Police Supt. dying to beat nature into submission

In the same week where people went nuts over a gas station accidentally offering gas at $2.50 a gallon, the Chicago Police Department let it slip that they were kicking around the idea of buying a bunch of SUVs for the rank and file to patrol in.

Citing "rugged winters" Police Supt. Jody Weis suggested that with the department's squad cars needing replacement, SUVs might be the way to go. That's where he lost me.

New radios? Great. Standardized firearms. Not a problem. Chevy Tahoes? Bad idea.

In addition to the usual maintenance costs, now the department is looking to run bigger vehicles that guzzle increasingly more expensive gas? How did this make it out to the media?

The funny thing is that departments around the country have already come under criticism for this, when gas prices first started to escalate a few years ago. City councils were asking why higher-ranking officers were given SUVs that were more expensive to buy and maintain. Cost-cutting measures were put into place to replace full hubcaps with smaller ones that just covered the lugnuts and were less likely to fall off in a chase or if an officer hits something in the road.

Not only that, but why Tahoes and not something more economically friendly like a Ford Escape or something in that weight class?

The idea that the Chicago Police are seeing this as an option makes me nervous. In a meta moment, I'm inclined to guess that this might just be the sexiest idea that came up, sp the media latched on, but luckily, it appears that the Tribune has done a little homework first:

If Chicago police switched from the Crown Vic to an SUV, some might question the cost, maneuverability and eco-friendliness of such a fleet, especially in light of Mayor Richard Daley's push to make the city green.

But some departments in smaller cities, such as Plano, Texas, have moved toward SUV fleets, citing higher resale value and more room for police gear.

And an extensive annual test of police vehicles conducted by Michigan State Police and reported in Law and Order magazine in November showed that the police-package Chevrolet Tahoe actually "accelerates, brakes and corners like most police sedans" and has a fuel efficiency estimated to be the same as that of the Crown Victoria.

But that's only about 11 miles per gallon.

(Image from: ThomasDealsOnline.com)

Heads up

I watch this and can't help but wonder, "Why the hell haven't they outlawed spectators at rally races?"

There seems to be a disproportionate number of accidents involving rally cars and people unaware of the existence of the races they're involved in.

But that's not what you're supposed to do!

This post by Consumerist.com made me chuckle this morning, hearing that most people are planning to spend their prebate to pay off bills instead of dumping the money back into the economy.

I've heard more than one friend threaten to take their found money and make a donation in that exact amount to the Democratic Party, but putting the money in savings or paying off credit card bills has also been a big winner.

While I doubt that it's keeping anyone in Washington up at night, I get a small degree of satisfaction in knowing that such a short-term fix isn't going as well as planned.

Who says Americans aren't fiscally responsible with their personal finances?

Rats and Spartans not in the NCAA Tournament

300 - I'd already seen this, but not in hi-def and it was much better on a screen that wasn't my laptop. I feel a bit cheated now that this is a pop culture story and not a cool old story I knew, but many people didn't. What fun is it being a nerd if you can't be smug about it?

Keen Eddie: The Complete Series: Disc 3 (4-Disc Series)- Great series that only lasted one season, but the episodes seem to be getting weaker in the third disc. This is one of the shows that pops up on "should have been saved" lists by critics.

Transformers - It makes me sad that kids won't know that glory of a cheap cartoon designed to sell toys because of this orgy of CGI technology. I wanted this movie to be so much more than it was, but it's still about robots who destroy things.

Ratatouille - At dinner Wednesday, two friends who are old enough to be my parents raved about how much they loved this movie. I love it too. I especially love that Patton Oswalt was the voice in a kiddie movie.

God Grew Tired of Us - I devoted a full post to this. See it if you still haven't.

(Image property of Pixar)

Movies in three sentences or less

In an attempt to keep the copy flowing when I don't have the time or energy to do daily weekly posts, I'm going to try short movie reviews of what I'm getting through Netflix.

