shoeless james

From First to Worst

2011-06-25T18:37:00.002-05:00

Wow, has it been that long since I have posted to this blog? What's happened? I know what's happened -- facebook -- the blog-killer. So, obviously I must have something very important to say, something that could not be constrained within the boundaries of Facebook. What is it that I have to tell the world about, get off my mind, etc.?

The plight of my fantasy baseball team.

I've been in a couple fantasy leagues the past few years, but this year I am down to just one. It can take up a lot of time, especially when you are looking to find the best players at any one time but you're only really familiar with the teams in your hometown or which your hometown teams play.

I've done pretty well the past couple years in this league. Last year mine was one of the top four teams at the end of the season. And this year I drafted an all-star lineup: Pitchers Jake Peavy, Matt Garza; catcher Buster Posey; Home Run Hitter Adam Dunn; Base-stealer Juan Pierre; Boston Red Sox Relief pitchers Jonathan Papplebon and Bobby Jenks. Man, I had every corner covered.

Until they actually started playing. Dunn not only hasn't hit any home runs, he hasn't hit anything. The Red Sox started the season horribly and Jenks fell off the map and the Sox' roster. Peavy has gone off and on the disabled list. Pierre can't buy a hit, which means he can't steal any bases, either. Posey got hurt and is out for the season. And Garza pitches for the Cubs.

Despite it all, I actually was in first place in my five-team division for the first couple weeks this season. But I've fallen off since then and have gotten beat badly a few weeks. This week I am up against a team with as bad a record as mine and whose owner doesn't seem to be paying much attention to it since three of his starting batters are on the disabled list. And he's beating me 10-4 so far.

But it's fun, still It's fun to play with numbers, it gives me a reason to care about most baseball games, and it's something to play around with when I'm bored and in front of a computer. Otherwise, I'm counting the weeks until hockey season -- I'm the defending champ in that fantasy league.

Riding the Christmas Train

2010-12-08T18:40:00.007-06:00

Today on the way home from work I caught the Chicago Transit Authority's Christmas Train, which is decked out with holiday decorations and lights inside and out, has seasonal music playing, and has CTA employees who are dressed like elves passing out info about the train and posing for pictures, and generally getting people in a much better mood than they usually are on the way home from work. The train only makes one run a day, and for only a handful of days through Christmas, so it's pretty cool to see on the tracks, and much cooler to actually ride on, which I got to do for the first time ever, today.

Sometimes this city doesn't totally suck.

Remembering JFK

2010-11-22T10:50:00.002-06:00

47 years ago today, Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Was he a perfect president or a perfect man? No, but no one is. He did bring hope and optimism and the world looked at the U.S. as it never had before. The following comments were made while he was president, some 50 years ago, but strangely, sadly, but not surprisingly, the remarks apply as much today as they did then. They also apply to those Republicans and Tebaggers and Democrats turned Republicans who who dare suggest that JFK was anything but a liberal. Here he is, in his words:

"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

"I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal."

"But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

Robbie Williams' new song, new video

2010-08-26T10:27:00.001-05:00

He's a little bit country. Of course people will call it his "Brokeback" video, but I like the "Butch and Sundance" touch at the end. Nice song, neat video. Now why is this man not a superstar in the U.S.?

'Disgrace'

2010-08-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

Disgrace | The New Republic

"I am speaking to you as an American, Mr. Obama."

What is disgraceful has been this president's failure to lead, on what the New Republic calls, rightly so, one of the most important civil rights issues of our time.

D-Bag of the Day: Tony LaRussa

2010-07-02T15:39:00.003-05:00

Today's Douchebag of the Day is St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa. The drinky, and now nutty, skipper (he who allowed a steroid user and abuser to play on his team) has voiced his support of Arizona's anti-immigrant law.

LaRussa (that doesn't sound like an AMERICAN name, does it?) said that "I'm actually a supporter of what Arizona's doing," the skipper said. "You know, people don't fix your problem, and the government, national government doesn't fix your problem, and you've got a problem, they've got to take care of it themselves."

He also had kind words for the Tea Party activists: "This is America, right? You're supposed to be able to have opinions and disagree, and a lot of things they do I think are correct."

Fine, you're a nut and unintelligent and you drive drunk and you enable cheaters. Fine. But then, then, when reporters dared to question him further on his public statements, LaRussa told them to back off, since their questions didn't involve sports and he doesn't talk about politics and they were pissing him off.

Excuse me? You go off publicly on a political subject, lend your vocal support to the nutjob tea-baggers then bark at anyone who wants you to explain yourself? Tony LaRusso (as Harold Washington called you) you are not only a drinky douchebag, but a spineless, cowardly one at that.

"Hey, Douchebag!"

2010-06-13T01:23:00.002-05:00

(in which I begin a new feature of my blog, sure to become world-renown and a favourite feature of all of my readers. Essentially, it asks the rhetorical question, "Hey, douchebag, what's with that?" Where debate or intelligent engagement just wouldn't matter, all you can do is tell someone, "Hey, douchebag!")

The first "Hey, Douchebag!" honor goes to:

The d-bag who felt the need to stick a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For the American" bumper sticker, (which included a mock Obama campaign logo), on the inside of the elevator door at my doctor's office. So, to that dimwit I'd say, "Hey, Douchebag!" then make him or her stand in that elevator and take the offending bumper sticker off the door with their fingernails, then make them clean the door of the sticky residue, until it was clean.

Thin Ice

2010-06-09T00:11:00.007-05:00

I type this on the eve of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers. The Blackhawks have a 3-2 lead and if they win on Wednesday night, in Philadelphia, they will capture the Stanley Cup, for the first time since 1961. This is a pretty big deal.

The competition between the two teams has been quite heated at times -- the two teams have been playing very scrappy, tough hockey, leaving quite a bit of blood and sweat on the ice.

One of the more renown players on the Flyers is Chris Pronger, a well-traveled NHL player, who is tough, (some might say dirty), scrappy, and smart; the sort of player who gets away with a lot because he is nice to the officials, and who fans of every other team hate, but they'd take him on their club in a second.

During the last game, at the United Center in Chicago, Blackhawks fans showed their displeasure with Pronger by booing every time he touched the puck. Silly, maybe, but harmless, really.

Not so harmless was the Photoshopped poster of Pronger in Tuesday's Chicago Tribune. The poster referred to him as "Chrissy" and the Tribune "artist" who produced the picture put Pronger in a pair of women's figure skating tights -- all together, it insinuated that Pronger was a sissy, or a woman, or a fag, or somehow not a real man. That's the impression that I got, and as much as the people at the Tribune might deny it, that's the impression many got. This is the "journalistic" equivalent of shouting, "Pronger, you fag!"

I was instantly infuriated once I saw this poster. So infuriated that when I got home from work I didn't just put it up on my Facebook page or e-mail it to a bunch of people, I called the Tribune Sports department because I had one question, above all else: What was the point of this poster?

To their credit, the folks at the Trib seemed to be expecting my call (I wonder how many calls like mine they got on Tuesday). I was put on hold briefly, then a polite gentleman (I did not get his name) answered and after I told him about my objections to the poster, he said, "The point was just to try to have a little fun with who Chris Pronger was." he talked about Pronger's reputation and how Hawks fans hate him, and I told him that I am aware of that, because I am a Blackhawks fan, but that the poster was really offensive. He apologized and said that it was not their intention to offend women or gays or figure skaters or anyone else beyond Mr. Pronger (well, you failed at that, didn't you, Mister?). He then thanked me for calling and said they appreciated that I called and that I read the paper and that I listened to him. He did not give me the brushoff -- maybe that was because I did not get angry at him and I tried to be polite, though my voice was shaking at times. I then told him that I appreciated that he took the time to explain it to me and answer my question, though I still did not like that poster.

Not only is this in poor taste, but it only emboldens the meatheads who yell stuff such as "Pronger (or Crosby or Ovechkin or Thornton, et al) you fag!" at Blackhawks games. I know this because I have been there for games when, after scoring on the Blackhawks, these players have been treated to the above cries. (As if it makes it easier for one team's fans to deal with if they call the player that just scored on their team a fag.)

The good news is that most of the comments I saw on the Trib's website, as well as on some other blogs, really gave the Tribune hell for this boorish, stupid, juvenile, homophobic, misogynistic poster. The bad news is that it ever saw the light of day in the first place. I hope the sounds of the phone calls from angry readers are still ringing in the ears of the Tribune's sports editors.

The Birds are Pissed

2010-06-02T17:46:00.003-05:00

and when the birds get pissed, terrible things will follow.

I blame my irrational fear of (some types of) birds on my childhood. This was shaped by two things: the superstitions of my grandmother and her sister, and bible movies, like The Ten Commandments.

My maternal grandmother lived in our house, in the apartment above us, with her sister, well into their old age. For a while, theirs was the place to be, as my cousins and aunts and uncles would drop by for lunch, seemingly every day, to a spread of mortadella, prosciutto (before it was gourmet food), capicola, ham, etc. It was usually quite loud and there was always laughter, but one thing I remember, and I can't quite remember the occasion -- maybe someone died or someone had noticed a bird outside the window -- but it was either my grandmother or my aunt who said that when a bird appears outside your window, then someone's going to (or already has) die. They were southern Italians, as if that explains it. For some reason I've always remembered that.

Then of course there were those bible movies, where birds were the harbingers (no pun intended) of disease, death and darkness. That affected me quite a bit, as did a certain poem by Mr. Poe.

I like many birds -- little birds are cute, exotic birds of unusual colors fascinate me, I'll always stop to watch a cardinal (especially if they are beating the Chicago Cubs!), and I was in awe the other day when I saw a bluejay atop a stop sign. But dark birds with their dark eyes, give me the creeps, especially if, you guessed it, they're outside my window.

For the past year we've had some nesting birds on the back porch. The same back porch where I like to hang out late at night, on my 'weekends,' and have a cigar, watch the airplanes heading into O'Hare (yeah, I know, I'm a good 10 miles east of the airport but still, they come in pretty low around Uptown/Andersonville), and tool around Facebook and the Internet on my ipod Touch. For the most part they didn't bother us and we didn't bother them, since our schedules are the opposite - by the time I enter the outdoor smoking lounge at night, they're all sleeping.

But lately -- this is their second year here -- things have been getting out of hand, with bird poop all over the porch, the railings, the steps, and pieces of nesting materials strewn about, as well. So, the landlord was notified and while I haven't heard from him, it appears his handyman may have plugged the hole in the rotting beam about the porch, where the birds were nesting. Because when I got home tonight I found one bird, at the top of the stairs, chirping, incessantly, and occasionally looking up in the direction of where that hidden nest was. But no chirps came back at him. But he's still there. On the porch railing, pooping, and chirping, and looking right at me. And I think he's pissed.

I may need to self-medicate tonight to avert the inevitable nightmares. Then there will be the full-fledged attack of the surviving birds once I step outside. Better get the umbrella...

(NOTE: The bird pictured in thsi post is not the bird on my porch today. But I know that look ...)

How Great is Glee?

2010-05-27T00:36:00.000-05:00

This great. Sure, the music makes it a unique, really great show, but moments like this, where Kurt's dad goes off on Finn when he hears him using the word "faggy," are what make it truly great. Kurt's dad speaks the same language as Finn, he played sports in high school, he's a "guy's guy," and he won't stand for someone using those words in his house. This is great television.

Alberto Zoppe, Part II

2010-04-16T15:37:00.002-05:00

My favorite part of my interview with Alberto Zoppe -- done about six years ago by phone, with me in Chicago and he in Arkansas -- was when he recalled sleeping in his family's circus trailer, which was pulled by horses, on Italy's unpaved roads, at night when he was a child. “Sometimes it was raining,” he said, and the sound of the rain, along with the sound of the steel wheels on the unpaved country roads, “made such a nice sound, and I slept so well. That was so beautiful.”

Here's the rest of my chat with him, along with some recollections by his son and his wife.

*****

By the mid-1940s, the Circo Fratelli Zoppe had reached a pretty serious level of renown throughout Europe. Orson Welles witnessed firsthand Alberto’s riding act, and afterward told Alberto about a circus movie the director Cecil B. DeMille was working on, called “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He asked Alberto to come to the U.S. with his horse act, and become a part of this movie. Alberto, declined Welles’s offer, since, with family circuses in post-war Europe suffering from a lack of animals, his circus needed his act, as well as his guidance, to survive.

Welles was undeterred, and enlisted the help of John Ringling North, who, at the time, was owner of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, to convince Alberto to come to the U.S. Welles brought North to Italy to see Zoppe, and beginning in 1947, North regularly pitched the idea of leaving Italy for the U.S. to Alberto. Zoppe would be part of DeMille’s film, as well as a featured performer in the Ringling Brothers circus.

“For three years he tried to get me to come to America,” Alberto says by phone from his home in Arkansas. “I was 20, 21 years old, and I didn’t care to come to Ringling’s show.” But North and Welles implored him to reconsider, telling him, “You have to come to America; we need you.”

By 1949, Zoppe told both North and Welles that he’d take them up on the offer to come to the U.S., but that he wanted to wait a year, “because they need me another year in Italy.” He also had a stipulation for his leaving the Zoppe family’s circus to join North’s circus and appear in DeMille’s film. He says, “I find out, from talking to people, that (the Ringling Brothers circus) had 40 elephants, and in Italy we had no elephants. I said, ‘OK, if you want me to come to America, you can send an elephant to my show in Italy to replace me.’” Ringling’s responded by telling Alberto, “‘if I give an elephant to every performer, I wouldn’t have any more elephants!’”

Alberto Zoppe’s family circus got their elephant, in exchange for his services, but Alberto didn’t get the year he wanted in Italy before he moved to the U.S. He met with Welles and John Ringling North at the airport in Rome one morning after they had agreed upon his coming to the U.S. and the elephant exchange, but to Alberto’s surprise, he was told that he had to leave much sooner than he had expected to.

“We were at the airport, and John Ringling North said, ‘you can’t wait another year. I talked to Cecil B. DeMille and he wants you for the movie. You have to go now.’”

Soon afterward, Alberto left for the U.S., where he trained horses for, as well as appeared in, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He also then spent four years with the Ringling Brothers circus, specializing in horse riding and horse tricks. And the elephant that was given to Zoppe’s family circus in Italy in exchange for him? Her name was Mary, and became famous in her own right. One time, the Zoppes put on a circus parade through an Italian town they were performing in, and Mary got loose, ran through the town market, and didn’t stop running until she got to a church, which she went inside. One of Alberto’s brothers, aghast at the fact that their elephant had run away but realizing the promotional potential of the episode, “called everybody; the newspapers,” Alberto says, “and they took pictures of the elephant in the church. It was good for the show, good publicity.” The Italian newsmagazine Oggi soon featured Mary the elephant in the church on its cover. “She was a great elephant,” says Sandra Zoppe.

His work on “The Greatest Show on Earth” led to decades’ worth of film and television work for Alberto Zoppe. Other movies that he either appeared in, worked as a consultant on, or trained actors to ride horses in, include; “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (which Sandra and Alberto’s sister Ruggera were also in), “The Great Barnum,” “Trapeze,” and “Toby Tyler.”

Alberto also has the distinction of being the first person with an animal act to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. “It was a horse,” Alberto says, and its name was Pacha. Pacha would tap out answers to mathematical questions Alberto asked. Alberto also appeared on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, Circus of the Stars (where he did all of the horse training, as well as lion and dog acts), and scores of other TV shows throughout the U.S. and Europe. In addition, he also kept doing regular circus work, either as an equestrian or with animals such as lions and bears.

Giovanni talked about some of his father’s work with wild animals. Most of the time the acts went off flawlessly, but there were a couple incidents where Alberto was injured. Giovanni doesn’t blame or say they had bad animals; the animals just may have misunderstood what was going on.

“My father had a bear one time that chased him all around the circus area,” he says. Giovanni explains that at one point of an act with a bear, Alberto would give the bear a baby’s bottle to drink from. Somehow, though, the bear evidently “thought my dad was taking the bottle away,” and because of that, the bear chased Alberto around the circus, but did not harm him. Alberto also performed with a lioness “when I was growing up,” Giovanni says. The lioness would stand up when she heard music, and she’d run up to a horse, jump onto the horse, and ride it, he said. One other thing she did was to “take meat out of my father’s mouth,” Giovanni said. One time, though, when the lioness was doing this with Alberto, “she got her tooth stuck in his lip and he jerked his head back,” tearing his lip apart, and requiring plastic surgery to his face, Giovanni says. The family has a realization that incidents such as that happen in the circus, and the animals aren’t punished or put down when such things happen. Giovanni mentioned that that lioness was part of their family for ten years, then given to a zoo.

Alberto Zoppe can’t talk about the past for prolonged periods of time these days. He remembers the conversations he had with Orson Welles and John Ringling North, the times his family’s circus performed for the Pope before he left for the U.S., he still remembers the mechanical details of the advantages of his four cupola tent over the tents that circuses previously used, he remembers how his circus family fled Cuba in the days immediately following Castro’s takeover, but he gets frustrated when he can’t remember dates and years. He’ll apologize for this, then will have to call on his wife to fill in the blanks. But when asked about his remembrances of the circus life from when he was a very young child, Alberto Zoppe’s memory is crystal-clear, and there’s one thing that he’s able to recall in the same wistful manner that ordinary working folk recall a great vacation they’ve taken. He remembers that his mother, the same women who rode horses in the ring, was in the driver’s seat of the circus’s horse-drawn trailers as they made their way from town to town in Italy. “That was about 70, 80 years ago,” Alberto Zoppe says, but he has no trouble remembering it today. “My mother was driving, and the streets were just gravel. The steel wheels made such a nice sound,” and Alberto would be lying in the trailer, sleeping, as his mother drove. “Sometimes it was raining,” he recalled, and the sound of the rain, along with the sound of the steel wheels on Italy’s unpaved country roads, “made such a nice sound, and I slept so well. That was so beautiful.”

Alberto Zoppe, Part I

2010-04-16T15:24:00.003-05:00

This is out of order as far as the piece I wrote on the Zoppes, but I only today, while browsing obituaries, saw that Alberto Zoppe died last March. More people should know about him -- his was an incredible story. I regret I haven't been able to tell his story to a large audience, but maybe it'll get passed on now, via this blog and those who read it.

*****

Alberto Zoppe didn’t want to come to the U.S.

In the late 1940s, partly out of his own talent as a performer and horse-rider (he was called “The Prince of the Riders”) and partly out of necessity (the animals that circuses had always made a staple of their repertoire were pretty scarce in post-war Europe), Zoppe was the star of his family’s circus, the “Circo Fratelli Zoppe.” Their circus traveled throughout Italy, setting up shop whenever townspeople would let them. Established in 1842, in Venice, the Zoppe Circus was formed when Ermenegilda Zoppe, a French clown, met a Hungarian ballerina, Napoline, while he was performing in Budapest. The two fell in love, married, and moved to Italy, where they established their circus.

Alberto Zoppe is the fourth generation of the Zoppe circus family. Alberto now lives in Arkansas, which serves as a sort of base for the current Zoppe Family Circus, their trucks and equipment and horses being kept there when the circus isn’t on the road. He was born in 1922 in the Veneto region of Italy, but he says that he was part of the circus before he was born.

Alberto Zoppe’s mother, Emma, in a tradition that continues down to Giovanni’s sister, Tosca, did a ballerina act on horses, riding a horse around the ring while also standing on the horse, jumping up then landing back on her feet on the horse, and other such feats. According to Alberto, his mother was riding horses in their circus up to her eighth month of pregnancy with him. “So I was working the horses before I was born,” he says in his Italian-accented voice.

