The Hendrix Experience, with only a one point deduction from the Russian judge.

Holy guitar strings Batman! Just sat through 3 amazing hours of modern interpretations of Jimi Hendrix's indelible music. Billy Cox from the original Band of Gypsies, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeshi, Johnny Lang, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Sheppard, Ernie Isley, David Hidalgo, Brad Whitford, Chris Layton, Living Color, and last but not least Joe Satriani, all took turns making this one of the most memorable concerts I have seen in years. And even slightly disappointed in no-show Doyle Bramhall II, the night was a 10. OK, the music was a 10, but I have to give the night on a whole a 9 for one dubious reason.

Not to distract from the awesome display of guitar fueled rock that spanned from the beautiful (Wind Cried Mary), to the powerful (Foxy Lady), to the psychedelic (3rd Stone From the Sun), I still have to take away a point. It wasn't for the 90 minute drive through rush hour traffic, we were not in a hurry. It wasn't for the $30 for 3 hours of parking, a deal no doubt. And it wasn't for the $5 lemonade either at the Chicago theater, (half a bottle of what is overpriced at $1.79 at a gas station, but I digress). Nope, I have to detract a point for the couple that sat to my right.

When we took our seats, about 20 rows back, there was nobody in our row. As the seats filled in, the pair to my right remained empty, and I hoped that it was some rich asshole who bought the tickets on a whim, only to wimp out and stay at home favoring a couple of vodka tonics and a re-run of Wall Street on HBO. Even the girl right in front of me was about 5'4". Awesome. Right up until the lights went down, and the woman from hell took her seat. First thing I noticed was the over abundance of perfume. She could have left the bottle at home, but instead smelled like she had just bathed in it in the ladies room. When the first song started, as people do, she worked herself up into a frenzy, screaming over the singer. But it wasn't a Yeah! or a Whoo! Ever heard the battle cry of a blood lusting terrorist? That shrill scream that sounds a bit like a Native American from the frontier days? Over and over and over, all bloody night long. And it came at the most inopportune times. Not, say, at the end of the song when everyone else is whooping and clapping.

And there were other annoyances. Like trying to have a conversation with me in the middle of one of the guitarists personal stories about Jimi. Would have been nice to hear that. Or her telling me she had to go pee as she was stepping on my foot attempting to squeeze down the aisle. To much info, but thanks. But as they left, I was thinking that maybe I would get lucky and her boyfriend would switch seats with her. That is until he stepped on my foot as well, thus allowing me to know what it's like to have a 400 pound man step on your toes. And they did this like 3 or 4 times, always in the middle of a song, always ruining a moment when I could have otherwise been enjoying some amazing music. We never left our seats, but the approximately 600-650 combined pounds of human flesh needed to go in and out like they were subbing at a basketball game.

The night was not ruined, as it sounds like here. Just a minor point deduction for atmosphere. In the end, I did got my wish. The boyfriend sat next to me when they returned, forget about using that armrest. Hell, forget about using the right side of my seat. The people behind us must have thought my buddy and I were gay, the way I was snuggling up to him. (He did smell nice) Thus is the moral of today's story. An amzing night no doubt, but be careful what you wish for.

Holy crap, what the hell is that?

Everyone has there morning routines, right? Some jump out of bed, put on the running shoes, and hit the pavement. Some wake up their spouse and play hide the salami. Me, I'm less ambitious, but monotonous just the same. Feed the cats, start the coffee, grab the paper, and read it cover to cover. At some point between the sports and Zwecker, I move from the dining table to the throne room to do a little side business. Like I said, I am regular and robotic, in more ways than one. Anyone or anything that disturbs the morning routine is heavily frowned upon. Thus it was today as I was leaving the throne room.

Without getting extremely technical or disgusting, lets just say when it comes to colors, you really only do expect to see only two. I mean, it's either yellow or brown right? If there is on occasion red, then yea you would probably seek the opinion of your doctor. But as I gazed at the wonder I had created this morning, I was dumbfounded. You're not supposed to see green. Had I consumed too much seaweed last night? A few California rolls, but that was minimal. Sometimes too many carrots will give way to an orange tint, but this is weird. I did eat like crap, pardon the pun, yesterday. I am not proud of it, but 2 trips to McDonald's with a hot dog squeezed in between is not exactly living like Euell Gibbons. But what in the hell is that I am looking at? Should I call the emergency room?

