Meta man

Cleaning up some loose ends and inaccuracies from the last couple posts...

* It's actually only about 250 on the grid system from the bus stop to the apartment, meaning I only ran about 550 yards. But of course, the shorter the distance run, the worse it was that my heart nearly exploded.

* I actually used the ATM in Chicago Place today - the actual text is "ATMs are a fast and easy way to access your accounts." Again, thanks for clearing that up. I think the most amusing thing is actually this: like 95% of ATMs, this machine only gives cash in multiples of $20. However, the picture on the display for "Cash is being dispensed" shows what else but a ten-dollar bill. Well-played, there.

* There is one other store in Chicago Place in which I might be caught dead - a book store on the second floor. Whatever.

Commentary on the week in TV will arrive after tonight's CSI.

Maybe the rain hates you

In case anyone was wondering just how out of shape I am right now, I just ran about 2/5ths of a mile and I want to die. Granted, I was running full sprint pretty much the whole time, and that's actually not the smallest amount in the world (it's roughly 700 yards), but still. It's amazing I'm even able to type this right now. When I got to my building I tried to bound up the steps and it felt like I was wearing lead weights around my ankles. My shins are throbbing. My lungs are only just now ceasing to feel like they were filled with rust. I felt like I was on the verge of blackout, and my head still feels so heavy I can't hold it straight up - it's like there's a bowling ball on my shoulders that happens to contain my eyes.

No, I'm not proud of any of these things. In fact, it's fairly alarming. I already knew that I wasn't much for running at the current time, but the very idea that a 700-yard dash would leave me feeling on the verge of a massive coronary attack is something that should scare anyone. On top of all that, I've been hovering perilously close to 200 pounds for a while now, a weight I promised myself, a long time ago, that I would never reach, and that if I approached it I would take that as a starting point to get into better shape. Well, I've been putting it off, but I don't think I can put it off any longer. In the words of Sam Cooke, a change is gonna come. I'm starting something - though I think I'll brainstorm with my dad on exactly what - this weekend, at the latest.

So, what brought all this on? Rain. I hate it so much. Yeah, I knew it was supposed to rain today, but to me "showers" means a different thing from "totally fucking pouring." My shirt and pants are hanging over the shower rod, they're so wet. I just hope my cell phone, which was in my pocket and thus barely protected at all, so wet was it, is okay.

Fun with Chicago Place

My sister was complaining about this blog's recent slew of TV-themed entries, and with a new Lost coming this week there will probably be more soon, so let's break the monotony with an entry about work.

This entry isn't about work per se, since my job isn't particularly interesting and I really don't think it's in my best interest to go into specifics about where I'm working on a public blog - if you really need to know, you can IM or e-mail me for more. I assure you that you will not be interested, however.

What really made me want to write this entry was something I saw at Chicago Place today, which should at least give you a rough idea of where I work in the city. Chicago Place, for those who don't know, is an odd kind of mall - it's eight stories high, and there's a Saks Fifth Avenue on every floor except the top one, which is the food court (and a couple other random places). You can take the escalators up all eight floors, which I actually did on Monday when I was talking to Drew on the phone so that I wouldn't lose him in the elevator. The view from the non-express elevator, where you can see the entire bank of escalators as you go up, is pretty neat-looking.

Today I noticed the ATM to the west side of the food court. On its screen were the following words: "ATMs are a convenient way to access your account."

Does that seem odd? I mean, was this the first ATM ever made? Have you ever seen another ATM that was trying to publicize its purpose? Pretty much all of them just say "Insert card," which I think is about right. I mean, there can't be anyone left in the country at this point who doesn't at least know what an ATM is, even though I'm sure there are still a few people who have never actually used one. It's just explanatory overkill. This seems kind of like going into McDonald's and seeing a big sign on the door that says, "Restaurants are a convenient place to eat when you're not at your house."

