The Papacy decides, "Eh, The Blues Brothers wasn't that bad"
Special dispensation!
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 week. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins.
• Chicagoist points out that Wednesday was the 30th anniversary of the iconic, wholly Chicago film The Blues Brothers. (And 31 years later, there’s still lots of space at Harvey’s Dixie Square Mall.) The anniversary was made even sweeter when the L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, essentially reversed the thumbs down the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops gave the film in 1980. (The paper has yet to throw its support behind Dan Aykroyd's Soul Man.) Now that we think of it, there aren’t many awful films identified with Chicago—at least, until Transformers 3 in 2011.
• ESPN Chicago has a solid profile on the guardians of the Stanley Cup as it travels around the area, with tidbits on where it’s cleaned (the shower), and how it has “had every known liquid inside of it.” (Even nitric acid?) Speaking of Lord Stanley’s renowned chalice, it'll make an appearance at the Elk Grove Village hometown parade, meaning the Cup is already beginning to settle into its role as “Miss Cook County.” Expect it to be degraded to a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new water park in a few weeks.
• Oprah, the great humanitarian of our time, surprised the staff of O: The Oprah Magazine by dropping by the office on Tuesday and handing out an iPad and $10,000 to each staffer in celebration of the magazine’s 10th anniversary. That seems like a nice gesture, but really, an extra $10,000 is due penance for 10 years of sitting through, “How should we put Oprah on the cover this week?” meetings.
• Gapers Block points out a Northwestern study that examines how doormen at “a-list” nightlife spots determine who’s cool enough to come in and who gets left out, considering obvious criteria like designer clothes and attractiveness. Then again, all those standards will be obsolete once this new hover board is released to the public, and us suddenly cool dweebs can just glide right in.
• Second City-trained Tina Fey and the Chicago-bred, utterly lovable Joe Mantegna will be honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Mantegna happens to be in town for Saturday's "Da Bears Movie Dat Wasn't" at Park West to reprise his role as the original title character in Bill Swerski's Superfans. And hopefully this is the first of many Hollywood Stars for the Springfield mafia. Fingers crossed next year for Johnny Tightlips.
