CTA Blue Line

P: I've been leaving the house at 7.45a every day, getting me to the train 15-20 minutes earlier than normal. I used to skate out the door between 8.05 and 8.10 to get to work by 9. I just got here. I can’t imagine what time I’d get here at my old schedule. Lousy Blue Line.

D: I'll complain about the CTA when I need to use it more often, otherwise I've got no problems with it at all.

P: The CTA sucks. They don’t renovate and upgrade, they do patch work. And like all patchwork it catches up and needs a major overhaul. They have no money to work with, and have p--- poor workers. The bus drivers are dangerous. The train engineers are reckless. And the station employees have grapenuts for brains. The pattern has to start somewhere. 1. Fix your tracks. 2. Hire able workers. 3. Then get new trains. The buses themselves are great, but their drivers are going to destroy them.

D: Which all starts with 1a) raise fares.
Then people flip out. We'll see if the Brown line improvements start to make any difference in the way the system works. Hopefully if the price of gasoline continues to stay high it might change the transportation patterns of city residents, but so far the prices have continued to rise and consumer patterns have yet to change. In europe gas is way more expensive, hence they have better public transportation. Until the masses actually make a shift in the way they move there, the CTA isn't going to have the money to make significant changes to the way their system operates.

P: I was not opposed to raising the fares. There are too many agitators keeping the wrong and not accepting the right. You have a**hole news reporters who live in Streeterville and River North who walk to work, but fill their columns with how the CTA shouldn’t raise fares. As far as gas is concerned, we cannot be expected to change our lifestyles because of the price of gasoline. We should, but we shouldn’t be expected. We can slam Exxon for posting 11 figure profits per quarter, but our govt won’t tap it’s own reserves?
Raise the fares. Raise the transfers. Shave 1 car off of each train and add one extra arrival. There is a simple way to do everything.

The Pain Index

Rank these in your perceived order of discomfort:
1.Wagon of woe
2.Boudoir of distress
3.Antechamber of agony
4.Fatigue fatigues
5.Rucksack of adversity
6.Inflammation Casket
7.Booth of tribulation
8.Hurt box
9.Pain cave
10.Bag of discomfort
11.Closet of exhaustion
12.Wretched envelope
13.Misery Grotto
14.Foyer of Distress
15.Satchel of Malaise
16.Shack of Torment
17.Forest of despair

Wood Chef

In a discussion over who has what it takes in the kitchen, we bounce back and forth various meals we have made with the ideas and the ingredients we had within arm's reach.

D: Made a huge batch of jambalaya, man it was good.
I've been getting these prepackaged rice meals -- Zatarain's is the brand name I think. Anyway, I mixed one box of Jambalaya mix w/ one box of Red Beans & Rice mix, cooked that separately (w/ 2 bay leaves). In the giant skillet I started with 1 onion & 2 green bell peppers, diced. Cooked those for a while, then added a can of diced tomatoes w/ green chiles. Then I started adding spices (cayenne, cajun mix, cumin, paprika, tabasco, lots of worchestshire sauce, etc). Then I added the smoked sausage, lastly added 1 lb of shrimp. Once everything was done I mixed the 2 pots into a giant serving dish. That was an excellent meal. I had leftovers for at least 3 days.

P: Made a shrimp pasta. Here's the run down:
Bought pre-cooked shrimp (something I'll never do again)
1 red pepper
1 yellow onion
1 clove of elephant garlic
Copious amounts of olive oil
And vermicelli
Diced up the garlic and let is liquefy ever so slightly in olive oil before I put in the diced pepper and onion in a pan. Kept the heat on very low to slow cook. Cooked the shrimp on a griddle on the grill with olive oil and greek seasoning (pretty much greek all-spice). Somehow timed everything perfectly over a bottle of wine and mixed together. The shrimp needed to be sautéed, but I'm going to buy uncooked the next time because they shrank and toughened to almost popcorn shrimp. The ratio of vegetables to noodles was even, which was a good thing because the excess oil made the pasta perfect. Servied with Buckley's Merlot.

D: I've found the same problem with pre-cooked shrimp. It shrinks & gets tougher when you try to sautee it.
Imade a quick fish dish. Got some cod for cheap from dominicks. Put lemon juice & olive oil in a small pan, add fish, coat both sides, then add sliced tomatoes on top of that. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top, cover with foil & bake for 10-15 minutes.
Except I didn't use a fresh tomato, I had a can of diced tomatoes and put those chunks on there. ended up being too much tomato. fish was good though.

