The Bears' QB Futility

Kyle Orton had a bad game last night for the Bears. But I heard no outrage today over how he lost the game, people seemed more level headed. Last year they would have been screaming to lynch Rex Grossman. But at this point right now are they really any different? Kyle came out and had the offense clicking towards the beginning/middle of the season. Really that is a pretty similar scenario for when Rex was putting up amazing numbers in '06. Kyle missed one game due to injury and has come back with 3 sub par games. Sure maybe it is because he isn't 100% but what if it isn't? Does your ankle affect your reads on safety coverage over your outside receiver? They looked like Rex throws to me.

Now let me put it out there that I have always been a Rex supporter so much in the way that I feel sorry for the guy cause it isn't all his fault. This is a team game and yet the entire city of Chicago continues to boo the guy just for walking on the sidelines. Doesn't this really stem from larger issues?

My point is this, it really isn't alot of difference between Rex & Kyle. Both are decent QB's that at least half the league would probably take over what they currently have, well maybe 1/4. Name one top rated passer that does not have a top shelf receiver to throw to? This system, this team, this management simply doesn't know how to play offense. The biggest problem with that is that their defense is broken. Running the ball is simple, look at Denver for proof. Just block each man and give the ball to anyone that can hold onto it and still move fairly quickly. I know it isn't that simple but compared to putting together a true passing game it is. Takes 1 to run, 2 to pass.

Basically stop booing Rex and don't think Kyle is the answer. The system and the supporting cast are bad. Drew Brees wouldn't be able to throw to these guys.

Calling Out People Who Forget

Yesterday on 670 the Score, radio host Lawrence Holmes had a little venting to do after a very quick and rough interview with Bears DL Tommie Harris. Harris was dodging most questions giving short answers and then cut the interview off cause he was starting a charity function and was being mobbed by people wanting autographs. After the call ended Holmes unleashed some personal venting on Harris's change in attitude lately and accused him of turning his back on the people of the radio station and becoming a bad person.

Whatever Harris's motives were don't really matter for my point. I was more impressed that Holmes finally came out and said something negative about a Bears player that he used to have a good relationship with, something Holmes appears to be more comfortable with all the time as he moves into his own identity and not the Bears beat reporter.

While I was encouraged to hear Holmes give us some real feelings and emotion on the radio, it also made me think about how he has changed. As the Bears beat reporter he needed open access to the locker room and the cooperation of the players in order to get any information. Rare was the time when I ever heard Holmes say anything bad about any Bears player even when the radio hosts he was talking to were openly bashing obvious flaws with the team. But now the tables have turned as he has his own shows and isn't in that locker room anymore. All of a sudden he can pass judgement on Tommie Harris for getting paid and turning into a bad person.

Either way both men have changed from what I remember. While I am not saying whatever Harris is going through is any accuse for his drop in play and general sour attitude lately, certainly a once overly nice and positive speaking Holmes is probably the worse change out of the two.

The End of Missile Football

This past Saturday marked the end of an era. As the Milledgeville Missiles were knocked out of the IHSA Class A playoffs by Stark County, Coach Gary Hartje's 30 year tenure came to a close once again 1 game short of the state championship game. 30 years is a long time and in a small school/community it is the cornerstone needed to build good programs. But not only did he coach high school football he used to coach 8th grade basketball and the high school girls softball let alone his normal teaching duties in the junior high. Dedication and commitment to a community that so desperately needs people to stand up this way and wear the many hats.

Still his accomplishments with the gridiron are by far his greatest. There was an article this fall in which Coach Hartje paid his respects to a founder of Missile football, Lester Snow. But every accolade you could give to Coach Snow & Molson for building the foundation of a football program for the farming community of Milledgeville, Hartje was the one who made it last. I played on many sports teams and have had several coaches but I cannot recall one with a better emotional connection to his players than what everyone experienced with Coach Hartje. Even when he was mad & screaming in practice it felt different. He was always about moving on to the next game or season whether the previous was good or bad. In his last 10 years he came 1 game away from the state title game 3 times. That is only 3 times in school history teams had made it past the 2nd round. There are always coulda's and if's no matter what happens in life but it takes someone special to look past most of those and be proud of every team they coach, win or lose.

