The real world series

Americans, provincial as we are, call our major league baseball championship the World Series. What world is that? The one between Maine and La Mesa?

Despite the longtime Latin presence in the game and the recent influx of Japanese and Korean ballplayers, our big leagues have never really reflected the world at large. At least we used to have two Canadian teams in our big leagues, but now we're down to one. Apparently it's true what they say: the world keeps getting smaller.

There are, however, two baseball tournaments going on right now that can fairly be called world series: the Little League World Series and the Summer Olympics baseball medal competition. Each of these events determines its contestants by dividing the globe into regions, all of which are represented in the main event. End result, a truly international tournament.

For example, to qualify for the Olympics, USA Baseball had to make it through a regional tournament set up for the Americas. Two Olympic spots were on the line; the United States nabbed one, Cuba the other. Similarly, the Little League World Series draws its international field from nations around the globe, which stage tournaments themselves to choose qualifying teams.

Little League World Series players occasionally grow up to play in the American major leagues. The latest hot prospect, Jesus Sauceda of Mexico, pitched the LLWS' first perfect game in 29 years yesterday, striking out all 12 batters in a mercy rule-shortened 12-0 win over Emilia, Italy. He also went 3 for 3 at the plate with 6 RBIs, including a grand slam. That's all you got, kid?

As for the Olympics, there's more than national pride at stake. Baseball and softball have been dropped from the 2012 Olympics and it's unclear whether they'll be reinstated for 2016. So the medals now up for grabs will be the last ones for quite some time, and a particular urgency underlies the tournament.

The USA doesn't send major league players, so once again our squad consists of top minor leaguers and college players. Cuba, winner of three gold medals and a silver in the last four Summer Olympics, is the team to beat.

If you'd like to learn more about the international baseball scene, check out a great new website called the Global Baseball Company. Among other reportage, it recently profiled the various teams in the Olympic baseball tournament.

There are baseball fans, and there are baseball fans. My buddy Charles Fiore, who writes the Global Baseball site, is in the latter camp. He knows and cares more about the game than anyone this side of Bob Costas. The guy goes to Florida every March to scout spring training for his fantasy teams. Charles has also worked with stats guru Bill James, a leading expert in the field.

Charles grew up in Cincinnati and I look forward to learning something from him tomorrow at Wrigley Field as he and I catch his visiting Reds. Until then, in both Beijing and South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, go USA.

Good

Giants walk among us

The stars are shining in Chicago lately, even during the daytime.

For many years I've felt like Forrest Gump or Leonard Zelig, continually bumping into well-known actors, athletes, politicians and other people who generally fall into the "we know who they are, but they don't know us" category.

Sometimes this happens in places you'd expect it (when you go to Aspen for the HBO Comedy Festival, running into famous comedians in the airport or at your hotel is not a big surprise), but it also happens with some regularity as I just live my life.

Take the last few weeks, for example:

1. I sat down to dinner at the Athenian Room in Lincoln Park a few hours after a Cubs day game at Wrigley Field. I looked up and there was Kerry Wood at the next table with his wife and kids. 

2.  Last Wednesday afternoon I was walking through downtown Evanston and bumped into Tim Kazurinsky, Second City and Saturday Night Live alum and Evanston dad.

3. On Friday evening, after dinner with some friends at the Pizza Art Cafe in Ravenswood Manor, I jumped on my bike and hadn't ridden 200 feet when I ran into Kevin Dorff, Second City alum and longtime writer/performer for one of my favorite TV shows, Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Kerry Wood I don't know so I didn't bother him. Tim and Kevin I know a little bit (they each addressed me by name) so I enjoyed a friendly chat with each of them.

Tim starred at Second City in the 1970s with the likes of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and George Wendt. These days he works as a screenwriter, banging out funny scripts for TV and the movies from his office in downtown Evanston. Tim is a warm and hilarious guy who's been around the comedy block a thousand times and has a story to tell for each trip.

