This is how Jim feels about summer:

How classy is that? The truth of this picture is, Jim, despite being a ripe, mature 36 years of age, has no idea how to react when you point a camera in his direction. Doesn’t he look pissed? He told me the other day that he HATES summer. I think I will never forgive him.

Well, despite my husband’s inexplicable anger at the only good time of year, I do not fear the sun and the sweat which accompanies it. Last week I took the kids to a baseball game, but despite my intentions, we did not make it to the Taste of Chicago. So yesterday I put them on the train and away we went….

On the train. I was afraid George would not like it, but he was so excited. They made me sit up top.

Super lame blow-up games aren't so bad when they are free! Thanks Mayor Daley!

At the Millenium Park fountain.

I'm not totally sure how I feel about the fountain "sculpture." If you've never been there, the faces change. And then eventually, they purse their lips and water spits out, like they are spitting all over the children. Which of course, the kids adore. I tried to take a picture, but I needed new batteries and the camera clicked off. Stupid cheap AAs.

 Of course, a day in the city is not complete until you see something disturbing. Enter the other sculpture at the park that caught my eye:

I walked around this work of “art” looking for a title, but found none. So I can only assume this is entitled, “great big dong wrapped in foil.” In a park designed for children no less! I seriously should have been an artist, because I am certain I could have designed this nonsense.

All in all, it was a perfect summer day. I’ll let the boys sum it up for you:

Happy summer everyone!

Now, it’s even been named. This year, the winner gets…

wait for it…

The BP Cup!

No shit.

My brother promptly announced that while the cup itself is lovely, it leaks. He also thinks it should be handed to the loser, not the winner. Too bad, sucker, the Sox have already embarrassed the ever-living pants out of the Cubs, 4 games. You win! You win! You win! Take your BP Cup and put it in your BP case next to you BP World Series memorabilia from 2005 and celebrate with some of that nasty BP Miller Lite you drink on the South Side. It’s one championship the Cubs are happy to lose! Hoo!

Anyway, I headed to the game with the boys yesterday. Had a great time. The only real entertainment was when Carlos Zambrano had a temper tantrum in the dugout and was told to go home, you know, after giving up four runs in the first (final score 6-0 Sox). We had a pretty good view from our seats. Oh, I was so proud to be a Cubs fan at Comiskey U.S. Cellular Field. Those Ricketts kids are turning this team around!!! Thanks Omaha!

But there was one awesome highlight of the game. Check it out:

My sister Laura snapped this photo of me and the boys after the game. Sure, George looks like a total goober. But look how skinny I look! And no snide comments from those of you who are like, ummm, sure you look skinny, in you know, a total fatty type of way. Shut up, I look good!

Well worth the loss, Cubs! I’m ready for my BP Mother of the Year Award!

Let’s start with the obvious: I am not a hockey expert. Not even close. When I lived down in Baton Rouge, where hockey was surprisingly popular, Kayla, Nancy and I, along with other various WBRZers, would often find ourselves at a Baton Rouge Kingfish game. With no idea what was going on, but there were fights on the ice and cold beers in our hands and um, we were young and kinda hot and those were the days, you know what I mean?

My first Blackhawks hockey game was with my sister Laura at some point in my early 20′s. We found our seats at the United Center, somewhere around the ninth row off the ice. I turned around to put my jacket on the chair, and *WHACK* something hit my ass. I turned around and there were a few players warming up on the ice — not Hawks but I can’t remember who they were playing, maybe Tampa — who were actually laughing at me. It was a puck. My big old butt was a bulls eye. I looked around and found that puck on the ground under my seat. I think I still have it somewhere. I also dropped 40 pounds after that!

I watched my first Stanley Cup Final in 2000, while working nightside at WGNO. I do not remember who was playing or who even won (though Wikipedia tells me it was Dallas and New Jersey, and New Jersey won). I do remember that the game went into triple overtime one night… and double overtime the next game. And Al Michaels said, “If you don’t love hockey, you should.” That struck me as very funny and I thought, maybe I should watch hockey. But it wasn’t something I ever got into.

When I moved to Quad Cities, I went to several Quad City Mallards games. There’s a pattern here, in case you were wondering — people who work in television, especially in small markets, really have no issues getting free tickets to minor league games of any kind! I remember one game, when a guy was leaving the ice after a fairly nasty fight, and one of the dudes from the other team was chasing him. And we were all in the stands yelling “BEHIND YOU!!!” like it was a scary movie. That guy — the Mallard — got to the exit, waited for the guy to get close, and pulled the glass door behind him real fast so the would-be attacker just smacked himself into the glass. Hilarious. That was the last time I went to a hockey game until I met my husband in 2004.