P: Not a meal, but a recipe. Steak Marinade:
1 ½ cups steak sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/3 cup Italian-style dressing
1/3 cup honey
1 tsp garlic powder
Mix in a blender, marinate the steaks for 2 hours.

D: For the Superbowl, I think the wings I made were some of the best I've made. Put a rub on them at first, mix of chili powder, salt, curry, cayenne, powdered mustard. Then put a light covering of hot bottled bbq sauce, let them sit in that in the fridge. (I don't remember the brand). Mixed together a mix of the hot sauce, KC masterpiece smokey bbq sauce, tabasco, habanero sauce & chili powder. Cooked them in the over for 30 min at 400 degrees, turning over 1/2 way. Basted with the bbq mix before going in and upon flipping. Served with the sauce for dipping. That was a big hit.

P: At Easter, we made Cauliflower au Gratin. Used 1 medium head cauliflower, some salt and pepper, 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese. Preheated the oven to 350F. Chop cauliflower. Cooked in a small amount of boiling salted water 10 minutes. Placed half of cauliflower in a one-and-one-half-quart casserole. Season with salt and pepper. Spread half of sour cream, half of cheese, and half of sesame seeds over cauliflower. Layered same again. Baked for 15 minutes.

D: Prepared rice
Cooked up 5 chicken breasts (in skillet w/ oil, no marinade or spices). As they were finished, I removed them from the skillet, shredded them w/ a knife & fork, and placed in another pan. Added a can of diced tomatoes & a smaller can of green chiles, cooked those together for 8-10 minutes. Took a can of green salsa, poured just enough to cover a full plate. Took wheat tortillas, made sure each side was dipped in the salsa. Put rice and chicken-veggie mixture into tortilla, rolled it up and placed into a dish for the oven. Used all 10 tortilla shells. Grated monterrey jack cheese on top of the tortillas, then poured rest of green salsa over the dish.
Covered, placed in oven for 15-20 minutes. Served w/ sour cream Delicious. Corrections for next time: line pan with something before putting rolled tortillas in it. Use WAY more cheese, maybe even some inside the tortillas?

The Art of Cooking

Square-table discussion on the art of cooking from people who have not a drop of professional guidance.

D: One of the 2 "date cook books" I have, either Win Her With Dinner or Will Cook For Sex has the real description of what the food is, and then after that what you should call it when you're serving it. Some of them are pretty funny, but I know none of them off the top of my head.

P: I have close to 50 cook books. 48 of which are pieces of crap. I feel a good cook book should have pictures not just of the final product, but maybe a “at this point it should look like this” bit. A few of the books are foreign and go by the metric system and that is horrible on the mind in a hurry. The best books I have are actually the ones older than me. The Dave from top chef, you are the man. Knife skills, stirring skills, and adding skills are the confidence boosters. Fumbling any of these, you might as well tell her its not going to work out. I feel much more confident off of wine than beer when cooking also. Some people prefer --- on the rocks or martinis, but I am not that good yet.

D: Control in the kitchen is key. People always ask me how I know how to cook. I tell them I don't, I'm just pretending to know what i'm doing, which is pretty much the truth.

P: Sometimes your mind just uses a common sense factor, and you pick up a lot over the years. They say that every cook book is good for two recipes. People don’t realize that whatever they cook with fish, ends up smelling like fish. Everything is cooked separate and then added at the end. Same goes for bbq sauce. Why do you want to cook the sauce? Cook the meat, then add the sauce. Pouring beer on a burger on the grill is about as useless as watering a parking lot. If you don’t poke holes in a brat before you soak it, you are just wasting beer/water. Water does not substitute milk. Ever.

The Bratwurst

A Wisconsinite taught me a fool proof way to cooking a tasty brat. This is about the only thing I would ever listen to from someone in Wisconsin, because they know their brats. Fill a pot with 1 beer and 6 oz of water for every 5 brats. Poke holes in brats. Chop up an onion and place in the pot. Cook on low heat, almost as low as it can go because the beer will rise and cause mess problems. Cook for 45 – 1 hour. During this time, the grease has been released into the beer water and mixed to go right back in. At the same time, the brats have cooked about 75% and are very moist. Then toss them on the grill for 4 minutes each side. The onions are already cooked and ready to serve. But drizzle them with olive oil after you've strained them of the beer water. Now, contrary to what my college buddies think, use a non-alcoholic beer. You are not wasting valuable beer, as the alcohol would burn away anyway and be useless. Also, pouring beer on the brat while it's cooking doesn't work either. Thicker beer is great but for safety, use nothing heavier than Moosehead, which is pretty much the 8 pound bowling ball. He also said there is no greater way to waste a brat, besides using ketchup, than putting French’s yellow mustard on it. The brown mustard, Dijon, and even honey mustard work.

