Ezra Furman’s soundtrack for Netflix’s Sex Education provides coming-of-age anthems for all stages of life.
Ezra Furman’s “I’m Coming Clean,” released in early 2019, feels oddly prescient.…Read More
Alex Debrincat scored 2 goals, but the Blackhawks were unable to complete the rally, falling 3-2 to the Nashville Predators for their second straight loss.
The post Blackhawks Rally Behind Debrincat but Fall to Predators 3-2 first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More
Alabama quarterback Mac Jones has met with the Chicago Bears twice now ahead of the 2021 NFL Draft.
The post 2021 NFL Draft: Alabama’s Mac Jones meets again with Chicago Bears first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More
Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
This afternoon will be sunny and breezy (expect gusts of up to 45 mph!) with a high near 63 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 47 degrees. Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain in the afternoon and a high near 63 degrees.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot today announced a new vaccination site in partnership with the Chicago Federation of Labor that will help get doses of the COVID-19 vaccine into the arms of essential union workers.
The announcement comes as the city expands eligibility requirements to what’s called Phase 1C. That expansion includes residents ages 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions, such as chronic kidney disease or cancer.
It also will allow the vaccination of other essential workers who had not previously been eligible.
“You all know this, but it bears repeating. Chicago is 100% a union town,” the mayor said in making the announcement at the vaccination site, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399, 2260 S. Grove St.
“It’s our union workers who make up the backbone of this city.”
The vaccination site is believed to be the first in the nation run by the labor movement.
The site will be able to handle about 1,200 vaccinations every week at first, and has the capacity to expand. Those interested in being vaccinated at the site must live or work in Chicago, hold a current union card or be a union retiree, and qualify under the city’s current eligibility criteria.
Read Manny Ramos’ full story on the new vaccination site for union workers here.
The mural painted on a wall outside apartments near Division Street and Springfield Avenue in Humboldt Park is different from most murals around Chicago in that it was designed and painted mostly by middle school students.
The youngest of them: sixth-graders. The oldest: high school freshmen.
The students did the mural through R City Print Shop, an organization that helps kids create art and learn entrepreneurial skills by silk-screening shirts and masks to sell.
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Seven students met twice a week for about two months, completing the mural in November.
It touches on things that were on their minds. Like social justice and celebrities like Kobe Bryant who died young and unexpectedly.
Songine Clarke, 30, a teacher who worked with them, describes the mural as “justice-oriented,” highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement and LGBTQ rights with a large “BLM” across a rainbow backdrop.
Part of the mural features the names of Bryant, hip hop icons Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion and actor Cameron Boyce.
Read Kyle Brown’s full story here and check out our ongoing series on murals and mosaics in the city.
Kirby Dach’s surprise return to the Blackhawks last night didn’t lead to a victory, but the remainder of the season will serve as a chance for the second-year pro to further establish himself as the team’s cornerstone player, Ben Pope writes.
And while the White Sox are saying publicly what they would be expected to say, privately, they must be thinking that losing a player poised to ascend into All-Star company and a middle-of-the-order masher is a crushing blow. That’s why the club already has a motto for 2021: “Next man up,” writes Daryl Van Schouwen.
What are your plans for spring break this week?
Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
On Friday, we asked you: What’s a food you hated as a kid but enjoy eating now? Here’s what some of you said…
“Brussels sprouts. My mom used to boil them and serve them to us. We would hide them anywhere we could to avoid eating them. Now I’ll eat brussels sprout air fried, sauteed, and roasted. They are one of my favorite vegetables.” — Christina Herrera
“Mushrooms. Hated the taste and texture of the white mushrooms I was exposed to as a kid. Now I can’t get enough of them. All types — white, oyster, portobello, shiitake, etc.” — Jeff Niebres
“Beets… could not stand them until I found them in my spinning salad at Lawry’s in Chicago. Ever since, I’ve loved them.” — Michelle Copenhaver
“Anchovies and olives.” — Adrienne Sabora
“Mushrooms. Hated the taste and texture of the white mushrooms I was exposed to as a kid. Now I can’t get enough of them. All types — white, oyster, portobello, shiitake, etc.” — Jeff Niebres
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Afternoon Edition: March 29, 2021on March 29, 2021 at 8:00 pm Read More »
You could say former Bears offensive lineman Rashaad Coward’s decision to join the Steelers was a Call of Duty.
