Results tagged “usatoday”

NIU classes resumed today after a vigil last night drew 10,000 people from the university and beyond, including Governor Blagojevich, Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, and secretary of the department of health and human services Michael Leavitt.

Are cougars reemerging in the Midwest? A few years ago, a dead mountain lion turned up in New Boston, IL and last month, a live one made its way through southern Wisconsin. Experts tested DNA from a bloody pawprint the animal left and confirmed that it was indeed a mountain lion, the first in Wisconsin in a hundred years.

What's the best part about the Monday after the Super Bowl? Why it's heading into the office and listening to Mr. Hilarious Co-Worker re-enact all of his favorite Super Bowl ads of course.

This morning's not-too-brutal weather is a lie. A lie! Because starting around 3pm, temperatures are going to be falling, fast*, into the single digits. It's also going to start snowing, and winds will be gusting around 50 mph. Overnight, temperatures will be around 3 degrees, which putswind chill in the -24 degree zone. The National Weather service has issued a winter storm warning, and remember: even if the snow doesn't stick, it's going to be "blowing snow," which makes travel hazardous. And a total drag. [Trib, S-T, USA Today]

Mike Ditka's red-faced this weekend, and not because of overindulging on his vanity wines. A report in yesterday's USA Today showed that a charity "Da Coach" founded three years ago to help retired Hall of Fame football players whose bodies are ravaged by the violent demands of the NFL has only doled out $57,000 in assistance. Federal and state tax records indicate that $715,000 of the $1.3 million raised by the Mike Ditka Hall of...

The Audit Bureau of Circulation released its Fas Fax data today, giving newspaper ombudsmen everywhere a topic for tomorrow's column. Too bad everyone's going to write largely the same story: Newspaper circulation is down. Circulation is down 2.6 percent across all major US daily newspapers, with the Trib faring worse than other papers, falling 2.9 percent over the last six months to a paid weekday circulation of 559,404. That makes the Trib the eighth biggest...

The last two weeks, our Made in Chicago feature, about local artists and crafters, has brought you jewelry. Now, we bring you some crafty clothes to go with that Chicago skyline necklace. Amy DeVoogd ( it's Dutch, pronounced “deh-vogued”), 42, a drifter from Boston, MA to Charlottesville, VA, has settled as a Chicagoan since 2004. Her illustrations are bright contrasts of color that are both surprisingly simple and detailed. Her work has appeared in Playgirl,...

Head 300 miles south to The Creation Museum and you may be dazzled by their Because The Bible Said So, That’s Why! explanation of life’s origins. That prospect is too much for The Field Museum. On Friday they open Darwin, a new traveling exhibition focused on the man and scientist considered the creationists’ biggest gadfly. Now a household name, Charles Darwin is remembered primarily for publishing Origin of Species and Descent of Man, the most...

Packer Jennings’ gleefully subversive panels, journalistic mash ups, and participatory projects hearken back to Abbie Hoffman’s Vietnam-era jabs at The Man. Jennings claimed he was unfamiliar with the Yippie agitator when we made the comparison at Three Walls last weekend, but Corporate America’s most aggravating philosophies and practices haven’t changed much since Hoffman’s klepto manifesto started disappearing off bookshelves. Three Walls’ latest exhibit features Jennings’ instruction panels for the aspiring revolutionary. Our favorite series imagines...

We couldn't help but notice that The Hood Internet boys just continue to collect accolades tumbling their way. Pitchfork loves them. Very Short List digs 'em. USA Today grooves to them. Heck, even the CBC is singing their praises! The art of the mash-up has been largely on the wane over the past year or so, but these wild upstarts from the mean streets of Chicago have injected brand new life into the art form...

Attention: All you shoe-loving rap fans, all you jobless hipsters ... Time to put down the Cristal. Time to take off the ice for a minute ... As Miles Raymer reported yesterday on Crickets, Redman is scheduled to do a DJ set and a meet-and-greet from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at St. Alfred in Wicker Park. So you know, if you don't have anything to do on a Wednesday afternoon, you might as well...

After two weeks of hype and Bears-coverage overload by the media (we didn’t even know that was possible!), the big game is almost here. In a little over 48 hours, the Bears and Colts will face off in Super Bowl XLI. The Bears remain seven-point underdogs according to most major sports books. But we think they may surprise some folks — just like they did against the Saints. Most of the experts picked the Saints...

Early Saturday morning a woman was crossing the street at 1227 N. Ashland and was hit by a cab. Chicago police are searching for the taxi driver, who witnesses say was speeding through a red light when the woman was hit and critically injured. The 26-year old is currently at the Stroger Hospital of Cook County. Police are still looking for any information regarding the cab driver, who was last seen speeding North on Ashland....

We found this in today's USA Today, which was surprising, since the subject was pizza and they resisted the temptation to print it with a corresponding pie chart. Anyhoo, Chicago Magazine dining editors Jeff Ruby and Penny Pollack list Pizano's as one of ten great places in the country to get a slice of pizza. The Sun-Times complements the USA Today story with a "how does it feel to be honored" article with Pizano's founder...

Not only was this weekend chock full of good music, but Chicagoist also got to knock back a few with some old friends and meet some folks whose work we’ve been admiring for a while now, specifically Abby from PunkPhoto, Scott and Amrit from Stereogum, Rachel from Scenestars, Dodge from My Old Kentucky Blog, Ryan from Muzzle Of Bees, and Whitney from USA Today’s Pop Candy. The next day as some of us were trying...

