The "fried chicken rebellion" at the state house???

Apparently state house Speaker Michael Madigan doesn't want people to eat at their desks on the floor in the House of Representatives chamber and there are some members who wants to change that rule according to Ward Room:

On Saturday, though, one hungry politician rose to condemn that rule. Every year, Rep. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, caters a fried chicken lunch for the entire Capitol. Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Pecatonica, wanted some of that chicken. But the House was in session, and being a conscientious legislator, he didn’t want to leave the floor for the designated chicken-eating room behind the chamber. So instead, he rose to make what is known as a “point of personal privilege” to criticize Madigan’s “Hey, this isn’t a diner” policy. The Speaker instituted the no-eating rule six years ago, after the House chamber was renovated.

“In the Illinois Senate, if you’re hungry and someone provides chicken, you bring it into your place and you sit down and you eat it like the grown adults each and every one of us is,” Sacia shouted, to the applause of his colleagues. “This is not a partisan issue. We all worked hard to get here. We go into the finest restaurants, and they don’t stuff us into a little room in the back and tell us, ‘Sit down and eat.' This is a shame, Mr. Speaker, when one non-elected person makes the rest of us act like children who can’t even handle a spork and dribble out of both sides of our mouth. This is a beautiful chamber. We should be allowed to eat in here.”

Sacia is correct. Senators are allowed to eat at their desks. I have personally witnessed Sen. Emil Jones III stuffing his face with something out of a white paper bag. I think it was popcorn.

Madigan’s spokesman, Steve Brown, says the Speaker is only trying to enforce the same standards as the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, which also ban eating.

“There’s no reason to turn this into a mess hall,” sniffed Madigan spokesman Steve Brown to The Dome Blog.

Hard to argue with having the same standards at the federal counterparts in Washington. It shouldn't be that much of a problem to allow legislators during the course of a session to eat at least once at their desks in their respective chambers.

The year 1999 as shown in the year 1966!

[VIDEO] How about a little fun today?

This video was made in 1966. It seems there were a lot of films made back then to depict the future. And surely those who made such films saw the year 2011 as a different world. Of course if some of those film makers were put into our current year it probably would be the same world as theirs. Of course I can only image how the year 2111 would look. That just has to be a different world right.

Of course, this video strikes me as not very liberating towards women. It still assumes that the man pays all the bills. Although for some out there passing the bills off to someone else would be very liberating now would it?

So the wife does her shopping on a PC (well the 1966 version) and in addition to that she checks the monitors around the house in keeping with her domestic duties. The husband is more of a geek here as he has three screens to look at. Also it appears he uses a stylus to write an "e-mail" to be sent to anyone around the world.

Of those three screens the husband uses he uses one of them to check his account information. So he's looking at his wife's bills as she went shopping "online". I'm not sure the husband was happy as he printed off his information.

Well some aspects of this video was off, but in concept, it was dead on!

Mary Shmich on The Chicago Code...

Watching The Chicago Code right now, found this column via Sloopin. She noted a couple of fans who have started their own campaigns to save the show. But the excerpt are Shmich's comments:

When "The Chicago Code" premiered in February, I was not an instant fan. The writing was better than average, the plots were ambitious, and Chicago, even in the broken neighborhoods, looked as gorgeous as a tourist brochure. Still, something was slightly off in the pace, the dialogue, the tone.

But week by week, like a stiff new shoe that loosens up, the show has gotten better.

The story, centered on a corrupt alderman played by the riveting Delroy Lindo, tightens like a blood pressure cuff. The annoyances — constant references to the Irish mob, some bad Chicago accents — have either diminished or I've gotten used to them. I've turned into a big fan and think there's an untapped audience for the show.

When word got around Tuesday that I was writing this column, I started hearing from fans from all over.

Several Chicagoans said the show has introduced them to parts of the city they didn't know existed. Out-of-towners said it made them want to visit. Some noted the jobs it brought to the city and the exposure it gave Chicago talent.

And all of them raved about the good acting and uncommonly intelligent, adult plots. Sadly, those credentials don't rival the allure of the show's usual 8 p.m. time-slot competitor, "Dancing with the Stars" on ABC.