All the Missiles can do now is look forward just as Coach Hartje taught all of us to do for so many years. And even if the day comes soon when the Missiles cease to exist there will still be memories of the teams 'With One Heartbeat' and a man that was Missile football.

Thanks for all you've done Coach!

Polar Caps

Warning: I am writing this as I go and I have a feeling it's going to be very random and possibly not well thought out.

In college, I took several geography classes that all dealt with the many different subjects and variations of geography. I believe it was in a course that focused on climate and weather that I first heard that at several different times in the earth's history the poles had reversed. Meaning that north became south and south became north. I don't believe this has happened at any point during human existence and I've since wondered what will happen when this occurs again. Will gravity be temporarily lost? Will all of us not nailed to the ground spin out into space. I guess the good news of that is we will go through a series of freezing and burning till whatever ever is left of us basically breaks down in outer space.

Also we talked quite about the poles melting. Which my uneducated and naive intuition feels may just trigger the above to happen. Meaning most of us will be covered in ocean by the time it happens then.

I guess what made me think of this was how polar opposite the world feels right now. The gap between the right and the left in politics in this world continues to grow. The current U.S. presidential election features an old white guy (nothing new there), who despite being in his mid-70s and a part of politics for the past 30 plus years, that is trying to sell people he is the opposite of what he appears. A maverick? A trend setter?

Then you have a middle aged black man who picked an old white guy for a running mate all in hopes that people will see him as a traditional, safe, ready to be your leader kind of candidate. But lets face it. The guy grew up in the Illinois political climate. For those that don't know, Illinois politics is as corrupt as most third world dictatorships. If you really think he is the next coming of Kennedy, think again.

I guess what's funny about it all is these are two men who appear the opposite are really trying to be exactly the same. They're trying to connect to people fleeing to one pole or the other. Hoping that the weight on one end will carry them over. Heck they're even switch they're polar positions if it means four years in a seat that will likely make them one of the worst presidents no matter what they do. Times are going to be tough.

I guess no matter how the world spins and which pole is north and which is south, they'll always be one on opposite ends. Unless, of course, the guy from Kids in the Hall is siting on the moon and crushing us with his fingers.