“My father and my brother taught me how to ride the horses,” he adds. “We all became circus stars,” he says, referring to himself, his two brothers and two sisters. One feat that Alberto became famous for was a horse-to-horse somersault.

Besides becoming a circus star, Alberto Zoppe has made an even more lasting effect on circuses throughout the world. He invented the four-pole cupola tent.

For a circus, the tent is their stage, their calling card, their home turf even as they find themselves in a different town every few days. It can also determine their income, as the size of the tent determines how many paying customers can fit inside. The tent that the Zoppe Family Circus had been using had two pulleys at its top, with a 16-ft. crossbow to support the top of the tent. Alberto Zoppe said that one night in 1936 “I went to bed and thought about it and thought about it,” going over the tent style and how it could be made bigger. He determined that they could double the size of the center of the top of the tent, making it 16 feet by 16 feet, and secure it by a pole in each corner of the top crossbow. In addition to doubling the size and crowd capacity of the tent, the four poles also made it easier to set up and tear down. “Just pull them up and down,” Zoppe says.

Even with such logistical innovations, traveling through Europe with a family circus in the 1920s through the 1940s wasn’t an easy ride. The small towns wanted the entertainment and diversions of a circus, but these towns weren’t in the most accessible regions of Italy. Alberto Zoppe remembers small mountain towns in Italy asking his family to bring the circus to their towns, but there were no roads into the towns that their trucks could travel down, so the circus performers, along with volunteers from the town, had to strap chests of their props and costumes, as well as every piece of equipment and they would need to set up their circus, onto their backs and carry them up the mountains into these towns. “We had to carry everything up by hand,” Zoppe says, yet just as soon adds, “That was a very enjoyable time. That was fantastic.”

Boehner, Remixed

2010-03-24T18:09:00.003-05:00

Whoever produced this is brilliant. It is brilliant because it is true. Hate never wins. Fear never wins. They may capture the occasional victory, but such victories are always short-lived.

I don't want to gloat or celebrate in the wake of the passage of the healthcare insurance reform bill. I find it hard to celebrate because there is so much work to still be done. And it's tough to celebrate something like the guarantee of a basic level of healthcare insurance, which is no big deal in other, civilized countries. And it's not a single-payer system, so much of the burden is still on employers, for one. But it's a giant step in the right direction. I don't want to gloat, or sing, but then I remember the text message I got from my former friend on the night Barack Obama was elected president, which stated, "Hope isn't any good when planes fly into buildings." I also think of the lies that were spread by those who opposed reform from the start, and I think of all those who from the moment he was elected, devoted their lives to derailing the presidency of Barack Obama.

I think of the Congressman who shouted, "You lie!" at the president. I think of Rep. Boehner shouting "Hell no!" in Congress. I think of smug John McCain, who though he lost to Barack Obama, couldn't get the smirk off his face during the president's bipartisan meeting on healthcare reform, the same meeting in which the Republicans went to and treated as a campaign debate then got their asses handed to them, wrapped up quite nicely, by this president. I think of the police officers I sometime hear on the police scanners late at night saying things like, "tell Obama to take care of them," when a dispatcher or another officer says someone has been injured or wounded on the city's streets. I think of the editorial writers and cartoonists who have been saying for the past year that freedom as we know it would cease if Obama got his way (of course none of them offered any workable alternatives). I think of the racist imagery so often used to criticize the president, and on, and on, and on, and I can't help but think ... you lost. You all lost. You lost the election, you lost on healthcare reform, and you're going to lose again and again. "Hell no!" sounds like the last words of a movement going down in flames. We've said it before, we can say it again -- Yes, we can.

Where I Stand

2010-03-24T17:47:00.004-05:00

I'd rather stand with those being spat on, screamed at, called names, than those who spit, scream and call others names. I'd rather aspire to people's better angels and work for something better and occasionally fall short than to play on and play to their fears for short-term victories. The win is so much sweeter when it does happen and it's easier to keep fighting the fight if you know in your heart that it's the right fight and your world, or someone's life can be somewhat better through your efforts.

When mouth-breathing, drooling hateful people scream "faggot" at Congressman Barney Frank, when they yell "nigger" at Congressman John Lewis, when they boo and scream at Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when they spit at other Congressmen and Senators, when they put the word "KILL" uncomfortably close to their caricatures of President Obama, when they vow revenge on any elected official who supported healthcare insurance reform, I stand proudly with the screamed at and spat upon.

And I know that even if Obama, Pelosi, Frank, Lewis, Reid, Dingell, Schakowsky, Quigley, Weiner and every other one who worked to make reform a reality hadn't wiped the floor with the "no" crowd, they'd still be right.

The arc is long, Dr. King said, but it does tend toward justice.

They Have No Shame, Do They?

2010-03-19T12:23:00.005-05:00

The following is a McClatchy story today (3/19/10) out of Washington state:

***

State of health care debate: Pundits attack 11-year-old

Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy's account of his mother's death as a "sob story" exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a "kiddie shield" to defend their health care legislation.

Marcelas Owens , whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost her health insurance and died, said Thursday he's taking the attacks from Rush Limbaugh , Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin in stride.

"My mother always taught me they can have their own opinion but that doesn't mean they are right," Owens, who lives in Seattle , said in an interview.

Owens' grandmother, Gina, who watched her daughter die, isn't quite so generous.

"These are adults, and he is an 11-year-old boy who lost his mother," Gina Owens said. "They should be ashamed."

Sen. Patty Murray , D- Wash. , told Marcelas Owens' story to President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House health care summit last month. Murray also has spoken about it on the Senate floor. Last week, Owens was in the nation's capital to speak at a health care rally and to meet with Senate Democratic leadership.

Limbaugh, Beck and Malkin are skeptical about the story, saying there were other forms of medical help available after Owens' mother, Tifanny, lost her health insurance. They lambasted Democrats for using the story.

"Now this is unseemly, exploitative, an 11-year-old boy being forced to tell his story all over just to benefit theDemocrat Party and Barack Obama ," Limbaugh said on March 12 , according to a transcript his show. "And, I would say this to Marcelas Owens : 'Well, your mom would still have died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014.'"

Beck, according to a transcript of his March 15 show, pointed out that Owens' recent trip to Washington was paid for by Healthcare of America, a group that has been lobbying for a health care overhaul.

"That's the George Soros-funded Obama-approved group fighting for health care," Beck said. "Since all of the groups are so concerned and involved now, may I ask where were you when Marcelas' mother was vomiting blood?"

Beck, who's from Mount Vernon, Wash. , said there were plenty of programs in Washington state that could have helped Tifanny Owens .

Malkin dismissed Marcelas Owens as "one of Obama's youngest lobbyists" who has been "goaded by a left-wing activist grandmother," promoted by Murray and has become a regular on the "pro-Obamacare circuit."

***

This would be even more sickening if it was not so unsurprising.

Beck, Limbo, Malkin and any who would defend them on this are all a-holes.

If you disagree that health insurance reform is desperately needed in this country, if you don't like this kid's story, fine. Either present an intelligent alternative, convey your sympathy toward the family then lay out just how the mom could have been helped under the current healthcare 'system,' or ... stay quiet, let them have their moment, then come out with your plan later, so you don't look like a complete jerk. At the same time, if these folks cared at all about how they are perceived in the public eye, how decent people view them, and that, they would show some class. But they're not interested in constructive debate, are they? They don't care about the sick, the uninsured, the poor, the people who watch their shows and live in their congressional districts. All they care about, all they have cared about since the night Barack Obama won the presidency, was tearing him down and defeating everything he has tried to do and defeating him and his party in ensuing elections. What a classless, despicable lot they are.

Planet Earth's Flipside

2010-02-21T22:46:00.002-06:00

Here is the text of the story that I wrote for the Sun-Times (Feb. 12) on Late Bar, the new nightspot run by Dave and Kristine, who I've mentioned here recently.

***

For two decades, Dave Roberts has kept the New Wave music torch alive in Chicago. Residencies at Club 950, Spin, Neo and Holiday Club gained him a legion of followers for his weekly “Planet Earth” night.

But when he was asked where he went when he wasn’t working, he’d say, “I stay at home,” because there was no place he knew of “where I could go to have a nice drink and hear music I wanted to hear.”

Late Bar, which he and his partner Kristine Hengl opened on Dec. 26 in the Avondale neighborhood, may be that once elusive place.

The two have “always wanted a nice place for people who didn’t like to go to sports bars or Top 40 places,” he says. “A nice bar that’s comfortable and you can still hear the music.”

Late Bar is open late (until 4 a.m.) but the name has a more significant meaning.

“Late Bar” was the flipside to the Duran Duran single “Planet Earth,” and “this bar,” Roberts says, “is the flipside” to his “Planet Earth.”

He still spins New Wave, on Saturdays at Late Bar, but there’s also an array of alternative and independent music throughout the week there, be it ska, psychedelia, electronic, industrial, or 50s and 60s rock and soul.

“This is the house that Planet Earth built,” Roberts says, but the music, avant garde videos and décor (subdued shades of purple and framed black and white photos of the likes of Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich and Siouxsie Sioux) span the generations of what he calls “subcultural.”

The look is a far cry from the carpeted, wood-paneled neighborhood bar that had been there for the past 40 years, but Hengl says what they liked about the space was its neighborly vibe, something that they’re working toward in their own way, for a different crowd.

It’s a place to hear alternative music and have a beer, but where you can order “a martini and not have the bartender roll their eyes at you,” she says. The bar also stocks gluten-free and organic beers, as well as soy milk, for vegan-friendly cocktails.

“We know there are people out there who are looking for something like this,” Roberts says. “The vibe and the reputation are just what we want them to be.”

--30—

Late Bar, 3534 W. Belmont Ave., is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

I'm not gay, but my column is

2010-02-19T18:26:00.003-06:00

Chicago Sun-Times ports columnist Rick Morrissey should just come clean and confront the issues he has with how he sees other males sometimes. In his column on Friday, Feb. 19, he once again wrote hundreds and hundreds of words which left left the reader wondering, "huh?" at its end. And, once again, he showed that he has some issues with what he sees as a lack of masculinity in male athletes sometimes.

The column this time around started off innocently enough, as he praised Chicago-area native Evan Lysacek for winning the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics the night previous. But he couldn't simply congratulate Lysacek for his gold and get on with it. He had to attack the man's sport, as well as the effeminate nature of some who participate in it and watch it.

In discussing the matchup between Lysacek and the Russian who came in a very close second to him, Morrissey noted that, "Thursday wasn't an arms race. It was style vs. might." He added, "There's a raging battle in figure skating between the people who want athletic jumps to be rewarded more and those who think artistry should be recognized more. Some want higher and faster. Some want more chiffon."

"Chiffon." He was just getting started, though.

"I don't presume to speak for all men, but I will say that many of us would enjoy the sport more if one's vertical leap were valued over the spangled piping on one's pants."

A little uncomfortable watching the figure skating, are we?

But wait, there's more.

"Here's an added bonus, football fans. Lysacek managed to look halfway OK in his outfit."

"Football fans"? Why should anyway give a rat's ass what "football fans" think of figure skaters? Do people who like, say, hockey, worry about what those who like tennis think of their sport, for instance? That's almost like saying, "Here's an added bonus, steak eaters. The salad is halfway OK." It makes no sense at all and there is no reason to draw such an analogy.

Are you steamed, yet, readers? No? Well, what about this, then?

"This is sport as envisioned by college theater majors."

Attention theater majors, theater professionals, and theater schools: The offices of the Sun-Times are at 350 N. Orleans St., if you need to find it for your protests. It's in a building called the Apparel Center, which is next to the Merchandise Mart -- you know the place, where dozens, if not hundreds, of interior designers, kitchen and bath places, tile, rug, antique and decorative glass wholesalers work out of. It is also the home of an art and design school, as well as a couple high falutin tea and coffee shoppes. It's a really gay place -- wonder how comfortable Rick feels working there.

He then wrote, about the outfits, "I also know that there was a skater wearing a tuxedo with spangles (he fell) and another dressed like a swashbuckler (down went Errol Flynn!).

The Czech Republic's Tomas Verner, in a rhinestone-studded vest, skated to the music from ''The Godfather,'' bringing to mind what Luca Brasi said to Don Corleone: ''And may their first child be a masculine child.''

I know! He cannot help but write about the figure skaters' costumes, but he qualifies his comments by saying, more or less, that these skaters are soooo gay.

There's more: "Jeremy Abbott of the United States smacked the ice hard while attempting a quadruple toe loop, but at least he tried. However, points should be taken off for the blue satin shirt buttoned to the top.

Why doesn't somebody break out and wear something different? Jeans and a T-shirt. Muscle shirts. Anything."

So, let me get this straight (ahem) here -- Rick Morrissey seems to be saying, in this pointless column, in effect, that "figure skating is so gay. It kind of makes me feel a little gay, which I don't like. Maybe if I just could root for figure skaters to fall down and snickered about their outfits and wished they wore more masculine clothes, I wouldn't feel so uncomfortably gay."

Mind you, this is the same guy who addressed the "scandal" that was a few of the Chicago Blackhawks players being photographed shirtless in a limo in Vancouver earlier this season by saying the thing he had the problem with wasn't that they were caught with their shirts off, literally, but that they looked like they belonged in a boyband, and not a hockey team. Morrissey wrote that he wants his hockey players to be hairy and have chipped and missing teeth and look like smelly mouth-breathing types, and not like young, smooth, wrinkle-less, doe-eyed boys that he ... well, I don't want to go all the way there, but why would he criticize hockey players for looking good with their shirts off if it didn't make him uncomfortable with the way in which he saw these men?

And, let it be noted that when he was with the Chicago Tribune, he spent a column-worth of prime newspaper space commenting on how he did not care for Chicago Bull Kirk Hinrich's very plain haircut.

Morrissey ended Friday's column by writing, about men's figure skating, "after (flamboyant figure skater Johnny) Weir, (Lysacek) looked like a wing-tipped businessman in a sleek, dark outfit. Maybe there's hope yet for this sport."

There may be hope yet for this sport, but not for Rick Morrissey.

"There's an all-night party..."

2010-02-11T21:17:00.004-06:00

Sometimes -- OK, oftentimes -- I feel in a rut professionally. My efforts to be something bigger and better than what and where I am now meet small degrees of success, but these successes seem fleeting, and it feels like every time I get a rung up on the ladder, that rung breaks and I'm back to where I was. Every time it seems that I'm about to replace some nationally-known but not very interesting columnist at the Sun-Times, I quickly find myself back to the reality of calling far away suburban police and fire departments in the middle of a weekend night to get details on an accident or shooting, only to be told to call back on Monday.

But enough pity for today, because I need to remember that there was a time seven or eight years ago when I truly, truly hated my work circumstances, when there were times I'd be ill at the thought of going to work at a soul-sapping place, and the one place where I felt free and happy and still full of some sort of potential was at neo, on the new wave "Planet Earth" Thursday nights, with Dave Roberts spinning the discs and a bunch of wonderful, welcoming people working the bar and door and filling the dancefloor. And I need to remember, also, that I would not have believed anyone had they told me then that one day, only a handful of years from that time, that Dave and his other half, Kristine, would have their own bar, and that I would write about it for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Well, Part I of that dream happened just a couple months ago, when Dave and Kristine opened Late Bar, in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood. Part II comes true Friday, Feb. 12, when my story about the place is scheduled to be printed in the paper. The piece is small, only a few hundred words, and there is no accompanying art, but I feel as though I've actually achieved something here. My particular work situation often sucks, but the consolation is that old refrain about having your foot in the door...well, I guess that's true in a way. Now I just need to get the rest of my ample self through that damned door!

Excuse me for a couple days here while I pat myself on the back. In some ways this is a minor accomplishment, but in other ways it signals how far I've come, though there is still a ways to go.

Ghost in the Machine

2010-02-11T21:00:00.002-06:00

The ghost is following us. The ghost that I was certain lived in my apartment now has decided to step outside and go for a ride every so often. Maybe he (I am thinking he is like Casper the Friendly Ghost) gets lonely in the apartment or he gets bored turning the lights off now and then or maybe he just likes to get some fresh air from time to time.

I say this because beginning back in oh, October of 2009 or so, my car began squealing and screeching, sometimes very loudly. But this only happened when I hit the brakes while going forward, so, naturally I surmised there was a problem with the front brakes. I took it to probably the worst mechanic on earth, at Ashland and Lawrence in Chicago, and though they charged me about $900, a couple days later the squealing was back. Yes, I should have taken it right back to that place,, but I was so infuriated and so afraid that a second trip would cost hundreds more, that I eventually just thought it wasn't worth the pain; that I'd just write a scathing Yelp review and go somewhere else, to get the brakes and nothing else, fixed, for my own peace of mind.

Eventually didn't happen until this past week, when relying on good reviews, I took it to a guy named Andy, at Damen and Montrose. Andy is a thin little hairy guy with a neck tattoo, but hey, if there's any line of work you can be in where a neck tattoo wouldn't matter, it would be his. The first time I met him, on a Friday, he said he was backed up and wouoldn't be able to look at the car for a couple days, but if I wanted, he could refer me to a buddy of his with a shop up the street. Um, no thanks there Kris Kringle, telling me to go to Gimble's, but thanks anyway. I took it back to him the following Monday, and he said that after driving it around abit, then taking it apart (!) he couldn't a) hear the squealing and b) there was nothing wrong with the brakes. And he didn't charge me a dime. If I found out anything this week it's that I will take my car, be it this one or the next one (I am lusting for a new Hyundai Tucson, Nissan Rogue, Ford Focus 5-door or BMW X3 ... hey, I can dream, can't I?) Andy's will be the place I take it to.

Until that new car comes along (I'm making the last loan payment on this one this month), if you're listening to that "Car Talk" show and you hear someone say, "Yeah, dis is Jim from Chi-caw-goh, and I got aToo Dousand Ford Fo-kiss," it may be me.

Of course, the car still squeals when I hit the brakes, so I have determined that it's just the house ghost, and he wants to go for a ride. Buckle up, Casper!

Rainbow Pancakes

2010-02-03T17:58:00.003-06:00

These pancakes are soooo gay. In a good way, you know, because they are pancakes, after all.

C60, C90, USB!

2010-01-16T06:26:00.003-06:00

Since my next computer may may a few USB powered devices attached to it at any one time, I will need a new USB hub, a place where these devices can all connect, because such a device would be able to handle more devices than the computer, which may only have two or at most three, plug-ins, would have.

And I have found just the USB hub I want. The Marc Jacobs-designed USB hub, which looks a lot like a cassette tape -- and not only does it hold a handful of USB devices to connect to your computer, it even measures to the same dimensions as a tape! How cool is that?

I do not, however, long for a MacBook that resembles a TRS-80 laptop.

Reflect, Resolve (Part I)

2010-01-07T15:59:00.003-06:00

It's time to look back over the past year, its resolutions and reflect, then look ahead and envision what I hope or intend to accomplish within this coming year. Not merely because this is the turn of the year, but also because it's just a good time to do such a thing.

My three areas to reflect and resolve are personal, professional and academic. I am addressing the professional today, because it is the easiest to do right now.

