Unlike previous years when there were band or bands that I wanted to see, this year’s Lallapalooza had little of note. I’m not a rap fan, so I didn’t want to see Emenem; Muse is big in Europe, almost unknown on this side of the pond. They featured the most boring huge “rock band” in the world in Coldplay, whom I’ve already said in an earlier post that they were like paint drying. I think that Foo Fighters are the Bad Company of the new millennium – not a bad band, some good songs, but not as good as many other bands.
Last year, the festival featured the Arcade Fire, one of my favorite bands, and Soundgarden, who I had always wanted to see play. The two bands almost got me to go out to Grant Park last summer, except of course, I would have been angry since both bands played at the exact same time. Fortunately, Soundgarden came back a few weeks ago (I posted about that too), and I figure the Arcade Fire will tour again. But this year, The Cars were playing – I didn’t pay to see them when they were together the first time.
The Indignant Family was busy this weekend, so I hung out with them – it was a better time.

• S&P downgraded the United States debt rating over the weekend, and just downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is important, but aren’t these the same guys who gave AAA ratings to mortgage paper just four years ago that turned out to be worthless? Their credibility isn’t exactly the highest.
• There has been a lot of talk that this is the year that the Detroit Lions will be a playoff contender, but then, bad luck, which has hovered over the franchise like a shroud for decades, descends again. The team announced that former University of Illinois running back Mikel Leshoure has a torn Achilles tendon and is out for the year. The rookie who ran all over my beloved Northwestern Wildcats last fall at Wrigley Field was injured after being hit high by defensive end Cliff Avril during practice Monday. He was carted off the team’s practice field after being attended to by team trainers.
• Speaking of bad luck, if there is a God, one must ask when He/She has against Haiti? Even thought Tropical Storm Emily disintegrated didn’t hit the impoverished island with its full fury, it still was dropping 6 to 12 inches on rain on the people living in temporary quarters from the disasters of the past couple of years.
• Is this what would happen here to some talented child? Soccer team Real Madrid has signed a 7-year-old football prospect from Argentina. Leonel Angel Coira signed with the Spanish club and will begin training on Sept. 6 according to a club official. Real Madrid signed the kid to beat Spanish league rival Atletico Madrid. Scary.

Some of you may have seen the one song that I played with the Elvis Costello Ensemble back in March of this year. Let’s go back a minute; I am a mediocre guitar player with a lovefor Mr. Costello’s music and I have been taking classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago for several years. For the past several months, the school had been running a class featuring nothing but EC’s music and I was a willing and active participant.
After doing two songs at the “First Friday” program for March, when the class resumed, our teacher, leader and emotional guide, Bob Goins, suggested that we do a 10 song set for the next graduation. So, we polished off old songs, learned some new ones, and put on, as I called it “Way The Hell Past High School Musical.”
On June 18, 2001. in front of an adoring crowd that could be counted on both hands, the Elvis Costello Ensemble played it’s last (to this point) show at the Old Town School location on Armitage Ave. My friend Wendi Walker recorded the show for posterity (heaven forbid) and the show is now on YouTube at the following links:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Rvi9e6jkw
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgrIp_q0TVA
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei4Mp3_wkZM
I hope you enjoy them, or at least, don’t laugh too hard.

If you had asked me who would be playing this season and who wouldn’t between Randy Moss and Plaxico Burriss, I would have voted for Moss playing and no one wanting to take a chance on convicted felon Burriss. But I would have been dead wrong.
Earlier this week, the Jets, who are one of the wackier teams in the league with Rex “foot fetish” Ryan at the helm, took a chance on the 35 year old receiver who spent the last two years in prison for gun violations (not to mention that he shot himself in the leg, which of course, make you wonder what he was thinking).
Burriss was a “me-first” player and at 35, coming off two years of inactivity, I would have thought that if you wanted a selfish, but talented receiver, Terrell Owens and Chad Ochosinco were, until recently both available. (Want Owens? Give him a call – he’ll play wherever.) Again, I thought that no team would want this outspoken, possibly over-the-hill problem man-child on their team. I sure wouldn’t.
It was Moss who announced his retirement this week. Well, he didn’t really announce it, all we got was a one-sentence statement from his agent saying that he was done. “Randy has weighed his options and considered the offers and has decided to retire,” Joel Segal said.
No farewell speech; no tearful goodbyes. Just gone – which was Moss’ persona his entire career. Some believe that he was the most physically gifted receiver to ever play. don a helmet. There is little doubt that Moss changed the way defense is played in the NFL, displaying a once-in-a-generation blend of size, speed and intelligence. He was well liked by his teammates, but was considered by many a clubhouse cancer when he didn’t get his own way.
Moss has Hall of Fame statistics – he has 153 touchdowns, which ties him with.. you guessed it – Terrell Owens for second on the career list. Moss is fifth all time in yards (14,858) and tied with Hines Ward for eighth in receptions (954). However, the Hall of Fame committee will probably not make him a first year entrant – both the football and baseball Halls of Fame like to “punish” guaranteed members for issues in their careers. Why else would Robbie Alomar have had to wait one year to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame? It was the John Hershbeck spitting incident that cost him a year.
However, I don’t see Randy Moss giving a damn if he makes it or not; and certainly not giving a damn if it takes one or two or ten years to get into the Hall of Fame. I may again be wrong, but I would wonder if Randy Moss would even show up to Canton when he does get in?

