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aaronsinger

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  1. aaronsinger
    Looking from the outside, this team appears to be the best in baseball on paper. But Spring Training don't always amount to much...
  2. aaronsinger
    A shame he didn't make the HOF before his passing. An icon, a legend, and a mensch. He always was hanging around with fans, just talking about baseball at length; a true lover of the game. Minnie will be missed.
  3. aaronsinger
    What a great thread. Sadly, I've only been to New Orleans and Louisiana once, as a poor but teetotaling (thanks to my travel mates) college student on fall break. We still ate somewhat decently well and had fun and listened to good music; that was October 2004. I would love to go back sometime. In the meantime I have only been able to live vicariously through TV and radio. From David Simon's Treme, where I learned a lot about history, food, politics, music & culture of the region; to the aforementioned Bourdain episode in Cajun country; to John Besh's low-key cooking shows; to John Folse's more gregarious, if rather staid, cooking shows that usually began with a history lesson; to a local weekly radio show here in Chicago devoted to New Orleans music.
  4. aaronsinger
    FWIW, I think Cy Young's 511 is more unlikely to be broken than DiMaggio's 56.
  5. aaronsinger
    I remember learning how to pronounce his Greek name... in Spanish class in high school.
  6. aaronsinger
    I enjoy reading Neal Stephenson as much as any other nerd (and I'm not nearly well educated on tech or economics), but I read his works as fiction.
  7. aaronsinger
    My favorite Bell's beer is Oarsman. I thought about picking up a sixer when I stopped at Binny's this afternoon. I instead went for variety and a make-your-own six-pack (the price being the same as Oarsman, which makes up 1 of the 6 I selected). That might be a mistake as that beer needs to be fresh, and sometimes the select-sixers have been sitting awhile.
  8. aaronsinger
    I often do that (pay with credit but leave a cash tip), though I don't dine at fancy restaurants so much as bars and such. I hope it doesn't come across as annoying or weird, though I don't see why it would.
  9. aaronsinger
    The total number of MLB games in a season is a lot greater than it was in past eras, so the probablity of seeing weird stuff happen may go up, as a not-small percentage of MLB games ever played has been just in the last few decades. Longevity records like Cy Young's win total will never be broken; pitchers today don't go as deep in games as ever before; L-R specialization and other factors have seen strikeouts go way up. But other stuff that is just weird things happening in a game as you mention w/ Tatis, or some other fluke performance, can happen more just out of probablity, I would think. I don't really have any concrete examples, though.
  10. aaronsinger
    What the internal investigation at NBC, headed by investigative journalist Richard Esposito, will look like: "How Can A Colleague Investigate Brian Williams?" by Jill Eisler on cjr.org
  11. aaronsinger
    I kick myself for never traveling down to that fest when he was living (though it's still going on in his memory). I used to love his blog, he was a great writer there on a number of subjects well beyond film.
  12. aaronsinger
    Brokaw sounds furious. He'd take over if he wasn't battling cancer (and if he was younger). Holt will get the job that he was close to getting when Brokaw retired. "Tom Brokaw On Brian Williams: 'His Future Is Up To Brian And NBC News'" by Mark Joyella on adweek.com Yeah, he's done. They'll negotiate some sort of severance.
  13. aaronsinger
    It's not in Chicago but in his hometown of Champaign (outside of the theater he grew up attending, as well as where he held his annual film fest), though your point still stands. http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards/roger-ebert-statue-unveiled
  14. aaronsinger
    The pilot above has sinced walked back his defense of Williams: "CNN Backtracks On Report Supporting Brian Williams" by Erik Wemple on washingtonpost.com New Orleans paper has questions of some of his claims about Katrina: "NBC News Anchor Brian Williams' Comments About Dead Bodies, Hurricane Katrina, Starting To Gain Attention, Draw Scrutiny" by John Simerman on theneworleansadvocate.com Here's a timeline of how his story has changed over the years: "How Brian Williams' Iraq Story Changed" by Tom Kludt and Brian Stelter on money.cnn.com I understand that memory can be unreliable, especially in recalling traumatic events. But Wiliams took notes on what happened at the time, and he had crew surrounding him. A conversation at a dinner party is also a far cry from a journalists reporting on an event, no matter if it happened recently or 12 years in the past. The nightly news has a large staff and a lack of fact-checking in repeating a lie, no matter how fungible memory can be, is no excuse.
  15. aaronsinger
    The other thing with MLB records is that there are so many more teams now, such that there are twice as many total games played in a MLB season nowadays as compared to the 1950s or even the 1910s.
