The Chicago Blackhawks were off on Thursday night. After winning four in a row, they have a couple of days to rest before their trip through Western Canada begins. It is going to be a hard couple of days north of the border so we can only hope that they get the proper rest before […] Former Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith gets a free assist – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & MoreRead More

Dominik Kubalik hasn’t produced as his typical pace so far this season. | Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Kubalik’s shot frequency, accuracy and danger have all decreased this season as he endures a nine-game goal drought.

SEATTLE — In five of his 16 games this season, Hawks wing Dominik Kubalik hasn’t taken a shot on goal at even strength. In six of his 16 games, he has one or fewer shots on goal in all situations.

“That’s not a good sign for a shooter,” Kubalik admitted earlier this week.

So what’s the solution?

“I’ve just got to find a way to be in those shooting positions,” he said. “[I need to] be around the net, [even] when it hurts there but you can have easy goals. . . . [I need] this mindset that if I have a chance, the first thing I should be looking for is to shoot it.”

After scoring in each of the Hawks’ first two games, Kubalik has only one goal since and zero in his last 10 games. Only one of those three total goals happened at even strength, and all his even-strength shooting analytics are down.

His attempts per 60 minutes have decreased from an average of 15.6 last season to 12.1 this season. The shots he does take are less dangerous: Only 52.3% have been scoring chances, compared with 63.7% and 58.7% his first two seasons. And his shots are less accurate: Only 45.5% have made it on goal, compared to 58.5% and 64.0% his first two seasons.

Interim coach Derek King sat down with Kubalik last weekend to show him videos of shifts in which he played well — an effort to boost his confidence and take his mind off his scoring troubles.

“It helped me a lot to see some different things than shooting,” Kubalik said. “When I saw the videos, I felt like I was doing the right things, so that’s good — even away from the puck, which is my problem. [I’m] just getting my legs going, [trying to] be on the forecheck, be physical, [do] those things I just need to do automatically every shift. There are lots of positive things, and [I] just have to build off that.”

Added King: “He’s like, ‘Ah, I’ve got to score.’ [I told him] he’ll score because it’s like riding the bike. You know how to ride the bike. If you don’t ride for 10 years, you still know how. He knows how to score goals.”

Last Friday, Kubalik squandered two golden chances all alone against Coyotes goalie Scott Wedgewood, hitting the crossbar on a high-glove shot on the first chance and finding no room along the ice between Wedgewood’s pads on the second.

Kubalik has been stopped often this season while trying to go five-hole. He joked about a friend calling him after Friday’s game to say, “It’s enough.”

“I can say you guys are not going to see the five-hole for a long time now,” he said Tuesday with a smile.

He ripped another three shots Wednesday night against Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer, all of which were considered scoring chances, yet again couldn’t find the twine.

Part of that might be goalies learning Kubalik’s tendencies better — not a surprise for someone who started his career by scoring at a pace only Jonathan Toews and Artemi Panarin have matched in recent Hawks history.

Kubalik knows it’s his duty to overcome that. The Hawks — tied for second-to-last in the NHL in even-strength goals (24 in 16 games) — will certainly benefit if he can.

“The good goal-scorers always find a way,” he said. “Everybody knows that [Capitals star Alex] Ovechkin is going to shoot the one-timer on the power play. It still goes in, looks easy. I’ve just got to find a way to make it look easy, too.”

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The Chicago Bulls are coming off one of their worst losses of the season. However, at 10-5, they are in fantastic shape going into the rest of the season. Every team loses games but the Bulls need to work on not blowing games that they once had a lead by 20. Their first chance at […] Nikola Jokic would look amazing in a Chicago Bulls uniform – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & MoreRead More

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Rev. Bill Kenneally. | Braxton Black

He pushed Catholic church officials for change, worked for social justice and was known for welcoming all to his North Side church.

The Rev. Bill Kenneally endeared himself to his congregation at St. Gertrude’s parish by being tough with those in power and kind to those without it.

He pushed Catholic church officials for change and worked for social justice.

Small details got his attention, too. When he found out a little boy at St. Gert’s was allergic to wheat, Rev. Kenneally arranged for him to get Communion wafers made of rice.

And he’d laugh along with everybody else when his cocker spaniel Buddy wandered in to church in the middle of the mass.

Services were held this month at the church the Rev. Kenneally, who was the pastor at St. Gert’s for 22 years. He died Oct. 28 at 85 in hospice care at the Wisconsin home of his nephew John Kenneally.

