The Daily Parker

ESPN moved the start of last night's Cubs game back to 6pm so they could sneak in a second game after it, which gave me the unusual twin opportunies to (a) see the Cubs beat Atlanta and (b) get home before 9:30.

Otherwise, not much to report about the team, except—oh, right, I almost forgot—the Tribune sold them yesterday:

Tribune Co. has finalized a deal to sell the Chicago Cubs to a bidding group led by bond salesman Thomas Ricketts.

Documents describing the fully financed deal were sent to Major League Baseball over the weekend, a source familiar with the negotiations said Monday. The value of the deal is between $850 million and $900 million, the source said.

The agreement reached over the weekend still needs approval from 75% of MLB team owners, as well as creditors and the Delaware judge overseeing Tribune’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

I hear Ricketts is a die-hard Cubs fan, who met his wife in the bleachers, according to NPR.

It's time for the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

Ribfest Chicago, with its 10 (mostly-)local vendors, its dog-friendliness, and its proximity, is one of my favorite Chicago street festivals of the year.

Then there's Naperville's Ribfest, which, in the tradition of suburbs everywhere, dwarfs Chicago's festival in every way except accessibility. Chicago's takes over a city block; Naperville's, a huge park. Chicago has booths and people crammed in at maximum density; Naperville has a huge park. Chicago has 10 rib vendors, 8 of which are local restaurants; Naperville has 17, most of them just festival vendors (they travel the U.S. going to outdoor events everywhere). Parker and I walk to Chicago's, while I had to take an hour-long train (to avoid a 90-minute drive) to get to Naperville.

Another thing: Where Chicago had standard-size, 3-bone taster portions for $6, Naperville left it up to the individual vendors. All four that I tried were more expensive and larger than in Chicago, so much so that I split three of them with the friend who met me there. (Thus, the limit of 4.) All of them were good; only one was really great, but I have no idea how to get them again. I sampled (in descending order of satisfaction):

• Texas Outlaws BBQ, Elizabethtown, Ky. Someday, I may take a road trip to Central Kentucky. If so, I'll make a point to stop in Elizabethtown. At the very least, I'll look for this vendor again next year. They gave me 4 big baby back bones with some tug and a nice char. They explained that they grill them over smoke chips with their hot sauce and then glaze them on the way off the grill with (too much) honey BBQ. After scraping off the excess sauce, I thought they were some of the best ribs I'd ever had, almost as good as my brother's.
• Desperados, Huxley, Ohio. Festival-only vendor. OK ribs: fall-off-the-bone style, just a light glaze in grilling with a pretty decent traditional sauce on the side. (I also tried the sweet smoky sauce, but found it too sweet.)
• Uncle Bub's, Westmont, Ill. The only local, non-chain vendor I found (right off the Westmont Metra stop, it turns out). They had cherry-smoked, St. Louis-style ribs, with a sweet-smoke sauce that wasn't bad. I might stop in to try a full slab, and I'd recommend them to people who live out in the suburbs.
• Porky-n-Beans, Parma, Ohio. Another festival-only vendor. They had St. Louis-style spareribs with a sweet, sweet sauce. Too sweet, in fact. The meat was good, a little pull of the bone, good but not great.

In all, a good day, aided by nearly-perfect weather and the proximity of the festival to Metra.

Happy 233rd birthday, country:

Sarah Palin announced on the second-biggest "take out the trash day" of the year that she's resigning her office on the 25th. No one seems to know why:

Palin announced that she will transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. Parnell will be sworn in during the upcoming governor's picnic in Fairbanks on July 25. An emotionally choked-up Parnell said he plans to keep all state commissioners and continue to pursue a natural gas pipeline.

Palin did not field questions and would not give any indications as to her future plans.

A burst of Patriotic Spirit on this holiday weekend? Or just another delusional escapade? Does she even know? Seriously—given her history of behavior lying somewhere between narcissistic personality disorder and worse, does anyone this side of the loony right fringe think she's not insane at this point?