Kevin was in town because the Conan show is on hiatus due to NBC's coverage of the Summer Olympics. He's a true Chicagoan, a South Side Irish kid who made good at Second City and moved on to the big time but still loves this city and gets back here whenever he can.

Oddly enough, this was not the first time that a Conan show Summer Olympics hiatus played a part in my running into one of their writers around Chicago. During the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, I was enjoying an al fresco lunch at a popular Italian restaurant around the block from my Lake Forest office when Brian Stack and his wife, Miriam Tolan Stack, Second City alums both, were seated at a nearby table. They were enjoying the Olympic break, bringing their daughters for a visit to their grandparents.

Brian performed at IO and Second City with Kevin, and they're now stablemates on Conan's all-star comedy writing team. He started his comedy career performing with Chris Farley at the Ark Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. After they moved to Chicago, Brian was a roommate of Noah Gregoropoulos, the improv guru and resident genius who still teaches at IO. Less comedically, our moms are friends in the Lake Forest garden club.

Casual Conan viewers might know their faces: Brian plays 1930s crooner Artie Kendall, the fast-talking traveling salesman and The Interrupter, and Kevin often appears as Jesus Christ, a porn star and the angry bartender at Joe's. But in Chicago comedy circles, they're as big as Kobe and LeBron are to NBA geeks, and also known by one name (say "Stack" or "Dorff" to a few thousand Chicagoans and they'll know who you mean).

The purpose of this story is not to drop names but (i) to share the latest chapter of my Zelig-like life and (ii) to alert you, my faithful readership, to the fact that Kevin Dorff will be performing at the Armando Diaz show tonight at the IO Theater.

To hardcore local comedy enthusiasts, this is a minor cause for celebration. In the Chicago comedy hierarchy, where many are called but few are chosen, getting hired by Second City and promoted to their ETC theater or Mainstage is a big deal. Those rare talents who make the jump to careers in comedy are generally excellent comedy writers and skilled improvisers. When they return to town, it's part vacation, part family reunion and part special guest appearances at Chicago comedy shows.

"Armando," as the kids call it, is already the top improv show in town, a Monday night showcase for Chicago's best and brightest improvisers akin to the ASSSSCAT show at the UCB Theater in New York. A beloved favorite for years now, it only gets better in the summertime or around the holidays, when IO and/or Second City alums like Stack, Dorff, Tina Fey, Scott Adsit, Jack McBrayer, Rachel Dratch, Horatio Sanz, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler blow through town for a return visit. Those shows are like when your uncle Eric Clapton sits in with your garage band for a night.

Between Dorff and the already excellent regular cast, tonight's show is as guaranteed to be hilarious as any improv show can be. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh no you di'n't

In this week's Friday performance, Ernie and Bert explore the thug life.



[via Kate James]

My new favorite comic

Strip, not comedian. I recently happened across a web-based cartoon, xkcd, by a guy called Randall Munroe.

Apparently xkcd is not an acronym, just the name of the comic.

Some of it is smart, observational material for a general audience.


Other panels are for hardcore computer programmers, biochemistry PhDs or online gamers, which makes those of us who have no clue what he's talking about feel that much less like geeks. When he lightens up the science quotient, he can at least get a chuckle out of those of us who took physics in high school.

Other times it's not so much a joke as evidence of the relatably weird ways people think.

It's interesting to discover you're not the only one who occasionally sees the world through an odd prism. Many will recognize their own foibles in his depiction of his own, though we rarely discuss such minutiae.

Besides the dorky stuff, there are also broader ones like this song chart.


The state of syndicated comics is pretty terrible these days, with unfunny pap larding up America's newspapers (which are themselves getting killed; causal relationship?).


But who needs a syndicator? In today's world, anyone can distribute their work easily online.


With Gary Larson long gone and Bill Watterson having hung it up in 1995, it's a happy surprise to happen upon a smart, original cartoonist who can make you laugh.


