As a matter of fact, yes, I *am* ready for some football

& the best collection of back-to-school tips EVER!

9-1-2022 (issue No. 51)

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.

This week

• Musings on football

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Watch catalytic converter thieves at work!

• Marilyn Lemak’s biographer comes to her defense

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• A reminder to ask me anything

• Back to school tips — words for the soon-to-be-wise

• The Weekly Schmich — thoughts on the end of summer from a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist

• A promo for “The Mincing Rascals” podcast

• Re:Tweets — this week’s finalists

• Tunes of the Week — That’s right, plural, tunes

On the grid (iron)

College football begins in earnest this weekend with a full slate of games, and the NFL season kicks off a week from tonight. I’m delighted. Football is an exquisitely designed sport, a complex tactical battle and intense physical clash that contains frequent pauses of about 30 seconds during which the fan can consider what just happened and ponder what’s likely to happen next.

Baseball also has frequent breaks for reflection and anticipation in the action, but often the situation from one pitch to the next is fundamentally identical and the options for opposing players are limited if you compare them to the options in play on both sides of football’s line of scrimmage.

Football is a new chess game on nearly every down. I will watch any close game in the fourth quarter even when I have no rooting interest in the outcome because of football’s seemingly limitless possibility for surprises. And I try never to miss any of the action with teams I do care about — the University of Michigan, my childhood team as well as my alma mater, and the Bears because it’s so fun to follow them in a Bears-crazy town.

I go through withdrawal after the Super Bowl every year and revive again in September, when the return of football compensates for the end of summer.

Yes, I know, it’s a brutal pastime that has damaged too many brains:

In 2017, (the Journal of the American Medical Association) published a major and disturbing finding. Researchers had collected the autopsied brains of 202 former football players who had donated their brains to science, or had them donated via their next of kin. The players included those who had played in the NFL, but also those who only played through college, and a few who had only played in high school.

Of the 202 brains, 177, or nearly 90 percent, were diagnosed with CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) ,a degenerative brain condition). And there was a pattern: Those who had played football longer were more likely to have worse brain damage. Among the former NFL players in the sample, 99 percent had CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. (Vox)

The risks have been known for a long time. Nearly 10 years ago, another Tribune columnist cited those risks as he pronounced football “as dead as the Marlboro Man,” soon to “be relegated to the pile of trash sports, like mixed martial arts or whatever is done in third-rate arenas with monster trucks and mud … the province of people with face tattoos.”

Not quite.

Fortune reported early this year how well the NFL did last season in the all-important metric of TV viewership:

The 272 regular-season games averaged 17.1 million viewers over television and digital platforms, a 10% increase over 2020 and the league’s highest average since 2015. During the season, NFL games accounted for 91 of the top 100 telecasts on television, according to Nielsen. …

A 2021 Ipsos poll asked Americans if they were fans of various sports. A majority, 51%, said they were fans of professional football; no other sport even cracked 40%.

I’m the last person to ding another writer for bum predictions. And I do feel some cognitive dissonance at how much I enjoy watching a sport that I would never have let my sons play. But it’s not like those who do choose to play are oblivious to the well-documented risks or are forced against their will to subject themselves to the collisions and other bodily traumas inherent in the sport. But there are the benefits — in fitness, camaraderie, scholarships and, very occasionally, generous salaries.

Most of us learn to live with at least a little dissonance between our actions and our environmental and humanitarian values. We rationalize, compartmentalize and go on wearing clothes sewn in overseas sweatshops, for example, enjoying the results of factory farming and blithely cheering for our favorite football teams.

The ability of college stars to profit now from the commercial uses of their names, images and likenesses — NIL — is a bit of balm for the conscience because it makes the college game feel less exploitive.

And I’m all for rule changes to make the game safer, including further limiting helmet-to-helmet contact and eliminating kickoffs where players tend to reach great speeds before colliding.

I’m intrigued by the soft helmet coverings that many NFL linemen have been wearing in practice and a training camp the last two years. They look a bit like turtle shells, and ESPN.com reports that they reduce force impact by up to 10% for professionals and up to 33% for high school players, which may help reduce concussions.

One drawback has been the caps don't deflect off each other as easily as the hard helmets that create a glancing blow. That slightly increases the chances of a neck injury.

