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Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

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Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

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The best thing to happen to and in the City of Chicago on Thursday was night four of Harry Styles’ residency at the United Center. The Chicago sports teams did not have a good night at all.

Both the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bears suited up for battle in their respective sports on Thursday night.

The Hawks played the second game of three on their season-opening road trip. After getting beaten badly on banner night in Denver, they rolled into the city of luck and tested theirs against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Down Robin Lehner due to injury, the Knights instill their faith in 25-year-old Logan Thompson between the pipes and he pitched a shutout.

The Hawks were 0-2 on the power play and outshot by 10 so they looked exactly as one would expect them to which is horrid.

Max Domi and Patrick Kane led the team in ice time with almost 20 minutes and three shots on goal (all by Kane).

Alex Stalock stood on his head and only allowed one goal on 37 shots. The Hawks’ offense didn’t back him up with good production.

The Chicago Blackhawks weren’t the only failure in Chicago sports on Thursday.

Is any of this feeling similar at all? The Bears hosted the 1-4 Washington Commanders led by quarterback Carson Wentz, who came in 6-0 in his career on Thursday Night Football.

After breaking the six-quarter-long touchdown drought on Amazon Prime, the Bears finally broke through at the end of the third quarter.

The Commanders were the only team to score in the 4th after Velus Jones Jr. muffed a punt again. Washington recovered the fumble and started their touchdown drive on the Chicago 9.

On an absolute mind-boggling call on 4th and 11 from the Washington 43, the snap doesn’t get off in time and they slide back five yards. They went for it again to no avail.

The right move was to punt the ball away, pin the Commanders deep, and count on them to struggle to move the ball as they had been all night.

By some miracle, they forced the Commanders to attempt a field goal but Joey Slye blew it. The offense got back onto the field with 1:49 to go.

The offensive line did their job, Justin Fields got the Bears to the 6-yard line (setting up first and goal) and it looks like the Bears have it made.

Darnell Mooney and Dante Pettis both dropped their targets leading to 4th and goal on the 4 with 35 seconds on the clock.

In a situation such as this one, a shallow-to-the-goal line doesn’t cut it. If Mooney is farther in the end zone and bobbles like he did but makes the catch, the touchdown counts, and Chicago sports fans are saved.

Unfortunately, like the Blackhawks a few hours later, the Chicago Bears lost the game. It’s gonna be a gruesomely long season for both the Hawks and Bears.

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The Chicago Bears only scored seven points. That is not good at all and will win you almost no games. However, they had a chance to win the game against the Washington Commanders on Thursday Night Football with those seven points.

Again, there were a lot of things that went into their losing but there is one play that sealed the deal on their fate. Velus Jones Jr. was back to receive a punt in the fourth quarter and he fumbled the ball as he attempted to catch it.

The fumble was recovered by the kicking Washington team and they had the ball close to the endzone with only a few yards to go for a score.

Of course, the Washington offense was able to get the short yardage that they needed to get the touchdown. They went for two and succeeded to make it 12-7. That ended up being the final score in favor of the visiting team.

The Chicago Bears were unsuccessful in their attempt to beat Washington.

This is bad news for the Chicago Bears. Velus Jones Jr. was drafted to be a special type of wide receiver for special plays. He was also known to be a great punt returner coming in but he has been awful. This isn’t the first fumble of his extremely short season which is a problem.

The fact that this one led to the game-winning score for the Commanders makes it hurt just a bit worse. Everybody makes mistakes but this is something that is going to need to get corrected. You’d think that by his age, he’d at least have the catching the ball part of his game down easy.

He is only a few games into his career so he can have a break for now but it isn’t something that can’t continue. It isn’t like these dropped punts have been his only mistakes either. Practice should include plenty of reps in this department for him as they try to become a better team in all areas.

The defense was never going to get the stop in that situation. They had to come back on the field after making a big stop and they were backed in the red zone. It was relatively easy for Washington to score and take the lead for good.