When he retired as pastor in 2006, Rev. Kenneally told his congregation: “I have problems with the Church. I get very frustrated, but my church is here. The way you treat each other. . .you’re the Church for me.”

“I would call him a revolutionary but not a rebel,” said Peter Buttitta, a former lay minister at St. Gertrude’s and a chaplain at Amita Health St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. “He was not out to break rules. He wanted to do the best thing for the congregation.”

Rev. Kenneally challenged the Archdicese of Chicago’s handling of accusations of clergy sexual abuse of children and defended journalists who reported on them.

He welcomed members of the LGBTQ community and women who’d had abortions.

He brought in altar girls before they were officially permitted, and he asked women and former priests in the congregation to take a greater role in preaching and running the parish at 1420 W. Granville Ave.

“He was a big supporter of dancers at Sunday liturgies,” said his friend John Horan.

With the St. Gert’s convent empty, Rev. Kenneally decided to repurpose it as housing for people who needed temporary shelter.

“Kindness, openness, acts of charity grow the church,” he said at his retirement mass.

Heidi Schlumpf, executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter, called him a “homilist extraordinaire, standup comedian, lover of opera and the Chicago White Sox and healer of hurting souls.”

When people told Rev. Kenneally he was popular, he’d jokingly answer: “Everybody who really hated me has left.”

The son of Irish immigrants, he grew up in Humboldt Park. His mother Mary Joyce was from Balla, County Mayo, and his father William was from Ballyporeen, County Tipperary. Young Bill attended Maternity B.V.M. grade school and Quigley Preparatory Seminary and the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

In 1961, he was ordained by Cardinal Albert Meyer. Over the years, he served at churchs including St. Paul of the Cross Church in Park Ridge, St. Edmund’s in Oak Park and St. Nicholas in Evanston. In Chicago, he served at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus Church and Immaculate Conception. He became pastor at St. Gertrude’s in 1984. After retiring, he helped out at St. Barnabas parish in Beverly.

Archdiocese of Chicago
Rev. Bill Kenneally

“Bill was always figuring out ways to welcome,” Horan said.

He’d visit people at the hospital and show up at people’s homes if he heard they were depressed.

“He was always checking in: ‘How you doing, how do you want to be involved?’ ” Horan said.

One time, standing on the steps of his church after mass, he greeted a man dressed in the resplendent robes of his native Nigeria with: “That’s what I wanted to wear!”

He enjoyed listening to NPR and seeing theater at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, Horan said.

In addition to his nephew John, Rev. Kenneally is survived by his nephews Christopher, Mark and Matthew.

He talked about the attributes he’d like to see in an archbishop in the 2012 Claire Bushey book “An Irrepressible Hope: Notes from Chicago Catholics.”

Rev. Kenneally said he wanted one “who considers Chicago home, not Rome; who goes to our plays, movies and symphonies, likes hot dogs and pizza; and dislikes tired pieties. But especially we need an archbishop who is willing to make a leap of faith out the window, spending two or three days at each parish, living at the rectory, meeting the staff, gathering the people. And, yes, he should walk the parish dog. It’s good for the heart.”

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Court reporter Jerry L. Martin holding one of his beloved dogs. | Provided

‘It’s amazing what he could do with a pen and a pad of paper, the same as we have now with tape recorders, computers,’ Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer said.

Jerry L. Martin was one of the last court reporters in Illinois to record proceedings with pen and paper instead of a steno machine.

He’d flip through his note pads, pages flying, transcribing 200 words a minute using Gregg shorthand, a system of squiggles, dots and lines that phonetically represent syllables and words.

And he was astonishingly accurate, said Nancy Naleway, the supervising court reporter in Skokie. She remembers a time she took over for him in a courtroom. Their note-taking overlapped until she gave the “pen writer” a nod that he could leave.

“As a ‘machine reporter,’ we think we’re so fabulous, and we can do all these things, and we’re so fast,” Naleway said. But when they compared transcripts, “He read lines from his steno [pad], and we mirrored each other to perfection. This was Jerry writing by hand at the speed that you’re speaking. It was hands down the most impressive experience. It’s something that has stayed with me for literally for close to 20 years.”

Mr. Martin, 82, died last month at his home in Evanston. He had Parkinson’s disease and congestive heart failure, according to his friend Joe Rocheleau.

He was one of only three pen writers working in the Cook County courts when he retired 20 years ago after more than 30 years.