Asheville, North Carolina Citizen Times guest columnist Dennis Justice laid out the case for keeping obese players off the field with weight limits in a 2017 guest column:

I propose a 10-year phase-in, jointly announced from the (National Federation of State High School Associations), the NCAA and the NFL. Three years, no change. Then each year you must weigh under a specific BMI 24 hours before kickoff or you’re suspended (like in amateur wrestling, boxing, MMA, etc.), starting at under 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, and finally 30.0. A 6’ 2” person like myself can still weigh 229.8 pounds (still technically “overweight”). Less obese football players will open up the game. Better football anyway. This is not “radical” at all. Sprint Football is played in college and they have a hard limit of 178 pounds.

I’d be in favor of that as well as a law banning organized tackle football for those under 16. Kids can develop plenty of football-adjacent skills playing flag football, and they are arguably too young to make informed decisions about tackle football until they’re in high school. We ban dogfighting, after all.

Meanwhile, if I may have a word with my fellow Michigan fans: As much as it goes against every impulse we have and all we have been taught to believe, we must root passionately Saturday night for Ohio State to beat Notre Dame in the titanic season opener for both teams.

I know, I know.

But death is not an option. And both these dreaded rivals are in the AP’s preseason top five (we are eighth). We do not play Notre Dame this season, so they stand to grab a spot in the four-team season-ending playoff, a spot that could be ours if we beat Ohio State and win the Big Ten championship game. Beating an Ohio State team that has beaten Notre Dame will add luster to our playoff resume — if we still have one at the end of the season — and will add savor to our lives, no matter what our overall record.

Last week’s winning tweet

donni saphire @donni

Slowly, Waldo's wife and Mr. Sandiego started putting the pieces together.

A search suggests that @donni was the first to offer this joke on Twitter, but I’ve seen a lot of variations on this theme.

The winner of the separate “dad jokes” tweet poll was a groaner so often stolen and passed off as original that I have no idea who came up with it:

“Just got hospitalized due to a peekaboo accident. They put me in the ICU.”

Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.

Gone in 40 seconds

Wednesday’s Tribune had an excellent Page One story on the rash of catalytic converter thefts here and across the country. It said the thieves “work like pit crews to jack up or slide under a vehicle, saw off the device and abscond with the goods in a matter of minutes.”

It’s more like a matter of seconds.

In the video below posted by the CWBChicago crime blog, the time between when the thieves set foot on the pavement until they are back in their car with the purloined converter is approximately 40 seconds.

The story says that one person who has been twice victimized “parks her car as close to her bedroom window as possible, keeping a watchful eye on the street below.”

Bad idea. Police will tell you — as they told neighbors on our Northwest Side street recently — that it’s unwise to interrupt cat’ thieves at work. You will note in the video that the two accomplices standing guard are armed.

From CWB:

Just four days before the footage (above) was recorded, a catalytic converter team shot a 54-year-old man who intervened in a theft in the 7200 block of North Oakley, according to Chicago police. On July 28, a 57-year-old concealed carry holder was shot when he intervened in a catalytic converter theft on the 2200 block of West Oakdale in North Center.

Don’t be a hero.

Meanwhile, I’m very skeptical that spray-painting the converters will deter thieves, who quickly resell the devices to those who strip them for the precious metals they contain. I can’t imagine spray paint being a deterrent, and Bruce Bekkerus, owner of A-1 Automotive and Transmission Service in Moorhead, Minnesota expressed similar skepticism to Ratchet and Wrench in their article “Painting Catalytic Converters: Does It Work?”:

Police have said the scrapyards won't buy marked catalytic converters, but Bekkerus had one too many experiences with salvage yards buying parts even after he alerted them that a particular part had been stolen from them and they should hold off from purchasing it if any come through.

Any salvage yard buying sawn-off catalytic converters is almost definitionally complicit in this crime, and I suspect the thieves are using other avenues anyway.

From the Trib:

Another solution gaining traction is the installation of locking devices that make catalytic converters less accessible to thieves looking to cut-and-run.

A Toledo company has built a booming aftermarket business with its CatClamp, a wire cable cage that attaches to the exhaust system. The device starts at $181 and runs north of $900 for heavy duty trucks, and can be installed by do-it-yourselfers or mechanics.

Kate Brueggemeier, general manager at CatClamp, said business is up 40-fold during the pandemic.

The war against cat thieves can’t be won on the streets. It has to be won by going up the chain to bust those who are buying the stolen goods and those who are buying the precious metals from them.