At the start of the last year, I resolved, as I often do, to get work in at least one place I had not previously written for. Meeting this happened pretty quickly, as I wrote a piece for the Chicago Sun-Times food section on the NHL wines and had a great time doing it, too. (One of the panelists I got to sit in for the wine tasting was then Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, now a U.S. Congressman.) In the wake of that, I was offered the opportunity to become a part of the new Sun--Times' food blog, "Digging In." (I came up with the name -- that's something I do, I've come up with names for things since my college paper's sports column, events I've done, etc. It's an odd talent.) Even though I do not get paid (or get expenses reimbursed) for this work, I think it is a great opportunity to practice and hone my writing and I still harbor some hope that it can become a platform to other work, such as food writing, or appearing on TV or radio to discuss the food blog.

Toward the end of the year I took some uncharacteristic initiative in both responding to the paper's op/ed editor's call for end of the year guest columns and also by contacting a features editor about writing about a new bar started by Dave and Kristine, of "Planet Earth" new wave nights fame and whom I got to work with at the Holiday Club for a couple years.

Remarkably, my idea for a column was not rejected and after a minor bit of tweaking, it appeared, along with my photo, in the Sunday paper (!!!) the Sunday after Christmas. This thrilled me greatly. Additionally, a features editor OK'd my bar idea and I am currently (oh cripe, it's due tomorrow!) a short piece for the paper on that.

So, as far as that goes, I'm pretty content with these minor accomplishments. But therein lie my resolutions for the coming year -- I intend to build on these little achievements and want to do at least a couple more columns for the editorial page of the paper. I also want to do more features pieces. If the opportunity comes along to write in any other medium, I will take it. (Hell, I have to take five unpaid furlough days this year, in addition to a 5% pay cut, so I'd better take more work!)

My full-time job is still working as a crime/death/murder and mayhem reporter for the Sun-Times Media Wire. In February I will mark four years at this job. Notice I didn't say I will be celebrating it. I am thrilled that after enduring a year or so of not knowing if the following month would be last employed there, it now seems as though the company I work for is not going under anytime soon. But I think I have outgrown the position of wire service reporter. There is no room above that position in the group to move to, so I will continue to do the best I can do there, but all the time be on the lookout for whatever opportunities arise in the newsroom, or elsewhere. As far as a resolution for my full-time work, I'd like my current full-time position to be not my principal source of income by the end of 2011.

I seem to have lost my primary freelance job, as a writer/columnist for the Chicago-based Italian American monthly newspaper Fra Noi. To be honest, the work I'd done the past few years there, following the anti-defamation beat, got to be tedious, especially when I'd have to report on some folks getting angry about comments they construed as anti-Italian by some regional radio talk show host I'd never heard of. And I am so glad I got out of that gig -- mutually agreed upon by myself and the editor -- before this whole "Jersey Shore" thing got going. Oy. But I also lost a great deal of work for that paper doing celebrity profiles, since they now have at least one person who has the time and resources to track down and personally interview celebs, something I could do less frequently as my full-time job took demands on me time and energy-wise. I'm disappointed that I can't do anything remotely political or left-leaning for the paper because it might offend some old biddy who pays $14 a year for a subscription, but I still hope I can do a story at least once every couple/few months, because I like the people there and I like the direction they are trying to take (smaller format that is more newsstand friendly, getting rid of 'news' about social clubs and ladies' auxiliaries, etc.) to up the circulation.

So that's my 2009-2010 professional reflection/resolution. I've moved up a step or a step and a half on the ladder, gotten a splinter or two along the way, taken a hit in terms of pay, but like the song says, "I'm still here," and I believe I can keep moving up and moving on, and I ain't but hardly just begun.

Moon(ie) over Washington

2010-01-03T06:58:00.003-06:00

I normally ache just a little bit every time I hear of another newspaper -- be it in Detroit, Denver, Seattle, etc. -- that is closing shop or cutting back its frequency or going to an all-Internet publication, but when I heard the latest case of what appeared to be more bad news for the industry, I shed not one tear -- in fact, I would not mind being around for its demise.

The paper here is the Washington Times, a relatively young publication, owned and operated by the Rev. Sun Young Moon and his Moonie church and a Right Wing, anti-Democratic publication, a la Fox News.

The paper last week published its last Sunday edition and since it has no Saturday edition, it will only be a five-day-a-week paper now.

The Washington Times also announced that it has ended a Web project called, "TheConservatives.com," which, according to the WaTimes, "was intended to provide a platform to allow allow "the Joe the Plumbers of the world to speak up to major thinkers, like Newt Gingrich..." (In case anyone doubted that the paper was run by Right Wing reactionaries.)

The paper is also completely cutting its sports department.

I realize that not everyone, and probably not many, of its staffers adhered to its crazy political agenda, and its never good to see professionals, especially in my profession, lose their jobs, but this particular employer is evil, and the world would be better off without it.

It ain't perfect ...

2009-12-23T02:15:00.003-06:00

but it's better than nothing, I suppose. And it's better than any plan the Republicants have come up with. A chart on just what sort of effect that the Health Care Reform will have on the nation.

Alcazar - Someday

2009-12-21T11:56:00.001-06:00

By Alcazar. Nice rousing anthem if you can stand Euro-pop-disco-y stuff. And the video is certain to make the bigots cringe.

I'm Number 1!

2009-12-21T11:00:00.003-06:00

in my fantasy hockey league.

Ah, it's been a tough road these past 11 weeks, especially given that in my six team league (hey, this is the lower 48, so its obviously tough to get more than this many people to take part in such a league), i have suspicions that one guy, the league's 'commissioner,' may own more than one, and possibly as many as three of the teams, but after playing just above .500 a few weeks then pummeling two weaker teams the past couple weeks, my team, "Cold Steel" (yeah, named after a Tricky song), is atop the others, with a winning percentage of .597.

Who's on my team? Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Cristobal Huet, Marian Hossa, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Kris Versteeg (notice a pattern?), as well as Evgeni Malkin, Nicklas Lidstrom, Mikko Koivu, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Maxim Afinogenov, Evgeni Nabokov (man, I love hockey player names) and Joe Thornton.

It's not nearly as satisfying as having a winning team in fantasy baseball, where you have 8 or 10 or 12 teams and guys who really want to win, but it's fun to play around with in winter and helps deepens my appreciation of the game of hockey, which I love as much as baseball, as well.

Nothing to Say

2009-12-15T17:38:00.004-06:00

As a reporter, there's nothing I hate more than people, especially those who are paid to talk to the media, who say "no comment." I believe in the exchange of information and ideas and that's how the truth is revealed, since so often people want it covered up.

But one area where I think the less said, the better, is the 'comments' section of news articles online. Generally those who comment on news are uninformed, unintelligent, tactless, vulgar and save for when they are working with others to hijack the comments section or promote a particular political point of view, contribute absolutely nothing to the discussion. There are times, though they are extremely few and far between, when someone commenting on a story will offer information valuable to the reporter or law enforcement, but for the most part the comments are useless and obviously are being done while someone is paying the commenter to do work that has nothing to do with the matter they are commenting on.

The latest story that got me annoyed once again about comments and commenters was the feel good story about a young man who won the city of Chicago's annual vehicle sticker art contest. A dozen or so high school students had their designs selected as finalists, and residents could go online to vote for the design they liked best. The story in the Chicago Sun-Times featured a picture of the high school student, smiling, with a poster-sized reproduction of his winning entry. It was an innovative design that featured a portrait of Daniel Burnham and a background of some of the famous urban architect's designs -- altogether a pretty handsome work of art, one which I don't mind at all displaying on the windshield of my car for 12 months.

But not everyone feels that way, at least among those who commented on the winning entry and the young artist, on the Sun-Times' Web site. Some decried the use of a photo-portrait of Burnham in the design, others didn't like that the young man apparently didn't draw it freehand, doing it by computer instead. Others dissed the selection process, saying it was like "American Idol," and that the kid who goes to the biggest school or who has the most friends, is the one who won, and that artistic talent had nothing to do with it. Some others took the opportunity to say that the voting system was rigged so that a certain school or a certain demographic group would win, and of course there were those who took the comment box as their opportunity to let the world know how much they hate Mayor Daley.

But all I could think about was the smiling young man in the Sun-Times photo, and his parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, even, and how proud they must have been of him and his achievement. Until they dared read the comments posted by the mouth-breathing know-nothings. I truly hope the idiots' comments didn't ruin an otherwise great day for this young man and his family. And I hope that those who saw a comment box as an invitation to crap on this piece of good news coming from the inner city of Chicago aren't always like this, but if they are, that young man, and all of us who cheer good news like his, will realize that at his age he has contributed more than all these commenters combined.

I welcome your comments.

With Liberty and Justice for Some...

2009-12-10T19:41:00.002-06:00

"We had 300 people there, 150 of whom we allowed to testify. We'd still be debating it today, right now, but when I knew the bill had the votes, I pulled the trigger. Yes, I am opposed to the bill at this point in time, but their (Garden State Equality) advocacy has come a long way, and I am quite certain some time in the near future, I believe the tide has turned a little bit, and they will win with their issue. I am still opposed personally because of my religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic, and as senator of the 36th District, which is mostly made up of Irish and Italian Catholics, and Orthodox Jews,"
-- State Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) of New Jersey, passed a marriage equality bill out of committee on Thursday.

Sen. Sarlo, it's nice that you are thinking of the beliefs of your constituents, but you were elected as a representative to a democratic government institution, not as pope, nor as bishop or rabbi. Besides, don't assume that just because a constituent is Irish or Italian and Catholic, that they oppose equal rights. It's a simplistic argument and maybe just a little bit insulting to those populations. God Bless.

Olympic Effort

2009-12-10T17:02:00.008-06:00

Throughout the city of Chicago's recent bid to land the 2016 Olympic games, I was pretty ambivalent about it. Some people were absolutely dead-set against it, others brought out the pom poms and were all for it, including Mayor Daley and anyone who did not want to incur his wrath. That was probably a big mistake of his since the opposition to the Olympics in Chicago was as much anti-Daley as it was anti amateur sports festival.

People were upset, and rightly so, about the lack of transparency of the process, about the fee hikes and what they took as the selling of the city (e.g.., the parking meter deal) of Daley to put forth a competitive Olympics bid. People also worried, again, rightly so, about the corruption that just seems to be inherent in this city and how it would manifest itself when it came to hosting the games, building the needed venues, etc. There would likely have been cost overruns, money exchanging hands under the table, deals that would make Salt Lake City look like, well, some sort of holy city, and then there'd be the hassles that regular city residents who wouldn't care either way about the Olympics would have to deal with -- buses and trains that would be even more crowded than normal, migrane-inducing traffic messes, construction projects throughout the metropolitan area, police possibly taken out of the neighborhoods to work at the Olympic sites, etc. And these are all very valid concerns.

Additionally, there are problems in Chicago that need to be fixed instead of throwing an Olympics. Kids and addults aren't safe on the streets or in the schools, the infrastructure is falling apart, the transit system is hobbling along, the schools aren't that great, we're short of a fulll police department by a couple thousand cops, and still, in spite of all that, the mayor and those who worked to bring the Olympics to Chicago deserve a round of applause, if not for the work they did then for at least some of their motives.

This is quite an accomplishment by Daley, to elicit sympathy for him, since he can be altrenately petulant and a bully, especially when he gets all red-faced and shouts at critics or anyone who dares question what he's doing. He loves to try to embarass or scapegoat the media, a favorite whipping dog of his, merely for sking basic questions. But he was right when he asked critics of the plan to get the Olympics, how else they'd make infrastructure improvements, how they get millions and millions of federal dollars, how they'd get tourists to the city from around the globe in the nidst of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The anti-Olympics crowd made it easier for me to feel some sense of loss when Chicago was quickly knocked out of the running for the Olympics, since they were like a Tea Party bunch -- shouting, screaming, hating, wishing for someone to fail --yet offering no solutions themselves to the many obbbstacles and challenges the city faces. Sure, Daley may have wanted the Olympics as a "legacy" project, and others may have wanted it just so they'd make money off it, but at least he tried. At least they tried. At least those who worked to get the Olympics in Chicago were working for something. What have the "anti" crowd done to the benefit of Chicago?

Yes, there would have been corruption and out of control costs and headaches for the citizens if the city of Chicago had won the 2016 Olympic bid. But things would have gotten built, people would have been put to work, the economic engine would have been humming, the namee "Chicago" would have been on the lips of people across the globe, and man, it could have been one hell of a party.

Zoppe, Part II

2009-11-25T19:47:00.002-06:00

Giovanni Zoppe isn’t some idle dreamer, though. He’s been a professional circus performer since he was a child, and a few years ago, he resurrected the Zoppe Family Circus in America, the same circus that his father, Alberto Zoppe, was the star of in Italy, before he came to the U.S. in 1949, lured to this country by Orson Welles, John Ringling North, and an elephant named Mary. The Zoppes may be artists and dreamers, but they are also business managers and problem solvers. To be part of a family circus, you also have to be part engineer, carpenter, truck driver, laborer and accountant.

It was Alberto who, in 1936, invented the four-pole cupola circus tent, which in addition to being more stable and secure than circus tents that had previously been in use, allowed circuses to fit nearly twice as many people in the tents as they had let in before, since the amount of square footage had been doubled by the way Alberto had devised the tents. It is Giovanni who not only takes center stage as Nino the Clown in the Zoppe Family Circus, but who coordinates scheduling with his sisters Tosca and Carla, brothers-in-law Rudy and Jay, half-brother Tino Wallenda Zoppe, and his mother and father, to insure that they, as well as all the hardware -- the tent, the concession stand, the bleachers, and the family’s horses and dogs, all of which is kept at his parents’ home in Arkansas, will be ready to hit the road when they’ve got a gig.

When he is not on the road with the Zoppe Family Circus, Giovanni Zoppe freelances with other circuses or various festivals as either Nino or whatever other character he may be suited for. This spring, for instance, he performed for two weeks in Hawaii, came home to Chicago for a day, and then hit the road for his next job, in Pennsylvania. In Chicago, he has performed at Navy Pier’s “Winter Wonderland,” where he produced a one-man show, “The Night Before Christmas,” in 2002. “It was a chair-stacking act (where his objective was to place an angel atop a Christmas tree) that we built a whole show around.”

He’s also played a scarecrow at the Halloween festival at Daley Plaza, in addition to performing at the Shriner’s Circus at Medinah Temple, before the building was transformed into a Bloomingdale’s furniture store. Elsewhere, he has performed a few times at Carnevale in Venice, as “a horny, drunk monk, an American tourist, the Greek god Mercury, … (and) a minotaur, a Comedia dell’ Arte character.”

While the origins of his family’s circus are in Venice, it is Chicago that has been his muse for the modern-day Zoppe Circus, as well as the winter circus he one day hopes to see in the city. While much of his living comes on the road, it is Chicago that Giovanni Zoppe has made his home; the place where he feels destiny has brought him.

It was while performing as Nino the Clown in 1998 as part of the Shriners Circus at Medinah Temple that Giovanni Zoppe first saw Block 37, and got his epiphany for a winter circus in Chicago. One day when he had some time to fill, Giovanni took a walk around downtown, “and I saw Block 37, and thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I stood there for like 10 minutes and thought, ‘What an amazing place to put my little circus, to put my family’s circus.’”

Even before he set eyes upon Block 37, Giovanni Zoppe says that, “I had already planned on opening my own circus. It may have been a little push from working at Medinah (where his father had performed some 50 years earlier)and the richness of it” that further fueled his dreams.

Besides mentally placing his circus on Block 37 and the German market that would compliment it, Zoppe further has envisioned the ComEd building that looks across Dearborn to Daley Plaza, as a training facility for Circus Arts one day.

Hard Drive Recovery

2009-11-10T23:42:00.003-06:00

As I try to get every last bit of life out of my six-year-old imac (which I bought used two years ago), I've been trying to dump stuff from its hard drive onto an external drive and try other tricks to get it to work at an adequate level, until I break down this winter and buy a MacBook Pro. While doing so I re-discovered a story I spent just about an entire summer on in 2004, while I was largely unemployed. I did multiple versions of the story for a local weekly publication, which in the end did not buy it. By that time I was so frustrated I gave up trying to sell it.

It's a neat story, though, about this old-time circus and the dream the guy who runs it now has had to bring it back bigger and even better, by not only traveling all over the country with it but giving it a permanent home, at least in the winter. It's a pretty long story, so I'll have to divide it among a few separate posts (and maybe at some point I'll relate my week of working at the circus during this time).

** The Dreams of a Clown **

Giovanni Zoppe wants to bring “real circus” back to the U.S. and he wants to bring it to downtown Chicago.

by James Scalzitti

About 1998, while taking a walk in downtown Chicago, Giovanni Zoppe saw that vacant plot of land known as Block 37, and he had an epiphany.

He had not yet, as he would do a couple years later, put his family’s nearly 160-year-old circus back on the road, so the thought he had must have seemed even more impossible than it does now.

He saw, at Block 37, the perfect spot for his family’s Venetian-born circus, an accompanying center for the study and practice of the circus arts, and a complimentary European food and gift marketplace. Even wilder? He envisioned this all occurring in the dead of winter.

To the skeptics, he explains, “Every city in Europe has a winter circus.” Zoppe, the 43-year-old owner of the Zoppe Family Circus, a traveling European-style circus that dates back to 1842 in Venice, points out, furthermore, that the trend is catching on in North America, as well. Winter circuses have been successful in New York City, Montreal and Washington State, and if these spots can make a circus in winter work, then why not Chicago?

Besides the argument that circuses are just plain fun, Zoppe and advocates of the winter circus point out that these circuses take spaces that would otherwise lie dormant for a few months and bring families downtown. For those who envision only snow and bone-chilling cold when they think of winter in Chicago, Zoppe says that winter circuses aren’t totally exposed to the elements; they do take place inside tents, and the air is warmed with heaters. And Chicago is no colder than Montreal in winter. “I was in Montreal last Christmas,” Zoppe recalls. “They had a beautiful horse show in a circus tent. It was extremely frozen outside, but it was an amazing show.”

And even if artificial means were not employed in warming the air, people who wanted to see a circus would no doubt still stay in their seats for an hour-and-a-half or so while they were being entertained, since, Zoppe points out, when Block 37 was home to “Skate on State,” the outdoor ice rink drew plenty of people, and the only sort of artificial climate control employed were the coils used to keep the ice from melting when the temperatures got too warm.

“It’s a mentality, I know,” Zoppe says. “Will people go in a tent in winter?’ But it’s heated.” He adds, “Circus people have always figured out a way to make it work. In summer we use air conditioning and in winter we use heaters. When we don’t use them, we don’t need them.”

“In every city in Europe, there’s a winter circus,” he says. “In Europe, they expect a circus to come in wintertime. And he believes that Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is known for importing to Chicago things that he has seen in other cities in his travels abroad, would especially like the idea.

“I believe it’s what Mayor Daley wants in this town,” Zoppe remarked. “Something small, European, and family-friendly. There’s nothing better than a winter circus for the family. Cities like Chicago need something like a circus for children to go to at Christmastime; something besides Santa Claus.” Observing that the city’s downtown is already a destination point for families from throughout the Midwest around the holidays, he adds, “how much more spectacular would it be for Chicago to have a real, authentic European circus in wintertime?”

