Gobble Gobble...

Howdy folks. I hope your Thanksgiving was a great one. I know I had fun and ate like a king. Let's do this.

• How many Bears fans felt really good after last Sunday's win over the Chargers. 7-3, on a definite momentum train, finally figuring out how to make the offense work for us and not against us? Now, same people who raised their hands, how many of you went to bed that night sick to your stomach knowing that a real run was probably over. Well, thanks to Jay Cutler's thumb, it is. Then we even had a chance to get Kyle Orton back to help backup Caleb Haine, who has as many NFL starts as I do, but that went to hell when the KC Chiefs claimed him off of waivers. Now we get Josh McCown, who might as well be Josh McCouch, 'cause that's where he's been the last couple of years. Bears fans, just remember this: it started questionable, and then got really good there for a bit. If Cutler can stay healthy all year next season and we pay Matt Forte, this is going to be a pretty special team.
  
  
• By the time I blog next, Adele is likely to be up for about 100 Grammy awards. It begins.
  
  
• I, for one, love this nice weather over the holiday weekend. However, there's a part of me that has the "let's get it over with" mentality about winter. Thing is, I'm smart enough to know whether the throes of winter start today or next week, it won't be nice out again until May, so I guess we might as well just stave this off. And yes, I did just bring up the weather. Wow.
  
  
• As we enter this holiday shopping season, let's not forget one thing. There are people all over the Middle-East who are risking their own lives in battle to save themselves and their family/friends from a life of persecution, and trying to achieve the one precious thing that we still hold true: freedom. What are WE doing with said freedom? We're committing the same kind of violent acts in Walmart because we so very much value a $200.00 LCD HDTV. You stay classy, America!!! But, seriously, can we tone it down a bit? I remember when Black Friday would mean stores would open at 7:00 AM, and that was a huge deal. Now we've got midnight opening times at stores, and some stores actually being open on Thanksgiving Day. Here's my question to the midnight shoppers: really? That meal didn't make you want to collapse on your couch for about a month? Are you kidding me? I guess it's a concept I've never understood. Yes, a good deal is a good deal, but so is a sense of sanity and dignity. Just sayin'.
  
  

Just like the work-week many of us had, this will end early. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and please be careful out there if you're shopping. Seriously, you are far more important than bedding or a new sweater for your uncle.

Quick Hits...

I know, I know... two blogs in one weekend. You know, we might start seeing more of this, especially since I was so rude and didn't post a lot in September and October. Here we go with a some quick hits...

• No, I don't want an LSU/Alabama rematch for the NCAA Football national championship. I know at least one of my readers probably agrees.
  
  
• What happened? When did the Bears become a team I should really be writing more about?
  
  
• Tiger Woods helps the US win The President's Cup, and America reaches over and presses the snooze button. And since it was in Australia, literally and figuratively.
  
  
• Is this whole Penn State mess still going on? I haven't seen anything in the news about it. Not at all (sarcasm alert).
  
  
• Why is it every year there's at least 1,000 yahoos out on the Chicago streets still hanging onto wearing shorts even though it's in the 30s. You didn't just run, and you're wearing a winter jacket? What's up, doofus?
  
  
• Thanksgiving week only means one thing: the countdown begins to the holidays... Oh, I'm sorry, that's Columbus Day now.
  
  
• Chicagoans are mad that the City is upping fees and ticket prices. Um, we're in a budget nightmare, what did you think was going to happen, folks?

Okay, that's enough for a second weekend blog. You all stay pretty, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! I'm sure I'll be back then, if not before.

Part Happy, Part Sad, Part Tardy, Part Timely

Last week, I gave a little blurb about R.E.M. It got me to thinking, and writing, so I thought I'd share it here...

Much like this blog comes months after they announced their breakup, and a week after their latest hits collection was released, I was just a touch late to REM; but not horribly so, I was still earlier than some folks. As much of their early material came out while I was in jr. high and high school, I didn’t get to hear much of it mostly because what I was listening to at the time was what any blue-blooded American teen was listening to: Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. But during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I heard “Superman” on the radio for the first time. Honestly, at first, I thought it was a song for kids. “I am, I am, I am Superman, and I know what’s happening.” They intrigued me, I thought they were “cute.” Okay, so nobody in the band “floats my boat,” but you know what I mean.

I was able to go back and listen to their earlier work –not a kids’s song in the bunch, of course- and sort of “catch up” with them just before they broke out into the mainstream with the albums Document and Green, then hitting the proverbial pot of Gold with Out Of Time. If I’m asked to name one song that defined my college years, it’s “Losing My Religion” on so many levels. One, it was a huge hit and made them award nominees at pretty much everything but the Oscars and the CMA’s. Two, it came out just towards the end of my freshman year of college, so it had time to ferment in the later years. Three, it’s either “Losing My Religion,” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, and the latter is a slightly depressing song which I’m still not sure what it’s about, and at least I know that “losing my religion” is some sort of phrase down south for being at the end of one’s rope. Sue, still depressing, but a happier sounding song nonetheless.