Some of the cartoons are pretty conceptual, and others are art sketches without a comedic point. I'm just posting a handful of the ones I found amusing.


I don't have much else to say about it but I keep writing filler sentences like this one to provide more room to post examples.


The cartoonist also provides additional commentary for each cartoon at his website, which you can read in a popup text box by hovering over the panel with your mouse. Check it out at xkcd.com.

Name changes

Beijing was Peking, but now it's Beijing. So what am I eating, Beijing duck?

One by one, the distinctive place names of the 19th Century are slipping away. Saigon had a better ring to it than Ho Chi Minh City. Bombay became Mumbai. Persia became Iran. Burma became Myanmar.

Congo declared itself Zaire, then changed its mind and went back to Congo.

A friend of mine in Calcutta tells me it's now Kolkata.

What's with all the name changes? Pick a name. Own it. Love it.

Best,
Greg
(formerly Ben)

You don't say

"So important in synchronized diving to be in the same place training."
—Insightful NBC diving analyst Cynthia Potter

Pixar is awesome

Here's a true story about how awesome Pixar is.

[Metafilter sideblog]

Stephen Wright, take note

American masters

On Fridays we post live performances.

Regular readers of this space may have noticed our preference for harmony, for beautiful songwriting, for artistry; generally, for things that are awesome.

Here, from fall 2003, visiting David Letterman to promote their first reunion tour in twenty years, it's Simon and Garfunkel.

And speaking of "good to great," as I was the other day, the first song is good and the second is great:

Good to great

That's the title of a bestselling book on American business, but it also describes my experience reading two recent magazine pieces about the early political career of Barack Obama: Chicago magazine's take is good and the New Yorker's is great.

It exemplifies the difference between a decent city magazine and an outstanding national one.

Judge for yourself:

The Friends of O [Chicago]

Making It [New Yorker]

Recommended reading

I'm bored

If only there were some sort of superhero movie or rock concert I could go to.

Friday with Randy

On Fridays we post live performances here. Usually it's music, but it doesn't have to be, and today it isn't.

As many of you know, Randy Pausch died last weekend. He was the Carnegie-Mellon professor of computer science who in spring 2007 delivered the school's Last Lecture, an annual tradition in which a faculty member delivers a valedictory oration of life lessons and sage advice for graduating students.

In Pausch's case, the "last lecture" thing wasn't just an idle conceit: he was at the time diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a particularly virulent organ cancer that proves fatal to over 90% of its victims. Professor Pausch knew he was dying and delivered his goodbye lecture in the truest and saddest sense.

And what a lecture he gave. He chose to spend his final months not dying but living, embracing life, enjoying every day, and preparing his family for the inevitable. His speech reflects his singularly undaunted personality.

Prof. Pausch's Last Lecture was recorded for posterity, but after it was posted on YouTube, it became an overnight sensation. Millions have watched it and drawn inspiration from his wise words, upbeat sense of humor, lack of interest in anyone's pity, and incredible human spirit. It also led to the bestselling book The Last Lecture, cowritten by Pausch and Carnegie-Mellon alumnus Jeff Zaslow.

It's all a lot like Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom's graceful paean to a dying professor, but in Pausch's case there is also the urgency and poignancy of a vibrant young man cut down in the prime of his career, contending with a fatal disease while raising three small children with his beloved wife.

Unless you're off for the summer, self-employed or exceptionally unsupervised at work, this hour-plus clip might be a little long to take in today. But you can watch it a bit at a time, or over the weekend.

Once you start watching, it will be hard to stop. I found it engrossing and moving as so many others have, and I know you will too.

My own private Flavorpill

Last night I wrote about my travails trying to get event previews into Flavorpill.

Of course, no amount of advance planning will help when it simply never occurs to you to write up an event in the first place. That's the case with something I'm looking forward to tonight at Northwestern University's Block Museum, a screening of rare films from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Learn more about it here.