Aesthetics aside, what about logistics? Zoppe points out that in a space like Block 37, there’d be more than enough room for his circus, in case city planners felt compelled to include some features more likely to generate income, such as concessions. He adds that not only could it co-exist, but that it would be a perfect compliment to the city’s existing winter wonderland in and around Block 37, such as the annual Christkindlmarket a German-themed holiday marketplace. “I can totally see it,” he says, as if there’s a blueprint in his mind that he’s referring to as he speaks. “When I look at Block 37 I see so much potential. It wouldn’t even take up that much room. My circus would be about the same size as ‘Skate on State,’” and there would still be room for the annual Christmas market. If his winter circus were to join the holiday market and holiday decorations and music that floods State Street during the holiday season, it would be the one piece that “would tie everything together.”

Heartless and Cruel

2009-11-10T19:20:00.002-06:00

It's one thing to oppose marriage equality and to pledge not to allow it in your state based on whatever twisted logic you have, but to veto a bill that would simply allow someone to bury their longtime partners, as the Gov. of Rhode Island has done, well that's just plain assholery.

What Would Jesus Contribute?

2009-11-09T09:44:00.003-06:00

For anyone, any Catholic, specifically, who is not taking any action in their own diocese in the wake of the half-million dollar campaign by the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine to bring down marriage equality in that state, take a look at where the Maine Catholics' money came from.

Catholic churches from throughout the country, including New Orleans, Gary, Ind., Rockford and Joliet, Ill., Biloxi, Miss., etc., etc., all gave money to the campaign of hate orchestrated by the Maine Catholics (with a little help from their new Mormon friends). Most gave $1,000, some gave $500, Rockford gave $5,000 (!!!). Apparently these dioceses are swimming in cash since they can afford to send the contributions from their followers to Maine to fund a political operation (are you listening, IRS???) This is infuriating, saddening and despicable. More than a half-million dollars that could have fed the hungry, clothed those without a winter coat, sheltered the homeless, provided counseling to people with a variety of physical and psychological ills and worries was instead funneled into a campaign to repeal marriage equality which was successful but which ultimately will be overturned, either by the voters or the progress of society in general. A half-million dollars. Children in this country are going hungry, adults are out of work, people in hospitals and the elderly who are in nursing homes are alone, and likely these days, as much or probably more than ever in the history of this country, people are talking to God, wondering what will happen next, where they can turn, how they can possibly hope for something better, and what is the Church's answer? To pour $554,000 into a campaign to repeal marriage equality. How sad.

This is not my Church, anymore.

Mod alla Italiana

2009-11-02T02:28:00.004-06:00

The following was printed in the November 2009 issue of Fra Noi. I encourage all of you to pick up a copy of the monthly Italian American news-magazine at your local deli, specialty shop, newsstand.

by James Scalzitti

When you think of the “Swinging 60s,” the music that probably comes to mind has origins in England or Motown, and the women behind the songs are chanteuses such as Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Lulu, even Nancy Sinatra.

While it is Italy that gave us “La Dolce Vita,” setting the stage for the stylish swinging 60s less well-known are the many Italian songstresses who made some great pop music through a period that spanned the decade. Italy also provided a welcoming, fertile ground for some American, British and French women singers during this time.

These women may today not be household names in the U.S., but in their day they regularly topped the charts in Italy and through Europe. Their music may actually be familiar to people who may not know these women by name, because often they turned out Italian versions of American and British pop songs, or they recorded songs that did not do so well commercially, only to be covered later by an American or British singer, sometimes to greater success. Many of these women are still involved in the music and entertainment business, working as talent agents, producers and executives, while every so often one of them will record (or in a few cases re-record) new music.

Since some non-Italians found success singing English versions of Italian songs, then why shouldn’t Italians have recorded their own versions of hit American and British tunes? That’s how I first stumbled onto these women, by finding a version of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black,” done by one of the more renown of these Italian singers, Caterina Caselli. Her “Tutto Nero,” is, I’d argue, superior to the Stones’ version, because her voice is richer, reaches deeper than Mick Jagger’s, and consequently the song is darker than the more well-known version. Caselli didn’t contain her covers of Anglo tunes to the dark stuff, though. Her version of the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” (“Sono Bugiarda”) has an upfront, swinging intensity that beats The Monkees’ version, I think. But then, I’m a mod, not a rocker.

Caselli, like many of these singers, found fame in the San Remo song contest. Her entry in the 1966 contest, “Nessuno mi può Giudicare” was a hit, outselling a version by Gene Pitney. The song established Caselli as a star and a rapid succession of hits followed.

In addition to her recording career, Caterina Caselli starred in several movie musicals. Her recording career carried on into the early 1970s, but by the 80s and 90s she only released a few singles and appeared in various song contests, devoting the bulk of her time behind the production controls and becoming a manager for other artists.

How’s this for irony? The first single released by another of these Italian songstresses, Patty Pravo, was a cover of Italian-American Sonny Bono’s “But You’re Mine.” Pravo’s song, “Ragazzo Triste,” made it to No. 13 on the Italian charts in early 1967, when Pravo was just 19 years old.

Pravo (real name Nicoletta Strambelli ) was a nightclub singer who after studying music, dance and orchestra conducting, left home in Venice for London, at age 15. She soon returned to Italy, settled in Rome, and in 1968 she recorded what remains one of the biggest-selling hits of all-time, “La Bambola.”

In 1969 she won Festivalbar song contest with “Il Paradiso,” which became a Top 10 hit that the British group Amen Corner covered in English (“If Paradise is Half as Nice”) which went to the top of the UK charts. She continued recording through the 1970s, left Italy’s music scene for the U.S. in the 1980s, but in 1995 she returned to Italy. Less than a year and a half later Patty Pravo made her return to San Remo, released a successful album and she continues recording and performing to this day.

As a teenager in the early 1960s, Rita Pavone worked in a clothes factory, ironing clothes, and supplemented her income by singing in local clubs around Turin. After winning the Festa degli Sonosciuti talent contest, her first single, “La Partita di Pallone” was released, topping the charts in February 1963 and ultimately selling a million copies globally.

Her subsequent hits included “Cuore,” which sold millions of copies throughout Europe. Rita was launched in the U.S. with an album modestly titled, “The International Teenage Sensation,” and appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, Shindig and Hullabaloo. Americans were charmed by the heavily-accented Pavone and a single from that album, “Remember Me,” reached No. 26 in the Billboard charts. She released two more albums in the U.S. by 1965.

Rita Pavone starred in a number of TV shows and movies, scored many more Top 10 hits through the 1960s and into the 70s (including “Stai Con Me,” a version of “Stand By Me” and “Gira Gira,” her version of The Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”) Her singing career wound down by the 1980s and she has since turned to more acting roles.

While Mina (born Mina Mazzini in Busto Arsizio, in northern Italy) has had a career that spanned from the 1950s through today, her mid-1960s material, some say, is her best.

She first topped the charts in 1959, with “Tintarella di Luna,” followed that with a string of Top 10 hits, before hitting No. 1 again in October 1960 with “Il Cielo in Una Stanza,” the biggest seller of that year in Italy. Her career suffered in 1963 when her relationship with actor Carrado Pani who was married, though separated from his wife, became known. She was banend from RAI but nonetheless scored more chart-topping hits, including in early 1964 the heart-wrenching “Citta Vuota,” a cover of “It’s a Lonely Town.”

Eventually the RAI ban was lifted, she got her own TV show, but by 1970 she had gone three years without a hit song and she was no longer the presence as she once was. But she kept scoring occasional hits throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, before making a big chart comeback in 2002.

These artists are just the surface of the singers who really made the Italian music scene swing in the 1960s. For people who like the music of the more well-known Petula Clarks and Lulus and Dusty Springfields, mining the record shops and mp3 dealers could unearth some great music that’ll reinvigorate your love of the music of this period.

Everything's Gone Green

2009-10-24T19:13:00.004-05:00

As you can tell from the list to your right, there was a time, not so long ago, when I was "running" in 5K races quite regularly, and getting a little better and quicker with each race. But for a few reasons, not the least of which I thought it ridiculous to take part in these runs in my ever-present state of fattiness, struggling to finish faster than the people with strollers or those who were clearly in worse shape than me, I gave up, turning my sights to getting in better shape by making better food choices and eating like a healthy person and getting to the gym at least four times a week - hoping to eventually get back to running outside.

But since the Sun-Times was a sponsor of the annual Notebart Nature Museum "Go Green" 5K and any employee who wanted to take part could run in it without having to pay the $35 entrance fee, I decided 'what the hell' and gave it a shot. I'd been running on the treadmill at the gym more regularly and thought maybe I wouldn't look too ridiculous out there. I told myself my first goal was to run without having to stop and walk the course, and secondly to finish in a reasonably respectable time.

Getting to Lincoln Park after my overnight shift, I found a parking spot on Clark Street, about three-quarters of a mile from the race site along Lake Michigan and thought I may as well pump $1.75 worth of quarters into the Daley 2016 Chicago Olympics Memorial parking pay box, since there was no way I'd run the race then get back to the car within an hour and a half.

The race apparently began a few minutes early and when I got to the starting line, a fella poked his out from a tent (it was raining lightly) asked if I was just starting and said, "You'll get a gun time," and I nodded and said, "That's fine," as if I understood the runner's lingo. But I looked at my super slim (the only time you'll see "I" and "super slim" in the same sentence) Nike running watch and saw it was 5 minutes after the hour, so I thought I'll just keep my time this way.

I lasted about three minutes before it felt as if someone had whacked me across the thighs with a baseball bat. I was relatively alone among runners though, since everyone else got an earlier start than me, and thought to myself that I can't stop now, I have to at least get to within spitting distance of the slow pokes before I stop and walk. Which is what I did. As soon as I caught up to a few walkers, I thought I could stop and start walking. But there was no way I'd walk the rest of the way, so after a couple minutes I started jogging again. I followed this run, walk, run, no way I'm gonna let this other fatty finish in front of me, run, there's the 2-mile mark, I can't breathe, I have to walk now, I can't look at this fat ass in front of me, run, walk routine the rest of the way.

After the first mile I looked at my watch and figured I was running an 11- to 12-minute mile. No way. At the gym, my pace is about 14 minutes a mile. That gave me inspiration to not walk all the way. At times it rained a little harder, the gravel along the lake was a bit muddy at times, but I managed to get myself into the pack and before long, I saw the sign that said "Mile 3" so I decided then that I'd kick it up a bit and not stop until I crossed the finish line.

I ran across the finish line and saw the official time was 48 minutes. I looked at my watch and it was 42 minutes past 9, meaning I had "run" it in 37 minutes. I was thrilled. Thrilled to be a slow runner, since I had hoped merely to finish within about 50 minutes. This was not my fastest 5K time, but then I have not run in a 5K in a year and it's been just about that long since I've run outside at all. UPDATE: According to the "official results" that I got e-mailed to me Monday morning, my chip was apparently working, and my official time was 36:01 -- a minute faster than I thought! Yeay, me. Even better than I thought. Of course, I'm thinking, "Damnit, if only I had run for just a few seconds more before stopping to walk, my time would have been under 36 minutes! Oh well, gives me a goal to shoot for next year!

So what now? Keep on training, keep on working out, don't eat like a pig and maybe next year I'll be in good enough shape so that I will be able to run a 10K, and who knows ... can a half-marathon be that far behind?

Meet ya at the Cattle Call, cowboy?

2009-10-22T23:39:00.004-05:00

Charlie's. Jo-Jo's. The Double Eagle. The Longhorn. Captain's.

Are they gay bars? Or are they steakhouses?

You'll have to go to steakhouseorgaybar to find out. A simple, possibly stupid, way to waste a bunch of time just clicking on either possible answer.

With Friends Like These ...

2009-10-20T17:47:00.002-05:00

Once again, this week I've been thinking about the nature of the Facebook Friend. I'm almost embarrassed to sound like a 15-year-old girl (or would that be an 18-year-old, since the 15-year-olds are all on myspace?) to waste time thinking about this, but what's the point of the whole Facebook friend thing if your 'friends' aren't really friends in the first place or if they turn on you because of the toxic political environment we're immersed in these days?

I've already had one big huge blowup with a former (real) friend who became my Facebook friend but whose political rants (e.g., 'it's raining out today, i guess the messiah obama could not make the sun shine 24 hours a day!') got to be absurd and tiresome and whose hatred of our President was so deep and intense that she became a vile, hateful, ugly person on my facebook page. Not only did I knock her off my page but I never want to see or hear anything about her ever again.

She had a pal who is also a Facebook friend of mine who also is a part of the whole teabagger, 'there's Marxists running amok in the hall of the White House!' types, but I have not kicked him off my FB page because he isn't that 24 hours a day -- maybe like 20, but not 24 hours a day. He also posts things related to street fairs he's going to or where he's biking or running and he can comment on say, a goofy news story or something I post without resorting to blaming Obama.

But then there are still people such as the guy I went to grammar school with, who I last saw I think in 7th grade, who 'friended' me, wrote me maybe one note that said hello and urged me to read Ayn Rand, but after a while the only time he'd check in with me would be to criticize something I said or to LOL at me and the rest of the liberals. The last thing he posted on my page began with "You liberals make me laugh," called me some sort of a hypocrite and it really bugged me, because I'm like, 'why the f should i care what some guy i haven't even seen in person for like 30 years says to me, not even to my face?' Then there's the guy who I'm not even sure if I've ever said anything to, who may have been a member of the same group of youngish Italians I was in awhile back, who has commented on my page maybe three times, and each time has been to counter something I've said about the need for healthcare insurance reform, or to rebut some assertion I made that illustrated how backwards and ridiculous Republicans have become in the past few years. It's one thing to disagree with me and say so, but if that's the only thing you do -- if you don't even click on the 'like' button when i post a picture of cute puppies or a grammar school choir singing Beyonce songs, why are you even here? Do you actually consider me a 'friend?' because I surely don't think you're acting like one.

Then there's the guy who posted hateful, spiteful things on the Steve and Johnnie Show FB page, and when I made a witty comment about how he's more obsessed with the WGN latenight radio duo than any of their actual fans, he took the time to go to my FB page, read my info, then go back to the Steve and Johnnie page and tell me I was stupid and he hoped I lose my job at the Sun-Times. He was soon thereafter kicked off the Steve and Johnnie show page, but he seems to have revisited them on Monday night, only this time he created a fake FB profile that was very close to theirs -- something like "Steve _ Johnnie _ Show," copied a picture of them for the public picture and then went onto their real page and acting as if he was them, said "Our show has been cancelled." Yeah, what a prick.

What drives people to be like this? If someone actually does not like you, and can't stand to hear you say something without telling you how stupid it is and how deluded you are, are they your 'friend'? If they only say something to you when you've said something they don't like, are they your 'friend'? If people who are your Facebook friends did anything in the 'real' world like what they did on Facebook, would they be your friends? Would they be arrested? Would they be shunned by all good, decent people? If people really need to say something, they should get a blog. It's free, and they can say whatever they want. And they can stay the hell away from me.

Haters Welcome Here

2009-10-20T17:22:00.003-05:00

So, the Catholic Church, in an effort to attract people whose favorite word is "no" and who generally can't stand anyone who questions decrees handed down by bitter men, is reaching out to Anglicans who are just not having the acceptance of gays and women their church has been exercising lately.

The Rat's minions this week have announced that Anglicans who have a problem with the liberal leanings of their church can join the Catholics -- no questions asked, no contract, or credit check required.

The Rat's plan "reflects a really bold determination by Rome to seize the moment and do what it can to reach out to those who share its stance on women priests and homosexuality," said Ian Markham, dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary in Alexandria. Its stance? What stance? Burning at the stake?

I'm surprised the Catholic Church is not setting up recruiting booths at Teabagger rallies. This comes not too long after the Church seems to be reversing its longheld stance on the importance of healthcare reform, because of its obsession with abortion. Yep, they would rather that healthcare reform fail and millions continue to be denied care and access than the medical procedure of abortion even be acknowledged.

Me thinks the Church might want to address the matter of disillusioned Catholics before they start macking on other religions' followers.

Our President, the Writer

2009-10-15T23:48:00.002-05:00

A fascinating, inside baseball-y look at President Obama as a writer, and the process behind his speeches, in GQ magazine. (Yeah, I know! GQ!) Particularly interesting is what happened to lead up to his big speech on race last spring.

"When the subject isn’t policy but Obama’s personal values, says Frankel, 'you just wouldn’t presume to write something for him. He has thoughts nobody can characterize.'

This was especially true last March 13, when the incendiary sermons of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, blew up all over the cable networks. On that Thursday, Obama had spent the entire day and evening in the Senate. That Friday, after enduring a series of tough interviews, Obama informed Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe, “I want to do a speech on race.” And he added, “I want to make this speech no later than next Tuesday. I don’t think it can wait.” Axelrod and Plouffe tried to talk him into delaying it: He had a full day of campaigning on Saturday, a film shoot on Sunday, and then another hectic day campaigning in Pennsylvania on Monday. Obama was insistent. On the Saturday-morning campaign conference call, Favreau was told to get to work on a draft immediately. Favreau replied, “I’m not writing this until I talk to him.”

That evening, Saint Patrick’s Day, less than seventy-two hours before the speech would be delivered to a live audience, Favreau was sitting alone in an unfurnished group house in Chicago when the boss called. “I’m going to give you some stream of consciousness,” Obama told him. Then he spoke for about forty-five minutes, laying out his speech’s argumentative construction. Favreau thanked him, hung up, considered the enormity of the task and the looming deadline, and then decided he was “too freaked out by the whole thing” to write and went out with friends instead. On Sunday morning at seven, the speechwriter took his laptop to a coffee shop and worked there for thirteen hours. Obama received Favreau’s draft at eight that evening and wrote until three in the morning.

He hadn’t finished by Monday at 8 a.m., when he set the draft aside to spend the day barnstorming across Pennsylvania. At nine thirty that night, a little more than twelve hours before the speech was to be delivered, Obama returned to his hotel room to do more writing. At two in the morning, the various BlackBerrys of Axelrod, Favreau, Plouffe, and Jarrett sounded with a message from the candidate: Here it is. Favs, feel free to tweak the words. Everyone else, the content here is what I want to say. Axelrod stood in the dark reading the text: 'The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made.… But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.'

He e-mailed Obama: This is why you should be president."

Why I Love the Belmont Barbers

2009-10-13T10:04:00.004-05:00

I've bounced around a handful of haircut places over the past decade -- from Gabby's to Big Hair to Lather to Foam to Rinse and Repeat ;) ... but I think I have settled upon the Belmont Barbers, at Belmont and Western in Chicago, just down the block from the Belmont Area police headquarters. What I tell people when I want to say what the experience is like in a nutshell, is that it's as if the Holiday Club had branched out into a barber shop. There are big black and white pictures of the Rat Pack on the walls, along with vintage 1950s hair product ads and some hair products that seem like they're from that time, as well. There's a pool table, a nice comfy leather sofa, coffee and a little fridge with cans of beer if you get there early for your appointment, and the barbers are of the multi-tattooed Rockabilly sort, who often can be heard talking about vintage cars and motorcycles.

The other thing that endears the place to me (besides that I can get a great cut for $20, tip included) is that when I sit in the chair that's older than me, and the guy about to cut my hair asks me what I want, I can point to the above picture, which they have on their wall, of Elvis getting his hair cut when he enlisted in the Army, and I can come away with something pretty darn close to it, and something which only gets better two and three weeks after it's cut.

Where the 'Boys' Are?

2009-10-04T03:47:00.003-05:00

A news story (which should not have been news in the first place but that's another matter altogether) contained the term "Boystown" in its lede, to refer to the North Side neighborhood in Chicago that is the hub of the city's (and dare I say the Midwest's) gay community.

