What A Mess

To think, I actually do work for these guys now and then.

Being a Republican in Cook County isn't easy. Between the Daley machine in the city and the limousine liberals in the collar suburbs, we're outnumbered by a pretty substantial majority. So we resort to grabbing headlines through silly publicity stunts...like the 312-WHISTLE hotline (a noble idea, yes, but I imagine the phone line over at HQ is covered in cobwebs), and now by putting a price on Mayor Daley's head.

Yes, Mayor Daley is crooked as the day is long. Yes, there's Hired Trucks and Silver Shovels. But let's face it...if not for Mayor Daley, the trains wouldn't run on time, there would be no bike lanes and a hell of a lot less green space. The guy's done a hell of a job with the city. There's an old saying (which really applies well to Chicago, epicenter of the sausage universe) about how while sausage is lip-smackin' good, you don't want to see how it's made. I guess the same could be said for how the inner workings of the City That Works operates.

I know Gary Skoien personally, and he's a hell of a guy who's committed to reform. It sucks that he lost his job because his boss happens to be a big Daley booster. But the Cook GOP has got to understand that real reform starts with real viable candidates, real policy change proposals and real action, and not Moveon.org-like bluster.

A Very Special Thank You

..to Noel, the "iPod Genius" at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue.

Thanks for not being sarcastic and dry. Thanks for asking a bunch of questions about what went wrong with my iPod over the past couple days, and allowing me to explain them thoroughly. Thanks for taking an in-depth look and exhauting every possible diagnostic resource available before telling me oh-so-politely that my little white baby kicked the bucket.

Thanks a lot.

Hawkisms

...as reinterpreted by non-Sox fans:

GASSSS....he out!

Right shape, wrong size.

He's gotta button it down and bend his neck right here.

I love it when you talk about stuff.

You can put it on the scooooooore...yeah!

White Sox Weekly Rewind: Week 16

Record For Week: 3-4. Record For Season: 64-33, First Place 11.5 games up, AL Central.

The Good: The Sox proved that they can hang with the big dogs in earning the split with Boston. Great start by El Duque Saturday night...maybe when he plays the Red Sox he feels like it's October even when it's a bazillion degrees out. Contreras twirls his most dominating performance of the season in the series finale. Some of the best clutch hitting ever was put on display in Monday night's come from behind win. Ross Gload's back in the house, Iguchi busts his slump in a major way, and Konerko's hitting the ball well.

The Bad: Big Frank's back on the DL. The Tigers, led by Magglio Ordonez, jumped all over us all 3 nights early last week. Joe Crede's pop drop Thursday leads to a Manny Ramirez dinger. The Cell was jam-packed with Red Sawx fans all weekend and needs to be thoroughly de-loused. The Sox are on the verge of trading for AJ Burnett, who in my eyes is little more than Kerry Wood in a turquoise uniform.

Ahead: At Kansas City 7/25-7/27, At Baltimore 7/29-7/31.

Thoughts: We've beat KC all 9 times we've faced. No reason that trend can't keep up. Baltimore's a tough team who we match well with, but I'd stil be satisfied with a split.

The Goal Is Excavation

Walking back from the store this morning, I saw a pretty bizarre sight--large quantities of water roughly the same color as cement oozing up from beneath one of the trees planted on the sidewalk and splashing all over the street.

Five minutes later, the police showed up and started directing traffic.

Thirty minutes later, the big blue Department Of Water trucks showed up and started digging. Sure enough, one of the main mains for the 'hood burst. As of now (8 hours after I first saw it), they're still digging. It's really loud, even over the roar of my air conditioning.

Mercifully though on the hottest day of the year, our water isn't affected...a definite blessing for anyone I encounter tomorrow.

Sights Seen

John Popper from Blues Traveler plays the national anthem on the blues harp at the Red Sox-White Sox game tonight, and it's so bad that it puts Roseanne to shame. At least the fat slob dropped about 80 lbs and cut off that shaggy tangled mass of hair. But come on! The Sox are in first place...they certainly ought to be able to do better than a guy who had one minor hit 10 years ago.