Various media reports Monday said Coward is joining the Steelers, but word of the signing apparently leaked Saturday in an odd way.
A Reddit user with the handle ProbationOfficer2035 said in an NFL thread that while playing “Call of Duty: Warzone” online, he was randomly teamed up with Coward’s wife Natalia and could hear Coward in the background discussing signing a deal with the Steelers.
From the Reddit post:
“Very random, as I’m a Packers fan. I was just playing Warzone with randoms, ended up with a female teammate. She had her mic on and I could hear her husband talking in the background about a ‘deal.’ Then something was said about he would love to play in Pittsburgh. I tried to ask the girl for info but she felt a bit awkward when I asked if she could tell me who her husband was. All she would say was that it was her husband being loud in the background and that he’s an NFL player.
“Anyways, he currently plays in Chicago (I did look up her gamertag which is linked to her Twitch/IG and she is wearing Bears gear in some pics). The last thing I heard was that if no one else calls within the next 30 minutes he’s gonna sign a 3-year deal in order to facilitate the trade because he would love to be in Pittsburgh. I know this is big speculation, but I heard what I heard.”
Coward’s agent confirmed that Coward’s wife is a gamer.
The lesson? You never know what news you might hear by eavesdropping on your fellow video game players.
NEW YORK — Laurie Metcalf smiles and laughs when she thinks of her character Jackie and her assorted misadventures on the “Roseanne” spinoff, “The Conners.”
Dating back to her introduction in Roseanne Barr’s 1988’s sitcom, Jackie has reinvented herself many times over. She’s been a cop, a truck driver, a factory worker, co-owner of The Lanford Lunch Box (which was reopened on “The Conners), and was for a time, as the character describes it, “Lanford’s leading life coach.”
The role earned Metcalf three Emmy Awards while “Roseanne” was on the air, but she’s content with Jackie being a supporting role.
“A little bit of Jackie goes a long way, so I’m always the weirdo B storyline. Too much of Jackie would be just overdose.”
While the character’s overall persona has remained unchanged through both series, it’s provided a chance to grow as an actor. When “Roseanne” started, Metcalf was a theater actor with no experience in television.
“Everything was new to me. I had a big learning curve to jump into a multi-camera sitcom. The writers started writing to each one of our different strengths,” Metcalf recalled.
“I’m assuming that one of my strengths was to be this victimized loser who didn’t have a clue that’s what she was to begin with,” she said laughing. “But (Jackie) just went out every day with her head up and determined to to do something great or make something. And then it would all come collapsing down around her. But, she had definite, firm opinions about things. And she still to this day meddles in the rest of the family’s business, even though her own life is collapsing around her.”
That sometimes involves Jackie’s romantic interests, which have been played by actors including George Clooney, Jim Varney and Matthew Broderick. She also dabbled in a throuple but that was short-lived because Metcalf says, “Jackie was clueless.” Her current love interest is Neville, portrayed by Nat Faxon.
“It’s so funny now when we go to work because we’re wearing masks all through the week and we don’t see each other until they say, ‘Action.’ We drop our mask and we tape the scene and then we put them right back on again. So. I didn’t know what Nat even looked like for the first episode we did together until they said, ‘Action’ and then I saw his whole face.”
Filming has wrapped on “The Conners” season three and the cast is waiting to see if they’ll be renewed by ABC for a fourth season. Metcalf said there’s more to be seen from Jackie, including whether she has any actual life coaching experience.
“One of my regrets was that you never really got to see her at work advising someone, so in hindsight there’s a tiny piece of me that wonders if she just lied about the whole thing,” said Metcalf. “There’s no proof, right?”
Metcalf will soon begin production on a film in New York, directed by and co-starring Ray Romano, about a big Italian family in Queens. She’s been working with a dialect coach on her accent.