While we're on the subject, what kind of name is "Chicago Place," anyway? Seems a little uninspired. Couldn't they have contracted this one out to a naming company or something? I bet the meeting went like this:

Exec 1: Okay, we've got this eight-floor mall on Michigan Avenue and we need a name for it. It has seven floors of Saks Fifth Avenue, if that helps.
Exec 2: How about "Stacks of Saks?"
Exec 1: Ehh... too narrow. There are other stores too. And a food court on the eighth floor.
Exec 2: Okay, how about "Food Court in the Sky?"
Exec 1: See, that still only encompasses one aspect of the mall. We need something simple and unifying, but catchy.
Exec 2: Simple yet catchy... wait a second. I think I've got it. What do we know about the mall?
Exec 1: Seven floors of...
Exec 2: Ah ah - simpler.
Exec 1: Um... it's in Chicago?
Exec 2: Right...
Exec 1: It's... a place... oh. Oh wow.
Exec 2: I know.
Exec 1: All right, that's out of the way.
Exec 2: What's next?
Exec 1: Um... [leafs through folder] Some place by the Water Tower.
Exec 2: Dude.

Back in the saddle again

For years I really didn't watch very much TV at all. NBC's Tuesday and Thursday nights of Must-See TV were, in fact, weekly must-see viewing in my house from the early 90s until well into high school, but I never really got into the weekly dramas, and by the time I got to college even the few primetime shows I had kept up with were either off the air ("NewsRadio," "Seinfeld") or had been on so long that I was relatively apathetic towards them ("Friends," "Frasier") - in addition to which, it was simply much more difficult to watch that much TV in college and, because I had more friends and easier access to them, it became less important. (The TV could still be a communal thing at times, but much of what we watched was the same ten videos every hour on MTV2, largely because they could sit in the background while we talked back and forth in a way that episodic television could not.) I recall the occasional landmark episode that we actually bothered to watch - the season finale of "The West Wing" where the hurricane hits, about which I still remember Drew complaining that the use of Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" had ruined the end's impact, for example.

However, having TiVo had been slowly changing this, and now it's changing it much more. Not only have I started watching "Lost" and "House," but I've already ordered the former's first season off Amazon so as to catch up, and the latter's will probably be added to the stack in short order.

In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby writes the following about his obsession with attending every Arsenal home game, even at the expense of blowing off friends' birthdays and the like: "What do I imagine would happen to me if I didn't go to Highbury for just one evening, and missed a game that might have been crucial to the eventual outcome of the Championship race but hardly promised unmissable entertainment? The answer, I think, is this: I am frightened that in the next game, the one after the one I have missed, I won't understand something that's going on, a chant or the crowd's antipathy to one of the players; and so the place I know best in the world, the one spot outside my own home where I feel I belong absolutely and unquestionably, will have become alien to me."

That's how I feel about this sort of thing. I never felt the same compulsion with the sitcoms I watched when I was younger (I rarely even watched every second of any given episode, particularly with "Seinfeld," due to the various humiliations and awkwardness that drove me from the room), but they have few callbacks to earlier episodes and the few that exist are missable. Not so with most dramas. Even with the "previously on [x]" episode starters, one can feel lost. CSI, in particular, is fond of calling back episodes from multiple seasons in the past - last season's sixth episode was a follow-up to the sixth episode of the third season, and the Paul Millander case was stretched over several episodes from the show's pilot all the way to the middle of the second season. The apparent mystery in the show's recent premiere surrounding a second person's involvement in Nick's kidnapping in last season's finale is just another example of this. (Thus the accusation from some quarters that CSI is not as compulsively-watchable because the shows are, like Law and Order, pretty self-contained, is somewhat unfounded. It's still not as serial as a show like Lost, but neither is it one where you can watch any episode whenever and not be confused.)

So it goes with Lost - though I know most of what happened last year, I don't feel right watching it without having seen the first season. Ditto for House - though it's not as totally serial as Lost, there's still plenty of continuity from episode to episode, as Craig noted to me that last season's finale had parallels to the show's pilot. It's also why I'm aggravated at having missed House last week for My Name is Earl, which wouldn't have been so bad if that show had actually been funny or good or well-acted. The episode I missed was not actually the season premiere of House, which it turns out I had in the TiVo, but still. The parallels to Hornby's situation are pretty apt - if you miss an episode, the next time you watch there could be references you don't get, or you could be talking to someone about the show and realize that there's something you don't understand. Thanks to TiVo, I won't be missing another of any of them - what a relief.

