Happily, I made it to the Cubs game today after the brutal weather yesterday that got the game cancelled.  I was concerned that they wouldn't reschedule it until later in the year when I wouldn't be in town, but the Game Gods were smiling and set it up for today.  I had a meeting planned, but was able to switch it to another day.

There's an El near where I'm staying, and it lets you off a block from Wrigley Field -- remarkably convenient.  But rather than going to the ballyard first, I turned the other direction and walked two blocks to Police Station #19.  That's where one of the three fiberglass Horses of Honor that my cousin Diana Leviton Gondek was commissioned by the City of Chicago to design, in memory of fallen policemen.  Another is in Mayor Emmanuel's office in City Hall and I believe the third is in the 44th Ward.

Which brings us to the ball game.  Needless-to-say, the weather was  far superior than the day before.  But that's not difficult when the day before it was in the upper-30s with possible thunderstorms and possible snow,  Today, it was sunny and clear.  But it was still pretty cold.  People were bundled up, with winter hoods, gloves and scarves.  The family sitting in front of me left in the sixth inning.

But it was still a good enough day for a game.

Cold as it was -- probably in the lower-40s -- a Cubs win (and against the hated rivals, the Cardinals) made the day all the warmer.  They took an 8-1 lead and held it for most of the game.  Then they had a meltdown in the seventh inning and gave up four runs, but held on to win 8-5.

Huzzah!  

When flying into Chicago, I was sitting next to a charming young woman from Australia who was participating in a conference.  She noted that she'd heard the weather was supposed to be colder than usual, and was curious if I knew what it was that day.  It was 30 degrees, I told her.  "How much is that in Celsius?" she asked.  (Okay, she's from Sydney, so she pronounced it, "Silsius."  But I digress...)  I did some figuring in my head, and then said that it was zero.  "Oh," she replied, "That's not good."  She added that it was the end of their Fall in Australia, so it was nearing Winter ("Wintah"...), so she figured she'd be okay.

That night, talking with my aunt, who I'm staying with, I mentioned that it was pretty chilly outside.  "Well, yes," she replied, "but then you're from Los Angeles."

Los Angeles??  This has nothing to do with "Los Angeles"!  It was 30 degrees in mid-April!  They cancelled the Cubs-Cardinals baseball game, because it was too cold to play.  Not because, "By Los Angeles standards, Major League Baseball has determined the game should not go on."

This morning, I went to downtown Chicago to visit the Art Institute, and not a single person I saw making their way through the Loop was wearing a windbreaker.  They were bundled up.  Everyone.  Some in winter gear, parkas, others in their heavy Fall jackets but with scarves and woolen hats.  Not one chilly soul in their Spring finest.

And not one of them that I'm aware of from Los Angeles.

I have a ticket to the Cubs game tomorrow.  It's supposed to be a balmy 42 -- though with the possibility of thunderstorms in the morning, ending before game time, though possible light rain later in the afternoon.  I have pretty good seats.  Hopefully after three hours sitting there, the weather gods will be smiling.  Down on everyone, including those from Chicago and Los Angeles, and all points in between...

UPDATE: the new forecast Wednesday morning is -- chance of thunderstorms and SLEET in the morning, high in the upper-30s with possible light rain in the afternoon and two inches of SNOW in the evening!  For April 18.  Play ball!!!  Hey, as they say, "April blizzards bring May flowers..."  But yes, I live in Los Angeles.

Well, I got into Chicago today.  And it was a bit nippy.  About 30 degrees, and that was during the afternoon, so I expect it will be chillier over night.  The elves taking care of the homestead find this hilarious.  They wanted to know where I keep the sunscreen lotion.  

My hope is that the weather forecasters are somewhat right for Wednesday, since I have a ticket to the Cubs game.  Tonight's game was canceled because of the cold.  But at the moment, it's supposed to be around 45-degrees on Wednesday, so that's perfectly fine.  Not ideal baseball weather, mind you, but quite manageable.  The reason I say that I hope they're only "somewhat" right is because the forecast also calls for rain -- the only day during my trip here.  Great timing!  So, here's hoping they get the game in.