At least I can share it in this space with you, my literally tens of readers.

You gotta have faith

In early June in this very space, I recommended a comedic solo double feature playing at Second City, Nicky Margolis' Split! and Pat O'Brien's Shatter, which I wrote about for the culture guide Flavorpill here.

I hadn't seen it at the time, which is unusual. Flavorpill's mission statement is "filtered content," meaning each writer is personally vouching for the event in question. Generally we attend a preview, press night or early performance whenever possible, both to decide whether to recommend a show and to incorporate its content into the writeup.

A perfect example was last summer, when my then-editor asked me to see the first of two performances of the intelligent young comedian Kumail Nanjiani's new monologue show Unpronounceable at the Lakeshore Theater. I caught the show in July with no pressure to write anything, but with time enough to preview the August performance if I so chose.

I found Kumail's show moving, thought-provoking and hilarious, so it was my pleasure to recommend it. Happily, the August show sold out and it met with a huge response as it had in July. Soon after, Kumail moved to New York City, where he's burning a trail through the standup scene.

Sometimes, however, it's not possible or practical to see a show before writing about it. When a band is on the road, for example, playing one Chicago show three weeks hence, there's no easy way to catch the current tour before the night in question. It's too late to write about it after it's over since we don't write reviews, only previews. So we might recommend a band's local show if we think their body of work or their new album merits it.

Another example is a short theatrical run. Our editorial turnaround time can be a week or more, and our popular weekly email blast arrives up to a week before an event occurs. Thus we usually work several weeks ahead of events. When a show is only playing for a short time, its run might be half over if we wait until after seeing it to write it up, so for practical reasons we take the occasional educated guess.

I did this with Avenue Q, which only played here for a couple of weeks. Having loved it on Broadway, I felt confident that the touring version would be close enough to the original that I could recommend it without seeing the road company, so I chipped in a recommendation sight unseen. My faith was borne out when I saw the show ten days later; it was terrific.

I took another flier with Split! and Shatter, initially booked for a short six-week run. I know both Nicky and Pat from my years of performing at the iO Theater (née ImprovOlympic) and went through a year of improv classes and performed with Pat. They are elite improvisers, two of the top young comedic talents in Chicago and rising stars in the Second City family, so based on this personal knowledge I recommended their double feature.

Once again, my faith was completely justified. The double feature became a big hit and was extended to last night, when I finally saw it and learned why.

Both shows are outstanding. Pat and Nicky's writing proves to be as good as their improvisation. Their shows are funny, funny, funny. Good character work, top-notch sketches, original ideas, great jokes and concepts that pay off in spades.

Nicky shows her range, deftly weaving a variety of characters into a seamless, entertaining show, and it turns out she can sing too. She employs a "live backstage camera" so two of her characters can interact, and what starts as a standard pretaped bit gets a lot more interesting when she runs "backstage" and, like Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap, not one but two characters played by Nicky interact onscreen. Impressive as it is, the technical wizardry is merely in service of a big, funny closing musical number.

Pat offers up some really good sketches, including a couple that pay off hugely using the lyrics of trite Top 40 hits we hear all the time but never really notice. He opens with a loose, funny scene in which he attempts to break a series of randomly chosen Guinness world records live on stage. Each attempt, of course, fails miserably, but with his winning charm and amusing ad libs, the scene itself succeeds gloriously.

Apparently a fair number of other friends also waited until the last minute to see the show because the closing night crowd was packed with familiar faces from around the Chicago comedy scene. The 160-seat Second City e.t.c. was sold out on a Tuesday night (as Carlos Zambrano was facing fellow All-Star Ben Sheets, no less).

Pat's family made the trip in from Michigan and he managed to involve his mom, the nicest, politest mom you'll ever meet, in a hilarious bit. He claimed to have randomly preselected one seat in the audience to read some dialogue with him. The winning seat was his mom's, and she dutifully put on her reading glasses and read a few cringeworthy, sex-charged lines with him to roars of laughter. The dialogue was on every table in the house so the audience could read along (and read ahead). He cut it short just before she got to the dirty part.