Take a look:

I sometimes shop at the Book Depository, a British online bookseller, because I'm a nerd. (Also because they have British editions and free shipping to the U.S.)

Today, I discovered their cool Google Maps mash-up, showing who is buying what on their site.

Did I mention I'm a nerd?

The FDIC closed seven banks yesterday, the highest number in one week since 1998. But back then, during the S&L crisis, things were much worse, believe it or not:

So far there have been 52 FDIC bank failures in 2009.

It appears the pace has picked up lately (12 bank closings over the last two weeks).

There were 28 weeks during the S&L crisis when regulators closed 10 or more banks, and the peak was April 20, 1998 with 60 bank closures (there were 7 separate weeks with more than 30 closures in the late '80s and early '90s).

(Emphasis in original.)

Still, if you have money on depsoit in the John Warner Bank, Clinton, Ill.; First State Bank of Winchester, Ill.; Rock River Bank, Oregon, Ill.; Millennium State Bank of Texas, Dallas; Elizabeth State Bank, Ill.; First National Bank of Danville, Ill.; or Founders Bank, Worth, Ill.; you may want to swing on by Monday and meet the new owners.

By the way, this doesn't mean that Illinois is a particularly bad place for banks. It's far more likely that the cluster of bank failures downstate has more to do with the logistics of getting FDIC personnel to so many at once. NPR has a good explanation of how it works.

And anyway, my deposits are at Citi, so I'm not at all worried about my bank's soundness.

Not one tiny bit.

Nope.

Perfectly safe bank, Citi.

you're resigning:

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Just kidding, though it seems like this could be from Stonewall. No, this is from last week—on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall raid, no less—and does not reflect favorably on the good people of Central Texas:

The short version is this: About 1 a.m. Sunday, two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and six [Fort Worth] cops showed up at the [Rainbow Lounge, a gay] club for an inspection.

These checks, which have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, target bars in search of patrons who are obviously intoxicated.

...[P]olice said they encountered hostile, argumentative drunks, some of whom "made sexually explicit movements" (my imagination runs wild) toward the officers. One young patron allegedly "assaulted [a] TABC agent by grabbing the TABC agent's groin."

OK, hold on. First, witnesses say the officers showed up ready to make arrests, their fists full of plastic zip-cuffs.

"They were hyped up. They were loaded for bear," said Todd Camp, a veteran journalist who was there celebrating his birthday with friends. "They were just randomly grabbing people, telling them they were drunk."

Police Chief Jeff Halstead[1] clarified, sort of:

"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."

To which Dan Savage says, essentially, "bullshit:"

Allow me to translate the chief's comments: "Them faggots in that thar bar touched mah officers and now they're complainin' about some rough stuff and one little ol' faggot with a brain injury? Those perverts should be grateful they're alive."

This is a classic example of the Gay Panic Defense. In the very recent past all a straight man who brutally murdered a gay man had to say was, "He made a pass at me!", and the jury would ignore the evidence and let the murderer off. The Gay Panic Defense doesn't fly in many courts of law these days but it still has currency in the court of public opinion. And the chief of police in Forth Worth, a major U.S. city, is attempting to use the Gay Panic Defense to convince the citizens of Fort Worth to ignore the evidence—to ignore photographic evidence and credible eyewitness accounts—and let his officers off.

(Empahsis in original.)

Sullivan:

We should call this what it is: a violent, homophobic raid to persecute and physically assault gay men, with some witnesses saying that they targeted the smaller and more effeminate men. We need a full investigation and in the meantime the police chief and all those cops who launched this raid need to be suspended until this is cleared up. No police chief should remain in his position after offering the gay panic defense for brutal beatings by cops.

I concur.

[1] The other irony here, of course, is that North Halsted Street is Chicago's gay neighborhood. Maybe the Chief has something he'd like to tell us?

I can't imagine United doing this:

Or this.

Air New Zealand.