Sometimes I look at people on the commuter train, around my neighborhood, at sports events, and think how blissfully ignorant these people are. They think they have the world by the short hairs and it would take an alarming event to jar them from their stupor. Such a thing happened to one Alexi Dohnal.
She arrived at the high end, celebrity gym and spa called the East Bank Club. It is so upscale that President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan have used the facilities. So, Ms. Dohnal went in this week for a facial; and as she changed into a robe, she placed her eight-carat diamond ring and wedding band and her gold Cartier watch in a locker. When she returned, she found the lock broken and her jewelry gone.
She told the Chicago Tribune that her first thought was that an attendee had mistakenly forced the locker open and moved her things, but when she went to the front desk but they knew nothing about anyone tampering with her locker. They called police.
She described the stolen items to police as a platinum engagement ring and wedding band bearing a total of about eight carats of diamonds, worth more than $120,000, and a yellow gold Cartier with diamonds surrounding the face, worth about $20,000. As of now, no one is in custody.
Ms. Dohnal said she wore the jewelry every day and would never have thought it might be stolen in the upscale health club. DOH! Listen you silly woman, you live in a big city. Crime happens all the time, and no matter where you are, you should always be aware of your surroundings. This is something I’ve told The Indignant Wife and will be instilling in The Indignant Children as soon as they’re old enough to go out and be responsible for things.
No matter where I am, I try to be alert. Yes, I was raised in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood; my folks’ house had bars on the doors, wire on the first floor windows. While it was not nearly as dangerous as it is now, I learned to always be aware of where I was, who was around, stay away from dark areas, and place my valuables in s safe place when I’m out, even if I’m doing somthing as innocuous as taking the kids to the local pool.
No matter where you are, people are people, and there are some people who, given the opportunity, will take something. I work in banking and in fraud classes I’ve seen and in my own experience, bank employees who have the opportunity steal, rationalizing that: they’ll only do it this once; that they’ll repay the money when they get the chance; or, more callously, feel that they are unappreciated and underpaid and are paying the bank back for being so cheap.
So, Ms. Dohnal has learned a costly lesson. However, I’m sure her husband/boyfriend/significant other has insurance and she’ll be back in her eight carat glory (or maybe 10 carats to ease her pain) by spring. It’s too bad there isn’t a “stupid” clause that the insurance company can use to not pay.

The University of Alabama canceled classes from Jan. 6-8 to permit students and faculty to attend the BCS Championship Game against No. 2 Texas on Jan. 7 in Pasadena, Calif. In case anyone was concerned about the missed classes, the school announced that students will have to make up for the lost class time.
This may be elitist, but I didn’t know that they had classes at the University of Alabama that anyone would worry about missing. Certainly the athletes won’t be missing any classes since they will be in football school. Unless they lose, of course…

There has been a big deal made by the Chicago Sun-Times and my old friend Rick Telander that another Rick, Morrissey had left the Tribune and would now be writing for the Sun-Times. I read Morrissey occasionally, usually only paying attention when he is at his most inane. While he is far from the shouting, idiotic hypocritical rants that were the mark of Jay Mariotti’s columns, Morrissey’s columns are generally not to my taste.
Through Rick T’s column, I found out that he and the other Rick were both from the Peoria area, and both attended Northwestern. Not a surprise – there seem to be tons of NU alums who are sportswriters including Michael Wilbon, and Kevin Blackistone, or newspaper writers like John Beifuss. But Telander mentioned that Morrissey was an Evans Scholar and that brought the distaste home.
Evans Scholars are recipients of scholarships founded by golfer Charles “Chick” Evans Jr. (1890-1979), and administered by the Western Golf Association, a conglomerate of 11 golf courses in the Chicago suburbs. The scholars all worked as caddies. Like Michael O’Keefe (“Danny”) in “Caddyshack.” Not exactly a character or a job that one would want, except for the good tips. And besides, it’s golf we’re talking about here, a non-sport in which as Robin Williams said allows white men to dress like black pimps.
At Northwestern in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I attended, the Evans Scholars, who had their own fraternity-type house, were all white, elitist (even for Northwestern), jock wannabes. They had to have been smart, but they got their tuition from caddying for rich white men at golf courses in the Northern Chicago suburbs. What hard work that is (choke)!
They would have been easy to avoid since they had their own house, but, as jock wannabes, they fielded numerous intramural teams, and my friends and I often also had teams in flag football, basketball and softball. Whenever we had to face Evans Scholars, they talked lots of trash, and played dirty when they realized that we weren’t pushovers and were going to give them a tough game. We hated them, and tried not only to beat them, but to beat them up. Nothing pissed us off more than to lose to the Evans Scholars.
Now, I know that you would think that grown men would have put aside their dislikes from 30 years ago, and normally, you would be right. However, as you can see from the top of this site, my “hates:” ND, the Packers, etc. are deep and are long term, most going way back to my childhood in most cases. I remember a “Hagar the Horrible” cartoon from several years ago in which Hager “looks” at us, the readers, and says something like: “Friends are good, but friends come and go. Now take an enemy – a good enemy lasts a lifetime.”