It was the wife, finally, who figured it out. A slave to the trend, I cannot make it through the St. Patricks Day holiday without partaking in the most sacred of traditions, the Shamrock Shake. Green dye. Who knew?

Big Brother vs. The Common Man: No contest.

They are no sure things in life, except death and taxes so the saying goes. Just when you think you have something all figured out, a curve ball out of left field blows the lid off of your theory. Most of the time. But I think I have found another sure thing. Bring up the words "abortion" or "guns" in an election year, and it is a virtual certainty that the left and the right will put each others in their cross hairs and pull the metaphorical trigger.

Abortion is the one topic that really leaves me scratching my head going, huh? I mean, every election year, the same tired arguments are rehashed over and over. Does anyone really believe that that the supreme court is going to overturn the infamous Roe vs. Wade? Some actually do, but I don't. And when a politician uses RvW as a cornerstone of their platform, I am thinking, Is this all you got?

But today's real topic is the matter of guns and the Supreme Court case of McDonald vs. Chicago. Jesse Jackson, Mayor Daley, and Neil Steinberg all seem to think that we will all be better off if we leave well enough alone. That is, let the really nasty bad guys have all the fun while the rest of the city sit at home hoping that tonight isn't the night when some lunatic with no soul is going to bust through a back window and shoot us while we sleep as a favor to a friend. I am talking about the Darien murders and how today's headlines could read, "Hero Father Only Doing His Job: Protecting His Family", or "Slain Gunman's Motive Still Unknown". Yes, you can argue semantics, like Darien isn't Chicago, but I don't think I really need to pull out any instances of this happening within the city limits, do I? Jesse argues that the real meaning of the second amendment was to ensure that militia's would be adequately armed when called upon to fight for their country. But is there a big difference in fighting to protect a union or fighting to protect your family? Yesterdays Confederate soldiers are today's Latin Kings, both are/were trying to disrupt your very way of life.

I know the counter-argument. A gun in the home leads to accidents that we can avoid by not having a gun in the home. Which in turn leads me to the point of my morning rant, and is in effect the very thing that really puts gas in The Guitarman's tank. The dumbing down of the world to save us from ourselves. Just because some people are too ignorant or too stupid to take the precautionary measures of ensuring accidents will not happen, the rest of us are protected for our own good. Whether it's guns in the home, no turn on red signs at every intersection, warning labels on lawn mowers, or whatever, because of the stupid actions of a few, the majority has to suffer. Big brother is here to protect us from ourselves. Thanks for that, but I would prefer to make a few decisions for myself. Like whether or not I want to be at the mercy of some loser pointing a gun at me in my bedroom at 3am.

Look, I am sure the founding fathers could not have imagined the world we live in, nor the debate that still rages on today over the 2nd amendment. They didn't have to deal with gun-toting, soul-less gang bangers in 1776. There were no stop lights. There were no lawn mowers. And there certainly weren't lawsuits with punitive damages in the gazillions of dollars because someone burned their thighs on a cup of McDonald's coffee. But I can only guess here, that they probably leaned toward less government and giving people the benefit of the doubt. Something that seems impossible today, given the path on which our government walks. A path that will no doubt lead to helmets and body armour for all so that we won't hurt ourselves when we trip over a crack in the sidewalk and get a boo-boo on our chin.

A Close Encounter Of The Rodent Kind.

So today as I was getting home around 4:30, I did what I normally do when it's winter. Grab as much of the crap that is turning my van into one of those curbside garbage cans that I can, and carry it into it's respective place. First stop, recycle bin. With my lunch box, cell phone, car keys, McDonald's bags filled with garbage, and sunglasses all being deftly clung to by one or more fingers, I try and drop the empty water bottles into the little yellow recycling bin just inside the garage door. It was at that precise moment that I had a close encounter of the rodent kind.

