High Speed Rail, why doesn’t the U.S. have it

by meta4man on August 9, 2009

I remember one moment during the debates, where McCain referenced Obama’s plans for High-speed rail, dismissing it as pork barrel spending and moving on to call everything else the same.

NOT pulling into a station near me...

NOT pulling into a station near me...

Is it really Pork barrel spending? Possibly. There are so many hands dipping into every spending stream, especially military ones, that there is no doubt somebody that will skim a lot of this money into their own accounts, but that’s one of the reasons I voted the way I did. I’m hoping that OB really is trying to change that. Meanwhile, China is leaving us in the Stone age, spending $4 for every 1 that the US will spend, in the disputed budget proposal.

China has in its drive to become a world leader has committed to investing over $300 billion in high-speed rail through to 2020 in contrast to the much argued invest in the US of only $8 billion. – http://www.inquisitr.com/32532/chinas-high-speed-rail-to-leave-the-rest-of-the-world-behind/

Do we need Hi-speed rail? Yes. We need Low speed rail ffs. Locally, we are struggling to get train stations back to towns outside of general metro areas. There has been a train station in the DeKalb downtown area sitting vacant since before I was born. The sets of tracks that run along side it, straight trhough town, are constantly used for commercial freight, but it’s still unfeasible to set up commuter lines again? 60 miles outside of Chicago, you still have to drive 20 miles to get on a train that will go to Chicago’s Loop. From a town of  35,000. They are bringing out another train stop, hopefully, but in reality for people in my town, this changes nothing, even if I think it’s a good step. http://www.daily-chronicle.com/articles/2009/08/07/68259033/index.xml

The service is something worth having, no matter the trouble or cost. In the article about China’s hi-speed rail, they cite the heavy use of the system already as validation for it’s construction and upgrade, this is something that the US cannot cite because our own civilian train system stopped improving in the 50’s.

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I Fell Off the Fence, to the Left

by meta4man on July 27, 2009

I’ve always liked the idea of having my own little blog, the idea of it. I’ve read up on how to make it successful, and what not to do, and catered to traffic I saw for certain posts. And, have not posted in a while.

I just don;t feel the need to write any more reviews right now, I’m pretty fucking busy, and this blog will once again be about my writing, and inane ramblings.

Tonight, it is about Politics. I don’t talk Politics, and to this point, outside of Plurking, I don’t write Politics either. I’m no political pundit. I vote what I think and leave it at that. In fact, a year or so ago, when I was trying to think up extra blog ideas, I had an idea for a blog that would be called, knockmeoffthefence, or on the fence, or whatever wasn’t taken. You see, I’ve got friends on both sides, hard line conservatives and just as hard lined liberals. As an idea for a blog, I was going to record conversations with both sides, inviting them to knock me off the fence in their direction. I even got a couple people to agree to the first trial pdocasts, but. that didn’t happen.

Now, it’s probably too late. I ‘fell’ off the fence, not a long distance, if we stick to the image, I’ve still got a hand on the fence, but I have definitely fallen left.

It was the election.

I started out thinking McCain, and then I listened to him. I like the straight talk, until I listened to it. He seemed too angry to me to be in charge of our country. He was not in touch at all with the middle class, the workers. I started looking elsewhere, at his primary opponents, and if I delved into their ideas, it all came up too crazy. Privatize schooling? Sure, so corporations can squeeze every dime out of that too.

I believe in less government, but government means RULES to me. We need SOME rules, but not for evwerything, shuffling us into line, going to privatization, so-called minimizing government means more rules, not less. I submit the Health care industry as an example, privatizationn has gone wild. Premiums go up, Hospital worker pay is paltry, and CIGNA’s President, the company that spends about five bucks a month denying different coverages for my daughter, makes the SECOND best salary among his peers at $12M. I believe we should all be able to reach for our dreams, and enjoy our success, but coming from an industry that cries poor, this is OBSCENE.

If offering a Public Option will make these companies start trimming, to prove they really can offer more efficient, cheaper, better, options, then it has done it’s job. Allowing them to compete among themselves, colluding for costs, is wrong. I do not like to speak GLoom and Doom, but that’s what they’ll do, and surely get a bailout to do it. Meanwhile they will point to the poor as being the ones that dragged us down.

BULLSHIT.

To be continued.

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Baby T-shirts

by meta4man on March 31, 2009

Because these made me laugh, and because I haven’t put together an entire post lately, I’m posting these from an email I got today for easier viewing.