It isn’t Velus Jones Jr’s fault that the offense only scored seven points but this turnover literally led to the game-winning score for Washington. You can’t pin the whole game on that one play but it was clearly the biggest reason for the loss.

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The Chicago Bears lost to the Washington Commanders on Thursday night. It was a big-time loss as they had the win in their hands but multiple different things prevented them from pulling it off. It was a frustrating ending to a game that had its pros and cons.

One of the biggest pros is that Justin Fields is starting to take some steps. He still needs to work on some accuracy trouble, his reads, and getting rid of the ball quicker. He doesn’t have enough help around him, however, to make any of those progressions easier.

This game from Fields though did provide one stat that should make people feel a little bit better. It is the total offensive yards that the team had in this game. Despite it only leading to seven points, they had 428 total yards on offense.

190 of those came from Justin Fields as a passer and the rest came on the ground. Fields also had 88 yards using his legs so it was a very productive game for him on the ground.

With the nice mix of David Montgomery and Khalil Herbert on the ground as well, it was a well-balanced rushing attack.

The Chicago Bears had a lot of yards on Thursday but didn’t score enough.

All of those yards certainly need to lead to more points. They turned the ball over in the red zone way too many times. They were aggressive on fourth down when they needed to be but it never worked out for them in point-scoring moments.

They had some near misses in the endzone as well but that doesn’t help you win games. That is an aspect that they need to work on during practice as seven points aren’t going to win you games almost ever.

The fact that they did gain all of those yards is a positive though. That is a good step toward building a good offense. Adding better weapons on that side of the ball will make turning those yards into touchdowns easier. We can only hope that the management team sees this.

It is exciting because Justin Fields had a lot to do with a fair amount of these yards. Between rushing and passing, he had 278 total yards of offense. It’s not star-level stuff yet but it is a big step in the right direction.

Now, this offense will have a bigger test ahead of them. The New England Patriots stand at 2-3 going into the weekend but we all know what a Bill Belichick-coached team can do to a young quarterback. That will be a Monday Night Football matchup on October 24th.

The Bears would love to see Fields take this game against Washington and learn from it enough to keep it going throughout the season. His development is key and getting this offense to become a juggernaut is the goal. The 428 yards is a great stat to build on but they need more points.

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Nnamdï’s sixth and latest album, Please Have a Seat (Secretly Canadian/Sooper), begins and ends with versions of the same refrain: “Some days I wake up ready to run.” Sure enough, since moving to Chicago from the suburbs a decade ago, the inexhaustible artist has essentially operated at a dead sprint. He records prolifically. He co-owns Sooper Records (with Sen Morimoto and Glenn Curran). He sings, he raps, and he plays guitar, bass, and drums, contributing nearly all the instrumental parts to his albums.

That said, Please Have a Seat sounds like the work of someone who’s stepped off the hamster wheel, however briefly, to wonder why he spent so much time running in the first place. Nnamdï dials down the goofy wordplay and madcap energy of albums past, though they’re far from gone—and another Nnamdï calling card, wholesale stylistic shifts within a song, continue to abound throughout. He’s at his blithe, bounceable best on “I Don’t Wanna Be Famous,” divulging quarter-life anxieties in the process. However, a line in the earlier song “Armoire” (barely snatchable in its galloping bars) might be the album’s most telling: “I used to dream I could have everything / I can finally see / That I already did.”

As a nod to those early days, his Please Have a Seat release show on October 7 turned the House of Vans into “Nnamdï’s Pancake Haus,” a big-boy version of the DIY venue he and his brother Alfred ran out of their suburban family home. (Meanwhile, his sister Kenechi is cited as a sampled voice on “Grounded.”) This headlining show at Metro is part of a fall tour with back-to-back legs in North America and Europe; Nnamdï will be supported by rapper Joshua Virtue, part of the Why? Records creative constellation.

