Killing the Legendary Pump Room - Tribune Shilling for the New Owners?

Note to the Tribune reporter - witness the dearth of Tom Collins glasses? No glass black panthers adorn the tables either. Martinis seem to be the drink to order.


I just left a crowded Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church here on the south side of Chicago. Father Gallagher gave a beautiful and simple homily about the need to accept God's will - the parable of the Chaff and Wheat.

Weeds grow up with the grain and louses, creeps, thugs and low-lifes thrive among simple, hard working, generous and wonderful people. What we want is not important, but what we do with what we are given and how we treat others is all that matters.

The Mass was thick with Catholics - Croatians, Irish, Italian, Mexican, African American worshippers - and as if to add a poignancy to Father Gallagher's homily a wildly obnoxious loud and disruptive crack-pipe aficionado who snorted, farted, fidgeted and interjected occasional commands of "Hey, Boss! Boss! Over here! I'm worshipping. God Bless You." At the hand shake of peace following the Pater Noster, the pipe smoker was greeted with "Peace be with You." and pressings of the flesh.

Not expected and yet ironically welcomed, the gent stumbled out of the pew as Holy Communion was administered bounced down Sacred Heart's narrow and rickety stairs. After Mass, Our Sunday Visitor, the crack-piper, was still bouncing his way from car-to car in the crowded parking lot on 117th & Church Street.

The presence of the crack head only made Father Gallagher's homily more beautiful.

We are all in this Vale of Tears and Garden of God together.

Chicago's Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel is a secular temple and house of comfort to travelers and revelers.

The Pump Room has hosted celebrities and helots for decades. Last week, the Chicago Tribune trashed the Pump Room with this sophomoric and whiny narrative by a disappointed reporter. With one visit to the legendary Pump Room, reporter Lauren Viera swept the decades of service, welcome and grace long attributed to the Pump Room into the gutter:

In my recent hunt for the perfect Chicago hotel bar, I was after a particular mood. I wanted to find a classy lounge of yore: dark colors and textures typical of a private club; perhaps a hint of a bygone golden age, with history hanging heavy in the air, and long nights of lounging worn deep into leather booths. And most of all, I wanted well-executed classic cocktails, worthy of predictably inflated price tags.

Check out how we rate Chicago's hotel bars on a scale of one through five.

My first stop was at the Drake Hotel's Coq d'Or, which opened Dec. 6, 1933 — the day after Prohibition was repealed in the United States. Fortunately, the lounge's classy ambiance has changed little in the 76 years since. The burgundy-colored leather booths, the gilded finishes, the tuxedoed bartender — all accounted for. But ask for a Tom Collins, the classic gin-based sour long drink that has been ordered with multiple variations since the 1870s, and you're lucky if it's served in the appropriate tall-glass tumbler (which, incidentally, is named for the drink). At Coq d'Or, my watered-down Collins-mix cocktail was served in a hurricane glass drowning in ice.The Ambassador East Hotel's famous Pump Room was by far the most disappointing, considering its storied history. Opened in 1938, it was at one time the go-to hotel lounge in Chicago, frequented by Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and the like.

On my visit, I was one of just three patrons sitting in the bar and still had to wait five minutes before the bartender on duty, concentrating intently on his handheld device, finally took notice. In reply to my Tom Collins request, he produced a watery vodka-soda, splashed with Rose's lime juice, served in a pint glass.

Only after I asked him how he made the drink did he pause, brows furrowed, and ask, "What's in a Tom Collins, anyway?" After hearing out the recipe and trying his hand at a fresh drink, he set it down in front of me apologetically and said, "You should always get what you want. Especially when you're out."

What I want, I'm afraid, doesn't exist anymore.

( click my post title for the full nonsense)

Heavens! A Tom Collins? Why not an Arrack Swedish Punsch, Black Velvet(Guinness & Champagne)The Doctor, or a Diki-Diki? All cocktails.

The Tom Collins is ordered with all the frequency of Keeley's Half & Half, Drewrys, Meister Brau, Andecker, and Grain Belt beers.

AS an old bartender ( Mike Doorhy's Mayfair West at 63rd & Mozart, Connelly's Tap at 63rd & Hamlin and Pete's Guiding Light at 63rd & Pulaski/Reilly's Daughter Pub on 111th, OB Joes at 111th & Sacramento and Leo's Riverside Tap on the Kankakee River), I knew my Mr. Boston Cocktail Bible.

Tom Collins - Voila!

2 ounces gin;1 ounce lemon juice, (freshly squeezed, if possible);1 teaspoon confectioner's sugar;Club soda -Add the first three ingredients for your Tom Collins drink to a cocktail shaker half filled with ice cubes. Shake vigorously long enough to chill, about 30 seconds.

Pour the strained cocktail ingredients into a Tom Collins glass or similar tall glass filled almost to the top with ice cubes. Top off with the club soda. Stir and serve with a straw.
Possible garnishes for your Tom Collins drink are an orange or lemon slice. Some people add a maraschino cherry.

I tried to imagine how this reporter would have reviewed Father Gallagher's Mass. The crack head sat directly behind me at Mass and next to Mrs. Scanlon. Mrs. Scanlon ( an eighty something widow) did not slide away from our Sunday Visitor, but accepted him as her pew mate.

Lauren Viera, it seems to me would have recoiled in utter and loud horror, demanded that the smelly drug addled gent be tossed from the house of worship and then pen a pithy missive of condemnation to the Cardinal.

Sometimes you a get a bum drink. Order something else - something less obscure.

The Pump Room continues to be a great and gracious place for an elegant time with wonderfully talented and fun people ( Max, Steve, Jesse, Bob, Angel, Gloria, James, Yancey et.al.) and handsomely mixed cocktails. The staff of bartenders ( Angel is # 1.) are exacting in the ministrations of the mixologist's arts and more so attentive to the point being family members.

When the Chicago Tribune wants something killed it dances the Joe Medill jig all over it. Might the Chicago Tribune being doing the new owner a service? Provide bum reviews and scare off potential visitors?

An honest reporter would have asked for some other cocktail, if the bartender seemed flustered by such a dated order - something else, or at least had the grace to come back again.

The crack head might be back next Sunday, but so will Mrs. Scanlon and all the other worshipers. Likewise, people who know better than some of the Dinny The Dimwits at the Chicago Tribune - a huge demographic that - will crowd the Pump Room.

God separates the chaff from the wheat.

Michael Moriarty's Close Reading of Communism/Progressivism in "On The Water Front"

Michael Moriarty is great actor and a serious scholar. I learned that Mr. Moriarty had Chicago roots ( Grandfather was baseball great George Moriarty - born in 'Back O' The Yards and buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Evergreen Park). Mr. Moriarty played Henry Wiggen in the great American film Bang the Drum Slowly.

Mr. Moriarty writes for Big Hollywood. The other day Moriarty presented a close reading of Elia Kazan's classic film On The Waterfront and presented some sobering thoughts on American Political culture, Marlon’s Mao: Part Three.

Michael Moriarty is a good read. Click my post title for the full article.

Here is a sample:


Close Reading/Reading to Write
Definition of genre

Close reading—usually of a written text, but quite possibly of a film, a painting, or another work of art—is the first stage in writing an essay that responds to or builds upon the ideas in the original text. That is why a close reading is sometimes called “reading to write” or “reader response.” Rather than merely extracting facts from the text, a close reading prepares you to analyze it critically through your own writing.

http://uwp.duke.edu/wstudio/resources/genres/close_reading.pdf

This, the Great American Tragedy of Communism’s homicidal insistence upon invading America as a “Progressive Movement” – the assassination of the very Catholic President John F. Kenney being one of its most disgracefully high points – will, I have massive faith, eventually turn out to be just another triumph of America over the mortal enemies of her infinitely and universally resonant Declaration of Independence.
Here, while basking in the relevance of On The Waterfront, I suddenly see the cosa nostra metaphor, the Brechtian fascination with Chicago mobs, the Obama administration’s Red-packed Czardom and Mao Zedong himself as the Godfather of all Godfathers … this mounting tower of Progressive Babel, making absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you have a ruthless mob willing to enforce it.
Our Second Amendment?!
If we don’t have weapons in our hands, the enlightened despots still know that we’re packing heat.
Most important is our American knowledge of the truth and the power of love.
With our government now run by no more than an Ivy-league educated, gangster’s mob, I recall Terry Malloy’s reluctant acceptance of a pistol from his doomed lawyer brother who insists – following one of screen history’s greatest moments of acting, Rod Steiger’s resigned and tragic sigh, the beginning of his surrender to the inevitability of his own death – “You’re gonna need it!”
Here is where, even before Karl Malden’s firey priest makes his re-entrance, God begins to arrive.
Then, of course, the hair-raising race down the darkened alley when Terry Malloy and Edie Doyle first barely escape being run down by Johnny Friendly’s hit team truck, then see the hanging, dead body of Rod Steiger.
Brando’s childlike plea to Eva Marie Saint to take care of his brother’s now fallen body, that gun in his possession, ready to do business.
Terry goes to Friendly’s bar to reek revenge upon his brother’s killers. With his hand still bleeding from the near-death escape with Edie, Terry hunches on the bar, gun in hand, to await the arrival of Johnny Friendly.
Who shows up?
A priest … a Catholic priest.
God again!!