Generally, I'll watch anything once, so I'll make sure to warn you of movies that you should never, ever rent - we're looking at you Cold Mountain.

If this whole exercise sucks, I'll stop, honest.

Hot Rod - Funnier than I expected. Worth renting, not buying. Probably only funny if you like Andy Samberg.

Superbad - Hilarious and profane. The fact that my wife refuses to watch the entire movie makes the baby Jesus cry. The soccer scene is one of the best in the movie.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party - One of my favorite concert movies, right behind The Last Waltz. Not a comedy show, but a must for hip hop fans.

The Simpsons Movie - Was it worth the wait? Maybe. Only one curse word that I noticed, but I wasn't really counting, either.

Never Cry Wolf - An old favorite about a man living with wolves in Alaska for a research study. Rent this today if you've never seen it. I remember watching this as a kid and it holds up pretty well.

(Image from: UltimateDisney.com)

It is a bright and shiny new day

So long, Comcast - see you in hell, you unhelpful jackals.

While I subscribe to the idea that in many cases the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, a quick search of Consumerist.com shows 8 hits for "RCN" and 381 for "Comcast" so I'm willing to take the risk.

The kicker is that when we moved to Minnesota, we were happy to set up an account with anyone other than Comcast after the installation (and disconnection) issues we'd had at our old apartment. When that company was sold to Comcast, we started complaining immediately, but were given a direct number to a customer service rep who took good care of us.

Honestly, it seems that Comcast's biggest issue is that they hire awful contractors who come in, dirty up homes, break things and never get the installs quite right. This has been our experience in two Comcast installs and this was only made worse when I started working in the A/V install industry and knew just how simple cable pulls can be with enough time. Comcast seems to rarely leave enough time.

I'll spare you our personal tales of woe, but the break point for us has been the awful Internet service. While we haven't seen any blocking that we're aware of, we have a daily reboot that required to keep the pipeline chugging along. In a moderately wired apartment - two laptops, two networked TiVos, an Xbox 360 and other devices clamoring for bandwidth at times during day and night - something is making the wireless router barf once a day, without any real predictability.

It's also fun when the wireless drops to local only in the middle of doing things, so while a once a day restart doesn't sound like the end of the world - and let's face it, it's light years beyond the old days of AOL dial up - that constant annoyance is enough to make a customer nuts when the bloated bill comes due.

It's a happy accident that RCN sent along word that our neighborhood is now within their network during the same week that I had to pirate our neighbors' signal for our league's fantasy baseball draft because I simply don't trust Comcast anymore. When you reach the point that their most in-depth tech support is someone telling you to unplug the wireless router from the surge protector and into the wall because sometimes it needs a power boost, it's time to look somewhere else for your cable and Internet needs.

So, fresh off the phone with RCN, I'm feeling positive this morning and can honestly say that they can do no worse. With all the cabling already run, I can almost guarantee that they won't ding up the walls or drill any bonus holes into our floors.

Here's a bonus for the Minnesota faithful - the number for the person in the Minnesota region who might actually be able to help you with Comcast's reign of crappy service.

(Image from Consumerist.com)

Less is more

Prompted by last night's off the cuff game review of the newest offering from the MLB catalogue and last month's Wired Magazine's piece on 37signals and their gospel of keeping things as simple as possible, I'm really seeing the benefit of keeping things at their most basic.

As I was working on 2K8's learning curve last night, it struck me that the game would be all but impossible to pick up and play, which is probably accounting for the amount of complaining that is flooding 2K Sports' message boards.

Setting aside the buggy nature of the game and the insulting game manual which incorrectly recycles last year's instructions and even reuses in-game screen caps for the help manuals found in the game itself, the game isn't very user-friendly for the casual gamer.

You only need to look to the runaway success of the Nintendo Wii to see the backlash against sim-type games is landing squarely against the old guard of sports games. Madden is all but unplayable for casual gamers and as a result, the market is making room for stripped down versions of games and over the top arcade style offerings that aren't really in the spirit of the sports people are trying to play.