I cringed, groaned and wished for a reason to update the story so that I could change "Boystown" to "Lakeview neighborhood," which it should have been. I can't stand that term, "Boystown." I have hated it since I was a young Leftie rabble rouser in college, when I first heard it used by a well-meaning fellow Leftie at a conference of Lefties at a Midwestern college. (That in itself was something, actually, with the GLBTs in one room and the non-gays -- at the time at least -- in another, and I think the point of the session was to figure out how to be more GLBT-sensitive and inclusive, etc.) One of the leaders of the group in the non-gay room (yes, that's where I was) tried to explain to the other Midwesterners how things were in Chicago, and led off by saying, "In Chicago, we've got a neighborhood called 'Boystown,' ..." That in itself made me want to run straight into the gay room.

The term has, to the best of my memory, been used casually, as a nickname, but never officially, and never as something that would appear in a newspaper (or news Web site). But lately use of the term has grown, I've noticed, and its become a de facto designation of the area. And, for the most part, I hate it. I hate it mainly because it reduces a group of people to mascots and circus clowns, as it every gay was "Jack" from "Will and Grace." Bestowing such a term on a neighborhood allows others to look at and treat its residents like children, and not adults. We don't use terms like "Jew Town" to refer to certain neighborhoods anymore -- and that is a good thing -- so why do people use a term like this? To show how cool or "with it" or not square they are? Puh-lease.

I realize that neighborhoods have often been referred to by the national origins of its residents, such as Little Italy or Greektown, etc., but none of these have the connotation of "Boystown." When you refer to people as "boys," you dismiss them as not worthy of the adult table, and deserving only of a ghetto. When you say Chelsea or The VIllage or The Castro to identify a neighborhood, you and the person you're addressing have an idea of what the demographic makeup of the residents is, so you don't need to use an insulting term such as "Boystown." If someone in Chicago really wants to make sure someone else realizes that the area they're talking about is the "gay" area, why not just say "Halsted Street," or "North Halsted," and then, "nudge, nudge, say no more, you know what I mean???"

Sinead's Hand

2009-09-01T23:24:00.006-05:00

A cool ad that would make any sane person ask, 'now what's the big deal? sure, go ahead!' (I especially like how at one of the houses he made his request in Gaelic.)

Robbie's Back!

2009-08-07T20:36:00.003-05:00

Almost. Robbie Williams' new album, Reality Killed The Video Star, due on November 9th. First single to be released on October 12. And, he's got a new, grown-up, cleaned-up look, it seems. Now if only he could bother to tour the U.S.!

Where the Jobs Are

2009-07-20T00:57:00.002-05:00

Well, they're not in Chicago (No. 44) or NYC (No. 42), according to this list. Even worse is that Chicago and New York aren't all that much better than (gasp!) Detroit (No. 50), for people looking for work.

Good news though, if I ever move to any of the other cities I'd ever considering moving to -- San Francisco (No. 12), Seattle (No. 6), Boston (No. 9) and DC (No. 1 -- you know, in case I wind up on the staff of a U.S. Senator someday).

Geez, even Pittsburgh and Cleveland have better job prospects than Chicago. Then again, you'd have to LIVE in Pittsburgh or Cleveland, and compared to Chicago, places like SF and Boston are just as if not significantly more, expensive to live in.

Livin' the Highlight!

2009-07-19T14:14:00.002-05:00

I finally did it. I finally, after months of window shopping and careful comparisons and weighing the pros and cons of various options, including staying with my current provider, jumping to another, buying online versus in a brick and mortar store, I finally, this weekend, pulled the trigger on the purchase of a new cell phone.

I went with the Samsung Highlight, from T-Mobile. I had almost decided, as recently as a few weeks ago, to go with AT&T because they had all the cool phones and buying one online, from amazon or one of those places that only sell cell phones, would cost me anywhere from 1 cent to at the very most $49 depending on the model of phone, and to me every dollar counts these days. My employer also has been pushing their discount deals with AT&T -- 10 percent on your monthly bill and 'select' hardware -- but I found out the same sort of deal was available with T-Mobile. The biggest factor in my decision, though, was even though I was not thrilled at the fact that my prize for being a loyal T-Mobile customer in good standing for more than two years was a 'discount' of well, really nothing from anyone who's walk in off the street -- actually, the phone cost about $150 more than it would for someone who would come in from another cellular provider -- and I could get a better phone from AT&T for nothing if I switched companies, was the reliability factor.

My previous T-Mobile phone wasn't always great with the reception, and I'm guessing this one will have its faults, as well, but I pretty much knew where the weak spots were, such as near the elevators in the Apparel Center and in my gym at Halsted and Belmont, but not outside of it. AT&T, though, from my research (and believe me, I did a HELLUVA lot of research) had weak coverage just about everywhere in and around Chicago. Alot of it comes from people with iphones, but I read plenty of forum posts, Yelp posts, etc., from people with AT&T as their cellular provider who have awful service in Chicago. Unfortunately, people in other parts of the country who have AT&T don't report anything near the problems people in Chicago have. And I decided to buy a phone from a physical store instead of online, because it seemed that it would be easier to resolve any problems with the phone if you get it from an authorized store where you can actually take the phone to and show to someone, instead of e-mailing a customer service rep in never never land. And, also, I appreciated that I could go into an actual store and try out the phones I have read about and seen online, and you know, I don't want the bricks-and-mortar stores to go out of business, so I thought I should give them my business as a form of thanks.

In spite of the reception issues in Chicago, I was still nearly going to buy an AT&T phone, because I didn't like the idea of paying $160 or more for a new T-Mobile phone, but after talking to people in a couple AT&T stores, I realized that those $0.01 phones only are sold online. While the AT&T phones were cheaper than comparable T-Mobile phones, the ones I was interested in were still in the $100 to $150 range. I could see paying nothing or close to nothing for a phone that would have spotty service, but for $150? Why? That's just stupid.

I found, by accident really, a new T-Mobile store at Clark and Diversey, and I stopped in there earlier this week and the manager talked to me, explained all the costs to me, told me I could spread the $170 cost of a phone over a few months and let me just play with the phones I was interested in. I went back there today, after driving my mom around to do her grocery shopping and that, and having worked last night I was not completely alert, but I thought I would drop in there this afternoon just to play around with the phone a bit more and ask them about an employer discount (10 percent -- whoopee) and the gal who waited on me was so nice and not only showed me the features on the phone but told me how to work them then told me to try my hand at it all, which I thought was strange but strange in a good way.

So I though, as long as I was planning on very likely buying this phone later this week anyway, why not buy it right now? So I told the gal to wrap it up and activate me on the new phone, as I slipped out of the store a couple times to feed my GoddamnedDaley parking meter machine. She moved my SIM card, which has all my two dozen or so contacts onto the new phone, and told me while the ringtones I had on my old phone were now history, since this phone has an mp3 player, I can just drag mp3 files onto it when it's hooked up to my computer, so I can make my own ringtones and I don't have to buy any anymore. How cool is that? I can't wait to drop "Waiting by the Telephone" onto it to be my first new ringtone.

I guess I'll have more free time now, since my phone search was an obsession of my the past few months. I spent hours every week reading reviews, window shopping, hanging out at cell phone blogs to get an idea of what was coming down the pipe and when -- geez, the comments in those blogs all seem as though they're written by 12-year-olds and complete idiots -- so now I can stop checking into those sites on a regular basis (well, with the possible exception of the 'samsung highlight' blog and 'guys with iphones,' you know, uh, just to check on technical issues and updates and such).

I'm looking forward to having a camera that is more than 1 megapixel, and not having to pound the number pad to type out text messages. And hey, my orange/red (officially its called 'fire') highlight, has a neat rubbery sort of backing and is kinda cool-looking. I need more people to call/text though.

"Prejudice Has No Place in the United States of America"

2009-07-17T21:55:00.001-05:00

At the very least, he is not shying away from talking about it with crowds that may or may not be receptive to his message. He deserves some recognition for this. Now we're all just waiting for the follow-through.

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The 'Read' Line

2009-07-17T11:55:00.003-05:00

I like to watch. You. When you're on the train on your way to work, when you're on the bus going home, when you're going shopping, etc., I just like to watch.

Don't get too creeped out, though, there's nothing too perverse going on. It just seems that no matter how many magazines I've packed, no matter what TV show (like Rachel Maddow or the Anderson Cooper podcast) is on my ipod for me to watch or what book I may be carrying in my hands, when I am on public transportation I can't help but look around and look at people and try to imagine where they are going, where they've come from, what's up with them, etc. This isn't much fun during rush hour, because people generally are going to and from work, which doesn't interest me at all. So, no matter what time of day it is, I'll take a look at what people are reading and go "hmmm."

I don't know what any of this would mean, but here on this blog I'll occasionally note what I've seen -- who the reader is, what form of public transportation they were spied on, what they were reading of course, and any other impressions I had of them. Unless otherwise noted, these are all observed on the Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses. I'm not going to judge (I save that for people who read the piece of poop 'Red Eye' commuter rag), just observe. Just take it for what it's worth, which is not much, probably.

So here's the first edition, compiled from a few days' observations.

• CTA Brown Line, Tuesday 1:30 p.m., heading downtown:

*White male, mid-30s to 40-ish, beard and glasses, red and white checkered short sleeve dress shirt, khaki shorts, Nike running shoes with running socks. Reading: 'Confederacy of Dunces.'

*White male, late 20s, jeans and short sleeve T-shirt, black canvas Chuck Taylors, long-ish sideburns, with a somewhat grown-out faux hawk. Reading: 'In Cold Blood.'

• CTA Red Line, Wednesday, 7:30 a.m., heading downtown:

* White female, 30 to 40, short, light brown hair, man's dress shirt with purple and yellow vertical stripes, black slacks, leather jacket, Asics running shoes. Reading: 'Valley of the Dolls.'

Buying Records Cheers Me Up

2009-07-10T20:19:00.002-05:00

Or CDs. Or downloaded albums with digital booklets.

Hypocrisy Seems to be the Hardest Word

2009-07-06T19:35:00.004-05:00

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R - Illinois) and Jean Schmidt (R - Ohio) both oppose gay marriage and would vote to re-write the United States Constitution so that they could define marriage as between a man and a woman. But that's not all there is to hate about these regressives. In 2007, both voted against a measure that would prevent job discrimination based on sexual orientation. Shimkus, of downstate Collinsville, Ill., also voted in 1999 to ban adoptions by same-sex couples in the District of Columbia.

So, where would you expect these mouth-breathing haters to hold a fundraiser? A Toby Keith concert? A NASCAR event? A dinner party with Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly? Nah, they're going to host fundraisers at the Elton John/Billy Joel concert at the Washington Nationals baseball park on July 11.

Yep, these two gay-hating mopes are going to host fundraisers at big gay Elton John's concert! And, and ... it's not the first time Shimkus has done so (hmmm...) according to the Kentucky democrat, via the Party Time blog [it's at blog.politicalpartytime.org -- this page on Safari won't let me link], he also hosted a fundie fundraiser at an Elton John show in 2005! A Shimkus spoeksman said the fundriaser doesn't mean the Congressman approves of the singer's "politics" and that Shimmy wouldn't actually be at the show this month, just as he did not attend the 2005 show. Rep. Schmidt's flack only agreed to reply to Party Time via e-mail and as of Monday afternoon no response was received.

Hypocrites. F-in' hypocrites. But then again that's not so surprising when it comes to right wing hatred, I mean the pope preaches aainst gays from the fabu-freakin' Vatican, a gay temple if ever there was one...

What's the Story?

2009-07-05T00:59:00.002-05:00

These two headlines were cheek-to-cheek on the Sun-TImes Web site this weekend.

Several gun and knife arrests reported at Taste of Chicago
July 4, 2009
FROM STNG WIRE REPORTS

and

Police say Taste peaceful, credit heavier presence
July 4, 2009
(no byline)

So what is it? Is this year's Taste of Chicago a madhouse of thugs and gangbangers and people bringing guns and knives into the crowded streets, or is it a lovely weekend where attendees walk around with parasols, sipping lemonade, tipping their caps at fellow tourists and Chicagoans and those leaving on public transportation give up their seats to ladies and the elderly? Hmmm?

Unfortunately the latter, 'peaceful' story relies on the word of the police and city officials, who would say "everything is fine here," even if downtown was burning amid armed rioting.

Two things here -- one; if your mother (or the city) says the Taste of Chicago is safe and peaceful, CHECK IT OUT, and two; the perceived safety many have of of this city, even downtown, is an illusion.

'Royko Was a Prick'

2009-07-03T12:45:00.003-05:00

I don't quite understand the fascination and reverence that many people of Chicago, whether they are journalists, would-be journalists, or media junkies, have for Mike Royko. Royko is the legendary Chicago newspaper columnist who got his real start in Chicago reporting at the City News Bureau of Chicago, then worked for the Daily News, Sun-Times and Tribune, writing some 7,000 columns over a 30-year career, exposing government corruption, taking on City Hall, and writing about other passions, such as the Chicago Cubs and 16-inch softball. His book, "Boss," about Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, is a classic, and showed the mayor as corrupt and racist, and I treated that book as a bible of sorts when i was in high school and college. He's also famous for drinking at the also legendary Billy Goat Tavern.

People speak of Royko as a Catholic would speak of the pope or President Kennedy, as some speak of Sinatra, as basketball fans speak of Michael Jordan, as boxing fans speak of Muhammad Ali -- he was the greatest, there will never be another like him, you all could learn a thing or two by watching him, etc. People name their dogs after Royko. When some get pissed off at a present day newspaper reporter or columnist, they sometimes resort to saying things like (I paraphrase), "Royko was the last great reporter in this town, the rest of you suck." People still are drawn to the Billy Goat, as they were when he was alive, because they want to be in the place where he spent so many thousands of hours drinking, getting into scuffles and hitting on other guys' wives and girlfriends.

He may have been a great newspaperman, but by some accounts, the guy was a first-class prick. A year or two ago, when I heard a radio interview with Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, who has had his own obstacles to deal with in his personal life (which you can read about in his book, "Drunkard"), in which he was asked about Royko, someone whom he spent some bar time with at the Goat, and Steinberg stated, "Royko was a prick." And by all accounts, Royko was an unpleasant person to encounter. (Maybe someone who knew him will disagree, that's fine. I never met him and can't say I regret that.)

Then, while bouncing around on the Internet today, I found that Jerry Pritikin, aka "The Bleacher Preacher," has a blog (he doesn't update often, but it is a blog nonetheless). Pritikin, now in his 70s, is a lifelong Cubs fan, a photographer by trade, and is also gay. In a piece he wrote (with photos which you should take a look at) for the Beachwood Reporter in 2008, Pritikin wrote of something he saw one summer day in the 1970s on Chicago's North Side lakefront (then and now, a place where gays liked to gather).

Pritikin saw a handful of police cars and bunch of cops "raid" the beach all because a young blond man in a Speedo was selling sandwiches on the beach, without a license to do so. Yeah, selling sandwiches without a license got nine cops to respond to the beach that day and arrest the guy.

Pritikin, who was visiting from San Francisco (he's lived in SF and Chicago) at the time, found a pay phone nearby and called the Daily News, where Royko was working at the time, and asked to speak to Royko, "who I had heard was always willing to go to bat for the little guy.

"I was connected to him and he listened my story and when I was finished Mike Royko said to me loud and clear:

'They should arrest all the faggots!'

And then he hung up."

So, you know, forgive me for not genuflecting at the altar of Royko the next time he is brought up in conversation or I remind you of how much of a prick this guy must have been when you ask me if I want to be like Royko or you assume that I ask St. Royko for journalistic guidance every day when I leave for work.

Two of My Favourite Things

2009-06-28T21:20:00.002-05:00

Anderson Cooper and Fred Perry. I wonder if Coop plays tennis in his Fred Perry shirt or if he goes to ska shows wearing it. He needs to work on his arms a little bit more, like his buddy has obviously been.

Let the Freak Flags Fly

2009-06-23T01:09:00.002-05:00

Joe. My. God. has some great thoughts on Pride parades. While I will not be watching or participating this year, I can't say I disagree with his feelings. I need to take a year, maybe two, off from it, but I am much closer to his opinion than those who are disgusted or dismissive of the freaks and "defectives" that make the front pages and nighttime newscasts.

What's the Point of a Parade?

2009-06-15T10:46:00.002-05:00

So, this is Gay Pride Month, and what have we done? Well, so far this month we have seen President No Hope defend the Defense of Marriage Act, refuse to repeal (or claim he can't) Don't Ask Don't Tell, and generally ignore and certainly piss off, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and supportive allies community.

Some people are upset. Some people are REALLY upset. Some people say "told ya so!" Some people are calling for a march in DC in the fall, when Congress will be out. In the meantime, the bloggerworld is filled with anger, shouting, name-calling of the President from a place formerly known as Hope. Isn't there anything else we can do?

Cancel all the fucking pride parades. With the exception of the seven states where gays and lesbians can legally marry (each other, Mr. President, not opposite gendered people, and even those marriages aren't recognized throughout the rest of the U.S.) what is there to celebrate this year?

Instead, hold letter writing and envelope stuffing and phone calling parties. You can still close off the streets, but fill them with tables and chairs for people to do this stuff at.

Tell all the fag hags and the folks who wander on down to the "pride" parties because it's a good time that if they wanna party with the queers, drink the queer beer, throw up in the queer streets, they're gonna have to do something to earn that drink or that string of beads (and I'm not talking about more college wrestlers doing porn).

If the big corporations want to show their support, instead of obnoxious floats with naked dancers on them or giant shopping carts, have them provide snacks and drinks for everyone making the calls and writing the letters and stuffing the envelopes and calling the congress people and senators. Instead of flooding the streets with drunks, let's flood the switchboards with calls to repeal DADT and DOMA and make marriage equal and well, as long as we're at it, switch the U.S. to a civilized, single-payer healthcare system.

You think that those who don't like the gays and who make money by preaching against the evils of "San Francisco-style values" and who put video of drag queens and go-go boys on their Right Wing/Religious "news" shows get their panties in bunches by watching and talking about Pride Parades, imagine what would happen if instead they saw hundreds of thousands of queers and others in a number of major U.S. cities calling their Congress people and writing letters and collecting donations to get equal marriage on the ballot, to get the President to keep his promise to repeal DADT and to make sure all the queers are registered to vote? How better to honor the memory of Stonewall?

Yeah, I know, it'll never happen, but like that $3 Lotto ticket I sometimes buy, it is nice to dream for a little while.

Is the Hulu Party Over?

2009-06-11T02:15:00.000-05:00

What, you thought it would always be free?

With 'Fierce Advocates' Like These ...

2009-06-09T18:35:00.003-05:00

Dear Mr. President:

You've got the job. Now start doing the work that the people who elected you want, instead of the job you think you have to do so as not to offend those who have done nothing to support you and never will. Our patience is wearing thin, if you haven't noticed.

***
From Realclearpolitics:
" In 1948, Truman issued an executive order integrating the armed forces. That same year Gallup found that only 13 percent of Americans supported "having Negro and white troops throughout the U.S. armed services live and work together."

That Obama has not acted on "don't ask, don't tell," despite public support that Truman would have envied, spotlights the delicate political tightrope the president now walks.

Obama is consumed by an historic domestic agenda, ranging from stimulus legislation to health care reform. It's no accident that he has withheld early engagement on the same issue that sidetracked Clinton's first year.

