Chicago and Illinois residents awoke this morning to a new set of Chicago ordinances. Mayor Daley called an early morning secret meeting of the Chicago City Council. New city ordinances were enacted under the cover of night, surprisingly reminiscent of the Meigs Field Airport closing. The new Chicago ordinances take effect immediately.
All reporters are hereby prohibited from using the words “clout” and “bribes” in the same sentence with the name of Da Mayor or any council member.
Parking ticket books will be issued to all Chicagoans who purchase a Chicago city sticker.
Richard J. Daley is now formally recognized as one of Chicago’s founding fathers.
Illinois is now officially a suburb of the city of Chicago.
Lawsuits against the city of Chicago will immediately be dismissed if not filed by an attorney with Machine clout.
Four-day school week will become the law for teachers. Students will continue to attend school five days per week.
Old police motto of “To Serve and Protect” on police cruisers will be replaced with “To Curb and Collect.”
O’Hare Airport passengers are now officially Chicago citizens and must pay property taxes while at O’Hare.
Lake Michigan is now Lake Chicago.
St. Patrick’s Day will only be celebrated on March 17.
Days of the week beginning with the letter “R” or “D” are now parking meter holidays.
Alternate Leap Days will be designated “The City that Works” Day, whereupon all city workers must work a full day.
Yesterday’s problems will be deferred to future generations.
When Chicagoans hear the names Palermo’s, Giordano’s, Chesden’s, and Falco’s, pizza comes to mind. Delicious Chicago-style pizza. My thoughts turn to chess. Pizza always reminds me of my days as a high school athlete at Gage Park High School. Okay, I didn’t actually play any sports that involved physical activity at Gage Park, but I did letter in chess and our chess team was awarded athletic letters at the athletes’ award ceremony. For some reason unbeknownst to me, chess was even covered in Sports Illustrated back then.
Dr. D. plays Jim Harmon as Ted Rafacz watches.
Anyway, I played chess on the chess team at Gage Park High School with Jim Harmon, Vito Vitkauskas, Dave Johnson, Bill Rozivics, Ted Rafacz, and Nick Polo. We were coached by Mr. Crowe, who also coached the hockey team. I suppose tenacity and mental toughness is required for both chess and hockey, so Mr. Crowe was the perfect coach for both sports. I think he liked the hockey team better, though. He used to brag about how smart the hockey team was. And he would tell us every time a hockey player got a college scholarship. The chess team was a bunch of slackers by comparison. One time, Mr. Crowe complained because two chess players were suspended and couldn’t play in an important chess match. Bill was suspended for low grades, even though he could recite the atomic chart from memory. And I was suspended for fighting. As a member of the chess team, bullies liked to pick on me, but I always fought back. I didn’t know you could get suspended for self-defense. To school officials, fighting was fighting and that warranted a suspension.
But back to the pizza. In order to inspire us to play better chess, Mr. Crowe promised to take us out for pizza every time we won a chess match. If we lost, we had to treat him to a steak dinner. We complained that this wasn’t fair because steak was more delicious and more expensive than pizza. But since he was the coach, we finally agreed with the arrangement reluctantly because he insisted that he was buying a meal for seven chess players while we were only treating one person.
I don’t remember how many matches we won or how many times Mr. Crowe treated us to pizza, but I do remember the one time we lost the match and we went to Chesden’s on Archer Avenue for Mr. Crowe’s steak dinner. We barely had enough to pay for his steak dinner, so we didn’t order pizza for ourselves. But Mr. Crowe was so kind as to keep asking the waitress to keep replenishing the bread baskets. All we ate was bread and water while Mr. Crowe savored a juicy t-bone steak. He insisted that he was teaching us to become better chess players!
The other memorable event of this day was the snowball fight afterward. As we were walking to Mr. Crowe’s car, we started throwing snowballs at each other. Since we were always very competitive, we chose up sides and began battling in earnest. Suddenly, Ted said that he had lost his school ring while throwing a snowball. We must have looked for that ring for about an hour in the snow, in the dark, before we finally found it.
