Some Non-Sporting Observations from Yesterday’s Bear Game. Number Eight Was a Surprise!

It was a cold afternoon at Soldier Field on Sunday. Not brutal, but cold nonetheless. The November sun did what it could to provide a hint of warmth, but long johns, two down jackets, a wool hat and fiberfill gloves did a better job.

Michael and I knew we wanted to take in a game this weekend, and using weather as our guide, going to the Bears-Lions game Sunday made a far better choice than the Northwestern football game in Evanston on Saturday, when rain and snow emptied the stands long before the Wildcats finished their 39-0 decimation of the visiting Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Michael found tickets for pretty good seats on Ticketmaster, I worked Spot Hero for some decent parking just a mile walk from the field and bundled up for a polar expedition we took in the game, my first pro game in about ten years. As we all know, the Bears, unlike the NU ‘Cats, were losers, but it was a close and exciting game, coming down to the last few seconds. Some observations from the 30-yard line:

There were no unlicensed vendors outside the stadium selling knock-off Bears gear. The McCaskey family must have quite a bit of clout with the Mayor, the Park District, and the Police Department.
Maybe they could use some of that clout to improve the pedestrian route to get from the north end of the stadium to past the Museum Campus. The crush wasn’t as bad as after the U2 concert last July, but who needs hairpin turns for 60,000 fans?
The Bears sideline looked a little flat. Maybe they need a picker-upper like the Northwestern Strength Coach Alex Spanos, whose tee-shirted escapades on the NU sideline in the rain showed about three times as much effort as the Minnesota defense.
Grilled Vienna Hot Dogs, nice touch. Men’s Rooms without urinals, odd touch.
The injury to Leonard Floyd was a chiller. The parade of Bears walking over to give him words of encouragement or a high five as he was carted off the field conveyed a lot of warmth.
The sprinkling of Lions fans in the stands had a good time and didn’t seem to be hassled, at least in my section. I have seen far worse treatment of visiting fans at college events where the true fanatics live.
With the game being played in “Bear Weather,” why did I pack a blanket, and then leave it in the trunk of the car?
During the first 50 minutes of the game, the Bear fan behind me issued more F-Bombs then the casts of “The Wolf of Wallstreet” and “Casino” combined. They were directed at the Bears, the Lions, the coaching staffs and the refs. I have never sat near a more passionate fan. So what did he have to say during the crucial last five minutes of the game? I don’t know, he left. I guess he wanted to beat traffic.
Promo tee shirts getting flung into the crowd don’t fare any better in the wind than a last ditch field goal effort.
The Bears will be better. But it will be a few more years before they end a season with more wins than my NU Wildcats. Unless Cat’s Coach Pat Fitzgerald decides to move a few miles south. And takes Alex Spanos with him!

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Tricks for U2 Tix. What Works for You When You Want Tickets to a Show?

Do I want to go to a concert? First, a few questions to answer. Am I a fan club member? Do I have a credit card from the bank sponsoring the tour? Will I have a chance to take a break from looking at slides in my office at exactly 9:00 am (9:01 will be too late) to log in? Do I want to go to see the show enough to make this all worthwhile? Or have my U2 days passed me by?

It used to be fun and exciting to get tickets for a show or concert or game. You could go to the box office and lay down cash. You could send a check to the stadium with a self-addressed stamped envelope (remember those?) and check your mailbox every few days in anticipation. For immediate gratification, you could call an 800 number, and armed with a BankAmeriCard or MasterCharge, order your tickets. Or if you were lucky, you knew an insider who had gotten a hold of a stack of tickets and would sell you a pair of great seats for face plus a bottle of Seven Crown. Ah yes, the Good Old Days. Barb and I saw a lot of Neil Diamond in those simpler times.

Then came the Internet, and Ticketmaster online, and automated bots getting all the front row center seats. The common consumer was left to find their way to the secondary market, the Stubhubs and Craig’s Lists of the world. You paid your money and you took your chance, as our son learned after getting ripped off on a pair of Final Four tickets.

But now the artists and the venues are creating new party games, trying to make sure those valuable tickets find their way to the “real” fans. They are doing their best to get the bots and the brokers out of business. How? It’s Pre-registration, baby!

