Is anyone shocked by ‘the Gipper’s’ quip? It explains so much trash talk

The latest bit of historical trivia to make it into the “news” – former President Ronald Reagan said something racially offensive.

REAGAN: Would he be proud of old quip?

It was back in the days when Reagan was governor of California, and when he made a telephone call to then-President Richard M. Nixon – which means it was one of many that got captured on audiotape.

SO WE KNOW that Reagan was calling to tell the president the United States ought to drop out of the United Nations. Specifically, he was upset with a U.N. vote that sided with mainland (as in Communist) China over the island of Taiwan.

Which it seems members of the Tanzania delegation began dancing about when the vote was taken in 1971 (a year before Nixon made his own visit to mainland China to try to restore relations).

And resulted in the Reagan-esque line, “to see those … monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”

To which Nixon chuckled, according to the tapes that are the source of reports in The Atlantic, which told of how the quip originally was withheld due to privacy concerns – which Reagan’s death in 2004 made a moot point.

THERE ARE THOSE acting as though this disclosure is some sort of revelation of great significance. As though we ought to be shocked and appalled that a public official could say or think anything quite so vulgar.

But let’s be honest; this was Ronald Reagan – the one-time actor who probably wishes we’d all remember him solely for playing the part of one-time Notre Dame football player George Gipp.

Remember that line about “Win one for the Gipper” that supposedly was a motivational speech to get future Fighting Irish gridiron guys to march to victory? And was one that Reagan fanatics used to like to play off of to describe their own attachment to the man?

But Reagan also is the guy who used to use the line on the California campaign trail, “A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.” Which was always good for a laugh amongst ideologically-inclined supporters who might then write out a campaign contribution check.

The 'trio' that made Reagan politically

WHICH CERTAINLY SOUNDS like it’s in the same spirit as claiming Africans were barefoot AND monkeys.

Heck, I suspect that if the line had become as publicly known as his “Tarzan” quip, the same people who thought that funny would have found the “Africans” line hilarious! And quick to dismiss people who are offended as being overly touchy.

Something to keep in mind whenever we’re forced to contemplate the legacy of the Reagan presidency – and the 1980s, in general.

For the real Reagan wasn’t anywhere near as polished as the cinematic image. Perhaps he should have had Robert Buckner, the writer of “Knute Rockne, All American” to script out his political life, as thoroughly as he did that film, which is recognized by the Library of Congress as a classic of American cinema.

Reagan's highlight? Or lowlight?

ALTHOUGH I MUST admit to always finding it a bit ironic that Reagan would mock “hippies” with Cheetah the chimpanzee.

Since the future president’s most prominent role as an actor was in the 1951 comedy film, “Bedtime for Bonzo,” where he was a college professor who helped to try to raise the namesake chimp with human morals.

Did Bonzo grow up to be a Republican ideologue spouting off much of the rhetorical nonsense we hear passing for political theory these days?

That would certainly explain a lot of 21^st Century trash talk!

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Blues Brothers as a pot product? No one’s going to Joliet (prison) for it

Maybe it sort of makes sense – John Belushi portrayed amongst his various characters a blues musician and singer (with his brother on harmonica).

It may well play off the idea of bluesmen as notorious reefer addicts. It may also have taken the sensation of marijuana to enable the “Jake Blues” character to endure his stint at the Joliet Correctional Center (for holding up a liquor store to get the money to pay off a motel debt his Blues Brothers Band incurred).

OR IT COULD just be that actor Jim Belushi is truly trying to play off the persona his late brother, John, left during his just over three decades of life (actually, at 37 years, he’s been dead longer than he was alive).

But somehow, there’s just something about the idea of Jim Belushi wanting to get into the marijuana-distribution business (now that it’s gaining the overtones of a legal business opportunity) that seems a little strange.

And not just because most people would have figured the comedic personas of Cheech and Chong would have tried to be the first people to become legal drug dealers.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported this week about how Belushi now operates the Belushi Farms in Oregon, where marijuana production has been legal the past few years. Now that Illinois has passed laws allowing for recreational use of the drug (as in you won’t need a medical prescription to avoid getting pinched by police), Belushi says he wants to gear up to begin sales here.