If I'm a six-year-old today, my options are to play incredibly difficult sim-type baseball games or cartoony slugfests like The Bigs. Actually, that game is pretty entertaining, but if you're a budding baseball nut, you're pretty much out of luck unless you spend all of your time indoors working on the game or are blessed with above-average coordination.

Fun, huh?

For most of these titles, I employ "The Jeff Test" which is to play for a little while and try to gauge how simple it would be for me to explain the mechanics to my brother-in-law before we both get pissed off and play something else instead.

New last night is "The Rich Test" where I realize that I need to e-mail my boss this morning to warn him about the game before he blows 60 bucks on it for his son.

This brings things around full circle for the post, as with the improvements made this year, the team at 2K Sports seems to be trying to create a handheld Wii for every platform and the result is unnecessarily complicated. Does it really make for a better game to throw the ball from the outfield by moving the thumbstick instead of pressing a button to throw to the corresponding base like every other game that has ever been produced?

I don't mind 2K taking chances, just not when the gameplay has gaps and changes made that aren't necessary. Pulling from Wired:

After college, Fried returned to his native Chicago, where he formed 37signals — a Web design firm, named in esoteric reference to SETI — and posted a manifesto on his homepage that railed against the shortcomings of most software. ("The Web should empower, not frustrate," he wrote. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should.") On his protoblog, Signal vs. Noise, he further developed his philosophy. "Remember — size does matter: A small group of 10 great people will outproduce, outwork, outthink a large group of 50 average people."

Try and keep that in mind for 2K9 - empower, stop frustrating.

(Image from: ViewImages.com)

Fun while it lasted

The reports are blazing across the Internet this morning - Brett Favre is retiring.

Frank's first response was to ask if it was for real this time and unless we have another trigger-happy code monkey on our hands, this time it's legit. (He has since sent this gem: "Aaron Rodgers, Rex Grossman, Jon Kitna, Tavaris Jackson - one of these QBs is guaranteed to make the playoffs next season. Gotta love the NFL.")

I'll spare the world another blogger wailing in the darkness and asking what Packers fans have done to deserve a quarterback who is subject to the aging process of the human body. I'll fess up right here and let everyone know that I was calling for Favre's (overdue) retirement a little over a year ago.

I'll also skirt the positive spin post until closer to draft day, when you'll see plenty of copy devoted to Aaron Rodgers and how he's primed to step into a starting role in Green Bay.

Instead, I'll fight back the tears and urge to vomit and relay a quick Favre story while I watch my Flickr account explode.

I went to St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin and the school has served as the summer home of the Packers dating back to the Lombardi era. Apparently, Coach Lombardi struck a deal with some of the Norbertine brothers to house the players on campus and they've been there ever since.

The prize job for me was as the van driver, who racked up a ton of hours each day, was fed three meals a day (a huge perk as a college kid) and drove players the few miles back and forth from campus to Lambeau Field.

I have often explained to people that this was the best job I've ever had and it's a shame that my career peaked so quickly. It used to be a joke when I said that.

One of the most stressful parts of the job... OK, pretty much the only stressful part of the job, was picking up players after practice each day when they had finished signing autographs after the morning workouts. It was my job to nose the huge 15-passenger van up next to the gates and hope that people had the good sense to stay away from the wheels and front end as we left to head back to the locker room.

Someone in the Packers front office had a great idea where eight or nine players would hang back after the morning practice and sign autographs for 30 to 45 minutes and fans would be issued tickets to get onto the practice field to get whatever they had with them signed. It cut down on the crush of fans hounding for autographs and meant that a good chunk of them went home with some nice souvenirs.

Normally, I just concentrated on getting guys into the van and then safely getting away from the crowd. This was usually stressful as fans do dumb things around athletes - like one kid who threw his bike under my rear tires to hopefully force me to stop and keep the players around while the police sorted things out - and the players just wanted to hit the showers and head back to campus for lunch.

Favre usually got a personal ride back with the security team - if he tried to wade through the railbirds and hop on a bike, he'd have been torn limb from limb - but on days that he was signing, he'd catch a ride in the van.