So whenever I think of pizza, my thoughts turn to my days on the Gage Park Chess Team!
As a law-abiding citizen and a patriotic American, I would like to participate in our fight against terrorism. I agree that we must stop the terrorists at the border.
I have crossed the border a few times, so I have an idea that may help. Sometimes the customs agents ask you questions to see if you’re really an American citizen. I don’t think they care how you answer the questions, but rather, they’re just checking to see if you speak English. I heard a story of an American family who was trying reenter the United States, but all their luggage, credit cards, and passports were stolen from their hotel room. They reported the theft and then flew back home without passports. Customs refused to let them through without passports or some form of identification. The customs agent asked them a lot of questions. Finally, the mother lost it and shouted, “We’re Americans! We only speak English!” Well, that was enough for the agent to wave everyone through!
We have a cabinet in our UIC Spanish department where the exams are stored so all the instructors have access to them. The cabinet had a combination lock so we wouldn’t need to make thirty plus keys. Well, even with the combination, not everyone could open the cabinet. On occasion, I had to help other instructors open the combination lock. Then, I noticed a pattern. Only instructors who were foreign-born had trouble opening the lock.
Only Americans are familiar with combination locks. Combination locks are an American rite of passage. I was indoctrinated to the use of padlocks in high school. Combination locks were perfect for adolescents who lose or forget their key. Plus, the school authorities could open any combination lock in the school by looking up the combination or with a little key that fits into the back of the lock. Everyone knew how to open a combination lock, or they would learn quickly enough out of necessity. Turn the dial twice to the right until you reach the first number. Then turn the dial to the left, passing the second number once. Then to the right to the last number. It was that easy! After a while, I would forget the actual combination numbers. I would spin the dial absent-mindedly and the lock would mysteriously open. The locks created the illusion that your property was safe. All those combination locks did was keep the honest people honest.
So back to my fight against terrorism. One of the tests to test for citizenship and reentry to the U.S., in addition to all the previous ones that have been proven to be effective, would be to hand a combination lock to the person requesting to enter the U.S. Tell them the combination: 27 – 32 – 15. If they can’t open the lock, well, well, well! They will require more scrutiny! This will not pick out every terrorist, but it’s a step in the right direction. Don’t be surprised if terrorist camps begin offering training workshops on how to operate combination locks to circumvent the new security measures. But I’m just trying to do my part.
I think we can all agree that liver and onions is not a very popular dish in America. Otherwise, someone would have opened a fast-food restaurant with a drive-thru specializing in liver and onions by now. This will never happen but imagine the possibilities! For me, this would be great since liver and onions is one of my all-time favorite dishes. Luckily, it’s available at many restaurants. It’s easy to prepare and I’ve even made it myself a few times.
Even when I was little, I loved liver and onions. My mother prepared it frequently because she loved liver and onions. I inherited her love of liver and onions. Sometimes my mother would make it just for her and me. Beef liver was usually unbelievably cheap. I guess few people liked eating liver back then, but no part of livestock was wasted. As The Jungle famously quoted one of the meatpacking plants, “We package everything except the squeal!”
Unfortunately, my younger brothers wouldn’t eat liver and onions if they knew exactly what they were about to eat. So, my mother would explain that we were about to eat some exotic dish. As we sat down at the table, my mother would always say something like, “Hoy vamos a comer tigre.” “Today we are eating tiger.” “Hoy les preparé algo muy sabroso. ¡Tiburón!” “I made you something delicious today. Shark!” And my little brothers would eat up the liver and onions that they so detested.
Once, we all sat down for dinner and my mother announced, “Hoy vamos a comer ballena.” “Today we are eating whale.” And so, we all started eating whale. On this day, I found the whale especially delicious. I was the only one who knew we were eating liver, sans onions to create the effect that we were eating whale. Have you ever eaten something that was especially delicious, and it really hits the spot. Perhaps I was suffering from an iron deficiency that day. Well, on this occasion, the liver tasted especially good despite lacking onions. I asked for seconds and thirds. My brothers continued eating it. Until I blurted, “The liver came out really good today!” My mother gave me a pained stare. And my brothers yelled, “Yuck, I hate liver!’ And they all stopped eating. My mother yelled at me because my brothers would have kept eating if they still believed they were eating whale.