Stabat Mater (Dolorosa) at St. John Cantius Catholic Church

St. Cantius Catholic Church offered the Stations of the Cross last evening. God knows I need as much Church as any sinner can get and I sin like a Congressman on junkets.

One of the most beautiful pieces of music from the Baroque period was performed - the Stabat Mater by Pergolesi. Click my post title ( Katia Ricciarelli and Lucia Valentini sing the final movement of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. 1979. Conductor: Claudio Abbado.)

Stabat Mater means - the Standing Mother - Mary Mother of Christ. It is the heartbreaking depiction of a mother witnessing the last breaths of her Child - think of Childrens Memorial Hospital at any given time.

St. John Cantius Catholic Church celebrates the magnificence and te simplicity of Faith. In our zip-lock culture, Faith is sneered at and shouted over. Faith engines our efforts and taps on the shoulders about our obligations to those we love and those we are commanded to love - that's the tough one, boys and Girls.

St. John Cantius
825 N. Carpenter St.
Chicago, IL 60642

http://www.cantius.org/

About the Stabat Mater

Date 1736

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 - 1736) was born in Jesi, Italy. His name became known thanks to his comic opera La Serva Padrone. He was slightly handicapped and had a weak constitution. He probably died of tuberculosis. A lot of confusion exists about which works Pergolesi did or did not compose. As his work came more and more in demand, some publishers tried to make a little extra by taking an anonymous composition and attaching the name of Pergolesi to it. However, about the Stabat Mater there is no doubt. It is known that in his early years he composed a Stabat Mater in A minor.
Probably the Stabat Mater in C minor was Pergolesi's last composition. The commission for this work was given by the same Order in Naples for which Alessandro Scarlatti 20 years earlier had composed a Stabat Mater. Though the score of the compositions is almost identical, the melodic lines of Pergolesi are more sentimental and highly ornamented.The piece was widely acclaimed and it seems to have inspired many composers to imitate, paraphrase and adapt (see Brunetti, de Nardis and Paisiello). Joseph Eybler (1764 - 1846), who was a friend of Mozart and who became Court Kapellmeister in Vienna after Antonio Salieri, added a choir to replace some of the duets, and extended the orchestra. Others were John Adam Hiller/Johann Adam Hüller (1728 - 1804) and Alexy Fyodorovich L'vov (ca. 1830). The musical setting of Psalm 51 "Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden" of the great Johann Sebastian is another example.

Performers Soprano, alto, three violins, cello, organ
Length 41.44 minutes (CD 1), 41.30 minutes (CD 2), 37.27 minutes (CD 3), 40.03 minutes (CD 4), 34.58 minutes (CD 5), 39.38 minutes (CD 6), 33.12 (CD 7)
Particulars The work is divided into twelve sections, varying from one to five stanzas. Very moving melodies, which led to some criticism because they were thought to be too cheerful. Interesting is the line "dum e-mi-sit" which is sung intermittently, as a musical picture of the last breaths of Jesus. This is found also with some other composers.
Some interpretations deviate from the composer's score, as a choir has been added to the two voices (see the second Colorbar, based on CD 2). This is probably based on the Eybler adaptation.

Governor Pat Quinn Will Win - The Media and the "Umm-ers" Are All Over Brady Like A Cheap Suit

Bill Brady won the Illinois Republican Primary for Governor and that is like kissing your sister - not that that is a bad thing mind you - just in case the Sex is Politics and Morality Crowd ( GLBT Advocates) are monitoring my helot's thougts. I have been meaning to ask if Incestuous Relationships fit in as an undeserved sexual morality minority group in need of the standard Progressive Hegelian Makeover. Most sexual peccadillo's have been Botox-ed Beautiful in this manner and are given a loud powerful voice and re-written histories in the Media.

Poor Bill Brady. In a year when Illinois should sweep a GOP Governor into the job, the "blow your toes off" DuPage Dimwits will lose the race.

Pat Quinn needs only to leave the Lt. Governor's Slot empty and allow the SEIU paid for Illinois Media to beat up on the Kid who won the GOP Lt. Governor spot and pour manure on Bill Brady. The "Ummers" are already all over Brady - "Ummers" are Progressive columnists and Snark Assenting Bloggers who charcteristically begin every snotty and irony drenched faux question or observation with the antecedant "Ummmm...,"

The Ummers are especially hard on Brady. Brady, even before Kerque Dillard, Marque Kerques twin, was treated to a daily rhetorical kick in the nuts by the poor man's moss-back Huffington Posters. These Midol gulpers think that they are on MSNBC and that they can create their own Illinois Sarah Palin - Palin would have their guts for garters. Dan Proft would do far worse to the Ummers.

Dan Proft would have blow-torched the Ummers.

Pat Quinn should catch a wave and tall tropical iced beverages until November.

Bill Brady will look like that poor broad in the first Aliens Movie before the critter ripped out of her chest -"Pleeeaaassse! Just kill me."

Here's just a sample of what the GOP Governor Primary Winner can expect.


Bill Brady Gaffes Again: Attack On Quinn's Early Release Program Unfounded (VIDEO)
Huffington Post (blog) - ‎57 minutes ago‎
With a final vote count in the Republican primary for governor expected today, Bill Brady revved up the campaign engine. Expected to be declared the primary ...
Brady misfires on governor Chicago Sun-Times
Brady swings and misses at Quinn Chicago Tribune
Brady Tries to Bring Early Release Program Back Up WGIL Radio News
Chicago Daily Herald - MyFox Illinois


I like Pat Quinn and he will win a walk. Poor Bill Brady.

A St. Paddy's Day Message to Every Elected Official

"Coimhéad fearg fhear na foighde*"
Beware of the anger of a patient man.

Pronounced - koe-vade varrig farr nah foe-ih-geh

Practice this and make some calls to your Senators, Congressfolks, State Legislators, Guvs, and Aldermen. They'll love to hear from you.

The O'Connell Sisters

The three O'Connell sisters took home their fried fish from DiCola's ( no meat this Lent for these ladies) and I overheard this exchange near the parking lot of County Fair ( 10800 S. Western Ave.):

Mary Elizabeth says, "Whew, it is sure windy today."

Molly replies, "No, no. Today is Thursday."

Colleen says, "So am I. Let's find a bar!

Pat Hickey's "The Alderman" will "Represent" " The Situation" - Reality South Side Show - Insulting People and Making Money: It's All Good.

"We're looking for people who represent what a South Sider is," said Joan O'Connor, casting producer for O'Connor Casting Co*. No African Americans wanted! Thought I'd help there- Hope O'Connor Casting hears some feedback.

Cretins, Feebs and Dummies will line up for hours to "Represent the South Side" - Our Version of "Jersey Shore" Attitude.

Knowing that real south siders - devout, hard-working, painfully honest, fun, witty, generous and genuine people will not make the O'Connor Casting Call, I decided to represent.

Get a guy who looks like the gent above and call his abdomen - "The Alderman" Call his gut the Alderman - it's Old School for Beer Belly. Edgy.