While enjoying a post-game refreshment on the deck after a brutally depressing and hot ballgame, a car pulls up at the intersection across from my building. Well-dressed businessman in nice suit gets out, and proceeds to toss his cookies (and his beer, martinis and shots) all over the street/sidewalk for about 5 minutes before stumbling back to the car. At least he wasn't driving. And somehow, his tie was on straight. Impressive.

Fun With Capsaicin

On a rainy night devoid of baseball, what's a bored urban creature to do?

Why roast peppers, of course!

Frequent readers of the IlkBlog will recall that back in May, I picked up a bunch of hot pepper plants at Home Depot with the eventual goal of turning them into hot sauce. While fearing the worst and hoping for the best, I potted them on the deck right around Memorial Day and let them grow.

Oh, did they grow. The deck gets a hell of a lot more afternoon sunlight in summer than I could ever antcipate, and before I knew it, the plants were sprouting. I watered them every afternoon, and they got all kinds of big, green and peppery. The peppers sprouted, and by the 4th of July I had a handful of them that were ready to be picked. (see pic above)

Since it's way too damned nice out and I'm way too damned busy to spend any time making hot sauce now, I found out the best way to preserve the peppers until fall would be to roast them. They'd been on the counter for a couple weeks, and I was beginning to fear that they'd turn funky soon.

Alton Brown may be a fruitcake who annoys the piss out of me with his food chemistry and his prancing around the kitchen, but the guy knows his stuff when it comes to technique. Alton taught me that the best way to roast my peppers without blowing the house up was to use a vegetable steamer directly over a gas burner.

I tried that. For about five minutes. My peppers didn't blacken, they just made a bunch of odd popping noises and started to smell like marihuana reefer cigarettes. Fueled by a desire to speed up the process, I decided to opt for the more traditional method (at least the one that got the most Google hits) of using tongs and just holding the pepper right over the flame.

The latter method worked like a charm...but believe it or not, you do get a sore hand from doing a whole bunch of peppers. I let them steam in a plastic bag for about 20 minutes, and then peeled off the burned skin before slicing them open with the precision of a surgeon and scraping the seeds and membranes out, leaving me with some very nice pepper pieces. They're safe in the fridge now, waiting for football season.

Goodbye, Fleer

Now and then, a little piece of my childhood just ups and goes bye-bye.

First it was Ross Bicycles.

Now it looks like the Fleer Trading Card company, who had gum in their wax packs far superior to that put out by Topps (probably due to the fact that they owned the secret formula for Dubble Bubble), is heading off to the big shoebox in the sky.

Notes From A Weekend

If you're young, single and Catholic, the Old St. Pat's Block Party is most definitely the place to go to meet members of the opposite sex. I say this because I'm old, not single, and a lapsed Catholic, and still got chatted up an unbelievable amount of times. Or maybe it was just my really ugly shirt.

When I was in St. Louis 6 years ago, I thought it was a terribly boring and puritannical town where nobody likes to have any fun. The reason for that? The gal I was there visting was boring, puritannical and didn't like to have any fun. I'm going to go on the record and say instead that St. Louis flat-out rocks.

St. Louis Cardinal fans are the finest baseball fans in the world. Polite, passionate and devoted. They don't even fight over foul balls at Busch Stadium. Russell summed it up best when he said "47,000 people here today and no one's an asshole." It's a celebration of baseball, as opposed to the intracity pissing matches that Chicago fans always seem to get themselves into at both parks.

XM satellite radio is one of the greatest inventions in the world for road trips. Listening to NASCAR coverage on XM during a long trip though? Not so fun.

Girls from Boston get really annoyed if you make them say "Nomaaaahhhh" over and over and over.

We had a waitress Saturday night at a joint called Sundecker's (right on the river, it had a deck that was out in the sun) that looked like Rob Zombie.

I may or may not do a Sox rewind later...busy day and they won 4 in a row after the break. Simple enough.

Fascinating Specimen

So my group just hired a new FIX developer. His sole mission in life is to write lines and lines of code that enable our customers' orders to get routed to exchanges, so that they can piss their money away trading.