For the last 3 weeks, I have been barraged by emails about the U2 concert at the United Center next May. Bono and the boys want ME to get insider access. Just a few things they want to know:

Am I a fan club member? Well, I probably am, but I sure don’t remember my username or password. And I really don’t want to be on another mailing list.
How about credit cards. Do I have the “preferred” one to gain pre-public access? Here I might be in luck, as my wallet contains enough plastic to build a tower to the newly discovered habitable planet 6 light years away. Citibank is the sponsor this time around and voila, I have a never used Citibank card that came with my now defunct Costco membership. So hallelujah, I am preferred. All I have to do is make the necessary preparations:

I have filled out and sent in my pre-registration form.
I have checked my phone and received my secret access code.
I have a timer set on my phone, set to go off at 8:59.
I have my Citibank card out on my desk.

My goal–tickets for 2, not too far back, not behind a pair of seven footers, and with a view of the Jumbotron. That’s what I call preferred. I’ll let you know if I succeed. In the meantime, what are your tricks to get the best seat in the house?

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Some popular recent posts:
Trump at Gettysburg
What Hillary Clinton Should Have Done

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Hillary, It Is Not About “What Happened.” It Is About What Didn’t Happen. Here Is Why.

This is where we are now. The Justice Department is being pushed by the President to investigate the Clinton Foundation. Allegations against Ray Moore are reigniting the “Bill Clinton did worse things to women than this southern gentleman ever did, and Hillary stood by him” conversation. And we are coming to recognize just how deeply sexual harassment has permeated Hollywood, Washington and probably all places in between.

Hillary, you missed your chance to make a mark on all of these.

It wouldn’t have taken a lot, just a couple of hundred words back in late 2015, words that might have been more important than cozying up to the Democratic National Committee. Surely you and your staff could have produced a statement that went something like this:

“I want to be your candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and beyond that I want to be your President. I have the experience, the temperment and the body of advisors that will be necessary to create a successful, progressive administration. I will not fail you.

There is one matter that may cloud my candidacy. The glass ceiling I am seeking to smash is held in place by many factors. One of those factors is the impediment placed in our way by ongoing sexual harrassment and unfair treatment of women in the workplace. Men have abused their positions of power to put tough women, resilient women, creative women, in positions of disadvantage or worse. One of the men implicated in such situations, both in and out of the work place, has been my husband, Bill Clinton.

I love and trust my husband. However, I must recognize the multitude of incidents attributed to him. With that in mind, Bill will have no role in any aspect of my campaign for the Presidency. He will not fund raise, he will not advise, he will not speak on my behalf. I further pledge that during my term as President, Bill will not be a part of the administration. He will devote his time and energy to the Clinton Foundation, with the assistance of an oversight committee that will ensure the separation of the business of the Foundation from the business of the State.

Our administration will miss the experience, knowledge and talents of my husband. It is a sacrifice that I make sadly but willingly. Women must and will be respected as our country enters a new age.”

You could have done it, Hillary. Banished Bill. Acknowledged his shenanigans and harassments. Even kept him off the tarmac with Loretta Lynch. And two things might be different today. Ray Moore might be just a footnote to history. And you might be President.

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Cream of Wheat Memories. What is YOUR Favorite Breakfast?

Keep your fancy oatmeal. I don’t want your prehistoric grains, your quinoa, your Kamut©. I don’t care what “multiple research studies” will have to say about the right cereal lowering the risk of heart disease in middle-aged men with a tendency towards corpulence. There is only one hot cereal for me, smooth and well-sweetened Cream of Wheat, made the proper way in a simmering pot on the stove.

I don’t know why my mother chose Cream of Wheat as the favored hot cereal for us on those cold winter mornings that we had time for a sit-down breakfast. Was it a favorite in her native Vienna? Perhaps she picked up a taste for it during her short stay in England, or maybe she was just attracted to the bright red box with the picture of chef Rastus. But on those special mornings growing up, Linda and I would enjoy a steaming hot bowl of cereal without a Pennsylvania Quaker in sight.

Through the years my preferred breakfast has changed as frequently as the Bears have changed starting quarterbacks. Early on, half a box of Salerno Chocolate Chip cookies fed my morning sweet tooth. Then a school friend introduced me to Kellogg’s marvelous innovation, Pop-Tarts. A pair of blueberry Pop-Tarts, untoasted and unfrosted, became my breakfast for most of high school.

Doesn’t a muffin sound like a healthy start? But there wasn’t much nutritional value in the overly sweet Sara Lee raisin muffins that kept me going for years. And nothing healthy in the delectable treats that drug reps used to supply on a daily basis to the Doctor’s Lounge of my old hospital in Des Plaines. Eventually, it was recognized that those tasty 50¢ morsels were an illegal inducement (I was never sure what I, as a pathologist, was being induced to do) and the drug reps stopped making daily visits with their haul from the local bakery. I entered into my “cold cereal years.”