No, I am not afraid of mice. I used to have them as pets. Until the little buggers started breeding like, er, mice. One or two is cute. Five or more is Willard. And it wasn't a rat. Never seen one in Gurnee. Saw a couple in Chicago that were big enough to pull a dog sled, but never here. Nope, I was about a foot and a half away from the gaping, hideous, hissing mouth of a possum. Scared the freakin' bejesus out of me! I actually went Nyaaahhh!! You know that sound, the one that Curly would make in every episode when something was wrong. He, or more likely she looking for a place to have some little hissing babies, was all nestled up with a pizza box as a bed and a newspaper as a blanket.

So I dumped my load of crap in the house, and tried to get the little bastard to budge. He wasn't going anywhere. I kick the bin. He hisses again. At least I think he's hissing when he opens up and bares his teeth in crocodile like fashion. I grab a stick and push the bin into the driveway. He ain't budgin'. So finally I turn the thing over thinking it would freak out and scamper, but apparently freaking out and scampering aren't exactly in this guys repertoire. So I lift the bin and shake the contents out, including the offender. He finally gets the hint, but just before he waddled away around the corner of the house, he looked at me, and in one instant he said with his eyes, "You fucker! I was all warm and cozy, the perfect spot! Food in the big blue thing right next to me, no blistering wind blowing up my ass. What gives you the right to kick me out into the cold, bitter winter again!" Or something like that.

Last night the wife had me look in the garage because she swore she heard something. I tried to give a listen, but he must have been playing possum at that point. And is it possum, or opossum? Does it matter? They have the grossest, most hideous, evil, snaggle-toothed grin of any animal out there. Except maybe the hyena. But I guess a possum is sort of a rodent-like hyena. But who's laughing now bitch?

The invasion of the teen-aged teenager!!

Our house, by most standards, is modest. Not a lot of room for us to spread out. When we moved in, it seemed bigger I remember. I guess because the kids were smaller would be as good a reason as any. But I feel some days like there is nowhere to go. Wife napping up in our room. Girls watching TV in living room. Boys, well duh. Playing video games in the basement. It's what they do. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the teenagers are taking over our house. And not just mine.

A two teenager household, as some of you can attest to, is hardly ever a two teenager household. It's, on average, more like 3-5. They seem travel in packs and secretly coordinate their plans to all be in my house at the same bloody time. But I'm the cool dad, I can't say no. And it's getting to the point now that when the younger friends of my 16 year old son are actually the same age as the older friends of my almost 14 year old daughter, the hormone factor comes into play and that raises the ante considerably. Now I have to keep an eye on them again. Damn, I thought I was done with that when they were like 6.

And dare I mention the food? Holy crap they graze like stoned Australian cattle that have the munchies. $200 at the Jewel is gone in a weekend if I don't hide some of the stuff. The basement is littered with empty bags of chips and pop tart wrappers and water bottles and cereal boxes. And I swear something is wrong with my son. I thought I was going to have to scoop out the toilet kitty litter style this morning, I shit you not.

In the summer it's easy. I kick them outside and lock all the doors. But in the dead of winter with spring break teasing us with like 4 weeks to go, we're like that puff ball John Belushi squirted out of his mouth. I'm a zit. Get it? All of us little powder kegs ready to explode at any time. I can't wait for vacation. At least the only teenagers I will be dealing with for a week will be mine. I hope.

Counting the days, yea.

I can see it on the horizon. And I swear I can smell it. That early morning smell that says, "...the little caplets of dew evaporating into the morning sunshine that will soon give way to the slight gulf breeze wafting across your nasal passage as droplets of sweat wind their way off your torso like miniature streams beginning to form..." Got it yet? You know that smell the minute you step off the airplane, or the first morning you wake up in a strange bed. I am talking about VACATION. I am talking, of course, about southwest Florida.