New TV season, addendum

Just after I didn't watch the season premiere of CSI so that Alma and I could watch it together tomorrow night, I watched the premiere of Criminal Minds. Last year I attempted to get into Numb3rs because it featured actors I like and one of my favorite character types, the super-genius, but I got bored pretty fast. Criminal Minds seems to do a bit better - you've got Mandy Patinkin in the lead as a smart-guy profiler who's recovering from a traumatic incident where six agents were killed in his attempt to bring in a killer, and veteran sitcom straight-man Thomas Gibson as... well, kind of a straight-man in the midst of the other characters. They're basically the leads, and then you've got the mega-super-genius - the twenty-something multi-degree doctor who knows everything (totally cool) but is socially awkward (slightly less cool). Lastly, there's the guy who played the dippy "other man" in the execrable Diary of a Mad Black Woman, playing another... kind of straight-arrow agent.

Anyway, it was fairly formula; you know how these things are. No matter how smart the serial killer is, his computer password is somehow guessable by looking through his personal items; the first suspect is pretty much never the guilty one; the one person who can help crack the case always divulges information at the exact right moment. But it was still okay. CBS might have had another viewer if they had not announced the show's regular time slot as... ta-da, Wednesday at 9/8 Central! Oh, CBS. Such a bad, bad idea. I mean, I know they had to put the show somewhere, but not there, not for this one. Either legitimately attempt to compete with a runaway hit by counterprogramming it with Survivor: Wherever the Fuck, or just give up and run nature documentaries. Don't put on a show that appeals to probably half the same demographic of Lost but has no hope of stealing any of them. You could have left it after CSI and it would have killed in that slot! With that lead-in and a similar theme? Look what that did for Without a Trace. (Which actually premiered last week and returns to the Thursday 10/9 next week.) I know what they were trying to do - whet the appetite for Criminal Minds now, then hope everyone comes back instead of watching Lost. Ain't happenin'.

Especially not when the ending was so weird. Mandy Patinkin, having saved the day but ruing the fact that there's always another killer to catch, goes into some gas station in rural Virginia, and notices that the cashier has dozens of Polaroids of people's faces pinned up behind him and a serious speech impediment. Then as Patinkin leaves, the guy follows him out and aims a gun at his head, which Patinkin notices in a mirror... and bam! Go to credits! Now, I know Mandy Patinkin isn't dying. I saw him in the clips of next week's show. So this isn't a cliffhanger - because there's no way he can get out of it, and he's not dying, which means - you guessed it - he's imagining it. How much of it, who knows. Possibly the whole thing. I mean, regular at that station was going for under two dollars - clearly the whole scene took place in Bizarro World. I'm sure it was meant to drive home his curse of seeing serial killers everywhere, or whatever. But it was just pretty corny. If there's one thing about Criminal Minds itself that utterly, coffin-nailingly guaranteed I'll be watching Lost next week, that was it.

Anyway. Okay show, unfortunate time slot. Although opposite E-Ring and Nanny 911, Criminal Minds could well finish second in that space (no one dared challenge Lost, clearly). So I guess it's just an unfortunate time slot for me, as I wouldn't have minded giving it a couple more views. And yes, I could watch Lost live and TiVo Criminal Minds, but Lost is not coming off the TiVo in case I'm elsewhere for some reason and is probably the kind of show you wouldn't mind seeing a couple times anyway. So, sorry, Mandy. You came and you gave without taking, but I'm sending you away.

New TV season.

I've watched my fair share of TV over the years, but much of that has been sports programming - ever since The Simpsons went downhill and Family Guy went off the air and then, upon its return, was so unfunny that I refuse to go back to it no matter how many people tell me the more recent ones are looking better, I haven't been much for that old tube mainstay, fiction. CSI is about the only show I watch regularly in that vein, and I only just started watching that late in Season Four. (The sixth season begins tonight.) Over the past couple nights, however, I have at least checked out a couple programs - one new, one older. My fall TV season isn't going to be packed, but it might have a little more company.