Favre would have been justified in grabbing shotgun and no one would have much of a case for kicking him out, but he didn't. In order to give more room to a series of linemen and players with pads in the August heat, Favre threw his helmet down between the driver's and passenger's seats and sat perched there for the short drive back.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but in the summer of 1997, Favre was a defending world champion, the quarterback for a frontrunning team and one of the most popular players in football - he was also a guy bouncing along and telling off-color jokes while squeezed into the front of a van so his teammates would have just a little more space to spread out in the air conditioning.

It was easily one of the best displays of leadership I've ever seen.

Late addition: Of all the stories today, this has been my favorite.

(Image taken for Siberia, Minnesota)

Coming to a concensus

So, Quarterlife is on right now and within the first four minutes, I was fairly certain that I had no desire to see the remaining 56.

I know that it was four minutes in because my wife helpfully pointed this out as I voiced my displeasure with the show. She, however, is on board through the first episode. You see our dilemma.

While we each have our "take one for the team" shows - for me, it's her Law and Order in all 14 flavors, for me it's endless baseball games - where we'll watch when the other person is home, but if either of is out, it's safe to assume that those shows won't be up on the screen.

It's important to have a safe overlap of tastes in television, music and movies so that you're not driven crazy in 22-minute bursts or on road trips.

Still, at the risk of sounding much older than my age, I'm not buying into these stupid kids. I'm sure that I've been too unaware of my surroundings until now and that this isn't the first time it's happened, but I liked this concept much better when it was Singles. And was only an hour and a half long. And wasn't quite so heavy-handed.

So, there's all of that.

Sometimes a show takes off after the mess that is defining the boundaries of the pilot. Usually that's not the case, but I'll cross my fingers and hope, because it's apparently been penciled into the lineup at our place.

Still, I have to hand it to anyone who has the stones to take a running start at the whole question of "how does this generation try to change the world." It's a huge, slippery bastard that everyone tries to wrestle to the ground at one time or another - some of us more than once - and virtually no one is ever really able to get a handle on.

The more immediate issue is that I'm not invested in the characters, I'm not buying the premise and at a very basic level, the whole feel of the show is uncomfortable. I'm generally opposed to boiling down entire generations to thumbnail sketches, and I just can't see how the show will keep any sort of momentum. OK, we get it, she's young and she blogs her innermost thoughts... now what?

Well, I can, but the show seems to want more for itself than just a Melrose Place knock off in thrift store garb. I'll give it points for effort, but the execution fell far short tonight.

(Image from LAist.com)

I wanna see stuff!

I followed a link from a local paper's web site this morning and was sorely disappointed by what I found.

The Go Chicago Card is an offer for those visiting our fair city and allows them access to the big attractions - the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, both zoos, etc. - over three, five or seven days as they make their way around town.

It's a great idea for tourists, but leaves city residents out in the cold, unless they take a week off of work.

Here's my idea - a city pass for city residents that would allow Chicagoans to do the same circuit, but wouldn't have the truncated timeline.

How nice would it be to have six or eight months to take in the museums, zoos and other attractions for a discounted price? Just a simple punch card that would get you through the doors once at each location?

It wouldn't cost the company much more to print some different cards and get people out the door in the cold to see the museums. They could even leave the Lincoln Park Zoo off the list - with that being free anyways, there's no need to pad their record with the locals.

So come on, Go Chicago Card - help out Chicago residents. Why should Iowa get to have all the fun?

(Image taken for Siberia, Minnesota)

Noooooo! Really?

One of our guilty pleasures is watching television shows devoid of any redeeming qualities. Give us any of the wife-swapping, nanny-involving or humans versus animals tests of strength and we're so there.

Tonight's Supernanny features Wendy Wilson and the episode is billed as a superstar's appearance. For everyone outside of her immediate family, Wilson was the utterly forgettable member of Wilson Phillips.

Remember them? Me neither.