PRODUCING HIS PRODUCTS under the Blues Brothers brand name. As in it would be the only kind of marijuana product that a discerning customer would choose to use for those moments when he feels he has a “mission for God” to complete.

He talks about wanting to promote his business venture by literally driving the Bluesmobile (which according to the 1980s film was a one-time Mount Prospect police squad car) along Lake Street, with a marijuana “joint” mounted on the car roof rather than the big bullhorn that Jake and Elwood used to promote their big show at the Palace Hotel Ballroom.

I’m sure he’s going for the imagery of driving around under the ‘el’ tracks. But as anyone who remembers the Blues Brothers film, Elwood actually lived in a flophouse on the other end of the Loop – down around Van Buren Street, with the elevated trains roaring right past his window on a near-constant basis.

That is, until Jake’s former fiancé (remember Carrie Fisher) used her explosives stash to blow the building to smithereens.

OR, UNTIL IN reality, a downtown fire managed to destroy the real life building. Yes, I remember that as one of the first news stories I actually covered during my days as a reporter-type person with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

It will be intriguing to see just how all this plays out. Illinois may be the 11^th state to offer up legal versions of marijuana, but that means there are 49 states where it remains illegal.

And it likely will be that some of those states will be absolute holdouts, refusing to even contemplate any notion that marijuana could serve some medical benefits – let alone be something that people ought to be allowed to use if they so choose.

Which is why Belushi is trying to piece together a network that would be ready on that date in the future when marijuana use really can be a national product without any sort of stigma attached to it.

IT COULD BE intriguing if Jim Belushi – whose acting career pretty much peaked with the “According to Jim” television series (where he was partnered up with a pair of women – Courtney Thorne-Smith and Kimberly Williams – most definitely out of his league) ultimately wound up doing something that got him out of the shadow of being nothing more than “John’s Little Brother.”

And kind of humorous if the Blues Brothers image were to live on in ways no one would have dreamed possible back when John Belushi was a living, breathing entertainer.

Remember Bluto Blutarsky? Animal House?

And let’s not forget actress Kathleen Freeman’s “Sister Mary Stigmata” character, who to this day is probably rapping “Jake Blues” across his knuckles every time his behavior gets a touch out of line with none other than The Lord himself.

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EXTRA: Reality tops fantasy

It's the reason I find it incredulous anyone would ever consider writing fiction; I find that reality usually has a knack of coming up with even more outrageous things than even my addled imagination could ever concoct.

Take the Chicago White Sox employee who, on Wednesday, was called upon to do the "first pitch" duties. She wound up uncorking a wild throw so erratic that she hit a photographer who happened to be on the playing field at the time.

IT LOOKED ALMOST as ridiculous as the bit from the 1988 film "Bull Durham." Remember when actor Tim Robbins' "Nuke LaLoosh" character hit the bull mascot? And probably more memorable than either of the ballgames the White Sox actually managed to win Wednesday against the Kansas City Royals.

Of course, this first pitch attempt brings to mind the one time that Chicago Bulls basketball star Michael Jordan did the duties prior to a ballgame at Wrigley Field. Made worse by the fact that Jordan himself once tried playing professional baseball.

No wonder he never made it beyond the Birmingham Barons. He couldn't hit (only .202 batting average) or throw!

And now, this White Sox employee is being overly grateful for the fact that the ball club won't publicly identify her. Because you just know she'll make "blooper" videos for years to come, just like that moment when then-Texas Rangers outfielder Jose Canseco had a ball bounce off his noggin for a home run -- a more-memorable moment than any of the 462 home runs (16 of them during a brief stint he played for the White Sox) he clubbed with his bat.

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Farquhar tale brings Stratton Story to mind; will Danny have cinema-worthy comeback for Chicago White Sox?

What is destined to be the place that Danny Farquhar will hold in the history of the Chicago White Sox, and in baseball?

Farquhar recovering from aneurysm

Is the 31-year-old pitcher finished as a professional ballplayer? Or can he recover to someday take to the pitcher’s mound and play in a major league ballgame?

