Rick Perry Hates Most of the World – Still Wants Your Vote

Baffles my mind that such an ignorant, government-hating hypocrite as Rick Perry is considered Presidential material. Also, remember those quaint old days when politicians honored the intent of U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and considered Church and State separate entities? Wouldn’t it be pleasant to have some secular humanists in charge for a change, instead of these Christian Taliban fools?

Black Eyed Peas Are Horrible

The Super Bowl’s half time show is always lame, but of all the spectacles I’ve seen (I’ve watched most since 1982 or so, even in the hipster years when I didn’t own a television) the Black Eyed Peas was by far the worst. They weren’t even good lip syncers, much less musicians, or anything resembling entertainment. My focus group were laughing hysterically at the Black Eyed Peas antics, and not with them, at them. So bland, so mediocre.

Scottie Pippen honored by Chicago Mayor’s Office

“I have a theory about politics in Chicago,” O’Connor told Pippen. “We love our sports teams so much that we only turn to politics when our sports teams aren’t doing real well. And you and the Bulls kept the city of Chicago politics off the front page for so long.”

CTA Apple Stop

Apple has so much cash in their corporate coffers (over $50,000,000,000 last time I looked), they can afford to spend a little money fixing infrastructure. In a country that cared about people more than foreign wars, the Chicago Transit Authority would have enough budget to maintain its own stations, but we don’t live in such a magical place. Infrastructure investment for public transit (Amtrak, et al) is not a priority, unfortunately.

Starbury in China

Notorious locker-room cancer and intern-boinker Stephon Marbury, aka Starbury, has apparently accepted a contract to play for a basketball team in China, Taiyuan Shanxi Zhongyu, currently ranked 15th out of 17 teams. … [Click to continue reading NBA’s Marbury Takes His Game to China – WSJ.com ] [Non- WSJ subscribers use this link to read the full article] For a guy who always thinks he is the best player in the league, despite contrary evidence, perhaps this will be a good experience.

Fifty Million Dollars Just to Sit At the Table

((the guy’s sign reads No Money; No Jobs; No Green Games; No Community Benefit; No Pride; They Play You Pay )) ] After spending $50 million showing off Chicago and circling the globe to hobnob with the world’s sporting potentates, civic boosters pursuing the 2016 Olympic Games are fretting over one last detail: Will Chicago’s First Citizen, President Barack Obama, travel to Europe next month to make the final pitch to the International Olympic Committee?

…Toronto was thought to be a robust candidate for the Games, until the city’s mayor, speaking before a trip to Africa, said he feared ending up in a pot of boiling water, surrounded by dancing natives.

Chicago Children’s Museum move stalls out

About a year ago, we had a flurry of posts opposing the move ((for instance: Setback for the CCM juggernaut )) ((or: Fight for Chicago’s treasured lakefront )) (( or: Subterranean museum )) (( or: The Grant Park land-grab )) ((or: Chicago astroturf alert )) (( or: Keep childrens museum out of Grant Park )) ((or: Daley vs Reilly )) of the Chicago Children’s Museum from Navy Pier to a semi-subterranean location in a corner of Grant Park. Just a year after winning hard-fought City Council permission to move to Grant Park, the Chicago Children’s Museum has hit a financial wall, raising a real prospect that its highly controversial new facility in the park’s northeast corner may never be built.

Eamus Catuli – AC0063100

Luckily, my iPhone got reception, and was able to find the Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field The Lakeview Baseball Club, which sits across Sheffield Avenue (right-field) from the stadium displays a sign that reads, “Eamus Catuli!” … The first two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs’ last division championship as of the end of the previous season (2008), the next two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs’ last trip to the World Series (1945), and the last three digits indicate the number of years since their last World Series win (1908).

Demise of Gehry Design for Nets Arena Is Blow to Brooklyn

The New Jersey Nets were supposed to have moved into a new stadium in Brooklyn by now, but there have a myriad of problems relocating the team from New Jersey. … His arena complex, in which the stadium was embedded in a matrix of towers resembling falling shards of glass, was a striking addition to the Brooklyn skyline; it was also a fervent effort to engage the life of the city below.

Cat Fight Emerson vs Bud

The Ferguson-based manufacturer of cooling equipment, network power products, appliances and tools plans to boycott Anheuser-Busch products to protest stingier payment policies and what it claims are Anheuser-Busch’s cutbacks in funding for local non-profits.

…Louis Post-Dispatch that Emerson, an engineering conglomerate, has instructed its divisions to boycott Anheuser-Busch products in response to A-B’s new insistence on making vendors — including Emerson — wait 120 days for payments.

New U2 Album No Line on the Horizon

Much like All That You Can’t and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further. … Apart from a stilted middle section — “Boots,” the hamfisted white-boy funk “Stand Up Comedy,” and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois — No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation.

Lefty Rosenthal, Kingpin in Las Vegas

Nonetheless, the story persists that it resulted from his testimony in 1961 in front of a Congressional subcommittee on gambling and organized crime, during which he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself 37 times, refusing to answer the simplest of questions, including whether he was left-handed. He was a clothes horse whose closet was said to contain 200 pairs of pants; a whiz with numbers, especially savantlike in figuring odds; a notorious egomaniac who at one time wrote a subliterate gossip column for The Las Vegas Sun; and was host of a late-night talk show on local television, on which he interviewed celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton, O.