“I’ve never thought that I was very good at them, so I’ve always shied away from a role that had an accent in it, but I’m going to tackle this one. I hope once we all get on the set and I’m surrounded by it, I’ll start to absorb it.”
A two-time Tony winner, Metcalf is anxious for theater to open back up because it’s her first love. When Broadway shut down due to the pandemic, Metcalf had done nine previews of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“‘Company’ with Patti LuPone was on the same block as me and we saw their lights go out, but everybody thought, ‘Oh, two weeks, you know, we’ll be back.’ That was like having the rug pulled out for sure. The whole theater community has been reeling now for more than a year. I can’t wait to be in a rehearsal room again for a play.”
It’s practically baseball season.
It’s already hardball season.
On the last day of Cubs camp in Mesa, Arizona, first baseman Anthony Rizzo said Monday in a video conference with reporters that enough was enough — no more extension talks involving him once Opening Day arrives Thursday against the Pirates at Wrigley Field.
No, he doesn’t expect to reach a new deal with the Cubs before then.
“Obviously, there’s been talks and whatnot,” Rizzo said, “but it doesn’t look like, really, at this time, anything is going to be finalized.”
No, he isn’t trying to bend over backward and make another team-friendly deal. Entering his 10th season with the Cubs, Rizzo, 31, completed a seven-year, $41 million contract in 2019 before playing two option years at $14.5 million each (the second one prorated due to the shortened season). Along with fellow core players Kris Bryant and Javy Baez, he’s on course to become a free agent in the fall.
“We feel we’ve given a lot during this process here,” Rizzo said. “I think with the Opening Day deadline, we feel really strong about it. We’ve had enough time to talk and try to figure it out. Once the season starts, for me, personally, it’s [time to] focus on baseball. If my mind isn’t 100% on baseball and it’s elsewhere? It’s hard enough to play.”
No, he isn’t assuming he’ll be back with the Cubs in 2022, let alone for years after that. Given ownership’s recent track record of reaching deep into its pockets and pretending to find only lint — at least when it comes to paying players — why would he assume such a thing?
Is there really any evidence suggesting the Cubs would give Rizzo the Paul Goldschmidt treatment — five years, $130 million from the Cardinals at age 31 — or even something within sniffing distance of that neighborhood?
This could be the final go-round on the North Side for a three-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner and longtime team leader who has been the most consistently productive Cubs hitter of his time, averaging right around 30 homers and 100 RBI in the last six full seasons.
“I can’t tell you what the future holds,” Rizzo said. “This will be a special year. Every year is special to me. …
“I’ve just been open with how I would love to stay here and my desire to stay here and continue to play for the Chicago Cubs. It has been an amazing ride. I don’t think it’s over yet, but it’s just part of the business. And you need to separate it, because every good business person will tell you there are no friendships in business.”
Friendships clearly don’t mean a thing here. Rizzo has a great friend in manager David Ross, who said Monday that if he were writing the checks, he’d pay Rizzo, Bryant and Baez “whatever they want and move on.” If that statement had a dollar value on it, it might cover the cost of a pretzel and beer.
Rizzo — slashing .293/.408/.969 this spring — is done explaining and defending his position. The ball is in president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer’s court. If Hoyer wants to bring him a sweet offer once the games have started, sure, he’ll lend an ear.
Rizzo still hopes to stay, after all.
“I love Chicago,” he said. “I love the fans. I love what Wrigley Field and being a Chicago Cub is all about. But, obviously, it didn’t work out thus far, and that’s OK. I’m at peace with it. I’ve done everything I can.”
When the White Sox welcome back a limited number of fans to Guaranteed Rate Field for games this spring, parents with young children can expect a new state-of-the-art accommodation to make it easier to enjoy a day at the ballpark.
Two years after the club introduced a Mothers’ Nursing Room to provide a clean and convenient area in the stadium for breastfeeding women, the space will now also offer a self-sanitizing diaper changing table that uses a “patented UV-C light system which is known to kill 99.9% of germs, including COVID-19,” in less than a minute.
