Should We Be Bullish on Ex-Bulls?

Not so long ago, sportswriters used the number of former Chicago Cubs on a major league baseball roster to determine that team's success in the post-season. The more exes there were, the greater the probability the team would fail.

With the NBA playoffs upon us, I'm wondering how that affects professional basketball teams with former members of the Chicago Bulls in their lockerooms.

It was a decade ago that the Bulls seemed on the verge of championship contention. Anchored by nascent superstar Derrick Rose, they possessed all the ingredients for a long run of success. But recurrent injuries to Rose's knees derailed what would have been a brilliant NBA career, and with it the aspirations of the entire roster.

Center Joakim Noah is retired, as are forwards Carlos Boozer and Luol Deng. But a smattering of the roster (including coach Tom Thibodeau) remains active. As do several other former Bulls.

So you have to wonder how the resurgent Atlanta Hawks (with Kris Dunn), Washington Wizards (with Robin Lopez and Daniel Gafford) and New York Knicks (with Rose, Taj Gibson and coach Thibodeau) will fare.

Ditto the Miami Heat, featuring built-in-Chicago superstar Jimmy Butler and fresh off an appearance in last year's NBA Finals. And we shouldn't forget the Milwaukee Bucks and Chicago refugee Bobby Portis.

So despite this season's startling success, does the fact the roster carries three ex-Bulls mean that Knicks' fans should be waving the white flag? Is their series with the Hawks (with only a lone Bull) a foregone conclusion?

And what of the Wizards? With zero ex-Bulls on the Philadelphia 76er roster, is their stirring late-season comeback and return to the post-season doomed to failure?

And how will things shake-out between Miami and Milwaukee? With a single ex-Bull populating each roster, do they negate each other, leaving their teams to fight it out on basis of merit?

With a fourth consecutive losing season, one over-before-it-began playoff appearance in their last six and a desultory rebuild mired in mud despite a new GM and a new coach, it's a bit disconcerting to see so many ex-Bulls thriving in new environments.

As fans do, I grew very attached to the teams coached by Thibodeau and Scott Skiles. Those rosters were gritty and talented. They played defense. Most importantly, they complemented each other.

It was tough to see them so rarely move beyond the first round.

I'm happy for Thibodeau's success, even if he's coaching my second least-favorite team in the NBA. The same goes for Rose, forced to consume a good deal of humble pie since the sparkling first act of his NBA career.

But I'm left wondering why the Bulls remain with an uneven, disjointed roster after so many other teams (Phoenix, Denver, Utah, Atlanta and those Knicks) have risen to contention in the same time frame.

If I even needed the impetus, I appreciate the Jordan-era dynasty anew.

Taking Wing(s)

It was never the coolest thing on TV. I mean, one of its own leads bemoaned the show's lack of critical and popular cache. There weren't any Emmy winners, or even nominees. But it was reliably funny. And its production team did an amazing job of developing and integrating new characters when circumstances demanded them.

The show? Wings. And for seven and-a-half seasons it was NBC's indefatigable ratings warhorse. True, it never captured the public imagination to the degree that Seinfeld or Friends did, but Wings was a top thirty stalwart for the vast portion of its existence.

Thirty years after its debut, writing an appreciation does not require marveling at its ability to be a lowest common denominator-styled ratings windfall. That's because three-decades later, trading in a genre that ages faster than unrefrigerated milk, Wings is still funny.

The band of imperfect and occasionally forlorn characters who populated Nantucket's fictional airport were eccentric, but eminently human. Driven by disparate agendas, there was never any shortage of conflict. But when circumstances demanded it, their humanity inevitably came to the fore.

Even if the humanity could be grudging, it was humanity nonetheless. It more or less mirrored the country it played to. But the real genius of Wings is that it never beat you over the head with a message. When there was one, it was tucked in between the sniping and the competition and the calculation.

Joe, Brian, Helen, Fay, Roy, Antonio, Lowell, Casey and Alex were just folk. People trying to make it to next week without declaring bankruptcy, losing their faith or acknowledging the fact it often seemed they might die alone.

And perhaps that human-scale sense of normalcy it what makes Wings so watchable today. There were no blood feuds, winner-take-all struggles for inheritances and no heartless, coldblooded competition for a seat on some corporate board.

It was Joe and Brian keeping Sandpiper, their single-airplane airline, afloat. And with it, the economic sustenance of its thrice-widowed ticket agent Fay and mechanic-savant Lowell.

It was the Italian-immigrant cab driver Antonio making ends meet, both financially and emotionally, no matter how strenuously those ends resisted.