I've worked with a lot of developers since I crossed over to the IT side a few years ago, but this guy might be the strangest ever. He walks in every morning with a 3 liter (which I didn't even know they still made) bottle of Jewel brand grape soda. He runs to the coffee maker and grabs a cup and fills it about 4 inches above the brim with ice. He then pours the soda into the cup, and usually kills about 2/3rds of the bottle over the course of a 9 hour day. If for some reason he runs out--not to panic! He's got a case of Coke Classic cans under his desk. He also listens to a cassette Walkman all day long. Bizarre.

Have I Seen It All? Guess Not.

Played tennis up at Welles Park tonight in Ravenswood, and I can't believe what I saw.

Gay men with toy guns!

That's right, the Really Outrageous Twirling Corps (yes, I googled "Chicago Gay Men Rifle Corps" when I got home and found them) was rehearsing right in front of the courts. It's pretty hard trying to concentrate on smashing your first serve in when you keep hearing "It's Raining Men" over and over and over in the background. They even have a drill sargeant, and boy, he watthhh one tough hombre. High point was when he screamed to his charges during a water break that "if you're not drinking, you better be twirling!"

White Sox Weekly Rewind: Week 14

Record For Week: 3-3. Record For Season: 57-29, First Place, 9.5 Games, AL Central.

The Good: Earlier in the season down in St. Pete, the Sox had all kinds of trouble with those perennial bottom-dwelling Devil Rays. Wasn't the case the past week though, as the Sox thrashed the Jellyfish...with the offense waking up just at the right time in support of some less-than-stellar pitching. Konerko hit a career high in hits yesterday in the loss to Oakland, going 5 for 6 and reaching the 20 HR plateau ahead of the All-Star break for the third time in his career. Jose Contreras didn't suck completely in his outing last Wednesday, a rare treat. Sox fans lived up to the old Chicago adage of voting early and often, voting Scott Podsednik to the last spot on the All-Star Team and beating out such luminaries as Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui, leading to much grinding of teeth from my pinstripe-loving friends. Bullpen provided 2 massive bailouts in the Tampa series. Timo Perez does what he does best and comes off the bench to put the Sox back in the game Sunday in spite of the loss. Willie Harris may have finally played himself off the Sox roster.

The Bad: Jon Garland and Mark Buehrle are both All-Stars, but neither pitched like it this past week. Aaron Rowand fanned 3 times Sunday. Brandon McCarthy conclusively proved that he's got a long way to go before he's ready for prime time after his lousy start on the rain-delayed 4th. The Pale Hose got swept in a 3-game set for the first time this season by the suddenly surging A's, who seem to have their number no matter what the locale is.

Ahead: At Cleveland, 7/14-7/17.

Thoughts: I don't think ANYONE thought that the Sox would be in first place at the break. Even the most diehard fans thought the losses of Ordonez and Lee would take all the wind out of the South Side Lumber Company's sails. They're not scoring 15 runs a game, but the "smartball" Ozzie Guillen boasted about early in the season is definitely paying off. Pitching. Clutch hitting. Speed. This team's got it all, and here's to a great second half..let's start it off right by putting a little more distance between us and the Tribe this weekend.

Sports Smack Talk As Mis-Interpreted By Dorky White Guys

I thought of this last night riding the El back from the Sox game. Will Perdue was in our car, and he's gotta be one of the tallest whitest boys I've ever seen. Got me to thinking of some of the dorky tall white guys I know (The Kell and The Better Half's Dad come to mind) and what they might say on the court/diamond while trying:

"Bang goes the firecracker."

"Call me the cabdriver, because I'm taking you to school."

"Know what I smell? Burnt pancakes!"

"I want you to meet my little friend!"

Almost Gomerfied!

Your humble correspondent poses with Jason Leffler's #11 car at the Joliet NASCAR Racefest Thingamabobber.

New Look!

Were you sick of the effed up formatting for all my posts the past couple weeks, ever since that fateful day when I cut and pasted baseball standings?

I was. So I blew out my old template, nuked all my links, and started from scratch.

