I haven’t been on the intertoobs much today, but I can’t believe I’m the only person who read this headline in the morning Tribune and found it funny:
Just proves that, sometime or other, we’ve ALL been winners!
I haven’t been on the intertoobs much today, but I can’t believe I’m the only person who read this headline in the morning Tribune and found it funny:
Just proves that, sometime or other, we’ve ALL been winners!
A busy day is about to get crazy-busy, so I thought I would post this link to an article in this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times discussing the strenuous process of getting accepted in one of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools. (For my earlier post on this topic, click here.)
Out of the blue yesterday, a reporter calls me up to talk about the process. We chatted for a while, then he asked if it would be possible to get a photograph of the prospective high schooler in question. By coincidence, Liam would be at Northside College Prep later in the evening for orchestra class. So we met the (is it redundant to say “harried”?) S-T photographer, snapped a few pics of Liam with his axe, and Boom! Liam gets to take his first dive into the news hole. I hope he doesn’t become addicted to fame.
And I hope everyone who reads the article is aware that an ellipsis is a device for showing that other parts of a quote had been cut. It might look like I’m offering St. Ignatius faint praise, but really, the two halves of that quote were separated by a lot of other verbiage. I was very excited Liam was accepted at St. Ignatius. In fact, I’m sorry I won’t have excuses for shopping and eating often in Little Italy (near the school), but now I’ll get to sample all the middle Eastern and Korean places near Northside Prep.
(I’m having trouble uploading the picture that accompanied the Sun-Times article. Do you think there is an embedded code to keep me from using it? I was able to download it to my laptop fine. Oh well. Check the article for the original picture.)
To celebrate the wearin’ of the green, I present here a video of me nephew’s band, Grand Rapids’ most popular Irish band, The Waxies! Give em hell, me boyos, and one fer Uncle Jamie!
Branden blames me for getting him hooked on Irish music and history, because one night I went on too long with snippets I remembered from college history class. Didn’t know I had the rabble rouser in me, but maybe it just takes the right audience. I can take the blame for the black cap as well. I lent it to him once, and have given up hope it will ever make it back (not that I’d want it at this point).
For more on the Waxies, check out their Facebook page and their MySpace page.
Slainte!
The reading for Mark Caro’s book The Foie Gras Wars went very well last night. He sold a lot of books, and his girls were very cute in their demand for the spotlight and the microphone. But the biggest surprise was the cake below, which his parents had made and brought to his reception after. This should be the standard, I think, for what all book signing cakes should be held to. This picture might not show it, but the cake was about 4 inches high, layered with chocolate, fudge and bananas (and thankfully no meat or organ products). Congrats to Mark, and our waistlines.
A couple of years ago, my friend and Trib writer Mark Caro found himself covering an odd spat among Chicago celebrity chefs. One chef (high-strung, combative, perfectionist, and a sucker for publicity) made it known through Mark that he had decided not to serve foie gras at his eponymous groggery. He stated further (okay, no need to be coy, it was Charlie Trotter) that he would like to eat the prepared liver of chef Rick Tramonto “as a little treat.”
A year later, through some silly aldermanic shenanigans, Chicago had the distinction of being the first city in the world to ban the sale of foie gras in restaurants. Restauranteurs dared city health inspectors to prevent them from serving it. The city’s top hot dog chef (and no fool about publicity, either) managed to become the first chef to be fined for serving his foie gras “dog”. Suddenly, Mark had a front row seat to the emotional battle over the fattened goose liver. And so, he decided to write a book about it.
“Foie Gras Wars” is now in the stores. Mark will be signing some Thursday night at 7 pm at the Borders at Clark and Diversey. Come on out and support him. (For a good article on the book, check out this from the New York Post.)
I’ve had the chance to read some chapters over the past two years. It’s a very entertaining and even-handed story, one that presents many facts and viewpoints but avoids easy answers. Mark even threw himself into the coverage by attending a goose liver weekend at a farm in France, where he learned the issue from the “inside out”, as it were. Once he had his research done, he told me he’d really learned a lot about food choices and this little delicacy, and that his cholesterol had gone through the roof.