  16. aaronsinger
    Bonds, unlike Sosa or McGwire, would've been a HOFer without 'roids, presuming that he started (ab)using around 2000 or so. I can be a little self-righteous about it, but my favoriite ballplayer of all-time, and the biggest reason why I'm a White Sox fan, was speaking out against steroid use in the sport long before anyone else. The team even tried to trigger more stringent testing around 2001 or so. And it continued to be ignored. No one wanted to see the truth in the 1997 HR race. You just heard, "baseball is back!"
  17. aaronsinger
    I was watching the WGN News last night, and anchor Micah Materre, who normally cares not one whit for sports, said that Banks was among the nicest and most genuine people she's ever known (she went to school with his kids). I don't think I've ever heard a bad word about him.
  18. aaronsinger
    Tony Hu's Chicago (plus one CT location) empire of restaurants is somewhat like this. Lao __ and then a region/city; Sze Chuan; Beijing; Shanghai; Hunan; Yunnan. That said, I haven't actually eaten at any of them yet, despite one Lao Sze Chuan restaurant being just a couple miles from me.
  19. aaronsinger
    Thanks for breaking down those differences better than I could have done. I get a bite at the Old Orchard Frontera a few times a year, and it's usually good. My mom has been taking some classes at Northwestern and says the NU location is terribly slow. I never think of Xoco as a breakfast spot, though I'm also not often in River North in the morning. But what I've seen looks good.
  20. aaronsinger
    I never finished watching Spooks, I've been meaning to do that. An enjoyable show.
  21. aaronsinger
    Thanks for sharing. Frontera has 3 separate locations at O'Hare: one in the United terminal, one in Terminal 2 (or 3? I get them confused), and one in the international terminal. I've read of varying quality between locations here and elsewhere, but I don't know the details of that variance. Frontera's website lists other locations in downtown Chicago (at the Chase Tower, the same building where NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" is taped) and one at UPenn. What's a bit odd to me is the branding here; those torta places are listed both separately from Xoco, the quick-service spot in the same building as Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, plus a second location in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. But a couple other restaurants aren't listed at all; these are called Frontera Fresco, IIRC; there is one location at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, another in the Norris Center, the large student center on Northwestern's campus, and one in the 7th floor food court at the big Macy's in downtown Chicago (the old flagship Marshall Field's). I wonder if that branding was sold off and is no longer part of Bayless' empire, though his name and face is plastered on their separate website, as is the branding for his retail sauces and salsas. ORD
  22. aaronsinger
    Looking back on it it's perhaps interesting where the careers of the various stars have gone. Who knows where Van Der Beek is, Jackson pops up occasionally in things, Holmes became a tabloid favorite b/c of Tom & Scientology, while Williams became a serious, skilled actress.
  23. aaronsinger
    CBS did a live play of Fail-Safe around 2000, IIRC produced or directed by George Clooney. I remember it being not completely awful, and certainly a unique experiment for modern TV.
  24. aaronsinger
    I went for a quick trip in early November. Can't remember where we went out to eat too much, though I do remember Lala's, a pizza place and wine bar in Capitol Hill. It was pretty good and seemed a nice neighborhood spot for a friend moving nearby. It was snowing that night and road conditions were a bit iffy, but met some friends who live in Lafayette at Colorado Keg House in Broomfield. Great selection of Colorado-only beers if you're out in the suburbs on the way to Boulder--food is bring your own, though there's a pizza place next door. Went overnight to the mountains and stayed in Silverthorne, CO. It was the shoulder season so the mountain towns around there (Frisco, Breck) were dead. Had a decent meal and some good beer at Dillon Dam Brewery. Went to the Cherry Creek Kings Soopers (the one that sells alcohol) one day to get some food to take back to my sister's place. Was pleasantly surprised by the low retail cost of craft beer there as compared to what I'm used to in Chicago. I'll probably be back sometime in the spring.
  25. aaronsinger
    My sister does tastings for them around the Chicago area. She went to HS with one of the owners. I haven't seen many other distilleries make spelt and millet whiskey. The oat I really like, and that also seems rare. I like many of their liqueurs even more than the whiskeys. Though not all--they don't sell it to retail much, but I tried a sunchoke brandy at the distillery last summer. Totally bizarre. They also occasionally make a beer brandy, using mash from a brewery next door (Metropolitan). They've also recently started making vodka and gin, though if I'm going to drink an Illinois gin I might go with that from North Shore Distillery--really like their gins, though I'm not a big gin drinker. Speaking of whiskey, my sister at a recent liquor store tasting bought me a bottle of Kentucky Vintage bourbon for Hanukkah. I don't keep much liquor at home; my other bottle of bourbon in the house at present is a bottle of Old Granddad I bought several months ago, which is almost finished. Quite the contrast from the spicy, high-rye grandpa to the very sweet, vanilla-y KBD product, though I like both styles.
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