“It was the end of an era,” said Shelley Sutker-Dermer, the presiding judge at the Cook County regional courthouse in Skokie. “It’s amazing what he could do with a pen and a pad of paper, the same as we have now with tape recorders, computers.”

His transcripts, which he typed from his notes, “were right on,” Sutker-Dermer said. “He was incredibly accurate, incredibly thorough.”

The last court reporter in Illinois still using pen and paper, Nellie Gilpin, retired in 2020 after more than 50 years on the job in the Douglas County courts in downstate Tuscola, according to Dustie Spradlin, director of Illinois Court Reporting Services.

Mr. Martin learned shorthand at the old School of Commerce at Northwestern University.

He grew up in Elmira, New York, where his family lived above the grocery store his parents Frances and Rexford Martin ran.

After settling in Chicago, he found new freedom to live as a gay man, Rocheleau said.

Mr. Martin and Bob Eagan, his life partner of 32 years, lived on the Gold Coast.

Until his partner’s death in 2007, they loved to travel, taking trips to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Cannes, Lisbon, London, Naples, Nice, Paris, Positano, Sorrento, St. Tropez, Salzburg and Vienna.

Mr. Martin loved movies, especially old ones starring Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe. He adored Elizabeth Taylor in works by Tennessee Williams, including 1958’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the 1989 TV movie “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

But Judy Garland was his favorite performer. He had a poster to commemorate seeing her legendary April 23, 1961, concert at Carnegie Hall, where Garland kept getting interrupted with standing ovations and adulation.

“He took the train from Elmira to New York with his mom to see it,” Rocheleau said.

In recent years, Mr. Martin enjoyed seeing “Hamilton.”

“His last outing to a musical,” Rochelau said, “we went to ‘West Side Story’ on his birthday.”

Provided
Jerry L. Martin loved “nice restaurants with big menus.”

A tennis fan, Mr. Martin would always watch when the No. 1-ranked male player, Novak Djokovic of Serbia, was on the court.

He stood 6-feet-3 and wore impeccable suits and ties. His favorite drink was a gin and tonic with lime. And he loved “nice restaurants with big menus,” Rocheleau said.

“Jerry was like an alarm clock when it came to having lunch. He had to have lunch,” Naleway said. “He went out to a restaurant every day and wanted to sit down and have a good meal.”

Near the Skokie courthouse, The Bagel was a favorite.

As a young man, he served two years in the Army in Georgia, according to Rocheleau.

In keeping with Mr. Martin’s wishes, he was cremated, and no service was held.

He is also survived by his sister Linda Lockner, nieces Allison Mott and Suzanne Blunt, nephew Eric Struble and many friends.

Provided
Jerry L. Martin.

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Cinespace Chicago Film Studio president Alexander S. “Alex” Pissios. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

Already linked to 2 big federal cases, Cinespace Chicago Film Studios’ Alex Pissios also owed money to Vincent DelGiudice, who’s pleaded guilty to running a gambling ring with ties to a mob-connected bookie.

It sounds like something out of a made-in-Chicago Dick Wolf crime show.

The head of a Chicago film studio owed money to a bookie linked to a reputed mob figure.

Facing his own legal troubles, the studio boss worked undercover for prosecutors, helping bring down one of the city’s most powerful union bosses.

All of this after he had a string of unpaid loans from a tiny bank authorities later shut down for fraud after the bank’s president turned up dead under strange circumstances.

But this isn’t some TV show. It’s the real-life story of Alexander S. Pissios, whose Cinespace Chicago Film Studios on the West Side hosts filming and production for Wolf’s popular NBC-TV dramas including “Chicago P.D.”

A week ago, a private equity firm announced it’s buying the two Cinespace studios –the the one in Chicago and the original in Toronto — from Pissios and his family, a deal said to be worth at least $1 billion.

News of the sale put a spotlight on Pissios. In addition to the legal troubles that pushed him to be a federal mole and help build the case against longtime Chicago Teamsters boss John T. Coli Sr. and the studio boss’s unpaid loans from shuttered Washington Federal Bank for Savings, Pissios turns out to have ties to a third big federal criminal case in Chicago.

According to the transcript from a recent court hearing, Pissios owed money to Vincent DelGiudice, who pleaded guilty last February to running an illegal gambling ring with ties to a mob-connected bookie.

Neither Pissios nor prosecutors will comment. And the court transcript offers no details.