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A “Really?” good segment on SNL

by meta4man on February 8, 2009

Kellogg, U.S. Swimming, and the Phelpsdude.

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Thursday Thirteen – Guy Movies

by meta4man on January 29, 2009

Though I can’t quite get myself to listen to them very long, yesterday the guys on WMVP 1000 were talking ‘Guy movies.’ I must give them credit where it is due.

I was able to hang in and listen to them for almost fifteen minutes, talking about guy movies, along with some sports. I just had to make my own list, and look, it’s Wednesday night, I guess that determines how many I will pick.

My criteria is such, though I’m trying to spread the time out, these are mostly for my age group, for a change. I feel like I usually write as if I’m 19, and these are movies that guys like. You bring them up at the bar, and most of the Guys I know like and know them, probably can even shoot out a quote from them.

  1. Braveheart – Facepaint, underdogs, backstabbers, and someone who managed to give ‘the man’ some trouble, before he. uh, got his guts strung out in front of him. I’m not much of a History buff, but this made me a little bit of one.
  2. Shawshank Redemption- Morgan Freeman as the ultimate narrator and the guys in Shawshank prison, don’t scan through the channel, or you will end up watching the rest.
  3. Top Gun – Don’t give me any shit about the volleyball game, this is just good fun. With the hot chick, the cool pilots, and Jets. I sweear I still go into exams clutching imaginary dog tags and saying “Talk to me, Goose.”
  4. Goodfella’s - A mob movie for the mob movie tourist. You don’t have to be able to recite the Godfather to like this movie, but if you can, this is even better. Ray Liotta hit his peak here, unfortunately, it was about his second movie. After this, the sneering gets a little old.
  5. Animal House – The American Pie franchise is a weak sister to this classic, that everyone knows a line from, and I really wish there ‘was’ a Senator Blutarsky.
  6. Major League – Funny baseball, with the stage props of a real sports movie. That coaches voice, like two old oak branches rubbing together. [click to continue…]

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Monsters Living Large in the Morning

by meta4man on January 22, 2009

There is good news for those that enjoy their Chicago Sports Talk, the Monsters are back, and it won’t take long to remember why you loved them the first time.

Dan and Mike are back!!

Dan and Mike are back!!

It can be argued that Dan Jiggetts and Mike North are responsible for my one time near addiction to Sports radio, I couldn’t get enough, and after what seems like forever, I remember why.

It is captured in their new TV/Web Cast show, “Monsters in the Morning“. After missing all of the first week, thinking that it was just a television show, I checked it out on Comcast Monday, and there found out that you could also listen to it online, and I am fully back.

The TV Show has it’s flaws, but some of them seemed to clear up even from the first week to the episode I watched. In many ways, these types of flaws are endearing, reminding us that this is new territory for these guys. The set and the sometimes primitive production remind me of the old WGN days. I swear that at some times, they are channelling Ray Rayner, the WGN Icon that any 40ish person from the Chicago area will remember.

Jiggetts and North bring a checmistry to the microphone, and camera that will get them by glitches in production. They may be crude, and I am not sure why they have to have thoe HUGE microphones in front of them, but they aren’t boring.

I heard their show described the first week as being a little aimless, as if they were just having breakfast with the sound on, but it didn’t feel like that when I watched Monday, and as an audio broadcast, it is far ahead of what evfen Mike was doing before he left the Score last year.

The Monsters are better than any incarnation of the two with someone else, the Mike North Zoo, Dan Jiggetts with Doug Buffone, etc. , always fell short, though I listened to North’s show in the morning more often than not. Jigs is his bookend. He’s not quite as edgy, or out of control, he’s having fun.

Mike North’s other stints have used guys like Fred Huebner was not a decent foil, or even his wife Bebe, who was fine for a while, but nobody could really go the distance with him.

His producer, and now weather/traffic girl/ Comic relief, can’t control him. She can only try to maintain him, but it ends up being the same as it was on radio, and visibly demonstrated with her running over to him on air with a can of hairspray that did not really change anything. Somehow, Jigs being there makes it work. Maybe it is from Mike looking across the desk at the enormous, and seemingly growing mass of a man that is parrying his remarks, maybe Mike’s just grown up, but it is working now like it hasn’t for a long time.

There is finally radio to look forward to on the air in the morning in Chicago.

I was a little disappointed that Dan McNeil wasn’t on Mike’s show Monday, but he did mention him early in the broadcast, expressing his condolences and wishing him luck. McNeil may or may not have a tough road ahead, but if I were the Score, before someone finds a way to put the Monsters on the airwaves too, I would bring McNeil back, right over those burnt bridges from when he left to WMVP.