The Devil's Dictionary

ALDERMAN
Alderman, (n.)
An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding.
English Slang Dictionary v1.2
alderman
a man's pot belly

This person's diet should be subsistance level ( of a Rugby Team) stuffings of Slim Jims, Whitey-One-Bites ( White Castles), Hot Dogs from Pops on Kedzie, Old Style Beer, Jagermeister Shooters, Flaming Hotz, and Waldo Cooney's Pizza Slices.

This person should sleep during most daylight waking hours and spend the balance of the day drinking draft 'Syles in Bust-out joints ending with BrewBakers Pub on Western Ave. at about 5A.M.

He should not be capable of generating, much less uttering, an original thought and merely sputter obsenities, racial epithets, phrases and verbals laced with apologies about his days of "Playing some Ball at ( fill in a Catholic High School) " crying about Anne Marie Balzakas who took him to Maria High School's prom and ran off into the tall weeds at Marquette Park when he got all smoochy and living in Mom's basement, since Dukes of Hazzard got cancelled.

The Media will love this edgy and "reality" based concept programing, so long as this presentation of a south siider is fulfilled. Any positive portrayal would be doomed. Can't have that.

The O'Connor Casting Company sound like real champs. Real Stock cuffers, or what's the word? It's hyphenated I believe.

*

CASTING REALITY TV SHOW: ARE YOU THE NEXT "JERSEY SHORE" TYPE OF REALITY STAR?
ARE YOU THE NEXT “Jersey Shore” TYPE OF REALITY STAR?
Do you live on Chicago’s Southside?

•Are you between the ages 19-27yrs? (Irish, Latino, Italian, Polish… open to all races and nationalities)
•Do you openly celebrate your true Southside self as a true Southsider?
•Are you the GUY or GIRL who is awesome in oh so many ways?
•Are you sexy, crazy, fun, outgoing, outrageous, love to make things exciting, always up for an adventure, and a HUGE SOX fan?
•If so, then we want you, your friends, your total awesomeness.
CONTACT US NOW!
If you or someone you know fits this description, please tell them or forward on to them.
HOW TO APPLY: Email Chicago@oconnorcasting.tv
INCLUDE:
Your FULL name, contact info (phone, address, etc).
Brief description of your awesomeness and why you would be a great Reality Star. And THREE RECENT pictures of yourself.
(In an emergency, contact 312-226-9112, but email is best.)

Audition Dates: Now thru the end of March (RESPOND – SOONER THE BETTER)
Audition Location: O’Connor Casting Company, 1017 W. Washington, Suite 2a, Chicago, IL 60607

Sun Times Natasha Korecki - A Real Reporter! Natasha Skewers Blago With an Elegant Final Sentence

That is Natasha Korecki in the Center - One of Chicago Best Reporters!


Who, What, When, Where, and Why are all that a reporter needs to present in any story with simple declarative sentences.

The absolute American Master of the simple declarative sentence is former Chicago Tribune Sports Editor Dan McGrath.

Natasha Korecki of the Chicago Sun Times is always at the head of the Class of the Field as well!

Today's piece on the Northwestern University speech by the odious louse and former Illinois Governor is one of Natasha Korecki's best presentations. It is a gem of solid reporting.

Ms. Korecki allows Blago to speak and cavort, unencumbered by irony. The irony of this Drip's perpetual public posing suffices and Ms. Korecki reports.

More, without the preening and self-absorption of columnist, Natasha Korecki gives the reader an elegant coup de grace on Bumpkin Blag with this poignard* of closing sentence -Blagojevich, 52, is scheduled to go to trial on wide-ranging corruption charges in June.

Right thru the liver!



*A poignard, or poniard, originally a French word, is a lightweight dagger employed in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Illinois Entrenched School Lobby Ain't Ready for Reform

Senator Meeks is out in front for Genuine School Reform. That is a reform that begins and ends with Vouchers - the only means of getting real Accountability and Competition for Public Schools. Public Schools are Un-Accountable and Compete with no one.

Public Schools are enthralled by the Illinois Public School Lobby - a Gordian knot of Teachers Unions, Ralph Martire Industries ( Pie Charts=More Taxes R Us), Public School Vendors, Bus Companies and hundreds of tax-funded satellite Education sucker fish - our Cook County Superintendent Charles Flowers* in their many manifestations.

Yesterday, Chicago Daily Observer's President John Powers posted a great report on the legislation by Illinois Senator James Meeks to reform Illinois Public Education.

His voucher proposal would allow parents of students in the academically lowest 10 percent of Chicago Public Schools to have the option of sending their children to a private school, if space is available.

Meeks, formerly a strong advocate for improving Illinois’s public schools, said his plan comes as a result of violence and increasingly poor test scores in CPS schools.

“Right now, our General Assembly rules actually lock a kid into a low-performing school,” Meeks said. “And we have no plans to get the kid out.”

Teachers unions and parents are opposing the proposed legislation, saying that taking the students out of public schools will hurt the school system. When Meeks outlined his legislation last week to a Senate committee, the opposition was ready to speak up.

Opposition to the Meeks efforts come not from African American Legislative leaders who in the past have supported the Illinois School Lobby,. . .

State Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, serves on the Senate committee and supports Meeks’ plan. Although vouchers have historically been a Republican idea, Hendon said he believes the city of Chicago needs this option.

Hendon said CPS is failing the students in the bottom 10 percent of schools, and that he is tired of seeing the violence.

“We’ve been saying we’re going to educate out babies. We’re going to fix the schools. We’re going to find solutions,” Hendon said. “And nothing has changed. Absolutely, positively nothing.”

State Sens. Bradley Burzynski, R-Sycamore, and James Clayborne, D-East St. Louis, also voted to move Meeks’ proposal forward. It now goes to a Senate education subcommittee, where it is scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday.

. . . but from the Blue Stocking Lobbyists.

Ben Schwarm of the School Management Alliance said the program is not realistic because of funding issues. He said there is no way to know how many students will participate in the program until the school year starts.

“We don’t know how many of our students are going to leave our district,” Schwarm said. “We don’t know how many students from other districts are going to come to our schools on enrollment day because they don’t live here. And for planning purposes, setting a budget and so forth, that raises some problems.”

Well done Senator. Hammer them!

* Supt. Charles Flowers:

The Daily Southtown newspaper wrote a detailed article exposing the corruption and failure of Charles Flowers as Superintendent. Here's the article and reporter contact information below:

When Charles Flowers took over the reins of the Suburban Cook County Regional Office of Education two years ago, critics were skeptical of his baggage.

Flowers, a former special education teacher and administrator, has a history of questionable financial dealings from his days as board president at west suburban Maywood-Melrose Park District 89. But he came into office in 2007 vowing to root out corruption and bring reform to Cook County public schools.

Once he became regional superintendent, Flowers hired relatives and friends and then began giving employees salary advance loans. Then he went to Cook County government for an emergency loan, which the regional office has yet to repay.

In April, the regional office couldn't make payroll and earlier this year the department didn't pay its group health insurance premiums on time, leading the company to temporarily cancel workers' health benefits.

So where's the money?

http://provisoinsider.blogspot.com/2009/05/daily-southtown-exposes-regional.html

Spotlight on Our Federal Mandarins!

President Obama rewarded SEIU's Mandarin* Andy Stern with a seat on the Federal Commission to Defeat the Deficit, which is like giving a drunk stewardship of the beer lockers at Sox Park.

Al Gore has made a Second Act of His American Life by sweeping in all Carbon Credit Chips onto his All In Move to Create the Federal Climate Mandarin.

Scholar and Demographer Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite reads each week, kicks the move to Mandarin Government that has parked such powerful American resistance - Tea Party Memberships and etc.

Kotkin, in Forbes, points to the slide to Mandarinism and the Jeffersonian reaction by us helots.

There also seems to be a conscious design to recreate the country as a European-style super-state. Forged by an understandable urge to minimize chaos after a century of conflict, the super-state generally favors risk management through centralization of authority. This has traditionally been accomplished by ceding regulatory powers to national capitals, though lately more and more powers have been ceded to the European Union.

Initially the administration had hopes of imposing similar controls through acts of Congress. However, with the shifting political mood, this seems less and less possible. With its latest action the administration sends the message that it will now impose the desired results through the bureaucracy. Under the proposal, private firms that do not raise wages will be bullied into doing so through the manipulation of federal contract awards. . . .This new order would transform the very nature of American capitalism. Now the economic winners will not be those working for the most agile or profitable companies, but those who gain the blessings of the federal overlords. In some senses this extends the corrupt, largely failed political economy of Chicago politics to a bastard American form of French dirigisme.