The table comes from a Chicago-based company called Pluie, which was started by a pair of local mothers, Addie Gundry and Brittany Hizer, who decided to address the fact that public diaper changing stations haven’t changed in decades.
The company says the UV-C technology in the device is widely used today by hospitals to sanitize patient rooms. It has plans to install the self-sanitizing tables in other public areas such as restaurants, parks, and retail, healthcare and education facilities.
The Guaranteed Rate Field nursing room, along with the Sensory Room installed in 2019, are part of an ongoing effort by the White Sox to make their game experience more inclusive to all fans. In addition to the new Pluie table, breastfeeding mothers will also find comfortable chairs, electrical outlets for pumps and a television to follow the game.
Other Chicago sports teams have also put an effort into making their homes more accommodating for mothers who are breastfeeding. The Cubs and Bears added “lactation pods” two years ago at Wrigley Field and Soldier Field, respectively. The trend at MLB stadiums began in 2015 when the Red Sox introduced a dedicated space for nursing mothers at Fenway Park in Boston.
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday announced a new vaccination site in partnership with the Chicago Federation of Labor that will help get doses of COVID-19 vaccine into the arms of essential union workers.
The announcement on Monday comes as the city expands eligibility requirements to what’s called Phase 1C. That expansion includes residents ages 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions, such as chronic kidney disease or cancer.
It also will allow the vaccination of other essential workers who had not previously been eligible.
“You all know this, but it bears repeating. Chicago is 100 percent a union town,” the mayor said in making the announcement at the vaccination site, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399, 2260 S. Grove St.
“It’s our union workers who make up the backbone of this city.”
The vaccination site is at the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399, 2260 S. Grove St. It is believed to be the first site in the nation run by the labor movement.
Read Manny Ramos’ full story here.
An Associated Press analysis of state data reveals that the coronavirus pandemic has ripped away several systemic safety nets for millions of Americans. It found that child abuse reports, investigations, substantiated allegations and interventions have dropped at a staggering rate, increasing risks for the most vulnerable of families in the U.S.
In the AP’s analysis, it found more than 400,000 fewer child welfare concerns reported during the pandemic and 200,000 fewer child abuse and neglect investigations and assessments compared with the same time period of 2019. That represents a national total decrease of 18% in both total reports and investigations.
The AP requested public records from all 50 state child welfare agencies and analyzed more than a dozen indicators in 36 states, though not every state supplied data for total reports or investigations. The analysis compared the first nine months of the pandemic — March to November 2020 — with the same time period from the two previous years.
And there are signs in a number of states that suggest officials are dealing with more urgent and complex cases during the pandemic, according to the analysis, though most child welfare agencies didn’t provide AP thorough data on severity.
A loss in reports means greater potential for harm because “there has not all of the sudden been a cure for child abuse and neglect,” said Amy Harfeld, an expert in child abuse deaths with the Children’s Advocacy Institute.
The U.S government’s first look at the real-world use of COVID-19 vaccines found their effectiveness was nearly as robust as it was in controlled studies.
The two vaccines available since December — Pfizer and Moderna — were 90% effective after two doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday. In testing, the vaccines were about 95% effective in preventing COVID-19.
“This is very reassuring news,” said the CDC’s Mark Thompson, the study’s lead author. “We have a vaccine that’s working very well.”
The study is the government’s first assessment of how the shots have been working beyond the drugmakers’ initial experiments. Results can sometimes change when vaccines are used in larger, more diverse populations outside studies.
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A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.
The findings offer little new insight into how the virus first emerged and leave many questions unanswered, though that was as expected. But the report does provide more detail on the reasoning behind the researchers’ conclusions. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis.
The report, which is expected to be made public Tuesday, is being closely watched since discovering the origins of the virus could help scientists prevent future pandemics — but it’s also extremely sensitive since China bristles at any suggestion that it is to blame for the current one. Repeated delays in the report’s release have raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions.
“We’ve got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview. China rejected that criticism Monday.
Read the full Associated Press story here.
If a cruise ship had been quarantined in the early days of a pandemic a generation ago, we’d have only still photographs and perhaps some choppy and grainy videotape recording of events as they played out in real time.