I’m tempted to try this with Italian sausage, but can’t seem to run the risk of ruining an already good link.

Old News but Still a Touchy Subject: FEMA and their Debit Cards

Brief discussion on Hurricane Katrina, a year after it was just a tropical storm. Having read the article, the following is the response.

D: Ridiculous -- I understand how the problems happened, but its obvious that the system is so F-ed that no one has time to doublecheck any of the work. Better to do it right the first time...

P: A guy I work with blames congress for handing out money. I blame the people for their responsibility. 9/11 brought out the best in people. This storm definitely brought out the worst. It is obvious that we are much more helpless of a species than we think.
I also like how many of the religious felt that this was a sign from God that the city was evil and people need to change their ways. Start new lives. Meanwhile crime is skyrocketing in the cities that Katrina victims got displaced to. They didn’t change their ways. They changed their venues. This was F’d up from the top-down.

D: I don't think it's the inherent nature of the people to be criminally minded but rather the fact that they've never had much opportunity couple that with the fact that the organization in place to handle these things was structurally F-ed from the top-down, and further magnified their beliefs that no one cares about them, and their situation in their minds has been lose-lose from birth. I'm not saying their attitude is the correct one, because anyone with enough willpower can succeed from even the humblest beginnings, but there's not a lot of optimism going around those parts.

P: Prayer replaces optimism, and vice versa. And I think even as a person who has religion in a his life will agree that people put too much stock in prayer. Prayer is comfort, not safety. At the same time, I think people that rely on prayer also are relying on someone else to get them out of their situation, rather than doing it themselves. Enter evangelists.
These people that just blew their money on everything but food, shelter, and survival, are the ones that are going to be crying “Oh please God help me. I’m broke. I’m hungry. I’m tired. My baby needs to eat.” They had responsibility of some kind before disaster struck, why can’t they have it now? I consider those cash cards extended paychecks for some, welfare checks and social security checks for others. I have to believe if they weathered the storm, no pun intended, they have eaten in the past. What are they doing now? There is a lot more optimism in the rural areas, where they people have banded together to rebuild their communities because they were forgotten. They know they’ll survive, but they have to do it together, alone.
All in all, this hurricane hit at a very, very vulnerable point in time for this country. We are an oil embargo away from a real crisis, and Iran and Venezuela are banking on that.

D: I have a feeling that 90% of the people that blew their money on non-survival items were also people who fraudulently obtained the disaster cards.

P: That is a distinct possibility. And I understand money makes the world turn, but shame on those places for accepting those cards. They looked like debit cards, but I’m sure there was something on them that said what they were. I guess that’s the same as selling a bum a pint of bourbon when he should be eating a sandwich, or a person with a stoma buying smokes.

All in all, people in times of crisis, in regions of crisis, do not act like barbarians. Some may be to proud to ask for help, but try to survive as long as they can. When aid arrives, starving nations do not have food fights. When peace-keepers restore calm, most of the time, they are not attacked. Freezing people do not find what fits. In short, "beggars can't be choosers" - Paul J. Quinn.
NOLA showed us that not only did many people defy help, but simply relied on it without seeking safety on their own. I'm not speaking for all, and I'm not speaking for the poor. There were many people who had opportunities that did not use them. There were some that could have helped others, and chose to just help themselves. This storm saw no boundaries. Whether those boundaries were neighborhoods, cities, states, or races.

A short time later, tapes were released on Michael Brown's warning the White House. Discussion followed.

D: Doesn't take him off the hook at all. His leadership, and the administration's, during the disaster was a complete joke whether they knew the deal or not. If you think the problem is bigger than what we're ready for, do something and mobilize people to handle it.