The reason I timed my visit for now is because Northwestern University is having a sort of fundraiser/reunion this weekend specifically for the School of Communications.  (It was called the School of Speech when I went there.).  Normally, I avoid reunions, but because it's a fundraiser, they're putting on a huge gala with alumni from the theater, film and TV departments -- all hosted by another alumni, Stephen Colbert.  And alumni Seth Meyers will be participating, but via video feed.  The list of participants is terrific (more on the event later), so I figured that despite my normal avoidance of reunions, I couldn't miss this.  And making it all the nicer, the head writer for the event is my pal, Shelly Goldstein.  I've occasionally mentioned the Lady Shellington for her fine chanteusing, but she's also a terrific comedy writer.  All the more reason to look forward to it all. 

Next week, I'll be off to Chicago for a quick visit.  Quick or not, I have tickets for a Cubs game against the St. Louis Cardinals.  I was surprised that the ticket price was so reasonable, The Cardinals, after all, are the Cubs long-time rivals and those games are packed, so I thought it would be one of the club's Premium-tier games.  Then I realized…”Oh, it’s for April 18.”  I was immediately sure that that was why, as an very early-season game in Chicago, it wasn’t Premium. 

Now, mind you, I'm sure that many people may think, "Ohhh, okay, I get it.  I might be cold then."  No, you don't quite get it.  Let's put it this way.  Today is the home opener for the Cubs.  That's a big deal for any ballclub.  Jammed park.  Lot's of hoopla ceremony.  Turning on my MLB GameDay service to listen to the game, I saw that the game was postponed until  tomorrow.  Well, hopefully tomorrow.

This is why an April 18 game in Chicago, even against their historic rivals, is not “Premium”… 

Next week, when I have my ticket, it's supposed to be a balmy 46-degrees.  So, here's hoping.  Today is a little nippier, at 38-degrees.

I like to buy commemorative stamps.  Not really as a collector (I do keep one of each, but they're no laid out in a book, meticulously or otherwise), but just to use.  So, I check in with the post office from time to time, to see what is new.  I don't buy every commemorative stamp -- some just aren't to my taste, or just promoting something commercial that doesn't interest me.  But I do get a lot of them.

It was a treat, therefore, to find two new stamps in that stood out.  One, because I knew that this year was the 200th anniversary of Illinois, and the other because...well, it was just fun to see.  So, if you have plans to go the post office over the next few weeks, here's what's waiting for you.

Once again last week Trump took off after Jeff Bezos, this time through his ownership of Amazon.  Though I know he took some heat for trying to negatively impact the stock of a U.S. corporation, I have to admit I did sort of understand the angst.  You see, it turns out that Trump and I have something in common.  We both have an issue with Jeff Bezos.  Okay, the difference is that his problems with Bezos are irrational and, as president, he has no business trying to take out an individual or his company.  But me, I have a totally legitimate complaint, because you see Jeff Bezos once knocked me down.

Really.

It was at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show.  There I was, minding my own business, wandering the show floor, looking around for the latest tech news, taking notes when out of the blue, wham!!, for no reason at all, Jeff Bezos came up to me and knocked me to the ground.

That's honestly, absolutely true.  Though...well, okay, while true it was a wee bit more benign than that.

I must back up a moment.  Only the month before that particular CES, the Segway personal transport scooter had been introduced to great fanfare and reached the market.  They were being called The Next Big Thing and considered way cool -- albeit expensive for most consumers at that early-adopter point.  And so, it's not surprising that one of the first buyers was Jeff Bezos who it seems Had to Have One.  And as a mega-multi-billionaire could afford it.

Anyway, as I said, I was just wandering the very-crowded show floor when I suddenly felt an unexpected, light bump, but catching me off-guard it enough so that I lost my balance and stumbled to the ground.  I looked up, bewildered, and there was Jeff Bezos on a Segway (see photo above for visual aid) with a sheepish expression on his face, clearly not having yet mastered the device.  It was only three weeks old at that point after all.  He gave me a look that said he was sorry and shrugged (not the most substantive apology, though there is an unspoken connection between us visionaries), and I smiled back and shrugged.  And got up, and we both went our merry ways -- me on my feet, and Jeff Bezos riding off into the sunset...or into some other poor sap.