Pissios began working as a mole when prosecutors told him they could charge him with bankruptcy fraud. The U.S. attorney’s office gave Pissios a great deal, too, handing him an unusual non-prosecution agreement in March 2017 that spares him any federal criminal charges as long as he helps them and is truthful.

Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Cinespace Chicago Film Studios, 2621 W. 15th Pl.

He secretly recorded then-Teamsters boss Coli, who had shaken down Cinespace for $325,000, according to court records. Coli pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities, who’ve delayed his sentencing.

The bank case involves Washington Federal, a small Bridgeport institution federal regulators shut down in December 2017 — days after bank president John F. Gembara was found dead with a rope around his neck in the Park Ridge bedroom of a customer.

Though the police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled Gembara’s death a suicide, some of Gembara’s family and friends think he was killed over problems at the bank.

Before running Cinespace, Pissios developed real estate with Edward Gobbo, a former Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation truck driver. They built homes near the United Center with millions in loans from Washington Federal and other banks.

Both filed for bankruptcy protection — Pissios in 2011, Gobbo the following year — while in debt to Gembara’s bank. It’s unclear whether the loans were repaid.

Though Gobbo owed Washington Federal $12 million when he filed for bankruptcy, the bank kept lending money to him and his family.

Gobbo, who hasn’t been charged with any crime, is a nephew of the late William Hanhardt, a former Chicago police chief of detectives who went to prison for running a mob-tied jewelry ring.

Federal authorities believe Washington Federal lent millions to people as part of a vast embezzlement scheme.

Among the recipients: Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Thompson awaits trial for income-tax fraud for deducting interest payments on his Washington Federal loans even though he hadn’t made the payments.

Thompson has refiled his tax returns, paying what he owed the IRS and saying he didn’t know his accountants deducted the interest payments on the tax returns the alderman and his wife signed for at least five years.

When Pissios and his wife filed for bankruptcy in 2011, they were more than $1 million in debt. Five years after the case was closed, prosecutors discovered they hadn’t disclosed a $100,000 loan from Pissios’ now-deceased uncle Nick Mirkopoulos, Cinespace’s founder.

Threatened with prison, Pissios agreed to cooperate with authorities investigating corruption and come clean about any potentially illicit activities he’d been involved in. He acknowledged owing a $70,000 gambling debt to Bridgeport trucking executive William Pacella, saying he’d been sending $1,500 checks to Pacella’s business for four years –without ever reducing the principal he owed.

Pacella hasn’t been charged with any crime.

Thomas Breen, Pissios’s lawyer, has said that debt has been repaid.

Pissios told investigators he’d been placing illegal gambling wagers since the mid-1990s, when he was selling fur coats on Michigan Avenue.

Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Casey Urlacher (right) walks with his attorney Michael Gillespie into the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

In early 2020, a federal grand jury indicted DelGiudice and nine associates, including Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, former Bear Brian Urlacher’s brother. Casey Urlacher got a pardon from President Donald Trump last January. Two weeks later, DelGiudice pleaded guilty. He’s awaiting sentencing as his lawyer fights prosecutors’ efforts to seize $9 million from him, including his Orland Park home.

The movie studio mogul’s connections to DelGiudice became public during a recent court hearing, when DelGiudice’s attorney Carolyn Gurland questioned a retired FBI agent over how much DelGiudice made from his gambling ring.

Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Vincent DelGiudice (right) and his attorney Carolyn Gurland leaving the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in March 2020.

“And do you recall that [DelGiudice associate] Keith Benson testified that Mr. DelGiudice forgave a lot of gambling debt to an individual called Alex [Pissios],” Gurland asked retired agent John Iannarelli in court last month.

“I do,” Iannarelli said.

There was no other testimony regarding Pissios during the hearing. Gurland won’t discuss Pissios, what he owed DelGiudice or why some of it was forgiven.

The DelGiudice ring involved as many as 1,000 gamblers placing bets through a Costa Rican website. Court records show DelGiudice had some gamblers cover losses by paying his personal expenses, including his daughters’ college tuition.

Prosecutors linked DelGiudice to another convicted bookie, Greg Paloian, whose ties to organized crime date at least to the 1990s. Paloian’s gamblers also placed wagers on DelGiudice’s website, prosecutors say. Paloian pleaded guilty in a separate case earlier this year.

Al Podgorski / Sun-Times
Greg Paloian leaving the Dirksen Federal Building in 2002.

DelGiudice also has ties to Cinespace’s longtime lobbyist Frank Cortese, who operates FJC Technologies, a side business that provides 65 video gaming machines to bars and restaurants under a license he got in 2016 from the Illinois Gaming Board. Cortese initially ran that company out of Cinespace studios. Now, it’s run from his La Grange home.