Jim loves hockey. Loves it. Loves it so much that, knowing it was not a popular sport in these parts, did not TELL me that he loved it until after we were married. Made it sound like, sure, I’ll watch it if it’s on, but I mean, it’s no big deal. He was a big fat lying liar. He loves hockey. The day he realized I would sit and watch it with him, I think he fell in love with me in a whole new way.

Here’s Jim loving hockey as a baby:

OK, it’s a picture of a picture, so it’s cooked and not so great. But as you can see, he’s wearing a Blackhawks shirt.

Here’s Jim and his friend Eric loving hockey somewhere in the early 90′s:

No comments on the hair people. And by that I mean, no comments on the actual presence of hair. (That’s my thumb in the corner, too, I should really get a scanner.)

Just a few years ago, if you went to the United Center on hockey night, it was a ghost town. Totally dead. These days, it’s packed. Now, there are those folks (Tommy) who like to get into the issue of “true fans” versus “band wagon fans” and all that nonsense. That the “true” fans are the rough and tumble guys in the upper deck who stuck with the team even when they sucked, the same guys who couldn’t afford a playoff ticket even if they sold their alcohol-infused liver on the black market. To this, I say, bah!

First — who cares when someone became a fan? You’re not allowed to love a team because you just started loving them this year? That’s stupid.

Second — the Blackhawks just came on television last year. For years they were blacked out, because owner “Dollar Bill” Wertz wasn’t willing to put his team on television and give the product away for free. They only came on TV now because the old man kicked off and his son decided to actually let the fans WATCH what was happening. It’s asking a whole lot of people to stick with a team through and through when not only are they not winning, but you cannot even see them play unless you drive into the city, pay for parking, pay for a ticket (even a cheap one) and pay for concessions. My husband still did this — often. But there were plenty of smiling and cheering faces in the crowd this year and last year who did not. It does not, in my opinion, make them any less worthy as fans.

I asked Jim if I was one of these band wagon fans, and he quickly pointed out that I am not. That while I certainly am no expert, the team sucked balls when he first started taking me to games. And I tried, desperately, to learn the game. I get strategy and I can follow the puck (which is a feat, by the way, when you are trying to learn this sport — that stuff moves FAST) and I understand some of the calls and rules but not as many as I wish I did and I FINALLY get the line changes.

So last night, as we watched Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, I reached over and checked Jim’s pulse. It was racing. Then, I checked my own, and it too was racing. Sweet Christmas, I AM a fan!!

Jim was deflated when the Flyers tied it up. And just like everyone in the world EXCEPT for Patrick Kane, we were more confused than excited when that winning goal went in the net during overtime. I’ll bet if we could turn back time and listen to the city of Chicago and the city of Philadelphia as a whole, we would hear a collective, “What the hell just happened?” PK was the ONLY person who knew that puck went in. When we watched it back in slow motion, you could pretty much hear most of my neighborhood cheer as we realized that the Stanley Cup was coming home to Chicago. Neighbors let off fireworks. Hank ran out the back door with a pot and spoon and banged away. Jim did NOT cry (ahem). Dudes… THAT.WAS.AWESOME. 49 years without a championship. It’s nice to be on this side every once in a while.

So thank you Blackhawks. Thank you for giving my husband a championship team. He loved the Hawks even when they were completely unloveable, and doesn’t care who is loving them now right with him. Mostly, thank you for giving us something to watch that is not baseball, because seriously, the Cubs and Sox blow. And thank you PK for knowing it before anyone else did. That was pretty cool.

Over at my very favorite hate speech website, Fox Nation, the joy is overwhelming. Some of the responses on the thread about the Olympic bid loss:

• Waserum – “LMAO…IN YOU FACE OBAMA…IN YOUR FACE!!!!”
• Barabrella – “I salute Copenhagen!!!! They too see what an egomaniac, and how arrogant Obama is. He thought he goes over there and kisses their a… and they’d bow! Hey Obama, how about cleaning up your crime and drug infested Chicago??. Why would they want to bring the Olympics to that dangerous hell hole????”
• Laura S. – “I THINK THE 3 BIGGEST OVER-INFLATED EGOS ON THE PLANET JUST GOT ROYALLY SHOT DOWN!!!! (That would be obama, michelle & offra) I GUESS THE WORLD THINKS THEY AIN’T ALL THAT!!! Congrats, RIO!!!!!”
• Mac – “Well I’m finally for the first time proud of the IOC.”
• Reality Man – “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahhahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahah ahahaahahahaahahahahahahahaaaaaaaahahhahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Guess everybody doesn’t love your grandiose ass!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah……..!!!!!!”
• Delores – “yea, my team won!!!!!!!RIO….here they come!!!!”
• be – “I can’t stop laughing!!”
• Sector 001 – “Yes!!!! There is a God!”
• rightwingmom – “FINALLY ~ Breaking News that made me SMILE!!!!”