It is ironic that the Chicago Cubs traded outfielder Kosuke Fukudome on the same day that former Yankee reliever Hideki Irabu was found dead, an apparent suicide in California. Both were highly hyped, big money players who had limited impact in the Major Leagues, and perhaps it’s time to proclaim an end to expensive Japanese prospects in baseball.
Fukudome was supposed to be a star when the Cubs did what they usually do – overpay for a player – signing him to a 4-year, $48 million contract. He was supposed to be the left-handed bat that that former manager Lou Piniella felt the team had sorely missed in the 2007 playoffs.
And, like many Cubs, the Japanese outfielder started well, hitting a three-run, ninth inning home run against the Brewers that tied the game on Opening Day of 2008. The first half of that season, he tore up the National League hitting well over .300, and Fukudome Fever struck the North Side. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was voted onto the starting lineup of the National League All-Star team.
Unfortunately, the Cubs and their faithful found out that their right fielder had the tendency to get hot early then fade when the weather got warm. Fukudome had a disastrous second half of the 2008 season and never regained the form of his first half season with the club. (In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a batter look more awkward in the batter’s box, or look worse in missing on a swing than Fukudome; often he looked like he belonged in Triple A after a particularly atrocious at bat.)
But the Fukudome era is over, having been traded to the Cleveland Indians along with $4 million in return for Triple-A right-handed reliever Carlton Smith and Class-A outfielder Abner Abreu – not exactly household names and neither guaranteed future major leaguers.
Ten years before Fukudome hit Chicago, Hideki Irabu was the most hyped pitcher to come from Japan. The flamethrowing Japanese right-hander seemed destined to become a pioneering star, and of course, the New York Yankees wanted him. Unfortunately for them, they got him.
Irabu was billed as the Japanese version of Nolan Ryan when he arrived in the United States in 1997, a starter with a 98-mph fastball who was known as a strikeout specialist. After an impressive debut with the Yankees that summer, he was a disappointment to the Yankees and himself during three seasons in the Bronx. Instead, he was forever tagged with a label from late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who called him a “fat … toad” after Irabu failed to cover first base during an exhibition game.
Irabu had a career record of 34-35 with a 5.15 ERA in his tenure with the Yankees, two years in Montreal and a final season in the Texas bullpen in 2002. He did have two World Series rings, but he made only one relief appearance in the 1999 AL championship series when Boston tagged him for 13 hits.
After leaving the majors, Irabu pitched in an American independent league and signed with a Japanese team in recent years while living with his family in Southern California. Neighbors believe Irabu had grown despondent recently because of a split with his wife. They had been separated for months, with the wife taking Irabu’s two young daughters with her. (it should be noted that this is the second apparent suicide by a sports figure this week – American Olympic freestyle skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson reportedly shot himself on Monday.)
Overall, we have seen some very good players come from Japan, but no real superstars. There have been some very good players from Japan like Hideo Nomo and Hideki Matsui, but there is only one player who is probably Hall of Fame bound – Ichiro Suzuki, but he is all stats to me.
Suzuki, the Mariners’ hit factory, is run a long string of hits titles, but I have seen a couple of writers say what I have thought for some time – for a guy that gets 200+ hits every season, he doesn’t score that many runs. Ichiro isn’t speedy on the base paths, and he has played with some lousy teams in Seattle with no one able to routinely bring him in, but Ichiro doesn’t manufacture runs. He doesn’t steal bases – he doesn’t make pitchers nervous after getting on base. Having all those hits and All Star appearances along with being a sterling outfielder, Ichiro is eventually Cooperstown bound, but he won’t be acknowledged as a great player, just a very, very good one.
So, does this bring an end to the hyped Japanese player? I think it’came to an end some time ago. Dice-K is probably the last of the heavily hyped, recruited, and overpaid Japanese prospects. At least until the next one comes along.