IF THAT WERE to happen, Farquhar could well turn out to be the 21^st Century take on Monty Stratton.

He was the one-time White Sox pitcher of the 1930s who managed to make an American League all-star team in 1937 and had Sox fans of that era convinced he was the big arm who would someday lead the team to victory (it actually took another couple of decades before the Sox became the “Go Go” guys who won that ’59 pennant).

But while Farquhar is the guy who a week ago suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm while pitching against the Houston Astros (collapsing while standing in the dugout), Stratton was the guy who suffered a hunting accident off-season.

He was shot in the foot, and it wound up having to be amputated.

The cinematic take on Stratton ...

BUT THE REASON why actor James Stewart (sort of the Tom Hanks of his era) felt compelled to play the part of Stratton in the 1949 film “The Stratton Story” is because ol’ Monty managed to teach himself how to pitch again – even though he had to use a prosthetic leg in order to move about.

To the point where he actually returned to the ranks of professional baseball, pitching for minor league ball clubs in Texas and managing to accumulate a record of 17 wins, 7 losses and a 4.17 earned run average in 1946.

Now I’m not saying that Farquhar and his story is destined to be the tale of a major motion picture with a Big Name star of immense sex appeal playing the part of his supportive wife, Alexandria (whom I understand was his high school sweetheart) similar to June Allyson playing the part of Ethel Stratton.

... and the real-life Monty

But when one considers that the aneurysm is a condition that could have killed Farquhar (he’d be the ballplayer who dropped dead in mid-game – although in not-as-dramatic a manner as the 1920 incident in which Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians died after being hit in the head by a pitch from Carl Mays of the New York Yankees – the fact that Danny remains amongst us is an achievement.

ON FRIDAY, FARQUHAR was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times to have actually taken “light walks” around the intensive care unit of Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center.

Not bad for a ballplayer who already had undergone two rounds of surgery for his condition during the past week and who, according to the hospital, remains in critical (but stable) condition.

It could well wind up that White Sox fans spend the 2018 season following the recovery of Farquhar, waiting for tidbits to let us know he still has a full life ahead of him with wife Alexandria and their three children.

Maybe he’ll even be able to return someday to baseball and give us a moment similar to that of The Stratton Story where Monty manages to finish out his time in the game on his own terms.

UNLESS YOU REALLY get that excited about determining how the 7-16 White Sox will evolve by 2020 into a pennant-contending team. Or, if you’re a Cubs fan, spewing a lot of trash talk about how it ain’t a gonna happen!

Danny presence remains in Sox bullpen 

And perhaps we can ponder how effective a role Farquhar would have/will play in a future White Sox championship team – a thought that may well be one that keeps Danny going forth these days.

Just as how I’m sure the fact that Stratton (whose bottom line stats include 36 wins and a 3,71 earned run average during five seasons with the White Sox) was able to return to baseball at some level was what kept him thriving in life, which lasted through 1982 at age 70.

Even though, I’m sure, for many fans “Monty Stratton” is just the name of a character from the James Stewart film that they occasionally see if they happen to stumble across a cable television channel specializing in old cinema.

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Can one really ‘give back’ a campaign contribution once money was spent?

Let’s say one thing up-front; the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein probably is a pig!

Weinstein still has his Oscar

The reports are coming out about how Weinstein has treated various women – including many who appeared in the films he produced. We may hear in coming days of more and more actresses willing to admit publicly of things they were pressured to do for Weinstein’s gratification.

BUT THERE’S ANOTHER thing we’re going to see a lot of in coming days – political people trying to rewrite history in ways that would make it appear they never relied on Weinstein’s financial support to get themselves elected to office.

For Weinstein throughout the years has been one of the big-money interests who has supported Democratic Party candidates for high-ranking office across the nation. It was supposed to be evidence that Weinstein was a “progressive-minded” guy with high-minded ideals on many social issues.

Now, we have many political people checking their campaign finance records to see how much money they ever received from Weinstein – and are now going out of their way to publicly make charitable contributions of their own for identical amounts.