Climate change provides another critical and necessary rationale for the expansive federal role. With the "cap and trade" system all but dead, the administration now wants to regulate energy and land use through the gentle graces of a largely unaccountable EPA apparat. As a result, we may see energy use, land use and transportation--as is increasingly the case in California--controlled by the whims of the unelected bureaucracy.

Such command and control approaches have their advantages in making people do what the mandarins demand. This is one reason there are so many admirers of Chinese autocracy now. In that regime, unlike our messy democracy, you can be forced to be green in precisely the way they tell you. There are always firing squads for those who go off the program.

Of course, even the most passionate centralists don't advocate adopting the Chinese model. But the notion of an enlightened super-state has long appealed to those disgusted with American-style muddling through. In some ways, the current fashion recalls Americans' attraction for the Soviet Union or even fascist Italy during the troubled 1930s.

Click my post title for more from this great original thinker.

*A mandarin was a bureaucrat in imperial China, and also in the monarchist days of Vietnam where the system of Imperial examinations and scholar-bureaucrats was adopted under Chinese influence. What did the Soviets call them?

Michael Moore Named Obesity Czar and Andy Stern Named to Federal National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Yep, Andy Stern, Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform!


Charlie Sheen named to Hollywood Celebrity American Values Insitute

Tigers Woods named to the Dalai Lama's Council on Celebacy

Danika Patrick named to the Right Turn Society

That President Obama is a Howler! Get This!

• Andy Stern, Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

President Obama said, “For far too long, Washington has avoided the tough choices necessary to solve our fiscal problems. I am proud that these distinguished individuals have agreed to work to build a bipartisan consensus to put America on the path toward fiscal reform and responsibility. I know they’ll take up their work with the sense of integrity and strength of commitment that the American people deserve and America’s future demands.”

Andy Stern named to the Order of Lenin - they still give that one out? Andy'd be the Cat's Nuts with that around his neck. Better that than Andy Stern around our throats and wallets.


Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina

to civilians for outstanding services rendered to the State,
to members of the armed forces for exemplary service,
to those who promoted friendship and cooperation between peoples and in strengthening peace, and
for other meritorious services to the Soviet state and society

The Eclipse - Beauty in a Film

I was multi-tasking all weekend - home repair guy, chauffeur ( St. Rita cheerleading), Bloggeur, dutiful Catholic ( 8:30 AM Mass at Sacred Heart - for the Transfiguration), attentive date and Mike Houlihan book signing event attendee - but I had an oportunity to watch a beautiful movie on the otherwise lousy HBO.

Ciarán Hinds plays a teacher tasked with being a driver for celebrity Literary Personalities -guest of the Cobh ( cove) Ireland Literary Festival. Hinds plays Michael Farr, widower with two children, with gracefully sad dignity who goes about his duties as parent and employee with Jansenistic stoicism all day only to be haunted by his loneliness and fears by night. This guy is no whiner.

One of the Literary Figures played with puckish self-absorbtion is Aidan Quinn. His character is "What being an A$$hole is all about," as we south side Chicago Irish are wont to say. Quinn treats people like cocktail napkins - waitresses, someliers, drivers and lovers. He refers to other human beings - those who are not literary lions and icons like himself , and who really is after all, as 'Stalkers.'

Ciaran Hinds is forced to deal with Quinn because of his task and a wonderful woman writer played with delicacy and genuine soul by Iben Hjejle who studies and writes about ghosts and hauntings. Iben Hjejle's character understands loss and also the shallow overtures of a gold plated jerk. She is a terrific woman.

This is the best movie that I have seen in many, many years.

The Eclipse is gentle, but shattering film about about grief, narcissism, ghost, parenting and redemption. The great Irish actor Ciaran Hinds plays a simple man who emerges from his grief over the loss of his wife and exsorcises his own demons when he is forced confront his own loneliness and fear during an Irish Literary Festival.

Ciaran Hinds is the greatest actor since Spencer Tracy. Hinds was named Best Actor for his role in this film at the Tribeca Film Festival last April.

Here are some notes on the film that is running on HBO at this time from the Tribeca Festival. Click my post title for more.

Renowned playwright and filmmaker Conor McPherson attended The Eclipse with two of his actors, leading men Ciarán Hinds and Aidan Quinn. His multi-tasking movie is a fusion of love story, grief study, character comedy and horror. The audience gathered for its world premiere responded to all of those elements enthusiastically: visible seat-jumping and audible gasps sprang from the scares, laughter emerged from the surprising comedic choices, and the drama hit home too, prompting personal stories from some audience members who’d lost loved ones.

“This is the first audience who’s ever seen the film,” McPherson announced to huge applause as the credits ended. He likened the premiere of his ghost story to an “out of body experience.” The Eclipse won praise from the crowd for its digital camera work and expressive original score by Fionnuala Ní Chiosáin, who was also in attendance. The setting and location further elevated the film’s mysterious mood. McPherson’s location team scouted every seaside town in Ireland, but the final decision was swift. “Cobh just had the most visual bang offered and that was it. I needed the gothic thing.”

Ciarán Hinds was open minded about what exactly his widower character was experiencing during the ghostly visitations. “Michael is haunted by his own emotions and his own grief. In a sense it could be real.” Whatever the story, the actors must take it seriously. “One doesn’t play the absurdity. One plays the truth.”

Aidan Quinn seemed thrilled to provide comic relief for a change. “I think it’s an awful terrible thing when an actor gets typecast as being serious.” His novelist character amused him. “That character Nicholas is in his own private Idaho,” he said and joked about preparing for the drunk scenes: “I had to do research. Being Irish, we don’t usually go there. It was difficult for me, but I took one for the team.”

McPherson showered praise on his cast: “I’m not a writer who writes things that people read. I can’t do that. I need great performers to lift the work, and I’ve been very fortunate.” Hinds and Quinn were his first choices, and he felt he was lucky to get them. Quinn, ever quick with a quip, countered, “Brad and Johnny turned it down.”

“I always need a supernatural element in all my stories.” McPherson said. “I think life is supernatural. I don’t think there’s any divide. I think it’s all a huge mystery.” A more practical question emerged: How do you market such a mix of genres? McPherson, light-hearted and thrilled with the premiere, confessed: “Listen, I’m exhausted after making it. I don’t know. It’s a supernatural love story. There are people who are obviously very good at [marketing], so…we need them!”

Eleven Year Old St. Cajetan's Girl Directs Candy for Haiti Kids! Hailey Crowley -St. Cajetan Warrior!

Your St. Cajetan's Lady Warriors!

A local clown columnist wrote that Pro Lifers only care for the 'acorns while the forest burns.'

Millions of actual children living in the real world right now will continue to be denied basic health care -- some fatally -- in the name of protecting embryonic potential children. It's like letting a forest burn down for the sake of a bag of acorns.

Strain that metaphor, Steinberg! http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/2073553,CST-NWS-stein28.article

Catholic Charities opens at 8 A.M. (folks are lined up in front every day well before that time) every day on 79th Street just east of Racine to feed children and their parents, while Planned Parenthood offers opportunities to kill children all over the state. Here's some of the support Catholic Charities offers all over Chicago:

Services
Adoption
Child Development
Counseling
Children/Youth/Families Abuse or Neglect
Domestic Violence
Education
Emergency Assistance
Employment & Job Training
Health Care
Homelessness
HIV/AIDS Services
Immigration / Naturalization
Legal
Maternity / Pregnancy
Nutrition
Refugee Resettlement
Senior Services
Senior Housing
Substance Abuse
Veterans Services

http://www.catholiccharities.net/services/


"Acorns and trees"do pretty well - cradle to grave.

The history of institutional health care in Chicago begins with the Daughters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy - care for foundlings, orphans and the indigent.

This Dante spouting goof Steinberg tries to imply that being anti-Abortion is hypocritical. Catholics prove the dope wrong again. A better man and a better journalist working for the same news group as pays Steinberg prints a real story on the same day. Sweet Ironies.

Hailey Crowley eleven years of age and a student at St. Cajetan Parish Grammar School must have learned that life is pretty complex. Her mom and dad it appears did a great job of raising her.