Cortese faces possible revocation of his gambling license after regulators discovered he has “business and/or social relationships” with DelGiudice, according to a gaming board complaint filed Aug. 24 that says: “DelGiudice and his associates were present at a licensed video gaming establishment in Bedford Park, Illinois, when Cortese and FJC delivered and installed” gambling machines in February 2019.

Cortese wouldn’t have been granted a license if state regulators knew of his connections to DelGiudice, the complaint says.

Cortese and his lawyers didn’t return messages.

Pissios has told federal investigators he hired Cortese as a lobbyist at Coli’s urging — Cortese also lobbied for the Teamsters union — and that Cortese helped the studio get $27.7 million in state grants from then-Gov. Pat Quinn to turn an old Ryerson Steel site into Cinespace.

The final grant, $10 million, came a month after Quinn lost re-election to Bruce Rauner. The new governor ordered Cinespace to return the money amid questions over how it would be spent.

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Justin Timberlake reaches to tear off part of Janet Jackson’s costume during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. | AP File

While solidly reported, the FX and Hulu report on the Super Bowl shocker comes across as an uninspiring academic lecture.

Whether by streaming dramatic series or theatrical feature film, one-time documentaries or docu-series, we’re seeing coverage of virtually every major scandal and upheaval and controversy from the 1990s and 2000s, from Diana to Tonya, from the O.J. Simpson trial to the Clinton impeachment hearings, from the accusations against Michael Jackson and Woody Allen, from Britney Spears to Lindsay Lohan to Tiger Woods and we could go on forever.

The newest entry in the burgeoning catalog is “Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson,” the latest chapter in the “New York Times Presents” series, premiering Friday simultaneously on FX and Hulu. This is a solidly researched, journalistically sound look back at the infamous Super Bowl halftime show in which Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast (for all of 9/16ths of a second) at the end of the performance, thus igniting a controversy with a ripple effect that lasted for years. Unfortunately, it’s also dry and objective to the point of coming across as an uninspiring academic lecture, and adds little to what we already know about the story.

“Malfunction” does a fine job of taking us through the buildup to the controversy, delivering an informative mini-biography of Janet Jackson’s career, from her days as a child actress through her breakthrough albums “Control” and “Rhythm Nation” in the 1980s and Janet owning her sexuality and identity through her music, her videos, her interviews and a very famous Rolling Stone cover. By the 1990s, we were in the midst of a full-fledged Culture War not unlike what we see today, with Vice-President Dan Quayle attacking the fictional Murphy Brown for choosing to become a single mother; conservative politicians and activists voicing shock and horror over Howard Stern’s radio show, nudity on “NYPD Blue” and Bono dropping the f-bomb at the Golden Globes, and groups such as the Parents Television Council pressuring the FCC to “clean up” the airwaves.

Through archival footage and new interviews with journalists, former NFL and network execs and cultural commentators, “Malfunction” sets the stage (so to speak) for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show on CBS, featuring P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock — and Janet Jackson. Prior to the show, there was more concern about the lyrics of P. Diddy and Nelly, and Kid Rock’s plan to wear an American flag poncho, than anything Janet Jackson or her surprise guest Justin Timberlake would do. There’s a little bit of an investigation into exactly what happened that led to the moment when Timberlake pulled on Jackson’s top and her naked breast (adorned with a silver sunburst decoration) was exposed, but it’s still not entirely clear if both Jackson and Timberlake planned it, if Jackson was supposed to be left wearing a red bra, and if it was indeed a “wardrobe malfunction.”

Whatever the details of the build-up, the actual moment created a media frenzy, with Jackson going into hiding at first while Timberlake reportedly apologized directly to CBS CEO Les Moonves and issued written expressions of remorse. By the time Jackson released her own apology, the media consensus was it was too little, too late. Meanwhile, opportunistic, sanctimonious politicians such as Sam Brownback from Kansas and Heather Wilson of New Mexico pounced on the moment to chastise the liberal media. As “Malfunction” reports, Justin Timberlake pretty much skated away, even appearing on the Super Bowl halftime show in 2018, while Janet Jackson lost record contracts, radio airplay and movie roles. This was terribly unfair, and Timberlake himself has continued to acknowledge that — but there’s very little here in the way of new or surprising information. If you don’t know much about this story, “Malfunction” would be a great place to start. If you DO, there’s no compelling reason to tune in.