This reminds me of something that happened recently with my son Alex recently. We were at Old Country Buffet, and he came back to the table with what he thought were chicken fries. He said they were really good! When I went for seconds, I saw where he got the chicken fries. He was actually eating calamari. I love calamari, so I got some for myself. Alex was surprised that I would eat chicken fries. I told him what he really ate was calamari. He insisted on knowing what exactly calamari was. When I told him it was squid, he stopped eating his chicken fries!
I guess sometimes you’re better off not knowing what you’re eating.
As I was crossing the Mississippi River, I suddenly got the urge to take a picture of the St. Louis Arch at seventy miles per hour. What you see above is my failed attempt at taking that picture. I’m lucky to be alive! But the image is foreboding. If I don’t change my ways, I will surely hurt myself.
Ever since my blog readers requested pictures, I have been trying to take more pictures. However, I’m sure they didn’t mean for me to risk my life in the process.
Some people don’t like it when you sneak up on them and take their picture. But if they’re in public, they’re fair game. Sometimes they look at you strangely if you request to take pictures of their personal items. For example, I once went to the offices of all my colleagues at UIC to take pictures of their computers. They gave me the strangest looks when I asked permission to photograph their computer. I supposed I would react in a similar fashion if someone came to my office only to photograph my computer. Occasionally, when I go out with my friends to eat, I tell them, “Wait! Before you dig in, let me take a picture of your food!”
For a while, I was taking pictures of interesting license plates. But it seemed that I only time I saw interesting license plates was while I drove on the highway more than sixty miles per hour. This didn’t stop me from trying to take pictures. They say that talking on the phone while driving doubles your risk of getting into an accident. And texting increases your risk by eight times. But no one said how much the risk of getting into an accident is increased while trying to take pictures. I’m sure it increases a lot more than eight times. I have had a few close calls, so I can vouch for that.
Once while I was driving to UIC, I saw a license plate that read CHITOWN. I had to take a picture of it! I attempted to get my camera out and take the picture before the SUV bearing that plate turned. There was snow on the ground and the street was slippery. I had to get a picture of the plate! But it wasn’t just any CHITOWN plate. It was a Kansas license plate! I risked crashing my car and I took a couple of pictures. I was overjoyed by my success. When I got home, I noticed that the license plate was unreadable in both pictures. I risked my life for nothing! What were the chances of me seeing this Kansas SUV in Chicago again?
Miraculously, I saw the SUV again about a month later. Again, I took pictures as I drove north on south Ashland Avenue. The pictures didn’t come out clearly again! But I figured out that whoever drove the SUV was bound to come down Ashland Avenue again. And sure enough, about a month later, I saw which way it turned, and I followed it. I was hoping the driver would hurry up and leave the vehicle so I could take a picture of his license plate. But, no, he took his sweet time gathering his things. I was in a hurry to get to UIC, so I got out of my car to take a picture of his license plate. The driver gave me a very suspicious look, so I told him I only wanted a picture of his license plate. He silently consented, but he eyed me cautiously. Well, I’m used to always getting strange looks anyway, so I took the picture and left. But it turns out I was too far away, and the plate was too blurry to read.
Well, I knew the driver with the Kansas plate and I had similar schedules, so I would look for his vehicle in the same parking spot another day. A couple of weeks later, I saw it again. This time I parked right behind it. And I took several pictures to ensure that one of them would be readable. Just then, I noticed a man in a nearby vehicle reaching down under his seat and eyeing me suspiciously. At first, I was sure he was reaching for a gun, but I managed to convince myself that he was merely getting pen and paper to write down my license plate number. Regardless, I left as quickly as possible. Below, thanks to my persistence, you see the fruit of my labor. Behold!
Chicago USA 