Category Archives: 1968 Democratic Convention

10/01/2014
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1968 Democratic Convention, Abbie Hoffman, ACORN, Barack Obama, Bull Connor, Chicago 7, James O'Keefe, Jerry Rubin, Pigasus, The Third City

Hot Air

Abbie Hoffman: An Oldie But Goodie

I thought I’d run an old chestnut from my days as a keyboard clacker for The Third City this AM. I’m doing this because I feel lazy as hell and I’ve got about 2300 other things to do. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.

[Originally published in The Third City, February 2nd, 2010.]

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Big Mike: Fight The Power(less)

I knew I was a liberal after watching Bull Connor’s thugs knock the crap out of civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama in 1963. I was seven years old at the time. I knew I was a rebel after reading Mad magazine a few years later when I was ten. I knew where my sympathies lay after Martin Luther King was bumped off and and West Siders tried to light their shitty ghetto on fire in response. I knew whose side I was on when Chicago cops were fracturing skulls in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

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The 1968 Democratic Convention In Chicago

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So I’ve known from the earliest age that I’d never, ever want to be part of the bully crowd, the gang with badges and guns and respectability, pillars of the community, the backbone, the bedrock, the silent majority of this holy land. From all I could see, those people could turn into mean bastards in the snap of a finger when, in their fever dreams, they saw niggers, broads, queers, and pinkos plotting to sap and impurify all their precious bodily fluids.

From the age of nine on, I knew that those in power had to be defied, ridiculed and distrusted. For my money, it was better to piss all over their shoes than to shine them. When I was fourteen years old, I found a voice and a face for my nascent philosophy. His name was Abbot Howard Hoffman of Worcester, Massachusetts. The world knew him as Abbie.

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Abbie

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He was the fun guy, the sex symbol some said, of the Chicago Eight. The Big Boys in in Washington and Chicago (appropriately enough, led by a couple of Dicks — Nixon and Daley) needed to string some people up for wrecking the Democrats’ bash in ’68 and for saying what pretty much everyone else with a cerebrum knew: that the Vietnam War was nuts. So US Attorneys threw darts at a list of radicals and came up with eight names to persecute and prosecute. Abbie was the star of that cast.

The war, segregation, corporate oligarchies and the rest might have pissed him off, but Abbie rarely lost his mischievous grin. Once, standing before a mass march of some 50,000 anti-war protesters outside the Pentagon, he directed them to marshal all their “psychic energy” to levitate the building. It didn’t work but he gave it a good try. Later, he and some cohorts stood in the visitors’ gallery above the New York Stock Exchange and tossed handfuls of cash on the trading floor, causing a mini riot as people scrambled to grab the fluttering dough.

During the Democratic convention protests, he and Jerry Rubin nominated a pig — whom they’d named Pigasus — for president. The pig lost. I think.

J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI file on Abbie ran to 13,262 pages.

Abbie mixed a joie with his rage. He was my hero. I even gave myself the nickname Abbey (yeah, I inadvertently misspelled it — sue me, I was 14.) I tried to grow my hair out like his — tough to do while trying to remain within the confines of a suburban, Catholic, college prep school appearance code. Had I been able to find an American flag shirt, I’d have worn it; of course, this was before wearing an American flag shirt became a statement for the entirely opposite reason.

When Abbie was found dead of a phenobarbitol overdose (he battled bipolar disorder) I mourned. The rabbi at his funeral said Abbie’s life’s work was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

That’s why some recent news has made my ears turn red. A quartet of little masturbation artists was busted down in New Orleans for impersonating telephone repairmen and sneaking into Sen. Mary Landrieu‘s office. They wanted to tap into her phone system illegally. They say their little prank was justified for moral and ethical reasons. Landrieu’s sin? She supports health care reform.

The four are part of a burgeoning movement of right wing college students who employ capers, hijinks, dirty tricks, entrapment, and guerrilla journalism to fight the forces who are destroying this holy nation. You know, those who push for universal health care, speak out against racism and sexism, and community organizers — terrorists of the worst sort.

You may recall one of the four as the guy who dressed up as a pimp and entered an ACORN office, phony street hooker in tow, looking for a small business grant. The ACORN representative, unwittingly (and suspiciously stupidly), went along with the scam. The right wing world, naturally, saw the isolated incident as a broad indictment of.., um…, I guess community organizations. You know, groups that try to help the little guy, the bastards.

