By Steve Rhodes

Jottings.
* How long until Darcel Beavers shows up on the county payroll?
* Dock Walls’ predicted landslide came true – in his mind. Today he is preparing his inauguration speech.
* 38,060 people actually voted for Walls. He’s more popular than the Blackhawks!
* Dorothy Brown is eating lunch alone today.
* It’s a good thing Arenda Troutman has transferrable skills she can put to use tonight right there in the neighborhood. Pays better, too.
* Daley won with the support of just one in five voters. How? Seventy percent of 30 percent turnout is 20 percent.
* Can we make Santo not getting into the Hall an annual holiday? asks Beachwood reader Mark Bazer.
* Yes, we know the Veterans Committee votes every two years, but we’d like to make Santo Day an annual commemmoration for the sake of the kids.
* The good news: The Detroit Cobras will play an absolutely free show with The Blacks at Logan Square Auditorium on Friday. The Cobras new album, Tied and True, is due out on Bloodshot on April 24.
And now the bad news.

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Posted on February 28, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The report card issued by the Developing Government Accountability to the People project that we’ve excerpted from these last two days is a pretty amazing document.
For example, for all you hear about the mayor’s vaunted remakes of Chicago public schools and public housing, the DGAP gives Mayor Daley a C on education policy and says “Chicago Public Schools are headed in the wrong direction,” and issues a D+ on housing, finding that the city ranks 22nd nationally in affordable housing and that CHA’s Plan for Transformation is, quite frankly, a mess.
It almost goes without saying that the mayor grades out at an F on ethics and corruption – and shouldn’t that be enough to toss him out on his ass? – but he also gets an F in criminal justice. The report’s summary of the problems within the Chicago Police Department only reinforces the fact that we’re not that far from the days of Jon Burge – and that the mayor doesn’t seem to care.
So what is the mayor good at – besides using power to bully, dominate, and co-opt dissent?

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Posted on February 27, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The Beachwood would like to thank the Academy for providing us the grist to bring you the planet’s best Oscar coverage.
For example, how prescient was our very own Bethany Lankin, who correctly predicted in her fashion preview that Eddie Murphy would be wearing ” a foam-latex, female fat suit by Rick Baker and a short, purple, pareo-style Hawaiian muumuu with floral-shirred sleeve and ruffled neck from Hilo Hattie of Waikiki. Hair by Wig Barn of Beverly Hills. His accessories – advertising fliers for his new movie, Norbit?”
Or that Kate Winslet “will look stunning in a hand-beaded, hand-woven, Bombyx silk Badgley Mischka gown in shades of gendale. Her shoes will be Stuart Weitzman‘s diamond stiletto sandals studded with 565 platinum-set Kwait diamonds. She will wear two 30-carat, pear-shaped diamond drop earrings worth $8.5 million by Harry Winston. Her hair will be done by Industrial Light & Magic. Her $64,800 Hermes “Birken” bag, adorned with tangerine crocodile skin and trimmed with palladium hardware and a diamond clasp will contain: 2 broken crayons, an expired McDonalds kid’s meal coupon, a handful of napkins from KFC, a tube of Walgreens Chap-ette brand lib balm, and $1.23 in change”?
Our Oddscars predictions were also dead-on – Ellen DeGeneres indeed made the show even longer by joking about the show running long – and we were right when we said the deserving Randy Newman wouldn’t win Best Song – even though that Melissa Etheridge tune is abhorrently awful.
We’ve got the geeky Sci-Tech rundown, and we’ll have more in an Oscar wrap-up later today.

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Posted on February 26, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Filling in for Weekend Desk Editor Natasha Julius, who is away on a dangerous assignment involving alcohol, hot wings, and the Scooter Libby trial.
Red Carpet Bombs
* In late-breaking Oscar news, the Democrats are trying to give back their 2002 award for Best Supporting Actors in a Foreign Policy Blunder of Epic Proportions.
* Meanwhile, the odds have broken in Dick Cheney’s favor in the Best Actor category for his strong performance as President of the United States. Cheney is now expected to edge out Larry Seidlin, whose otherwise compelling portrayal of a judge is deemed to have gone off the rails in the final act.
* And finally, Ellen DeGeneres will announce Sunday night that she has switched teams.