There are thousands of posts just like it. Thousands. Thousands of people cheering against an American city hosting the Olympics. Thousands of people rejoicing that America lost out on this one. Thousands of posts coming from the same people who claim to have cornered the market on patriotism. Thousands of people who called ME unpatriotic for saying even one tiny little thing against Bush. There they all are, embracing the fact that Chicago lost as a complete and total WIN! HOOORAY!!!

Can anyone even IMAGINE what would have happened if this type of joyous rhetoric had come out of Limbaugh’s pill-popping mouth when New York City was removed from consideration for the Summer 2012 games? Sweet Jimminy, he would have been waterboarded and sent to live in San Fransisco! When New York loses, it’s a darn shame. But when Chicago loses, it’s time to bust out the champagne and oxcycotin cocktail!

By all indications, Rio put on a hell of a show to win this Olympic 2016 bid. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, led the Brazilian delegation in Denmark, and surprisingly, none of the pundits who claimed that the US President had no business being there had the same to say for the Brazilian President. Everything that I read seemed to indicate that even if Chicago had made the first cut, the games belonged to Rio. It’s bitter sweet. Sure it would have been nice, but it could have been risky. And there’s hope to try again for a future bid. But it still stings to lose. But, luckily, Chicago is half full of Cubs fans and all full of Bears and Hawks fans and we’re pretty good at taking it.

Still, I don’t get the happiness over the loss. My buddy GleN Beck, wearing, inexplicably, a tailored suit jacket, a maroon shirt and jeans, said he never had a problem with Chicago, despite his tirade yesterday. Instead, his beef was this: “Now that’s it’s off the front page of the paper, we will forget about the real meaning of the story: corruption and Valerie Jarrett. Corruption in Chicago that now lives in the White House.”

GleN Beck has endlessly accused Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett of some type of Olympic bid wrongdoing, but has yet to produce any proof of it. And by “proof,” I mean he’s not even smart enough to try and fake it. Or to manufacture it. He puts a picture of her on his chalk board, next to a picture of William Ayers and Obama and a picture of the Bolsheviks (you know — they’re all Marxist Commie Bastards!) and Richard Daley and Al Capone. TA DA! Politically corrupt. Nevermind that the White House continually debunks GleN’s weak claims.

He also at one point used the term “true ‘dat.” Hey GleN. The 90′s called. They want both their outfit AND their ridiculous white suburban slang back.

Tangent – GleN also included a poll result, from a Rasmussen Survey of 1,000 likely voters, about what issues they deem most important currently in this country. The results, as aired by GleN:

• Government Ethics – 83%
• Economy – 82%
• Health Care – 73%

Dude. That adds up to 238%

Back to what I was saying. After Beck’s opening monologue where he got to say “true ‘dat” (which, I’ll bet, he’s been hanging on to that one since 1997. Seriously. He finally got to say it on the air!), he had the big old brass balls to bring on a bunch of mothers who refer to themselves as “The Sisterhood of the Mommy Patriots.” Now, I’m not going to give these women a hard time for wanting to organize Moms as a powerful political force, even if I have no desire to join their force. I will pick on their idiotic choice for a name, but that’s a different story. GleN had the NERVE to sit with these ladies and talk on and on about how very important it is that we all come together. GLEn FREAKING BECK. The man who says the President of the United States hates all white people wants us to COME TOGETHER. Hypocrisy much? Jackass.

Dudes, I’m just so sick of it. GleN Beck is an atrocious embarrassment to journalism. He spits out hate then acts shocked and persecuted that the White House will call him out on it. Just as he has the right to spew his hate, everyone else has the right to tell him to shut his damn trap — or, at a minimum, expose him for the whiny lying liar he is with a little thing we like to call “facts.” Don’t ever accuse GleN Beck or Rush Limbaugh of letting the truth get in the way of their “reporting.”

I think I should put myself in a time out. I’m off to indoctrinate my kids.

Well…

Dammit all to hell.

But, I have one real reason, one reason much stronger than any my brother lists, for why I support the Olympics in Chicago. I want it for one simple reason : GleN Beck hates the idea.