In these economic times, macaroni and cheese might be on more people’s minds than foie gras, but keep an eye out for this book and pick up a copy. It’s a fascinating look into politics, money, class, the artisanal food movement, and our relationship to nature and what we put in our bodies.
UPDATE: Here’s a good article about Mark in the Chicago Reader. He’ll also be signing at the B&N in Old Orchard in Skokie next Thursday.
Was just listening to WXRT this morning when an ad came on for AmeriStar. It had something to do with money, and how knowing your “Mystery Points” will multiply your winnings for the day. Know your Mystery Points, and you’ll find out how to exponentially increase your money.
The name “Ameristar” sounded familiar, and will all the talk about points and money, I thought it was a bank. Sounds like a generic bank name, right?
It ain’t.
It’s really a chain of casinos.
For weeks, I’ve been promising to take Liam and some of his buddies to the opening weekend of “The Watchmen” for his 14th birthday. Had some reservations about it, especially as the reviews started coming in, mentioning the violence and nudity.
But then I saw this and feel much better about it all. Absolute genius.
Next week mystery lovers in Chicago will get two chances to meet and greet Bryan Gruley, who has penned a marvelous new book, Starvation Lake, out now from Simon & Schuster. I urge everyone to come out and support Bryan, the Chicago bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and an altogether mensch-y type of guy.
On Sunday, March 8 at 2 pm, he’ll be at Centuries and Sleuths, the redoubtable independent mystery bookstore in Forest Park. On Tuesday, March 10 at 7, he’ll be at the Borders at Clark and Diversey in the city. You can find other dates on his tour, plus interviews and all that stuff, at Bryan’s webpage here.
For an even more awesome experience, go to Bryan’s website, StarvationLake.com. It will give you a good feel for the setting of the book, a northern Michigan town where hockey is a religion and a murdered high school rink coach is a sign of deep rot among the people. It’s a really slick site, the kind of web marketing that writers need to do now to get attention. So please do pay attention, and support this book. It will free Bryan up for more daytime drinking with the rest of us professionals.
THE MUSE AND THE JUICE: An Ode to ‘Roids
Despite the pressures of my muse,
While writing this, I did not juice.
I might be subtler, more profound,
With cultured people’s praises crowned,
If performance enhancers I had downed.
Yet every morn I grab my pen.
I’m swinging for the fence again,
Honing mood and tone and meter,
Shunning erudite Velveeta,
While the gimlet-eyed all mutter, “Cheater.”
If offered Poet Growth Hormone,
Speaking for myself alone,
I’d shun sub-dermal shots in favor
Of a potion with robust flavor
Robert Burns was said to savor.
Boost the power of my thinkage?
Not when the tincture causes shrinkage
To my oeuvre. Tis too great a risk
I’ll be marooned on a copy desk,
My good name and my asterisk.
UPDATE: Please check the comments to this post for a poetical rebuttal from Jim U-Boat, The Poet Laureate of Calumet City, Illinois.
Well, the acceptance letters from the selective enrollment public high schools in Chicago have been sent out, and there has been much rejoicing and gnashing of teeth. In our house, we’re doing the rejoicing thing. Liam has been accepted to Northside College Prep, the odds against which are very very long, even for a bright kid. The odds were so long, in fact, that we simply weren’t counting on it. It was in our list of options, of course, but that list was long and exhaustive. Realistically, we concentrated on him going to St. Ignatius, the top Catholic high school around here, which accepted him a couple weeks ago. That required me wrapping my head around a lot of issues–of faith, of my own past in Catholic schools, of finance and transportation–but I actually grew very comfortable with and excited about the idea. I’d be proud for him to go to Ignatius and do well. (I was also looking forward to eating often in nearby Little Italy, but now I’ll have to start investigating the kabob houses near Northside Prep.)
Then the public schools come through and throw our plans out of whack.