A wrestling season

Rehashing some of the NWO Revenge tales in our previous lists got me to thinking about pro wrestling or sports entertainment or whatever it's called right now. I haven't watched either WWE or TNA for a few years. I haven't even bought or played the last couple of versions of Raw versus Smackdown. I've lost interest. That happened once before in the early 90s till the mid to late 90s, and my interest was piqued actually by the Revenge video game more than anything else.
Anyways the business of wrestling has been in a slow tailspin since the end of the Attitude Era and the purchase of WCW. I continued to watch for a few years as a lot of the dream WWF/WCW matches played out, usually not very well, in the new WWE. A few years ago TNA started to provide some competition for WWE. But it doesn't really compete. First of all, WWE is a streamlined product, it will get big again sometime because some character will take off, but in the meantime it is very kick and punch. I stopped watching RAW in part because it was essentially the same show with the same matches and same interview segments each week.
The little I have seen of TNA hasn't been very good. There's some interesting talent and characters and the six-sided ring is different. But basically it's WWE south with a different ring and less quality production and storyline writing.
How do you compete? How do you really do something different?
I think you have to look at what works around you in other pro sports and in reality entertainment.
First, don't televise new shows all year long. 6-to-8 months. If you have the backing to pay performers well, this will take some of the stress of their bodies, hopefully decrease steroid and drug dependency. Plus, it will keep the audience fresh. Give them a break and allow you to build excitement for next season by showing re-run highlights during television time. It also cuts back on production costs for a new company while still generating sales through DVDs and merchandise.
Second, no more champions. That is not more having a guy carry around a belt. Instead each season will determine that year's individual champion and possibly tag champions. At the beginning of the next year they're the defending champions in name like the N.Y. Giants are the defending Super Bowl champions. I think the way to work this is by creating 5 man teams at the beginning of each season. Each wrestler wants to win individually for himself but also for the team because they're would be incentives like automatic bids into season ending playoffs something like that. Here's where the drama comes in as teams try co-exist with each other and against other teams. You could even have a team manager or something. They're a lot coulds and shoulds in this part and I haven't worked it all out. Probably each week two teams could face off in a best of series matches. Each team would also pick two guys in the group to wrestle in the tag division. They're are endless offshoots. As I mentioned earlier, the end of the year they're be a playoffs to determine individual champion. That's where the team probably dissovles. Probably top eight records or maybe even use a point system to get into tournament with winning team getting three automatic bids.
Third, no more monthly pay-per-views. This became too formulaic in the WWE and WCW. Week one of each month set up new rivarly. Week two the rivarly is brought out in tag team main event or something like that. Third week the PPV match is made. Foruth week the face is beat down by heal. PPV - whatever happens, happens. In the new company, you have maybe three pay per views. The final one being the year singles and tags tournament. The other two could allow teams to earn challenges on the pay per view during regular shows. This is how rivalries could get settled. If you work on a points system, more point could be awarded for PPV match wins and main event wins. Team would try and get as many guys on the PPV as possible with them probably choosing who to fight in what kind of match. Again this could have endless offshoots.
Fourth, don't depend too much upon extremely muscled guys, wilds stunts and wacky run-ins. A little of all those are OK. But just a little and only used when needed or it makes sense.
I know this got long and there's probably more to it that I forgot and some of it is confusing. But I figured if NASCAR people can understand the algorithm they use to determine a champion, wrestling fans could get this.

Knowledge & Integrity

I am a life long Cubs fan and I am really enjoying this season. So it is almost a sin that recently I have found myself listening to White Sox games on the radio when the Cubs are not on. At first I dismissed this as just noise in the background because I needed something to break the silence. But my interest has grown which could be pointed towards the fact that for the first time in my life time teams on both sides of town are winning their divisions with the great dream of an all Chicago World Series. But even with that, it still isn't a reason to listen to the game.

I listen because of Steve Stone. The former Cy Young Award winner that has much just as big of a career as a broadcaster. I grew up listening to him call Cubs games with Harry Caray and later his grandson Chip. I remember vividly his falling out with the Cubs during the 2004 season in which the club blew their chance at making the playoffs after being just 4 outs away from the World Series the year before. That is were the integrity part comes in. Steve did not shy away from his straight forward observations of the team and his disappointment (maybe disgust) for the way they avoided blame. Obviously for an organization at the time that was afraid of the truth, this caused quite a stir. Steve left the position not wanting to be a monkey on TV backing whatever the team or skipper did. But that season made Steve Stone to me and many other fans, because he wasn't afraid to say exactly what we were all thinking.

Now he is on WSCR The Score doing Sox games and will enter their TV booth next year. His knowledge of the game and situations is unbelievable. He seems to have this ability to understand the game like no one else and thus know what is going to possibly happen. There are plenty of clips that are evidence to this. I find myself listening to the Sox broadcasts just to hear what Stoney has to say and what he thinks about every team and every situation. He is my baseball guru.

Ode to the Harmonica

A couple weeks ago, I spent a few minutes watching a band. Nothing big, just a few old-time amateurs playing oldies. But they did a workmanlike job of jamming threw some familiar tunes.
Anyhow, during a few of the tunes the keyboard player broke out the headset out with the harmonica. Not the sexiest of looks, but it did serve as a wake up call.
Sitting there, I realized nothing quite tugs at the mind like a slow, steady harmonica solo. I think it springs memories for everyone. Especially those who grew up listening to classic rock.
So many of the greats used it frequently. Bob Dylan, Neil Young. Johnny Cash. The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith. Tom Waits. And so on down the list.
So I guess, my question is where did the harmonica go? I can't think of the last new act (at least outside of country songs) that use it even passingly. Maybe I am ignorant to a song or band that have hit the charts lately with a harmonica featured in their songs, but I don't think so. it's almost like this effective instrument has been lost in the jam of synthesizers, beat boards and mixing machines.
I hope not, it still has it place in the grand sound of American rock music.