But this is also not 1993. That year, one summer Gallup survey found that Americans were divided on the issue--48 percent supporting the policy and an equal share against. Today, about seven in 10 Americans are against 'don't ask, don't tell.'"
***

What Are You Afraid of, Mr. President?

'A Growing Firestorm'

2009-06-08T01:04:00.002-05:00

Americablog taps into it.

"People may generally love Obama. But gay people are pissed. And growing more so by the day. The overall impression in the gay community is that we've been, or are about to be, had by this administration; that someone in Obama-land (rhymes with Rahm) is telling the President that we're political pariahs who must be shunned at all costs."

More than 10 percent of the states now have equal marriage and they may soon be joined by two or three more, but the President has yet to say one word about this. Gay and lesbian service members are still being rooted out -- at great cost to taxpayers and their service branches -- and the president has yet to address this, after promising to be a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. He doesn't have to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell -- he can however, stop the enforcement with single pen stroke. "Gay" was one of his favorite words on the campaign trail and even on election night, but since he's taken office, the closest he's come to demonstrating support of anything gay has been a date night on Broadway with the First Lady.

You can ignore and marginalize and triangulate, Mr. President, but you better watch out, for, as Aravois says, "I can't name a single Democrat (or Republican for that matter) in recent memory who's been on the receiving end of our ire and walked away unscathed. This isn't your daddy's gay community."

Hilarious Beer Ad

2009-06-05T16:28:00.004-05:00

I can't believe this ad would ever air anywhere, but there's enough Bud Light in it that either it is Internet only or the beer company's lawyers haven't seen it yet.

In any case, it's so funny I laughed out loud many times, and since I'm still trying to get over a cold, I then started coughing and tearing up, too. But it was worth it. This two-minute ad is simply hee-larious.

Sex With Ducks

2009-05-30T16:56:00.006-05:00

In response to the Rev. Pat Robertson, who warned on his TV show -- which, incidentally, is watched by wide swaths of people in certain parts of the country, so we shouldn't underestimate his influence -- that legalizing marriage for all would lead to all sorts of weirdness and immoral behavior, including, but not limited to, "sex with ducks," these two gals, Riki "Garfunkel" Lindhome and Kate "Oates" Micucci, have created video that shines a light on the absurdity of people like Pat Robertson and his followers. There's a way to respond to such brilliant, well-reasoned arguments as the wingnut Right's, and it's with sanity, intelligence and sometimes humor.

Sonia Sotomayor, Racist

2009-05-30T15:37:00.002-05:00

She talks about how being a Latina woman has enhanced her perspective -- racist! She made a decision supporting the city and against some non-black firefighters' claims of racism -- she hates white people! She wants people to correctly pronounce her name -- double racist!!

Thank God the New York Times has actually looked at and analyzed Judge Sotomayor's record.

Here's what they found:

"Of the 96 (race-related cases while serving as an appeals judge), Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case.

"So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1."

Next question?

Ellen's Commencement Speech

2009-05-23T01:07:00.003-05:00

Wow, this was really good. I think this commencement speech should be given not only to all graduates, but also to those just starting college and adult life in general. It was funny, it was serious, it was, also, unlike some celebrity commencement speeches, about the graduates and not the speaker -- though she used her life experiences to show the kids that you can go through great ups and downs in life and still come out of it, eventually, on top, and with your own dignity.

This only makes me like Ellen more.

Ellen's Commencement Speech

2009-05-23T01:07:00.001-05:00

How Sad is the State of Journalism?

2009-05-18T18:42:00.003-05:00

According to this interactive chart from Time magazine, journalists polled are slightly happier than butchers, mail deliverers and bus drivers.

I know, I'd think it would not be that bad to be a butcher. Just as depressing is that more insurance salespeople said they were happy in their work than journos. Interestingly, PR people are only slightly happier than journalists.

Among the happiest were priests, firefighters, architects and actors. So when I'm hanging out with actors and architects, now I know for sure that I'm the least "happy" one in the bunch. (Perhaps I should investigate a career change more seriously. I do like preaching to the choir...)

Surviving CHM

2009-05-07T23:10:00.004-05:00

Tonight was the last time that I will go to an event at the Chicago History Museum. It was about the fourth time in the past year and a half Stephen and I had gone to the museum for an after museum hours event. The others we had attended while members last year. Each event was dull and unexciting in its own way, from Catholics in Chicago to a couple Out at CHM programs to a Black Sox lecture. Each was so dull that Chicago History Museum event set a new standard for our own inside jokes when something we are at is unbearably stuffy and self-important and sleep-inducing.

But tonight would be different! This one was all about "Surviving Reagan." It was about gays in the 1980s and how they dealt with the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the "Reagan Revolution" and his ignoring the AIDS crisis and how all these conditions all together made activists out of people who would have never dreamt of it and how living through the Reagan years was and what it was like and how terrifying yet at the same time exciting it was! This program was going to be different! This would show the under-30 attendees ($10 for members, $12 for non-members) what real activism and civil disobedience was like and what it was for and we would hear from people (those who were still alive) who had been on the frontlines and who were still working and fighting in many other ways now.

An hour and a half later, after we got our bags from the bag/coat check, I picked up one of the flyers for the event, and Stephen looked at it and said, "Surviving Reagan -- looks interesting. We'll have to come back for that."

Such was the nature of the even...actually, it wasn't an evening, it was a barely 90-minute program, cut short because there was another event happening elsewhere in the city that the organizers of this event were concerned that some in this crowd might miss if this event went too long. In short, the program got off to a very promising start, with a brief video of Joan Jett Black, a Black drag queen who ran for president in the 1980s. From that point on, it sunk like a rock. Instead of telling us who paid to be there what it was like to live through a supposedly oppressive era and how people who were not marching in lock-step with the Republicans did so, what we got was three people on stage talking about the problems of being part of lefty organizations and how contentious things sometimes got and how some segments of the population were underrepresented and how white males ran everything (no one dared mention that the white males likely paid for everything around that time, as well), and how "when I was living in Berlin, I was a Marxist and my boyfriend was a Maoist and .." blah blah blah.

You know, one of Ronald Reagan's great sins was that it took him seven years -- after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died of AIDS -- before he dared mention the word publicly. Ironically, at a program about surviving Reagan in the 80s, I think Reagan was mentioned once by the panelists. The most interesting part of the evening came near the end, when the moderator, who was obviously taking cues to wrap things up from someone offstage, mentioned the time she has spent recently at the Reagan Library, reading previously classified documents and memos to and from Reagan's staffers.

It was incredible, as well, that Danny Sotomayor, who was as close to the epitome of the 1980s AIDS activist that he had in Chicago was mentioned only in passing, briefly, and that was only to make a point about some of the infighting and bickering that went on in groups like Act Up and Queer Nation. That, as well as the mere wave from the stage that a saint like Lori Cannon got, were sinful omissions and demonstrated just how useless the event was.

"You Know How I Know You're Gay?"

2009-05-05T17:46:00.005-05:00

You have three names.

According to After Elton, David Ogden Stiers, he of M*A*S*H fame, has joined David Hyde Pierce and Neil Patrick Harris as actors whom we always were pretty sure were gay, and were not at all surprised (though happy nonetheless) to find out they really were.

Since his days on M*A*S*H Ogden Stiers has done some other TV (ironically playing an effete aristocratic fellow like he played on M*A*S*H on an episode of Frasier), as well as movie voiceover work (for Disney animated features).

'Dude, Where R My Pants?'

2009-05-02T02:45:00.006-05:00

This gives "Drunk Dialing" a whole new meaning. Some geniuses -- and I mean that affectionately -- have come up with what I think is the greatest blog/Web site ever, or at least of the year so far.

It's called, appropriately enough, Texts From Last Night, and like its name suggests, it is a compendium of text mesages that people, mostly drinky, many in various states of undress, have sent their friends (or, sometimes, by mistake, strangers or political campaigns). Their friends, in a display of undying trust and loyalty, then forwarded these text messages to the blog. The results are often hilarious, and it's great mindless, time-wasting, voyeuristic reading. For added enjoyment, they also provide the area code the texts originated from, but the rest is anonymous -- no names are ever revealed, which is good for the texters, once you start reading them.

Some of my favorite excerpts, from a quick read this morning:

* "(813): dude i woke up laying next to some guy. i dont have my bra or his name. he has a nice tv though."

* "(614): I may or may not have started my period at the bar. Good thing I have dark jeans on."

* "(413): Dude this is getting pretty serious, we had a sober make out session last night."

(What is it about texting that makes people call each other "Dude" so much?)

* "(815): Why did you send me a picture of a dick?
(630): It was an accident sry. Not mine tho."

(Oh, those crazy west and northwest suburban Chicago kids!)

* "(323): WTF. you left me with no condoms and you ate all my mac and cheese. scumbag."

And one that makes me laugh out loud every time I read it:

* "(415): Trimmed my pubes and broke your paper shredder. Separate events."

Love it. Dear Crazy Texters: Keep 'em coming, please.

"A Dancer Dances"

2009-04-30T00:05:00.003-05:00

There's a restaurant here in Chicago that I like, called the Bagel. There are a couple of them actually, but the one I like best isn't in the burbs but on the lakefront, in the Gayish neighborhood. As befits its name, the restaurant features downhome Jewish fare, like matzo ball soup, corned beef sandwiches, liver and onions plates, lox, of course, and in the front part you can get bagels and cream cheese to go. The place has been around for a couple decades, at least, so its not like its some 'concept' some restaurant marketers came up with.

I like the place, but the interior feels a bit dated. It's tough to describe, but Broadway musical posters from the 1970s look a certain way (like they are all trying to evoke the early 20th century in some way), and these posters line the walls of The Bagel. In some way it's comforting, but in another way the decor has not aged well and seems a bit out of place, because it has no context --you don't know why there are all these weird-looking musical posters on the walls. (Sometimes when I am there or at a similar place down the street, The Melrose, which is open 24 hours and is Greek-owned as opposed to Jewish, I look at the old posters and photos on the walls and start to wonder about all who have been there before me -- all the dates and all the after-show meals, all the after-clubbing cups of coffee consumed there, all the lives that have passed through. But that's another story.)

This is not about The Bagel, though I kind of wish I had wound up there tonight. This is about "A Chorus Line," which I saw at the Oriental/Ford Theatre tonight with Stephen. I have not seen the movie before, have never seen the stage show, had an idea of the story and definitely knew that it was supposed to be important and influential and that there are people who just adore it, so I thought it would be good to see it onstage, since it was in Chicago for a two-week engagement and I was able to get a decent deal on tickets. Also, I was further intrigued by it after Neil Steinberg wrote about it in the Sun-Times and Amy Matheny and Stephen Rader did their Windy City Queercast podcast after having seen this particular production.

So, a couple hours after having seen it, I can say that it is like having gone to the Bagel. I am glad I did it, the meal was alright, but as I was looking around, I felt that the decor was dated and had no context. I didn't hate it; I was entertained, I thought the dancing was lovely, the actors were good, a couple of the monologues were so well done that the entire theatre was hushed, but ... but ... it just didn't like grab me by the collar and show me how or why it was so important. I don't know, maybe if this was 1977 and we had gone to the Bagel or RJ Grunts afterward it would have felt different and more meaningful, but it kind of was just there for me. I really enjoy 'inside baseball' type stuff and would have enjoyed a story about these dancers' lives and backgrounds and their struggles to even get onto an audition stage, but this production didn't really connect with me, didn't give me that sort of sense of urgency.

But I am glad that I saw it, thought it was great that there were many others, particularly high school-aged kids, who were seeing it, and I had an enjoyable evening. Maybe I'll have better luck going to see Topol in "Fiddler."

Goose Crossing

2009-04-27T00:15:00.003-05:00

Sunday, 26 April, 6:20 a.m.
Hubbard Street between Kingsbury and the Chicago River, outside the East Bank Club and the Apparel Center.

Girls Behaving Badly

2009-04-23T00:12:00.004-05:00

For some time now, there has been both concern and consternation regarding the presence of drinky giggly women acting like fools in male-centric gay bars. This issue has emerged again recently, with the fight for equal marriage rights at the forefront of the gay civil rights struggle, since some gay bars are so often besieged by groups of these women, who go to gay bars to celebrate impending wedding vows. Bad enough as it is that they are loud and boisterous and obnoxious and tip badly, they also flaunt their legal right to marry by wearing little wedding veils and accompanying costumewear to their bachelorette shenanigans. Some bars have even banned such groups of girls (I can't really call them women because they don't really act like adults), for the above and other reasons.

Jessica and Elizabeth may not have been celebrating an upcoming wedding, but they are not unique. The two pretty much constituted a two-gal wrecking and mayhem party of their own Tuesday night on Halsted Street (I have problems with calling it 'Boystown' -- namely that a moniker such as that only reaffirms the assumption that it's a theme park, and the gays who hang out and live there are mascots and sidekicks and not real people).

Basically, the story says (full disclosure: the version linked to in this post was written and partially reported by me. The Sun-Times Wire Service overnight crew got the story originally, I got the charges and the gals' names and further details), Jessica and Elizabeth got stinkin' drunk at Roscoe's Tavern, and in the process, they dragged a guy into the girl's washroom, kicked bar manager, slapped a bouncer, and tried to interfere with the arrest of one of them, blocking the way of the police and screaming at them. Oh, and one of the gals MADE AN ALLEGATION THAT THE BOUNCER -- AT A GAY BAR -- RAPED HER. And they were only charged with misdemeanors.

Nothing I can say about these two would be fresh or new, because it would all be along the lines of 'Imagine if they had gone to one of the many straight bars just down the street from the gay strip -- do you think they'd be able to get as drunk as they did or act like they did without actually getting sexually assaulted at worst, or at best, gotten kicked out of the bar much sooner? These gals, both of whom live in the gayish area of Chicago, likely go to gay bars to get drunk and out of control because they feel safer doing so there than in straight bars, they like to live in the gayborhood because it's just so lively and fun and safe and I'll bet they don't even know where all their elected officials stand on issues that matter to gay and lesbian folk.

It's kind of odd that it took them so long to get kicked out of this particular bar, though, because Roscoe's has always had a full phalanx of headset-clad security throughout the place. And the former bouncer in me looks at this and thinks that even if the place was understaffed, there were probably signs that they should have been tossed out way before one of them kicked the manager.

I have, even very recently, opted not to chase certain news stories because I felt there would be nothing gained by doing so and it would cause undue harm and pain to those affected by the incident. Not so, here. I hope what these gals did gets out all over and while they were only charged with misdemeanors (Geez, can you imagine if a guy, or even worse, a Black person, had acted like that toward police? They'd be dead right now.), I hope they are embarrassed to death by having their names in the news. And they should be kicked out of the fucking neighborhood.

[NOTE: The above image is a stock photo, from the Daily Mail, of drunken young women at a tavern, presumably in England. Apparently such behavior is international.]

Saturday morning, 4:40 a.m.

2009-04-18T15:46:00.007-05:00

Last night about 4:40 a.m., I heard some talk on the police scanner about a woman falling to her death from the 19th story of a downtown building. Since it was about the time for me to leave the building where I work, which was only about a block and a half from where this happened, and drive to the medical examiner's office, I decided to stop near the scene on my way to the West Side, if for nothing else to confirm that someone had fallen there, and if there was a media person from the fire department there, maybe to get some info from them.

The street where it happened was blocked off to traffic by 5 a.m., when I got there, but I was able to park across the street from the scene and get to within about 20 feet of where the body was lying, on the sidewalk, covered by a white sheet. There were also about five guys, in their 20s or 30s, standing at a car closer than mine, a guy in a suit standing up against a wall, a couple guys walking past and stopping, who looked as though they may have just gotten off work from a nearby bar or club, and a girl, maybe in her early 20s, wearing a baseball cap and a Cubs T-shirt, near the guy in the suit. I called the office -- "yeah, there's a body here, no cars on the street seem damaged by the fall, she's right on the sidewalk." As I'm saying that, the girl in the Cubs T-shirt, whose eyes are tear-filled, walks toward me, past me, and into the arms of one of the guys standing just a few feet behind me. She is sniffling, the guys say nothing, she says nothing, then I look to the guy in the suit, and it looks as though he has been crying, too.

My first instinct is that I'm glad I didn't talk loudly on my phone or that I didn't say something insensitive that one of those people out on the street at 5:15 a.m., who clearly knew the now dead woman, may have heard. My other instinct is that these people likely know what happened. There are undoubtedly some people who work as reporters, maybe some who work with me, who'd walk up to the guys, or even possibly the girl, and try to get the "story." But not me, not today. As a human being I'd like to know what happened, of course, it's natural curiosity, but also I look at the small group of people out there, weeping, biting their lips, standing in near silence, and I want to know why this happened ... was there a fight or argument? Was the woman suicidal? Was there a party and was she just drunk and fell? I could get the story if I walked up to them. There is no other media there; no TV station, even though the Chicago ABC affiliate is about one block away; no Chicago Tribune, whose lone overnight reporter likely is already at the ME's office. I could be the first, possibly the only, reporter to get the story, or I could slice open a wound that has not even stopped bleeding yet, turning an already horrible night into something even worse for a few people. Then, possibly, for the rest of their lives, these people, and their families and friends, would hate the media. Or they could just scream at me or through their tears tell me quietly that their friend or relative has just died, and can't I just leave them alone?

The decision wasn't that difficult for me. I leave them alone. Did I "miss" a story? Maybe. Does it matter? No. I did a brief story on it anyway, with the information I had and what police later told me, largely because, though we don't story suicides, if that's what it was, it was something that happened publicly, downtown.

A couple hours later, after getting in my car to drive home, I had to go south anyway to stop at the post office, so I drove past where that woman had fallen to her death. The police were gone, the police tape was gone, there was some sort of debris in the street, a section of the street and sidewalk were wet, likely from the cleanup that took place after the body was removed. I drove slowly, a couple drivers went around me and sped by, past the scene, having no idea what happened there just a few hours earlier. I felt like saying some sort of prayer, but I just drove by, slowly, silently.

"A Bit of a Blooper"

2009-04-18T15:46:00.001-05:00

The funniest thing about this clip of a Canadian TV guy saying a dirty word on live TV is not what he said, or that he was live at the time, but the guy back at the studio who referred to it as "a bit of a blooper." Ah, Canadians, gotta love 'em.

Oh, and let's go, Blackhawks!

Hey Sports Fan!

2009-04-12T23:31:00.003-05:00

I love about 18 different things about this picture, not the least of which is that killer watch our President is wearing. Damn, now that's a watch!

White House Hopscotch

2009-04-11T17:01:00.003-05:00

This is so cool. And it comes in the same week that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a chat outside the White House, near the Obama girls' swing-set. I don't know, there's just something strangely heart-warming about it.

Blood on Their Hands

2009-04-05T13:35:00.004-05:00

This weekend, a 23-year-old man from Pittsburgh, who had been laid off from his job at a glass factory, shot and killed three police officers who had come to his home to answer a domestic disturbance call.

The man had told friends that his fear in life was not the economy, his family, his community, the future of his country, but that the Obama administration would take his guns away. No matter where you stand on the issue of guns -- I think it wouldn't be an entirely bad thing if everyone's guns were taken away, why would anyone need an AK-47 in their home, like this man had? -- this is a myth that has been perpetrated and perpetuated by the whole McCain/Palin, "Joe the Plumber," Limbaugh, O'Reilly, FOX, "F -- Obama" crowd, and each and every one of them has blood on their hands. Every person who has worked to perpetuate this fear among gun owners, all these law and order types, from congressmen and women all the way down to the individuals who two months after the inauguration, refuse to accept Obama as their president, has the blood of three dead Pittsburgh police officers on their hands. And I don't expect the rhetoric to cool down any time soon.