Witness this report by Steve Metsch of the Southtown Star:

Hailey Crowley was deeply touched when she saw televised reports from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
"I just wanted to do something to help because we have so much stuff and they don't have anything. They're living on the streets," said Hailey, 11.
She won't soon forget one image.
"There was a picture of a little boy, younger than my brother, sitting in the street and crying," said Hailey, whose brother, Liam, is 6.
Hailey, of Chicago's Beverly community, decided to help raise money for the children of Haiti but wasn't sure how.
Then she found inspiration at a cousin's baptismal party.
"They had chocolate bars with her name on the label. I thought, 'I could do that,' " she said.
She asked her parents, Doug and Mary Kay Crowley, to buy several cartons of Hershey milk chocolate bars.
Doug Crowley helped Hailey design "Help 4 Haiti" labels in the red and blue colors of the Haitian flag.
Printed for free by Copy Cats, a print shop at St. Xavier University, the labels were slipped over the Hershey labels.
And then Hailey got busy selling candy bars for $2 each.
"A lot of people gave me more than $2. A lot of relatives gave me $20 for one bar," Hailey said.
One family gave Hailey $100 for one chocolate bar, Mary Kay said.
Hailey went door to door selling chocolate bars. She called friends and relatives. She even sold candy during lunch at St. Cajetan School, where she is a sixth-grader.
To date, Hailey has raised more than $300 that will be donated to UNICEF to help needy children in Haiti.
"It makes me happy," she said of her large haul.
St. Cajetan Principal Terry Reger is "happy and thrilled" by Hailey's idea.
"She's an example of the message we're trying to get out to our kids. You give back. You help others. That's what it's all about," Reger said.
"Hailey is very genuine. She's not in it for the publicity. This is Hailey. This is who she is," Reger said.
This is Hailey's second effort to help others. She organized a candy sale for Hurricane Katrina relief when she was in second grade, her father said.
That's not too surprising, given her upbringing. Helping others is a common trait in members of the Crowley family.
Doug Crowley is a Chicago firefighter. Mary Kay Crowley is a nurse at the University of Illinois Medical Center.
If you are interested in helping Hailey raise money for Haiti, she will be selling her "Help 4 Haiti" chocolate bars through St. Patrick's Day.
HOW TO HELP

To buy a "Help 4 Haiti" chocolate bar or make a contribution, e-mail Hailey Crowley's father at douglas_crowley@hotmail.com.

White House to Tap Chicago's Own Mike Houlihan to Replace Desiree Rogers

Auteur, Raconteur, bon viveur, agent provocateur, souteneur, connoisseur, rapporteur,
littérateur, farceur, danseur, répétiteur,Beaux sabreur, Monseigneur Michael ( Michel) Houlihan to replace DimBulb Diva Desiree Rogers!

It would make perfect sense. The White House could replace a self absorbed Liability with an UnRepentant Man of the People! Rumors are darting like the icy flakes of wet stuff and clinging to the concrete and clay of Middle America! Hope and Change!

In an exclusive exchange with Film Maker Mike With Both Hands Brand , during a packed book signing at Harte's Saloon in south suburban Evergreen Park, the witty Renaissance Man Houlihan was speechless when I passed on the hot rumor that he was to be named to replace Ms. Rogers - for a moment.

Pulling himself to his full and majestic height, future White House Social Director Mike Houlihan opined -

" When called I will serve at the pleasure of my President! ‘We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand, Our possibilities are endless Brand Obama is about to get ripped a new one! Ice e'm Down, Gibbs! Wooooooooooo!"

Mark Harris and the Moriartys - George & Michael: Novels, Baseball, Chicago and God

"You will no more expect the novelist to tell you precisely how something is said than you will expect him to stand by your chair and hold your book". Mark Harris American Novelist 1922-2007

In my Arcturus Calendar for October 7 it says, "De Soto visited Georgia, 1540." This hands me a laugh. Bruce Pearson also visited Georgia. I was his pall-bear, me and 2 fellows from the crate and box plant and some town boys, and that was all. There were flowers from the club, but no person from the club. They could of sent somebody.

He was not a bad fellow, no worse than most and probably better than some, and not a bad ballplayer neither when they give him a chance, when they laid off him long enough. From here on in I rag nobody.

Mark Harris - Bang the Drum Slowly

Mark Harris wrote great novels. I read The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly while I worked nights at Orchestra Hall, which paid for my tuition at Loyola University. I worked - didn't get fired anyway.

I read these books on the recommendation of Dr. William Heibel of the English Department at Loyola. Years later, Dr. Heibel would serve on my Master of Arts Oral Examination panel - he was brutal and a great guy.

Bang the Drum Slowly is a secular parable set in the 1950's - its narrator is a fireball pitcher for the fictitious New York Mammoths by name of Henry Wiggen.

Henry Wiggen is a talented athlete and sharp student of human nature - in the off season Wiggen sells insurance to the natures who inhabit the team clubhouse. One of the more ignorant, sad and lonely members of the Mammoths is the rube catcher Bruce Pearson who would make Shoeless Joe Jackson appear to be Baseball's Noel Coward.

Wiggen and Pearson room together and Wiggen learns that Pearson is dying of cancer.

Wiggen tries to make Pearson enjoy his own talents, gifts and humanity in his last days.

The novel was made into a beautiful film and teamed two wonderful actors Robert DeNiro and Michael Moriarty.

Recently I learned that Moriarty's grandfather, George, had been born and raised in Chicago's Stockyards and was great baseball player.

George Joseph Moriarty

Positions: Third Baseman, First Baseman and Outfielder
Bats: Right, Throws: Right
Height: 6' 0", Weight: 185 lb.

Born: July 7, 1885 in Chicago, IL (All Transactions)
Debut: September 27, 1903
Teams (by GP): Tigers/Highlanders/WhiteSox/Cubs 1903-1916
Final Game: May 4, 1916
Died: April 8, 1964 in Miami, FL
Buried: St. Mary Cemetery,in Evergreen Park, IL
Relatives: Brother of Bill Moriarty

and more . . .


George Moriarty
Street-tough George Moriarty carved a career in baseball that spanned more than 50 years, as player, coach, manager, umpire, executive, and scout. As a player, Moriarty played with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers, and used his aggresive baserunning to swipe home 11 times. He later succeeded Cobb as manager of the Tigers, after becoming an AL umpire. Moriarty spent two decades as an arbiter before joining the Al office as a public relations official. He later scouted for several teams, until his death in Miami in 1964.
Career Batting Stats
G AB H R HR RBI SB AVG SLG OBP OPS OPS+
1076 3671 920 372 5 376 248 .251 .312 .303 .616 95.9
Teams George Moriarty Managed
Detroit Tigers (1927-1928)
Born
George Joseph Moriarty was born on July 7, 1885, in Chicago, IL.

Died
April 8, 1964, Miami, FL

Batted: Right
Threw: Right

Major League Debut
9 27,

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1903
John Titus
Hans Lobert
Solly Hofman
Lee Tannehill
George Moriarty
Jake Stahl
Three-Finger Brown
Chief Bender
Red Ames

Post-Season Appearances
1909 World Series
Notes
Actor Michael Moriarty, known for his roles in the television show Law and Order, and the baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly, is the grandson of George Moriarty.


Michael Moriarty's grandfather played with Ty Cobb and could be as mean as that iconic sociopath, but retained more humanity and good humor. From Wikipedia:

It is reported that once while Moriarty was umpiring, Babe Ruth, who was at bat, stepped out of the batter's box and asked Moriarty to spell his last name. When he had spelled it out, Ruth reportedly replied, "Just as I thought; only one I." The baseball card shown to the right of this text spells Moriarty's name incorrectly - with "two I's."
Moriarty also was noted for his influence on the life of Tigers first baseman Hank Greenberg. During the 1935 World Series, Moriarty warned several Chicago Cubs players to stop yelling anti-semitic slurs at Greenberg [2]. When the Cubs players persisted with their remarks, Moriarty took the unusual step of clearing the entire Chicago bench - a maneuver that got him fined by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis [3]. Later, when Greenberg was pursuing Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, Moriarty kept the final game of the 1938 season going until darkness made it impossible to continue. Greenberg finished the night two homers shy of Ruth's record [4].
In his biography, Hank Greenberg recalled:
Much later in my career George Moriarty and I became very good friends. Back in the early 1900s he played third base for Detroit, and he used to steal home. Somebody wrote a poem about him, and the title was “Never Die on Third Moriarty.” All through the rest of his life George felt he knew something about stealing home. When he was umpiring on third base . . .