Chicagoist still cannot get used to the sight of Frank Thomas in anything other than White Sox pinstripes. We remember having to track his home run count in day-old USA Today's while at overnight camp. We remember his hitting a home run in the first game we drove ourself to, and we remember being happy for him last year when he finally won a ring -- even if he wasn't able to contribute much. We...

We’re sure by now that everyone has heard at least something about the whole National Secuity Agency/AT&T, phone records debacle (this is where you look it up if you haven't). Well, it’s about to hit a lot closer to home. Meaning that if the possibility of a near-omniscient (as far as records go) entity like AT&T handing over regular, domestic phone records to the NSA bothers you at all, the American Civil Liberties Union is...

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced on Sunday that she will run for reelection, and so far she is easily in the lead as no one has yet stepped up to run against her. Madigan has released a statement on her campaign website that reads, in part: Whether the issue is protecting women from domestic abuse, protecting our children from sexual predators, protecting seniors from scam artists who are targeting them, fighting unfair pricing...

Though it innocently “started out as a big joke”, the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” has become the unofficial theme song of the White Sox run at the World Series title. It’s not surprising that all this started thanks to A.J. Pierzynski, the Sox player who’s been behind other controversial calls in the postseason. In a Rick Morrissey column, Piersynski says he and other Sox players were listening to a lounge singer in a Baltimore bar...

While we're always a bit apprehensive about lending too much credence to polls, the latest USA Today/CNN Gallup poll reports that 54 percent of the sample agrees that "the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq". That percentage is as high as it's ever been. In the second half of June 2004 the same percentage of respondents agreed that the U.S. had made a mistake in Iraq. That was approximately a year...

Last week, the NCAA instituted a new policy that would ban schools using "hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery" during NCAA Championships and would prevent offending schools from hosting postseason events. While broad in policy, the NCAA has squarely aimed these new rules at the 18 schools with Native American nicknames -- including the University of Illinois Fighting Illini. Many have been outspoken in their opposition to the NCAA's decision, including Florida...

Chicagoist is a bit old school in that we still love to listen to baseball on the radio. Sure, more often than not we watch the games on TV, but there's a certain romance to having somebody describe the nuances of the game that can't be seen, that the slower pace of the sport allows for. And there also room for stories--of teams and player from years past. We were almost disappointed when play resumed following a White Sox rain delay a few weeks back because we were enjoying some great tales about managers who knew they were about to be fired.

As a Bulls fan and Duke fan, the news hit Chicagoist pretty hard when Jay Williams wrecked his new motorcycle in June 2003 and suffered life-threatening injuries. Having been picked second overall in the 2002 NBA draft, Williams had recently finished his rookie season with the Bulls and was expected to be a cornerstone of their rebuilding. But the accident changed everything. After making it past the critical stages, Williams still had to deal with...

There’s just nothing cooler than being New York’s pre-Broadway musical comedy whore. Chicago’s “Spamalot” world premiere try-out bows tonight before moving on to Broadway in March, and pundits from Playbill to USA Today to the New Yorker are weighing in on the potential appeal of another potential “Producers”-size blockbuster. Of course it helps that, like “The Producers” before it, “Spamalot” hits the stage with a built-in audience that’s kinda familiar with the source material...

Might the University of Illinois men's baketball team jump to the top ranking in next week's ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll? ESPN's Andy Katz think so! It's sure looks likely following last night's 91-73 romp over current No. 1 Wake Forest as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. And the game wasn't really even that close. Illinois sent a loud message that they may be the best team in college basketball this year.

Oh man, Chicagoist is still drunkfull from yesterday. We're still experiencing the glow of our foodgasm, and we really just want to roll over and go to sleep. Hey, listen, stuffing: we don't want to cuddle. It's not that we don't like you a lot—we think we might even be falling in love with you—but we need our space. We're solitary sleepers, OK? But it was a great night, really special, and we really care...

So John Kerry was on The Daily Show last night, trying to woo youngsters and seem 'hip.' It almost worked, too. He had his moments, specifically when he and Jon Stewart folded their arms and looked right at each other from only a few inches away, which was actually adorable in an unexpected and possibly wrong and gross way. Kerry was sporting one of those oh my god, cancer awareness is so trendy Lance Armstrong...

Chicagoan Jen Schefft has been selected to be the star of ABC's The Bachelorette 3. Jen was the winner of season 3 of The Bachelor when Andrew Firestone proposed to her. Not surprisingly the couple broke up. An interesting side note is that Chicagoan and Trump Apprentice Bill Rancic had been under consideration for Andrew's roll on The Bachelor 3. Also, Bill and Jen dated after Jen and Andrew broke off their engagement. Whether you've...

The queen of daytime talk TV signed a contract extension that'll keep her on the air through 2011. The extension of Oprah's contract will ensure that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" will be on the air for a full 25 seasons. Take that, everyone who was speculating that she'd be quitting the show soon! Oprah will also be increasing the number of original shows per season from 130 to 140. Oprah said, "The thought of taking...

As ususal, baseball's trading dealine brought a flurry of deals as teams tried to fill in wholes for the pennant run while others look to dump salary or get something for soon-to-be free agents. Satruday, as the dealine approached, both Chicago teams pulled off big trades. The White Sox traded Esteban Loaiza to the Yankees in return for Jose Contraras. While both pitchers were having mediocre seasons, Contreras is said to have great stuff if...