Awaiting anxiously these days for word from the groundhog and the Trumpster. Then again, maybe we shouldn't be!

The Donald or The Groundhog (below), … 

So just what is that gol-danged groundhog going to have to say to us come Saturday about whether springtime is on the way; or if we’re going to have to wait six more weeks for the coming of pleasant weather?

Although a part of me is now wondering even more just what that gosh-darned fool we call a president is going to have to say to us come Tuesday – the date he finally gets to stand before Congress and give the annual State of the Union speech.

… who do you place more faith in?

NOT THAT I expect anything of real significance to come from the lips of The Donald – who at times reminds me of the old Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wisecrack about New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

Remember. “How can you tell when Steinbrenner is not telling the truth? His lips move!” It sounds like a pretty accurate assessment of Trump – who actually once had his own ties to the Yankees owner and has about as overbloated an ego as the one-time shipping magnate-turned-baseball boss.

The only difference is that Steinbrenner put together teams that achieved their goal of winning World Series. While Trump, for the good of us all, has consistently failed to achieve his goal of building that ridiculous wall along the U.S./Mexico border.

Steinbrenner and Trump -- two of a kind?

Which is what I really suspect Tuesday’s address in the House of Representatives will be about. He’ll harangue Congress for not meekly giving in to his every political desire.

HE’LL TRASH THE Democratic caucuses of Congress for behaving responsibly and standing up to his nonsense desires.

I couldn’t help but notice that yet another Trump e-mail received Friday asked us all to take a five-question “State of the Union” prep survey. Trump wants us to say that Democrats aren’t being blamed sufficiently for the 35-day-long shutdown of federal government, and that we’re being told lies about the conditions along that U.S./Mexico border that Trump probably wishes he could erect an electrified barricade along its 1,900-plus miles.

Punxsutawney Phil will do his act Saturday; will he be more accurate than Trump?

Above all, we’re supposed to say we approve of Trump and are happy with the economy – so that Trump can use all of this as the factual basis of a speech that claims The Donald is being unfairly maligned.

Which will truly be a level of nonsense that I suspect the masses won’t be swayed by in the least. We’ll believe it about as much as we’ll believe the silly little poem that the people of Punxsutawney, Pa., write up as the “words” of their groundhog – who is supposed to tell us Saturday just how close we are to springtime.

YOU KNOW THE drill. The groundhog supposedly knows the date, comes out of hibernation, then flees back into his hovel if he sees his shadow. Which would mean six more weeks of winter weather.

Whereas if that groundhog stays outside and enjoys some fresh air, then spring is nearby! The worst of winter is over!

What I’ve never understood is this; if Saturday is a nice sunny day (as it’s supposed to be in the Chicago area), doesn’t that increase the chances of the rodent-like creature seeing a shadow?

Should we be desperately hoping for a cloudy, overcast day on Saturday so as to increase the likelihood of shadows being invisible?

OR IS IT more likely that the only people who place any faith in the weather-predicting ability of the groundhog are the same ones who fall into the 37 percent (according to the Gallup Organization) who these days still look favorably upon Donald Trump’s performance as president?

More faith in Bill Murray than either!

I’m actually inclined to think that the groundhog and anything Trump has to say as part of his national address will be equally absurd and filled with nothing but pure horse-hockey.

But then again, the concept of Groundhog Day did give is that somewhat entertaining 1993 film by Bill Murray – the one in which every day is Groundhog Day and he has to keep reliving the experience no matter how insipid.

Just suppose that same concept happened to Tuesday and every day we would have to hear Trump give a ridiculous address for the State of the Union? That would be the worst thing that could happen to all of us!

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Matter of ethics? Or ugly aldermen taking space from Hollywood glitter

The World Series returns to Wrigley Field on Friday, and there won’t be any aldermen in attendance. That is, unless the aldermen are willing to dip into their own pockets and pay the ridiculous fees that are being sought by ticket scalpers.

Not like World Series of days of old at Wrigley

Much indignation has been spewed in recent weeks about the fact that the Chicago Cubs included City Council members on the list of people who would get the chance to purchase tickets for the World Series games to be held at home this weekend.

THE PERK IS that even before the limited number of tickets that went on sale to the general public were put up for grabs, the aldermen were among a class of so-called important people who could have the chance to buy some seats.

Note I’m saying “buy.” Nobody was talking about giving aldermen the tickets for the ball games. Which is a concept I suspect offended at least some of the aldermen – who probably think they’re important enough to warrant freebies.

Also keep in mind that the official prices charged for World Series tickets are not the same as those charged for Cubs games during the regular season. They’re higher – a few hundred dollars per seat.

Which is cheap only when compared to the scalper prices – I have heard figures ranging from just under $1 million per seat if you want to sit in one of those prime seats up close to the action and where everyone watching the games on television will be capable of seeing you, to as low as about $5,500 per seat if all you want to do is stand in the upper deck in spare space and be able to say you were inside the building when the World Series returned to Wrigley Field for the first time in 71 years.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think that kind of money is worth the experience. I think it borders on criminal that anybody thinks they can charge it. But then again, I have never thought Cubs fans had all that much sense, so perhaps they’re willing to give up a chance at retirement and can reminisce about the games they see this weekend when, in future years, they’re reduced to eating cans of cat food.