OK, there was the chubby one, the pretty one and the other one? She's the other one. (And points to the nanny for nailing the line, "You're a talented woman," without cracking up on the spot. I suppose it could have been the third or fourth take, though.)

Sister of Carnie Wilson, Wendy Wilson now has four kids and no sense of how to raise or discipline children. It's like placing a camera in Britney's house, only much less relevant.

Need an example? So far, I've seen three minutes of the episode and the kids are literally taking a dump on the back lawn like a golden retriever.

Really, Brian Wilson's kid is having a hard time recreating the nuclear family? This guy? You're freaking kidding me.

"I think that structure was missing in the household," she says in the opening montage.

I would never have suspected that from the family that brought you "sand in the study so Dad could feel the beach on his feet while he wrote music." This will be a totally craptacular hour of my life wasted.

On a related note, can the government step in at some point and pass legislation to remove children from the lives of celebrities and just raise them somewhere else in a protected environment? If it works for polar bears, how bad can it be for Hollywood's elite?

(Image from: uberreview.com)

Yup, that's the mayor

Sean Connery spoke of the "Chicago Way" in The Untouchables, where he said, "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

While this is the type of stereotype that makes Olympic organizers cringe, it gives me a strange sense of pride when my mayor throws being politically correct out the window and just runs his yap.

The mayor took the Chicago Way to a different place when speaking about bicyclists in the city and telling the press that he flips off drivers. I'd pay to be in that car just to have the story to tell my children.

This has to rank up there with Daley's quiet approval of vigilante justice when it comes to the Chicago school of space saving in the wintertime.

I can honestly say that if pictures appeared online in five minutes that showed an angry Daley dumping a bucket of water on someone's windshield, I wouldn't be surprised in the least and I'd probably set it as the wallpaper on my laptop.

(Image from: USAToday.com)

Why my life is worse today because of the Giants win

Two quick points today to wrap up the Super Bowl postmortem. They both relate to how the New York win last night will impact my life in the short- and medium-term.

First, the big reason I didn't go off the deep end two weeks ago when Green Bay fell apart at home and let the Giants escape with a field goal in overtime was because I assumed that the winner of the NFC game just won the "get your ass kicked by the Patriots" medal.

So much for that.

(Did we ever get a solid reason for why Green Bay didn't want to rush the ball in subzero temperatures and insisted on trying to force the passing game? Aside from the Giants' front four, what was the reasoning behind keeping the ball out of Ryan Grant's hands? The Packers do realize that in the span of a dozen years the team has gone from winning a Super Bowl to losing home playoff games to Michael Vick and Eli Manning, right? Mike Holmgren must be rolling in his grave.)

In addition to not enjoying seeing the Giants win, I got a delayed suckerpunch from seeing New York pull out the win against the unbeatable Pats. I'm just saying that it could have been Green Bay. That was something I never even considered as a possibility.

I think that's why I'm still shocked at the upset.

Secondly, this is going to be an annoyance for me of epic proportions as the Red Sox season ramps up in two weeks. Whether it's on the surface or not, the subtext for Patriots fans who will probably just stay drunk until pitchers and catchers report in a few weeks (can't really blame them) will be that the Red Sox need to pick up where the Pats left off.

This has happened before as both teams have put together handsome post-season resumes. This year will be much worse.

Most baseball fans will just be able to enjoy the usual Boston freak outs, so remember this in May when people are screaming and acting irrationally on message boards because the Sox got off to a slow start.

It's going to make for a very long summer with meatheads blowing every stupid loss out of proportion for three to five months.

Thanks for nothing, least of the Mannings.

(Image from: SportsByBrooks.com)

Wait, Eli did what?

If I was just a bit more motivated, I would have gotten this up sooner in the day, just so it didn't seem like I spent all morning scouring the Internet to build a case and then try and run with it.

I'm just not that motivated.

But, unlike Super Bowl victories, judging what the media will do next is really easy to predict. The blogosphere is as easy, if not more so.

