Fuddy Duddy, and Spouse

I have attempted, along with my spouse, to age, as they say, gracefully.

Make a note. It is official. We have failed.

On New Year's Day I gave a call early in the evening to Grandpa and Grandma to wish them well for the new year. I had avoided making one of those midnight phone calls the night before, figuring they might have turned in early.

When they answered the phone--both of them, as they frequently do, which is somewhat disarming, the two hellos, like a delay--their voices sounded fatigued. I pumped up the enthusiasm and tossed out a Happy New Year, hoping they'd perk up.

"What did you do last night?," I enquired with some reluctance.

"We were at a New Year's party at some country club in Niles," replied Grandpa. "The Ampol Aires played. Good food, you know, open bar, good music. Then, when that party ended, we headed over to the Stardust, they were having another band, so we went over there and stayed there 'till, I don't know, 3:30 or 4, and hell, we didn't get home and get to bed 'till, I dunno, around 5. It was tough for Grandma, ha-ha, she can't handle it so good anymore."

"Ah, it was the food. The food didn't agree with me, I ate too much," chimed in Grandma. "So I had to take it easy today, that's all. What did you guys do?"

My turn.

"Ummm...we went out for dinner...around 6:30...in town...and, ummm, we, uh, that was about it."

The picture above is the Ampol Aires, the entertainment of the early portion of Grandma and Grandpa's evening. The picture is from 1965. While most--not all--of the band members have changed over the years, they are still playing, and Grandma and Grandpa are still out there partying.

And we are not.

We have been passed on the party scale by Grandma and Grandpa and the Ampol Aires and an army of polka dancing senior citizens who certainly don't want to hear anything about aging gracefully.

That is all.

Marketing Classic

On New Year's Eve in Las Vegas, some motorcycle jumping guy shot his machine nearly ten stories into the night sky and landed atop the Arc de Triomphe at the Paris Hotel. He drove the bike around the top of the Arc a few times and then drove it off the edge, hit the ramp properly and stuck a successful and safe landing. The good citizens of Paris, France, were unavailable for comment, but they may want to look into this new and novel use for local landmarks Chicago, not to be outdone, saved its spectacle for New Year's Day.

The newly revived Chicago Blackhawks Hockey Club, Inc., played the perennial powerhouse Detroit Red Wings yesterday at the world's largest saloon, Wiggley Field. The game was OK, 41,000 people showed up to party, the most successful operation in Detroit prevailed and the marketers accomplished exactly what they had hoped for.

What a dopey event.

I had hoped that this space would be poplulated today by a noted non-fan of hockey, Amy, who was in attendance at yesterday's chilly New Year's party, but apparently all the revelry was too much for her. Through a phone call about an hour before the game, we first learned that Amy had been pressed into service as a Blackhawk Standby when her significant other's pal was taken ill. Whether the illness was revelry-related was not disclosed.

The last two contacts from Amy, text messages, informed us first that she had lost the feeling in her extremities and then that she had fled the outdoor saloon and found comfort at an indoor watering hole. Papa didn't raise no fool.

Unable to overcome my curiousity, I watched parts of the Winter Classic from the comfort of the recliner while also watching yet another of my bowl wagers go up in smoke in a substantially warmer setting, warmer for me and at the bowl game, too. Back in Chicago, the hockey game was the most aggressive advertising campaign that I can remember ever seeing, simply amazing.

The bankrupt Tribune company, which spent $1.5 million last spring to have the notoriously horrendous Wiggley playing surface rebuilt (by Roger Bossard of the White Sox), had no qualms about renting out their playpen for a hockey game. I cannot be convinced that this will not have a negative impact on the ground the Wiggleys hold sacred.

Next, the pricey tickets for contest did not assure that you could actually see what was occurring on the ice. By my guesstimate, the seats nearest to the rink were close to a hundred feet away. Those seats were also obstructed view, as the side boards of a hockey rink are about three and a half feet high, so most of the lower deck seats were unlikely to see much of the actual ice surface. Another round here, beertender.

Some of the hockey heroes of my youth were dragged out to create a more festive mood for the show. Bobby Hull, once the most venerated athlete in town, looked right at home at the world's largest saloon. He joined good old #21, Stan Mikita and Wiggley favorite Ryne Sandberg in a bizarre rendition of Take Me Out to the Hockey Game. They all appeared to enjoy singing away as the home team was getting pounded. Upon reflection, that was consistent with a hundred years of summer behavior at Wiggley.

The money shot for this game didn't land in the net. It's the shot that appears above, the throwback jerseys with the decrepit Wiggley scoreboard in the background. The uniforms are for sale right now on NHL.com, and the photos, framed and with commemorative plaque affixed, should be available shortly for your purchasing and reminiscing pleasure.

What the hell...it's better than a picture of the motorcycle guy in Vegas.

The Granddaddy of Them All

The first post season college football game was held in 1902 as an added attraction to Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses festival. The University of Michigan came out to the west coast and beat home state favorite Stanford 49-0 in three quarters of play. After the third quarter, Stanford was getting schmeered, so they quit and left.

