Chicago - A message from the station manager

Tiny Classified Ads Can’t Help Don Lapre Now

Nor Can The World’s Greatest Vitamin

“They say the marshal always gets his man, but there’s no guaranteeing the condition the fugitive will be in when nabbed,” Phoenix New Times reports.
“Take infomercial huckster Don Lapre, who made the not-so smooth move of failing to appear for his arraignment in federal court on 41 counts of fraud-related charges. After his no-show on Wednesday, June 22, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
“U.S. Marshals had him in custody by Thursday evening.
“But when federal agents stopped the car Lapre was in, near Warner Road and Interstate 10 in Tempe, they found the marketing guru suffering from deep, self-inflicted knife wounds to his thigh and groin.
The U.S. Marshals Service believes the vitamin peddler had been trying to hit his femoral artery in order to bleed out and commit suicide.”

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Posted on June 29, 2011

When The Starship Enterprise Landed In Chicago

Remembering the landmark 1975 convention

1. By HeyHow via YouTube.
“As a teenager, I attended this early sci-fi convention and actually got to work on the crew. Excuse the poor quality of the photos . . . all I had was a cheap Instamatic camera.

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Posted on June 22, 2011

Nobody Should Play Drew Peterson In A Lifetime Movie

By Steve Rhodes

The media is asking the wrong question. It’s not a matter of whether Rob Lowe is the “right choice” to play Drew Peterson in a Lifetime movie, it’s whether anyone should play him in any movie.
Two women are dead. Profiting off that tragedy is immoral. (And that includes the book by Joliet-area reporter Joe Hosey that the movie is based on.) Glitzing up the horrible trail of dead for viewers’ entertainment is despicable. Making money off it is worse. (See No. 9; see also the item Peterson’s Pension in this column.)
So instead of asking if Rob Lowe is “too pretty” to play Drew Peterson, let’s ask if Rob Lowe is upstanding enough not to.

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Posted on June 17, 2011

The Sexual Politics of Unlikely Chicago Icon Hugh Hefner

By Steve Rhodes

“Perhaps the most important moment in gender politics in America occurred at a kitchen table in Chicago late in 1953,” Tom Matlack writes at Huffington Post.
“A young man named Hugh Hefner borrowed a thousand dollars from his mom to publish a magazine that was originally going to be called Stag Party. But apparently there was already a Stag magazine about horses. At that kitchen table, Hefner put together the first issue of his new magazine and decided to name it Playboy after an automobile company that his mom had once worked at. He featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover . . .
“In the years since launching his magazine, Hefner has sparked a profound change in American culture that continues to frame the way we look at sex and gender. The first mass-market magazine to show naked women, Playboy gave birth to pornography as we have come to know it – a business that has blossomed into arguably the biggest single media industry in our country.
“No other man has had as profound an impact on both the conscious and sub-conscious way men look and think about women and their bodies. From Madison Avenue to Hollywood the way women are portrayed is either a direct result, or a direct rebellion against, the boulder that Hefner started rolling down that hill 50 years ago.”

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Posted on June 15, 2011