P: What I think he is happy about is that there is definitive proof that the very people that threw him under the bus, knew about this in time. The mayor, gov, senators, house reps, and the W admin should all be held liable. The mayor did the most, but could’ve done a hell of a lot more, especially with mass transit vehicles. It really breaks my heart hearing people in the towns down there that look like the hurricane hit 2 hours ago say that have prayer to keep them going. F that. If there is anyone in the world that should be mad right now (besides Iraqis), it should be them. These folks, by the time they get electricity and the debris cleared so the mail can come through, will be getting IRS audits because they are late on their bills and taxes. If it were up to me, everyone who was not able to receive some sort of aid within 2 weeks of the storm, should be exempt from taxes for 2005. And at the rate it is going, 2006. The volunteers who can help them should be exempt as well.
Asking another 70 Billion for a civil war in another country, give me a break. You know where that money is going? It is being used for the right reasons. Only, that $5 million school they keep building just keeps getting blown up again. That bridge that was constructed for $10 million, gets blown up every month. Those trucks that carry goods all day, need their windshields replaced 20 times a month from stones being thrown at them. That’s where the money is going.
By the way, if you crunch the numbers, this war is doing exactly 5/8 the damage of Vietnam. Casualties/deaths, etc.

New Season of Survivor: Best Idea Ever?

As a wise man once said: They aren't reality shows, they are just long running game shows.
Very, very true. There are always prizes at the end. There are consolation and bonus prizes throughout. And the winner always returns for the next show.
While we are not fans of reality shows, we dabble in the Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen programs only for the fact that we can walk away from each show learning a new technique or recipe aside from giving a cab driver directions in Turkish, or knowing how to climb a rope slathered in baby oil over a polluted harbor. MTV is disgusting. Meshing unstable losers with alcohol and sitting them in a house for 4 months and expecting them to get along wore out 12 years ago. Congrats Real World San Francisco, you were the last good one. And that is just one of their reality shows.
Now there are such shows as The Amazing Race, which brings families and marriages and relationships to the brink of destruction, whizzing them through the most beautiful spots in the world without so much as a hint of appreciation. It's hard to say you've seen Paris, when you have an hour to conquer it. There is also Project Runway, an okay show if you are into fashion. There are countless others, and then the ones with no prizes. But no show has captured the attention of views quite like Survivor. A true feat of ordinary people left to their wits to throw each other to the lions for $666,667 after taxes. Anyone who has watched all of the season (no me) knows that there are several factors involved in survival. There is sharing, connecting, comprimising, teamwork, and of course, backstabbing. But other issues get involved that don't necessarily have to, much like in everyday life. Race. Well, before local police will have to be called to the scene, the producers have decided to stick everyone with their own kind, to be blunt. They may say the show isn't diverse enough. It can't be. If there are "too much" of one race, people will argue it only caters to that group. Not diverse enough is why we have Telemundo, BET, and CNN.
This time, Blacks (African Americans), Whites (Whites), Asians (Orientals to some), and Latinos (Hispanics to others) will be separated. That's right. In order to work together, you have to be together. No cries of racism, prejudice, stereotyping, or work preference. Well done.

Book Discussion: Touching the Void

Discussion on the book Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. A story of impossible survival.

P: Finished Touching the Void last night. All I can say is better him than me.
I can't believe he lost 49 pounds during that ordeal (1 stone is 14 pounds).
Its amazing that he even still has a leg, with how long it was broken, and
the crap it went through, not to mention a Peruvian hospital. Has your
brother ever had to take that Ricotol or whatever its called to improve circulation?

D: In the movie, the way they film the last part of him crossing the morraine
field and getting back to camp is pretty surreal. It's almost exactly as
you picture it in the book. He's completely delirious and losing his mind,
well past the brink of exhaustion.
I don't think Adam's ever needed that ricotol stuff. His altitude highpoint
is 20,700 though, I think Joe and Simon were much higher than that.

S: The part of that book that got to me the most actually, was when they were
talking about the Japanese climbers that fell right behind them. I think
growing up in a big city, and living an urban life, its hard for me to
imagine being isolated to the point that a broken leg could mean death. Part
of the isolation has a lot to do with communication. When your deep sea
diving and something happens, at least you have a radio. When you are in
space, at least you have a radio. I'm sure if he didn't have those voices
in his head, he would've stayed in that crevasse. What I don't understand
is, why didn't they have radios? If not between each other, at least with
Richard back at base camp?

