K to see the gov!

"It's interesting to me that making contributions to Democrats is automatically considered pay to play," Ozinga said. "That, in my opinon, in outrageous."

He explained that it wasn't pay-to-play, it was pay-to-say.

*

Okay, not the best line. See, he said he paid just to have his say to the governor . . . hey, they can't all be winners.

Promised Land
I hereby pledge that if I ever become a big rock star, I will not play the Super Bowl no matter how much money is offered. I will even sign an affidavit to that effect.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Something worse.

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