There’s no use explaining the process by which the Chicago Public Schools chooses students for their seven selective enrollment schools. Describe it to anyone who lives in any other school district, and all you’ll get is a puzzled look and a sad shake of the head. It puts more pressure on eighth graders than being accepted into college, and it breaks the hearts of a lot of B+ and A- students when they don’t get chosen for one of the 2700 openings (the official number of applicants for those openings is 12,000, but most of us suspect the number is a lot higher and the CPS keeps a lid on it because the system would look even more ridiculous and unfair than it already does). From what I gather in conversations, there’s a lot of anger and disappointment running through Liam’s eighth grade class right now. One girl spent days telling her friends that she was accepted into Walter Peyton College Prep, when in reality she wasn’t accepted into any of the schools she applied to.
And in three years we get to spin this wheel all over again when Liesel starts looking at high schools. By that time, the ground rules and playing field will be different, due to demographics and budgets and probably lawsuits against the CPS. Maybe she’ll be the one to go to St. Ignatius–the social scientist in me still wants to see one of my kids undergo a Jesuit education–or maybe by then we’ll move out of the city.
It’s still hard to believe it’s over, and that we got into the school we wanted (and frankly, we were trying our best to keep everything calm even as we pushed Liam to excel in the grades and tests that mattered). He’ll get a chance to perform at a very high level, with a school full of other motivated kids. At the same time, it’s a shame that other motivated kids in his school have the choice of paying to go to Catholic high school or going to the local public high school, which of course has suffered because the good teachers and the top students have been siphoned off to the showcase schools. And it’s a shame that they might have feelings of failure from this fiasco. The CPS could open a dozen other selective enrollment schools and fill them all, without test scores sinking very low. And what about the B or C students at regular public school? What kind of high school alternatives do they get? (Don’t answer, it’s too depressing.)
Living in the city: expensive, complicated, stressful and morally suspect.
But at least we can walk to restaurants!
UPDATE: Liam and I went to the welcome and orientation meeting last night. It was one of the happiest gatherings of people ever, because of course all our longshots came through. Saw an old friend or two whose kid proved to be an undisputed genius like Liam (even though we dads both remember when they were eating dirt on the playground). The principal of the school said that 18,000 kids take the CPS selective enrollment exam (for the 2,700 slots open), and that 6,000 applied to Northpark. Of those 6K, 277 will show up next fall as freshmen. So, for every seat in the class, 22 other bright kids are vying for the spot. Think there’s a little pent-up demand there?
The Answer: Downloading them, of course. Just found a cool site with old postcards from every state in the union. You can search by county or city. I just browsed around for Detroit, and found a lot of aerial shots of factories. My, but the surrounding neighborhoods were very green!
Happy Time-killing on a Friday afternoon!
Okay, I’ll give in. Our coldest snowiest winter in memory is probably over, and birdies and buds will soon appear, which brings warmth to even the iciest soul. And there’s always this….
LIFE IS GOOD
Winter’s been raw as a campout in Banff.
Your new basement walls are moldy and damp.
Your drapes caught fire from a knocked over lamp—Relax!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.Your check-writing hand’s developed a cramp,
Your bills are all due and you ain’t got a stamp,
Creditors cling to your neck like a clamp—Smile!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.Your yard now faces a new freeway ramp.
Your son’s engaged to a gold-digging tramp.
Your “guitar hero” neighbor’s just bought a new amp—Life is good!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.
I posted this yesterday on Bardball even though it’s a rerun from 2008, because it’s factually true, because I like it, and because I run the site. When the baseball season really begins, we’ll be posting more poems there. And the big news is, we’re in the works to create a podcast of material, for all you folks too busy to read. So don’t forget us in the coming weeks.
Baseball Prospectus just picked the Cubs to finish first in their division, and the White Sox last, so there should be a lot of emotion running through the Windy City this summer.
On the other hand, what does the Prospectus’ Nate Silver know? Did he predict all 50 states in last year’s election? No? Only 49? Then he better go home and tweak his algorithm, as the girls at U of C probably told him a time or two.
For a very funny read about rampant Lincolniana, check out Christopher Buckley’s piece, “Team of Sequels”, in today’s edition of The Daily Beast.