Weather has been crazy in the world over the past few years (Global Warming is a myth, eh, you Republican idiots?), and it has played havoc on the airlines. Delays and cancellations are the norm, not the exception anymore, but I think that American Airlines may have finally outpaced United as the stupidest airline.
The Indignant Wife was in New York City earlier in the week for business, and we had some heavy thundershowers in Chicago on Wednesday morning (actually, nearly every morning this week), the day she was scheduled to return. But, she wasn’t supposed to return until that evening and no serious storms came through Chicago until after 10 PM, after the time in which she would have landed. But I received an automated phone call at 10 AM saying that my wife’s 6 PM flight had already been cancelled. A few minutes later, I received another automated phone call that American, in their infinite wisdom, had rebooked her on a flight back to Chicago on Thursday morning!
Fortunately, my wife’s work has its own travel agency service and they got her on a Delta flight the same evening (in fact earlier than her original flight would have gotten her back if everything had been on time). But what about the poor shlubs who aren’t traveling on business? They are stuck in New York for another day, easily another $500 – $1,000 expenditure once we talk about airport travel, another night’s hotel room, meals, etc. I guess American thinks people have that extra money to just throw around.
I probably wouldn’t be writing this if this had been our only incident with American this summer. Earlier in the summer, I had traveled to Pittsburgh for work, and I had a 5 PM flight back to Chicago. Weather was again an issue – they cancelled the 5 and 7 PM flights, but I was re-booked on the 9:00 PM flight home. OK – I had been in the Pittsburgh airport for hours, but I had stuff to occupy my time. The airplane for my flight was late coming into Pittsburgh – it was now delayed until 10:45 PM to leave for Chicago. The plane arrived at around 10:30 – we could have quickly turned around and flown to Chicago (the Indignant Wife told me that the storms had ended in Chicago). But American waited until nearly 11 to cancel that flight too.
Because it was weather, we got no hotel rooms, no food vouchers, etc. The airline people told me about a hotel not far from the airport, where I stayed, but if they were going to cancel all flights, they could have done so at 8 PM and then I could have gotten a good night’s sleep, and relaxed if I had to stay another night. Since they rebooked me on a United flight the next morning, they told me to be at the United desk by 8:00 AM. By the time I got to the hotel, it was midnight, and I booked myself a return to the airport on the shuttle for 6:15 AM to make sure I got to the United counter early. United, for once, found me a seat on an earlier flight and I got home around 10:00 AM Chicago Time.
As I said, a friend of mine used to work for United and from talking to her, it was evident that they were run by the Keystone Kops; every decision made things worse. Maybe those idiots have gone to work for American, who obviously would rather cancel every flight and rebook people for the next day, rather than actually wait out the weather and get people where they want/need to go – albeit later.

So, all the deadlines, legal wrangling, lawsuits, saber-rattling is over – the players appear to have ratified the new NFL collective bargaining agreement. To my knowledge, no one in the media has reported exactly what the agreement entails, but it sounds like the players get a little less TV money, but they get lifetime health care. Most important, the older veterans will get health care, a group that neither the league or the players’ union seemed to give a damn about. The 18 game season doesn’t sound like it’s a done deal.
I’ve already heard some people grousing about the owners and players being to blame for all of this, but we must remember that the owners have been spoiling for this fight for over 2 years. They negotiated a deal to get money from the television deal even if there were no games. It is speculated that since some of the NFL owners are also NHL owners, they saw an opportunity to roll back salaries like when the hockey league did (of course, the NHL needed revenue certainty to keep from imploding; the NFL is far from same financial dire straits – no matter what the owners said).
Now the wheels start turning quickly – free agency will start soon, either today or tomorrow and training camps will open by Saturday. Your favorite team is likely to look very different – draft picks can finally be signed, and the free agents are likely to fall fast. It is so much turmoil that I didn’t even buy an NFL preview magazine this summer because it was meaningless with all the player movement that will occur.
The only casualty – the Hall of Fame Game, which was an even more meaningless exhibit game than the rest of the exhibition games. As to who really won or lost financially, only time will tell. One thing that will happen – the fans will be forking over their hard earned dollars to the millionaires and billionaires.
Speaking of that, I’m not looking forward to my DirecTV (NFL Sunday Ticket) bill