Chuck Berry collapses at Congress Theater gig
Ahoy, captain.
Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the holiday weekend. Here are some things to think about as the workweek begins.
• Rock ’n’ roll legend Chuck Berry collapsed onto his keyboards during a concert at the Congress Theater on Saturday night. Reports say Berry struggled through several of his songs before plopping his head on the piano, not moving for a few minutes before being helped off the stage. A YouTube video shows the glittery-jacket-donning, 84-year-old Berry joking that, “I feel like like I’m about 65 or 70” after doctors had attended to him, then doing his signature duck walk to exit the stage.
• The Internet was abuzz this week about the revelation that the website for the 1996 Michael Jordan flick, Space Jam, was still functional and seemingly hadn’t been touched for 14 years. This time capsule of the Geocities era features basketball tips, exciting Space Jam e-postcards, and sentences like, “Watch as Michael Jordan plays basketball against many strange men in green suits and facemasks—who never appear in the film!” And finally, a place to regularly check up on breaking Space Jam news!
• As a follow-up to its popular Bus Tracker program, the CTA announced it will launch a Train Tracker application in January, which will allow riders with hand-held devices to check train ETAs on all eight lines.
• The Tribune expressed its undying love for flash mobs—those surprise public performances where dozens of people spontaneously break out into a cheery dance number—and wondered aloud how to keep the fad from wearing out its welcome, suggesting it could “liven things up at the driver’s license bureau, for example, or during intermission at the theater, when the line for the ladies’ room is snaking through the lobby.” Or how about at the next Illinois governor’s corruption trial?
• The Daily Beast ranked the nation’s drunkest cities, with Chicago clocking in at #29, behind Midwestern booze bastions Milwaukee (#1), Minneapolis-St. Paul (#11), and even Sioux City (#14). We’d be furious about being this disrespected if we weren’t so sober right now.