And yes, I know that I could have screamed out in traumatized agony, furiously began yelling at him, writhed on the ground, grabbing my leg and back, and threatened to sue, and I could have retired for the rest of my life very comfortably 15 years ago on the out-of-court settlement.  But I shrugged, and getting a shrug back was enough for me.

That last trait of which is one of the things Trump and I do not have in common.

And I believe that after all these years, Jeff Bezos knows that last year I bought an Amazon Prime membership, as my way of saying, "I forgive you."  That unspoken connection and all, remember.
​

I only belatedly learned that March 21 had been World Down Syndrome Day.  Reading about this last night, I was reminded of when I worked on the 1988 movie, The Seventh Sign, which was back in my dark days as a movie publicist.  One of the small roles (although it turns out to be central to the plot) centered around a character with Down Syndrome.  It was played by young man named John Taylor, and I got to spend a good amount of time with him, along with his mother and two sisters who came with him to the set.

John was upbeat, friendly, and loved movies, but he especially loved Demi Moore, who was the film's star.  When she was shooting a scene, John was there, watching.  Always.  Two particular things about this stick in my memory. 

​The first is that later in the production when John finally had his particularly-big scene, everyone was surprised to see Demi there on the soundstage, as well, even though she wasn't in the sequence.  It was odd to see since, when actors aren't filming, they're almost always back in their dressing room, resting or working.  But Demi was there on set.  And when John saw her, he was thrilled, absolutely overjoyed.  I remember her explaining to him, "Well, you're always on the set watching me when I'm filming, so it was only fair that I come and watch you."  And it wasn't a token appearance for the first shot, which still would have been thoughtful, but she stayed the whole time, probably 45-minutes to an hour.

The other thing I remember related to all this is that on John's last day of filming, Demi bought him a gift.  A puppy.  As you might imagine, he was thrilled by that, too.

I was able to track down most of that scene.  The video quality is a bit soft, but it's fine.  In the film, John played a a young man in prison for having killed his parents because he insists God had told him to.  (The movie was about prophecies and the end of the world, and this is all tied into that.  My recollection is that the parents were pretty high on the Sinners Scale.  I'm not saying that that justified them being killed, or even that the son did hear voices, just that that's part of the plot, as well.)  In this scene, Michael Biehn played Demi Moore's husband, a lawyer trying to represent the young man who doesn't really want to be represented.  Akosua Busia is another lawyer brought in to help.

I've been enjoying the NCAA basketball tournament more than usual this year.  That's because the Loyola of Chicago Ramblers have been shocking the basketball world, and after their win last night, they've made it to the Final Four.

For most people, this is notable because Loyola of Chicago is not known as a major basketball powerhouse.  (To be clear, it's not as tiny a school as people might think.  Undergrad enrollment is 16,500, which is twice the enrollment at Northwestern.)  But for me, it's not only notable, but highly-notable for another reason.

It's not just that Loyola is just about two miles down the road from Northwestern -- literally.  (Both schools are on Sheridan Road.  Northwestern in Evanston borders Chicago about a mile to the north of Howard St. -- which is the dividing line -- and Loyola is about a mile south of Howard Street.  But one of the iconic sports memories of my life concerns Loyola basketball.

I was but a wee kid at the time, but even then I knew it was something really special when Loyola of Chicago shocked the basketball world (the first time...) back in 1963 when they made it to the NCAA basketball finals.  And it was all the more shocking because four of their five starting players were black, led by All American Jerry Harkness.  They weren't given any chance against their opponents, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats, since Cincinnati was not only the defending national champions -- but they were the two-time defending national champions.  And yet...Loyola won.  In overtime.  On what was literally a last-second shot.  Despite being behind by 15 points with about 10 minutes left.

