By Steve Rhodes
1. Marlon Byrd vs. Robert Byrd.
2. Beware deadly air fresheners.
3. Luis Gutierrez knows how to get on the Internet.
4. Wanna live in the Museum of Science and Industry for a month? We do, too. Here’s how to apply.
5. “Long-term trend points up for zig-zag Gold.”
I just wanted to say “zig-zag Gold.”
6. Pitchfork Preview.
7. “If you think this chart looks a little like someone is laughing at you – you are not being paraniod. This smiley face pattern is bought to you by the chart painters at Goldman Sachs (GS) and the rest of the Gang of 12 and their media lapdogs who push and pull the markets around on a daily basis.”
8. “Chicago fire officials say about 150 people who didn’t want to lose their places in line at a bus stop were treated for heat-related illnesses,” AP reports.
9. “Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune is visiting from San Francisco today with a message for Richard Daley,” WBEZ reports. “Brune says the Chicago mayor has earned a national reputation for environmental efforts ranging from bike paths to green roofs.
“BRUNE: All of that is at risk because in no other city do we have two coal plants affecting more people – that spew more greenhouse gas pollution and other toxic emissions.”
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You would think a reputation would be built more on killer coal plants and the lack of workable citywide recycling, but when you’ve got bike paths and green roofs . . .
10. Comcast Sucks.
11. Sperm Hasn’t Changed in 600 Million Years.
Somehow I think that’s related to this.
12. Fried Chicken, Krispy Kreme and Lobbying.
13. Damn lies.
14. Blago’s Tar Balls.
15. The Week in WTF.
16. Mt. Prospect Abandons Condemnation Of Ye Olde Town Inn.
17. Just catching up with this:
“More people in Chicago and its suburbs are admitted to hospital emergency rooms for heroin use than in any other major city, and heroin is now the most common illegal substance for which people in Illinois enter drug treatment, a new study shows,” the Sun-Times reports.
“In addition, heroin-related deaths have risen sharply in the collar counties, as use of the drug continues to expand among young, white suburbanites.
“These are among the key findings from a report released today by Roosevelt University’s Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy.
“The report – which is based on federal and state data on admissions to hospitals and drug treatment programs, as well as county death records – illustrates that heroin is “the most significant illicit drug threat in the Chicago metropolitan area,” according to co-authors Stephanie Schmitz and Kathleen Kane-Willis.
“In 2008, there were nearly 24,000 heroin-related hospital admissions in the Chicago area, more than in any of the 12 other cities included in the federal government’s Drug Abuse Warning Network. New York and Boston had the next-highest totals.”
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Caution: See Item No. 13.
18. “Synthetic surfaces and short fields and the Rachel vs. Zenyatta contretemps aside, we now enter into my favorite time of the Thoroughbred racing year,” our man on the rail Thomas Chambers writes.
19. Will the alderman – er, the defendant – please rise?
20. “[T]he Playboy Club in Chicago was screening the Batman serials (1943’s Batman and 1949’s Batman and Robin) on Saturday nights,” retrorebirth reports.
“It became very popular, as the hip partygoers would cheer and applaud the Dynamic Duo, and boo and hiss at the villains.
“East coast ABC executive Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in childhood, attended one of these parties at the Playboy Club and was impressed with the reaction the serials were getting.
“He contacted West Coast ABC executives Harve Bennett and Edgar J. Scherick, who were already considering developing a TV series based on a comic strip action hero, to suggest a prime-time Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Be dynamic.
Posted on July 16, 2010