Greatest scene from greatest baseball movie

I've got it posted here at Just One Bad Century. Tell me I'm wrong.

Video Vault

Have you seen this yet? This is the bizarre pre-show ritual that Jackie Bange and Robert Jordan go through before they do the news at Channel 9. It was captured on video, and posted on the Tribune website...

E-mail Box

I got this e-mail yesterday...


Hi Rick,

I just wanted to email you or John Swanson to say that this book is one of the most useful resources I've ever come across for beginners in the industry so thank you very much for taking the time to write it.

Its great to find someone as openly enthusiastic about University (yes, I'm from England) radio as I am. I started a Film & TV Production course at University and after some experience at hospital radio I quickly realised I wanted to be radio producer but there's no student station here. I have been spending the last year trying to persuade the university to help raise the money to build one but there's a surprisingly low amount of interest!

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you both for this book. It's very helpful and gives me a bit of insight into the American radio industry too.

Regards

Liam

Father Knows Nothing

I continued to write for my NWI Parent blog while I was on blogging hiatus here. If you like the Suburban Man column, you may like my column "Father Knows Nothing."

Columns from the last month include...

The Oma Game (a story about the unique present my kids made for my mom).

Dumb Dad (a couple of videos to make me feel better after not being about to help my seventh grader with his math homework)

The Saga of 8 Eyes (the unforeseen dilemma caused by my middle son Johnny getting glasses for the first time)

and my 2008 Christmas letter.

There will be a new Father Knows Nothing on Sunday, and I'll also link to it here.

Blackhawks at Wrigley

I did watch that Hawks game yesterday, but I couldn't help but think..."How much did people pay for those seats in the bleachers?" Those looked like pretty crappy seats.

When this game was first announced, we had a little fun with the concept over at the Beachwood Reporter. We called it "Take Me out to the Hawks Game."

Just One Bad Century

Even though I wasn't posting on this blog for the last month, I have still been busy over at Just One Bad Century.

I finished up the "This Week in 1908" feature (one last one coming on Monday--it didn't start until the second week of January last year), told stories about guys with nicknames like Jittery Joe, Jigger, The Human Icicle, and the The Hoosier Hammerer, and featured the last few mustaches in my Great Mustaches feature.

I also wrote about some very bad Cubs shortstops like Dick Bartell, Lennie Merullo, Roy Smalley, and Gene Mauch. Read about those guys and you'll feel like we're living in the Cubs golden era right now.

This year I'll be unveiling two very cool new features at Just One Bad Century. I'll let you know more about those as we get closer to their unveiling.

Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Til Next Year

In December a new book came out called "Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting til Next Year," and it contained an essay by yours truly.

Long time readers of this blog may be familiar with the essay I wrote. It first appeared on this blog during the summer of 2007. It's about the Cubs-White Sox rivalry, and how my White Sox friends are mostly unhappy people who hate the Cubs more than they love the Sox (I believe the actual quote was people who "eat sunshine for breakfast"), particularly my good friend Dave. Dave is thrilled to be immortalized in the pages of a Cubbie book.

It really is a good book. There are essays from famous authors like Mike Royko, Rick Kogan, James Finn Garner, Jonathan Eig, Robert Goldsborough, Randy Richardson, Scott Simon, Dave Hoekstra, and Sara Paretsky as well as local media celebrities like Lin Brehmer, and Mike Murphy. It's available here, if you're interested.

Happy New Year!

I'm back in the saddle again. Happy New Year everyone.

This year I'm going to be doing the blog a little differently. I'm not going to have regularly scheduled features on this blog, but I'm going to be posting more--not less.

It will be more of a traditional blog. I have 30 or more mini-features I'll be doing exclusively on this blog on a semi-regular basis, and I'll be linking to my full length pieces that I'm writing for various publications elsewhere (instead of re-posting the entire pieces here).

Each of the elements of my previous blog will remain in some form. Suburban Man is now going to be called "Father Knows Nothing," but it's the same column, and it will still appear weekly at NWI Parent. I'll be linking to each column here.

The various elements of musings will remain. I'll still be posting jokes, linking to articles that interest me, and posting funny pictures and videos. I just won't be doing them all at the same time once a week. Keep sending 'em in. I'll post 'em when I get 'em. That way I'll be more timely.

As for the media stuff, I'll still be doing weekly interviews with Chicago Radio personalities (starting up again soon), but I won't post the entire interviews here. I'll just link to them. I also won't be doing a full media notebook anymore, but when something big happens, I will post a link to the story along with my analysis.

The Cubs stuff at JOBC will still be coming fast and furious too. I'll post links to what I'm working on over there on this blog.

And finally, I'll have some new stuff coming too.

I hope you don't mind. I've been feeling a little confined by the old format and I'm just going to write what comes to my mind. Plus, to be totally honest, I'm working on so much other stuff now (including my next novel), and I need to be as flexible as possible.

My hope is that the blog becomes a little easier to navigate. With this new format it should be easier to skip over what doesn't interest you without scrolling forever (a common complaint).

I'll start up again tomorrow with links to what I've been working on while I took a blog vacation.

Happy New Year!