Just a couple of examples include Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. – both of whom would like for us to believe they never took Weinstein’s money.

OBAMA: $61,900

WORKING ON WOMANHOOD is a Chicago-based group that has received $10,900 from Emanuel, and will get another $2,000 in the near future. The larger figure is the total of two donations Weinstein made to Emanuel mayoral campaigns, while the $2,000 is for a donation Weinstein made to an Emanuel congressional campaign back in 2004.

The Chicago Sun-Times also reported that $1,000 will be donated to the American Red Cross by Durbin – an effort to erase the contribution Weinstein made back when Durbin first ran for the U.S. Senate back in 1995.

Now before anybody thinks I’m trying to single out Emanuel or Durbin for abuse, keep in mind that I realize this is a common tactic by political people who certainly don’t want to be tainted by their ties to someone who later turns out to be scummy in nature.

EMANUEL: $12,900

There have been many charitable organizations used by government officials to try to erase their potential sins-by-association. I’m sure the organizations were able to put the money to good use.

BUT JUST AS I always thought right-wing idiots who wind up taking money from white supremacists or other leeches on our society shouldn’t be able to erase their stain so easily, I’m not sure that anybody should be so quick to dismiss the Weinstein affair.

What we really need is an honest accounting of his behavior and efforts to try to raise the level of conduct in our society so that we stop harassing women just because. Merely giving up some money that came from campaign contributions seems like a lazy effort to make the problem “go away” without doing anything to make it actually go away.

DURBIN: $1,000

Besides, my own gut feeling is that the money donated to campaigns by Weinstein certainly got spent years ago. Trying to give it away now doesn’t erase the fact that there was a Weinstein impact to the past elections.

It seems like a lazy response to a very real problem.

WHAT WE NEED is for people to speak out with more than their campaign wallets. Take former President Barack Obama (whose own presidential re-election campaign of 2012 received over $61,000 in Weinstein donations) – he and one-time first lady Michelle issued their statement denouncing Weinstein’s behavior and saying, “We should celebrate the courage of women who have come forward to tell these painful stories.”

TRUMP: Saying as little as possible about issue

Which stands out compared to the thoughts expressed on behalf of our current president. Donald J. Trump admitted recently that he knew Weinstein personally, and was “not at all surprised” to hear such stories.

Of course, Trump himself probably can’t go farther in being critical of Weinstein because there are many tales out there of pre-presidential Trump behaving in a boorish manner – many of which he told about himself throughout the years during appearances with broadcaster Howard Stern.

Which is just as much a problem as those elected officials who think they can make a perception problem go away by “returning” money they really spent years ago.

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Did Belushi/Ackroyd give Chicago history lesson w/ The Blues Brothers?

I’m honest enough to realize that “The Blues Brothers” isn’t classic cinema.

It came out the summer following by first year of high school – a time in life when I had the time to watch the many movies that were made. The film based off the Belushi/Ackroyd “Saturday Night Live” characters was long (and would have been longer if director John Landis had had his original vision approved), over-convoluted and in some points nonsensical.

BUT THERE IS one reason why I will never tune away from a showing of the film if I happen to stumble across it – the film depicts a segment of Chicago that just doesn’t exist any longer and never got much attention paid to it when it was around (unlike “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” which shows us the official take on touristy Chicago).

As someone who was born in the South Chicago neighborhood and who was raised in suburban Calumet City, The Blues Brothers was the film that was made in my home neighborhoods (although to be honest, there never was a Our Lady of the Blessed Shroud orphanage in Cal City that needed saving).

In fact, the closest to Calumet City that the film came was when they used the remains of the old Dixie Square shopping mall in Harvey (two towns to the west) for the chase scenes involving the Illinois State Police.

But the 95^th Street bridge, the Baptist church that served as the “Triple Rock Church” and home of the Rev. Cleophus James (a.k.a., singer James Brown) and the “Curl Up and Dye” hair salon where the late Carrie Fisher’s vengeful hair stylist plotted the Belushi character’s death.

ALL ARE PLACES I could take you to in the old neighborhood and show you where movies were made nearly four decades ago.