Marilyn Lemak’s biographer comes to her defense

The following was written by Janet Lagerloef, a writer from Sugar Grove who is finishing up a book about her 10-year friendship with Marilyn Lemak, who is serving a sentence of life without parole for killing her three children in their Naperville home in March,1999. In last week’s issue, I covered the details of that crime and Lemak’s bid for executive clemency based on a claim that high doses of prescription Zoloft had warped her thinking and made her delusional. Tuesday’s issue (now unlocked) contained a raft of reader responses, to which Lagerloef’s comments here were addressed:

An antidepressant saved me. For the vast majority of users, antidepressants are perfectly safe. But I was one of the millions of lucky ones — Marilyn and her children were tragically not.

Here’s a telling quote by retired FDA scientist, Richard Kapit, M.D.

“I had always thought the drugs (SSRIs) had the potential to cause manic episodes, and manic episodes are frequently accompanied by violence. I accepted that in rare patients it could cause them to become manic and suicidal. I don't think I doubted, or anyone doubted, in rare patients that could be true.”

Houston attorney Andy Vickery wrote Marilyn’s clemency petition. He has represented many tragic involuntary intoxication cases. Here is an excerpt from my book:

One year before Marilyn killed her children: On February 13, 1998, in Gillette, Wyoming, Donald Schell, after two days on Paxil, shot and killed his wife, his daughter, his eight-month-old granddaughter, and then shot himself. Andy represented Schell’s son-in-law, Tim Tobin, who was the husband of Schell’s daughter, and the father of his granddaughter. Tim was convinced the man who carried out this massacre was not the man he knew.

In June of 2001, the Tobin case went to trial (five months before Marilyn’s trial began). Andy put everything on the line professionally and financially. GSK brought in a million dollars a day in gross revenues, and Andy had a small, albeit successful, law firm in Houston.

“I had to psyche myself up,” Andy told me. “I’m on my white charger. I’ve got my lance. But from the other side of the courtroom, I think I appeared like a little shepherd boy with a slingshot. Their wealth and power is infinite.”

Andy Vickery won. The jury awarded Tim Tobin 6.4 million dollars, and it remains the largest settlement in an involuntary intoxication case. “And maybe the best part,” Andy said, “is that the truth of these stories could no longer be ignored. It opened the door for me and other lawyers, advocacy groups, and scientists to bring the evidence to the attention of the regulatory authorities. The FDA could no longer bury its head in the sand.” Andy’s verdict helped pressure the FDA into requiring the first black box warning on SSRI’s at an open advisory meeting in 2004.

Ten months before Marilyn killed her children: On May 28, 1998, in Los Angeles, Brynn Hartman killed her husband, Phil Hartman. Phil was the popular star of Saturday Night Live in the 1980’s, famous for his impression of Bill Clinton, and at the time of his death was starring in NBC’s sitcom NewsRadio. They were about to film their fifth season when Phil’s wife, Brynn, shortly after beginning Zoloft, killed him and herself. Phil and Brynn’s two young children were suddenly orphans.

I happened to watch John Hartmann, Phil’s brother (Phil dropped one “n” from their last name when he entered show business), in a documentary about his family’s tragedy, which aired on the Reelz Channel. John said that he believed Zoloft was the reason his sister-in-law killed his brother. I found a phone number for John, a music executive in California; he took my call and generously answered my questions.

“Brynn saw a doctor for depression and was prescribed Zoloft,” John said. “Not long after, she shot my brother and then herself. The media said she did it because she was jealous of my brother’s success in show business after she herself had several failed attempts. There’s some truth to that; she was jealous of my brother, but suggesting she’d orphaned their children over it was preposterous.”

John researched and became convinced Zoloft made her do it. “Nothing else made sense,” John told me. “I learned these crimes are covered up by Big Pharma. I had to forgive Brynn for killing my brother. It wasn’t easy, but it simply wasn’t her fault. Even my mother forgave her, and her son’s death destroyed her.”

Greg Olmstead, Brynn’s brother, came to the same conclusion. He contacted the best attorney handling these cases: Andy Vickery. Andy filed a lawsuit against Pfizer, the maker of Zoloft. “It settled quietly out of court, for an undisclosed amount,” said John. “The money was put in a trust for the children. Pfizer was certainly aware of the enormous publicity this case would have generated.”

Thirty-three days before Marilyn killed her children: On January 30, 1999, Ryan Ehlis shotgunned his five-week-old daughter, Tyra Lynn, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Andy represented him in a criminal trial.

“Ryan Ehlis was hearing command hallucinations —caused not by Zoloft, but by Adderall, an equally powerful psychoactive drug,” said Andy. “I went to the prosecutor and explained the effects of these drugs and implored him to drop the murder charges against him. And he did, saying, ‘It was the right thing to do.’”