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James O’Keefe And Accomplice

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Anyway, the financier behind this homunculus’s campaigns, a wealthy right winger, has compared his work to that of Abbie Hoffman.

Those are fighting words. Look at the mugshots of the four and you’ll see the faces of privilege. They’re well-fed, smug, and awfully pale. They’ve gone to to best schools. They have bright futures in the corporate world — even if they now carry felony raps. They have as much to do with Abbie Hoffman as they do with Moe, Larry and Shemp (who, I recall, also impersonated telephone repairmen in one of their shorts.)

They’re fighting for the bullies of this world, which in my book makes them uber-bullies. They afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. I hope they enjoy their stay in state prison.

I’m still an Abbie guy, even if hyenas like the New Orleans four try to hijack his legacy.

At the ripe old age of 52, last year, as Barack Obama was being sworn in as 44th President of the United States, I realized I still walked the path with my old idol.

My feelings were mixed as I watched the inauguration. I was giddy that a brown human being had reached the White House. But I was also scared to death that some member of this nation’s racial majority, some lover of status quo, some idolator of guns and badges, certain that pillars of the community and its leaders should have pale skin, would aim a rifle at Obama. If anybody bumps this guy off, I swore to myself, I’m gonna go out with a baseball bat and make some fuckers pay.

It’s what Abbot Hoffman would have thought. Radical? Sure. Unreasonable? Hell no. Thanks Abbie.

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12/12/2012
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1968 Democratic Convention, Bull Island, Concert for Bangladesh, Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival, LSD, March on Washington, Monterey Pop Festival, Orange Sunshine, Ravi Shankar, Summer of Love, Vietnam War, Woodstock

The Pencil Today:

HotAirLogoFinal Wednes II

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THE QUOTE

“When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor.” — Jonathan Lethem

Lethem

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CARPE-ING THE DIEM

All the coolest things happened in the ten year period before I became old enough to participate in them. Here’s a list of events I’d have attended or been part of had I been 18 years old and not still terrified of being grounded for a couple of months by Ma or clunked on the head by Dad:

Summer of Love

I Wished

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How I longed to have been there!

Accordingly, for the first few years of my youthful independence, I tried to do everything that I couldn’t when I was a tadpole.

I mean, I even burned my Selective Service System registration card the day I got it in 1974, even though the draft had been effectively ended at least a year by that time. I felt revolutionary. I must have looked like a dope.

Some six months before that great act of resistance, I concocted a foolproof cover story, bundled up some clothing, a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, and pocketed the entirety of my wealth — some $12, IIRC — and set off with five pals for southern Indiana and the Erie Canal “Soda” Pop Festival.

Soda Pop Festival Ticket

Where Did I Get $20?!

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It would be my first rock festival and, I was certain, would be as cool, as transcendent, as culturally significant, as oh wow! as Woodstock. I was 16 years old.

This was my cover story: I was a member of the Astronomy Club in high school. In fact, by Labor Day weekend 1972, I’d already been elected vice president of that august group. The only nerdier guys were the Chess Club members, some of whom were also members of our gang. The Astronomy Club twice a year would hold a weekend camp-out some 50 miles west of Chicago on one of our members’ uncle’s property where we’d set up our telescopes, keep running counts of meteors, and when we got too cold, huddle in cars and look at the Playboy magazines that one of us invariably brought.

I told my parents the Astronomy Club camp-out would be early that year.

“Okay,” Ma said as I shoved off. “Just be careful.” I nodded and walked a couple of blocks to a prearranged meeting point. There, in a rusty old black Ford blaring the 8-track strains of the “Concert for Bangladesh,” sat not my pimply-faced geeky brethren but three hippies named Bart, Karen, and Gaye. Behind the Ford was an even rustier faded blue Rambler containing two more hippies named Ronnie and Sunshine.

I never found out what Sunshine’s real name was. He’d earned his moniker because he was mad for Orange Sunshine, a type of LSD that made other kinds of acid seem like something your Mom would take.

Orange Sunshine

A Four-way Blotter Hit Of Orange Sunshine

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Sunshine always had a faraway look in his eyes. Faraway.