Even outside of the city’s 10^th Ward, the film gives us the sight of what was once the old Maxwell Street market where one could easily repurchase any item that might have been ripped off from you.

Or that flophouse of a residency where Ackroyd’s character lived (and which Fisher’s character took a bazooka to)? It was under the “el” tracks down on Van Buren Street in the South Loop (back when the area was decrepit), and I still remember one of my first assignments for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago was to report on the fire that destroyed the building for real.

So what brings all of this to mind? The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events likes to show movies on a giant screen in Millennium Park. Tuesday night will be a showing of The Blues Brothers. Admission is free and you can sit outside and get a laugh (unless you’re so politically uptight that you can’t bear the thought of watching a film in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Great Lawn).

MEANING BELUSHI (the native of suburban Wheaton) AND Ackroyd will live on, as will the music of the late Brown and Cab Calloway (“Minnie the Moocher” will never die because of this film).

And even that moment when we learn that Bob’s Country Bunker features both kinds of music – country AND western. Where we’re also subjected to a ludicrous Belushi/Ackroyd take on the Tammy Wynette classic “Stand By Your Man.”

The combination of elements of current Chicago and bits that are long past are something that always amuse me and make the film (along with “Medium Cool” from 1969).

The latter film showed us the Grant Park of the past that became the site of anti-war protests back in the Vietnam era, the Uptown neighborhood of old, and the lengthy shot early in the film of a man on motorcycle rushing videotape from an auto accident scene back to the TV studios downtown (riding along the length of Lake Shore Drive into the Loop) is one that captivates me because of the number of times I’ve made a similar drive during my life.

THERE'S ALSO THE Chicago of "Call Northside 777," but much of it is before my time, and was long ago subjected to the bulldozer. What a shame.

Yet those don't compare to the compare to the bit in The Blues Brothers when Illinois Nazis (yes, we all “hate” Illinois Nazis) wishing to kill the musical duo drive off the end of an incomplete bridge, and wind up soaring thousands of feet into the air before crashing down into a car-sized Chicago street pothole.

Which the Blues Brothers conveniently happen to drive right over in their one-time Mount Prospect police squad car. Silly? Ridiculous? Totally absurd? Of course.

But didn’t I warn you the film was nonsensical!?!

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Too many “Bonds” for Moore’s death to be definitive blow to film franchise

I’ll state one fact up front – when it comes to James Bond films, I do enjoy “Live and Let Die.” Particularly for its use of Paul McCartney on its film soundtrack, and its inclusion of the New Orleans scene for its storyline.
 

Moore at his Bond best

But I’ll have to confess that when I heard the headlines Tuesday of “Bond actor dies,” my gut reaction was to think “Sean Connery finally passed.” When I learned it was British actor Roger Moore instead, my reaction was along the lines of, “Oh, well.”

I KNOW I’M going to trigger a brawl amongst film buffs, particularly those who get into the Bond series of adventure films that we’ve been getting off-and-on for the better part of a half-a-century.

Yet those six films that starred Connery as the British secret agent with the license to kill people reach a certain standard that none of the other Bond film actors manage to do.

In terms of pure fantasy (and when you come down to it, how else should you view a guy who hangs around the casinos of Monaco, jets all over the world for adventure, and always finds time to romance the local fair maiden no matter how old he gets), they don’t get any more out-of-this world than Connery’s vision of the role.

So as for the death of Moore, I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter. But it’s not THE DEFINITIVE PASSING that we should think of. Although I’ll admit it’s more significant than the eventual passing someday of actor George Lazenby – who also took on the Bond role.

OR PERHAPS THAT of actor Pierce Brosnan, whose performance in the film “Goldeneye” always manages to capture the spirit of the Connery versions of the “Bond” films.

Pierce has his 'Bond' moments

As for the most recent Bond, I’ll confess that Daniel Craig’s take on the role just doesn’t do as much for me. Although he probably does appeal to the people who are most interested in action sequences rather than the Bond-like campiness leading up to them.

I always figured Craig’s Bond was the kind of guy who would stand up to actor Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” Callahan character (bearing his gaudy Smith & Wesson .44 caliber “hand cannon”), disarm him, then show the “superiority” of the Walther PPK.