 

Won't be able to ignore Murray

But back to the aldermen, who had their perk taken away when the public got outraged – seemingly out of the belief that aldermen were getting free tickets from the ball club. Then, the council’s ethics board declared that accepting the ticket perk was something that bordered on unethical.

I can already hear the snide comments made about the absurdity of ethics from the Chicago City Council. But the bottom line is that someone decided to take the high road when it comes to political perks.

Although there are bound to be complaints. Take 31^st Ward Alderman Milly Santiago, who may well have created her moment of political infamy when she complained about losing the perk.

FIRST, SHE POINTED out that the seats she was being offered were those cheap ones in the upper-most rows of the top deck. Then, she said, “I’m a poor alderman. I cannot even afford to buy a $1,000 ticket.”

You just know she’s never going to live that line down.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a loss if there aren’t so many political people on hand. You know Fox television is going to be more interested in Hollywood celebrities who bother to show up at games.

Chances are, we’re going to be sick of seeing Bill Murray by the time Sunday rolls around. And if by chance Jim Belushi is among the Wrigley scene, you just know nausea will predominate among the television viewing public.

 

SANTIAGO: Poor alderman

THE KEY TO comprehending the crowds that show up at Clark and Addison this weekend is that they’re not going to be hard-core fans. Heck, even regular season Cubs games are more about the glitz, but this will be even moreso.

It may well be Chicago trying to put on a show of the kind of city that certain people wish it was, instead of what it really is.

If anything, the real reason to keep aldermen out of the ballpark is that it means there will be fewer ugly people taking up space that could better be used by whichever gorgeous starlet actor John Cusack decides to have as his date Friday Night for Game 3.

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Ramis – the eternal ‘straight man’ who made Bill Murray funny – dies

It was a bit of a blow to learn Monday that actor, comedy writer and film maker Harold Ramis – who started out at Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe – is dead.

Because he’s the guy we didn’t notice as prominently as people like Dan Aykroyd or Bill Murray, but whose sense of how to play the “straight” role made the characters those other two played seem all the more off-the-wall, funny and entertaining.

RAMIS, WHO DIED early Monday at age 69 from a condition that caused his blood vessels to swell, was one of the Ghostbusters, along with Aykroyd and Murray.

He also was the friend of Murray’s “John Winger” character who got conned into enlisting in the U.S. Army along with him, thereby giving him somebody to watch his back – and join him when the two have to go into then-Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia to retake their army unit.

Who, by the way, were only captured because they were searching for the Murray and Ramis characters – who had taken the Army’s experimental prototype of a combat-ready recreational vehicle out for a spin to pick up some girls.

It literally is a line from Stripes (along with Murray’s quip about how Tito Puente was unappreciated in life) that still gets quoted by my brother.

WITH MURRAY’S CHARACTER telling Ramis’ role: “Come on, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick them up, and we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia, it’s like going to Wisconsin.”

To which Ramis’ “Russell Zitsky” character responds, “Well, I got the shit kicked out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it!”

Much of the humor was in the timing. It’s funnier on film than it is on the written page. Although I’m not about to reduce Ramis’ working life to a single quip about the cheeseheads to the north of us.

It was just this past weekend that I happened to be stumbling my way through television channels when I came across “Meatballs,” a Bill Murray comedy from back in that period right before I began high school.

WHICH MEANS ITS overly-horny prepubescent characters and trivial nonsense were at about my age level (I drooled back then over the blonde who, looking at her now, makes me feel like a dirty old man). With Murray as the out-of-control camp counselor who befriends a particularly vulnerable summer camper.

Ramis co-wrote that script.

While I don’t doubt that Murray can improvise with the best of them (the film was basically Bill Murray saying and doing outrageous things), it was Ramis who put the thoughts and images onto the page of a script so they could be turned into something resembling reality on the movie theater screens (and now our television screens every time we watch it).

Although I thought that the repeated running gag about the head camp counselor repeatedly finding his bed moved in the middle of the night (with him still in it) to various locations (up in a tree, alongside a lake, at the entrance to the camp) was a bit overdone.

THEN AGAIN, THIS is the man who also wrote the script for Ghostbusters who envisioned the idea that all of mankind could be threatened by a gigantic Stay-Puft Marshmallow man.

Which brings to mind Murray’s celluloid response of a quip, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

Although it’s not just these moments that Ramis gave us. He also was the director of “Analyze This” (and the sequel, “Analyze That”), which purported to give us the concept of an organized crime boss (played by Robert DeNiro) having to see a psychiatrist (portrayed by Billy Crystal).

Which is very “The Sopranos” sounding. Although we should remember the Sopranos scene where the late actor James Gandolfini appears like he wants to smack upside the head the psychiatrist who tells his “Tony Soprano” character that he understands “the mob” because he saw “Analyze This.”

THESE ARE JUST a few of the career moments that have given us humor. It is why we’re better off that a one-time Rogers Park resident who actually once wrote freelance stories for the old Chicago Daily News decided there were better things to do with his life than try to report the news.

He’s given us moments to brighten our day, for so long as all those DVDs of his films continue to function properly.

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