Sure, I was there as a (p)reviewer, but on the personal side I'm really happy for both performers. They did a fantastic job and deserved the huge ovation they received. I'm proud of them.

I wish there were still time for you to catch the solo double feature, because it was pretty much what the Milwaukee Brewers hit against the Cubs on Monday night: back-to-back home runs. But it's over now, although Pat and Nicky may remount their shows elsewhere around town at some point. Pat's also taking Shatter to the D.C. Comedy Festival next week.

Congratulations to those of you who took my advice in early June and saw this excellent pair of shows. Readers of Ben Bass and Beyond, you gotta have faith too.

Awww

Quote of the week

"O.J.'s got a lot of nerve, complaining about how hard it is to be a single parent. He killed the mother!" —Chris Rock

My peepz have skillz

As Bruce Springsteen shot to national prominence in October 1975, he appeared simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek.

On a local level, my buds in the orchestral-pop band Canasta pulled off a reminiscent feat yesterday, earning nice articles in both the Chicago Tribune (here) and Chicago Sun-Times (here).

Vocalist-bassist Matt Priest is one of those dynamic people who seems to be everywhere at once. (It's entirely possible that the Flaming Lips' In A Priest-Driven Ambulance is about the night Matt ferried Wayne Coyne to the emergency room.) He's a born leader whose energy and enthusiasm are contagious. People follow happily along.

For example, Matt and some college classmates started a Friday evening restaurant club after they moved to Chicago. It soon became Priest's baby, a labor of love designed to keep a circle of friends together.

These things tend to fade out over time, but under Priest's charismatic stewardship, the club has convened at a different restaurant every Friday night for over eight years. It's not only persisted but expanded, bringing new friends into the fold. (As a member for only seven years, I'm one of the newbies.)

It's a drop-in deal; I make it out several times a year. Last night at I Monelli, already a contender for worst restaurant of 2008, I congratulated Priest on the nice newspaper article. He thanked me, mentioning the Sun-Times. I had no idea they'd been written up there, nor did Priest know about the Tribune article I was referring to.

Back to Canasta. Despite several lineup changes since they started in 2002, the chamber popsmiths have been consistently tuneful and engaging throughout their run. Their hard work has won them glowing press and some glamor gigs.

For example, Canasta was handpicked to open for Wilco at a fundraising concert for Barack Obama (see photo) and their signature song "Slow Down Chicago" appears in the movie trailer for Terry Kinney's upcoming comedy Diminished Capacity with Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick and Louis C.K.

Props are also due to fellow Canasta founder and FOBB&B Elizabeth "EL" Lindau, a good violin player and a good person. She's the one who brought me into the restaurant club.

We met as Bucktown neighbors on a sunny summer day neither of us is likely to forget. Some misguided soul had broken into a home, stolen a car and led police on a high-speed chase. The joyride ended when the offender smashed the car into a tree across the street from my house and fled on foot.

As the crime unfolded, a friend and I were walking back to my place and EL was out for a jog. We were all puzzled by the sirens piercing the air of our normally quiet neighborhood until we simultaneously happened upon the bizarre crime scene.

The stolen car was a crumpled wreck on the parkway and broken glass was everywhere. Dozens of neighbors were outside surveying the damage and sharing their versions of events. It was one of those weird moments in life.

It all ended well as the cops caught the bad guy and EL and I became friends. The Canasta kids and EL's eventual boyfriend (and now husband) Jeff Dunlap would later enrich the circle.

Neither of us lives in Bucktown anymore, but some traditions carry on; the restaurant club is going strong and so is Canasta. They're playing tonight at Schubas, a great band in a great room. Come on out.

Culture note

FOBB&B Hannibal Buress performs tonight on Comedy Central's standup comedy showcase "Live at Gotham." He's hilarious. Check it out.