Using my mad scientist background I experimented with preparing the ideal mix, eventually arriving at the combo of Nabisco Shredded Wheat, Shredded Wheat’n’Bran, and for a touch of sweetness, Quaker Oat Cinnamon Squares. I never add milk to cold cereal, so the mixture, which tasted like hay mixed with straw, was missing out on things like healthy fats and protein.

I moved on. For the last few years, breakfast has been whole grain toast slathered in natural peanut butter all covered with a mountain of blueberries. I get some fiber, some protein, and a nice wallop of free radicals. It gets me out of bed in the morning ready to face the long drive to the lab.

But some days the dairy aisle at Marianos or Whole Foods will call to me. I’ll pick up a pint of fresh milk (the cow variety, not the soy or almond substitutes) and look forward to the following weekend when I can stand leisurely at the stove with my metal whisk and stir up some Cream of Wheat smoothness. It takes me a long way back, and it never disappoints. My mother would be proud.

Our Veteran’s Day Blog is on the front page of today’s Chicagotribune.com. In case you missed it here is the link: Trump at Gettysburg

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The Gettysburg Address-Trump Style

A mysterious audio file appeared on my screen this morning. I publish an unedited transcript.

“Four score and seven years ago–(what is that, about 90 years? Math wasn’t on my IQ test) our forefathers (white men, great white men) brought forth upon this continent (I got to tell you it is a great continent, loaded with coal, loaded, with coal) conceived in liberty (I would have liked to have conceived a few things with Liberty if you know what I mean) and dedicated to the proposition (or is it preposition, these 5 syllable words all sound the same) that all (white, European) men are created equal (and should be allowed to avoid inheritance taxes.)

“Now we are engaged (I have been engaged a few times-don’t recommend it, puts a crimp in the pussy grabbing) in a great (the absolute best) civil war, testing whether that nation (that we will make great again) or any nation (did you know Lincoln was a Republican?) so conceived (got to put some more conservatives on the Supreme Court) and so dedicated, can long (I have very long hands) endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war (and they used rifles, so rifles are very historical). We have come to dedicate a portion of that field (would make a great golf course), as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. (Or we could have just compromised on this slavery thing and all gone home and watched FoxNews.)

“(Blah Blah, this is getting boring so I am going to skip ahead to my big finish.) It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us (building great walls, mining coal, making threats)—that from these honored dead (and I called one of their mothers. Lovely woman, can’t remember her name) we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain (if I can remember I’m gonna tweet that and say it was my idea)—that this nation, under (my) God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of rich white men, by rich white men, for rich white men, shall not perish from the earth.”

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And from me (Les) wishes for a peaceful, meaningful Veteran’s Day to all.

What should Hillary Clinton have done differently? Click here to find out.

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Why the Name is Changing, But the Song Remains the Same

I have made a change. You may not have noticed, but beginning today, my blog has a shiny new name.”Downsize, Maybe” has been retired.

When I started writing in the middle of 2015, Barb and I were still contemplating what sort of house we would build. We thought we would probably be downsizing, but we weren’t quite sure that things would turn out that way, hence the original title of the blog “Downsize, Maybe.” I wonder if anyone recognized the phrasing as a take-off on the hit song, “Call Me Maybe?” As Carly Rae Jepsen sang, and Barb and I knew, “this is crazy.”

So a lot of the early posts, particularly from the pre-ChicagoNow days, were adventures in home designing, financing, and building. It was often a rocky road (when isn’t it) and lots of the frustrations made it into these pages. But Barb and I have been in the house since January, and since that time we are just typical suburbanites. I really haven’t written very much about our “Crystal Palace” these last few months. So like Dart on Stranger Things, the time has come for this blog to molt its skin and take on a new identity. “Downsize, Maybe” is becoming “Getting More From Les.” The king is dead, long live the king!

Where will we go from here? I suspect there will still be plenty of glimpses into our lives and passions and challenges. I will continue to observe the absurd, police the politicians, promote the prostate, and chime in for or against the national zeitgeist. I may return a bit more to the music I love.

I hope to keep writing as long as you will keep reading. As always, comments, criticisms and new subscribers are welcome. Pass it on!Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!

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The Safety Engineer’s Reply Will Make You Wonder.

“Dr. Raff, the new stainer won’t turn on.”