Pit Craig's 'Bond' in a boxing ring ...

Whereas Connery’s Bond was the kind of guy who managed to get out of a jam by planting his “Playboy Club card” on a corpse – thereby giving the brief impression that he was dead, and thereby able to leave the scene undetected.

ALTHOUGH I’LL GIVE Moore’s “Bond” character one bit of praise. Like I already mentioned, it gave McCartney a prominent place that led to him getting one of his post-Beatles hits with the title theme song to “Live and Let Die.”

... against 'Dirty Harry'

Considering that Connery’s “Bond” was the guy who in the film “Goldfinger” said that lukewarm Dom Perignon champagne was, “as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”

Yes, this commentary is a collection of fluff and trivia. Although perhaps it also is a way of coping with the misery of the British explosion at a concert this week that managed to kill 20-plus people.

Religious fanatics in the form of ISIS, thinking they have accomplished something grand in the name of Allah, have taken credit for that attack. Although I suspect if we had a real-life “Bond,” he’d already be on his way to the Middle East to infiltrate the group, commit an act of vengeance, and perhaps taste for himself a few of those unspoiled virgins who supposedly are the prize for those kind of nutcases.

SO WHAT SHOULD we do to pay tribute to Moore, who admittedly starred in seven “Bond” films – one more than the six Connery did.

Do we have a collection of Bond actors throughout the years gather together to pay tribute to Moore – drinking a “shaken, not stirred” martini in his honor? Even though fans of televisions “The West Wing” remember when actor Martin Sheen’s “President Bartlett” character mockedP such a martini, saying, “James is ordering a weak martini and being snooty about it.”

Now that's the real "Bond, James Bond"

Perhaps they’ll then gather around and watch “Live and Let Die,” writhing in excitement as Moore’s “Bond” avoids being eaten by crocodiles while also trying to bed the mystic “Solitaire.”

Although if they want the ultimate Bond experience, they’d have to tune in to my personal favorite – none tops “From Russia with Love,” and no Bond girl (in my mind) tops the loveliness of Italian actress Daniela Bianchi!

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EXTRA: No more for 'mystery' woman packing flamethrower and an M-16

I still recall a moment from a bus tour of Chicago I once took – not one of those floofy types of tours with a double-decker bus where we see the Hancock Building and other downtown structures.

This one was of the Calumet area of Chicago on the Southeast Side, and I still remember at one point our bus was passing through The Bush when the guide pointed out a dumpy little storefront at 85^th Street and Burley Avenue – telling us that it was used as a set for that 1980 film “The Blues Brothers.”
\
SURE ENOUGH IT was the building that once had the sign on it identifying it as the “Curl Up and Dye” hair salon – which appeared in one scene where Carrie Fisher (who was the mystery woman out to kill John Belushi’s “Jake Blues” character) was reading the field manual for the proper way to use a flamethrower.

Just one of several weapons she burnished during that film (ultimately relying on an M-16 military-style assault rifle for the scene where she finally caught up with Jake, her one-time fiancé who had spurned her).

As a native of the nearby South Chicago neighborhood, it always amused me to think that Fisher (who by that point had already given us her hair-bun adorned performance in Star Wars that most people are remembering Tuesday as the high point of her career) was actually once in The Bush.

Which was, at its peak, a neighborhood for the people who actually lived in the nearby steel mills that used to exist, and now is a place for their extended families who for whatever reason haven’t been able to move on with their lives.

NOT EXACTLY THE kind of place that would be expected to have a Hollywood-style tinge to it. Although the nearby 95^th Street bridge over the Calumet River is the one that will forevermore live for the scene where the Blues Brothers drove their car over its open expanse.

That is what popped into my mind when I learned Tuesday that Fisher, who was 60 (which is barely older than I am), died from complications due to that heart attack she suffered during the Christmas holiday weekend while riding on an airplane.

Fisher, who appeared in, and directed, a string of films during an interesting career that also included authoring some books, is no longer with us physically. Although her memory will live on through the output of her work -- which really does consist of more than just an absurd hairdo or a "gold" bikini -- that we’ll be able to check out for decades to come.

