By Steve Rhodes
1. This made the rounds over the weekend – and rightly so: Fountain Tribute To Blackhawks A Ghastly Delight.
2. “When is a half gallon container of orange juice not 64 ounces? When it’s Tropicana!”
3. “Crack open a beer this summer. Please,” writes Jeremy Mullman of Ad Age. “The $100 billion U.S. brewing industry is staggering into its crucial selling season from its weakest position in years.”
4. Boystown Parking Ticket Mystery Solved!
5. Can we please get over the saggy pants?
Next week: What’s with kids and their rock and roll?
6. The worst part of the Joe Sestak imbroglio is that it was done on behalf of Arlen Specter.
7. The Tribune editorial page still has Olympic fever.
“Chicago survives, stronger for having aspired to accomplish something great.”
Was our survival ever in doubt? Was there a chance the city would just slide into the lake and sink to its depths?
And what would the great accomplishment have been, miring us in even more debt than we already have while telling the public how, um, great it is?
“Not everyone wins the gold, few even get to stand on the medal platform, but all achieve something by going in front of the world and putting forth their best effort, just as Chicago did.”
So our “best” was last? Woo-hoo! At least we “survive.”
“Approaching our first summer since the selection rebuff, we see benefits of our Olympic effort. World Sport Chicago existed as part of Chicago’s Olympic push, and lives on as its legacy. WSC, which started with some $6 million that was collected but not used for the bid, works with local parks and sports clubs to help young athletes get started in Olympic sports.”
Maybe start with the Chicago Public Schools, which no longer can afford sophomore sports or assistant coaches.
“Olympians will visit Chicago to support the free summer track program, which expects 500 or more participants in 2010, up from 300 in 2009, its first year. It targets children ages 6 to 13.”
That’s great. Will the events be held in high school hallways?
“We had an Olympic letdown, but the bid is still paying benefits.”
All that wasted time, energy and resources for a two-week party that would have cost taxpayers millions is paying off!
8. Mullet vs. Gullet. Another edition of Hawks vs. Cubs.
9. Trade Konerko. It will give Sox fans their next year back.
10. SportsMonday will appear later this morning.
11. Best Spam Ever. By The Beachwood Inbox Affairs Desk. (Not Totally Safe for Work.)
12. I’m still sorting out my thoughts on the Mark Kirk award controversy, but I had to laugh when WGN-TV over the weekend said that Kirk had claimed to have been the Army Officer of the Year. That really would have been something, seeing as how Kirk was – and is – in the Navy.
13. Beachwood contributor Scott Buckner sent me this note yesterday:
“Today is our nation’s officially-recognized Memorial Day. Forget for a moment that Michael Savage is a complete raving fucking lunatic. And forget what you may or may think about President Obama’s policies. The fact IS – and this is a fact that assholes like Savage and the guys from the national press and the lemmings reposting the ‘Obama gives a middle finger to the dead’ on Facebook – Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood is the resting place of a few thousand of our nation’s servicemen who served as courageously and mundanely as any serviceman resting at Arlington. And Abraham Lincoln National is JUST AS IMPORTANT as Arlington. Just as the sons of the South who starved and froze to death at Chicago’s own Fort Douglass during the Civil War and were re-interred on the grounds of the Douglass Memorial are JUST AS IMPORTANT.
“Our president honoring the war dead anywhere in our nation is what matters.”
14. Thank you, Browns.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Move it on over.
Posted on June 1, 2010