Gear

On Fridays we post live performances.

A few weeks ago we presented a Beatles cover. Today, in a different sense, a Beatles cover:



...and for good measure, charming newsreel coverage of a 1963 Fab Four visit to Manchester:

Jerome Holtzman 1926-2008

Today we acknowledge the passing of the greatest of baseball scribes, Jerome Holtzman, who covered the grand old game for decades as a beat writer and baseball columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times.

Nicknamed "The Dean" by Cubs Hall of Famer Billy Williams, Holtzman set the standard for baseball coverage, breaking big stories and regularly scooping reporters half his age. He is best known for inventing the pitching save, which baseball adopted as an official new statistic in 1966. It was the first major new baseball stat since the RBI in 1920.

Holtzman's book No Cheering in the Press Box is to sports reporting what Mike Royko's Boss is to politics: a seminal primer by a Chicago newspaperman that remains widely admired and taught on college campuses to this day.

After Holtzman retired from the Trib in 1998, commissioner Bud Selig immediately hired him as baseball's first official historian, in which capacity he had long unofficially served.

I exchanged a few hellos with Mr. Holtzman around the ballyard during my eight years as a vendor at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Parks old and new. I didn't know him personally but read him with great interest as so many others did.

The Dean was also a wise professor, and when you read a Jerome Holtzman column, class was in session. His clear writing explained the nuances of the game, bringing readers into the sport's inner circle with a healthy spadeful of inside dirt.

Jerry Holtzman was the sportswriter I made a point of reading when I was growing up. Even as a kid I could tell he was doing something good for the game.

The Tribune's obituary is here, the Sun-Times' is here, and fond remembrances such as this one are everywhere.

Going to the movies

As you know, it's easier than ever to see a movie without going to a theater. Your TiVo (DVR, Netflix, pay-per-view, houseboy) will provide movies in your living room to your heart's content. If you forget to TiVo your movie, HBO On Demand will serve it up. There's also usually a mediocre romantic comedy playing on TBS. After that's over, you might actually consider going outside.

Even brand-new theatrical releases are available at home, where any six-year-old with the inclination and hard drive space can illicitly download them. They're also available on DVD from a horse blanket on Canal Street if you're cool with your money going to Chinese pirates rather than Warner Bros.

Like most people I don't support these unofficial distributors, but volume is not an issue (or it is, but in the sense that we're bombarded with too much of it). At any given time there are eight or ten movies waiting forlornly on my TiVo box or DVR for some attention.

Will I get to them? Not likely. I also TiVo my favorite TV shows, plus the Howard Stern radio show plays on a 24-hour loop on Sirius. The Stern show is as addictive as a soap opera, plus unlike a movie I can half-listen to it while, for example, writing this.

Movies were the first casualty of my surfeit of entertainment options. I record them not because I'm intent on watching them but to provide a decent selection on the rare occasion I want to watch one.

In this climate, there's little incentive for someone like me to head to the local cinema. It's so much easier to kick back and watch a movie at home, where I've already paid for it. (Apparently I'm a hypocrite because I just paid a good nickel to see Chris Rock at the Chicago Theater on Sunday night performing what will surely end up as his next HBO special.)

Plus at my house we don't get too many morons bringing a screaming 18-month-old to a Saturday 9:30 p.m. show, which ruined Something's Gotta Give for three friends and me at the City North 14 on Western Avenue.

Who cares if the movies aren't brand new? I finally saw Harry Potter 5 on cable last week. Did it matter that I missed it in the theater? I'd already forgotten it five minutes after it ended.

For all of the above reasons, plus the fact that I'm a bad sleeper and I try to avoid being downtown after 11 p.m. on a school night, I passed on an admittedly cool event last week: the Dark Knight Gala at the IMAX Theater on Navy Pier (see right), a red-carpet preview screening and party with such dignitary guests as director Christopher Nolan.