So, the bowl and BCS Gods have spoken and now we know certain things:

• Undefeated Alabama and Texas will face each other in the BCS Championship game on January 7th. It should be a good one but the Fiesta Bowl between undefeated TCU and Boise State could also be argued as Championship, Part 2. I know the fans of those 2 schools think so.
• After bowing in convincing fashion to Alabama last Saturday, Florida will play Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. Will Brian Kelly be Notre Dame’s new head coach by then? Who will be in the Cincinnati sidelines? If Florida loses again, with Head Coach Urban Meyer check himself into the hospital again?
• Speaking of Florida, the Sugar Bowl will mark the end of the Tim Tebow era in Tallahassee and not a moment too soon for this observer. He has been one of the most underwhelming Heisman Trophy winners in recent memory and has as much NFL potential at quarterback as Tim Couch, the Nebraska running QB who was a bust in the pros and out of football quickly).
• Of course, I’m very happy that the Outback Bowl looked past record, gave greater credence to head-to-head match-up and picked my alma mater Northwestern over Wisconsin to play Auburn in the Outback Bowl. Wisconsin will go to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando and play Miami.
NU has been to six bowl games since the program’s resurgence in 1995, but the team is 0-6 in those games. Last year, NU posted its best bowl showing since the 1996 Rose Bowl, losing in overtime to Missouri in the Alamo Bowl. At this point, the luster of going to a bowl game just to lose is long gone. Unless the ‘Cats win the bowl game, the season is incomplete.
On the surface, it appears that we would much rather play 7-5 Auburn than 9-3 Miami, but there is just something about playing either Miami or Auburn is daunting to my psyche. I know that these are not the same teams as 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, but putting my beloved little Wildcats against an SEC school fills me with fear, especially knowing that Auburn gave Alabama all it could handle before losing 26-21 to one of the BCS finalists.
Perhaps it will all turn out alright? Will we win? I hope so. Unfortunately, it’s too expensive to go down there, so I’ll be watching at my house at 10 AM on New Year’s Day.

Since I posted a couple of days ago, convincing stories have been flying all over about Tiger Woods being involved in numerous extramarital affairs. It doesn’t surprise me at all.
After all, Woods is talented, rich, famous, clean cut, good looking, in the prime of life. The way I used to see women throw themselves at NBA players not nearly as rich, talented or attractive as Woods back when I was an Andy Frain usher shows the often unseen side of famous athletes.
Chicago papers have made an interesting and appropriate suggestion to Woods – talk to Michael Jordan. According to accounts, Jordan, as much of an icon as Woods, never found monogamy to his liking either. He has been sued, divorced, and even though his playing career is over, he is just as popular as he ever was, and lost no endorsements. The same should happen to Woods. It’s really no one’s business other than he and his wife what happened and where their marriage will go from here. As always, exacerbated by the constant media scrutiny and immediate news access, people tend to put their sports heroes on pedestals. I’ve done it; you have too; we all have. But, we need to remind ourselves that these people are only human, with faults and weaknesses, like we all have. A lot of men have problems thinking with the wrong head given the opportunity to stray, and if you were in your early 30’s, attractive, rich and famous, believe me, the opportunity to screw everything that moves would be enticing to many men.
Still, as a father, the most important people to protect are the children. Someone said that the kids are so young that they won’t remember this incident. Tiger, use your immense wealth to make sure they don’t.