So, here's my version of the prop bets for what to expect in the next week and beyond.

From New York:

* Tales of the "never say die" Giants, primarily focusing on Eli and Strahan (Come on, that's a total gimme and it will be just as bad as press for the Patriots, if not worse)
* A push to make Eli a legitimate star. This will be awkward and hilarious. (I'd like to see it set to rap/rock so it will look more like the montage in the middle of movies like The New Guy.
* Fans using this as leverage against the Yankees collapse in 2004.
* A sudden exodus from the remaining Jets fans who don't give a crap about football.
* Story after story about how Eli is now an elite QB (he's not), how he's caught up to Peyton (he hasn't) and how the sky is the limit for the Giants now with such a young QB (it's not - they are a suspect team, just like they were before the playoffs).

From New England:

* Brady was hurt.
* The Pats lost the game, the Giants didn't win it.
* Brady was at fault for being too distracted / not into the game enough / hurt. Pick one.
* The coach wore a new sweatshirt.
* The Pats didn't deserve to win, so everyone should stop paying attention because it's being handled by angry fans.

From Everywhere Else:

* This is karma for winning so much lately.
* This is karma for cheating during the season.
* This is karma for all the ads, being too cocky, etc.
* The Pats have lost focus.
* Did New York win or did New England lose (Deadspin Commenter Slapfight Division)
* It is somehow Randy's fault (Minneapolis Bloggers Division).
* This is what happens when fans tempt fate with the whole undefeated thing.
* This is the ultimate karmic payback for Pats fans being so unbearable all season.
* The league is rigged (I'm nearly on board with the VanPete theory here, hatched after the Falcons' trip).

And Further Along the Line:

* Long, boring submissions about autumn in New England, mortality and the quest for perfection.
* Long, boring submissions about how one person or another personally jinxed the team (Bill Simmons Division)
* Pointless soul-searching for a scrap of meaning the likes of which we haven't seen since the Buckner Game.
* Letters of resignation to allow people to spend time living quietly in a small shack in the Carribean (Tiki Barber Division).

(Image from: ABCNews.com)

Good Samaratins and Bad Language

Having time on my hands, I started to dig out from the last day's worth of snow. I was feeling pretty good this morning, so I started in front of our apartment and kept going down to the alley to help out our neighbors.

The snow is pretty light, so it's actually a good snowstorm to rack up the big accumulation numbers.

Anyone who has lived in a cold climate knows that powder is better than packing snow on your back, just like they know that rear wheel drive cars can be hell in the snow.

As I was coming back from walking around the neighborhood, I see a car stuck with the back wheels just churning up snow and making ice. Some poor knucklehead had his Porsche stuck in a small drift, while another guy had stopped to try and push him out into the plowed part of the street.

I stop to help push and realize that the guy in the car has no idea how to rock the tires up and over the snow drift and he's just laying down as much rubber as the good people in the Porsche production facility will let him. It was a total circus.

As we're pushing, the other guy who stopped is cursing away about what a clown the driver is and he's yelling at the driver to slow it down, drop it a gear if he can, etc., but every time he leans over to get him in line, the driver sprays him with a new tirefull of slush.

It was good work from everyone on the team.

If the tires would have grabbed at any point, we would have seen the car's touted 0 to 60 speeds headed for the broadside of the cars parked across the street. (OK, maybe that's the biggest reason I stopped - you can't miss that.)

I just shook my head at how worthless a Porsche is in the snow (like it's distant cousin, the Mustang) and how a random guy walking with his wife will have it in his heart to stop and help, but have such a foul mouth while doing it.

The driver fell into the "not from around here" category (European-ish) and thanked us after he got free. He promised he'd look into getting a "shovel, no?" Good for him.

As the car slipped down the street, the other pusher thanked me for stopping and made the easiest called shot imaginable - "That guy would have been here all fucking day, otherwise."

I'm not sure if that's true - eventually he would have melted his way down to pavement or been hit by a passing garbage truck, right?

(Image from: viewimages.com)