Time Out Chicago has finally launched, to lukewarm response from at least one critic. It’s hard to imagine anyone in Chicago getting exercised about a new magazine or newspaper. The city has been so awash with new pubs in the past five years, readers are probably asking themselves what more there is to say about … Read more
Well, if you’re in a lucky seat, you’ll win a Hormel hot dog treat. Great for lunch, great for dinner, You could be a wiener winner, in the Hormel…Row…of…Fame! ALSO: GREAT NAMES IN MAJOR LEAGUE HISTORY, PART ONE Astyanax Douglass Drungo Hazewood Ezra “Saltrock” Midkiff Moxie Hengle Tub Welch Rivington Bisland Ollie Welf Spurgeon Ferdinand … Read more
I close my eyes, whistle, and send the dogs off into the brush to see if they can scare up any words. I’m not sure how long I sit here –it varies, I suppose, from night to night. When it gets quiet like this, though, and I can’t even hear the rustling or baying of … Read more
So, it is day two of what amounts to a four-day Rosh Hoshanna for Minnesotans; it is the state high school hockey tournament. As threatened, we have set up the office television, stretched the bunny ears across the bookshelf, fiddled with the horizontal and the vertical. We only saw a little of yesterday’s game between … Read more
Fantasy baseball is one of them. Fantasy league is even worse. There’s something essentially emasculated about these terms, and to use them in the form of an admission –“I am in a fantasy league”– seems somehow shameful. I’ve no doubt that a first-rate thesis could be written on the homoerotics of fantasy league baseball, but … Read more
I don’t suppose I can reliably claim that I have just seen, at four a.m. in the third day of March in the Midwest, the first firefly of the summer. That won’t, however, stop me from staking my claim. I see what I see, and the world can believe whatever the hell it wants. I … Read more
A little over a year ago, Paul Gruchow killed himself—and we are still feeling robbed. At the time, we put pen to paper and tried to memorialize him as best we could. We still believe that he was one of the finest environmental essayists ever, anywhere. Just today, we finally got around to reading Michael … Read more
I’d like, if I could, to correct a common misconception regarding Paradise. The animal sanctuaries are actually, in fact, offshore, a couple islands just off the coast which have been set aside for cats, primates, and horses. As with humans, however, not all cats, primates, and horses are admitted to Paradise, although virtue is not … Read more
I assume the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated is out, although I have neither seen it nor gone looking for it, have never done so that I recall—though I certainly do not mind it when it passes into my life, say in the waiting room at Jiffy Lube. One of our prized possessions here in … Read more
I have every reason to believe our lads are steroid-free (seventeen reasons, in fact –that being the number of seasons since a member of the local nine has hit thirty homeruns), and I wouldn’t expect to hear of any dirty piss tests emanating from the Twins’ clubhouse any time soon. The truth is that the … Read more