"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
By way of one of my bike-riding friends: The Super Bowl Summed Up In One Image.
[Later: My informant, who looked at this more carefully and is apparently less gullible than I, notes that he found a reference that this is a Photoshopped image from a Bears-Packers game.]
Technorati Tags: chicago bears, sports
Indianapolis 29, Bears 17. Thus ends Chicago’s once-a-generation visit to the NFL championship game. The rain and Prince, as well as the final score, lent a soggy, dispirited feeling to the proceedings.
But on the plus side, I feel like I really must have grown as a human being. I watched without dismay or rancor: I let loose with one first-half “god damn it,” but after that nothing stronger than a “God bless America” escaped my lips (the presence of an impressionable and watchful seven-year-old helped check any over-the-top displays, as did the fact the Bears were outplayed for all but the first few minutes of the game. Bottom line: Stuart Smalley would have been proud of me).
Technorati Tags: chicago bears
I’ve been working on pulling together the story behind the writing of “Bear Down Chicago Bears”–a mystery of perhaps less significance than, “What happened to the WMDs?” Still, you work with what you got.
Along the way, I called the song’s current publisher, Mark Spier, of Larry Spier Music, in New York City. He says he’s getting lots of requests for the sheet music. Alas, there is no currently published sheet music. So his firm has made a PDF copy of the 1941 sheet music and is selling it online. In the 10 days since the Bears beat the Saints to get into the Super Bowl, Spier has sold 200 to 300 copies (including one copy to me; Dad, it’ll be in the mail soon). The first thing I learned from the sheet music, beside the Bears’ 1941 address (37 S. Wabash), is that the song is to be played at a “bright march tempo.”
You can buy the song from Spier here (it’s three bucks; the company is selling several other Bears-related musical items, too). If you’re not satisfied with a virtual copy, I found at least one copy of the 1941 original for sale on eBay (the seller has timed it so that the auction will end near game time on Sunday.
One last thing: The graphic on the “Bear Down” cover page: It looks familiar; it’s looks similar, in some way, to Chicago Cubs scorecards, which always seemed to have an abstract quality to the cover art (that’s the 1941 scorecard here, part of a great online collection assembled by a “die-hard Cubs fan” (poor soul). I wonder if the same illustrator worked for both teams?
Technorati Tags: chicago, chicago bears
A beautiful NASA satellite shot of the Midwest after the snow- and icestorm that blew through a couple weeks ago. Worth taking a look at the larger image (just click the one below).
(By way of exit 670)
Tinley Park, Illinois, a brand-new tract of homes, five days before the first big snow of the season. The Bears were losing inside. Outside: Sunset and contrails and warm enough to punt back and forth across the back yard (thanks Max and Liam) until it was just about dark. It was Mom’s 77th birthday.
Why Do You Call It MAY-Hee-Koh? Lydell points out a query posed to the Chicago Tribune’s lingo expert:
Q. Why do Americans pronounce Chicago with a “sh” sound at the beginning (as in “she”), instead of a “ch” (as in “chick”)? You might have noticed that Spanish speakers, even bilingual speakers (such as myself) make a very clear distinction between the CH sound and the SH sound. My lips refuse to conform to anything but a “Chick-ah-go” pronunciation.
— Stephanie Pringhipakis Guijarro, Chicago
To his possible credit, the Tribune guy ignores the multicultural preciousness behind the question and answers it seriously. I would have been tempted to respond. “Dear Stephanie: Where the heck did those people down in México come up with that voiceless velar fricative pronunciation for the X: MAY-hee-koh? What’s with that strange-o accent and wild vowels? You may have noticed Americans (such as myself) say “MeKSiko.” My Midwestern lips (actually, the back of my tongue and my soft palate) absolutely refuse to pronounce X as anything but the most excellent consonant cluster “ks” (except in all the many exceptional cases, such as the “gz” in “exit”). P.S. What’s a ‘Pringhipakis’?”
Doubts Answered: By way of Steve Downey, fellow cyclist and connoisseur of notable sports names, we encounter Lucious Pusey, a linebacker with Eastern Illinois University. Maybe I should say former linebacker, because Pusey reportedly changed his name and the EIU roster now shows him as Lucious Seymour. Mr. Seymour-Pusey’s name has been the subject of frequent blog-based chortling; I join in the chorus only for the most noble of reasons: because I told someone this story and they dared to doubt me.
