The Chicago Stadium Organ. It's mostly gone, in a fire, allegedly arson. If it is, I sure the Wertz had something to do with it. I found this site http://www.catoe.org/barton.html where many great pictures exist of that wonderful piece of workmanship.
I also like this picture McABEE Located at http://theatreorgans.com/il/joliet/MCABEE.HTML

Why is it that 80% of the drivers of SUV's have no idea how to drive them?

luckily I drive very little every day, see I take a train into Chicago every day. I do have to drive to the train station and here and there on the weekends. For some reason this year I seem to be waiting in a parking lot more and more while some yahoo tries to maneuver their over-sized SUV in and out of parking spaces.

My wife and I where tring to park at the grocery store and ended up waiting five minutes (this isn't an exaggeration) while the driver of this Ford Expedition moved back and forth a foot at a time trying to straighten her vehicle into the parking space. All we could do is laugh, point, and laugh again. Nobody was going anywhere and where actually not in a hurry.

The person finally straightened themselves out enough so we could get by and we zipped into a parking space across from the behemoth. Well and behold who gets out, an Asian female. This figures. Don't give me that Asians suck at driving. I know for a fact the do in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, so I am sure they do to where you live.

Again a guy pulling out of his parking space at the train station couldn't tell how far he was moving back. So he ended up not pulling back far enough, even though there was enough space between the back of his vehicle and another car for me to drive through. No, I didn't; It's an SUV driver in there I wasn't feeling that daring. Because of this, of course, the driver couldn't make the turn into the lane and had to backup again to turn without hitting the vehicle in front of him.

There is no doubt in my mind that there should be special driver licenses to drive any vehicle double your own height in length.

Post from:chicagoblackhawkuprising
Date: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:01 pm

Now that hockey is officially over, not that we didn't know this
already, it's time for more important things, like:
Freeing Lord Stanley's Cup.

FREE STANLEY!

Just because the bloated, bureaucratic NHL doesn't want a hockey season, that is no reason not to award the highest award in hockey to a deserving team.

Have you been to NHL.com lately? Man what a joke. All the content is about old games. The NHL is continuing it's "remember the original six" shit. Yes, I love old time hockey, of course I do and many, many others; that's because that's when the NHL and its players had heart, shit-loads of it. It is all the NHL has to stand on is it's past. I am sure it was good for them at first, nestalga is big with humans, but it never lasts.

I read an interesting article this morning which tipped me into the, "Fuck the NHL" mode again. (more about that later, maybe)
The "NHL Lockout Log" (Yahoo Sports) sited a poll taken by ESPN.com,
"According to a poll on ESPN.com, 73 percent of the 146,514 Americans who voted do not care if the NHL cancels the 2004-05 season."
It is shit like this I don't understand. If I would of taken that poll, I am sure I would of been lumped into that 73 percent.

It isn't the fact that I don't care, I do greatly. It's more that I am completely fed up with all of the bullshit. I have been fed up for years. I would think for most fans that this disgust for the NHL has been growing over the last decade or so. That's a pretty long time to try and turn around quickly. Which is another great recent failure of the NHL and it's players; we fans don't forget or forgive easily. Baseball has never fully recovered from it's last fuckup.

It started for me after the last great league expansion. Lets move a great team (talk about nalstalga...) the North Start to Dallas, Texas (what the fuck, Dallas?) and ADD another damn team called the Minnisota Wild. Who's brain child was this? Then add teams in Florida (again, what the fuck), and Columbus; Oh wait, Pheonix, lots of ice down there. The claim they owners can't affored the teams they have and more and more Canadian teams move into the states because they can't support them (like the Colorado, Avalanch), and they still expand the leauge bigger and bigger thinning out the already thin talent in the NHL. If Canada can't support the teams you know there is problem; Canada is the hockey capital of the world. This also guarentees that your favorite team may never play that great rival (nalstalga again). For me it's the Blackhawks, always has been. In the 2003-2004 season we played the Blues twice and the Dead Wings (ok, Red Wings) twice. I tried finding a 2003 schedule and couldn't (No I didn't look that long) so I don't have actual stats on this. What I do know is that the Blackhawks played at least 10 games against the Wild and Blue Jackets. Now that is going to drive veiwer-ship.

I hate to say this but FUCK THE NHL, I hope they crash and burn. It's time for a new hockey league, this one is so full of burocracy and bullshit it just sucks. I would never like to see the Blackhawks, Red Wings, Blues, Bruins, etc. go away, but if it means bringing back the sport of hockey and demolishing the business of hockey as it is today, lets do it.

Beckman is looking to make the NHL like the NFL, he wants their revenues. I am sure every sport would. Baseball tried, striked, and I'm still not into the game. The NFL plays a 16 game season. That is a far cry from 82, which is a standard NHL season. Then the NHL post season is best of seven, for four tiers. Another huge streach of games that most people don't watch until it's a deciding game. There is a total loss of a captive audience, it just doesn't exist in the NHL. Every Sunday, everyone knows football will be played. Where is the Hockey day. Basically it can be any day, any day at all. No structure, no routine, look for the next game and pray the owner is going to let you watch it.

I have no idea what the answers are, if I did I wouldn't be sitting here wining about this I would be changing it. I have some great ideas, and some really bad ones too. Where it all starts in my mind is having the Owners and Players comming back to reality and reforming the NHL into the great league it once was.