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I know I’ve already gone on n’ on about Montreal’s culinary delights, but Saturday, besides being enraptured by Frank Beckmann’s Michigan-Miami (OH) calls on my rental car Sat radio, I did what most Montrealers do on an idle, early September Samedi:
Watch tennis at Bar Le Stud while gnawing on smoked meat sandwiches and bagels - and polishing it off with some angioplasty-inducing Poutine. Oh yeah, and hang out with SbB Girl Wendy: Read more…
Last night I went to the Oasis show at Bell Centre with SbB Girl Wendy. It was my first trip to the building. (I’d previously been to the old Montreal Forum many times.)
It’s not as massive as some of the other newer arenas I’ve seen, like Staples Center and United Center, and the seating is much steeper and closer to the action. The vast majority of the seats, unlike the aformentioned facilities, are in the lower level, with the club and upper levels much smaller. Read more…
SbB Girl Wendy and I spent the day puttering around Montreal, taking in the sights. Here’s a photo of an old building, and some flags. And …
… whoa.
My own personal highlight today was making the fantastical discovery that Montreal is hosting the 2008 Le Coupe Grey (that’s Grey Cup for those of you residing in Whitehorse). Read more…
Currently I’m in Canada - soon to be joined by SbB Girl Wendy. We’ll have oft-incoherent commentary coming this weekend, so keep checking back. More details below.
(SbB at Toronto’s Virgin Festival this weekend, thanks to My Boy Barry!)
Yesterday I spent the day flying from Los Angeles to Montreal. Here’s one of the many highlights of my layover at O’Hare Airport in Chicago (nice to see the city’s most famous extinct dinosaur Bill Wirtz getting the proper tribute he deserves):
I also enjoyed the chance to stock up on all things Cubs. This Chicago airport store display featured 21 (I counted) different Cubs’ memorabilia items …
… and one White Sox item, which after the ALDS will most likely be the latest fashion trend on the streets of the Central African Republic.
On the flight from LAX to ORD, I saw something I’ve never seen. Some poor old, oxygen-tanked woman actually swapped her own stuff for that drop-down oxygen mask. She ended up making it through the flight ok. We might have lost her in the changeover, but thankfully Ozzie Guillen wasn’t sitting next to her, ‘else she’d have had to assist him with his mask first.
With all those great performances by Michael Phelps & Co., the Olympics sure have been exciting here stateside. And, thanks to a report out today by the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, you’ll be pleased to find out that Chinese citizens are getting a very, very similar buzz off The Games!
Jennifer Brett of the AJC notes that Coca-Cola executives at the Beijing Games “have been mobbed like rock stars at Coke’s pavilion on the Olympic Green.“ And after a recent promotional event at the “Olympic Green” sponsor pavilion, Beijing residents “surged forward for photos and autographs” with Coca-Cola China’s Beijing Olympic Project Group GM David Brooks.
Boy, it’s great to finally gain some keen insight into what has the Chinese so genuinely excited about their Olympiad. (And of course, that reportage by Ms. Brett has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Coca-Cola is based in Atlanta.)
Big news in sports radio today, as Sirius XM announced that Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who recently departed WFAN-AM’s long-running “Mike and The Mad Dog” show, is heading to the Sat Radio network.
Russo and Sirius XM President Scott Greenstein appeared on CNBC today to trumpet Russo getting his own channel on the net, called “Mad Dog Radio.” (Russo will take a $3M annual salary to do a daily show, while also hiring talent for the channel.)
RBC Capital Markets’ David Bank said Russo’s $3M annual salary “sounds like a big number, but in the grand scheme of things, … this is actually not that expensive.” CNBC’s Bill Griffeth told Russo, “You sold cheap.”
Russo sold cheap? Then he’ll be right at home with Sirius XM stockholders.
While I guess having Russo on Sat Radio is good news for Sirius XM, the bad news is that at least one major U.S. automaker is already manufacturing internet-enabled cars.
(My next cross-country drive to include mustard BBQ, “Mad Dog Radio”?)
From those cars you will be able to listen to thousands of radio shows for the cost of your internet service. I’m actually already doing it in my car, with my wifi-enabled laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter. I drove cross-country two months and didn’t miss any of my favorite radio shows.
That’s the real future of four-wheeled sports *radio* receivers. (Hope Mad Dog is getting paid in advance!)
The CHICAGO TRIBUNE’s Rick Morrissey writes today that female athletes who pose for nudie mags aren’t advancing the cause of women’s sports. Instead, they’re once proving that, “women’s bodies are commodities.”
That has the Olympic Village giving whole new meaning to “commodities exchange.”
The WASHINGTON POST’s Dan Steinberg, in a recent online chat, wrote, “To me, it’s (the Olympics have) been dramatically less fun than Turin was.”
Well that’s really an unfair comparison, as Turin is best known as the Atlantic City of Italy’s rust belt. Read more…
My rule on people who claim they’re from Chicago is that if they say they’re a White Sox fan, you know they are indeed from the Windy City, because who outside the (312) would claim otherwise?
(Didn’t think it possible to look cool in a designer White Sox hat - until now)
SbB Girl Wendy is such a person. She’s a genuine Chicagoan and a huge White Sox fan. As further proof of her city of origin, I’m here to report that she despises the Cubs (and more specifically, their martini-tinkling fans) almost as much as she adores the Chisox. Read more…