Stories & The Classic Western

Big Red's points about being involved with a story was already in my mind as I watched The Undefeated Saturday morning. John Wayne & Rock Hudson starred in this 1969 western placed after the end of the Civil War. The story is marginal but it got me thinking about many of the other great Westerns, the stories involved and how Hollywood fails to produce the same anymore. The focus is usually on the characters involved and not necessarily what happens to them but how it happens and what gets them their. It is about their beliefs, their struggles with life, and how they interact with eachother.

The biggest point I think is pacing of their story. People always talking about the pace of a story or when doing standup pacing the jokes, how fast the action moves. There are so many movies today that are "Non Stop Action" moving at a torrid pace for 90 minutes that you either feel out ob breath watching it or confused because so much happened that you can't comprehend it all. I watch these old westerns and they seemed relaxed yet are always moving along. Their pace builds the story slowly, giving you lots of back story through character interactions. Maybe that is because they had to without all the effects and abilities of movie makers today.


It seems like audiences need that now, we have to have everything packages up without anything unnecessary and we need to be out in time to do the 1000 other things on our to-do list. Maybe we can't relate anymore to the more relaxed story telling that many of the classic westerns represented or have we just past our fascination with the Old West? I just know that no matter what genre we are talking about, Hollywood doesn't quite tell a story with the same pace and dialogue as those old westerns.

Football/Soccer

It is Olympic time which means competition in a bunch of sports most Americans don't care or even know about. But soccer, or Football as the entire world except us call it, has always been a subject of debate. Although this time around I think I might have found some explanation, at least for myself, on why we dog the world's most popular sport so much.


Random Olympic competition during the weekend and late at night is far better than most crap on TV so I find myself flipping through the 3 channels NBC is broadcasting on. I can't remember which teams were playing but it was an opening match in pool play. I found myself compelled to see how this hard fought match would end as the tension kept building towards the 90th minute of this deadlock. Then all of a sudden someone broke away and scored. I felt it! That weird excitement and I could understand why people go crazy when a goal is scored.


I woke up the other morning before work and turned on the TV to find the US down to Nigeria with about 15 minutes left. I watched the US bring out all the big guns, shooting at the goal from every angle and all the close calls that ensued. The US lost match but the flurry of activity was thrill enough.

So even though I still don't totally understand the finer rules (like how people are offsides), I have found myself glued to each soccer...I mean football match that comes on TV. Then I realized maybe this is similar to my feelings on hockey. For me, hockey is only good to watch when it is the NHL playoffs as opposed to a regular season game. The big reason is that the teams actually play hard cause each games means something. That is why I think I will continue to enjoy Olympic football and hate the MLS. Football is a grueling endurance sport. It really takes alot of conditioning to run that much. So that would be an obvious excuse not to give it your all without good reason.

Well right now football means something. For some of these countries this is the most important thing in their world because it may be the only thing they are truly good at. Thus, we Americans in our quest to be better at more things than anyone else have sorta given up on football at times. We realized that we could never get as much dedication out of our country for one single sport as the rest of the world seems to. So instead we created our own sports, got them into the Olympics and continue to kick everyone's ass in them because no one else really cares.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Shuffle

I would not consider myself to have eclectic music tastes by any stretch. However, I do enjoy a wide variety of bands and styles. With an ever expanding music library, I try to employ shuffle as often as possible. I remember when there wasn't such a luxury, fast forwarding through all my cassette tapes or making my own mixes. Even in the early days of CDs, not every player could shuffle. Of course now on ITunes, my IPod, any CD player and even satellite radio (Super Shuffle on Sirius) everyone enjoys a little more variety.