Then, there's the great unanswered question -- is Fisher's mystery woman character now traversing the heavens in search of Belushi's "Jake Blues" still seeking revenge? Or does Jake finally "do right" by his woman, and they spend eternity happily ever after?

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EXTRA: Somebody’s been listening to too much Charlton Heston lately

WALSH: Oh, be quiet!

"On Nov. 8, I'm voting for Trump. On Nov. 9, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket. You in?"

  -0-

That Tweet (from a Twit) came from the former member of our very own state’s congressional delegation – Joe Walsh, who served one two-year term as an ideologue from Illinois before the people of his congressional district came to their senses.

Obviously, he’s someone who has been influenced by the NRA rants of the late actor Charlton Heston. Which makes me wonder if next, he’ll come up with some way of shouting at Dems, “Take your stinkin’ paws off me, you damn dirty ape.” Perhaps as they're taking him away for being a crazy person waving around a musket in public?!

Walsh's role model?

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EXTRA: More ridiculous film premise – Major League or Rookie of the Year?

What with a Cleveland vs. Cubs World Series taking place this week and early next, it has me wondering about a pair of baseball-themed films from recent years and trying to figure out which was more absurd.

As in the “Major League” series, or “Rookie of the Year.”

YOU LIKELY KNOW of the Major League films as the source of many one-liners that oft get repeated as gags during baseball games. There even are moments when all those high-tech video boards inside modern-day stadiums are used to show snippets of them for laughs.

And it was the Major League series that gave us that eternal philosophical question – can Jesus Christ hit a curve ball?

Then, there was Rookie of the Year – a film largely intended to be something that parents can take their children to see. It tells the tale of a 12-year-old boy who suffers a freak injury to his throwing arm that makes it possible for him to throw 100-mile-an-hour fastballs.

Because the kid supposedly lives on Chicago’s North Side, he signs a contract to pitch for the Cubs. And supposedly leads them all the way to a playoff game, when his arm supposedly snaps back into place and he begins throwing again like a not-particularly-athletic 12-year-old kid.

ALL IN ALL, a ridiculous premise. But no more silly than a film that answered a ballplayer’s request to snap out of a hitting slump and sacrifice a chicken by providing him with a bucket of Kentucky Fried.

Although I always thought the Major League series, which uses the Cleveland Indians as its heroes in humor, to be more absurd. The sequel film Major League II was the low point – because it was the one that treated the Chicago White Sox as the all-powerful team that needed to be vanquished by an underdog Indians squad.

Not even the most drunken of Sox fans would ever think that their team was all-powerful – except at offering up the best-tasting Polish sausage at the ballpark concession stands.

Perhaps we’ll just have to answer back with a showing of “The Monty Stratton Story” or "Eight Men Out." Or “The Kid From Left Field,” which in 1979 starred Gary Coleman at the peak of his “Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout Willis!” fame as the youthful pseudo-manager (it's really his father, Robert Guillaume of "Benson" fame) who leads the San Diego Padres to a World Series appearance against none-other-than the White Sox. Which truly is absurd!

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EXTRA: What a crash!!!

I realize it was mere fiction. But there’s a part of me that, every time I’m in Chicago’s Union Station, wants to go find the spot where the train locomotive crashed its way off the tracks and into the station lobby in the film “Silver Streak.”

That 1976 film was the first of several that paired up the duo of comedian Richard Pryor with actor Gene Wilder. Its storyline of Wilder’s character seeing a murder occur on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago passenger train is a bit ridiculous. But the two did show a natural pairing that was enhanced four years later in “Stir Crazy.”

AND YOU HAVE to admit, that finale scene of the train crash into the lobby is something you don’t forget. That and something like the scene in “Running Scared” where we see bags of cocaine being dumped all over the floor of the Thompson Center state government building – thereby upsetting a youthful actor Jimmy Smits who played the heavy in that particular film? Yet another image that pops into my head every time I have reason to set foot in the state building.