The Tiger Woods incident has brought me to a point that has been building for a long time and it’s now time to issue it to the world. To all agents, publicists, hangers-on, sycophants and members of the posses of famous people – when something happens, don’t ask us, the public, to respect that person’s/family’s privacy.
As my old friend Rick Telander wrote so eloquently this week, it’s too late for Tiger Woods to ask for privacy. He should have done that before he asked us to buy cars, buy clothes, use golf clubs like him. Before he told us which credit card to use; before he told us where he had his Lasik eye surgery; that was the time in which he could have protected his privacy. But now, like Pandora’s Box, the cat’s out of the bag, and there’s no putting it right.
So many people will do anything to be famous. All you have to look at are the reality television shows – people will debase themselves, their children, anything, just to get on television, have the opportunity to get rich. We have seen, I think, 4 CDs released over the past couple of weeks from contestants in American Idol and their foreign counterparts, and they’re selling. Like the oft-used Andy Warhol quote, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and that’s where we’re headed. But once you’ve gotten what you want, don’t be shocked that there’s a price to be paid. People, especially Americans, love to build up people, then tear them down, or at least take joy in watching their ever-so-human failings.
So, spin-meisters, handlers, and others, when your famous meal tickets screw up, don’t ask us to suddenly have respect for your client’s privacy. Do what you have to to clean up the mess; use the celebrity’s money to protect themselves, but don’t even include the phrase “please respect our privacy.” It’s become a cliché; it is meaningless lawyer-speak, and no one is paying attention to it anyway.

Earlier this week, former Chicago Bull forward Ron Artest made headlines because he told The Sporting News in an interview that he drank alcohol during games when he was playing in Chicago, in part, because the team lost so frequently.
“I used to drink Hennessy … at halftime,” said Artest, who played with the Bulls from 1999-2002 and now is with the Lakers. “I (kept it) in my locker. I’d just walk to the liquor store (near the stadium) and get it.”
Since the story broke, some teammates and front office people have shrugged off Artest’s comments as “Ron being Ron.” Of course, we are talking about a player who has engaged in all types of crazy behavior on and off the court.
Among Artest’s “Greatest Hits” of sheer insanity: during his rookie season in Chicago, the well paid basketball player applied for a job at Circuit City in order to get an employee discount.; while with the Indiana Pacers he went to practice in a bath robe. Artest was suspended in 2004 by then Pacers coach Rick Carlisle after he allegedly asked for a month off because he was tired from promoting an R&B album for a group on his production label; he was arrested for domestic abuse in 2007 and had a dog removed from his home for being abused.
His most infamous moment came as a result of his participating in the infamous Sacramento Kings-Detroit Pistons brawl on November 19, 2004., Artest fouled Pistons center Ben Wallace, and Wallace, upset at being fouled hard when the game was effectively over (the Pacers led 97–82), responded by shoving Artest, leading to an ruckus near the scorer’s table. Artest walked to the sideline and lay down on the scorer’s table. Wallace threw something at Artest, then a Pistons fan threw a cup of beer at Artest, hitting him. Artest jumped into the front-row seats and confronted a man he incorrectly believed to be responsible which in turn erupted into a brawl between Pistons fans and several of the Pacers. Artest was suspended for the remainder of the season (73 games and playoff), the longest non-drug or betting related suspension in NBA history with the troubled forward losing approximately $7 million in salary.
Why would Artest say something like this? For attention? Does this childish man need infamy so badly that he needs to go looking for it?
Apparently.