Not only that George Moriarty was a musician and songwriter.

thus -

Despite his combative field persona, off the field Moriarty could be more congenial, maintaining close friendships with Jesuit priests at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Moriarty also fancied himself a lyricist, and collaborated with Richard A. Whiting on the tune "Love Me Like the Ivy Loves the Old Oak Tree."

A great American Novelist created a character who plays America's past time. A great athlete competes and flourishes in that mileau. His grandson goes on to play the character created by Mark Harris and goes on to become a great American Actor

God seems to know what He's doing.



http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/moriage02.shtml?redir

Seven (7) Homicides in My Neighborhood ( Morgan Park) Since New Year's Day

Chicago's Media, Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers and Thugs have created the Thug Comfort Zone. -

Comfort one -

The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk (Alasdair A. K. White "From Comfort Zone to Performance Management"

Click my post title for Red Eye's Homicide Charts

These seven people died in my neighborhood because Thugs feel free to do so. The feel free to do so, because murder has no consequences - The Chicago Media always takes the side of the murdering thug and helps Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers like Jon Loevy and G. Flint Taylor make millionaires of murderers.

Chicago's Media ( Frank Main/Mark Brown & etc) are spoon fed bullshit and lap it up like gluttons.

Showing 7 homicides in Morgan Park since Jan. 1, 2009.
Name, age +
Story Date +
Time Block Cause +

Locale

Brandon Berry, 20
> Read more 2/13/10
8:30 p.m. 11200 S. Hermosa Ave. Gunshot
Street
Anthony Watts, 26
> Read more 12/9/09
9:50 p.m. 11300 S. Aberdeen St. Gunshot
Apartment
Robert Watson, 29
> Read more 12/9/09
9:50 p.m. 11300 S. Aberdeen St. Gunshot
Apartment
Kevin Johnson, 20
> Read more 4/14/09
5:03 p.m. 1600 W. 119th St. Gunshot
Parking lot/garage
Gregory Robinson, 14
> Read more 3/13/09
10:35 p.m. 1100 W. 110th Pl. Gunshot
Street
Otis Matthews, 29
> Read more 3/9/09
11 p.m. 11600 S. Church St. Gunshot
Sidewalk
Jojuan Miller, 34
> Read more 1/3/09
4:44 a.m. 11300 S. Racine Ave. Gunshot
Alley

Jan Schakowsky Insists Dead Babies Mean a Healthy America!

Dimbulb Democrat Jan Schakowsky, still under scrutiny as a Turkish Spy by the way, insisted to MSNBC's own Gay/Abortion Advocate Loudmouth Rachel Maddow that American Health Care requires dead babies:

While the Hyde Amendment initially banned public funding of abortions except in cases of rape, incest or the life or health of the mother, Stupak's amendment could end abortion coverage for people whose health insurance currently covers the service. His amendment would ban women who get government subsidized insurance to enter into a plan that covers abortion services--even if women wanted to pay for the plan themselves.

"[Stupak's amendment] went way past the current law," Schakowsky told Maddow--adding that Stupak talked several Democrats into thinking his plan was the status quo. "The pro-choice members [of Congress], 42 of us who signed a letter that said we want to maintain the status quo and will not vote for [the bill] if it has the Stupak language."

When Maddow asked Schakowsky whether the pro-choice members of Congress would vote down the health care bill if it included the Stupak language, Schakowsky said they "absolutely" would.

Planned Parenthood paid good money for Jan Schakowsky since she was a back-benching pain in the rump in Springfield and now GE giving this nitwit more air time.

Maddow and Schakowsky? Muy Simpatico! except to unborn children. These two odious harpies need to go.

Doreen's Frozen Gourmet Pizza - Herakleophorbia

I am a devout Catholic and an empiricist -in most things beyond metaphysics. I am not a devotee of Vito and Nick's, Fox's, Milano's, Roseangela's and Barraco's pizza because I am a south side parochialist, but because I ate pizza from Buddy's Pizza at 79th & Paulina as well as Caruso's on Ashland.

I was blessedly schooled in fine pizza, as a kid from Bordeaux, or Napa might say that he had sampled some Okay wine. I grew up in Pizza Utopia. Palermo's on 63rd! Falco's on Archer! Oh, Happy Land! Someone exclaims, " We're having pizza!!" and a south sider's mind races - "'Kay -don' panic. Be nice. Don' get your hopes up. It might be OK but expect Red Baron or Saltines with Brooks Ketchup on 'em. You're in Indiana for Crissakes. Calm down."

Doreen's in the heart of Calumet City and Hegewisch!

Doreen’s Gourmet Frozen Pizza Outlet Store located at:
130 State Street
Calumet, City, Illinois 60409
Phone: (708) 862-7499

Doreen's
13201 South Baltimore Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60633
Phone: (773) 646-0063

Later, while studying at Loyola University -north of Madison Avenue - I experienced Pizzeria Uno & Due and My Pi ( Greek Logo) - nice. Lou Malnati's ? If it's in front of me. Home Run Inn? Ditto.

I lived in Indiana from 1988-1998 - Pizza desert.

The south side of Chicago, Blue Island, Calumet Park, Calumet City and Chicago Heights were blessed by Italian immigrants who know how to toss pizza - thin to win and thick for the Micks. Mrs. Panatera made a gravy ( red tomato sauce) that if it were ladled over my son Conor's old New Balance mud dancers I'd devour that footwear.

I developed my gustatory tastes and sensibilities along with my passion for literature.

Last week, while shopping at County Fair Foods* for my three kids who eat like they're going to the Chair, I discovered Doreen's Gournet Frozen Pizza. Most frozen pizza's taste like the boxes that contain them; however, Doreen's Pizza ( jalapeno pepper) lifted me to Jove's Beard and Juno's Knockers! I recalled this passage from H. G. Wells!

Quite ordinary persons you perceive, both of them, outside their science. Or if anything on the unpractical side of ordinary. And that you will find is the case with “scientists” as a class all the world over. What there is great of them is an annoyance to their fellow scientists and a mystery to the general public, and what is not is evident.
There is no doubt about what is not great, no race of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, greyheaded, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or to read the anguish of Nature at the “neglect of science” when the angel of the birthday honours passes the Royal Society by, or to listen to one indefatigable lichenologist commenting on the work of another indefatigable lichenologist, such things force one to realise the unfaltering littleness of men.
And withal the reef of Science that these little “scientists” built and are yet building is so wonderful, so portentous, so full of mysterious half-shapen promises for the mighty future of man! They do not seem to realise the things they are doing! No doubt long ago even Mr. Bensington, when he chose this calling, when he consecrated his life to the alkaloids and their kindred compounds, had some inkling of the vision,—more than an inkling. Without some such inspiration, for such glories and positions only as a “scientist” may expect, what young man would have given his life to such work, as young men do? No, they must have seen the glory, they must have had the vision, but so near that it has blinded them. The splendour has blinded them, mercifully, so that for the rest of their lives they can hold the lights of knowledge in comfort—that we may see!

H. G. Wells - The Food of the Gods Chapter I, part 1.

Yes! That We may see and later eat it!

True genius you shall know by this sign!

Doreen’s Pizza, Inc. originated in 1986 on the south side of Chicago as a small take-out and delivery pizzeria with only one table in the dining area to accommodate customers who needed a quick bite to eat.

Being praised as the best pizza in the area, owner Bob Wisz decided to take this pizza perfection to the masses -- and began selling his pizzas frozen to local bars. Word quickly spread and people all over the area raved about his product and asked for it to be sold near them. Bob quickly expanded and started selling his soon-to-be famous pizza in many different types of businesses catering to a variety of age levels. Today, Doreen’s Gourmet Pizza is hand-made in our manufacturing facility in Calumet City, Illinois. To provide our customers with nothing but the perfect pizza, our facility makes only pizza – not burritos and not chicken pies.

