Why I Oughta...

On a recent Saturday, we packed the kids in the minivan and took them down to see a White Sox game.  When we arrived - which was early - we were surprised by the crowds waiting to get into the park and the noticeable buzz around the gates.    There were huge lines waiting to get in even before Comiskey Park opens.  Strange, right?  I mean....it *is* the White Sox, right?  They're terrible.  In last place.  ( In Hahn, we trust , btw)  The place should be empty.  I guess it was a Saturday night, so there are the fireworks, but in today's world, that seems like a stretch to think that people would be willing to go to a Sox game just for fireworks like we used to when I was a kid?  (Maybe the whole Disney fireworks thing has jaded me for fireworks now?) But then we saw the t-shirts.  And the costumes.  There was a lady with Princess Leia buns.  A dude with a wookie hoodie.  And the buzz?  It was because it ...

Walk through City Hall these days and you'll see that Northside guy Rahm has wrapped himself in the "W" flag and there's dozens of them hung up in the lobby.  There's no way that Da Mare would would have allowed this, right?  I don't like this.  Not one bit.

At the very same Estate Sale that I picked up that hobnail milk glass pitcher and the big set of vintage ornaments, I picked up this book from 1982 about the Chicago White Sox.  It is written right at the point when Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn took over the club and installed the big new "Diamond Vision" scoreboard out in centerfield with the old Veeck-era exploding pinwheels on top.   I thumbed through the book and it talks about the new arrivals like Carlton Fisk, Greg Luzinski, Tom Paciorek, Rudy Law, Ron Kittle, and Greg Walker who were all - incredibly - in their first or second year on the South Side.   Reinsdorf took over the team from Bill Veeck in 1981 and if you read the opening of this book (which...in the fine print states that the White Sox themselves cooperated with in terms of photographs and such), it reads like a love letter to the new ownership's commitment to making the Sox a winner.  And...just in looking at that list of players that th...

A week or so ago, I came across this story on Wired entitled: "How to get your photos off Flickr (and where to put them)" that made me try to figure out how to get into my long-ago-abandoned Flickr account.   Once I gained access, I found that I had a few thousand photos there that I'd long forgotten about.  Ranging in dates from January of 2002 all the way up until October of 2008.   Flickr has made it *somewhat* easier to pull them down.  You can batch download them, but if you get too greedy and select too many photos to download at a time, it gets flaky and the whole thing grinds to a state of constant stalling.  But, after a few trials/errors, I found a good groove of pulling down a few months at a time, unzipping those folders, then using the Google Photos Uploader to put each batch up to Google Photos.  There's a bunch of stories that go with the photos that I've unearthed and because what the kids are doing these days are #Throwback Thursdays, ...

So...here's something that I'm a bit ashamed to admit:  earlier this year when Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Tribune ran this piece you see above featuring Griffey and Tim Raines (who I don't think made the cut). What I was startled by was the last line:  Chicago AL, 2008.  Meaning....he played on the South Side.   I had to go back into the Googles and flail about to try to jog my memory .  Then it clicked:  this was a prototypical Kenny Williams deal.  Griffey got hurt and didn't play a ton of games for the White Sox, but for me?  Once a White Sox.  Always a White Sox.   Just look at that sweet swing .

Getting him started right with the Good Guys on the South Side - as any good Dad would do, right? He'll have no memory of this night we spent together, but I will never forget it.

You can't send us to a Sox game and not have us seek out the big Mickey Mouse up by the Fundamentals level out in left field.  That's what every family does, right?   The Bird here can't read so the big 'please keep off' sign didn't stop her from posing with her guy all dressed up in White Sox colors.   We arrived about 45 minutes before the first pitch and did a tour around the lower bowl concourse before settling into our seats.  It was hot.   Like sweaty hot.   And we lasted about 1/3rd of an inning before one of the girls started to complain about being 'bored'.  Seriously.  1/3rd of the FIRST inning.  

We picked up this kids bank at Affordable Antiques some time last year but we had to wait until this Spring to give it the intended target:  my brother-in-law. He's a hardcore Sox guy and also has an appreciation for old stuff, so it was a perfect fit.

Doing an entire 'Year in Review' would be daunting, as I can't quite remember what happened 6 weeks ago, let a lone 6 months ago, but what I can do is tell all you--my loyal readers--what I think was/is the biggest story of 2005 in and around Chicago. ....Drum roll please........... The Biggest story in 2005 was the City of Chicago's 'about-face' on live, outdoor music in the City's parks. What? Live music as the biggest story of the year?!? WTF, Parrillo?!? What about the 'Drought of '05', or the White Sox, or Hired Truck, or Marshall Field's closing? Well...those are all good stories. They're all qualified for 'Biggest Story of the Year', but they don't have the same impact to me as the City's Leaders embracing live music. I wrote about it back in July when both Lollapaloza and Intonation were put on to rave reviews, despite the repressive heat. Dunno if you realize what is happening here. We just went from th...