I don't remember much of the game (I didn't remember any of those details above, but was reminded of them when tracking down this video below), but I knew enough even at that young age that when I was watching on our old black-and-white set, this was pretty amazing.  It helped, too, when you could hear the Loyola announcer Red Rush screaming "We won!!  We won!!!

And now, I wasn't just a fair-weather fan.  I followed all the Chicago teams, including the DePaul Blue Demons and their legendary coach Ray Meyer, and Loyola was especially fun to listen to because Red Rush was a reasonably-outlandish announcer.  I remember that their games were sponsored by Gonnella Bread -- easy to remember because Red would loving boom out their slogan, "Gonnella, it's swella, fella."  And I've always remembered Loyola's coach, George Ireland.

I listened to Northwestern basketball, too, but...well, they sucked eggs.  As you may recall, up until last year they were the only major college team never to have qualified for the post-season tournament in the history of the NCAA.

It was a notable tournament that year for another reason.  That was the year that Mississippi State played in the NCAA post-season tourney for the first time, having avoided it in the past, despite being a very good team, since that would have meant playing integrated teams.  And in their very first NCAA tournament game, Mississippi State's opponent was...the Loyola Ramblers.  From what I've read, it's one of the most-famous games in NCAA history, known as the Game of Change.  And Loyola, of course, won -- "of course," because they had to have won all their tournament games that year, given that they won the championship...

This is a very good 30-minute documentary on Loyola's 1963 championship season, made by Comcast Sports.  It focuses on that Game of Change and the championship game.  If you only want to see the coverage of the final game, just jump to the 22-minute mark.  (Loyola is wearing the white uniforms.)  The fun thing, too, is you get to hear Red Rush's wildly-excited play-by-play, including his screaming of "We won!!  We won!!"  Alas, not a word about Gonnella Bread.  But it is swella, fella.

(And still is, after 130 years...)

There was a March for Our Lives rally today in Santa Monica, which I was hoping to make.  I had somewhere to be in the morning, but was able to get back in time around when it was beginning.  I hadn't expected many to attend, given where it was held, but I was surprised by how jammed it was.  If I had to estimate, there were maybe 1,500 people.  (I think there were other rallies throughout Los Angeles, so that isn't the total for the city.)  The best thing of all were how many kids were there, many pretty young, but most high school age.

The march began at 15th street on Montana Ave. and headed to the Pacific Ocean, where there were speeches on the Palisades.  I couldn't really hear anything, so I wandered around a bit and headed back.

In a perfect world, it would have been nice if a more visible location had been used.  Montana Ave. is a nice, quiet street, sort of a boutique shopping around in Santa Monica that parallels between the far more busy Wilshire Blvd. to the south and San Vincente Blvd. a few blocks north.  And the area of the Palisades was north of where most activity is.  Of course, the reality is that most attention today was on Washington, and with other marches around the city, getting this many here was encouraging.

This photo doesn't come close to doing the crowd justice, but it's the best I could do...

Another St. Patrick's Day annual tradition -- and for decades, by the way, long before the Internet thing -- this is the song, "Ring to the Name of Rose".

Now, I know that on the surface it appears that I'm posting this because of its connection to the Irish Rose.  And that's a good theory, and a reasonable connection.  And it holds, but then, if that was solely the case I'd probably instead post the song, "My Wild Irish Rose."  In fact, I'm posting it because today, St. Patrick's Day, is the birthday of my grandmother -- and her name was Rose.

Family history dating back to 1895 being what it is, there's an uncertainty if there was any St. Patrick's Day connection to my grandmother being named Rose because of the day.  The general assumption is "no," but that's not a sure thing.  However, what is sure is that my grandmother absolutely loved being born on St. Patrick's Day, and the connection that her name was Rose.  So, that's good enough for me.

By the way, there's another interesting thing about this song -- who wrote it.  It's a lovely, sweet number, and not remotely the kind of song we associate with the loud, boisterous work of its composer-lyricist -- best known for "You're a Grand Old Flag," "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway."  That would, of course, be George M. Cohan.