Blogger Embed: There’s lots of talk about bloggers being the future of journalism, but it’s rare at this point to find bloggers trying to tackle real reporting. An exception: Bill Roggio, a blogger who has embedded with U.S. military units in the past and has just gone back to Iraq to do it again. He’s unattached to any news organization, and his trip is funded by readers. I kicked in 25 bucks despite the fact I’m not in love with his hawkish take on the war. But I think it’s worth supporting anyone willing to put themselves on the line to report independently (or as independently as possible in a situation where staying alive means staying with the troops).
As avid readers of this space are aware, I’m an admirer of Chicago weatherperson Tom Skilling. His work on WGN has always seemed to be well ahead of the curve in terms of graphic presentation. His presentation is fact-rich and thorough (a new wrinkle in coverage of the winter storm hitting Illinois tonight: a discussion of pavement temperatures), yet understated. And his on-air material is supplemented by the best full page of weather I’ve seen in any newspaper, much of which is reproduced in the WGN Weather Center Blog. Typically, the blog includes an evening post written after WGN’s night news show; the posts usually carry Skilling’s name. The other night I was reading one, and was struck that the head of the station’s weather operation was actually taking the time to put out a last thoughtful and well-crafted message before shutting down for the night. I’ve been in other TV newsrooms, and I can tell you that that’s pretty unusual (and I admit I half-suspect someone else on the team drew the short straw for this duty).
(For comparison’s sake, this is what the San Francisco Chronicle passed off as weather knowledge on Thursday: a 50-word blurb from one of the KPIX weatherpersons on why you can see your breath when it’s cold out: “…When your breath leaves your warm body and comes in contact with cold air, it cools rapidly. As it cools, the invisible water vapor condenses into tiny water droplets, similar to to droplets in a cloud or fog.” That’s actually one of the more provocative treatises the page has delivered recently.)
I wrote Skilling a note telling him how much I like the stuff he and his group put out–yeah, drooling fan mail to a meteorologist. Surprise of surprises–though not as amazing as the time Kate wrote to Mr. Rogers and got back a beautiful two-page letter that bore all the signs of having actually come from Fred himself–Skilling wrote back to thank me. Must not get a lot of email from Berkeley. Made my day; or at least part of it.
November 29, wee hours, Chicago and Oakland. It’s colder here. By 17 degrees. But talk to me again in a couple days. (Oregon location added for family and scholarly interest.)
I found the place in Evanston that stays open late. It’s Kafein, a coffee place just south of the Northwestern campus, and it reminds me a little of the old Albatross, a bar in Berkeley that used to be owned by the Johnson brothers, North Dakota natives of Icelandic extraction who somehow wound up on San Pablo Avenue. What’s reminiscent is … well, it’s nearly midnight, and there are a lot of people here talking, a few playing board games. No beer, though. Too bad.
I knew this place had a wireless connection, because I’ve used it from the Peet’s across the street. I needed, or wanted, to do some email, and this is the only place I thought I had a chance of coming in and sitting down and doing that (I could have sat in the car in the alley behind by sister’s place). So while I’m at it, here’s a post.
Besides the absurd debate unfolding in the media about whether there’s a civil war in Iraq, the news of the day is the weather here. It’s been in the low 60s every day since I got here (Friday). Lows of about 50 at night. And, thanks to the wonders of the WGN Weather Center Blog, I (and you) can get all the details about how the warm spell is going to end: frigidly, in about 48 hours. And that’s it. That’s my post. I’m going to go home and go to bed, then catch a 9:45 a.m. flight back to Oakland.
Fellow patrons’ reading at Evanston Peet’s:
–“Handbook of Combinatorics,” “Hypergraphs,” “Graphs and Hypergraphs” (checked out from Loyola University Library).
–World Market holiday flyer.
–Walgreen’s holiday flyer
–A New York Times story on “unschooling.” (Not sure what unschooling is, though I read over a guy’s shoulder that it’s legal in all 50 states, and the suggestion is that it’s self-directed study without the regular or home school framework. Wish I’d known about that when I was 12).
–Chicago Tribune story on a homeless food kitchen (I think).
–The New Yorker.
–An unidentified magazine; I’ll guess Reason or The New Republic or The American Prospect.
–A double-spaced sheaf of pages; maybe an undergrad’s musings on Kierkegaard.
–A course catalog of some kind.
–An black-underlined and green-and-red-hlghlghted textbook.