D: I don't know what kind of technology existed in '85 that would have been
lightweight enough and reliable enough for them to have bothered taking it
with them up the mountain. With the terrain how it was, along with the
remoteness, I don't know if they could've had something that would've
reached back to richard. Heck, even those motorola walkie-talkie things now
that people have, those don't always work on ski mountains.
I think one of the most telling things was when he started lowering himself
further into the crevasse that he didn't bother to put a knot at the end of
the rope. He decides, "well, this is it. I'm not going to sit here & die.
I'm going to lower myself down. If I get to the end of the rope, I'm not
going to hang there & die, and I'm not going to climb back up this rope, so
we'll see what happens then."

P: Do climbers ever use smoke cannisters or flares?

D: I'm sure in some situations. That's probably a crapshoot though, you
can't even see some of those mountains sometimes due to the weather. Who
knows if there will be people who actually see something. When you're in a
mountain range it's not like you're on a big open plain with visibility for
miles. On a clear day, you should shoot up a flare gun and there could be
no one who ever sees it. Those people that do see it could be a 2-3 day
hike from where you are anyway. Nowadays, with GPS stuff, it's much easier
to find lost people as long as they're well prepared and people know what
their plans were.

At this time the fire alarm was triggered and the discussion came to an abrupt end. While descending the staircase, a brief mention of the Animatrix was discussed. Unfortunately, the conversation was one-sided as the clankering of heeled shoes hitting metal stairs drowned out and response.
P: Half way through the Animatrix. They are split up by visions
(episodes) and I've finished, I believe 5 of them. Great graphics.

January 15th, 2006

So here is a summary of the most interesting day of my life, but before I get started, I will give you a little background.
Background:My friend Eric and I have been progressively working on drywalling our hallway since Thanksgiving. Our schedules and business travel have conflicted REPEATEDLY. When there haven't been scheduling conflicts, we have run out of materials and further delayed the completion. Now, we agreed we would do the drywall sheets, and Eric's friend from Poland would do the "mudding" and sanding, because he is cheap and good. His name in English is Greg, but is known as Pajak (pronounced Pie-onk) which means Spider in Polish. So anywho, he did the first layer of mud last week and needed to come again this week to sand and apply the second coat of compound. He came over on Saturday and sanded for about an hour, and applied the second coat for another 3-4 hours. Once this is dried, all he needs to do is sand again, and he's done. He said he needed an hour. He wanted to come at 1pm, I preferred 12pm Sunday. So it was set at that.

January 15th:Katie and I wake up feeling horrible. She had a touch of food poisoning from dinner the night before and I felt like I drank a bar dry, and only had 3 beers. The food obviously was the culprit. Noon rolls around and there is no sign of this guy. 12.15 rolls around and I hear a hear a police car chirp and a series of car doors closing and banging. I look out the window and see this guy getting pulled over by the cops right in front of my house. 10 minutes go by and one cop is obviously running a check in the car while the other is keeping an eye on him. Suddenly, the cop emerges from his car, walks right over the Greg's car and opens the door and pulls him out, promptly cuffing him. At this time I am on the phone with Eric screaming about this two bit convict getting rolled in front of my house, and what his story is. Eric is freaking out because he is no where near my house to provide an explanation. They take this guy's shoes off and tear his car apart obviously looking for something. Next thing I know, he is getting heaved in the back of the squad car and hauled off. Now I'm laughing, because I can't believe this just happened. Eric doesn't know what to do. Katie thinks its funny. I call my Mom, she thinks its funny. And we all agree that the day must progress.