But during that time, it wasn’t just cool to like R.E.M., they became mandatory listening. After years of toiling around the college-rock scene of the southeast paying their dues with albums like Murmur, Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction, and finally getting their foot in the mainstream door with Life’s Rich Pageant, Document and Green, they had now been blown out of the stratosphere. And when they could’ve rested on their laurels and just began to coast with their success, Automatic For The People was released and solidified their place near the top of the rock and roll

Honestly, over the course of the last 15 years, my interest in the group had waned. They signed a mega-deal contract, and then it seemed like they began to rest on those laurels. Each record would bring maybe one or two vintage R.E.M. tracks, and a lot of songs that made you wonder if the best years were in the mirror telling you how objects may appear closer than they really are. Even with that said, it did make me sad a couple of months ago to hear they had decided to call it quits only months after releasing their latest album, Collapse Into Now, which was honestly better than many of theirs in the last decade. Maybe I wasn’t hoping for a bright future with R.E.M., but a chance to know that a part of my earlier life wasn’t dead just yet. Not every band can be the Rolling Stones planning a tour that could very well be someone’s last (but not Keith Richards, we all know he’s surviving the apocalypse), but maybe they had that one more great record in them, y’know?

Now we have Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011, the first ever comprehensive R.E.M. best of collection, features tracks from the early years on IRS Records, and then their move over to Warner Brothers in the late 1980s. The tracks seem to be remastered, which isn’t a huge shock as we’ve seen recent remasters of the albums Murmur and Life’s Rich Pageant, but the older tracks definitely sound fresh, and pretty much the same material from their later years that would be the “one or two” on the later albums are on disc 2. Perhaps there could be some complaints as to what was left off from the earlier and peak years (such as the previously mentioned “Superman” Out Of Time’s classic “Half A World Away,” and Automatic For The People’s “Drive”), but it’s two and a half hours of some of the best they had to offer, and every “best of” compilation always has the headscratching missing track or tracks, so they’re just following the formula, if you think about it. In addition to 37 catalog tracks, there’s three new tracks that were done after the release of Collapse Into Now, “A Month of Saturdays,” “We All Go Back To Where We Belong,” and “Hallelujah,” the third possibly being a band exhaling knowing they’re done towing the line. They’re serviceable R.E.M. tracks to be sure. But that’s not why you’d be picking up this album.

This a must have if you, like I was, are late to the R.E.M. party. Albeit your being quite late, but it’s always good to have you if you are. By the way, thanks to a vending machine in my building’s laundry room, I’ve been drinking an Orange Crush during the composition of this blog. No kidding.

Sunday Morning Blogging

Well, I'm up. Most of my friends are very much still sleeping on a Sunday morning, so I might as well be productive and get something ready for y'all to read when you finally wake. Without further ado, let's go all over the place.

• Did something happen at Penn State University this week? Okay, all kidding aside, it's a horrible situation with no winners whatsoever. It's pretty obvious that -thankfully- child molestation still remains the biggest taboo in our society for something that happened a decade ago to reverberate the way it has in the last 8 days since the first release of information on Jerry Sandusky. And let's be clear, it should. It's a damn shame that a guy like Joe Paterno, who spent half a century building a program of integrity and honor would have a transgression like this bring him down. But if there's one thing that qualifies under "yeah, that one thing is gonna tear your career apart," it's not reporting something like someone raping children. And let's not forget all those young men whose lives are inexorably changed for the worse because of a foul individual who should've probably just turned a gun on his own head before he ever considered harming an innocent child.
  
  Editor's note... I'm now dumping the blog for a little while to go have breakfast with a friend who's actually AWAKE at this hour on a Sunday. Turns out, he never went to bed last night. This should be interesting, to say the least... and fun.
  Okay, and we're back...
  
  
• If you're an R.E.M. fan, you may want to pick up Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011. It's their post-break up remastered greatest hits, and the first hits package from R.E.M. to feature material from both their IRS Records and Warner Brothers days. While there's a few omissions ("Superman," and "Half A World Away" to name a couple), there's still well enough material on here to keep any true R.E.M. fan happy, as well as three songs recorded after their final album, Collapse Into Now, which aren't the greatest of their career, but still very serviceable R.E.M. tracks.
  