Lost: I didn't watch a single episode of this last year, which I think makes me the only person in the country for whom that's true. But I did keep more or less abreast of the plot developments, and, for no particular reason, sat down last night and watched most of the show, save for a brief interlude early on during which Drew, Dave and I went over to Cold Stone. But I saw the opening, which was nuts, and the last 40 minutes or so, which were really no less nuts. Knowing what I know about the show up to now, and having seen what happened, I will say, as vaguely as possible so as not to spoil anything for anyone, that there is now no way this show will have a reasonable resolution. Things are far too weird, the strange coincidences far too rife. I've got a guess, but it's based largely on Wednesday's show and not too much else; regardless of what the answer is, though, it's going to be in-sane. The teaser promised that next week "the fate of all the survivors will be revealed." Can I be the first to say "I'll believe it when I see it?"

My Name is Earl: I have never - never - seen worse acting on a sitcom. I'm sure there have been sitcoms that featured worse acting (pretty much anything on the WB or UPN comes to mind), but I sure didn't see them. Honestly, everyone is terrible; no one from the actors to the director has any sense of comic timing. It doesn't help that there's no laugh track, of course, but things can certainly be laugh-out-loud funny without one. I laughed, I believe, twice during the show. Possibly three times. None were particularly boisterous. It just wasn't all that funny, and the line readings were just painful. Now, I know this was only the pilot - they still can hit their stride (Jason Lee, when on Conan the other night, said that he felt the shows were getting funnier and funnier) and with most of the exposition out of the way, things could potentially open up... but on the other hand, they could just as easily be hamstrung by a potentially one-joke premise. I like Jason Lee, but this doesn't seem like the character for him - that may yet change, but ultimately all I can say about the first episode is this: it didn't work for me.

It's more annoying because I had to choose between this and the season premiere (at least I assume it was) of House, a show I had actually watched a bit in reruns over the summer and had liked a decent amount. (Though I still have about six of them sitting in the TiVo because I don't especially like watching reruns for some reason.) Every show follows the same formula, yes, but you could say the same thing about CSI or Law and Order, both of which, I don't need to tell you, are immensely popular. And Hugh Laurie alone makes the show worth watching.

So the fall will probably look like this for me: CSI, Lost, House. (Mercifully, there are no conflicts in that group.) Maybe something else will come along; having TiVo might aid in that, though I need to keep plenty of space open for Champions League games. At least I know I'll be home in the evening.

Trivial conquest

I went out to just my second-ever night of bar trivia on Greg's invite, joining him, a couple people he knows, and Leah at the Globe. We won, which is a lot better than I did in my previous bar trivia effort (in Washington with Shannon, two years ago). Of course, this team was also more balanced than that one. For example, Round One would have been a disaster for a lot of people, as its theme was the Muppet Show and many of the questions were not at all easy - but Greg grew up on the Muppet Show and we ended up getting ten of ten. As it happens, there were seven total rounds and we led after every single one of them for an amazing wire-to-wire victory that had teams around us grumbling, jokingly I hope, about us being "ringers," whatever that means. (Seriously, what's a "ringer" in bar trivia? Is bar trivia supposed to be for stupid people and so having actual smart people show up isn't fair?)

The "matching" round was geography, matching names of Central American and Caribbean countries to blank maps of said countries, which of course I thrashed (three of the 13 teams there actually managed a perfect score in this round, but I wonder if any of the others could have done it without the names of the countries presented as a list - I really wish I'd gotten on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? back in the day, although it's hard to get to that final round when the second round is kind of a crapshoot and is, if it can be considered a test at all, a test of memory and not geographic knowledge).

The prize for winning was a $50 gift certificate... for the bar! So I guess we're going back at least once, because there's nothing like a smoke-filled environment if you really enjoy overpriced hamburgers. We also got t-shirts, but so did everyone. The entry fees apparently go to an MS charity, though, so you can't complain either way. And it was pretty fun. We all got along - no big fights over answers - and chuckled over various bits of conversation. Everything I was wearing is saturated with cigarette smoke, but I'd still do it again.