On November 28, 2001, the day after Marilyn’s trial began: Twelve-year-old Christopher Pittman walked into his grandparents’ bedroom in Chester, South Carolina, as they slept, and shot and killed them both. This is the tragic story that still brings Andy to tears, not only as an attorney, but also as a grandad. What made Christopher’s action so hard to believe was that he’d recently run from Florida to his grandparents’ home for refuge when his mother abandoned him for the second time, and his father hit him yet again.

It was five months after Andy’s groundbreaking Tobin win when Christopher’s father contacted Andy. Andy agreed to defend his son pro bono, because he thought if anyone could save this boy, it was him. “Christopher had a rough life, but he was a good boy,” said Andy. “Before starting Zoloft he’d never been in trouble.”

Andy showed the prosecutor in Christopher’s case what the prosecutor in the Ryan Ehlis case had done. He explained that Christopher, just after starting Zoloft, killed the two people who were his only real saviors in the world. “I thought the prosecutor would set this boy free, or at a minimum send him back to juvenile court where, at the worst, he would get out by age twenty-one,” Andy said. “I was wrong. Then I was sure I could convince the jury. Wrong again.”

Christopher’s case became nationwide news and Andy was interviewed by 48 Hours before the trial began. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. “I wasn’t prepared for that,” Andy said. “I was devastated. Still am. It ripped my heart out.” Christopher was sentenced to twenty-five years and is eligible for parole in 2026.

It was three years after this verdict in 2004 that the FDA finally agreed to the black box warning for adolescents. “Unfortunately, it was too late for Christopher Pittman because he’d already been prescribed Zoloft,” Andy Vickery said to a nearby reporter at the FDA meeting. "Two things might have happened. The doctor may not have given it to him, or he might have provided him with the appropriate warnings.”

“I wonder if things would have been different for Christopher and his grandparents had the warnings come three years ago,” Andy mused, as he walked away. — Janet Lagerloef,

---

RxISK, a Toronto-based website that for 10 years has been collecting and publicizing information on “the unintended consequences of prescription medications” posted a four-part series on this case over the summer if you’d like to read more.

• Marilyn Lemak’s Trial and Punishment (July 5, 2022)

• Marilyn Lemak Then and Now (July 12, 2022)

• Marilyn Lemak Clemency Hearing (July 19, 2022)

• Marilyn Lemak: When the Music Stops (July 26, 2022)

And I should point out again that DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin’s office has filed a response in opposition to Lemak’s clemency petition, categorizing her actions as “rageful” and saying prosecutors “do not accept” that “Zoloft made her kill her children.”

Land of Linkin’

• “On Adventure With Dad” is a Facebook page, Instagram account and book created by Kenny Deuss that features often horrifying photoshopped images like this:

  

  By the way, Adobe seems to have all but given up trying to discourage people from using “photoshopped” as a lowercase adjective to describe an image digitally altered by any number of computer programs that can doctor photographs. For a time, the company was urging us to say and write “enhanced using Adobe Photoshop software," but no.

• Substacker Judd Legum reports: “In a petition sent to Google executives earlier this month, a group of 650 Google employees demanded … that Google stop supporting ‘politicians and any political organization…responsible for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade,’" as the company has been doing.

• Have you received a very official-looking email with the subject heading “Invoice from Billing Department of PayPal”? It’s a scam.

• In “Editorial misses the mark on public art argument,” members of the Chicago Monuments Project take a whack at the Tribune Editorial Board. “Removing a monument does not erase history. We live with the generational consequences of historical acts. They underpin our structures and systems, cultures and identities. We do not need to glorify inaccurate representations to remember the past.”

• Here’s what could happen when an election denier becomes a chief election official (Politico). I’m not at all persuaded that making it harder for people to vote will harm Democrats and help Republicans as the Trumpalos seem to think.

• Mount Everest viewed in drone video. Stunning!

• I’m gung-ho about electric cars and look forward to buying one as soon as I can put to bed my “range anxiety” over the difficulty of keeping such vehicles charged during long-distance trips. And it remains unclear to me how car owners who don’t have access to a garage — many city dwellers, for instance — will be able to manage. But Slate writer David Zipper brings up another issue I hadn’t been aware of: EVs are much heavier than traditional cars and so stand to cause more deaths on the road.

• Why QR-code menus are still around (CNN). “The tech solves problems that restaurants have had for years. … QR codes let restaurants update pricing and availability quickly and without added costs.”

