Mid-July Broiler Blog

The record hot summer continues here in the Midwest- and with the thermometer scheduled to hit 100 degrees again tomorrow,maybe it's a good thing that the Taste of Chicago was shorter this year- otherwise, every entree-as well as the patrons- might have been fried to a crisp. Let's hit a few random thoughts I've been saving in my fevered brain... Okay, this one is just plain weird- on Saturday, while we were returning to the city, we were having a conversation when my pal Jim, who was driving, suddenly instructed us to look to our left. In doing so, we saw- an absolutely perfect,Disney-theme park quality Snow White driving alongside us!Yes, the short dark hair, the high collar-it looked exactly like the lovely Disney heroine-in the car all by herself!(We joked that she probably had the 7 dwarves in her trunk, at which point our director, shooter, and editor Chris commented- "...and they're ALL GRumpy!") Jim said he wanted us all to look just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.We then got into a discussion of how it must be the same thing- kind of- when we're going to, or from, one of our appearances- we could imagine a driver telling his family or friends-"No, I swear to you- I looked over at the next car on the expressway- and there was Svengoolie! Really!" We were wondering what exactly Snow White might have been doing- was she making an appearance at the Taste? Was there some other Disney-oriented event somewhere? (One of our group made an oblique comment about her having made an appearance at that EXXXotica convention that was right near our G-Fest event in Rosemont, but...nah, it couldn't be...though it was brought up "we can't see the rest of her costume"..okay, stop that. Right now...unless you have pictures...) If anybody knows where Snow was going, let us know! I got an e-mail letting me know that WWE wrestling super-star Chris Jericho now has his own glow-in-the-dark Sven shirt and loves it!The "break the walls down" grappler is a huge horror movie fan, and I was surprised when I was first told that he knew all about our show! So, now I can be a "Jerichoholic" and he can be a "Svenamaniac"! Our friend and co-worker George Blaise forwarded an unusual article to us-about a Lithuanian basketball team documentary, regarding their Olympic medal persuit of 1992.The documentary entitled "The Other Dream Team" includes the story of a huge $450,000 contribution to the team from an artist who independently created a special image for their uniforms- which is the reason George brought this to my attention.The artist,Greg Speirs of New York, generated the big donation amount through sales of merchandise featuring that image-which was that of a skeleton dunking a flaming basketball!!! George wondered if it might have been Tombstone moonlighting for the Lithuanian Team, which went on to win a bronze medal in the Barcelona Olympics! Can you imagine Tombstone on the court? "Whoa! It must be the shoes! Or,maybe, it must be that I finally have FEET!" or"If Miami loves the heat so much, how 'bout they stick this burning basketball right up their foul line?" Maybe even "If I win some kind of medal- does that mean I can keep this body?" The press release states that Speirs is re-issuing the 1992 jerseys- and,the cool thing is, all the money has always gone to charity, whether it was the Lithuanian team or children's charities. You can check out the design and find out more about the shirts at www.skullman.com ! I'm sure that image might not only make Tombstone proud, but may even cause his head to swell- which, in his case, is a major thing- since he's usually JUST a head!