Bart, Ronnie, and Sunshine were in their mid-20s. Karen, Gaye, and I were in our mid-teens. Bart and Karen were a couple, which we — self-regarded free-thinking and free-loving freaks — thought nothing of. I was madly in love with Gaye. She was the first white chick I ever knew who had an Afro.

As we barreled south on Interstate 57, I even tried to hold Gaye’s hand, which she allowed me to do for all of 13 seconds. The rest of the time she spent staring out the back window of the Ford, looking for all the world like a lonely puppy. I wouldn’t let myself realize it at the time, but she was mooning over Ronnie, following us in the Rambler. She was madly in love with him.

The Erie Canal “Soda” Pop Festival originally was slated to be held in Chandler, Indiana but county officials there quickly put the kibosh on that idea. After scouting around for a new site, the organizers discovered a piece of oxbow land just east of the the Wabash River called Bull Island, near New Harmony. Because the big river had changed its course over the years, Bull Island, originally part of Illinois, by then was on the Indiana side of the river. Ergo, Indiana authorities had no jurisdiction over it. And, like that, the festival had a new home.

Evansville Courier-Press Photo

The Way In

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I took a hit of Orange Sunshine that Saturday night, my first acid trip. I’d hardly ever smoked marijuana to that point. In fact, I’d only drunk alcohol a handful of times. “Don’t worry,” Ronnie advised me, “this is gonna be freaky.”

Freaky was his word for wonderful.

A couple of hours later as Foghat played “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” I looked down at my hands and discovered that I’d gashed them wide open. The gaping wound was big enough that I could have sworn I saw the very tendons and bones inside of me. “Oh God,” I shrieked, “I need bandages, quick!”

My plea was so desperate that any number of people leaped up and ran for First Aid supplies.

Evansville Courier-Press Photo

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The next morning when I woke up, my pals were laughing at me. I considered this highly insulting; after all, I’d nearly severed my hands. Then I learned what had really happened. A guy was walking around passing out flyers. I stuck out my hand to take one and — wouldn’t you know it? — got myself a nasty paper cut.

That was the extent of my trauma.

Freaky indeed.

As we bathed in the Wabash River that morning, the sounds of Ravi Shankar’s sitar wafted over us. I’ll never forget that moment because it was the very first time I’d ever seen a nude chick. Thank heavens I was waist deep in the river. I loitered there for a long time, not just to catch sidelong glances at her and other unclothed females, but to allow certain parts of my anatomy below the surface to de-tumesce.

Did I mention I was 16?

Evansville Courier-Press Photo

Ravi Shankar At Bull Island

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Anyway, Bull Island was a catastrophe. More than 200,000 people showed up; the organizers were prepared for 50,000. Much of the acid sold there was not just a rip-off, it was dangerous laced with strychnine. Before the acts arrived by helicopter, each was advised not to drop any acid purchased at the site. We were lucky inasmuch as Sunshine had dosed us from his personal stash.

Bull Island, the festival, lacked water, food, medical supplies, and toilets. A downpour of biblical proportions soaked the 900-acre site on Friday night. Trucks bringing food into the festival were looted and one was overturned and burned. A kid in a sleeping bag was run over by a car backing up on Sunday night. Three other kids drowned in the Wabash River.

Scheduled acts included Rod Stewart and the Faces, Black Sabbath, the Allman Brothers, and Joe Cocker. None of them performed. Instead, we were treated to the likes of Black Oak Arkansas.

After the festival was over, the stage was set on fire.

Evansville Courier-Press Photo

Aftermath: A Burned-Out Food Truck

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I think of all this because I learned Ravi Shankar died yesterday. He was 92. He played at Woodstock as well as Bull Island.

Bull Island was not Woodstock.

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11/28/2012
1 Comment
1968 Democratic Convention, Abraham Lincoln, Anita Alvarez, Chicago Police Department, Chris Gaal, Equal Rights Amendment, G-8, Honda Fit She's, Keith Richards, NATO, Phillip Morris Company, Phyllis Schlafly, Police Riot, Rahm Emanuel, Rolling Stones, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Susan Brownmiller, US Supreme Court, Virginia Slims

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Women are all female impersonators to some degree.” — Susan Brownmiller

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SHE♥S A GIRL

Do American women really want pink cars?

I suppose there are those who do, but do enough of them crave advertising the fact that they have the XX chromosome that it’s worth it to Honda produce millions of the new pink Fit She♥s?

Haven’t we gone beyond this stuff?