AND THEN IT GETS INTERESTING
2.5 hours later, Greg pops up at my door. "F'n peegs man. Hey you want me to finish, or go someplace, because I need hour to finish" I tell him I want this finished and he waves off his ride. I don't know how he initially got pulled over, but he gave his brother's name before they took his license. He failed to mention anything else other than he said he blew a .06 at the station, at 12.30pm! He gets started and all is fine and well. I'm keeping a closer eye on him now and his stack of police papers. All is going well for 45 minutes. Because we have to have the front door open due to the sanding dust, I am seldom in there watching the Indy game. I hear this racket out front and see a flatbed tow truck pull up with a piece of crap car on top. I start to come out on the porch because it looks like this guy is going to dump the car in front of the house. It is not ours so there is NO WAY it is going to be put there. The driver hops out and pulls out the infamous T shaped bar. He hops back in the truck and proceeds to back it under Greg's car. I run up the stairs and hit the ladder and tell him they are towing his car. Since I was on the other side of the drop cloth, I didn't see, but I think he fell off the ladder. He comes running out and took my front steps in two leaps. During this time, he is leaving a vapor trail like a comet of drywall dust behind him. If you remember that scene in Goodfellas where Deniro wraps the phone cord around Morrie's head and Henry Hill spills out a laugh, that’s what I did at this point. Him and this tow truck driver (who was actually a repo man) were arguing in the street and this guy has half his face covered in dust. Every time there was a breeze or he swung his arm to point, he created a cloud like Pigpen from Peanuts. He comes running up the steps and says the "F'n peegs man, try to take my car. I show him papers but…is that your f'n car behind mine?" "Uhhhhhhhhhh yeah?" "Can you move it cuz this guy is towing the car goordiva." I grab my keys and start to back up the car, thinking the tow truck needs to pivot to get his car. All of a sudden he opens his door and yells "I come another time to finish. They try to tow my car" and backs up down the street and peels away, leaving me with the tow truck guy. I promptly call Eric back and start chewing him out about who the hell he left me with. By now I am so torn between confusion, laughter, and confusion and disgust I don't know what to do. I'm supposed to meet Eric and another guy at this dump bar in 20 minutes so we would talk about it then. Meanwhile I am left with 5 minutes left of sanding to go and an incredible mess. Katie is feeling awful, Bettis just fumbles the ball on the goal line, and I'm really needing a beer right now.

So I'm finally cleaned up and on my way to this bar, to watch the game. It is filled with regulars. These regulars are between the ages of 40 and 60, all smokers and all half in the bag, whose past times include darts, pool, bowling, horseshoes, and for the youngens, softball. Everyone there had a Boom Town Lounge sweatshirt on which immediately put my eddie bauer pullover WAY out of place. I didn't dress to pick up chicks, but I wanted to look like I held a job. Many of these people I'm sure planned ahead to wear their Boom Town sweatshirts and made sure they were clean for Sunday. Beers are $10 for a busket of 5, not bad by any means, and worth the trip. I spent the entire game watching the regulars as opposed to the game because people like this I don't come across every day. Imagine a typical Packer bar in upstate Wisconsin, only they are Bear fans and are in the 773 area code. That's how weird it was. Perfect strangers talking to you in the bathroom about how bad Grossman is, referring to him as "That Jew". When I asked who they were talking about exactly, it wasn't as if they felt they were offending anyone, just that I couldn't figure out that the German translation of Big Guy was in fact Grossman, and that he may or may not be semitic. The food they served was pure Chicago Heart Attack: half cooked burgers, polish sassage, and pasta with mayo and garlic salt. The average person went up about 3 times. People were wearing sports gear that you get when you buy a case of diet coke during Jewel specials. By games end, we were the soberest people in there by a mile. The day wound down with a shouting match between two people in Lowe's. In any event, I couldn't make any of this up if I tried.

Chicago Radio

This discussion stems from the departure of Mancow Muller from WKQX, also known as Q101.

P: In ranking order of my least favorite radio personalities: 1. Rush 2. Don Imus 3. Mancow.
I’d say 4. would be David Lee Roth, but his career didn’t last as long as this sentence.

D: Unfortunately, Q101 will probably throw some terrible morning dj on there in absence of mancow.

P: In my opinion, that channel has been in a steady decline since Mancow arrived, not necessarily contributing to him. But when I flip to that station and hear NEW ROCK ALTERNATIVE, and Black from Pearl Jam comes on, it tells me these people have some gears to switch. It used to be a pool deck favorite during summers in HS and college, but stations like that and 105.9, which was a GREAT channel for classic rock (now it is round the clock mic howlers), I have turned to 780 AM and 91.5. If I want music, I turn to the CD player or my iTrip. Most of the music I listen to is not on the radio anyway.
They’ll get a spillover from WGCI or B96. Or pick up some idiot who will try to outdo Mancow and Stern combined. Getting himself arrested as a badge of honor. With a fatter, sloppier sidekick who will have a studder and dentures.
“hey I know, we can get ourselves a midget smaller than theirs.”

D: Q101 has actually jumped leaps & bounds in my book in the last year. they stopped playing only new stuff and went back through all of their playlists and now they'll play anything they've ever played, like even talking heads stuff, it's been much better. that's the reason you heard black on there. they still play too much new crap that i don't like, but more often than not i'll find something listenable on there. they've had to compete with the Jack FM's of the world and their 5,000 song playlists.