Two things I don't like

1. Someone bought billboard space right across from Wrigley and put up a sign congratulating the Cardinals on winning the Central. Motherfuckers.

2. Although the White Sox crashing out of the playoffs would be amusing (if I didn't live in Chicago, I'd be nervous for them, but when you actually live here and realize how obnoxious most Sox fans are, suddenly it's good riddance), I don't like the fact that for them to do so would almost certainly mean the Yankees would be in. I can't see that team winning in October, but that they would even have a chance is sickening. (Plus, there isn't an AL contender I truly trust right now in a seven-game series, meaning New York would have as good a chance as anyone. And that just can't be allowed.) Maybe the best scenario is for the Indians to take the Central, so it's still quite the collapse, but for the White Sox to take the wild card (at which point they'd lose in the first round anyway) and, of course, Boston to win the East.

Bear down

After looking pretty weak in their opening game, the Bears turned everything around for their home opener, burying the Lions 38-6 in a game that saw the most total points the Bears have posted since, if you can believe this, a 47-17 defeat of Tampa Bay twelve years ago. Twelve! (The high water mark during the 2001 season, easily the Bears' best of the last 12 seasons, was 37 points in the 37-31 OT win over San Francisco - a game in which, coincidentally enough, Mike Brown returned an interception for a touchdown as he did today.)

Kyle Orton looks like he might be the next Ben Roethlisberger - he doesn't put up the gaudiest stats on his own, but combined with a solid running game (Thomas Jones erased thoughts of Week One with 139 yards on just 20 carries and two scores) and a strong defense, he could get the job done. 14-of-21 for 150 and a score is nothing spectacular, but it's plenty effective, and he's certainly a confident passer (though this is sometimes his undoing, as with the interception he threw into quadruple coverage in Week One).

Next week is a big test. Which week was the fluke, the ugly loss to Washington or the blowout of Detroit? Does this win just mean that the Bears could dominate what has the potential to be football's worst division in the NFC North, or could they maybe turn into legitimate sleeper NFC contenders? Stay tuned when the Bengals (2-0 and fresh off a destruction of the Vikings) come to town.

Ugh.

You know what are fun? Back problems. I don't know what makes them show up, and I don't really know why they go away. All I know is I have them right now and it really isn't very pleasant at all. Occasionally I can find a position in which it doesn't hurt, but as soon as I have to move it's pain all over again. I don't know what those muscles are doing back there that they keep on injuring themselves, but with luck this will all be over in a day or two like it usually is. My body is very strange like this; I've had all kinds of random things in the past, like my foot suddenly hurting too much to be walked on as though I've sprained my ankle, and then the next day everything's fine. I'm like some sort of wussed-out Wolverine.

Somebody explain to me the whole Johnny Cash thing

The latest round of the Rolling Stone 192 Tournament is up, and two Johnny Cash songs are poised to make the round of 16, with only John Lennon and Stevie Wonder standing in front of them. I don't really get it. I'll grant that when you're narrowed down to a field of 16 songs, it's not entirely unfair for the Beatles to only have one entry (especially since they're not nearly as popular with some voters as they are with me). But what is up with Johnny Cash that there is a strong possibility he'll have more songs in the final 16 than will the Beatles?

I've listened to the songs in question, "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire." They're fine, I guess. "Ring of Fire" is catchy enough. But why are these songs so great? The music is pedestrian, the lyrics acceptable but fairly simple; Cash's voice is interesting but doesn't evoke much in me. And on top of all that, the two songs just sound pretty similar to me.

Certainly people are entitled to their opinions on Cash, and I can respect that, just like I can respect (although massively disagree with) people who think that the relative trifle "California Girls" is better than George Harrison's masterpiece "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and such. (Though I cannot respect the opinion that "Strawberry Fields Forever" is a bad Beatles song.) But I'm wondering if it's possible for his allure to be explained at all, especially against some of the best songs in rock history. ("Line" and "Fire" have combined to defeat "Fortunate Son," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Both Sides Now," "Waterloo Sunset," and "In My Life;" I consider only one of those five songs not to be better than both of Cash's put together, but again, that's me.)