But when the Diamond Princess liner was put on quarantine in February of 2020 with some 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew members aboard, just about everyone had a cell phone handy and recorded untold hours of video — and select footage from a number of those passengers and ship employees is utilized by director Hannah Olson in the compelling if incomplete-feeling documentary “The Last Cruise,” premiering Tuesday on HBO.
Spanning just 40 minutes, “The Last Cruise” opens with title cards explaining the Diamond Princess set sail from Japan on Jan. 20, 2020, when only a few cases of the coronavirus had been reported worldwide. It certainly wasn’t a concern for the passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess, as evidenced by the home video we see at the outset of the story.
Keep reading Richard Roeper’s review of “The Last Cruise” here.
The Blackhawks have reached a crucial moment in their season. And they know it.
One by one, Alex DeBrincat, Malcolm Subban and coach Jeremy Colliton spoke after Sunday’s loss to the Predators and used the same rhetoric to describe the team’s current state.
“We’ve got to figure out what our identity is,” DeBrincat said. “We’ve got to go back to what we were doing earlier in the season: battling hard, getting cheap goals, going to the net, getting pucks on net and doing all that. We’ve gotten away from that a little bit and that’s why we’re struggling right now.”
“We just need to get back to the way we were playing,” Subban said. “We just need to embrace it and just be ready for the challenge and try to surpass these obstacles.”
“We’ve got to get back to our mentality and our identity and the things we did earlier in the year that allowed us to have success,” Colliton said. “If we do, then we’ll be fine. But it’s important that we don’t wait any longer.”
The Hawks have lost nine of their last 13 games. They’ve taken almost 100 fewer shots than they’ve conceded over that span. They’ve scored only 17 goals in their last eight games.
And they’ve fallen out of a playoff spot, with the Predators holding fourth place entering Tuesday on the regulation wins tiebreaker. A few more losses and the Hawks could conceivably fall into seventh.
Compared to the optimism at the end of February, the Hawks have slipped into a discouraging, soul-searching place as the end of March nears. Not even the buzz created by Kirby Dach’s return has, so far, helped reverse the downward spiral.
And the road isn’t about to get any easier, with the Hurricanes — who, at 23-7-3, are the current NHL leaders in point percentage — coming to Chicago for games Tuesday and Thursday.
“It’s frustrating,” DeBrincat said. “We’ve lost too many games in this stretch to be OK with [it].”
“All teams go through ebbs and flows through the year,” Colliton said. “This is ours, and we’ve got to nip it in the bud. The positive is, through how we played earlier, we’re still in a good position in the standings.”
Colliton’s claim about the standings might not be exactly true, but he’s right that the Hawks’ well-above-expectations play in winter has given them a window to re-float the ship.
Every single metric, both offensively and defensively, indicates their play has declined since then, though.
They’re taking fewer shot attempts (.808 vs .843 per minute) and allowing more shot attempts (.972 vs .940 per minute).
The attempts they are taking are less accurate (55.8% vs. 58.3% on goal) and less dangerous (48.9% vs 50.0% are scoring chances), and the attempts they’re allowing are more accurate (59.3% vs. 57.7% on goal) and more dangerous (54.5% vs. 49.0% are scoring chances).
They’re winning fewer faceoffs (46.5% vs. 47.4%). Their goaltending has gotten worse (.903 vs. .914 save percentage).
Colliton is aware that the team’s struggles have spread across the board. Asked Sunday what the Hawks need to do better, he listed a dozen things in one minute.
“Skating, work ethic, competitiveness, relentlessness, defending hard,” he said. “Being willing to play a ‘zero shift’ and just leave the next line in a better spot. Being harder to play against physically. Being willing to grind. The best thing you do may be just finishing [your shift] in the offensive zone, or maybe you start in the ‘D’-zone and just don’t get scored on. That can be a positive for the team. Draw a penalty. Do little things that will help your teammates have a chance at success.”
Fixing all that at once will be difficult, if not impossible. But the clock is ticking on the Hawks to find a way to do so.