We use only FRESH ingredients, including the vegetables, the sausage and the 100% real cheese that tops it all off! We go the extra mile to ensure our pizza is fresh when it comes out of your oven – and tastes just like it -- just like the moment it was made fresh and frozen in our facility.

All of our pizzas are fresh frozen and never precooked. This allows the blending of each ingredient and its unique flavor to combine uniformly to create that special Doreen’s taste! And our pizzas are packed with toppings for your eating pleasure! In fact, our Deluxe Pizza weighs nearly TWO POUNDS!
You can avail yourself of Doreen's Gourmet Frozen Pizza at these sensible and classy locations!

ILLINOIS -

Baltimore Foods - Hegewisch

Berkot's Super Foods - Dwight, Coal City, Braidwood, Watseka, New Lenox, Manteno, Mokena, Manhattan, Wilmington, South Wilmington

Bizios Fresh Market - Olympia Fields

Brookhaven - Mokena, Burr Ridge, Darien

Casey's Market - Western Springs

County Fair - 108th & Western - Chicago

Country Squire - Chicago Heights

Fairshare - Midway Airport - Chicago, Roosevelt Rd. - Chicago

Fairway - Lockport, Sauk Village, Dolton, Riverdale-144th & Indiana

Green Leaf Foods - Michigan Ave. - Chicago

Lincoln Park Market - Chicago, IL

Lupita’s - Calumet City

Misch Bros. - Calumet City

Pete’s Market - All locations

Potash Bros. - Chicago, IL

Presidential Market - Presidential Towers Chicago

Quality Supermarket - Watseka

Randy’s Market - Orland Park

Sentry Foods - Midlothian, IL

Strack & Van Til - Chicago - Elston Ave., Plainfield

Sunset Foods - Libertyville, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Northbrook

Tony's Finer Foods - Chicago (on Belmont, Central, Elston, Fullerton), Melrose Park, Bridgeview and North Riverside

Trudy's Pantry - Lansing

Ultra Foods - Hanover Park, Calumet Park, Chicago - 87th & Kedzie, Chicago Heights, Downers Grove, Forest Park, Joliet, Kankakee, Lansing, Lombard and Wheaton

Village Farmstand - Calumet City

WALT’S - Beecher, Crete, Frankfort, Homewood, South Holland and Tinley Park

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Doreen's Outlet Store

Visit our Doreen’s Gourmet Frozen Pizza Outlet Store located at:

130 State Street
Calumet, City, Illinois 60409
Phone: (708) 862-7499

Click here to view products available at our Outlet Store!




Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:30 - 4:30 9:30 - 4:30 9:30 - 4:30 9:30 - 4:30 9:30 - 4:30 Closed Closed
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Doreen's Pizzeria Restaurants

Don’t forget to visit Doreen’s Pizzeria, featuring our delicious namesake pizza. Two convenient locations in the Chicagoland area to serve you.

Dyer Restaurant
726 Joliet Road (US 30)
Dyer, Indiana 46311
Phone: (219) 865-9988



Chicago Restaurant
13201 South Baltimore Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60633
Phone: (773) 646-0063






Do, click my post title.

* County Fair Foods
www.countyfairfoods.net
10800 South Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60643-3226
(773) 238-5576

Ralph Martire and The Endless Illinois Snow Job

Ralph Martire, the mouthpiece for Tax Increases in Illinois, is everywhere! He is like the endless 'Chance of Snow -100%' warnings for Illinois.

If it is snowing and it is - now, yesterday, and tomorrow - it is up to Illinois residents to grunt and strain and heft and heave the burden. If it is Tax Increases, and it is -now, yesterday, and tomorrow - its the work of the Snow King, Ralph Martire who has pie-charted and schmoozed the media since he took his sheepskin. It is, however, for the Illinois resident to grunt and strain and heft and heave the burden of taxes.

The Civic Federation has linked arms with the Snow King and calls for more Illinois Taxes.

Ralph Martire snows on Illinois about entitlements, infrastructure and education.

Here is Ralph Martire pie-charting and parsing about Illinois Education as reported by the tough and fair minded Jeff Berkowitz:

Ralph Martire, a liberal and Executive Director of the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability, contends the evidence shows vouchers don't work. He cites, for example, to a federal government funded research study that Martire contends supports his view. However, Martire's favorite study to cite on education simply compares private and public schools, it doesn't study the impact of school vouchers.

Peer reviewed credible studies on school vouchers

Moreover, Tillman says that Martire is wrong and that there are many studies that demonstrate that vouchers work well. Tillman argues that based on all the peer reviewed credible studies on vouchers, they work extremely well. In short, Tillman believes that choice improves outcomes. That's true with charter schools and school vouchers.

When consumers have choices, they can benefit from competition, resulting in more efficiency and innovation. Producers, in this case schools, offer improved quality and services, and at lower prices. In response to Martire's argument that school vouchers don't work, Tillman said if that is the case, people wouldn't use the vouchers, that is, they would simply stay in the public schools, so "what do we have to lose by trying school vouchers? What, indeed?

Click my post title for more Snow melted by Jeff Berkowitz. Nice, Jeff!

The Chicago Media Ten Cent Head Club never connect Ralph to the endless snow jobs.


What indeed? More Snow of course! Ralph Martire is taxed with giving 'scientific' cover for Tax-A- Holic Progressive boondogglers.

Here is Ralph Martire - Googed by your humble helot hack/blogger - pie-charting and parsing for more heavy, wet miserable Tax Blizzards!

Daley orders more budget cuts
Medill Reports: Chicago - Jessica Q. Chen, Aaron Stern - ‎Feb 11, 2010‎
"It's hard to fathom given how lean things are … that this won't impact services," said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget ... Lawmakers advocate unlikely bills
Peoria Journal Star - Brian Feldt, Doug Finke - ‎Feb 20, 2010‎
“It's purely pandering,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “It's evading the issue. ... Despite budget woes, lawmakers push tax breaks
Rockford Register Star - Brian Feldt, Doug Finke - ‎Feb 19, 2010‎
“It's purely pandering,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “It's evading the issue. ... School Vouchers-School Choice: The Obamas, hypocrisy and social justice
ChicagoNow (blog) - ‎Feb 15, 2010‎
Ralph Martire, a liberal and Executive Director of the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability, contends the evidence shows vouchers don't work. ... How The State Budget Crisis Imperils Lower-Income Students
Progress Illinois (blog) - ‎Feb 12, 2010‎
The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability's Ralph Martire tells us that those families in lower-income districts are likely to get hit with higher ... Unfunded mandates bill part of larger school funding push Posted By John Myers ...
Catalyst Chicago - ‎Feb 19, 2010‎
... as many as a dozen, says Ralph Martire, executive director for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and a school finance expert. ... Memo From Turner: Could it Have Changed Scott Lee Cohen Outcome?
Chicago Daily Observer - ‎Feb 7, 2010‎
No one in our state, except possibly Dawn Netsch, Paul Vallas or Ralph Martire understand economics and budgeting as well as Dan does. ...

Memo to our Media Dim-bulbs - Ralph Martire is the Illinois Tax Snow King! Shucks,Girls, let's give Ralph Martire his Props for all the Taxes Now and to Come!

http://news.google.com/news/search?um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=ralph+martire&as_qdr=m&as_drrb=q&cf=all

Ralphie Martire! Keep the Duck!

The MUCH respected Civic Federation ( Fanfare of Trumpets Please!) wants Illinois Tax-payers to kick in more dollars that they don't have to pay for what Ralphie Martire* demanded and got from 2004 on!

Hey, The Sun Times said so!

That same tax increase has been advocated since 2004 by another civic watchdog group, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Allow us to soften the sticker shock of such a tax increase by putting it in context:

Ralph Martire takes money from people who earn salaries and provides cash, goods and services to people who do not.

In 2004. Ralph Martire, as he has done so all of his career, poached income from the Illinois Taxpayers, with the say-so and go-ahead of Illinois Progressives like his Chinaman Dawn Clark Netsch.

Akin to shooting a duck that lands on a farmer's land:

Ralph Martire shoots a duck out in the country - Kankakee,or Papineau, Illinois let's say. As he's retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him - like his income. After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the matter "country style."

"What's country style?" asks the city boy Ralphie.