After serving for years on the Associate Board of the Chicago International Film Festival, I remain a member and support the festival every October. They provide preview screenings throughout the year (most of my trips to movie theaters are for these) and occasional big-ticket glam fundraising events like the Batman party.

I'm happy to go to a new movie when someone else suggests it. Last year some buddies and I caught Sunday matinees of The Simpsons Movie (liked it) and The Bourne Ultimatum (loved it) and we had a great time. But I only went at their invitation; the idea of going literally never occurs to me.

Of course, there are still plenty of reasons to go to the movies: to catch the hot new release everyone's talking about; to lose yourself in the immersive environment of a large screen and surround sound; to share a communal experience with like-minded strangers; to see The Crying Game or The Sixth Sense before someone ruins it for you. Plus not everyone has Netflix or cable, and there will always be millions of kids looking for something fun to do in the summer.

It wasn't just the kids who came out to support the Batman movie, which set a new box office record for an opening weekend. With a slew of positive reviews and so much word of mouth I can hear the buzz coming through my window, it's looking like the movie of the year, as beloved as WALL-E, a thinking man's superhero movie in the vein of Iron Man.

Naturally I haven't seen any of these, but I look forward to catching them on HBO next year.

Campus crime beat

Friday live

In last week's installment of our Friday performance series, an Asian instrumentalist played a mesmerizing rendition of a familiar chestnut.

Why stop there?  Here's Zack Kim's take on a pair of ubiquitous pop culture standards:

Things I am over

1. The New Yorker's Obama cover. I have no problem with the cover, but I am over the world's overreaction to it.

2. National and American League All-Star jerseys. These are an utterly blah invention of recent vintage, expressly designed for the sole purpose of selling yet more merchandise to a fatuous public. I was over them the first time I saw them.

The players still wear them in the Home Run Derby, but at least baseball has gone back to letting each player wear his regular team's jersey in the All-Star Game itself. The varied uniforms on the field have long been one of the coolest things about the All-Star Game, as baseball temporarily forgot but has now happily remembered.

And on a related note:

3. Ever-changing sports team jerseys, colors and logos. See above in re "expressly designed for the sole purpose of selling yet more merchandise to a fatuous public." Over them.

It's bad enough that the players change teams and cities so often they also need their last names on their street clothes. At least leave the uniforms the same so they're recognizable to the casual fan. In my day... never mind.

4. The electoral college. I am so over this vestige of our agrarian past. Battleground states? Pshaw. Every voter should have a battleground vote.

Candidates for national office should conduct national campaigns. They should make their case for the presidency directly to the people of all 50 states, not 12.

Every vote should matter and count the same. Whoever gets the most votes should win. Isn't that the definition of an election?

5. "President" Bush. Neither I nor the country or world is close to over the massive hemorrhage of statesmanship that has been the Bush II presidency. Nor am I over the fact that every day this idiot remains in the White House is an affront to all Americans regardless of their political views. But him personally? Over him. Next.

6. The endless election season. If only it were just a season. It's been dragging on for what feels like eleven years. Over it. Can we have the election tomorrow?

We've known the names of both presumptive nominees for a month now. With their radically divergent worldviews, the average thinking adult should have little trouble deciding between them. Anyone still undecided should wake up, open a newspaper and make up their mind.

As my friend Goldie said, "Basically, I'm checking out until election day. Voting for Obama. And then hopefully checking out again." Hard to feel differently at this point.

7. The election process circa 2008. The need to amass a huge war chest two years before the election; the states' leapfrogging each other to ever-earlier caucus and primary dates; Super-Duper Tuesday, whose pernicious effects cannot be absolved by a cute nickname.

Enough already. The system badly needs an overhaul.

8. Bloggers. Angry loudmouths who rant about sports and politics on their websites as if anyone else cares. Over them.

Headline of the week

A late great

Because most visitors to this site stop by Monday through Friday, I rarely write here on the weekend. (Ben Bass and Beyond: friend to bored cubicle dwellers everywhere.)