It was Helen keeping her lunch counter (and her heart) open as she fought to carve out a career in music while keeping an eye out for Mr. Right.

And while Roy, who headed Sandpiper's lone competitor, appeared on solid financial ground, he fought his worst instincts as he attempted to replace the one true love of his life—ex-wife Sylvia.

In their writing, Wing's creators fashioned characters we could relate to and empathize with. We laughed with them at least as often as we laughed at them. We cared.

Actors come and actors go, but the best addition to Wings (aside from Tony Shalhoub, whose Antonio became a regular in season three) was Amy Yasbeck, who played Casey beginning with season six.

Helen's beautiful-but-snobbish older sister, unceremoniously dumped by a west coast millionaire, returned to Nantucket with her tail between her legs. Left penniless and with no discernible job skills, she was forced to room first with with Helen and then brother-in-law Brian as she struggled to find a foothold in her strange, new world.

Her arrival brought a fresh infusion of energy, something that Farrah Forke, in her role as Brian's acerbic girlfriend Alex, never quite managed. (Check the episode 'Nuptials Off'—season 6, episode 23—for proof.)

Even minus the cerebrally off-kilter performances of Thomas Haden Church as Lowell, Wings was able to zoom off into the sunset on a high note. And as a fan, that had to make you happy.

So to David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee, Tim Daly, Steven Webber, Crystal Bernard, Thomas Haden Church, David Schramm, Rebecca Shull, Tony Shalhoub, Farrah Forke and Amy Yasbeck, thank you for making me laugh then.

And thank you for making me laugh now.

What follows are my highly-subjective and totally unscientific nominees for the ten best episodes of Wings ever:

The Customer's Usually Right (4)

Nuptials Off (6)

Et Tu, Antonio? (6)

Say Uncle Carlton (5)

Four Dates That Will Live in Infamy (3)

Terminal Jealousy (5)

She's Baaack (6)

The Big Sleep (7)

Miss Jenkins (6)

Marriage, Italian Style (3)

And some honorable mentions:

One Flew Over the Cooper's Nest (7)

When a Man Loves a Donut (7)

Noses Off (4)

2 Good 2 B 4 Gotten (5)

Hey Nineteen (5)

The Lyin' King (7)

Dreamgirl (8)

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wrong (7)

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Policewoman Scorned (2)

The Puppetmaster (2)

 

The Pains of Consuming

I've done it again. Gone and killed another of my favorite products. Merely by enjoying them, it seems I consign them to some sort of consumer products death sentence, where like Stalin's political enemies they disappear and are never seen again.

According to several news reports, it's not hard to do. Products are coming and going in unprecedented numbers. And just about anything affects it. Corporate mergers. Supply chain issues. Sales. Executive whims. Pandemics.

As a guy with a few kinks in his tastebuds (I detest seafood and poultry, for example) I don't expect to find an endless array of foodstuffs that appeal to me. But when my tastebuds find themselves in the mainstream, I kind of hope things will stick around for a while.

Take Knorr Foods One Skillet dinners. Just last year, I discovered the Steak, Pepper, Brown Rice and Quinoa variety. And the Moroccan-Style Chicken with Barley, which asked only that the preparer add carrots and raisins. (Okay, I admit it—the latter is a little exotic. And if you're wondering, I substituted the chicken with pork.)

But they were amazing! I mean, restaurant-quality food from my kitchen? Are you serious?

But there they were.

Yes, there was some prep required. With the former, one red and one green pepper needed to be sliced, along with a pound and a half of good beef (I used London broil). With the latter, the pork had to be similarly prepped, along with the carrots.

No big deal.

Then each ingredient had to be cooked separately, with each one picking up traces of the item cooked previously. Finally, there was a grand re-combining. Let stand for a couple of minutes and they were ready to go.

I consumed them like someone who hadn't eaten for weeks. Leftovers existed only theoretically.

After several months of One Skillet nirvana, I began to notice one of two things when I went to re-stock: they were either gone (along with their shelf IDs), or they were on sale—the clearance kind.

It being the year of COVID, so much could have gone wrong.

And yet on the other hand, with so many people spending so much time at home, I would have thought a product like this, which required only a few, easy to find additions and yielded a restaurant-quality dinner in return would have been wildly popular.

I was wrong.

But I'll never know for sure. Responses from Knorr were vague and never confirmed the status of these products. But their continued absence from the corporate web site and store shelves doesn't paint a bright picture.

Even on the inedible side of the marketplace favorites disappear.