That is except me. I seem to have become very jaded towards shuffle at times. Obviously the idea is for the selection to be random. But it is never random enough for me or sometimes too random. I was just listening to Iron Maiden and now I gotta settle down for Carrie Underwood? Sure you could say it is my fault for putting that on my IPod, but isn't this thing supposed to do the work for me? Really with all this technology, it should be able to tell what I am in the mood for and play that more often.

I have already forgotten the strife I used to go through trying to listen to a mix of music without switching a CD every time or taking a whole afternoon to make a 15 song mix. I want more and I want it exactly this way but somehow random! It is my fault, I choose Shuffle every time. So I realize I am a hypocrite but then I just hit the skip button and get over it.

A Bar Somewhere in America

Okay, tonight it took two budlight brewsters at Applebees to make me a cheap date. If I were a chick in skirt, some guy could have had my panties off and back on again well before Leno started his monologue.
Six hours in 110 degree heat will do that.
Anyways I sat at the bar, drank and ate one of Applebees famous trios that turned into a duo as one of my entrees never escpaed the kitchen.
Oh well, I didn’t need more food and I was comping the meal anyhow.
Across the bar was Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazard about 20 year younger than he appeared on the show.
He was reading a some publication called “The New Criterion” which either means he is a religious zealot, a communist or some sort of mechanical technician.
Imagine Uncle Jesse as any. Although he did continually turn the sound up to hear the Cardinals game. I am going with communist.
Down the way there was a man that looked to be in his 70s, but had a little earring in his left ear.
This man was also reading. He had some sort of paperback book. I didn’t know reading was such a common bar drinking activity.
I felt out of place with just a beer and a plate of food.
I guess the short of this experience is that people never cease to amaze me.
Of course, I was the one that drank enough to get tipsy then went back to my hotel, wrote a story for work and then thought I should write this.

535 miles from where ever you are

We’ve all met the guy. He’s the one that cringes whenever the radio station turns over from the AM to the FM. He’s the one that’ll tell you - “It’s all noise to me. Loud noise.”
I started driving yesterday with Stone Temple Pilots playing Lady Picture Show on my MP3 player. I don’t think that guy would even need to hear STP. You’d say the name and he’d know it was noise.
Anyways I crossed well over 500 miles today from Northern Illinois to Southwestern Missouri. Over the blacktop, with song after song keeping me company. I passed the green exit signs, blue rest area signs and the increasingly large number of Adult Video Billboards. I saw every Pizza Hut and Applebees, Chilis (ate at one) and McDonalds. There was a Wal-Mart there. Here was a Lowes. Across the street a Blockbuster and then a Best Buy.
By the end of the trip, I was on a track from Bob Marley. Music-lovers realize that generally Mr. Marley fits under the same rock or popular music category as STP. But other than that, and both groups association with recreational drug use, the comparasion ends there. The bands where separated in time by 20-plus years in terms of their popularity.
Marley burst onto the scene in the 70s as the voice of Reggae. STP was probably at best a second-tier grunge band and at worst a pretty good rock band. They’re both off different evolutionary branches of Rock’n’Roll that originated in the 1950s.
Yet that old man with the hearing aid and the flannel shirt would say the same thing. It’s all noise. Maybe slightly different noise. But noise all the same.
But I think I understand him now. Not about music but the landscape of this country. It’s all noise masked by bright lights and the smell of steak on the grill. Where once every city had it’s local restaurants and full service gas and each road it’s unique mystique, now there’s a cookie-cutter suburb.
I was on historic Route 66 today for a time, but I couldn’t tell what the big deal was. I may have been on Route 67 or 91 or 25. The truth is that this is a tree where all the branches are nearly exactly the same.
In less than 50 years, we’ve made 535 miles to the southwest pretty much the same as where we started.