"Out here in the country," the farmer says, "when two fellers have a dispute, one feller kicks the other one in the balls as hard as he can. Then that feller, why, he kicks the first one as hard as he can. And so forth. Last man standin' wins the dispute."

Warily the Tax Hawker Ralph Martire agrees and prepares himself. The farmer hauls off and kicks Ralph a good 'un in the groin with all his might. With now three Adam's Apples in his gullet Ralph Maartire falls to the ground in the most intense pain he's ever felt, crying like a baby and coughing up blood. Finally he staggers to his feet and says, "All right, n-now it's–it's m-my turn."

The farmer grins. "Aw, hell, you win. Keep the duck."

When every wage earner and tax-payer in Illinois gets to line up and go Country Style on Ralph Martire and the fine folks of the Civic Federation, a Doomsday Tax Increase will be just jake with me.


* January 1, 2001
Ralph Martire is executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability ( "CTBA"). He also serves as a regular columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the State Journal-Register and The Herald News on issues involving government accountability, tax, fiscal and budget policies. Ralph served on the budget advisory board to Governor Rod Blagojevich's transition team, where he acted as chairperson of the state revenue subcommittee. Ralph was the principal author of a study CTBA produced that identified revenue enhancement proposals to address the 2002 fiscal crises in the state of Illinois. Five of the proposals identified in that study ultimately became law. Ralph also was a key member of the research team that produced the groundbreaking "State of Working Illinois" report, which detailed industry, employment, wage and benefit trends in Illinois over the last 15 years. A joint project of CTBA and Northern Illinois University, the State of Working Illinois has been featured in over 150 media (print and broadcast) placements nationwide.
Ralph was the recipient of the 2004 Ben C. Hubbard Leadership Award, presented annually by Illinois State University to an individual whose leadership has significantly benefited education in Illinois.

Christopher Buckley Wiggles and Giggles - Never Bring a Silver Spoon to a Baling Hook Brawl with Long Shoremen

Si tacuisses, philosophus manisses Boethius

Christopher Buckley, America's Bertie Wooster and parallel universe Kennedy Kid, took his Highland walking stick to the backs of American Helots and overweight Patriot re-enactors for redefining his Old Man's Conservative Order of Battle.

Novelist, wit, gad-about, and androgynous political cut-and-paste-er Chris Buckley, who helped elect President Obama in 2008 and had gone to ground since then, is back.

Hip! Huzzah.

Buckley like Kennedy is an American Brand name like Hilton or Kardashian.

Chris Buckley sports natty Anglophile habiliments in town in a custom pinstriped peak-lapelled single-breasted suit, pocket square, fawn waistcoat, watch fob, and homburg hat and in the fens Barbour Classic Beaufort Jacket, knee-high hose over moleskin breeks Dunmoor fleece waiscoat, Sutherland tweed driving cap and lined Capeskin gloves - marvelous. Accessoried with language as well, Buckley gives out against his blood kin and the Official Image of White House Opposition - fat, racist rustic ruffians who detest the President because of the color of skin:

One might then logically ask, wouldn’t it have been simpler, and more honest, to issue a J’Accuse Obama! instead of a windy yadda-yadda about first principles and why are liberals wiping their arses with the Constitution?
I have some thoughts about the growls and yips emanating from the podium and—ahem—Teleprompters at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, where CPAC is holding its auto-da-fé, but in the tradition of Sharonesque brevity, why don’t we leave it there until tomorrow.

One might, but President Obama had plenty of help leading the Nation to this economic and spiritual nadir, Young Buckley - You, Wee Davey Brooks, Dame May Peggy Noonan, Mike Murphy, Kathy Parker and other youthful conservatives all took the MSNBC coin.

Tah!

Dick Simpson and Gang Trot Out Corruption Stage for Dave Orr

What a phony piece of garbage this report happens to be.

This is nothing more than a swell BGA/Progressive/Media/UIC dung-heap upon which Cook County Clerk David Orr intends to crow his Mayoral Platform of Reform.

Daley will hand Dave his mustache months before Dave asks the 19th Ward, 11th Ward, 18th Ward, 14th Ward and 47th Ward to send some helpers to get him some signatures.

However, the Media Howler Monkeys will paste up some serious nonsense for the dim-bulb soul patchers.

Slap it on thick, Girls!

The UIC (a real hallmark of 'distinguished fugitives') and the BGA (Andy Shaw's Golden Parachute) study is a mere Google search of convictions that deftly avoids the indictments, trials and conviction IVI-IPO sanctioned crooks who went to the Iron Hotel for Reform Looting sprees.

Nice try there, Cupcakes.

Andy Shaw's BGA and Professor Dick Simpson presented a nice thirty-three page study ( The Idiot's Guide to Chicago Crooks -not Our Progressive Crooks, but Regular Democratic Crooks) that is merely a litany of Cook County convictions.

The bottom line is that only Dave Orr ( former Mayor of Chicago who did not lift a finger while Burge was a Cop)is to be trusted, because he brought in the Hugo Chavez manufactured voting machines.

Give it a thumb-through. It is as informative and valuable as the palm cards that Todd Stroger bought in January.

Click my post title for the breathless NBC ( the clowns who pushed out Steve Rhodes when he refused to tweak his take on corruption the Tribune Managing Party Animal - in the Chicago Media) link and then click on the BGA pdf link.

The Corruption Cesspool is the Media's wallow as well Dick and Andy.

BTW - Dave Orr - will stay Clerk. He's got no where else to go.

President Obama's Saturday Address

Good morning, and thank you for joining me. Many of you in this room are my friends. Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have cheered for me or you’ve worked with me or you’ve supported me.

Now every one of you has good reason to be critical of me. I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in.

. . .( pause) I am also aware of the pain my behavior has caused to those of you in this room. I have let you down, and I have let down my fans. For many of you, especially my friends, my behavior has been a personal disappointment. To those of you who work for me, I have let you down personally and professionally. My behavior has caused considerable worry to my business partners. . . (pause -Manly Stare) . . But still, I know I have bitterly disappointed all of you. I have made you question who I am and how I could have done the things I did. I am embarrassed that I have put you in this position. . . .( Pause -Winsome smile) . . . I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done. My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to before. It’s now up to me to make amends, and that starts by never repeating the mistakes I’ve made. It’s up to me to start living a life of integrity. . . .( pause -Heroic toss of the Head) . . . I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it. Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, the Dalai was here Thursday. . .nice guy . . . Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught. The Dalai was here you know.

As I move forward, I will continue to receive help because I’ve learned that’s how people really do change. Starting tomorrow, . . . maybe not . . .

Finally, there are many people in this room, and there are many people at home who believed in me. Today I want to ask for your help. I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again.

Thank you. Gibbs, is this thing on?

Most of the text of this fictional address and more can be read by clicking on my post title. God, I love to cut and paste! I gotta stop eating the stuff . . .playing hell on my old teeth.

Tiger's Sorry -Big Deal. The Guys of Affordable Group Services are the Real Heroes !

But with man it is wholly different. He possesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of the animal being, and hence enjoys at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material. But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity's humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially from the brute. And on this very account - that man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason - it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession; he must have not only things that perish in the use, but those also which, though they have been reduced into use, continue for further use in after time.

Pope Leo XIII - Rerum Novarum


Affordable Group Services is an alcohol/drug rehabilitation program that shows addicts the 'way to go home' - through learning a skilled trade.

This Hazel Crest based addiction recovery/vocational skills training operation run by John Dunleavy is below-the-radar Cinderella Story.

Men who have beaten themselves to the canvas can find a way back onto their feet in into the fight of their life - recovery from alcohol and drug addiction and a return to dignity.

The Southtown Star's Carole Sharwarko writes a story that throws Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon into the cheaps seats. Front Pages are devoted to Tiger Woods and his apolopalooza yesterday - who shives a git?!

Read Carole Sharwarko's saga of John Dunleavy and the heroes of Affordable Group Services! Click my post title for this powerful story!Writer Carole Sharwarko is a Hero!

Here's a taste:

Sometimes an idea is so simple and perfect, you can't imagine why no one's thought of it before. But even the best idea needs a champion, a walking embodiment of its potential.
At Affordable Group Services, every man who stays out of the bottle and off the pipe is that champion. Each man who chooses an honest day's work over a life choked by addiction personifies a concept conceived in 2003.