We can only hope, and pray, that sensible people will prevail.

Throwing My Arms Around Morrissey

2009-04-04T13:08:00.003-05:00

I think since I reference Him in this blog's subtitle, I should at least occasionally post some news about Morrissey or my obsession with him.

This is Morrissey weekend for me. Tonight I am going to see him at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. It ain't much of a ballroom -- it's more just a giant pit with a horrible sound system, and I have seen him there at least three times already, but it's only a mile or so away from where I live so I can walk there.

Monday night I am going to see Him in Minneapolis, at a place that looks to be a great, once grand and recently refurbished old theater. That should be fun.

Actually both shows should be fun. Tonight I will be going with my friend Michael, whom I saw Morrissey with in Milwaukee last year, then we will be meeting my other half, Stephen, at, appropriately enough, the Wild(e) Pug salon, which is an English-inspired gay club, which may or may not have music and drinks that bring to mind Dear Old Blighty (or they may just play thump-thump music and have go-go boys wearing Union Jacks. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but after a Morrissey show?)

Monday Stephen and I will be driving up to Minneapolis, which I have never been to before, so I can see Him there, then we will hang out a bit in one half of the Twin Cities before driving back to Chicago Tuesday. On my list of things to do up there is visit a cafe called the Wilde Roast and of course, stand in the street and toss my hat up in the air, a la Mary Tyler Moore. In this instance, I allow anyone to say, "That's so Gay!" Because, well, it is. I like it, though.

Trip details, as well as photos, of course, will be posted next week. I might just make it after all ...

My Other Blog

2009-04-04T12:22:00.003-05:00

So, as if I don't have enough on my plate already, (pun half-intended), I now blog for the Chicago Sun-Times' food section/Web site/food site on the Web.

The blog, "Digging In," (you like it? I came up with that), is filled with food features, food and restaurant news, observations on food (that's by me - I wonder about things a lot) and occasional restaurant reviews. I know, I know, as if there aren't enough people writing about food and newspapers and magazines and Web sites blogging about food. But we hope this is a little different, because it is, for the main part, written by people whose background is in news reporting. Two of the people, Janet and Lisa, actually know and write about food often -- Janet is the paper's food editor, Lisa does the 'food detective' column. So, we'll have stuff on what chef is in the running for what food award, but we will also report on restaurants that are closed by the city because of health code violations and mouse droppings in the food prep areas. We'll also cover some things that the serious "foodies" wouldn't stoop so low as to write about -- that's where I come in. I am the guy who asks the stupid questions, but who hopefully finds some interesting food news and bits and bites (another intended pun) sometimes.

I am not what you would call a "foodie." I live right around the corner from one of the most renown "foodie" haunts in Chicago, a Japanese restaurant that is open like three hours a week and supposedly is one of the few "authentic" Japanese restaurants in the metropolitan area, and I've never been there. I also live a few blocks away from one of the hottest pizza places in the city, but I have never been there and do not intend to go there, because the place is so cool, so hip, that they cannot even bring themselves to say, in the window, that they are a pizza place/bakery. Seriously. My other half and I have walked past many a time and have wondered if the joint is a neo-retro hardware/furniture store, an organic bakery or rustic art gallery. No menu in the window, no hours posted, and they've got some ambiguous 'what could it be?' name, as well. I don't get it.

But I do like food. I like eatin' it, like cooking (sometimes) like watching other people cook, like trying to figure out what's in certain dishes. I like reading magazines about food and I get all breathless when I walk by the kitchen showrooms in the Merchandise Mart.

So we'll see how this goes. Every New Year's I resolve to be published in one place I haven't been before, and I guess this kind of sort of fulfills that resolution for this year. Who knows, maybe Lisa, janet and I will become sort of a Siskel, Ebert and friend of food writers. And soon, radio and TV shows will be clamoring for our witty and wicked insights. I can dream, can't I?

Ivri Lider Kissed a Girl

2009-03-31T17:41:00.001-05:00

... and he liked it. It would be one thing if someone merely covered the Katy Perry song and even slowed it down quite a bit, but when that someone is a gay man, like Israeli pop star Ivri Lider, the song becomes something different altogether.

His version, introspective and, well, for lack of a better word, questioning, is not a cover version, it is a brilliant song in its own right. The combination of the acoustic treatment, his weary, somewhat worried, perhaps kind of confused, voice, takes the situation, shakes it up and puts it back down, all upside down. The tenor of the song is especially brought to the forefront when, just as Perry sang in her version, he says, "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it." Then to top it off, you have a nice-looking woman enter the room (a bathroom?), walk out, and he soon follows her.

Or I could just be reading way too much into it. I think not. Nothing black and white about it; it's all gray, and I guess that's why I like it. Ivri Lider is just brilliant.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - He's a Bear

2009-03-27T11:48:00.000-05:00

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - He's a Bear

This show, much like this 90-second clip from it, is hilarious. And, much like in this clip, they often go places you'd think, "Oh no, they're not ... oh, they are!" going to, all the while, of course, while you are laughing your ass off watching them.

Lisa Lampenelli and Simon Cowell

2009-03-26T14:44:00.001-05:00

Everything that Lisa Lampanelli says is wrong, wrong, wrong. And I laugh my ass off listening to her. People think Kathy Griffin is bad and funny? Lisa wipes the floor with her. Hilarious.

'That Ripping, Nagging Feeling That I Am Inferior'

2009-03-25T00:58:00.003-05:00

A 17-year-old in Vermont testifies for equal marriage. Is it OK for me to say that a 17-year-old is my new hero?

(By the way, what's wrong with Splenda? Have I missed something?)

This Show Cooks

2009-03-14T14:30:00.003-05:00

Don't fear The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, the current production of Theatre Mir, which is playing at the city of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Storefront Theatre downtown (it's across the street from the Chicago Cultural Center). Don't be afraid of being hit with some difficult to digest (no pun intended, really) political discourse. Don't be afraid of shouting or ranting or yet another take on a dispute that seems cannot ever be resolved.

Do go there and go into it expecting to hear the real stories of real people who live in the Middle East -- Arabs, Israelis, Christians -- and how they go about their everyday lives, amid suicide bombings, humiliating checkpoints, being cut off from their families and their traditions, being targeted by those who want to kill them for no good reason, but also as they cook, eat, dine together and discuss their dreams and what they hope for their futures.

Food is at the center of this production. Like the director said after one of the shows last week (the one I went to, on Thursday), the playwright cold not just go to Israel and say, "Hey, tell me about your life," but he could ask them to talk about a meaningful dish and prepare that dish then, in the course (no pun intended, again) of preparing that food, they would open up and discuss their lives and how they live despite their uncertain futures. This tool works both ways, actually. I think it might be a tough sell to a lot of people to tell them, "OK, we want you to watch this play where people portraying these interviewees talk about life in the Middle East," but when you say, "You're going to hear and see people preparing the foods that are meaningful to them, and they'll also give you a glimpse of what it's really like to live there," the potential audience becomes more intrigued.

There are a few moments that are tough to watch, but powerful, as well, such as when an older woman talks about shopping at a grocery store and she sees Arab flower sellers outside beforehand and those young women turn out to be suicide bombers or when an Arab cook and cafe owner sees that he will not be able to pass on the 1,200-year-old tradition of what he cooks and the place he runs, to his children, because the checkpoints have killed his business. Or the Israeli bus driver who drives a bus on a route that is the most popular for suicide bombers.

It's not all bombings and that, there are some lighter moments, as well, so when you and yours discuss the show afterward, you'll be able to laugh at one or two things. Oh, and the food smells great. Unfortunately, the audience doesn't get to taste any of it.

One of the best things about the show, though, is that there is no "big" ending. The show doesn't pretend to have the answers that would end this situation. There is merely a hope, expressed by an elderly woman, for peace. Beyond that, everything else is open to discussion.

The View From My (Back) Window

2009-03-14T14:17:00.002-05:00

Ah, to lay about on the back porch railing, scratching yourself, gnawing on the post, and leaving behind some poop, on a breezy Saturday afternoon.

Parking Available

2009-03-10T14:06:00.005-05:00

Near the end of 2008, the city of Chicago, with no public input and a minimum, absolute minimum of scrutiny from the city council, rubber-stamped the mayor's deal to sell the city's parking meters to a private firm for a one-time payment of $1.2 billion.

The firm then changed the rates on the meters. It now costs 25 cents to park for 15 minutes in the city, working out to $1 an hour and in time, that rate is expected to jump to $6.50 an hour by 2013. Also, you now have to feed the meters 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on holidays. Oh, and another thing -- the city has lowered the 'boot' bar from three tickets to two, so once you get two parking tickets, your car gets "Da Boot," which leads to a cost of about a couple hundred bucks to get the boot removed.

Yep, the city is squeezing those who can least afford it. But the people are fighting it, in their own special way. Now, there are things about Chicagoans I hate, such as their penchant to 'save' their shoveled out parking spots on public streets with old furniture, thereby making most of the city's residential streets look like a huge trailer park through winter. But this I like. Rather than pay the mayor, i mean, the man, automobile owners are finding a way around this absurd parking meter robbery, either by parking in private garages or taking public transit/bikes, whatever to work.

Check out the picture here, that I took on a Sunday morning downtown, near the Merchandise Mart. Given, Sunday mornings are among the easiest times to find parking downtown, but this was astonishing. Normally there would be, about 8:30 a.m., a spot here and a spot there, but on this one block, nearly every parking spot was open! Take that, Mr. Mayor and you parking meter thugs!

Phone Tree

2009-03-08T17:48:00.003-05:00

I've got the 20-month itch. Yeah, I've had my current cell phone for almost two years now, and I'm itching for a new one. I see all these fancy dancy ones the kids have and I look at my boring but perfectly serviceable Motorola phone and I think, geez, I'd like to have better-looking pictures from my phone, I'd like to have an easier time composing text messages, I'd like something as cool and sleek and with it as I am (Ha!). So I've been looking around at phones and phone service plans and I say, it's like (human, automotive or real estate) porn, in that everything is portrayed to be so sexy and the lighting is almost always great, and you think, "wow, i wonder what it would be like to play around with that one!" In the same way that you think, "Wow, that's stunning," then, "But can I really feel comfortable in a loft with floor to ceiling windows? Is that really me?" You might also think, as I have, "Whoa, that Blackberry Pearl is like a precious jewel; the LG/Samsung/HTC touch screen is something out of 'A Clockwork Orange' if they had cell phones in that movie -- but could it really withstand my fingerprints, my mindlessly dropping it in my bag, my sometimes driving so erratically that it flies from the passenger seat onto the floor of my car?"

Then there's the matter of social responsibility to consider. Verizon supposedly has the best service/coverage of the major carriers. But the newsletters I get from the Communications Workers of America, my union, tell me that Verizon has worked to smash any efforts by its employees to unionize, or to even meet regarding unions, telling them lies about how it would affect their jobs and pay and generally intimidating them into not organizing. Then my union says it supports AT&T, because it allows its workers to belong to unions, and the CWA even has deals with AT&T for like a 10% discount off its monthly service charges. Great, but AT&T generally is thought to have just about the worst phone call quality in the Chicago area, no matter what their ads say. And, then I got an e-mail from I think it was Air America, saying that AT&T donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the McCain/Palin campaign last year and has generally been quite supportive of Republicans. And AT&T has the iphone, but I've already got an ipod touch, so I get the apps and all that and besides, I don't really want to be that connected, and the iphone service plan is more expensive than normal phones' plans.

Reading cell phone and cell service reviews on Web sites is a waste of time, I've decided, because for every review you see that says, for instance, "The Behold is the greatest phone I have ever owned," or "AT&T has the best customer service of any provider," there is always another reviewer who says, "This phone is a $300 piece of crap" and "AT&T used to be good but they suck. I'm going back to Verizon." But then you go over to the Verizon reviews and you see someone who says, "Their phones are great but Verizon has the worst plans and they add on fees without telling you and they won't even replace the phone that arrived in 12 pieces in the mail." (I am paraphrasing, here, but just imagine a cellular "Mad Libs" and you get the idea.)

So maybe I'll just stay with my current cell phone service provider, T-Mobile, and upgrade my phone in a couple months, when I get a 'discount' to do so, even though I would wind up paying more money than someone new to T-Mobile, who hasn't paid their bills regularly over the past two years and hasn't needed any additional service and has taken good care of his phone. Why not just jump to another company and get a brand new phone for free, as opposed to paying like $149 or whatever? Or just sign up for another two years with T-Mobile just to avoid the headache of switching over and stick with a Motorola phone. Oh wait, Motorola is laying off thousands of workers, which is a bit evil, and they and T-Mobile are profiting from the loss of employment by people who need to support their families. Oy. Just give me a paper cup with a string on it.

Hat Trick!

2009-03-02T03:03:00.003-06:00

This is what happens when you hold Blackhawks construction helmet night on the same night as when a player -- in this case Johnathan Toews -- scores a hat trick.

FYI, a hat trick, which doesn't happen that often (think a grand slam home run in baseball -- maybe once or twice a year per team) is when one player scores three goals in a game. For Toews, last month was the first hat trick of his two-year old NHL career. Additionally, when a hat trick is scored, fans often throw their chappeaus on the ice to honor the achievement. On this night, however, hundreds of plastic construction helmets rained down onto the ice at the United Center. Thing is, though, what was Toews' third goal of the night was subsequently disallowed because his stick was too high when the goal was made. Not long afterward, though, he scored yet another goal, which was not in doubt. The hats -- though not as many as before -- came down once again.

"There Are No Civilians Anymore"

2009-03-01T20:08:00.003-06:00

"Broadcasting legend" "Icon" whatever, Paul Harvey, died this weekend at 90 years old. The tributes have been pouring in this weekend, on the radio, in newspapers and on TV. He was a very Right Wing guy who probably had the same beliefs as a Rush Limbaugh, but wrapped his little radio segments in a manner that was "aw shucks, by gosh," which made him more palatable than a Limbaugh/Hannity type, but it was sometimes infuriating hearing him because he'd state his opinion as fact, and even through the economic disaster that was the Bush years, he'd always frame the news in a way that pointed out that some people were still making money and working and those who were out of work were just too lazy to look for work or enjoying their welfare handouts.

I've been withholding any thoughts on the occasion of his passing because I thought it would be inappropriate and in bad form to say just how right wing and wrong he was on the air and what a shameless shill he was for his advertisers and how he sold a Republican agenda to millions with his folksy, downhome tone, which certainly was not ever in Middle America's best interests. I thought, "so what?" he's dead now, and while I am not happy upon anyone's passing, it's best to hold your tongue and let his family and friends mourn and hold back any criticism of the man because it just doesn't look good so soon after his passing.

But I can't hold back, not after yet another 'tribute' to him, this time on CNN. Following a somber "In memory" shot of Mr. Harvey, CNN then broadcast a replay of an interview Larry King did with him in 2003. Like the many times I happened to hear his show because it is broadcast on WGN radio, which I listen to most of the time, I could not listen to more than about three minutes of this man talk without screaming, "Oh, F-- you, you idiot!" at the screen. Larry King asked Paul Harvey about 9-11 and what he did that day and then how it affected him. Mr. Harvey (see, I'm showing some deference by calling him "Mister") seemed more pained and more drawn to prayer a couple minutes before, when he looked back at a 45-minute vocal chord procedure, since without it his broadcast career could have ended. He then said that 9-11 didn't affect him as much as it would have had he been based in New York City, since he worked out of Chicago and he just didn't have the same sort of emotional response that a New Yorker would have had, such as worrying about the safety of loved ones, either on that day or any following day. What a simplistic, narrow-minded way of thinking. The terrorists who killed thousands on 9-11 did it by hijacking AIRPLANES. Those airplanes could just as easily have been flown into the Sears Tower or the John Hancock Building as the World Trade Center. And if you don't feel anything because you are in Chicago and somehow believe the invisible shield over the city will stop any planes from crashing into our downtown, can you not even feel the least bit of empathy for your FELLOW AMERICANS in New York? Or are they different because oh, they have different values than you? Or because there are so many New Yorkers who have darker skin than you? How can anybody, any American, not have felt pain when New York was attacked? Paul Harvey, though, just turned the page. Larry King even asked him if he felt as though Chicago was at danger because you know, it is a pretty recognizable MAJOR AMERICAN CITY, and he just said "no," as if to say, "why would anyone want to fly a plane into a building in Chicago? We're Midwesterners, we haven't done anything bad enough to make foreigners hate us, not like those New Yorkers."

Then, then, Mr. I'm so tuned into what real Americans think and feel was asked how 9-11 changed him. And you know what he said? He didn't say that he now cherishes the little things, he didn't say that he now draws his friends and family closer than before, he didn't say that there are no hyphenated-Americans anymore; we are all one country, etc., no, no, he said that the one thing that he realized, his big realization, after 9-11, was, "THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS ANYMORE."

He then muttered some crap about "our planners" who "show deference" to "civilians" throughout the world don't realize that in the wars we fight now, "there are no civilians." Think about that. This old man, who everyone this weekend is jumping over to show respect to and praise to the high heavens, pretty much advocated just fucking bombing the shit out of any country we go to war with, just fucking flattening these godless, horrible, war-loving peoples, because they're all out to get us, anyway. What this guy said, was, if we think that one guy has weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just bomb the whole country, since the Iraqis are probably hiding nuclear bombs in their houses or huts or whatever the fuck they live in. If we don't like the way that North Koreans say things, then knock the whole country out before they get a chance to use whatever weapons they have on us. Same thing for Iran. And Afghanistan. And you better watch out, too, India. Pakistan? Don't get any ideas, or else we'll scorch the whole lot of you. You know what, we don't need a reason -- you're all out to get us anyway, what with your fatwas and ayatollahs and 'Death to America,' so we're just gonna kill you all, because "there are no civilians anymore."

What an a-hole. And they claim he had an audience, at one point, of some 20 or 25 million people? GOOD DAY.

Tomei, Tomei, Tomei

2009-02-22T16:15:00.002-06:00

(The following is an excerpt of a profile I wrote for the March issue of Fra Noi. I thought it appropriate to include here on the eve of the Academy Awards, for which Marisa Tomei is nominated -- again -- for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. I especially feel compelled to reprint my article here after I caught a snippet of Dean Richards' Oscar pre-game show on WGN radio Sunday afternoon. I didn't listen to much of it, because as soon as I turned it on I heard some woman say, "When she gives back the Oscar for 'Vinny and Me (sic) then I'll ..." I then shouted 'F- you, you moron,' then immediately turned the radio off. You get the point. This idiot couldn't even bring herself to say "My Cousin Vinny," let alone give Marisa Tomei, someone obviously is much more talented than the hack who was dissing her on the radio on a Sunday afternoon has, the respect she deserves. So here's my turn on Marisa Tomei and the pretty intriguing career she has put together so far.)
***

It is time to forever remove the word “fluke” or “undeserved” when you talk about the accolades actress Marisa Tomei has earned in her career. A small number of people cling to the urban myth that Tomei wasn’t really the winner of the 1992 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in “My Cousin Vinny,” and a larger group of film snobs just dismiss her performance as Joe Pesci’s girlfriend in that comedy. But any such discussion of Maria Tomei’s acting ability is now a moot point.