GleN Beck was on his usual hateful tirade today, and he won’t shut up about Chicago. I mean really, Republicans have been torching Chicago worse than Mrs. O’Leary’s cow did ever since Obama became a viable candidate for the presidency. Chicago politics and the Chicago machine and that big bad corrupt CHICAGO. As a gal who never lived IN the city, but grew up here in Chicagoland, I am sick to death of it. Why do we sit back and take it when GleN Beck, a repugnant radio DJ who once ridiculed the wife of a friend ON THE AIR because she had a miscarriage, the man who baselessly insists that President Obama is a racist who has a “deep seated hatred for white people” (a quip that left his advertisers running for cover as they yanked their wares off his show), the man who boasted about his awesome 9-12 project and how thousands of people need to come to Washington, DC to participate, but didn’t actually show up himself,  looks down his ugly little nose at us, the people of greater Chicagoland? WHY?

Today, GleN spent an ungodly amount of time whining about the President making an appearance in Denmark to push for the Olympics to take place in Chicago. See, GleN apparently hates the Olympics. And for some reason, when describing the dumb old Olympic games, he felt it was necessary to use his Kermit the Frog voice, which was disturbing at best. So he goes on about all the bad stuff about Chicago and poverty and crime. I don’t know that I see this as a valid argument, when we are talking about a city of 3 million people. Of course there is poverty and crime. But then GleN said, “They’re also called Second City. Residents there experience mental anguish over constantly being told that they are second best.”

Dude. F-YOU.

Then he went through some non-sensical nonsense about how all the potential host cities have some sort of problem, something… I don’t know, he totally lost me. There was laughing and weird-ness and more Kermit the Frog impersonations. Then he abruptly tossed to a commercial, only to come back and say, “Why is this a priority?” Because when Bush spent 4 days just watching the Olympics in 2008, or went golfing or hunting or fishing at any time, there were no other “priorities.”

“Yesterday we told you about how bringing the Olympics to Chicago is potentially a corrupt political move, hmmm, you think,” GleN said, without explaining why or how the Olympic bid was potentially corrupt. To support his claim, he brought in Michelle Malkin, the pundit who claimed that ABC reported 1.5 to 2 million people at the 9-12 party in Washington DC, a false claim that ABC had to correct multiple times, the woman who printed the names, e-mails and phone numbers of student protestors, prompting people to deliver death threats to those students, and the woman who, in my opinion, is kinda butt ugly, to support his claims that somehow, some way, President Obama will have his pockets personally lined with the hard earned dollars of Chicago tax-payers should the Olympics be played in Chicago in 2016. She referred to Chicago as a “basket case,” her snaggle tooth catching over her impossibly large and faux inflated bottom lip. She also forgot to put the proper amount of makeup on her ugly face, and sheesh… no one should have to look at that, not even Republicans. Yitch.

GleN then went on about how there was sooooooo much corruption on the Olympics in Salt Lake City, and how Mitt Romney fixed it all. Um, idiot? Is GleN suggesting that Daley or Obama or someone has paid off members of the International Olympic Committee, because that is quite a claim. All Mitt Romney had to do in Salt Lake City was NOT try and bribe anyone. He didn’t fix a problem, he cleaned up a mess. He was a venture capitalist. Cleaning up messes was his job. He’s not a hero. It’s not like he didn’t get handsomely paid.

Then GleN and the ugly one and some guy in a pink shirt were going on about how EVERYONE IS CONNECTED! All these Chicago people are CONNECTED TO OBAMA! Hey shit-for-brains — they are all from Chicago, why the hell would they NOT know each other? WTF? Seriously, WTF?

Then GleN was nice enough to play the video of Derrion Albert being beaten to death on the streets of Chicago. Wasn’t that nice of GleN to play that video on the air… AGAIN? I’m sure Derrion’s mother really appreciates GleN using the murder of her son for his political propaganda purposes. Nice. His point? Apparently, if you bring you children to Chicago, they will be murdered on the street. Heck, Obama will probably be holding the 2X4 that your kid gets struck with. ROLL THE TAPE AGAIN!

GleN, get the hell away from my city. I’m tired to death of “journalists” who *puffy heart* New York and DC and Los Angles and Boston, then wag their fingers at Chicago when they don’t know the first thing about this place. Shut up. If you hate Chicago so much, then stay away. We can take care of ourselves just fine and dandy, and we certainly don’t need YOU to point out what WE may be doing wrong. If the President wants to say to the IOC, hey, my hometown is a good place, then he should. I would expect no less out of any other president, past or future.

GleN, there are all sorts of tea-bagging townhallers that have no ability to compose their own original thought, and they need you to tell them what to think. Please. Pretty please. Go the hell away.