I make an exception today because my brother Justin has suggested that I write something acknowledging Milton Berle's 100th birthday. In gratitude for Justin's stalwart support of this site, not to mention his excellence in the brotherly arts, I do so.

I assume he knows Uncle Miltie's birthdate because the two of them hit it off when they met some years ago at a party in Los Angeles. He got a kick out of meeting a living legend. So did my brother.

And thus we wish a happy hundredth to the late Milton Berle, television pioneer, comedy icon, host of Texaco Star Theater, and a man renowned in the Friars Club locker room for his enormous, shall we say, career. Apparently he was a decent guy too. If my brother liked him, that's good enough for me.

Incidentally, his given name was Mendel Berlinger. Mr. Berle, that is. My brother's real name is Hyman Moskowitz.

Old school

Last week our Friday performance series took a break for Independence Day, but now that we're dependent again, we return this week to kick it old school.

I write event previews for Flavorpill, a popular culture guide (ambiguity intentional). It's kind of a big deal in its hometown of New York City, lower-profile but also respected here in Chicago.

Many of my Flavorpill writeups are about comedy and theater, but I also write about music, panels, readings, or what have you (sorry to boast but I'm equally ill-informed about everything).

Looking back, I seem to have unintentionally carved out a niche writing about events sponsored by a Chicago institution called the Old Town School of Folk Music, or as I affectionately call it, "Old School." For example, I wrote about it here and here, and way back before Flavorpill went from .net to .com, here.

That's a fair amount of coverage considering I've never taken a music lesson there in my life. I've only walked into their Lincoln Avenue headquarters a couple of times, first to see Gillian Welch and Steve Earle (a late substitution for a mourning Richard Thompson) on the grand opening weekend, and once for Red Red Meat and Califone.

But it's a beloved local institution with a rich history and excellent programming, so I support it in my humble fashion by helping to spread the word.

And thus, like Scorsese hiring De Niro for the umpteenth time to act in a movie about criminals, I return this week to my favorite muse, chipping in this writeup for the Old Town School's Folk and Roots Festival tomorrow and Sunday at Welles Park in Lincoln Square. If you're a music fan looking for some outdoor fun this weekend, you could do a lot worse.

As sometimes happens at Flavorpill, the above preview was edited within an inch of its life. One quip edited out was: "...for those who like a little old school in their Old Town School, expert cover bands playing Beatles, Kinks, and Wilco favorites."

But I edit this site, bitchez! So it's back! Ha ha! Boo-yaa! Sorry, my ad nauseam repetition of the term "old school" triggered some nostalgic 2003-style exuberance there.

To get us in the mood for the Beatles covers that the Old Town School's crack cover band will perform at Folk and Roots this weekend, here's the virtuosic Jake Shimabukuro's ukelele take on a Fab Four classic:

Household corner

Move over, Hints From Heloise. Today it's all about Grandpa Benjy's Old-Time Home Remedies up in this piece.

From my neighbor Nancy S., a retired college professor who knows everything:

Are you troubled by multiple mosquito bites this season?  A little dab of household ammonia applied right to the bite completely eliminates the itch/pain, and also the swelling.  Furthermore, the itch/pain and swelling do not return when you get around to washing it off, even if washed almost immediately.

Of course, the ammonia and water base evaporate almost immediately, but household ammonia also includes various mysterious ingredients that the manufacturers do not want to divulge to competitors----“anionic and nonionic surfactants”, and “small quantities of processing aids and perfume”.  Not knowing what these substances are, I prefer to wash them off as soon as I can get around to doing so.  But, remember, household ammonia is supposed to be reasonably safe, as approved by the FDA, or whatever.  The instructions say to flood with water if there is prolonged contact with skin.

Maybe you knew about this remedy already, but I know lots of people who didn’t.  It is truly more effective than anything else I’ve encountered to provide immediate, and complete, relief from mosquito bites.