  
• Also in the "good new music" category is the self-titled Jim Hall & Pat Metheny. I think it's great music for a Sunday morning (on as I write the blog). Both Hall and Metheny are legendary jazz guitarists, and bring their expertise together for an album that is part live, part studio, part improvisation, part pre-written, but all very enjoyable and relaxing.
  
  
• Hey, Cubs... aren't you done finding a manager yet? No? Okay... just let me know when you're ready to name Mike Maddux as the manager. It seems that's where we're going anyways.
  
  
• How's that Republican Presidential Race going this week... honestly, how's it going, I haven't paid much attention. Between an inability to count to 3m and all the sexual harassment allegations, it's tough to keep track of the situation. Wake me up when Mitt Romney's the nominee.

Alright kiddies, that's enough on a Sunday morning from me... I'm going to go relax. You have a lovely day.

Back in the Groove

Hey, look, it's only been a week since my last entry. See, I still love you, my faithful readers. And as it turns out, my little joke about there being only four of you didn't hold water. I got a lot of folks telling me they were reader #5, so that was nice to hear.

Let's go back to randomness, shall we?

• It was a real shame that Adele -in the 30 Rock vernacular- had to shut it down for the remainder of the year. She's been having the year of her life (even bigger than when she burst onto the scene a few years ago), and then it takes her toll and her throat gets all messed up. I'll tell you what the positive of all of this is... That awards season we all thought she'd sweep coming up (American Music Awards/Grammys)? Well, that's an absolute lock, now. First of all, the Grammy nomination process for the year ended a month ago, so nothing new can be put into any of the categories (I'm looking at you, Coldplay). Now, add on the definite sympathy bump she'll get from voters. I'm not saying she'll win every category in which she's nominated with 100% of the vote, but I'm saying she'll be tough to beat. Great album, great P.R. year, reason for sympathy? The engraver is already at work.
  
  
• Let's just ask ourselves this question: is anyone truly surprised as to what is happening to Herman Cain? A month ago, this guy was the "fresh face," he was the one who could possibly come out of nowhere to capture the nomination, he was "not your typical Republican." Well, let's see... he's got a tax plan that most economists say can't work, he gets fiesty with the press when they dare to ask him questions about anything relevant or otherwise, and he apparently likes the ladies a little too much. Nope, that sounds like a typical Republican to me. I'm just waiting for the inevitable implosion. He doesn't have the right team in place to help him deal with scandal, and his head is more than likely going to explode very soon. I'm just hoping it's during one of the 10,000 debates between now and January. It'll finally be the one thing that makes it worth watching.
  
  
• So, as I sit here and type, the World Series of Poker's Main Event Final Table is being played live on ESPN. This just goes back to my statements back in the summer about how live poker just isn't exciting. It's exciting when it's edited, the commentators can crack wise, and I can watch no more than two hours worth of coverage at any given time. Today's coverage is set to last 6 and a half hours... AND THEN THERE'S MORE ON TUESDAY NIGHT. I mean, c'mon. I have to admit, after seeing some of the live poker earlier this summer, I didn't watch any of the recorded coverage that I have watched on an annual basis since 2003. I knew who the final nine were. I just no longer cared. And now, in trying to make it a more climactic event, they're making it less climactic by breaking up the final table over 2 nights. They'll start live with 3 people on Tuesday. Live poker versus The Biggest Loser. People losing weight wins.
  
  
• It's not enough that the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. Now Ryne Sandberg is an official candidate to replace Tony LaRussa as their manager. Now, I honestly don't think he's going to get the gig -Pujols wouldn't play for someone new to the MLB ranks like that, and they want to keep Pujols- and I couldn't begrudge Ryno for taking the gig if it were offered, but the thought of his wearing a Cardinals uniform makes my shirts cry. I understand that Theo Epstein wants to get someone in the Cubs' dugout that already has MLB experience, but here's the thing... YOU almost hired him for your AAA club, and the Cubs not going for him last year was no fault of his own. He's put in his dues, and given clubs for 2 different organizations winners. Oh, and did I mention he's a Cub legend? Give him an interview. Even if you're not going to give him the job, give him an interview. He might just blow your socks off.
  
  
• No matter who Epstein hires, I just hope it's someone competent. We're still going to be saddled with the Soriano and Zambrano contracts, so any manager we have is going to need to be creative with the other players he gets next year, including a new third baseman... something I was so happy not to have to say season after season for the last 8 years.
  
  
• That was a nice Bears' win in London a couple of weeks ago. Now, unfortunately, they have to head to Philadelphia for a suddenly surging Eagles' squad. I make no predictions about that game tomorrow night, as while Philly's been on the rise, so have the Bears. It'll be interesting to see who can keep that momentum up... and if I can still be awake by the time the game ends. THAT might be the bet to make in Vegas... I'm looking at you, Andy.

That's all. Happy November, everyone.