Will Asian Carp assault Chicago, Lake Michigan similar to the way Godzilla terrorized Tokyo in the movies?

It has long been the fear of environmentalists that Asian Carp, a breed of fish considered particularly devastating to our ecology, is someday going to manage to work its way into Lake Michigan and the surrounding of the Great Lakes.

Have Asian Carp arrived at Lake Calumet? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

So it is with much trepidation that there is now evidence indicating that the Carp have made it past the electronic barricades further south near Romeoville (which the Army Corps of Engineers installed thinking that was the absolute solution to keep the Carp out of Chicago) and are now in existence in Lake Calumet.

FROM WHICH, IF they really have made it that far along the path, only now have to swim upstream through the Calumet River for about seven miles through Chicago’s South Side and will then be in Lake Michigan proper.

The Asian Carp, who initially were released accidentally into the Mississippi River somewhere down near New Orleans have managed to make it up across the nation, and across our state through the Illinois River and could now be about to take over the lake that is pride and joy to our Chicago.

Which, of course, will have many people eager to blame Chicago for letting the Asian Carp loose – even though one could claim it was the ineptitude of those who initially let the Carp loose down south who are truly to blame.

From Lake Calumet mouth to Calumet River … 

But the reality is that there’s nothing that can be done to undo the damage in the mighty Mississippi. But we can still hope that our officials can act in ways to bar them from Lake Michigan.

SO WHAT’S THE big deal about the Asian Carp? The fact is that the Asian Carp feed on anything and everything in their paths.

In doing so, they’ll devastate the ecosystems of whatever water supply they manage to get to. In a sense, everything that is alive and thriving now in Lake Michigan could wind up becoming barren, if the Carp make it that far.

And the reality is, we may well find there’s nothing we really can do to stop the Asian Carp from making the final stretch of their journey to Lake Michigan and all the other Great Lakes.

and up the river, past the Chicago Skyway bridge

If they’ve managed to work their way north from New Orleans to Chicago this far, what’s to make us think there’s anything that can be placed in their way during the final seven-mile stretch of the Calumet River?

NOW IT SHOULD be noted that the Asian Carp proper have not been found in Lake Calumet itself. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said last week that traces of DNA from Asian Carp have been found in the lake’s water.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the DNA could consist of evidence of skin cells, secretions and feces (just think, fish poop), and that those substances could well have been in the bilge water of the ships that pass through the area – if not the Asian Carp themselves.

Too bad the Asian Carp can't read signs!

It could be just genetic junk, and not the fish themselves that have made the lengthy journey from down south. Which means that rather than blaming Chicago for letting the Carp into the Great Lakes, we ought to be thinking in terms of whether or not Chicago will be “heroic” enough to prevent the trip from being completed.

I suppose we’re now on the lookout for the Asian Carp, which have been sited by the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam – located just south of the lake – to see if they’ve made it a few miles farther north to the lake proper, then well on their way to the “big” lake itself.

IT WILL BE intriguing to see what kind of last-ditch measures our federal and state officials (Gov. J.B. Pritzker has written to the Army Corps of Engineers offering whatever assistance the state can provide) can concoct to try to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

Will we see some new sort of technology devised to try to barricade off Lake Michigan? Or are we destined to see the same kind of electronic barricades erected at the mouth of the Calumet River headed into the lake as one last-ditch attempt to kill off any sort of creatures?

Will the Asian Carp be reminiscent of Godzilla films?

Is it inevitable that Lake Michigan (and the other Great Lakes) as we now know them are doomed? Or can they be saved?

It makes me wonder if we’re destined for some sort of story in our future resembling the old Godzilla movies – with the Asian Carp being a threat to our ecological well-being and threatening Chicago similar to the way the cinematic dragon-like creature used to terrorize Tokyo!

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N.Y. “pop” ban good if it hurts gougers

Yes, a part of me thinks that New York City municipal officials are being ridiculous for expending their precious time on trying to pass a ban on movie theaters selling those ridiculously-absurd sizes of extra large cups for soda pop.

BLOOMBERG: Health nut? Or idle hands?

You’d think Michael Bloomberg would have better things to focus on, and I suspect that is the motivation for many of the 51 percent of people who said in a recent poll that they oppose the mayor on this issue.

BUT I HAVE to confess, a part of me wishes that some Illinois-based official would push for a similar restriction.

Not because I believe that Bloomberg’s stated goal of improving the overall health of New Yorkers will be achieved by not letting them be capable of buying the obscenely-large cups that are sold.

But because I see it as a rebellion against every single snotty kid who works in a movie theater concessions stand and engages in an aggressive pitch to try to get me to buy the larger size because “it’s just a quarter (or 50 cents) more.”

I understand that the kid could care less what I buy, that he’s merely a minimum-wage worker, and that he’s following the instructions of his boss – the theater manager, who is pushing those larger sizes off onto people to bolster the bottom line of his particular theater.

WHICH LIKELY IS part of some large chain and that has some computer printouts available that judge the manager in question on how much pop and popcorn he can peddle.

Because I realize those $10 per person tickets for the actual admission to the theater don’t do anything for the profitability. The movie producers get the bulk of that money.

The theaters make their money off all the junk food they can sell you.

And to ensure that they can charge us prices that we would never pay in the real world (a.k.a., a Walgreen’s or a Jewel or perhaps a real candy story), they come up with those humongous sizes.

WE THINK THAT we’re getting our money’s worth when we pay something like $6 for a cup of soda because it’s somewhere around 48 ounces.

But who in their right mind is going to drink all of that in one sitting?

It’s either warm and/or flat by the end of the two hour-plus cinematic production. Or you actually managed to guzzle it all down, and you’re now thoroughly disgusting to everybody around you because you’re belching up a storm.

All that gas from having drank so much pop.

IT’S EVEN MORE disgusting than some of the films that are passed off as “horror flicks” but are really just collections of grotesque images strung together.

And if the only reason that exists for having such deformed sizes of pop cups in existence in movie theaters is to bolster a cineplex’ financial bottom line, that just isn’t good enough to me to justify it.

Let them die!

It wouldn’t bother me in the least to see more rational policies put into place when it comes to concessions. It has got to the point where I don’t go to a movie theater all that often just because I don’t want to be confronted with an orgy, so to speak, of obscenely-sized candies and cokes.

OF COURSE, I also have to admit that the main reason I don’t go to movie theaters regularly is because I can’t stand the crummy selection of films they show.

Just this week, my local theater (part of the Marcus chain) is showing Madagascar 3 and Prometheus on three screens each, along with Men in Black 3 and Show White & The Huntsmen on two screens each.

I suppose I should feel thankful that they have the Dark Shadows film restricted to one screen, and are not giving us that everywhere we look.

All in all, it reduces the number of films that actually get shown locally. I don’t like to have to make the long haul of a drive to see a worthy film that gets squeezed out of my local theater to enhance the “viewing opportunities” for certain dreck to be overplayed.

WHICH IS TO say that I think many of us are depriving ourselves of the chance to buy those perversely priced pop cups because we think the films themselves stink!

And we’ve certainly come a long way from the days when an animated hot dog, popcorn and pop danced across the screen, urging us “all (to) go to the lobby” to get ourselves a not-so-overpriced treat.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I sort of agree with one-time Illinois Statehouse news broadcaster and state Attorney General spokesman Abdul-Hakim Shabazz that this pop cup ban is a nonsensical issue that Mayor Bloomberg should not be wasting time on. So I'll sort of support his "Do nothing" candidacy for public office at a date yet to be determined. A non-endorsement for a non-candidacy.

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