Just a short quiz on a Saturday afternoon.
Is this recent Bulls’ first-round draft pick Joakim Noah or American Idol castoff Sanjaya Malakar?
OK, the link gave it away but aren’t they eerily similar?
Here are a few of Joakim.
http://www.gatorgallery.com/albums/albun39/Image10.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/03/sports/04ncaa_netstring.jpg
As a connoisseur of fast food (notice that fast is an anagram of fats), I always am thrilled when a restaurant debuts a new sandwich, especially when it is some variant of a cheeseburger.
Wendy’s has now introduced the Triple Stack, trumping their own Double Stack, which is one of the top fast-food burgers of all-time. Good size, good taste, great price (99 cents) — all-around great choice. Yes, I know it’s 420 calories and has 20 grams of fat and 34 carbs, but for 99 cents, but I am willing to risk cardiovascular disease (I already have it anyway) for the tasty goodness.
One of the greatest crimes against humanity was when Wendy’s bumped the price of a Double Stack to $1.39. I boycotted for weeks and eventually, they returned the double stack to their value menu.
Actually, I could have written this post on June 1, the day after school let out for the summer in Kankakee.
But I gave it a few weeks and all that has done has strengthened my stance on year-round schooling.
Let me preface this by saying I love my kids. It is an unconditional love that parent are supposed to have. They hurt, I hurt; they laugh; I laugh; they get yelled at by their mom; I laugh.
Remember the Bill Cosby bit about kids having brain damage. I used to laugh at that, thinking it was a solid bit of comedy. Now I see that Cosby wasn’t trying to be funny; he was speaking the honest-to-God truth.
This story about Cheap Trick reminded me of another good story. http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=397569
My college roommate, Doug Seaton, is from Pecatonica, a small town just outside of Rockford, Cheap Trick’s hometown. One winter break, Doug was at the Winnebago County DMV to renew his license. While in line, Doug turned around and standing right behind him was Rick Nielsen, guitarist for Cheap Trick. It turns out rock guitarist have to wait in line just like the common folk.
In 1999, I found out that rock guitarists have to do other things the same way that common folks do.
Prior to my full-time job here at The Daily Journal, I worked for National Record Mart/Waves Music. Every two years, store managers were whisked away to Seven Springs Mountain Resort, a beautiful resort just an hour out of Pittsburgh.
There, we were treated to four days of live bands, great food, free beer(!) and loads of free stuff from various music labels and accessory companies. I honestly would take an extra suitcase for all the free stuff. In the three conventions I attended, I brought home more than 500 CDs.
I heard a reviewer call it “Fantastic Bore.” I wonder if we saw the same movie.
I took my twins to the Paramount to see “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” on Sunday and like the first movie, it was highly entertaining — action-packed, humorous in spots and Jessica Alba. What more could you ask?
No spoilers here, other than to say it stuck closely to the comic books and it came in at 89 minutes, a perfect length for two 8-year-olds and their dad, who drank a mega-sized diet coke and was beginning to feel the effects.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a column for the Sports section that was a parody of the dugout tussle between the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett.
In the on-line comments, the reviews were mixed and some detractors took it a step further, blasting me for my writing ability, my professionalism and my appearance. If you haven’t read the column or the comments, here they are:
http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=396585
http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=396939
A writer learns very quickly that not every reader is going to like what he or she writes. You just can’t please everyone. What one person finds funny, another may find offensive.
The comments made by hoops, Anonymoose and Local Business Man about me writing garbage or missing the mark on that column do not bother me. Each of those readers missed the point and again, a writer is not going to connect with every reader, every time.
Last Thursday was no doubt an exciting time for the 10-gallon-hat-wearing Ahrens clan in Texas.
Earlier in the week, my dad’s cousin Ken, who used to teach physical education here in Kankakee in the 1950s, e-mailed me to let me know his grandson Kevin was drawing major interest from more than a few Major League Baseball teams and it appeared that Kevin was going to be drafted in the Major League Baseball Draft.
And it was so. Kevin, a switch-hitting shortstop out of Memorial High School in Houston, was taken as the 16th overall selection in the first round by the Toronto Blue Jays.
ww2.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/events/draft_report/y2007/index.jsp?mc=ahrens
Here’s hoping that Kevin’s climb to the majors is quick and painless and that he remembers his long-lost third cousin. Also, get use to hearing two national anthems wherever you go, Kevin.
UPDATE — I talked to Ken, Kevin’s grandfather, on Friday and Kevin will be signing a contract today with the Blue Jays and leaving for Florida on Sunday. There, he will be evaluated and asisigned in the Toronto farm system.
Ken is very proud of his grandson and is most happy that he is the one who taught Kevin how to switch-hit. He also taught him a strong cross-over step at short.
Area 60- and 70-somethings may remember Ken Ahrens as a traveling p.e. teacher in the Kankakee area in the 1950s.
David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, is probably hard at work counting his money, but he may be just as busy sifting through angry e-mails and messages regarding Sunday’s Sopranos finale.
I’ll admit that I gave it a “What the @#$%” at the time, but the more I think about it, why not go out on an unconventional note? It was an unconventional show that never really followed “the rules.”
The fade-to-black ending (actually more of a quick switch) had me wondering if the DirectTV went out or if the DVR blew up. Thankfully, I didn’t have anything on my lap to throw other than a dog and that particular pooch holds high esteem in the household, so she wasn’t going anywhere.
But after thinking about it and listening to co-workers grouse about it, I think I find it more amusing than anything else.
Let’s explore the comments:
1) It was a cop-out — Not really. Keep in mind, the characters’ lives in a story, especially those in a series, do continue on, even when the series stops. For example, Sam Malone still owned and operated Cheers after that finale; we just never got the chance to see what happened after the final episode. We weren’t introduced to Tony Soprano at his birth; we only got to see a section of his life. That section ended with Sunday’s show. Killing him would have been the cop-out; leaving it unknown leaves viewers to decide for themselves.
2) It was a lame finale — Phil got shot in the head and then got crushed by his own SUV. How in the world could that be lame? After last week’s Bobby shooting that almost made me wince, Phil’s death made me cheer. That’s the mark of a great bit of writing and acting when you can cause me to talk to the TV.
3) Fans deserved more — Nah, we don’t deserve anything. The characters are creatures of Chase’s mind. He was nice enough to let us see them for a while.
So what happened at the end?
In my eyes, nothing. Meadow sat down; they ate; they went home. End of just another day in the life of a mob family.
But watch out for tomorrow.