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Two people were killed and seven others wounded in shootings in Chicago Thursday. | Sun-Times file

A 60-year-old man was killed and another man injured in separate shootings Thursday morning on Interstate 55 near DuSable Lake Shore Drive and on a ramp to the Kennedy Expressway.

Two people were killed and seven others wounded in shootings in Chicago Thursday.

A 60-year-old man was killed and another man injured in separate shootings on Interstate 55 near DuSable Lake Shore Drive and on a ramp to the Kennedy Expressway. The 60-year-old was shot around 5:40 a.m. in the inbound lanes of the Stevenson and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Walter Schroeder. His name hasn’t been released. A little over two hours earlier, a 19-year-old man was wounded in a shooting on the inbound lanes of the Stevenson near DuSable Lake Shore Drive around 3:15 a.m., state police said. The teen was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in serious condition, Schroeder said. State police said he was expected to survive. State police did not say if they believed the shootings were connected.
A 22-year-old man was killed in a shooting in Brighton Park. The man was sitting in the passenger seat of a car about 9:20 p.m. in the 2600 block of West Pershing Road when he was shot by someone in a light-colored Toyota Camry, police said. He was struck in the head and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he later died, police said.
A man and a woman were shot in an apartment in East Garfield Park. They were in a second-floor apartment in the 2900 block of West Jackson Boulevard when two people forced their way in and fired shots about 12:40 a.m., police said. The man, 42, and woman, 49, suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition, police said.

Four others were wounded in citywide shootings Thursday.

A person was killed and eight others were wounded in shootings Wednesday across Chicago.

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Moon Alert

Avoid shopping or important decisions from 2:45 to 8:45 a.m. Chicago time. After that, the moon moves from Taurus into Gemini. The Lunar Eclipse occurs at 2:57 a.m.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

You want to enlighten others about something important that interests you. (You like being the first to tell someone something or the first to deliver important news.) Today, you can trust your instincts.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

You might find that you emotionally identify with your possessions more than usual today. You have a strong attachment to something. Be careful that you don’t get caught up defending something that doesn’t really matter to you.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

The moon is in your sign. This happens for two days every month, and when it occurs it means you will be more emotional than usual. However, it also means that you will have slightly better luck than all the other signs.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

You’re tempted to withdraw and keep to yourself, which is fine. Possibly, relations with females might be a bit strained. Don’t worry if you choose not to socialize, because this an ideal day to cocoon somewhere and catch your breath.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

Your emotional contact with a friend or a member of a group is important to you today. This is why you feel protective about someone and want to support them. You might even feel jealous if they pay attention to someone else. (This happens to everyone at times.)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Today the moon is at the top of your chart, which tends to call attention to you. Perhaps some aspect of your personal life will be on public display. Nevertheless, people will sense that you are more sensitive and responsive to their needs, which they will appreciate.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Today you long for adventure and a chance to do something different! In a perfect world, you would travel somewhere exciting! At the very least, do something that lets you break free from your daily routine so that you can shake things up a bit. Enjoy seeing new faces and places!

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Today your emotional response to others is more intense than usual. You might feel possessive about your share of something. You might envy what someone else has or wish to possess it. This is a temporary feeling.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Today the moon is in the sign that is directly opposite your sign, which means your attention will be drawn to your most personal relationships. This placement of the moon can make conflict with others more emotional. Guard against knee-jerk reactions. Be cool. Count to three before you respond.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

You might have to work for the benefit of someone else or perform some kind of service. You also might be more interested in your own personal health concerns and possibly, more involved with a pet. You have decided to display a smiling face to your outer world.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

This is a playful, fun-loving day for you. It’s an excellent day for romance and flirtations. You will enjoy social outings and sports events. Playful activities with kids will also appeal. Accept invitations to have fun, especially if they involve the enjoyment of the arts and the hospitality world.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

You’ll be happy to cocoon at home today and relax among familiar surroundings. You might be more involved than usual with a female family member. It’s the perfect time to do some navel gazing. Take it easy.

If Your Birthday Is Today

Actress, director Jodie Foster (1962) shares your birthday. You are very charismatic. You’re confident, independent and powerful. You are easy-going, friendly and well-informed. You are also a natural leader. This is a wonderful year for you because it is a year where you are seeking recognition for your efforts. Expect promotions, kudos, awards and acknowledgement from your peers. You deserve whatever comes his way — enjoy this moment.

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