• Bookmark my 2023 Chicago mayoral scoreboard, a frequently updated list of who is in and who is out and who is still on the fence.

• I was one of Patrick Pfingsten’s guests on “The Illinoize”{ podcast this week, a supplement to his Substack that focuses on state politics. We discussed the results of his recent poll that were very grim for Illinois Republicans.

• The Picayune Sentinel on the air: On Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., WCPT-AM 820 host Joan Esposito and I chat about ideas raised in the new issue. The listen-live link is here.

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

AMA reminder

In next week’s issue, I will mark the one-year anniversary of the debut of the Picayune Sentinel with an “Ask Me Anything” feature where I will field questions readers might have about, well, anything.

I don’t promise to answer every question, and you may assume from my reticence what you will. But please, fire away!

Back to school tips

When our twins entered high school in 2011, I wrote this list of tips for them:

• Leave nothing for the morning. Before you go to bed, gather your books and assignments, pack your lunch, charge your phone and lay out your clothes. Drama and anxiety are no way to start the school day.

• Strive never to be late. Tardiness is a sign of disrespect to teachers and fellow students.

• Remember names. It’s a way to at least pretend that you’re not utterly self-absorbed.

• Never gloss over unfamiliar words when you’re reading or pretend to understand something that you don’t. Having a broad and ready vocabulary will not only help you on the standardized tests and college admissions exams, but it will also help you think and allow you to express yourself better. “Can you explain that again, please?” or “I don’t think I understand what you mean” are smart, not shameful, things to say.

• Don’t sweat the “relevance” question. A lot of what you’ll have to learn won’t seem important or directly related to your goals. And, honestly, a lot of it won’t be. Within a few years, you’ll forget most of the facts you’ll stick into term papers or regurgitate on exams. What you won’t forget, though, is how to attack an assignment — how to research, analyze, criticize and refine; how to tell good ideas from bad ones.

• Keep a calendar and make lists. If you manage your time well, school will not make you nuts. Create and keep to a study schedule and an assignment calendar that has larger tasks broken into intermediate chunks with their own deadlines. Staying caught up in your classwork is the most important and, for some, the hardest aspect of school, as it requires limiting the time you spend socializing and entertaining yourself by staring at screens.

• Be kind. When you’re older, you’ll regret all the times you were careless with the feelings of others, and you’ll remember fondly those who accepted and included you when they didn’t have to. You can’t be admired if you’re hated or feared, and being admired for your good character is the most noble ambition there is.

• Shrug off your insecurities. Even the popular kids have them, as I’ve learned in frank conversations at reunions. No one thinks about or notices your particular imperfections nearly as much as you imagine them, and it is a sign of strength to laugh at yourself.

• Trust those who love and care about you. Believe it or not, the teachers and parents and other relatives who will ride you hard (if you’re lucky) really want you to succeed. And despite their advanced age and cultural cluelessness, they can and want to help you through just about any academic or personal problem you’ll encounter. They’re on your side.

When they went off to college four years later, I distilled what I thought of as wisdom into to three keywords for them to keep in mind as they set off:

Perseverance.

College amounts to an attempt to fulfill a lengthy succession of goals, some of which you set for yourself, some of which are set for you by others. Realizing these goals requires that you make plans and stick to schedules, even when you'd rather be doing something else.

It means you need to be on time and not blow deadlines. It means that when even diligence fails, you should reach out for assistance — a boost from teachers, counselors, mentors, friends, even parents. They usually care more than you know and will often be in your corner for the long haul.

Curiosity.

Cultivating a sense of wonder and asking questions is how best to engage with the subjects you study and the people you meet. Learning and maturing are interactive, not passive, experiences.

We all fight the temptations of self-absorption and complacency. Even beloved newspaper columnists. But you’ll learn more, and people will like you better, if you are (or can force yourself to pretend to be) interested in others and in topics you presume are dull.

If you’re not asking questions, you’re just going through the motions.

Perspective.

Dark nights of the soul are virtually a prerequisite for graduation, as are mornings of shame and epochs of self-doubt. You likely will earn some lousy grades, disappoint people you care about and, if you’re lucky, have your heart broken in a way that toughens you up for the inevitable relationship challenges ahead.

Think long term about these and other setbacks. Learn from them, vow to do better and remember that even total failure isn’t the end of the world at your age. The road to professional and personal fulfillment often zigzags and sometimes doubles back. Have patience, and keep steering toward the goal, even though that goal will not always be clear.