Not that her ability as an actress has suddenly emerged in Darren Aronofsky’s gritty 2008 film, “The Wrestler,” for which she has collected an armful of awards and critical acclaim. She displayed just how capable and in control she was of any material she was given way back with “My Cousin Vinny.” Now, some people, even those who welcome her evolution as a “serious” actress may scoff at that film, because it was a comedy or because she and Pesci played caricatures of New York Italian-Americans, or just because they somehow had their cosmopolitan sensibilities rankled by the portrayals or the story in general, but Tomei’s performance in that film was spot-on, her character was funny without becoming some sort of clown and if you dared look past the surface, you would have seen a strong, intelligent, independent woman that Tomei brought to life onscreen. Whether you regard “My Cousin Vinny” as a guilty pleasure or just a pleasure, it is impossible to say that Tomei’s recognition for her work in that film was somehow undeserved.

If you had not been paying attention though, you may not have realized that in the ensuing years between “Vinny” and “The Wrestler,” Marisa Tomei has not settled for the easy, predictable roles, that she has stretched her talents and the image some may have had of her, and that she has consistently earned the well-deserved recognition of her peers and critics with a trail of serious, well-regarded work.

In the course of her career, she has collected some three dozen separate awards and nominations for his work. From her well-received role as Michael Keaton’s wife in 1994’s “The Paper” to a solid performance as a troubled single mother in Nick Cassavetes’ “Unhook the Stars” in 1996 (for which she won a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Tomei showed early on after “Vinny” that she wasn’t going to fall into anything easy or predictable. Other roles of hers which garnered critical praise include “Welcome to Sarajevo,” and 2001’s “In the Bedroom,” for which she got her second Academy Award nomination.

More recently, she has earned the continued respect of filmgoers and her peers through movies such as “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” “War, Inc.,” and “The Wrestler.”

In “The Wrestler,” Tomei bares all, emotionally and (nearly) physically. Though the movie is the story of a one-time superstar wrestler, played by Mickey Rourke, who, though doctors have warned him that if he continues to wrestle -- in VFW halls, high school gyms, et al -- his life is in danger because of a heart condition, he can’t tear himself away from it because that’s who he is and it’s all he’s got, it wouldn’t be half the film it is without Marisa Tomei’s performance as a stripper whose situation parallels that of the wrestler’s. Tomei is naked in a few scenes, for an extended period of time, in the movie, but her nakedness is hardly gratuitous nor is it prurient in any way. In fact, there are scenes where Tomei is completely naked but what draws you to her is her body language and her face. When she is dancing in a private room for a group of men half her age out on a bachelor’s party and the young men, instead of being turned on by her ridicule her and her 40-something body, or when she is dancing onstage, alone, and she realizes that not one man in the crowd is looking at her, it’s absolutely heart-wrenching to see. In other areas of the film, she brings sweetness, sexiness and strength to her character, which few other actresses likely would be capable of. It’s a world away from her part in “My Cousin Vinny,” but in the heart of both roles there is a truth that Marisa Tomei brings out, honestly and brilliantly.

Director Joe Mantello, who directed her on stage, told the New York Times Tomei had no problem with sharing a dressing room with other actors and on stage, ''she's sort of fearless. 'She never thinks, 'Oh, I'm going to look like a jerk. She doesn't have that kind of ego.”

Much-deserving for a long time of praise for her work as an actress and human being, it’s about time to give her all the credit she deserves.

Grammy How I Love Ya...

2009-02-18T18:42:00.002-06:00

Yes, I know it's a week or so after the fact, but here are my notes on the Grammys. I didn't intend to blog about it, hell, I didn't even plan to watch it, but I started to watch after it had begun, and I was hooked. Not that it was great or notable awards presentation - it was infuriating at times -- I actually yelled at the TV a few times, for gross injustices like the absurd amount of awards that Robert Plant got (huh? what decade is this? Now I understand why rappers and others get so upset) but it was great TV. So here's what I thought at the time, written on the pink paper bag that my local card shop put my St. Valentine's Day cards in.

* My spine will tingle every time I think of Jennifer Hudson's performance tonight. Stunning. Classy. Brilliant. Strong.

* Coldplay dressed like rock stars.

* Adele won 'Best New Artist'! Yes! Take that, Jonas Bros.! Oh, she's so cute...

* I want the jacket Kanye West wore. But what was with his Ghostbusters hair?

* Samuel L. Jackson and Justin TImberlake are buddies?

* What was on Morgan Freeman's hand?

* Record of the Year? Robert Plant? What year? 1978? You gotta be freakin' kiddin' me.

* Is every performance going to be a duet? Or a superstar trio?

* Radiohead backed by the USC Marching Band? Cool.

* Of all the songs Sir Paul McCartney could sing -- "I Saw Her Standing There?"

* It was cool though to see McCartney cheering on and singing along from his seat for the Four Tops, or rather One Top, Smokey Robinson, Ne-Yo and Jamie Fox.

* Neil Diamond is a freakin' legend. Still, he had a ground-breaking, No. 1 album this past year, and he sings "Sweet Caroline"? Geez.

* Damn, a lot of great musicians died last year. Too bad they were each honored for like three seconds apiece, if that long.

Follow the Money

2009-02-07T03:35:00.002-06:00

News item, Feb. 5, 2009:
Kmart issues recall due to salmonella risk
(Chicago Sun-Times)

Feb. 1, 2009:
Salmonella-tainted peanut products spark public fury
(Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Jan. 22, 2009:
In peanut-salmonella outbreak, 125-plus products recalled
(Newsday)

Commentary, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 6, 2009.
"America's food supply has never been safer."
by David Martosko
(David Martosko is the director of research for the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is supported by restaurant and food comapnies.)
Remarkably, Martosko did not even allude to the peanut panic. His column (which should have been a letter to the editor) was a criticism of the organic food movement, which he derided as "misguided activism and food snobbery." In it, he also praised President Obama for not -- so far at least-- caving in to the demands of food snobs and organic activists. He then says it is "time for all of us to recognize the 'food revolution' movement for what it really is: a gourmet coup d'etat."

"Coup d'etat"? Language snob.

Big Wheels

2009-02-05T11:29:00.002-06:00

This surely should be the subject of a post sometime in the future when I have more time to devote to the writing and the thinking for it, but the question that has come up recently (like in the past couple years) for me, is, 'My God, what's going on with me? What's happening? What sort of strange transformation is taking place? I'm having these strange, alien, uncontrollable lustful feelings I've not felt for these particular objects of affection before, ever. Does it mean I'm becoming a different person, a la Bill Bixby turning into a green giant Lou Ferrigno?

I speak, here, of what I've been feeling when I look at and think about some ... automobiles. Like the Nissan Rogue, the Pontiac Vibe, the Mercedes GLK, the Landrover, the Mazda 3 and the Lincoln Mark VI (OK, I kid about that last one. It was big among my family when I was growing up and I will use any excuse to use Roman numerals). I am not a 'gearhead.' I don't know what goes on inside the guts of automobiles. I can change a tire, have never changed my own oil (except for that ill-advised Vespa I owned in college, geez, what a mess that was in so many ways) and most importantly, people who have had a close relationship with cars since their youth and know much more about them than me live (in oh, so many ways) in an entirely different world than me, and never, ever, except for when my car needs fixin', will our worlds meet.

Still, I get really, for lack of a better term, turned on by certain cars (such as the above-mentioned models). It's almost a sexual sort of feeling. The zippy, nimble Mazda3 hatchback has a sexy look to it -- look at it from a certain angle and you'd swear it's winking at you. Models such as the Vibe, Toyota Matrix, and small SUVs like the GLK are, well, quite versatile. And living through and dealing with yet another Chicago winter makes one dream of getting in a nice, warm, muscular, welcoming SUV/car crossover like the Rogue or GLK, and seeing that snow pile up gives fuel -- pun intended -- to the thought of how easy it would be to tackle those natural and manmade snow drifts in a tough, yet refined Landrover.

Pictured here is the 2010 Mercedes GLK. It's Benz's new model, their late to the party entry to the small, urban SUV market. And it's sexy as hell.

The Conservative Soul - Brooks vs. Sullivan

2009-02-05T11:23:00.001-06:00

Conservative Cagematch! Sully v. Brooksie!

If only more people who dared to call themselves 'conservative' these days could express themselves as intelligently as these two -- in spite of how I may disagree with their conclusions and assertions -- without bumper sticker chanting and shouting and parroting of catchphrases from radio blowhards, I'd listen more to what they say.

Sullivan, though, succinctly and deftly, disproves the belief that George W. Bush (or any in his crowd) was a conservative. He brought no real tax breaks, spent money wildly and left us and future generations with a debt that won't go away for a long time, if ever.

It's good to finally (after 16 years) have some grownups in the White House.

Soooo Not My Church (Again)

2009-01-31T22:36:00.002-06:00

First "The Rat" un-excommunicates a Holocaust denier, and now this.

He has named Fr. Gerhard Wagner of as auxiliary bishop of the Austrian diocese of Linz. The 54-year-old Wagner, in 2005, called Hurrican Katrina God's punishment for New Orleans' tolerance of homosexuals and laidback sexual attitudes. Wagner was happy not only because Katrina destroyed nightclubs, bars and brothels, but abortion clinics.

Oh, and another thing. Wagner first gained notoriety in 2001, when he characterized J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books as "satanism" and warned of the magical spells and formulas used in the books.

He is to be ordained on March 22.

Satan Rejected His Soul

2009-01-18T14:29:00.003-06:00

And that's why he must stand outside the cemetery gates -- forlorn, yet content. The Canadian Maxim magazine has a one-page interview with Morrissey in its February issue. Apparently the premise of the Q and A is a 'Last 24 hours on earth' kind of thing and the interviewee is to reflect (succinctly, of course) on his life, his possible afterlife and how he might spend his last living breaths. Some pretty good questions, and the wit of Morrissey shines through in most of his responses. Here it is, so you don't have to spend any money on a copy of Maxim magazine. [thanks to MorrisseySolo/MusicSlut]

HOW DO YOU WANT TO GO? DOUBLE DECKER BUS? 10 TON TRUCK?
Concussed by a coconut.

WHICH OF YOUR SONGS PLAYS IN HEAVEN?
“Satan Rejected My Soul”

AND WHICH ONE PLAYS IN HELL?
“I Have Forgiven Jesus”

WHAT BOOK DO YOU REGRET NOT FINISHING?
The Toilets Are Closed In Your Honour, an account of the life of Cressida Dick, deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police.

WHILE ALIVE, WHAT DID YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR MONEY ON?
Legal fees.

WHO IN YOUR LIFE WOULD YOU MOST LIKED TO “KICK IN THE EYE”?
That meat-fed horror Jamie “Orrible” Oliver. If he’s a master chef, then I’m Miss Brazil 1970.

WHAT WILL BE YOUR GREATEST LEGACY?
Thundering suavity.

ANY REGRETS ABOUT BEING OUTSPOKEN?
Whatever I said, I meant.

WHEN WERE YOU HAPPIEST?
At age 12 I could juggle a plate on a stick.

NAME 1 THING YOU’RE GLAD YOU’LL NEVER HAVE TO DO AGAIN.
It will be worth being dead just to get away from Victoria Beckham.

WHAT’S THE WILDEST THING YOU EVER DID WHILE YOU WERE ALIVE?
I took some swimming lessons at the local baths.

WHAT’S YOUR LAST MEAL?
The disease of smallness - tea and toast.

DO YOU HAVE A DEATHBED CONFESSION?
I’ve never seen myself naked. It seemed impolite to look.

TO WHOM WOULD YOU WHISPER YOUR LAST GOODBYE?
To my very best friend… myself.

How Cold Was It?

2009-01-17T22:00:00.004-06:00

The accompanying phone photo was taken from just inside my apartment this past week. The wind chill factor was somewhere in the area of 30-degrees below zero this past Thursday and part of Friday. The photo quality would have been better had I opened the door and had not had to deal with the fogging up glass, but the back porch storm door was frozen to the ground beneath it. It's gonna be crazy when this past week's icicles begin to fall, all over the city.

CNN's Rick Sanchez Rocks!

2009-01-15T12:40:00.001-06:00

Exposing the idiocy, hypocrisy and utter self-serving, hate-fueled absurdity that is "Joe" the Plumber, whose real name is Sam and who is not even a plumber, daring to say that media is the problem and media should like, you know, be barred from reporting.

Face it, Sam, and everyone who thinks this creep is some kind of a hero or iconic figure -- YOU LOST. The crap you stand for -- if you stand for anything besides being against good and hating anything unfamiliar, was REJECTED by a majority of the American people in November and for the next four, probably eight, and possibly 12 or 16 years, you will be in the minority.

You don't deserve this platform you've been taking advantage of, you haven't earned it and Rick Sanchez rightly and properly calls you and your ilk out. You don't know Jack, Sam, and every time you or those deluded folk who are all rah rah for you make the mistake of opening your mouths, you only expose more of your ignorance.

Rick Sanchez, you've just gained a new fan in me.

He Loves Paris

2009-01-11T14:10:00.001-06:00

I'm starting to feel some Morrissey fever. The video of "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" has been released and I think it's great. The song sounds like classic Morrissey; as far as the sound of it and the lyrics, as well. I really like the sound of the drums -- don't know what it is called when when there is a very brief drum solo but it's a wonderful touch, that has appeared in other Moz songs. I like the spartan look of the video and of course the puppies make it irressistable.

Only three months until his tour hits our shores. I'm already envisioning what the T-shirts will look like...

You Might Be a Big Fat Pig If ...

2009-01-07T00:03:00.002-06:00

at the Foodstuffs counter at your work building's food court, the woman making your salad asks you if you're sure that's enough bacon on your salad, then the trainer who weighed you and took your measurements for your gym's "Biggest Loser" type contest asked you if you think the the XL t-shirt that comes with your entry in the contest would be big enough for you.

I don't want to be the fattie anymore. I want to be able to wear cool clothes. I don't want to have to take high blood pressure medication for the rest of my life. I don't want to get diabetes. I don't want to get a heart attack before I'm 50 (actually I don't want to have a heart attack ever). I don't want to eat like a drunk drinks. I want to play hockey again. I want to walk through MarketDays this summer with my shirt off.

I've made myself a salad for lunch tomorrow. And I'm going back to the gym tomorrow night. And Thursday. I can lose 10 pounds by the first week of Feb. 15 by mid-March. 20 by the beginning of May. 30 by July 4. This is not the only thing I need to do in the near future, but it is No. 1 right now.

Back to Work

2009-01-05T10:03:00.002-06:00

Well, that whole Christmas/New Year's Holiday period was nice. The week of doing absolutely nothing, with not having to either go to work or work on anything for anyone else, was lovely, as well.

But now we have to switch gears, and it's going to be a doozy going from neutral to whatever gear it would be that enables one to go faster and up on a steep incline. Besides the 37.5 hour a week job, I also have to do two pieces a month for the monthly paper, I'm starting work on a soon-to-be-unveiled blog for my mainstream media employer (so no slacking off for weeks at a time, as I would be tempted to do with a personal blog) and starting this week I am enrolled in two courses at DePaul, one an introduction to community/public relations, the other in quantitative reasoning. Both the classes are online (you think I wanna trudge through the snow any more than I have to the next few months?) Add to this the ongoing family drama, including the one day a week job of driving my mother around to her bank, her grocery store, her doctor, etc., etc. (she has two other offspring, both in their late 50s, but she'd not dream of asking them for anything even though they both pillaged her home and savings over the last decade, but I digress.) It's quite daunting, all that is in front of me. I am amazed at how people (maybe some of you!) are able to handle two or three jobs, do other things on the side and still have a personal life or at the very least not become a hermit for months on end.

Oh, and I've resolved to drop 40 pounds by the end of summer. Shirtless at MarketDays, that's what I'm going to be -- no matter how much I've lost by then. That's my way of motivating myself to keep working out and to push myself away from the Taco Bell and get the salad at McDonald's instead of the McRib. That'll be the toughest thing since food, like Rhoda Morgenstern used to say, was the first thing I loved that ever loved me back, and I expect to go back for some of that love and reassurance and temporary comfort often.

Yeah, it may be a bumpy ride, but it may also be really fun. Let's go!

To Serve My Country

2009-01-04T22:40:00.003-06:00

Before Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat of President-Elect Barack Obama, Senators, like Democratic leader Harry Reid, said they would not recognize anyone the Tainted Gov. appointed to the seat. They would not let the appointee in the Senate, they wouldn't give him the oath of office, they wouldn't so much as give the appintee the time of day. Now that he has named the unremarkable but untainted Roland Burris to the seat, they may have to change their tune. Who knew the crazy corrupt governor would actually go ahead and name someone to fill the Senate seat and that someone would be crazy enough to accept the appointment, after the criminal complaint was made public and no one, whether senator, pundit or voter, would take seriously the work of anyone who'd actually accept the office from Blagojevich?

Since 1) Burris has not been implicated in any of Blagojevich's shenanigan and he's widely held to be a clean politician and 2) is an African-American, the Senate can't really bar him from the place if he shows up to take his place, as he has said he intends to do.

So what to do? Put me at the door. Are you listening Sen. Reid? Sen. Durbin? Do you see the picture alongside this post? That's me. You may know me as a blogger/reporter perhaps future spokesman for a U.S. Senator ;) but before I was any of these things I was a doorman (please don't call us 'bouncers' that's vulgar and only invites bad behavior on the part of guests) for a swingin' joint in the Uptown neighborhood here in Chicago. In addition to telling people when it was their turn to leave, whether or not it was last call or they had finished their drinks, and keeping an eye on the crowd, I often told people they weren't going to get in that evening. Whether they were too drunk to get in or it was already last call or I just didn't like the looks of them, I had no problem at all keeping people out of the place I was charged with keeping control of. I've had people give me the sad faces and tell me their friends were inside or girls try to flirt with me or guys wave cash in front of me just so they could get in the bar, and none of that had any effect on me and none of them got in.

So, you see, to me there is no difference between the douchebag white former frat boy Vince Vaughn wannabes telling me at 10 minutes to closing that they will only stay for as long as it takes to down four shots and "don't you want our money?" while waving $20s or $50s in front of me and the hapless yet ambitious black politician who would presume to say "I have been legally appointed! The people deserve two senators!" In either case I would keep looking straight ahead, shake my head that they are not getting in and tell them when needed to get out of the way of the people leaving the bar/Senate chambers. And if he didn't get out of the way after closing time or if he dared step a foot inside the door, I'd gently but firmly explain that this was a non-negotiable matter, with my arms crossed, hands under the biceps, to make them look bigger. (Boy, sometimes i miss those days. But not that often.)

Mama Said Knock You Out!

2009-01-01T01:06:00.002-06:00

Yep, getting home in time to watch Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper ring in the new year paid off big time, since I got to hear her yell at a heckler, "Screw you! Do I come to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth?!" Yeah, she said it. On national TV. Perhaps it was delayed on the West Coast or something. But we heard it here in Chicago, loud and clear. I'm shocked -- shocked that CNN didn't have her on a 7-second delay!

Oh, and the guy who made the vulgar gesture at Anderson's usual partner? Classy. I liked it when she told the drunken idiot, "OK, it's time to go now." Putting reporters in the eye of the drunken storm is never a good idea. I imagine there are many memos and such going around CNN in the next day or so. Loved Anderson's puffy coat, though.

Happy 2009! It's gotten off to a brilliant start!