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Posted on February 24, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The best Oscar preview on the planet starts here with our man on Sepulveda Boulevard setting the stage. Our coverage will continue through the weekend and wrap up next week, provided our fearless correspondents don’t get too drunk or stay too sober.
Geffen Goof
In the wake of the David Geffen dust-up that ended up with Barack Obama’s campaign casting Coulter-like aspersions on Hillary Clinton, Obama tells The New York Times that “My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”
Aside from the raising money from David Geffen part.
Geffen’s Green
For all of David Geffen’s apparent bitterness at Bill Clinton’s failure to pardon Leonard Peltier (which Geffen apparently has reason to believe Obama will deliver), he still wrote big checks to Hillary for her two Senate campaigns and donated $1 million to Bill’s presidential library, the Times reports.

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Posted on February 23, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

David Geffen does his best impression of the right-wing hit squad and Obama fails to decry the smallness of his politics. In Geffen’s Folly. And all our Obama reports can now be found in Obamathon.
And a different view of Obama’s California splash, from the Los Angeles Times:
“But, truth be told, there was little that was really new or different about the issues Obama raised in his maiden swing as a formal presidential candidate.
“Washington gridlock. Poison politics. Overweening special interests. Poverty, poor schools and an exorbitantly expensive healthcare system. Candidates cluck over them every presidential election.
“Obama offered little in the way of concrete solutions. And most of the proposals he did throw out, like harnessing technology to bring greater efficiencies to the healthcare system, were hardly novel . . .

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Posted on February 22, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Barack Obama took the cynicism out of politics in Hollywood on Tuesday with a million-dollar haul and a series of private fundraisers on a schedule not being publicly disclosed.
For more, see “Barack Hollywood.”
Tortured Settlement
“[Attorney Flint] Taylor said U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen had been mediating the [Jon Burge police torture] dispute behind closed doors when the City of Chicago agreed to pay $14.8 million in November,” the Sun-Times reported on Tuesday.
Then the city, Taylor said, reneged.
“Aspen was ‘livid,’ Taylor said, and called the city’s conduct ‘unprecedented in his 27 years on the bench,” the paper’s account said.

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Posted on February 21, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

“Camille Paglia says Madonna Gave Britney the ‘Kiss of Death’.”
I suppose that’s plausible.
On the other hand, when I read pundits like world-renowned psychologist-at-a-distance Stella Foster complaining about “all the partying, drinking, wearing sexy/tacky clothes and alleged drug use,” I just want to say to Britney, “Go, girl!”
I mean, that sounds like a lot of my shaved-and-tattoed friends at 25. And at 40.
But seriously, you had to expect post-traumatic stress syndrome to kick in at some point in a woman raised as a sexpot in order to make millions titillating guys like Bob Dole.
Easy, Boy
“Bob Dole, Pepsi Pervert: A Critical Analysis.”
Sinead Spears
If I remember correctly, Sinead O’Connor once explained her shaved head by saying she didn’t want to be judged by her looks. Maybe Britney is ushering in a fourth-wave feminism.
Vetting Novak
Newsweek reports that Bob Novak let a source vet his now-famous Valerie Plame column before he published it – a source who just happened to be pals with Karl Rove, who then got his own sneak preview. Rove, too, was a source for the column. Shouldn’t this spell the end of Bob Novak?

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Posted on February 20, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The Tribune editorial board endorsed Mayor Daley on Sunday, sentencing us to four more years of the paper chastisising voters for not expressing their outrage over corruption at the polls.
For more on the non-existent mayoral campaign, see The [Daley ’07] Papers.
1. So Mike Downey obviously would have no problem with ads being inserted into his column.
2. In between drooling over Barack Obama, Neil Steinberg warns that “On this Presidents Day, we should honor our country by girding ourselves against the appeal of charismatic leaders.”
3. Can the secret of weight loss be found in the Bible? An investigative report by Nesita Kwan, tonight on the Channel 5 news.

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Posted on February 19, 2007

By Natasha Julius

Market Update
Shock waves rippled through global markets this week as a gold-standard asset holding, Royalty, took a beating.
Upset!
Despite an impressive showing by the incumbent, the winner of the Lying Rodent of the Week title was sort of a no-brainer.

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Posted on February 17, 2007