“That’s strange, the electrical safety engineer said it was fine yesterday…”

Our lab has been in business for almost 12 years now. We use lots of automated analyzers, stainers, cover-slippers. They are subjected to daily use, so plenty of wear and tear. We purchase some of them used from a handful of vendors that specialize in refurbished laboratory equipment. And being of a fairly small size, we don’t have much back-up. A particular machine better run or the serviceman better get here quickly. We keep up a good relationship with the service companies, we don’t want their technicians feeling like lonely Maytag repairmen (or women.)

We also want to keep a safe work environment and meet our credentialing requirements, so we hire an electrical safety engineer to check all our equipment each year. The rule is simple; if it has a plug, it gets inspected. He tests each piece for leakage and shorting and any other electric hazard and slaps an “Inspected” sticker on it. And any new piece of equipment we bring into the lab gets a safety check before it gets put into service. We don’t want anyone shocked when they flip the “On” switch for the first time.

Last week we took delivery of two pieces of equipment, a new incubator for our ever-increasing number of bacteriology cultures (shipped with the wrong power cord,) and a gently used stainer for our Cytology Department, replacing a workhorse stainer whose microswitches were failing and unreplaceable. The new incubator looks sharp and it only took a handful of emails and phone calls to get the correct power cord from the manufacturer. And the replacement stainer is more environmentally and worker safety friendly than its predecessor, so that’s a win-win situation.

I called Bill, our electrical safety engineer, to let him know about the new instruments and he came yesterday afternoon when the lab was quiet for the safety check. Bill was here for a half hour and then stopped by my office to drop of his worksheet and let me know our equipment passed the safety check; we were ready to rock.

So imagine my surprise this morning when the staff couldn’t get the stainer to turn on! We read the quick start manual, flipped the switches, checked the circuit breakers, but nothing happened. No lights flashing, no whirring engines.

Once again, I called Bill. “Our stainer won’t turn on, but you had it working yesterday, right?” “Well,” he said “it passed its safety check, but when I turned the power on nothing happened. You seemed busy, so I didn’t mention it to you. I guess I should have.”

Um, yeah! Not telling me the equipment you just checked is “safe” but won’t actually operate is sort of like a pilot announcing halfway to Europe “We don’t really have enough fuel to cross the Atlantic, but you all seemed to be in a hurry so I took off without refueling. Please prepare for an emergency water landing.”

Our great lab staff did the troubleshooting and solved the problem, but from now on, no service person leaves the front door without answering one basic question. “Does it work???”

For those of you asking after the blog earlier this week, the new car is an Audi A6. So far, it purrs.

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Cars Come and Go, But the Best Leave an Impression.

Tonight Barb and I will sign the papers, write the check, and trade in my black stallion for its replacement. It will all happen at a dealer out in Naperville, a suburb as foreign to a Northsider like me as wins are to the current Bulls team. It took weeks of combing car dealer websites, days of studying comparison charts, and hours of test drives before I found the low-mileage, gently pre-driven car I was looking for. A new companion to make my daily commute down the Tri-State Tollway speed by–at a speed acceptable to me and allowable by the state highway patrol.

It is not easy to give up the old black beauty. She started as another man’s mistress, the back up to his primary ride. And since she was his mistress he loaded her up. Every amenity available for a 2011 luxury car — infrared night vision, rear seat DVD screens, a lovely coffee-colored leather interior, driver assist speed control–nothing was too good for her. And under it all, the lovely eight-cylinder engine that purred.

But he was an embezzler and they both paid the price. He went from Wall Street to a prison, she went from a suburban New York villa to an impound lot. She traveled west after her dealer auction and ended up in my hands. And we melded.

For four years we have zipped along. The night vision and the DVD screens have languished, but I have loved the brown leather. The powerful engine synching up with the speed control has been a perfect match for my driving style, purring until I would roar into the left lane. And although the car always felt a little stiff and uncomfortable to Barb, I have loved every minute of driving her.

But now she is a little gray. She is showing her age, showing all those miles I have pushed her through. Things that used to work don’t work anymore, and like any aging heiress, she is getting too expensive to keep beautiful, and much too expensive to maintain.

The new car doesn’t have as many features or as interesting a backstory. But it has enough oomph and glamor to satisfy my desires, and a long, long warranty to satisfy my practical side.

So I will Waze my way back to Naperville tonight as the Bulls battle the Cavaliers. I may not be trading for Lebron James, but I still think I am trading for a winner!

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#metoo. Here’s Why I Was A Lucky One.

