By Steve Rhodes
This is what a desperate newspaper looks like: best beaches and hot fans.
And let’s not forget headlines inside like Hot Bods, Hubba Bubba Barbie and Sex Hit-And-Run Stings!
Oh wait, is that John Mayer? Yes, and guess who occupied his time while Jennifer shopped? Someone hot, I’ll bet!
Meanwhile, Miley is hearing footsteps at Disney!
And with Susanna’s Night Out taking the day off, there’s room for a Liz Phair story from Billboard!
Too Hot To Handle!
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Is it any surprise that that an ad package for a diet pill – disguised as news stories – spreads out over two pages? What, the people from the Mint took the day off?
Longest. Contract. Ever.
“At the behest of Mayor Daley’s former law partner, a City Council committee agreed Monday to extend until 2040 a franchise agreement that has allowed a private company to tear up Loop streets to install the chilled water pipeline needed to cool downtown office buildings,” the Sex-Times reports in between beaches and bods.
2040!
The original agreement – with the Northwind subsidiary of ComEd – had been set to expire in 2020, so give the Daley administration credit for thinking ahead. Officials also announced the music lineup for Taste of Chicago that summer, including a reunion show by Fall Out Boy, and said Chicago would bid for the 2038 Olympics.
“That will give MDE Thermal Technologies, the company that acquired Northwind years ago, the stability it needs to attract more clients. MDE is owned by Australia-based Macquarie, the company that paid the city $1.83 billion over 99 years to lease the Chicago Skyway.”
And so the city feels compelled to help keep it in business.
“MDE was represented at Monday’s Transportation Committee meeting by Jack George, a partner in the law firm of Daley & George. Michael Daley, the mayor’s brother, is a partner in the firm.”
Ding ding ding!
The agreement reportedly transfers power of attorney to George’s grandchildren after 2030.
“The law firm stands to reap lucrative legal fees over the course of the longer franchise agreement.”
On 32 years of interest alone.
“Daley & George once employed the mayor and paid him until 1991 under a buyout agreement reached in 1980, when he was elected state’s attorney.”
According to the buyout agreement, they now own him.
“George said the unprecedented extension is needed ‘to ensure that more than 100 existing customers – and all of our potential new customers – understand that the environmentally-friendly cooling system is gonna be available for the [long-term] future when we enter into these contracts with these various people.'”
Oh, and it’s also to send a message to our existing customers – and all of our potential new customers – that we’re the boss hogs with the big nuts.
“Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Allen (38th) countered, ‘When you see that the use agreement changes from expiring in 2020 to 2040, it raises some eyebrows.'”
Mostly from people who want to know how to get a slice.
“He asked MDE President David Bump to justify it some more.”
That way he wouldn’t look so bad when he passed it out of his committee.
“They need to know we’re going to be there,” Bump said. “It’s in our interest – ours as well as the city’s – to have this system committed for the long-term so people will utilize it.”
Funny how their interest and the city’s coincide.
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Here’s the worst part: Now Brian Urlacher wants his contract re-done.
Urgent Message
R U An Idiot 4 Thnkng Txt Msg Hdlines Are Clvr?
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Co-anchor chit chat on the Channel 2 “news” last night after a Vince Gerasole report on text-messaging.
“Vince is down with the kids!”
“He sure is!”
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“Today’s big danger: Texting while walking!” Margaret Lyons writes at Chicagoist. “Holy moly, is it ever time to be afraid. Particularly of twin bullshit stories, neither of which identify anyone who has actually been injured.”
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Chicagoist commenter Spook responds to the Trib story: “I hope that in the very near future, Ms. Kelly Scheiner of Streeterville is texting whilst running one of her many errands and has a ‘real time intro’ with the front grill of a speeing Mississippi bound Mack Truck that leaves nothing left behind on the street but her silver Nordstrom bag still draped over her left forearm for shallow mindless consumer posterity.”
The Beachwood Tip Line: Hot and bothered.
Posted on July 29, 2008