If you can find it, take my all-time favorite car wax. It was my wife who first spied Final Detail on QVC, and was impressed by the claims of the manufacturer. Mindful of the many hours her hubby spent washing and waxing their cars, she ordered.

Perhaps displaying a bit of gender-based skepticism, I regarded the product with a noncommittal “Hmmm.” It seemed too good to be true. But because of the degraded condition of the wax on hand (I had stupidly left it the garage, where it had frozen over the winter), Final Detail was pressed into service earlier than anticipated.

And I was awed.

My car shone like the proverbial diamond. It was its own auto show. The sun was reflected in a tightly-focused, blinding point of light. Even better, Final Detail could be used across several different types of surfaces. I was immersed in Final Detail delirium. People stared. 

(At the car. Not my delirium.) 

Not so surprisingly, my wife was immersed in a gentle form of I-told-you-so delight. As if I even needed the reminder, she was a woman worth listening to. And I don't hesitate to say I did.

Marital tangents aside, I became hooked on Final Detail. I swore by the stuff. But life changed, and finances no longer allowed for luxuries like garages. And things like waxing the car took a backseat to things like looking for a job.

When we were again able to afford housing with garages, I resumed my old habits. The diamond-like luster it cloaked my 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder* in made my heart swell. Perfection!

So when bottle number-one of a two-pack ran dry, I began searching for replacements. I may as well been looking for a break on my Illinois property tax. It is gone.

There is a lady by the name of Bridgette in Sumner County, Tennessee who is selling a bottle on Varage Sale for $30—roughly three-times its original price. But apart from hers, good luck.

However humiliating it is to admit, I am a consumer-oriented capitalist at heart. And when I find that rare product that either tastes really good or works really well, I seek an LTR faster than a lonely soul on a dating site.

I mean, I'm there.

But the world's titans of industry need to cooperate. It's hard to believe this even needs to be said, but I can't have an LTR by myself. And insofar as One Skillet dinners and Final Detail car wax are concerned, I seem destined to remain a party of one at a table for two.

Sigh.

* = This is a bald-faced lie. While I am presumably capable of driving and waxing a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, there exist several million reasons why this won't ever happen. 

 

Business and Government--Inverted

In the United States, “we” have given enormous power to our businesses. If you're a Republican, you feel this is a great and good thing. If you're a Democrat, probably not so much.

We is in quotations because no one asked us—the American public—if we were okay with that. It was just done. Case in point was the 2010 Citizens United decision, which had nothing to do with citizens or unity.

Ostensibly about campaign finance reform, it served to weaponize Republican's biggest advantage (money) and removed any and all constraints from corporate campaign donations. This because in the words of our friends across the aisle, corporations are people, too.

And that being the case, deserve their first amendment rights, also. 

Sniff.

This not only further entrenched the culture of special interests and lobbyists in Washington DC, but made running for office a whole helluva lot more expensive. You are no doubt shocked to learn a Republican-majority in the Supreme Court found in its favor.

As the U.S. economy has moved from one based in manufacturing to one based in more nebulous things like buying and selling stuff like debt and data, it has moved out of brick and mortar structures into cyberspace.

It has changed more-quickly than the government can adapt to it. Tech entities like Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook frequently operate in an unregulated environment that often leaves them to (gulp) police themselves.

Which brings us to Facebook's suspension of Donald Trump.

I'm convinced one-hundred percent of us know Donald Trump is a shit. But only fifty-percent of us will admit it because denying for Donnie has become a cause. A declaration of contempt for people who see things differently than you do.

For those of us not in the cult, Donald Trump is a cancerous skin lesion. Left untreated, it will envelop the body and kill it. And unlike most cancers, the best and most-effective treatment for this strain is silence.

Unplugging the lie machine that seeks only its own affirmation even at the expense of a nation. 

Republicans can yammer about freedom of speech til they turn blue. (Heh heh heh.) Donnie can cry “It's rigged!” til his BMI is appropriate to his age, weight and height. But as they so often do, Republican's own actions hollow-out even their most-pointed accusations until they're nothing but empty shells.

Much like Republicans themselves.

Until government catches up, we are most fortunate to have tech entities like Facebook that realize the greater threat, and have acted accordingly. Ironic, isn't it?

What's Playin'?

With The Square Peg having been more or less hijacked by police shootings for the better part of the last month, I felt it time I posted a bit about music.

While so many interests have waxed and waned and then waxed again over the years, music has been the over-arching constant of my life. While life in a post-rock world has meant it's harder to find the music I love, it's not impossible.