The first Tournament of Roses had nothing to do with football. Twelve years prior to Stanford's hissy fit, the good people of Pasadena decided to show off their paradise to the Easterners and Midwesterners who were buried in frigid winter, so they put together a festival. During the first few years, the events at the festival included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations and a race between a camel and an elephant (the elephant won).

That 1902 football massacre caused the committee to avoid football the next year…actually for the next 13 years. In 1903 there polo matches and the crowds stayed away in droves. The replacement was chariot races, held from 1904 to 1915 In 1916, football was back, and Washington State beat Brown in front of 14,000 people.

The contemporary festival features the world famous Rose Parade, and this year is the 120th edition. The Rose Parade will be broadcast on ABC, NBC, Univision, HGTV, Travel Channel, RFD-TV as well as KWHY and KTLA in the Los Angeles area. The Parade is also seen in more than 200 international territories. The photo above is from the 1920 parade. Looks like a major party time...not.

This year's Rose Bowl features Penn State & USC, which provides an excuse to run a picture of the USC cheerleaders.

So get a good seat in front of the big screen today and enjoy a unique American spectacle. Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve Plans

New Year’s Eve, aka Amateur Night, can be celebrated in a variety of ways. When you’re young and again when you’re old, you generally celebrate by trying to stay awake until the stroke of midnight. For all the years in between, there are endless choices.

A few of the choices I’ve made over the years stand out. In the Virginia Avenue days, one of the neighbors always threw a party. I alternated between incoherent revelry, moderation, and abstinence at those parties. The memorable ones were the abstinence parties. Watching your friends advance into personal chaos is far more entertaining than accompanying them on the trip. The mornings after you've abstained, when you go visiting your friends to witness the aftereffects, are highly entertaining, too.

Staying off the roads, at least after, say, nine o’clock, is an absolute must. One year, I visited a family party on the west side of Chicago and departed early enough to make it home before midnight but late enough to share the roads with well oiled revelers. After numerous harrowing, breathtaking experiences, I made it home in one piece and resolved to never again tempt fate on New Year’s Eve.
Another unique New Year’s found my wife and I in the party mecca of the Midwest, Winneconne, Wisconsin. It was a viciously cold day, not unlike what we’ve experienced here lately, and on this night a blizzard had seized control of the proceedings. Our friend Doug Nelson had acquired the Talk of the Town Tavern that year, adding it to the resorts he already owned in Winneconne. For the night’s entertainment, Doug had hired the music teacher from the grade school to play piano. Strike the mental image you just got of a gray haired spinster, she was a party girl who could really play—a decision that would prove fortuitous, for as the night progressed, the entire town was plunged into blackness. We learned later that one of the local drunks had failed to recognize a curve and launched his pickup into a rather important electrical transformer. Doug found candles, dozens of candles from who knows where, and the piano required no electricity. The rest of the joints in town needed electricity for their juke boxes and the amps for their bands, i.e. "party over" for them. The Talk of the Town, on the other hand, turned into a candle lit oasis, and the piano player’s tip jar was brimming. The other places in town emptied out and The Talk of the Town filled up, packed ‘till closing time.

We stayed that night in one of Doug’s motel units, one that was customarily a summer place, and jammed towels under the door to keep the blizzard out, and held each other close to maximize warmth. It was a singularly spectacular night, unique and fun.

For a few years, we made a habit of dinner with friends, revisiting The Old Barn in Burbank one time, experiencing the now demised Greek offering from Lettuce Entertain You one time (gaining an understanding of why it’s life was short) and hitting White Fence Farm for Manhattans and fried chicken a couple of times, always early enough to avoid the lunatics.

Lately, friends join us for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and we turn on the Channel 7 New Year’s show to see what kind of bad dress Janet Davies will have this year. We keep the night really low key.

It’s hard to get excited about anything else after you’ve spent New Year’s Eve in Winneconne, you know.

Four Christmases

The Mrs and I saw Four Christmases last week. It stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a pair of yuppies who are committed to each other and their very "me" lifestyle. Their annual Christmas vacation gets sidetracked by the weather, and instead of heading off to an exotic locale as is their custom, they spend time with each of their parents.

Short version review: I rate this as a sugar cookie, something that you'll enjoy but wouldn't miss if you skipped it. We like both the stars, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, but they're not quite the right pair for this movie. They seem to me just a bit older than their characters ought to be. You can overlook that, and it's not too hard to overlook it if you like them. The situations give up some pretty good giggles for three fourths of the Christmases, but one of them is a misfire.


Vince Vaughn has been getting slammed a bit lately for his limitations, but I find him pretty funny. Reese Witherspoon, whom I have thoroughly enjoyed in most of the stuff she's done, seems to be fading on the charisma scale, at least in this movie. She's skinnied up a bit too much, too.


There's a terrific portrayal in the movie by Robert Duval and a couple of actors whose names escape me; they are Vaughn's dad and brothers. In another of the vignettes, Mary Steenburgen is the parent character, and she's looking pretty worn. Jon Voight has a significant role but doesn't get a lot to work with, character wise.


Bottom line, if you have a couple of hours to kill and these actors are on your like 'em list, see Four Christmases. If you miss it, it should be on DVD by spring.