Do not leave this entry on the dashboard, or it will melt

In March 2003, I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York and found in the gift shop an item of candy that amused me to no end, mostly because of what was on the packaging. If I may refresh your memory...

Are you familiar with the "Pet Dinosaur" line of gummy candy? I suspect they only sell it at history museums, though I had seen its brethren - like "Gummi Pet Rat" - before in real candy stores. At any rate, what compelled me most to shell out $1.25 for "Terry Pteranodon" was the set of "Care and Handling Instructions" on the back.

1. Don't be afraid to hold your gummi dinosaur, since this one is an edible creature. It won't bite you!

2. Do not leave your new friend on the dashboard, or it will melt!
I'm a particular fan of that one. Of all the warm places a kid might leave a piece of candy, does "the dashboard" really seem like the likeliest of them to you?

3. If you and your Pet Dinosaur become "real pals," buy another one to eat!
I also like that. The quotation marks are theirs, needless to say. Don't you think someone who could become "real pals" with gummi candy would probably become "real pals" with any gummi candy he came across? I suspect this is how the show "Gummi Bears" was conceived; some quietly loony writer was playing with a bag of candy he'd brought home and figured "Why couldn't my new friends have adventures?"

4. Flavors may include two or more of the following: Cherry, Lemon, Tangerine, and Lime.
Is this really a "Care and Handling Instruction?" I ask you.

So that was pretty funny, right? Drew thought so, anyway. He was so amused by it that when he was in New York this past weekend and went to that same museum, he thought he would bring me back one. Then he gave in and ate it. Then he thought he would quiz me on what candy he had purchased and nearly returned to me, except the return trip left him tired enough for the following slip:

Me (after failing to guess): "Okay, give me another clue."
Drew: "Do you want a good clue or an obvious clue?"
Me: "A good clue."
Drew: "Okay. The place where you got this gummy dinosaur is notable because..."
Me: "So, it's a gummy dinosaur?"
Drew: "...what did I say?"
Me: *laughing uproariously*

Of course, I had to check the care and handling instructions. Someone at Jelly Belly must be reading my site, because they were notably less ridiculous, though still funny.

1. Handling - Don't be afraid to hold your Pet Dinosaur™, it's been trained to not bite. Your Pet Dinosaur has a very thin coat of oil to keep it shiny and from getting sticky, so be careful not to let it slip out of your hands.

This one was never the funniest to begin with, but I like that they managed to add a split infinitive in there. (Normally Drew is the stickler for this, not me, but I was reading it out loud and "to not bite" sounds pretty bad.) It's also hilarious that they talk about the "thin coat of oil" that gummy candy invariably has.

2. Housing - Pet Dinosaurs like cool, dry places. Too much heat will cause them to melt, so don't leave your Pet Dinosaur out in the sun!

What, the dashboard isn't a viable place to keep your candy anymore?

3. Feeding - For the best flavor, eat your Pet Dinosaur immediately. If you and your Pet Dinosaur become pals, buy another one to eat!

Last time there were no instructions for how soon to devour the candy. "Immediately!" Maybe they're hoping the kid will wolf it down right there in the shop and demand that Mommy buy them another. I also think it's funny that that section is titled "Feeding," since you'd think that would tell you what to feed your pet. To Jelly Belly's credit, I'm pretty sure they know this and were making a clever pun. That said, they still fail to recognize that anyone becoming "pals" (though sadly not "real pals") with a piece of candy probably isn't going to eat the next one either.

4. Collecting - Want to add to your Pet Dinosaur collection? A variety of Pet Dinosaur species are available... Collect them all.

I truncated the middle and end here because it's just shilling for their other products. Once again, is this really a care and handling instruction? It's also funny that they tell you to eat them immediately but then suggest you "collect them all." Collect them where, in my colon?

For the last word on this, we turn again to Drew, who when he saw that I was building an entry out of this commented, "Well, I'm glad I brought you back something of use. It's nice to know that I only needed the wrapper."