Thanks to the Internet, newspapers, word of mouth and of course, the radio, I'm able to piece together bits of information about releases that are conceivably of interest to me. And after all these years I've gotten pretty good at it.

So when the question “What's La Piazza Gancio listening to these days?” is posed at your next soiree, you may answer thusly:

Jessie Ware –What's Your Pleasure? (2020)

Moby – Everything Is Wrong (1995)

Lana del Rey – Chemtrails Over the Country Club (2021)

Tune - Yards – Sketchy (2021)

Chris Stapleton – Starting Over (2020)

Moby –18 (2002)

Kathleen Edwards –Total Freedom (2020)

I also can't stop listening to an old Ray LaMontagne track, Beg Steal or Borrow. Funny how some songs appear at a certain time in your life and express the very things that've been rattling 'round your head.

Yep—life without music is life in black and white. (And not the Ansel Adams kind, neither.)

 

The Sad Constant

I've just begun standing-on-my head lessons. I need lessons because as a child, I was even more hopeless at gymnastics than I was at traditional sports. Thankfully, this period of my life pre-dated popular use of the word “spazz”.

So, yeah. Lessons.

My instructor is a nicely-muscled Oriental woman named Lexi, who prefers to be called Flexi. I know, I know. Her choice, right? Anyway, she's adept at contorting her body into all sorts of unnatural poses. For her, inverting the carbon-based life form's upright posture is as easy as spending money.

Me? I may as well be attempting to nail pudding to a wall.

So. You may well be asking yourself why does he even want to stand on his head? Especially at his age!

I seek this to better understand the rapidly-shifting world around me. You see, in my eyes the world is off its nut, and the best strategy towards understanding this new normal is to invert my own.

Capisce?

Take our new litmus test: police shootings. Like the conflicts they stem from, they happen all over, all the time.

This being 2021 America, 49.5% of the population feels they are entirely justified, all the time. The other 49.5% of the population believes they are wanton acts of race-based brutality and are never, ever justified.

Which leaves me and a few others in the one-percent who feel police shooting don't fit into one-size-fits-all categorization. That they originate from a hugely diverse set of circumstances and are subject to an ocean of factors that by their nature, often demand lightning-like responses.

Before going any further, I want to say I think it is a good thing we are examining them so closely. The taking of a human life, especially by an entity ostensibly there to protect them, isn't anything to take lightly.

In Chicago, we have the shooting of a thirteen year-old gang-banger caught in the act of, well, gang-banging. While I rue the influences and choices that led Adam Toledo to be firing at cars at 2:30 AM on a Monday morning, I can't quite bring myself to feel this is an unspeakable loss of human life.

The media has taken a millisecond of film in between Toledo's covert disposal of his gun and his turning to face the pursuing officer with hands raised and the officer's firing of his gun and turned it into a poster of police brutality and murder. A moment frozen for all of eternity.

For the one-percent of us still in possession of our faculties, we understand that given the conditions of the event, there was no way the officer could have known Toledo had disposed of the gun and was in the act of complying before he was shot.

This because we are talking about a tiny, infinitesimal fragment of time. And let's not forget, Toledo was an active, legitimate threat to public (that's you and me) safety.

But to 49.5% of the population, the officer may as well have blindfolded Toledo, tied him to a post, popped a cigarette in his mouth and shouted “Fire!” before dispatching the entirety of CPD's arsenal into his body.

If you say so.

Then we have the sixteen year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, Ma'Khia Bryant.

Bryant, for unknown reasons, ended up a foster child. Despite this speed bump, she was liked and made her high school's honor roll. She posted videos about make-up and hair which were widely shared.

None of which explains how she ended up with a knife in her hands attempting to stab two co-residents of her foster home after an argument over house-cleaning. But she was. And did. The confrontation continued even after police showed up.

Again, my apologies for not belonging to either of the majority populations. But um, Bryant was in the act of murder. She was actively stabbing another person. Again, even after the police showed up. She showed no signs of abating.

Naturally, after the event ended bystanders (who, it should be pointed out, had done virtually nothing to sidetrack or end the confrontation) turned on the police. One of those assembled said “She's a (expletive) kid. Damn, are you stupid?”

Hmmm. Let's look at that real hard.

Granted the officer, after showing up, should have paused the confrontation long enough to make proper introductions and confirm the participant's ages. Then refreshments should have been served before the festivities were allowed to continue.

But the stupid cop, acting as stupid cops do, came upon what I'll call an active stabber. Bryant was in the act of stabbing someone, and after pushing them to the ground turned on another bystander and began assaulting them.