BTW: that’s precisely how Honda’s styling the new model’s name, with a cutesy little heart rather than an apostrophe. Ick. And another thing, what would be the purpose for an apostrophe in that position anyway? The whole thing is a mess, I tell you.

Pink Car? Flowers In Hand? Proof She Has A Vagina

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Terrifyingly, the new Fit She♥s have windshields designed to minimize facial wrinkles (I’m not making this up) and the AC system helps prevent bad skin.

Oh, you gals!

Back in the early 70s when women’s lib was becoming sort of acceptable, Phillip Morris Company marketed Virginia Slims cigarettes. They were longer and narrower and had pretty little packaging.

The ads for the smoke were everywhere. You’ve come a long way, baby, the brand’s tagline, became part of the cultural landscape.

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But that was then. Sassy women were fresh and exotic — that is until they started making noises about earning the same salaries as men — then they had to be squashed. Just a few years later, Phyllis Schlafly and her gang of upright simians successfully stymied the Equal Rights Amendment. Before the decade was out, women’s lib became a couple of dirty words.

Somehow many females in this holy land got themselves elected to Congress and even were named CEOs of big corporations. Heck, there are more female university students than male in the United States today.

And, mirabile dictu, they’re not just going to college to look for husbands.

So even though the wording of our Constitution was never changed to accommodate one half of our population, women seem to be making big strides, even if the Right Wingers and Christian fundamentalists would like them to make little pitti-pat strides in bare feet.

I feel uncomfortable around anybody who needs to blare to the world what shape their genitals are. Suffice it to say I don’t keep company with any woman who’d be hot for one of these pink cars.

In fact, it was The Loved One who insisted on black when we bought our then-new car a few years ago. She’s cool by me.

Who Am I To Argue With The Loved One?

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INNER CITY BLUES

So, our friends in the Bloomington Common Council last night OK’d the plan to build a 168-room Hyatt hotel on Kirkwood just west of the Courthouse.

Yeesh. I smell a pile of Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Coldwater Creeks popping up around that area quicker than you can say gridlock.

Bloomington Tomorrow?

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This ain’t Memaw and Pepaw’s Bloomington anymore.

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FREEDOM! WELL, A LITTLE BIT

In the lead-up to last year’s scheduled NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez, cooked up a law banning the recording of cops doing their jobs on the city’s public streets.

Protesters and civil liberties advocates screamed to high heaven that the new law would allow the cops to act with impunity during rallies and marches. It would be, they feared, 1968 all over again.

Reporter & Protester, Bloodied By Cops During The ’68 Convention

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Rahm and Alvarez, whose position is analagous to that of Chris Gaal here, figured they’d be protecting the identities of cops who might subsequently be targeted at their homes for retribution or merely for the hell of it.

It’s possible. Problem is, whenever public officials or law enforcement officers are allowed to work in secrecy, they tend to do things that they really need to keep secret. Like clunking people on the head with their nightsticks.

A Convincing Argument

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So, what’s more important? Keeping cops safe in their homes or keeping citizens safe from the cops?

I know where I stand. Police work is a dangerous business. You take your chances when you take the oath. That doesn’t mean anyone who messes with the home or family of a cop isn’t a stinking rat. But we have laws to protect any citizens — including cops — from criminal attack.

We always have to be vigilant against the chilling effect of authority and tyranny on public speech and demonstrations. That trumps most other considerations.

And guess what? The US Supreme Court agrees! Huzzah!

The Court, still dominated by Reagan/Bush/Bush conservatives — believe it or not, refused to overturn a lower court ruling yesterday that Emanuel and Alavarez’s new law was too broad and unconstitutional.

They Got It Right This Time

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Next time there’s a mass demonstration in Chicago — or anywhere else in this free country — protesters will be able to record the doings of the cops, just in case the boys in blue have an urge to dent some skulls.

[A Note: The NATO summit was eventually moved to another location where organizers wouldn’t have to worry about mass protests.]

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FOGIES

In other Supreme Court news, the Rolling Stones now are older, on average, than the nine members of the highest court in the land.

Early Humans

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And that includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in March will celebrate her 169th birthday. She is the only living human to have attended both inaugurations of Abraham Lincoln.