I am possibly giving the Score executives more credit than they deserve for thinking they might do something so smart. McNeil has been kicking their offered competition’s ass in ratings since he left, until they simply gave up and let his old partner, Terry Boers turn the Score afternoons into a disgrace. It is amazing to me that while the legendary voices of Chicago radio are being let go, that howling ape still has a job, he must work cheap.

Score executives, go get Dan McNeil, tell him he doesn;t have to work with Boers, ever, and let him take back the foothold that the national station gained with him. His old show already sounds like every other sports radio show, as if 3 college room mates were just talking crap for three hours. He was the hand that stirred that drink, get him back.

In McNeil’s column in the Sun Times this week, he takes his firing in stride, and promises to be back by spring. I hope he comes back as strong as the Monsters have.

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About Zack and Mary – Kevin Smith Took it Hard

by meta4man on January 19, 2009

In my post, Zack and Mary Made a Flop? I professed that possibly Kevin Smith would be disappointed about the performance of his movie, but that in the end, he can just put it with the other movies he made, know that he didn’t lose money for anyone, and move on.

After two Podcasts, Smodcast 68 and Smodcast 69 , “The Talking Cure, Parts 1 and 2, I knownthat I severely underestimated how hard he took it, but in the end, saw what he saw about the entire experience. In the end, he made a successful movie, that made people money, and the end product is what he wanted to be shown. He did it his way, and his way apparently leads to $30 million+ grosses while other corporate machine generated movies can make more for what can only be considered less of a movie.

Kevin and Scott Mosier, camped out at Kevin’s house a month after the movie opening, when they are both finally able

LOS ANGELES - AUGUST 20: (L-R) Producer Scott...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

to talk about it, use Smodcast as a therapists couch, and spend three hours being funny and slicing and dicing what happened to their movie and why it fell short of their expectations.  In terms of listening quality, think of it as an extended guest stint on Letterman’s couch. You don’t have to pay attention to every bit, but it’s worth having on as background. That’s pretty much what Smodcasts always are, and that’s why I tune in.

In the end, Kevin will keep making movies, someday, surely, one will pop, and it will probably be one that he won’t expect much out of, that’s the way it usually goes. In the meantime, Zack and MAry and it’s ilk will be watched by myself, and about $30M/10 = 3 million others that went to the movies. On another note, they should include the concessions for Kevin’s movies, because I bet there are a lot more sold for his movies that the others.

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Chicago Sports Media Just Got Bleaker

by meta4man on January 18, 2009

This weekend, another head-scratcher in regards to the Chicago Sports radio climate. WMVP – ESPN 1000 chose not to renew the contract of Dan McNeil, the main cog in the stations highly rated, and highly entertaining, afternoon Sports show, Mac, Jurko, and Harry.

As of late, I’d finally started listening to the afternoon show that McNeil ran, and found him to be the last of the truly entertaining, genuine radio hosts in Sports Radio.  I really enjoyed his visit with Mike North after North was shown the door at the Score, and was surprised and happy with his candor as they talked about old times at the Score, and recent times.

That WMVP would let him go, citing financial times and wanting to move in a new direction, is nothing short of telling the Chicago Sports Radio listeners, “screw you, you’ll get cheap, or you’ll get the generic national radio feed, and you’ll like it.”

“We’re looking to try some new things in the afternoon, and given the economic climate, we feel like this is the right time to do it,” – WMVP boss Jim Pastor

I don’t buy it. This guy helped ESPN get a foot hold in a town that had no use for them before, and the minute they see a chance, they dump him. I can picture the execs in their offices this last year, as big Chicago names fell off

Steve Dahl
Image via Wikipedia

the dial, Mike North, then Steve Dahl, and a few others, have been pushed aside, declining revenues being cited as the issue. All of them, including McNeil, had some time left on their contracts, though North only had a month.

My afternoon drives home are going to be less fun now, or maybe just less full of sports. I can’t help but wish that maybe these outcast radio jocks, without any more outlets for their voices, might find a way to band together, get on a low profile station bandwidth, and build a station of their own, sort of like McNeil, North, and Jiggetts did with the Score, back in the 90’s. They are all fat and rich, maybe they don’t have the hugner for it anymore, but it would be interesting, and I’d find them.