Great Scott

In the parlance of PTI, happy trails to Scott Stevens, who announced his retirement today after 22 years in the NHL, the last 13 with the Devils. Stevens came over from St. Louis as compensation for Brendan Shanahan's departure, and while the Devils really haven't had a scorer of Shanahan's stature since, Stevens formed, along with Scott Niedermayer and Ken Daneyko, the core of a strong defense that won Stanley Cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003 and was consistently one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference for a decade. With Stevens and Daneyko retired and Niedermayer joining his brother Rob in Anaheim, the Devils are going to have to re-up on defense big-time, though hopefully their offensive will be given a boost by the return of Alexander Mogilny. Stevens apparently will stay with the team in another capacity (presumably front-office, but perhaps as an assistant coach), which is good; even though he wasn't an original Devil like many of the team's best players over the years (Daneyko, Niedermayer, Elias, Gomez, and many others), he was as identifiable with the team's image as anyone, and wore the captain's C from 1992 on for a reason. Thanks for the memories, Scott.

Trivia question for my dad, who might actually know the answer: who preceded Scott Stevens as Devils captain?

Kicking and blogging

So you may have noticed that the "Cubs Diary" wasn't exactly getting updated. Or you may not have noticed, because I bet three people even thought to read it, ever. Anyway, the gist of that was, almost as soon as I started it, the Cubs began their post-All-Star swoon, and at that point it just wasn't any fun. Maybe I'll try it again next year, but right now I've moved on to a better idea - a soccer blog. Kind of a journal of the travails of being a soccer fan in America, mixed with game observations and that sort of thing. It's a good time to start - the Premiership season is just getting underway, and we're heading into the home stretch for the World Cup next summer. (In fact, I'm about to go watch the tape-delayed broadcast of the U.S.-Mexico rematch.) And it's better than with the Cubs because I don't have a severe enough attachment to run screaming from making updates with a couple losses. (Not that I'll be turning cartwheels if Man City loses five in a row after I've started, but... whatever. I started following them in May.)

Anyway, this may well have even less of an appeal to my general readership than the Cubs thing did, but I'm going to have more fun with this one, you can bet on that.

The nail in the coffin of discourse

Driving north on 90/94 yesterday, I saw the following billboard at the Junction. It was for 560 AM, WIND, which claims to be "news talk." Besides that information, there was only one other thing on the billboard: a slogan that read, in whole, as follows:

"Liberals hate it!"

How can this country ever come together again with things like this out there? Conservatives no longer seem to take pride in their own opinions; all they care about is making sure they don't have the same opinions as so-called "liberals." Well, that and disagreeing with those liberals as loudly as possible. Outlets like Fox News - and, apparently, WIND - exist not to provide news but opinions, and only a specific set of opinions at that, culled in many cases directly from Republican talking points. There is no such thing as dissent in Conserva-World - you're either for the president or against him. There is no room for a shade of gray. I firmly believe that many people who voted for Bush disagreed with him on any number of issues, but voted for him anyway because the conservative hive mind decreed it.

Conservatives are scary for this reason, and this reason alone: they care more. Liberals aren't invested in this war. It took us years just to get a liberal-slanted talk radio station on the air, and its best-known pundit is a comedian by trade. Conservatives are so invested in bashing the left that they still spend their time harping on the perceived faults of a man who hasn't been president in four and a half years.

And conservatives care more about toeing the party line. Left-wing candidates struggle not because this country is overwhelmingly conservative, but because the left wing is capable of critical analysis, and incapable of turning itself into a single mentality. That's what happened in 2004. Everyone on the left knew that four more years of Bush wasn't something they wanted to happen, but some people just couldn't bring themselves to vote for Kerry.

Ultimately, though, I hope that the conservative tendency to scream at the left will be their downfall. Sooner or later, someone has to see through the vicious, frequently lie-filled rhetoric and understand that liberal-bashing is a smokescreen put up to hide the real issues. People saw through Joe McCarthy eventually, and I think even most conservatives don't take Ann Coulter seriously (idolator of McCarthy as she is). The trick is getting them to take a hard look at their own people and see if they honestly believe that they agree with them on everything. If they do, that's fine, there must be people like that out there. But there are people who vote for Bush apparently unaware that his economic strategies (strategies is a word I use loosely when it comes to Bush) won't help them, now or ever. They need to learn to read more sources, look more critically at information, and not just tune in to a radio station because they're promised that "liberals hate it" - in other words, that they're never going to risk hearing something they might disagree with. It might be comforting to live your life like that, but it's also cowardly. I just hope that someday, some of them figure that out.