Along with that old Mount Prospect squad car jumping over the 95th Street bridge in "The Blues Brothers," that would be a "top three" in my mind. It’s scary that some of the images of Chicago that stick most closely in my head are things that never really happened – even though I can picture every lasting detail.

Anyway, all these images are what popped into my head when I learned Tuesday of the death this week of Wilder -- whose career may well extend beyond those films he made with Peoria native Pryor. Particularly that train crash!

Yet they are among the bits of cinema that I truly can never tire of, finding myself stopping to watch them anytime I happen to be flipping through the mass of channels of programming we now have to pick from and stumble across them.

Beat that scene for a film finale!

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Gary? Waukegan? No idea too crazy for that Lucas museum in search of a home

I couldn’t help but chuckle Wednesday night while in Gary, Ind., where I was covering a vicious, meandering and often confusing debate related to federal immigration policy and corrections when a member of the city’s Common Council suggested the Hoosier city as the perfect place for that museum filmmaker George Lucas is so desperate to build.

Maybe I just have to be different, ...

Seriously, Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade said that seeking projects such as the Lucas museum (which is supposed to feature pop culture and media arts) is what her home city ought to be trying to attract, rather than seeking a detention center project that already has been rejected by Joliet and so many other south suburban communities.

NOW I DON’T seriously expect anybody from Gary will try to get into the Lucas mix, now that it appears Chicago blew its chance (as did San Francisco previously) to be the location for the museum that would have potential to attract so many visitors ONCE.

Although if you think about it, Gary also is on Lake Michigan and could offer up a lakefront site. Which supposedly was the reason Lucas was eager to come to Chicago to begin with.

It actually is the same line of logic being used by people in Waukegan – where municipal officials seriously are trying to urge Lucas and his wife, a Chicago native, to locate to that lakefront city to the north.

The one-time home of comedian Jack Benny would, in their eyes, also become the home of Darth Vader. Would the Sith lord suddenly start telling gags about being perpetually 39 years old?

NOW I DON’T expect the Lucas museum to come to either of those communities on the fringes of metro Chicago; places whose best days are in the past.

But it does make me wonder about what kind of community would feel compelled to get into the Lucas mix, now that his museum is once again a free-agent in search of a home.

How desperate does one have to be in order to want to make a bid for the project by now? Let’s consider that Lucas has already managed to spurn both Chicago and San Francisco.

 

... but i always preferred these Lucas films

You’d think he’d be developing a reputation as some sort of character; a crackpot of sorts who is difficult to deal with.

PARTICULARLY SINCE IN Chicago, it seems Lucas had his heart set on a lakefront site. People who suggested that perhaps it would be best for the city to locate such a museum in a different part of the city so as to boost attention there were viewed as malcontents.

As for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, he still seems with his rhetoric like he wants us to believe he’s holding out hope. Almost as though he’s in a foxhole with the enemy (Imperial stormtroopers, perhaps?) rapidly charging his way – and he’s down to a single round of ammunition with which to fight them off.

The “Blame Emanuel” people likely will never forgive him for this loss. Even those people who, deep down, didn’t want the museum here. They just like being able to say that everything is Rahm’s fault!

I suspect this project will wind up in some third-rate town willing to kow-tow to the cinematic set, where it will eventually be lost in a sea of mediocrity.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always been skeptical of this particular project – the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. It sounds like such a high-handed concept, whereas I think the kind of people who would want to visit are definitely low-brow.

Show them a real-life piece of Norman Rockwell’s art, and they’ll be complaining, “Where’s the Wookie costume?” Viewing scene sets and props from the Star Wars films, many will expect – as they think in Yoda-speak.

It reminds me of a museum exhibit that passed through Chicago a few years ago devoted to the sinking of the H.M.S. Titanic back in 1912. All those artifacts that divers brought up from the ship’s wreckage – and the item that caught the public fancy was the movie set of a staircase where Leonardo DiCaprio romanced Kate Winslet in that 1997 film.

 

Does anyone envision the Lucas museum in the city of  "The Music Man?"

Somehow, I think we will wind up dodging a bullet (or perhaps a shot from a stormtrooper’s blaster) if this project winds up elsewhere.

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