Our home away from home for every spring break since I can remember. We love Ft. Myers Beach. Love everything about it. The crowd, the beach, the mini-golf, the fishing charters, the wave runners, the pools, the Edison museum, the music wafting down the shoreline from the one man band guitar players in every bar, and even the performance artist on the corner that has spray painted himself and his bicycle gold. (And the scantily clad spring breakers with their tatoos and naval rings are just a bonus.) But I guess there is one thing I don't really like. Okay two. All the money I am going to dump, and the kids bickering, from everything we aren't going to do today to the do-over they should have got on the 7th hole at Jungle Golf. Is it too much to ask to leave it at home and, I don't know, actually enjoy ourselves?

And why the heck do they charge like $30 bucks for a family of 4 to play mini-golf? Oh yea, because they can. It's a money pit I know. You can't be a tourist without actually being charged like one. There are other, possibly cheaper, places to vacation, I know. But it has been my home away from home since I was like 10. Some people are into exploring the world. We are into Florida.

Now close your eyes, and imagine you are in you ideal vacation paradise. Got it? Now imagine you leave in 4 weeks. It's torture, isn't it? Knowing you have to stay in the real world while this Eden-like paradise beckons you like a mermaid to a lonely sailor. So I am counting the days. Counting the days until I don't have to look at snow. Counting the days until I don't have to drive someone to a basketball game. Counting the days until I can wake up in the morning and know all of my troubles are behind me. Sort of.

From die hard Cubs fan to just plain dead.

Like many of my local brethren, I am a Cubs fan. I guess at one point you could say I was of the die hard variety. In the famous "Bartman" series, I specifically remember game 7, and how I hoped with all my heart, that the Cubs would pull it off and go to the World Series. My head, however, was a bit more realistic. I knew deep down that the night would end in misery, as I literally couldn't watch. I mean, the game was on, but I had my head covered by a pillow, only furtively peeking out when it seemed there was some glimmer of hope. I also remember 1984, when the team was up 2-0 on the Padres, only to watch them dump 3 in a row in the biggest choke fest I had ever witnessed. That is, until Bartman came along. I was screaming at the TV in game 5, alone in my living room at school in Idaho, isolated from the real world. But alas, I think I may have attended my last game at Wrigley Field.

As ticket prices and "fan-demonium" have soared over the years, I have been attending less and less each year. When tickets go on sale to the public, it's almost unfathomable that after a very short time, like a couple of days, all that is left are single seat tickets for 81 games. With 41,118 seats to every home game, that's 3,330,558 tickets gone in a blink of an eye. So that leaves me with StubHub.com, a legal ticket scalping website where ticket prices go up 2x, 3x, hell even 5x face value. And with 2 kids, and 4 tickets to purchase, and hot dogs and pop and beer and cotton candy and peanuts to buy, the average game, with less than average seats, is a piggy bank breaker. That is, for someone like me. Unemployed and lower middle class wage earning even when I have a job.

So, aside from the fact that prices go up every year, as team wins seem to go down every year, we now learn that the Rickett's family, the saviors from everything Tribune and Zell, are just in it for the money after all. In case you haven't heard, there is a "pre-sale" this year. It's open to everyone, of course. Everyone that has enough money to blow between $250 and $500 for 3 hours of "fun at the old ballpark". Oh wait, there's a catch. For this honor, you have to fork up an additional 20%. Getting tickets on the day they go on sale have just gotten even harder. So it seems, the chasm between the haves and have-not's just got a little wider. And I thought Sam Zell was the greedy one.

Flashback yet again. Late 70's, early 80's, the gang used to drive to Skokie, catch the swift to Wrigley, buy a ticket at the gate, and sit in a section all by ourselves, the entire day costing like $20. I know, 30 years of inflation, yada, yada, yada. But that misses the point. It used to be fan friendly, or more to the point, wallet friendly. The brass didn't have some unbelievable marketing tool they could sell back then, but boy do they have one now. As other old ballparks across the nation succumb to time, Wrigley's magnificent wonder only continues to grow.