Readers added their own keywords in the flood of email and comments that followed:

Discipline. Commitment. Self-reliance. Determination. Responsibility. Preparation. Attitude. Balance. Organization. Motivation. Accountability. Attendance. Attention. Integrity. Resilience. Resourcefulness.

This list was starting to sound like an even more earnest version of the Scout Law (“ ... trustworthy, loyal, helpful ...”). But reader Alan Tarot offered a counterpoint: “Your son and daughter don’t need three words,“ he wrote. “Only one. Passion. Passion will provide a person with perseverance, curiosity and a long-term perspective.”

photo by Mary Schmich

Mary Schmich on the end of summer

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:

It's the last day of August. The light shifts. The air.

We cry "What? No! How?"

This is a column I wrote at this time of year in 2018, which expresses my annual combination of dismay and gratitude when August ends:

Several days ago I got an email from a friend who was taking a few final days of vacation. She’s a teacher, which means that unlike those of us who can tell ourselves that summer lasts through September, she knows hers is almost gone.

She described her 72 hours of walking by the water, driving tree-lined streets, lingering over coffee.

Her vacation report wasn’t dramatic. No cliffs climbed or rapids run, no foreign countries conquered in a week, just the essential summer pleasures of taking life at a slower pace than normal, taking time to notice the air, the light, the flowers.

“Home tonight,” she wrote as she signed off. “Then back to school. Another summer. Again, a gift.”

Another summer. Again, a gift.

Ever since I read those words, they’ve been lodged in my brain like a song hook.

This is the time of year when those of us who live in the cold climates have to admit we’re on the summer downhill. I know I say this almost every year, but that’s because it happens every year.

Facebook fills up with back-to-school photos. There’s a day when the temperature doesn’t crack 75. Then there’s a second day. And is that a yellow leaf on a tree?

Here in late August, the present tense fades to past.

Listen to the conversations around you and you’ll hear it: How was your summer? What was the highlight of your summer? Who did you see? Where did you go?

Was. Did. As if it’s over, which for most people it nearly is.

But rather than lament what’s fading, it’s good to remember that it was a gift, still is.

All summer I’ve thought about one of my best friends, who died in May …

Read the rest of Mary’s column here or here on Facebook or at the Tribune website.

Minced Words

Host John Williams welcomed me, Jon Hansen and Mark Guarino to “The Mincing Rascals” virtual roundtable this week. Hansen offered a very personal defense of the drag queen bingo event in the public library in his once and future hometown of Downers Grove. We also got our grump on about “drifting” and catalytic converter thefts, among other topics. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

A rough transcript of the show is here for those who prefer to read or who might want to try before they download.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• So, the robber shouted, “Everyone lay down!” Then I said, “‘lie’ down.” Oddly enough, I was the only one shot. — @Scottzilla667

• Being a Marine is brutal. First day of boot camp they cut your hair without so much as a, “What are we thinking today?” — @kipconlon

• Stop singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" when you're at the damn ballgame already. — @fullykrausened1

• Gemini (May 21-June 20): Mars is in retrograde making you gullible enough to believe vague statements apply to you & 1/12th of the population. — @RickAaron

• On your first day in prison, go up to the biggest, baddest dude in the yard and tell him that orange is not his color. — @GianDoh

• Who is Rorschach and why did he paint so many pictures of my dad being disappointed? — various

• Apparently “undercarriage” isn’t part of the sexting vernacular. — @Shade510

• They should announce a sequel to “Groundhog Day” and then just re-release the original. — various

• When David Cassidy sings "I think I love you / So what am I so afraid of?" I bet his ex takes a huge swig of rosé and yells, "INTIMACY!" — @boobsradley

• Just once I want a doctor to ask if I've been eating enough potatoes. — @blueeyesgreene

Vote here in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tunes of the Week

Last week, I told the story of when I got the chance to choose one song to play during the morning-drive show on WXRT-FM 93.1 in the summer of 2002. One song to share, to sum up my musical tastes and perhaps in some ways my personality. I settled on “Under the Summer Moonlight” by Garnet Rogers. I asked readers to tell me what song they’d choose if given the chance. Here’s what they sent in:

Ted B. 

Bob E. 

 Darrah

Jeanne DeVore

John Duffy 

Shaun Hoffmeyer  

Colleen K.

Steven K. 

 Tom Knoff: 

Marc Martinez

Joan Pederson

Peggy

Pete Prokopowicz

Jenni Roberts 

I’ll do this again sometime, as there are some very wonderful songs in here that I’d somehow never heard before. If you want to submit yours either in comments or via email, please include a YouTube link. I’ll save them up.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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