I was a 13-year-old kid, the son of the company’s office manager, spending a blistering hot summer helping out in the warehouse. The guy was about 25, part of the regular warehouse crew, pulling boxes of shoes and socks for delivery to the 20 or so stores the company had in the Chicago area. He had no power over me, at least as far as the employment situation. On the contrary, I am sure that one word from me and he would have been out on the street, looking for a minimum wage job somewhere else. It was a complete reversal of the typical workplace harassment situation.

But that didn’t stop him from being the aggressor, in a quiet, insidious, way. The warehouse contained rows and rows of high shelving units packed to the ceiling with cartons of shoes. Standing in the aisles between those racks was like being in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, hidden from view and detection. It was in one of those secretive corridors that he made his move.

First, he showed me some “French postcards ” that he claimed to have just found on the sidewalk outside the warehouse. Porn was much harder to find in those pre-Hustler, pre-Internet, pre-Comcast days, so it was quite a surprise to have an older guy showing me risque snapshots. He followed the peep show with increasingly personal questions until I finally got the drift of where he hoped this encounter was heading.

I mumbled “not interested,” in my 13-year old Bar Mitzvah boy’s voice. He backed off. I didn’t say a word about it to anyone, certainly not to my dad. The other warehouse workers were unaware of the incident but played nasty tricks on the man on the basis of generalized homophobia. I can only wonder if there may have been other propositions made between the shoe racks, but at least the other recipients would have been above the age of consent.

Was I a victim? Yes. Was he a predator? Absolutely. Was I traumatized by the episode? I don’t think so, although it is certainly made enough of an impression on me that it is the only incident of that summer job that I clearly recall. While it was unfortunate that my first interaction with someone who I recognized to be gay was a negative one, that has not colored my association with the many LGBT individuals with whom I have worked, celebrated and shared with over the years.

I don’t believe I have ever acted inappropriately towards a woman-I don’t believe I ever will. But perhaps looking back on this episode helps me understand the pain, the discomfort, and the torment of women who must deal with harassment on a routine basis, particularly when the predator has the power to put the victim’s well-being or livelihood at risk. And after reading the outpouring of #metoo personal stories this week, I will be ready to intercede if I become aware of that type of behavior around me.

So that our mothers, wives, and daughters can stop becoming #metoo.

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NRA Got it Wrong-Researcher Discovers the Second Amendment Protects the Right to BARE Arms!

Alexander Hamilton, Father of “Bare Arms.”

In a startling announcement, T. Mueller-Hinton Ph.D. of the National Constitutional Archivists (NCA) has conclusively demonstrated that the Second Amendment to the Constitution contains a transcription error. After reviewing notes from the attendees of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and numerous drafts of the Bill of Rights, Dr. Mueller-Hinton has clear proof that the amendment speaks of the rights of citizens to have uncovered upper extremities.

“The evidence was there all along,” Mueller-Hinton said in his press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. “We know that English spelling wasn’t totally standardized in the 1700’s and the words like bear and bare were frequently interchanged. Up until Draft 4, the word is consistently written as “bare”, but sometime between then and the final copy, a scribe switched to the alternate spelling “bear.” This amendment never was about guns, rifles or bazookas. It is strictly about bare arms.”

Dr. Mueller-Hinton, a post-graduate student at the National University of Traditional Scholars (NUTS,) a Minnesota think tank, began his research project after viewing a production of “Hamilton,” the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. “After I learned that Mr. Hamilton was born and lived his early life in the Caribbean, I began to wonder what impact that had on his thought process. In reading some of his “Federalist Papers” I noticed commentary on the joy of feeling the sun on his sleeveless arms while a youth. He was unhappy with the stuffy dress conventions of the United States. It was easy to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 after that.”

Clint McWhitlock, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association (NRA), immediately released a statement stating that Constitutional protection was not really needed for his association’s goal of “a handgun in every pot, two rifles in every garage.” The statement further went on to say “firearms are the American way of life, and we don’t need the Second Amendment to preserve that. After all, we have great laws like Concealed Carry now.”

Also releasing a joint statement were Elizabeth Shagreen MD, President of the Dermatological Society of North America and Gordon Calomine of the Coppertone Corporation. “Suns don’t kill people, people kill people. We are advancing legislation to require all bare body parts must be protected by sunscreen with an SPF of 75 or higher. We cannot let this new Constitutional interpretation cause us to lose lives.”

Vice-President Mike Pence commented that it was OK for Americans to get a suntan, as long as they didn’t kneel while doing so.

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