We used to be very lucky. Some close family friends have some season passes on the home dugout and we have been lucky enough to snare some each year. I was willing to cough up a few extra bucks for the privilege of these premium seats, each year cringing a little bit more as I wrote the check. This year? Those 4 tickets, along with the requisite parking pass, is almost $500. That's like 2 weeks of groceries for us. Or almost half a mortgage payment. How can I justify that? No, I am afraid that short of finding some tickets on the street, our Cub watching days at Wrigley Field have come to a close. I guess I am going to have to wait until my kids are grown up and can afford to take me to a ball game, because the Cubs have priced themselves out of my budget. Thanks a lot Rickett's family. I guess they're keeping one recent tradition alive. Greed.

If you don't like my rules, I am going to take my ball and go home.

What happens when two opposing sides play by two sets of rules? If we're talking checkers, and say you get two moves to your opponents one, how long would it take to win the game? 5 minutes? Two? If we're talking basketball, and lets say one side gets to play 6, while the other only plays 5, I think the score might be 162-18. If we're talking elections, and one guy spends $2,000,000 while his opponent spends $2,000, well you get the idea. We have SEEN that at work. But what happens when one group of people demand to be treated different than the rest of us? And the rest of us cannot even say anything about let alone do something about it. I am talking about the unspeakable.

Muslim groups around the world, peaceful or fanatical, are demanding this of the rest of us. The whole Danish cartoon thing stands out as the brightest beacon of light. Draw a picture of our God and die for it? Why? Because some prophet hundred's of years ago wrote that it is OK to kill in the name of religion? How many jokes have started with, "So this guy goes to heaven and is standing before God...?" Substitute Allah for God and you have some Jihadist at your front door. I know, respect religion and all. But do we really have to die because of it? You can't be a devoted servant AND have a sense of humor?

In 2004, France banned the wearing of headscarves in the classroom to basically protect their secularism, trying to keep religion out of schools where it has no place. Students were expelled who refused to follow the rules. So in retaliation, 2French journalists were kidnapped. The ransom? Overturn the ban on headscarves, basically saying, "We refuse to play by your rules, so we demand the rules be changed." And this year, there was rioting in Malaysia because local Christian groups were heard using the word Alla, no "H", a literal translation of the word God in the Malaysian language in its services and brochures. The reason? Muslim leaders were worried it would lead other Muslims to convert to Christianity. Yea, riiight, like THAT would ever happen.

Fast forward to today and the upcoming furor: body scanners at the airport. Muslim American Groups are supporting a Fatwa, a religious ruling, that forbids Muslims, men and women, to go through these intrusive scanners. I can understand the need for this technology, in light of the ever growing and adapting strategies of the fanatical Muslim suicide brigade. Personally, if some security guard is going to get his or her ya-ya's off by seeing a digital replication of my penis, I say, "Have fun with that." But once again, here is the Muslim community demanding that they get to play but a different set of rules. It's only a matter of time before some suicide bomber throws a Burka over himself and walks into an airport.

I know the figures, OK? I know that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, kind, and productive members of society. I am not worried about them. I am worried about the lunatic fringe that exists within that community. And when that community of people finally wake up and realize that we are doing this for all, not just for any one group, this country and the rest of the world will be a little bit safer.

Illinois politics: Bullshit walks, money talks.

To my non-Illinois brethren I apologize for I am about to bore you with inane prattle on Illinois politics. For my Illinois neighbors I also must apologize for I am about to bore you with inane prattle on Illinois politics. But I have a question for the flat-landers out there: Did you vote for Scott Cohen for Lt. Governor?

Quick current events lesson for the un-informed. Cohen, a pawn-broker and admitted illegal steroids user who once held a knife to his prostitute girlfriends neck and also attempted to force his ex-wife to have sex with him, the same ex-wife mind you that he withheld more than $50,000 in child support from while dumping $2,000,000 on his own campaign, was the democratic nominee for Lt. Governor. Not a very virtuous guy it would seem. And although I blame the voters for not seeing through the thin veil he pulled over our eyes, it is the system that elected him.