Dispatches From The Front

It's a damned shame that gainful employment prohibits me from playing cards until 4:15 am on a Friday morning...because apparently that's what happened last Thursday night. Killer Bee retells the story in his own words:

yeah, the real entertainment came in the cash game....the kell was out to get the bee...the hand that put him over the edge was when i reraised him preflop, then checked on the flop. he hit top pair and just moved all in. I said "well i'm gonna have to call you. i flopped broadway." then it was "damnit, get me another $20 in chips." he and joepa were getting pissed because i was raising and reraising every hand...then whenever they had a decent hand and called me i had a monster. by the end it was costing $5-$10 to see a flop.... like isaid...craziness happens when a guy as drunk as i was keeps catching cards. every raise looks suspicous.

Add This To The "What Sucks" List

Making your lunch for the next day late at night, not checking to see if the roasted turkey breast is still fresh or not.

Taking said lunch to work in an effort to be more parsimonious, cracking it open when the hunger pangs strike at noon, and discovering that the meat ain't no good no more.

Ick.

White Sox Weekly Rewind: Week 13

Record For Week: 4-2. Record For Season: 54-26, First Place, AL Central.

The Good: The Detroit Tigers can keep talking all the shit they want about how they're "the best team on paper" but the fact remains: if you open up the paper to the baseball standings page, they're still very much in 4th place, languishing below .500. The Sox usually struggle in Comerica, which makes the 3-game sweep all the sweeter. Buerhle picks up his 9th straight win last Tuesday as the Sox pull off yet another close one...and then Big Frank blasts the game-winner Wednesday. The bullpen was spectacular in Detroit...even Shingo looks like he might be getting back to form, and he didn't wilt with the bases juiced in the 13th. McCarthy with a quality start (no walks...yay), hopefully he'll pull off more of the same tonight with me in attendance. Garland solid in Oakland as the Sox manage to win 1 of 3 out west...quite the accomplishment. Garland, Buehrle and Konerko all get nods for the All-Star team...and Scott Podsednik is one of the finalists for the 25th Man Award.

The Bad: Contreras with 6 walks on Friday? That's worse than anything he ever did against Boston. Nothing short of brutal. Buehrle looked like a rookie making his debut on Sunday, what with the throwing error and the fielding error and the twelve hits allowed and all. Podsednik hasn't been getting on much, making it awful hard to manufacture runs...and it seems like Konerko's right back into another one of his major funks.

Ahead: Vs Tampa Bay, 7/4-7/6. Vs Oakland 7/8-7/10.

Thoughts: The gossip wires this weekend were all abuzz with talk of the Hose trading for Jason Schmidt. Your humble correspondent has learned that the G-men were asking for Garland and Adkins, plus Sweeney or Anderson. Not worth it. Two years ago today in Tampa, the Devil Rays broke my heart and made my fireworks fizzle with a walk-off dinger off Billy Koch. Tonight, it's time for some revenge.

Poker Travails

Odd Thursday night at the Killer Bee's last night.

For starters, Killer Bee had spent the afternoon at the Cubs game, and was pretty wasted as a result. I knew as soon as I walked into his house and his normally nasal Wisconsin whine was about 3 octaves and 40 decibels higher than normal that he'd hit the sauce hard for the better part of the afternoon.

The Kell made the mistake of wearing a plaid shirt, and was subjected to "Farmer Kell" comments from the Bee all night. It would have been alright if they were sitting next to each other, but they were across the table from one another, so he had no choice but to scream across the table.

The Nis was out of cigarettes, and extra fidgety as a result.

Joe Pa didn't finish first or second, which is a rarity. He spent most of the night yelling at me to deal quicker. Somewhat intimidated by Joe's comments, I knocked a beer over and dumped it all over the table/floor/cards. Big mess. I wasn't even anything resembling drunk.

Worst of all, I got knocked out by the Live Wire. The Live Wire is a developer from Russell's old firm who is a sinewy bundle of energy with a brain like a mainframe. He can look at any hand and tell you what the pre-flop odds were. He never bluffs, he never gambles, he just plays poker. Somehow, in the heated excitement of having top two pair, I forgot this, and into the buzzsaw I went. He had a flush. Dumb, dumb, dumb.