The team of mathematicians who calculated the astronomical figures have said they did not take into consideration the fact that Keith Richards has lived the equivalent of hundreds of years. Had the Richards factor been added to the algorithm, the math geeks say, the average age of the Stones would have exceeded that of the ancient redwood trees of California.

Just Kids

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03/06/2012
1 Comment
1968 Democratic Convention, Ambassador Hotel Los Angeles, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Conspiracy Theory, G-8, Gay Marriage, Homeless, Hubert Humphrey, Hypnotism, IDS, Indiana Memorial Union, Indiana Pacers, Laurens County Republican Party, Marlene Dietrich, Monroe County Public Library, Pornography, Pre-marital Sex, R.E. Paris, Robert F. Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan, South Carolina, Thom Simmons

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“In America, sex is an obsession. In other parts of the world it’s a fact.” — Marlene Dietrich

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THE LEAST OF US

Here’s a classic good news/bad news story.

The IDS reports this morning that the homeless are welcome to use Indiana Memorial Union facilities.

The East Lounge at IMU

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You know, it’s easy to be magnanimous with people in need as long as they’re cuddly and harmless.

Professional athletes, for instance, are great at this. They’re forever flitting from one children’s hospital to another, signing autographs, bringing game-worn jerseys, and hugging kids made bald by chemotherapy. And, yeah, the poor kids are thrilled to pieces. They grin and swoon. How can anyone with a beating heart not embrace some unfortunate little one who’s dying of cancer?

But what if the needy person stinks or is obnoxious? Things get a little difficult. Take a guy who’s 52 years old and scraggly-bearded, who hasn’t changed clothes or had a full bath in weeks. How quickly is the shooting guard for the Indiana Pacers going to wrap his arms around that guy?

And don’t get me wrong. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in the Monroe County Public Library and have chosen to move from my table when a homeless dude who smells like hell sits across from me. Or when a half dozen homeless folks set up camp at the table next to mine and loudly argue about who’s a better friend of whom.

Suddenly, I’m not a saint.

Not Easy

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It’s not easy being a saint. The people who run IMU, though, have made the hard choice and we should salute them.

“We are a very public building and invite everyone into our building,” IMU official Thom Simmons tells the IDS.

That’s the good news. The bad news? Just that there are homeless in this very, very wealthy land.

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SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, SEX, TAXES, AND GUNS. AND SEX.

Another h/t to my pal R.E. Paris. She messaged me yesterday, pointing out that the Republican Party in some backwoods South Carolina county is demanding its members sign affidavits that they’ve never had pre-marital sex.

“Would You Be My Wife And S&M Submissive?”

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Wow!

Oh, and that “Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender…,” and “You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.”

Do we really need any more evidence that the GOP is obsessed?

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ELECTIONEERING

Barack Obama’s White House shocked the bejesus out of Chicago by moving the G-8 Summit from my hometown to Camp David.

The May pow-wow had the potential to be as wrenching an experience as the 1968 Democratic Convention. Obama’s political advisers sure as hell are not going to let their man suffer the same fate the late Hubert Humphrey did.

Law And Order

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Mark it — the Obama brain trust is as politically astute as the gang that Bill Clinton assembled 20 years ago.

That c-note I have riding on the Obama reelection looks like a smarter prop every day.

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PULP HISTORY

Did you catch the motion filed by Sirhan Sirhan’s lawyers in an attempt to get the RFK assassin out of prison?

Sirhan did not fire the kill shot, they claim.

The Jordanian-born, Palestine-state advocate put a slug in Robert F. Kennedy’s cranium on June 5th, 1968, in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen. Kennedy died the next morning.

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Sirhan’s attorneys say, yeah, their boy was on the scene when the gunshots rang out, but he didn’t kill the presidential candidate.

As is the case in all high-profile shootings, conspiracy theories began bouncing off the walls seemingly before Kennedy was even loaded into the ambulance. The most persistent theory has it that a security guard standing behind Kennedy either inadvertently or as part of a plot fired the deadly bullet.

Me? I have little patience for conspiracy theories. Public officials have a hard time filling potholes efficiently and promptly. They usually can’t even agree on what time to break for lunch. So how are they gonna put together an airtight plan to topple the Twin Towers, whack the president, or capture extraterrestrials?

Once in a great while, though, conspiracy wingnuts raise a point that might just pass the sanity muster. For instance, why couldn’t a part-time security guard who was probably trained for all of two and a half hours have accidentally fired his gun in the chaos at in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen?

