Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Monday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“As a kid growing up outside of Chicago, James Holzhauer came home from school, turned on the TV and indulged in his two great loves: Cubs baseball games and Jeopardy! episodes, both of which aired in the afternoon,” Alyson Footer writes for MLB.com.

“My dad would come home from work and turn the TV off,” Holzhauer said, smiling at the memory. “But I had already had my fun.”
Most kids are asked at least once in their childhood that standard question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Holzhauer had two items on his list: be a contestant on Jeopardy! and work in a Major League Baseball front office.
Needless to say, one-half of that to-do list has been checked off. Could the second be lurking around the corner?

Why yes, it could!


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You’ll have to click through for the rest, but as someone who as only vaguely, at best, been following the Holzhauer story, I was surprised to learn that Holzhauer, who grew up in Naperville, is a professional gambler who lives in Las Vegas. And by surprised, I merely mean I did not know that.
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Bee Bested
Here’s another thing I learned in recent days: Only the honey bee dies after stinging you. Other bees do just fine – their stingers are constructed differently and are easily extracted from your skin. The honey bee, on the other hand, has a stinger made in such a way that it pulls off and remains in your skin, taking other vital organs with it, when the bee tries to make its getaway. And this only in humans and other mammals with skin like ours.
Oh, honey bee, it’s not your fault. Nature just made you that way. The universe is a really fucked-up place and nobody really has any control over themselves, ultimately. It’s just a giant unspooling of computer code that eventually ends in unimaginable destruction with no point at all.
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Some Personal News

The first instruction, if you read the comments, was: Someone go get me more water.
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E-mail from me to friends on Friday at 4:09 p.m.:

Well, gentlemen, this may be it. I think I’m dying.
My head is foggy, my stomach is fucked up, my limbs are weary, I have no energy, no focus. It’s been a good run. Well, not really. At least I tried.

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E-mail excerpts from me to friends on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.:

[L]ate Friday afternoon, all of a sudden I was just *hit* with something, like *instantly.* I had a fever and chills. Like BOC, I was burnin’ up! But also, I had a horrible headache, and of a kind I haven’t really had before, but have had tastes of lately … usually my headaches are your basic blunt headaches, often caused by eye strain. This was a mega version of something I’ve been feeling lately, where the pain seems to course through the crevasses of my brain. I was literally in tears . . .
I was in so much pain. I really wanted to be dead. I know I’ve felt that before when sick, a few times, or more like, felt if someone would lop my head off I’d be fine. But this was one of the worst. I was literally in tears, people. I was. At least at the hospital they sedate you, or pump you full of morphine. I actually googled “how do you self-induce a coma?” I did!
[. . . ]
And then I discovered, after what I thought would be a routine trip to the bathroom, that, um, my stomach was also a problem. I mean, my stomach didn’t hurt or anything, but … the stuff that came out of my butt for the next 24 hours screamed, “Your body is not working properly! This disgusting material we’ve processed for you is the only way we have of warning you, because we don’t speak English down here!”
I don’t think I slept a single second Friday night, though I don’t know for sure. For one thing, my heartbeat was insane. I thought about taking some of the expired Xanax I have, but for reasons I cannot remember, I didn’t. I had reasons, I just can’t remember what they were. Maybe, “That’s just what the government wants me to do.” Also, I could not get my mind to stop thinking, “Are you asleep now? Are you falling asleep? How will you ever fall asleep? Stop monitoring if you are asleep!” None of my usual techniques to get past that worked. I went through every permutation of the Cubs lineup, for example, and still wasn’t sleeping. I was, however, in an intermediate zone, which can really be worse, because you are maybe partially asleep, though less than half-so, and that just makes you feel shittier . . . I felt like John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. I truly wondered how he did it.
On Saturday, I was able to sleep a few hours here, a few hours there, and eventually “caught up,” though researchers say there really is no such thing as “catching up” on sleep. And my fever had broken, though my stomach was still clearing out its inventory of absolutely disgusting product. Geez, hire more workers down there!
I started to get my strength back, and my headache went from an 11 to a 3. I was finally able to make it to the 7-11 for some Advil; the Walgreens was just too far . . .

I seem to be back to my version of normal. Usually when I get sick like that, it’s the start of a horrible virus that leaves me incapacitated and one turn of the wheel from hospitalization. This time it was either a 24-hour bug or, I learned from sources close to Google, food poisoning, which isn’t something I would have associated with fever and excruciating head pain, but apparently that’s part of the package.
Meanwhile . . .

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New on the Beachwood . . .
Coachella Just The Latest Example Of Everything That Is And Will Always Be Wrong With The Music Industry
It used to be about the music, man.
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Sinclair Forms Right-Wing Sports Broadcast Company
With an assist from the super-unfunny Byron Allen.
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How To Avoid Accidentally Becoming A Russian Agent
For starters, be cautious if a stranger asks you to wear a Santa Claus suit with a mask of Donald Trump’s face around your city.
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SportsMonday: Cubs Better At Kicking Than Bears
For starters, bring back Casey Bednarski.
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Chicago Zine Fest Celebrating A Decade Of Showcasing The DIY Spirit Of Self-Publishers
A star-studded extravaganza.
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Angie’s List Is A Sham
Study: “Angie’s List recommends and gives preferential treatment to these advertisers that can easily mislead consumers into thinking that these businesses are the best ones and should be patronized.”
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Playing The Game Right Now
Bat flips and dugout celebrations only go so far. Winning is what keeps bringing us back. In The White Sox Report.
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The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #250: Ryan Pace Is A Draft Disaster
The anti-Belichick can’t win at this game. Plus: Cubs Progress To The Mean; White Sox Suddenly Not As Bad As You Think They Are; Sixers-Warriors; The NHL’s Deadly Denial; Wrigleyville Literally The Worst; and Dragging The Derby.
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TrackNotes: Dragging The Derby
In the early handicapping, we had all kinds of news: good, bad and part-of-the-game. And once again, a professional and spiritual letdown by humans, a wolf named Wolf and a man named Smith..
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ChicagoReddit

LCoInmnCOoLnn from r/chicago


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ChicagoGram


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BeachBook
Reading Arendt Is Not Enough.

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Rare Wisconsin Tobacco Farmers Hang On To Tradition.

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Art Institute Of Chicago Aims To Improve Your Connoisseurship Of With ‘Great Wave’ Exhibit.

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Elizabeth Warren Disqualifies Herself By Being Right About Financial Scandal.

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‘I’m The Donald Trump Of Art.’

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood McRibTipLine: Cover me.

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Posted on May 6, 2019