Nnamdï Joshua Virtue and Moontype open. Sat 10/22, 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $22 in advance, 18+

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Nnamdï’s sixth and latest album, Please Have a Seat (Secretly Canadian/Sooper), begins and ends with versions of the same refrain: “Some days I wake up ready to run.” Sure enough, since moving to Chicago from the suburbs a decade ago, the inexhaustible artist has essentially operated at a dead sprint. He records prolifically. He co-owns Sooper Records (with Sen Morimoto and Glenn Curran). He sings, he raps, and he plays guitar, bass, and drums, contributing nearly all the instrumental parts to his albums.

That said, Please Have a Seat sounds like the work of someone who’s stepped off the hamster wheel, however briefly, to wonder why he spent so much time running in the first place. Nnamdï dials down the goofy wordplay and madcap energy of albums past, though they’re far from gone—and another Nnamdï calling card, wholesale stylistic shifts within a song, continue to abound throughout. He’s at his blithe, bounceable best on “I Don’t Wanna Be Famous,” divulging quarter-life anxieties in the process. However, a line in the earlier song “Armoire” (barely snatchable in its galloping bars) might be the album’s most telling: “I used to dream I could have everything / I can finally see / That I already did.”

As a nod to those early days, his Please Have a Seat release show on October 7 turned the House of Vans into “Nnamdï’s Pancake Haus,” a big-boy version of the DIY venue he and his brother Alfred ran out of their suburban family home. (Meanwhile, his sister Kenechi is cited as a sampled voice on “Grounded.”) This headlining show at Metro is part of a fall tour with back-to-back legs in North America and Europe; Nnamdï will be supported by rapper Joshua Virtue, part of the Why? Records creative constellation.

Nnamdï Joshua Virtue and Moontype open. Sat 10/22, 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $22 in advance, 18+

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The Chicago Blackhawks are now 0-2-0 on the 2022-23 season after dropping their first two games of the season. Now, we all knew they were going to be bad. They are openly trying to tank so that they can rebuild the long slow way.

They also opened with the Colorado Avalanche who are the defending Stanley Cup Champions with most of their team back. In this loss, they were facing the Vegas Golden Knights who might give the Avs a run for their money this year when it comes to the playoffs.

Despite being outclassed in almost every way by Vegas, they only lost 1-0. Vegas’s goaltender Logan Thompson played excellent as he earned the shutout victory with 27 saves on 27 shots. There were some high-danger chances for Chicago in this one.

The Blackhawks also got magnificent goaltending as well. In fact, you can argue that Alex Stalock’s performance was even better as he is playing on a worse team that allows better chances to better players.

Alex Stalock was incredible in the Chicago Blackhawks’ loss on Thursday night.

He made 36 saves on 37 shots. The one goal, the only tally for either team, was a goal scored by Paul Cotter (assisted by Zach Whitecloud). It wasn’t exactly Jack Eichel or Mark Stone that got the best of Stalock. Those guys had their chances but Stalock said no.

This isn’t your traditional NHL goaltender. He isn’t really steady in the net so watching him play is a wild ride. He is very active in the blue paint which isn’t very common amongst goalies anymore but it works for him from time to time.

He will have his stinkers but he might be better than some people realize. The Hawks don’t plan to win much this season which is why they are fine with the Petr Mrazek/Alex Stalock duo but some nights will see him play like this.

It is nice that the Hawks had someone play well on a night that they still ended up losing. They certainly want to (deep down inside) lose as many games as they can for the best draft odds. But nights like this might make Stalock attractive to contending teams that need a solid backup goalie.

Going forward, the Hawks need their offense to produce some offense to at least be a respectable last-place team. They didn’t get it in this one which is why Stalock’s effort was all for not when it comes to the win column.

Their next chance to get that first win will come on Saturday night when they visit the San Jose Sharks which will end their road trip to begin the season.

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