But Sirhan’s lawyers say the security guard wasn’t the shooter. Someone else was — and their boy was a patsy.

Wrestling With Sirhan

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Here’s where they lose me: Sirhan, they insist, was “hypo-programmed” by conspirators. His role was to serve as the fall guy while the real hit men did their thing.

Oy! You know what? A lot of people are gonna buy into this fever dream. Too many folks in this holy land can’t tell the difference between reality and cheap fiction.

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12/10/2011
1 Comment
1968 Democratic Convention, Alan Cromer, Bloomington Indiana, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Sun-Times, Durban Climate Conference, Environment, Fox News, G-8, Jon Burge, Kirk Douglas, Marvin Gaye, NATO, Neil Steinberg, Occupy Movement, Police Riot, Roger Ebert, Summerdale Police Scandal, What's Going On?

The Pencil Today:

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WE’D RATHER FEEL THAN THINK

The late physicist Alan Cromer suggested that scientific thinking is not a natural process for the seven billion of us who muddle through this life. “Human beings, after all, love to believe in spirits and gods,” he said. “Science, which asks them to see things as they are and not as they believe or feel them to be, undercuts a primary human passion.”

Cromer

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BLOOMINGTON REDUCES ITS GAS PAIN

Environmental issues, both local and global, are in the news this Saturday morning.

The Herald Times reports that the City of Bloomington used five percent less gasoline in its fleet vehicles during the first half of this year, as compared to the same span in 2010.

Good news, no?

Less Of This Here

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It’s important to keep in mind, though, that Bloomington, being the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union, is chock-full of liberals, Democrats, and other sinners who go in for that kind of Earth-y stuff.

The rest of this holy land? Well, you know.

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WHAT DO THOSE DUMB SCIENTISTS KNOW ANYWAY?

So, the South Africa climate talks are petering out with no agreement in sight.

It’s the usual snag: the big countries (like you-know-which holy land) that pollute most are pushing for a tepid pact to curb greenhouse gases and other flotsam and jetsam. Developing nations, which have a lot less to lose economically, want strong environmental safeguards.

I understand the motivations of corporate robber barons and their coatholders in Congress who want to forestall any restrictions. It costs dough, after all, to sanitize smokestacks that belch toxins.

The Sweet Smell Of Success

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Why, though, would that certain segment of the general populace that drools before any TV screen with Fox News on it not want stringent global environmental laws? Don’t they want to breathe fresh air or drink clean water?

Perhaps not. Perhaps they wish only to inhale Camels and slurp Diet Coke.

Anyway, that gang doesn’t believe the overwhelming majority of climatologists who are convinced humankind is mucking up the atmosphere so badly that Hurricane Katrina in a few decades will seem like a spring shower.

Many of them do believe in things like ghosts, UFO visitations, astrology, intelligent design, spontaneous human combustion, numerology, angels, homeopathy, feng shui, clairvoyance, Nostradamus, and other fairy tales.

In that sense, the Fox News audience is far more “natural” than I am.

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MERCY MERCY ME

Heck, let’s stick with the ecology. Here’s the final track on side one of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” vinyl disc, released in May, 1971. For my money, it’s the best pop album ever made. Enjoy.

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert can’t speak anymore but his voice rings out louder than ever these days. He’s become a writing machine. He reminds us that Kirk Douglas is now 95 years old.

By the way, you have to read Roger’s take on the Occupy Movement. He goes a little too soft on the Democratic Party, IMHO, but his righteous indignation is refreshing.

◗ And so we’ll stick with the Sun-Times. Columnist Neil Steinberg writes today about the Chicago Police. The boys in powder blue will be on world display next spring with the G-8 and NATO summits coming to town. The CPD has been tarnished through the years by the Summerdale Scandal, the ’68 Convention, the Jon Burge torture case, and too many others to name here. I personally took a beating in the back seat of a squad car once for the unforgivable sin of being a mouthy sixteen-year-old. Steinberg is no more popular with Chicago’s cops today than dopey kids like me were back then. His FB link illustrates why.

FYI: It was Steinberg who, as a pseudonymous critic of a well-known, pathologically flatulent Chicago newspaper columnist back in the ’90s, inspired the title for this feature. I wish I could tell you what Steinberg’s nom de plume was or who was the blowhard he skewered but, well, I just can’t.

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