Bryant repeatedly ignored the cop's requests to cease and desist. She had a knife and was bent on using it.

Sadly, the thought-impaired bystander didn't offer an opinion as to what kind of response he would have preferred had Bryant been attacking him when the cop showed up. I'm going to take a crazy-ass, out of left field swing at this, but I'm guessing he wouldn't have wanted the cop to have first inquired as to Bryant's age before subduing her.

Am I right, bro?

Apparently, 49.5% of the population needs to hear this: a gun and a knife are dangerous, regardless of the age of the person wielding them. In fact, as Adolph Hitler himself learned through his infamous recruiting of the Hitler Youth, they are even more dangerous in the hands of someone given to black and white thinking.

Someone without a fully-developed sense of reason and consequence.

Predictably, the reaction to Bryant's death has been hysterical and extreme. Blind. Wildly inaccurate. She is innocent by virtue of her age—and nothing more. Her survivor's predictably rosy portrayals nonwithstanding, who was Ma'Khia Bryant? How did she end up in foster care? Why was a knife an acceptable response to an argument?

I pull back even further when I read the suggestions of Sheila Bedi (a civil right attorney) on how the Toledo foot chase should have unfolded. Her thought? The chase should have been abandoned. Yep. In essence, Toledo should have gone free since he is a victim of quote-unquote “society.”

Uh-huh. (It goes without saying that Bedi's was not one of the cars Toledo and his pal were shooting at that night.)

Jason Van Dyke and Derek Chauvin were clearly guilty of murder. The former should be serving a prison sentence commensurate with his crime. Hopefully, the latter will be.

But the cops who responded to the calls regarding Toledo and Bryant? Nope. By virtue of their profession, they were dropped into situations demanding immediate responses. I am confident neither is going to look back on their participation with the slightest sense of satisfaction.

Indeed, they will more-likely be haunted by them.

Can we simply mourn the tragedy of kids with no emotional center, be it a loving family or a strong parent or a true and good friend? Can we do that without shredding the people forced to respond to the worst in them?

Putting police into a position where they're all-guilty-all-the-time is as dangerous as anything a Republican could concoct. So is cloaking them in law enforcement's version of diplomatic immunity.

Police shootings need to be examined on an individual basis—not stuffed into all-or-nothing decisions that only serve a single—and highly politicized—demographic.

Oops! Gotta go. Lexi—I mean Flexi's—here. 

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Minneapolis: the Un-Chicago

 Five and-a-half years ago, I watched in disbelief the video of Laquan McDonald's murder at the hands of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Given the obviousness of the event, I assumed a conviction and a long jail sentence were forgone conclusions.

What I failed to remember was that this was Chicago, where the fix is always in. While it's true that Van Dyke was convicted, he received a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of just six and three-quarters years for shooting McDonald sixteen times in the back.

(Which I think you'll agree is what you and I would have received had we done the same.)

Even more stunning was the dismissal of all charges by judge Domenica Stephenson for the four cops central to the police-sanctioned cover-up. Combined, these cases represented an abyssal failure of justice, and if Chicago cops didn't feel immune from prosecution beforehand they certainly did afterwards.

So I am relieved that Minneapolis was able to conduct a trial unblemished by political influence and pandering.

Of course, it helps that the circumstances were very different. McDonald's murder came late on a Monday night on an empty stretch of Pulsaki Road. Floyd's came mid-afternoon in a neighborhood populated with stores—and shoppers

While the Chicago police sat on the McDonald footage until a court order forced its release, that was never an option for the Minneapolis PD. Cell phone video was posted to social media within minutes.

And finally, the defense's argument that Floyd's medical conditions killed him—not Derek Chauvin's knee pressing on his neck for nine minutes—was ludicrous. Seriously? Turned inside-out, that argument implies George Floyd would have died that day even had he not encountered Derek Chauvin.

Wow.

They must've thought they were addressing a CPAC convention, because I can't imagine another forum where such lunacy would be given a second thought. Never mind a first one.

The mind reels.

So congratulations to all concerned. Again, it is deeply satisfying to see reason and evidence triumph over political expediency.

With so much yet to be done, I fear this post is premature. Chauvin has yet to be sentenced (as a first-time offender with only a second-degree murder conviction, he's probably looking at a little over a decade in prison) and the trial of his accomplices won't happen until August.

As a hard-bitten cynic I'd say plenty of track remains for this train to go off the rails. 

But it is my desperate wish that communities of color and the police departments who serve them could meet, speak honestly and discover a mutual sense of respect and understanding. Of when police need to do certain things and why, and perhaps even discover a better way forward.