By Steve Rhodes
1. Typographical tour of Chicago.
2. “Players Agree: Wrigley is nice, but new is nicer.”
As long as the players pay for it . . .
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The funny thing about players is that they come and go, but we’re here to stay. It’s our ballpark, not theirs.
3. From Aaron D.’s Yelp review of the Wicker Park Dog Park: “Filled with Alpha-humans and their dog counterparts. Owners are usually busy chatting on their phones or showing off their new tat while their pit bull attempts to maul my 15lb beagle. These are not isolated incidents. I’d say 15-20% of owners fail to manage their dogs in this park.”
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As a resident of Wicker Park who has lived across from the dog park since before it was a dog park, I can report that this is a generous assessment. The dog park is a Menace, and Must Be Stopped.
You wanna know something? Dog parks do not belong on crowded residential blocks – especially dog parks with no hours that are frequently used by Yuppie Dog Owner Scum At All Hours With No Regard For Neighbors. And it’s not even the Constant Dog Fights that are the worst; it’s the Screaming Dog Owners whom are within range of sharp objects that could be hurled from my front window. Do not tempt me further.
4. No wonder WaMu is in trouble – their business model was based on volume.
5. Inspired by this New York Times dining article, I went looking for mooseburgers – or any variant of moose food – on Yelp and Metromix and came up empty-handed, so I e-mailed my pals in Chicago magazine’s dining department to see if they knew where someone could get moose in this town. I’ll keep you apprised.
6. Please. The worst bartenders ever employed at the Beachwood Inn run circles around these lame-oids.
7. As if the Obama campaign doesn’t engage in trivialities – and moreso, it was David Axelrod who has said himself he crafted a campaign around personality and not issues. The problem with Obama – like his embrace of the Machine – is that he knows better and yet does it anyway. This strikes me as more cynical than simply not knowing any better.
8. I also get a kick out of the Obama campaign’s continued attacks on John McCain for being “out of touch” when Obama is the one who has needed constant schooling in how ordinary people talk and live, as noted in the post above.
9. It’s funny how ignorant people who are this condescending reveal themselves to be.
10. Hero of the Day: Stephen Frayne Jr.
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“I can tell you this is absolutely not about free speech, but about the natural domain for our site, and the domain name that is rightfully ours,” says Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky.
By that logic, chicagoisrunbyacorrupttyrant.com rightfully belongs to the city.
11. Apparently there’s one person in America who can still get a loan.
12. Under pressure from do-gooders, Obama called Emil Jones to supposedly urge him to pass the ethics bill he has stalled up to now. Beachwood Labs has obtained a transcript of that call:
OBAMA: [dials Jones’s cell phone]
JONES: Heh-heh. I’m not here right now to take your call and I don’t even know how to work this thing so if you leave me a message I’ll never get it! Heh-heh. [beep]
OBAMA: In the name of all that is good and holy, I beseech you to release the ethics bill from your clutches and bring the kind of change to Illinois that . . . that . . . that . . . it needs. Let me be an instrument of your will. I mean His will. [click]
OBAMA TO STAFF: Okay, get that out to the press.
13. Which campaign has lied the most so far? Here’s one measure.
14. Chicago’s pundits overwhelmingly favor Obama. Here’s a tally.
15. I’m just not feeling the outrage on this one.
16. The Daily Herald won’t publish the phrase “hand job,” Margaret Lyons notes at Chicagoist, but the Sun-Times has published “fuckin’,” “shit” and “ass” on its website.
17. “Politicians in this state are so sleazy that even a vote to hold a constitutional convention is corrupted by their touch.”
Vote Yes on Con-Con.
18. “It was my call, based on a Sun-Times Internet site that runs like a Ford Edsel and my conclusion that the paper isn’t far from folding,” Jay Mariotti tells Michael Miner. “The night the U.S. basketball team won the gold medal, I had to wake the web editor out of bed at a wedding in California because hours had passed without our stories being posted on the web site. That was pretty much the final straw. I left about $1 million in guaranteed money on the table.”
19. “Neither of the major presidential candidates has proposed workable fixes to the nation’s most significant health care problems, according to two articles published in a leading policy journal today,” Judith Graham writes at Triage.
“Senator John McCain’s health reform plan wouldn’t reduce the ranks of the uninsured, contends one set of well-known experts, writing in Health Affairs.
“Senator Barack Obama’s plan wouldn’t stem rapidly rising health care costs, argues another set of experts in the same publication.”
20. Chicago Fountains: Then & Now
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The Beachwood Tip Line: A silent signal.
Posted on September 18, 2008