Informal poll #537B

This arose from a brief discussion-cum-playful argument that Alma and I had on the train the other day. The question is for people who either live in Chicago or nearby areas or have done so in their lives.

Chicago is, of course, set up on a numbered grid wherein 100 in the number system corresponds to a furlong, or roughly one block. 800 is a mile. The 0/0 marker is at the corner of State and Madison.

Now, the nearest major E/W street to me is Addison St, at 3600 north. Everyone knows how you'd say that number: "thirty-six hundred."

About a mile and a half west of me is the N/S street Damen Ave, located at 2000 west. The question all this has been leading up to is this: how would you say that? Not so much the number itself as what it means within the city block system.

I always said "two thousand" (not that I had much cause to say it, but any street with three zeroes in its number was a "thousand," not a "hundred"), but when I said it in front of Alma, she thought I was crazy, and explained that it was said "ten hundred," "twenty hundred," "thirty hundred," and so forth.

Today I called my dad, who was born in Chicago and raised mostly in the near north suburbs. He said that he always thought of them as thousands as well, but when he asked my mom - who at no point in her life lived in Chicago itself and lived in Illinois for fewer than ten years - she said that they should certainly be called "ten hundred" and et cetera, and seemed baffled that anyone should think otherwise (as Alma had).

So, my question to Chicagoans of various kinds who read this: what do you say/think, and what (if anything) have you heard? If possible, to what would you attribute your choice?

Bonus question, which can be answered by the handful of people already polled as well: how would you refer to something that was at, say, 103rd and Western? Is it at "103 hundred South Western," "ten three hundred South Western," or perhaps just "103rd and Western?" I can at least make sense out of "thirty hundred," but "one hundred three hundred" seems to be pushing it.

M-M-M-M-M-Maureen

For all those who assume, as I used to, that gas is more expensive inside cities, it turns out that this is apparently not always the case. Gas up by Alma (40 miles north of the city or so) has spiked to the point where one Speedway (usually among the cheapest stations) is at $3.31 for regular. The highest premium price I saw while leaving the city was $3.32. Cripes.

Quick review of the new Fountains of Wayne CD, Out-of-State Plates. Rather than being an actual new LP, it's a 2-disc collection of unreleased tracks (two of which are actually new, from 2005), rarities (mostly songs that were released on international singles and such), and a couple live recordings. The booklet is nice; it comes with little commentary by Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger on each of the songs, some of which is pretty hilarious.

The CDs themselves are, as you would likely expect, something of a mixed bag. The first disc is actually pretty solid throughout - leading off with "Maureen," which may have replaced "Stacy's Mom" as my favorite FOW song. (They have other songs with more interesting lyrics and perhaps better music as well, but these two are so infectious they're impossible to deny.) Other great songs on the first one include "California Sex Lawyer," "You're Just Never Satisfied," and a cover of ELO's "Can't Get It Out of My Head," but really, only one of the 13 songs wasn't strong enough to make it into my MP3 playlist, so it's solid indeed. The second disc is a bit weaker; "Elevator Up" is another great FOW power-pop tune, and there are a couple good sweeter songs, including "The Girl I Can't Forget" (this disc's 2005 cut) and "Kid Gloves." There's also a surprisingly unironic cover of "...Baby One More Time." Aside from a decent cover of Jackson Browne's "These Days" (one that won't challenge Nico for the best version of the song), though, there's not much after track 6 besides a country cover, a live cut of "She's Got a Problem" (which sounds better on the self-titled release), a few novelty-type songs, and a handful of filler-sounding stuff at the end.

The first disc alone makes Out-of-State Plates a must-have for the Fountains of Wayne fan, though novices would probably be better served to start with their first album. With a solid combination of power-pop and sweeter love songs similar to how their other albums are divided, Out-of-State Plates finds Collingwood and Schlesinger at their best, even if it's only in compilation form.