Yet Ford and her fellow fans reach for crumbs of hope. Monday's ratings were up 12 percent among viewers 18 to 49. And was it a happy omen that the come-on for next week's show referred to the "season finale," not the "series finale?"

Next week's finale, by the way, is called "Mike Royko's Revenge." I knew Mike, the late, great Tribune columnist, well enough to believe he would have liked "The Chicago Code."

And he'd have let the genius TV executives know just how dumb it was to let such a good show die.

I mistakenly referred to this week's episode as the "season finale" on my Twitter page. As noted in the quote that episode will in fact premiere next week.

Hmmm, another book to add to the book list in the sidebar, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko. I need to find it and read it however

FOX cancels "The Chicago Code"

I was just starting to get into the show. Read a comment at the Entertainment Weekly article that this show should go to FX. There should be a campaign to get this show a second season somewhere on the TV dial. This really is a good show that should've been renewed. Especially since it was a bit of a midseason replacement.

Besides FX was the home of another creation of Shawn Ryan, a little known show that ended it run within the last two years called The Shield. There's got to be room on FX for another cop drama!

April Fools Comes Late to the Sloop?

April Fools Comes Late to the Sloop?

There's more about this at Curbed Chicago. It seems this was a hoax by a group with an agenda and they took aim at a company that owns a power plant that already operates in the city. A clean power ordinance was stalled recently in the Chicago City Council that would've forced this company to switch from coal to natural gas.

One way I suppose to at the very least bring attention to a subject. Although to be honest I know very little about whether or not coal or natural gas is much cleaner fuel.

Rehabber wants to grow grapes, make wine in sweet home Chicago

 

[VIDEO] This is a fascinating idea. Turning an abandoned, boarded-up landmark home into an urban vineyard to grow grapes and make wine. In addition to teaching people how to make wine. I'm giving great credit to the young man well he's not so young any more who wants to make that a reality.

BTW, here's more about this historic landmark referred to as the Raber House located at 5760 S. Lafayette Ave.

Bill Lavicka's renovations have always been unusual. The veteran rehabber and owner of Historic Boulevard Services has trucked four buildings intact from one site to another, converted small churches into homes, remade entire Near West Side blocks and showcased his quirky aesthetic by topping spires and balusters with bowling balls.

But the next remodel he has his heart set on raises the bar on unusual. Lavicka wants to turn a boarded-up Washington Park mansion, one of the city's last surviving examples of a multiacre country estate, into a winery.

And he doesn't want to import the grapes.

He wants to plant about 5,000 vines in the yard — what's now three or so bombed-out-looking blocks along the Dan Ryan Expressway just south of Garfield Boulevard.

Complicating matters, the vacant land and long-neglected mansion are owned by the city of Chicago. For nearly two years, Lavicka, 66, has been trying to persuade the city to sell 40 to 50 lots that were once part of the John Raber estate to him for $1 each, plus commit to streetscape and road improvements, and subsidize part of the renovation in some way.

Ald. Willie Cochran said Wednesday that he is "confident this deal will get closed," saying the winery would be approved along with an adjacent urban farm and new park with a baseball field. But details remain to be ironed out, and those will have to wait for the new mayor's input, he said.

The project, Lavicka said, has taken longer to plan than it would take to remodel.

"I probably like the buildings more than wisdom would allow, or should allow," Lavicka said as tears began to fill his eyes. "I can take an old building and fix it up, and everybody else goes by for years and years saying knock it down."

I hope this can happen. I'm all for finding creative ways to revitalize urban areas. Just another plan for an urban farm in an area with land that well real estate developers haven't discovered yet.

Via Bill Baar!

YouTube Blog: Mashups, parodies and lip dubs: Ask a legal expert...

YouTube Blog talks about Fair Use and how YouTubers are able to take clips from other media sources without being sued for copyright infringement.

Another "original" YouTube cited fair use in one of his videos. I used "original" to say that he posted videos people watched starting a short 8 years ago. Man it's unbelieveable how long ago that was.