North and Jiggetts, of course, are now on their own 3 hour talk show, which I have not had occasion to watch or listen to. but all reviews so far have not been good. That’s ok, they might have the luxury of learning as they go in the situation they are in. I am tuning in tom orrow since I’m home, and might even write up something about it.

As far as McNeil goes, I’m just sorry he won’t be on the radio, at least for the time being. I liked the mix he had, after not liking the mix before when he was with Terry Boers, the most boring, annoying, selfish man on the planet. McNeil used to have his moments with Boers too, but they were scattered, and he often came off as arrogant. Lately, he comes off as simply enjoying his job, and the world around him.

I’m sure he will continue in that course, despite this curveball.

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The Cockroach of the Internet adds the Cockroach of Chicago Sports

by meta4man on January 6, 2009

Jay Mariotti, may you continue to suck very visibly.
That’s about all I can muster so far as good to say regarding Jay Mariotti and my experience with him. Okay, one other thing, when I was in Arizona and you were “briefly” on ESPN radio and the only voice that spoke glowingly of the Cubs, I liked him.

Since I’ve been back in Illinois, not so much. Do I / did I, regularly read his column, no, but I did read it once in a while. Like him or hate him, the guy can bring up some good points and pose a valid argument. On the other hand, he spends a lot of time picking scabs and prolonging petty arguments, as well as some blatant back-stabbing, as I wrote about before when Mike North lost his job.

I’m not the only one to dislike Jay Mariotti, and have no illusions that my complaining about him just adds to his Buzz ratings, but there can not be enough people pointing out his tactics. In his first column:

Now hear this: I’m a bit too busy to hate bloggers or, really, anyone but terrorists and certain Illinois politicians. I just think they should be writing about Steve Smith, not Stephen A. Smith.

Okay Jay, point taken, but You hear this, you are not unaccountable. I am, because I am nothing, just a ‘blogger’ and not a very prolific one at that, but there are a lot of us. We are part of your argument for moving away from print, don’t discount us, or your readers.

Jay spends the last column taking shots at Charles Barkley for his recent DUI and offensive behavior which was reported along with it. This is where he fails as a columnist. I don’t claim to be a professional, but he is, and he gets paid like one. Lately, his columns have been nothing but vendetta’s, and he glazes over the fact that he got to go to China for the Olympics on the Sun-Times dime, and they might only have two or three left, and came back to quit on them, then used his first column in a new venue to skewer them.

He says that he left millions on the table with the Sun-Times, and I say, there must be a whole lot of this story that is not getting told. I think that if he is planning on replacing that money with income from AOL and many more millions coming from the web market, that he should have paid attention. Money appears and disappears from the internet table faster than a rolling tide, and it almost never ends up in the hands of pure writers.

Like Jay, AOL is a survivor, but you have tom wonder how much they have left, and if they truly think that people will forget how long they squeezed them for a weak product and come back just because they opened up the doors to the rest of the world, finally. AOL was a good starting point for me as a place to begin experiencing what the internet could ofer, but it is Soooo 90’s now, and not seeming to make any particularly great leaps forward.

I’ve got to wonder at the thought process that took Jay to AOL, and if he’s telling the real story. Maybe he’s right, maybe he jumped off a sinking boat, but maybe it is the last ‘tic of this roach as he and his new compadre’s swirl down the drain.

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Does this Dog Know what it’s gotten into?

by meta4man on January 2, 2009

Today, on my RSS feed, got a picture of this Puppy, named Chupa

Chupa the Mixed Breed

Chupa the Mixed Breed

A lifetime or two ago, when I was a minor editor on the AOL Short Stories Board, we were asked to pick a name for our “Offical’ Editor name, which would be tagged as NOVL _____.

My first choice was  NOVL Chupa. Mainly because I had been reading about El Chupa Cabra a little bit, and was working on a short story about them. I guess I could have figured out what Chupa meant then, or maybe I even did, but I didn’t really care. To me, it sounded cool, and for some time, I judged and responded to stories as NOVL Chupa.

Then the Powers that were in AOL sent me an email, stating that it had been pointed out that Chupa meant “To Suck” in Spanish, and NOVL “To Suck” sounded a little offensive. Oops, my fault, they asked me to pick another name, and I pickled the simplest, possibly most innocuous name ever, Cub. Again, probably because it was Spring and that is what I am thinking, Cubs Cubs Cubs Cubs. That one stuck for several years, in fact until I quit working there. Now this dog has my old name.

I’m guessing his mom and dad aren’t hispanic.

Some Links back to the old AOL Short Stories Days:

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