P: Which is probably why they’ve improved. They finally have competition. The Loop is starting to go downhill in my book, aside from Think Pink and Getting the Led Out. Their idea of deep cuts barely scratches the surface. [Anonymous] listens to 101.9 loyally, and I will say, if nothing else, they haven’t changed their format in years. They play popular songs along the same genre. They aren’t trying to slip in an Eminem song. XRT has also been great. One of the last true Chicago radio stations. They are located on the NW Side. A one story building with a 500 foot antenna on top of it. As Steve Dahl put it, “that place was built back when Chicago worked. Try getting that kind of building approval these days.”

D: Actually, I think XRT has gone downhill. They used to throw some curveballs in there but lately it's seemed as predictible as 101.9. The music quality is better than the mix's, but they never rock the boat -- they're definitely scared of losing listeners to other stations. That's the whole radio dilemma -- no one wants to try anything new because they're afraid they'll lose their market share.

P: And they are really afraid because not only do that have XM to deal with, but they have Sirius as well. Give it another year or so and you’ll have a third. They also have webcasts to deal with. They can preach free radio all they want, but if you are going to offer me a poached perch for free, and a top sirloin for $13 a month, I’ll take the latter. This discussion is exactly why I listen to talk radio, mainly news. NPR knows it has a limited market, fan base, and pocket to reach in to.

D: Unfortunately not everyone is as picky about their listening experience as we are. I usually opt for my cds.

P: But the fact of the matter is, for a city this size, we should have great radio. Instead we have almost a mockery. By the way, what the hell is this DreX channel?

D: 103.5 -- it's not bad hip hop/dance stuff for most of the day, they play the usual new stuff that gets played in clubs/whatever. The morning show is this guy named Drex, it's very focused on the high school to mid-20 yr old crowd.

The topic of radio in Chicago has hardly been discussed. People either do not mind the crap they are hearing, or have never heard radio anywhere else. Next radio discussion will handle sports talk and AM Radio.

Summer Festival "Suggested Donation" Suggestion: Go F*** Yourself!

The following is a mid-summer discussion regarding the various local street fest prices of admission that go share the religious side-step of donations rather than charges for admission. Every festival and block party had them this year.
P: This entry donation business to get in is BS. Charge me or don’t. I pay, but my friends choose not to, and they get an earful as they are walking through the gate. Is that worth it?

D: I agree, that "suggested donation" stuff is kinda crap. they need to charge to make the money, but legally they can't stop you from walking down the street so it's a donation.

P: They make a lot of money off of beer though. Four of us in a two hour span down 20 beers at $4 a pop. Using tickets really can become deceiving. They would’ve done better if they had better food. I was willing to try the Grouper Quesadilla, but wasn’t hungry. I guess the overall problem with the [blank] Fest is that there is no theme. It’s just a reason to put a stage up and tents. Another thing about the suggested donation. If it is a donation, I want a wristband. There has to be a tally of people who paid. If you are rubber stamping my hand, there is no way of knowing that money just made it into the box. If you give away 1000 writstbands, there better be $5000 in that box.

D: Yeah, the wristband would make sense. it gets pretty easy to scam those things with tickets. at [blank] fest the huge plastic steins are supposed to be $8 each and by the end of the day we'd pay for 3 with around $12. Each book has 5 tickets on it with a cardboard backer, so you take the first 2 off and pass off 3 as 5, and then as the day goes on you just convince the people you only have $12 left and politely ask for 3 refills, they'll give 'em to ya.

P: The other problem is that so few restaurants contribute, rather than many setting up tents. There were tents, but the folks were just volunteers. They had Maxwell street polish, 4 tickets for a 6 inch and 7 tickets for a horsec*ck. Kinda pricy, but people will pay for food when they are drunk. The Asian food tent had good looking stuff, but again, bud light took precedent.

It is agreed that the city cannot charge you for walking down the sidewalk, where many of these fests are located. We may come and go as we please, but we should not be badgered and chastized for not contributing. There are laws in Chicago to prevent homeless people from harassing for money. This law should be in effect for gate keepers as well. If they put more than just a stamp on our hand, we would trust the system. If the destination of the donations was a little more clear than just a historical society or for "cancer", people may be more willing to give. A party at a southern Illinois college was straight forward with the slogan they had: "My girlfriend got a ticket and we are trying to pay it off."