Sure, go ahead and also blame Chicago Aldermen Dick Mell, Bernie Stone and Robert Maldanado. They actually endorsed this guy, proving that your average Chicago politician is just as clueless as the average voter. But not me, I blame the process itself. He won because he bought the election with a slick campaign ad that hit the voters where it counts the most. In their hearts and wallets. He easily outspent his opponents, all of which were unable to match his glitzy ads on the airwaves that promoted him as a job creator. In the ad, person after person tell us that they were voting for Scott Lee Cohen because he found them a job. True or not, people heard it loud and clear and voted for him on election day.

Rewind to about 3 weeks before the election (I think). He spilled his history to Sun Times columnist Mark Brown to no avail. He was a nobody and people didn't care. Then he opened up his wallet and the rest is history. If there were strict campaign financing laws, this couldn't have happened. Make everyone play by the same rules and you will get a more balanced outcome. Allow millionaires and special interest groups to finance a campaign and you get what you deserve.

Now had this occurred a few years ago, it's possible that the furor would have never been so loud. The "Pre-Blagojevich" office of Lt. Governor was a non-entity. Now that we see that the office is a heartbeat away from leading our scandal plagued state, it has become a priority to get the right guy into the job. But the bottom line is that the election process is flawed. The incumbents don't want to fix it because, well, they are incumbents. The neophyte politicians can't fix it because they are invisible to the voters being broke and all. And the voters can't fix it because they are lemmings looking for a cliff, allowing their vote to be bought.

15 and counting.

15 and counting. No, no the age of one of my teens. And no, not the amount of beers consumed in one night. Though my boss did once proclaim, "God bless the 30 can case," claiming that downing 15 beers, thus half the load, was easily a goal for one night of drinking. Nor is the Group of 15, The Summit Level Group of Developing Countries, still growing. 15 is the number given to us by PolitiFact.com, whose conservative standard peg that as the number of broken promises by none other than our very own man of impeccable integrity, President Barack Obama.

Used to be, all you had to do was look no further than the name Clinton to find a democrat who made a career out of telling the lemmings, excuse me, voters all they needed to hear to win their favor. The Clinton Handbook for conning voters relies on one basic principle: say whatever, do whatever it takes during an election year, and the country will give you a free pass once you are in office. The problem with the last election was, in effect, that Obama played the handbook better than the Clinton's did.

Let's recount a few, shall we? Why not. Let's start with televising health-care negotiations on C-SPAN. I guess the network programmers had other ideas. He rebuffed by saying coverage would have been hard to arrange because the negotiations occurred in several locations. Ahem. So C-Span only has one camera? And if it was so hard to arrange, then it is obvious that he didn't do any homework before he made his promise. And therein lies the rub. On the campaign trail, (for which he really never left) one doesn't have time to pee, let alone research a bogus promise.

Fiscal responsibility was another. As in spending less, but getting more. A spending freeze he touts only affects 12.5% of the budget, doesn't take effect 'til 2011, and is offset by funding for his pet projects. The budget forecast for 2011 is already $3.8 trillion, compared with 2010's $3.6 trillion. If you mean to reduce spending, you don't actually raise it. Legislation signed by the Prez increased domestic discretionary spending 84%. But what about promises to reduce the interests of lobbyists? Or to refrain from raising taxes on households making less than $250,000? Cutting earmarks to 1994 levels? Reigning in executive power and the "state secrets" privilege? Closing Gitmo by last month? Ending raids on medical marijuana distributors? Public review of bills before being signed? Recognizing Armenian genocide? All promises made and broken in that order. Made to get you vote, broken to confirm reality. People need to stop drinking the grape Kool-Aid during the election year, take the blinders off, and use some common sense. Vote for results, not promises. But being a freshman senator and all, that's all he had were promises. Maybe he should have stayed in that job a little longer to actually produce some results.

So the math conscience out there have added that up and it doesn't come to 15. If I spent more time listing and discussing them all you would have stopped reading 2 paragraphs ago. It just re-emphasises my point the Obama is just another in a long line of career politicians with big ideas on how to win an election, not on how to run an office. Or in this case a Country. The Clinton Handbook is dead. Long live the Obama Handbook.