June 9, 2004

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Opening shot

I like Mark Kirk -- he's my congressman, and was patience itself when I barged into his office in Washington, D.C., last year with my entire family in tow. Pushy of me, I know. But we were doing the obligatory "Our Nation's Capital'' vacation, and a visit to Our Representative in Congress seemed essential. We didn't present a pretty picture: the boys over-excited and jabbering, me rumpled, anxious and sweaty, the wife ... well, I was too busy keeping the boys from climbing Kirk's bookshelves to recall how she was. Kirk was polite, and gave us a few minutes, though I know he was asking himself, "Why am I talking to these strange people?''

That said, I flinched at his description of Wisconsin waste polluting Lake Michigan as "cheesehead sewer water.'' First, given that Chicago has been shipping its pollution down to St. Louis for a century -- why do you think they reversed the Chicago River? -- we're not in a position to lecture anybody. Second, while I'm normally indifferent to the feelings of the justly maligned, this is Wisconsin we're talking about. Have some pity. Don't you feel sorry for Wisconsin? I sure do. So close to Chicago, yet still an isolated nowhere of cows and dogtracks and cheese, populated by those who never got their lives together enough to move here. Wisconsin is like the dim brother who lives in the basement and nobody talks about. You don't want him teased.

More pork now! More pork now!

I love Consumer Reports, and consider subscribing a moral obligation, simply to support one of the rare independent voices trying to counterbalance the blizzard of corporate lies filling so much of our world. The magazine is also a lot of fun, with its sharp eye and sarcastic attitude. On my own, I don't think I would have realized, as CR points out in its July issue, that the blue banner across cans of Campbell's Pork & Beans reading "NOW with MORE BEANS!" is just another way of saying "NOW with LESS PORK!"

Potshots

Did your school have spring class photos this year? Ours, in my leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, did. This upset me mightily. You're supposed to have one school picture a year -- one rigid, flat, depiction of your child holding a schoolbook. Thus are the years measured. Having a second one throws everything out of whack. It is so wrong. And expensive. Which is why they do them -- to raise money. That's not a good enough reason. Why not just kidnap the kids? "You want Johnny? That'll be $10. . . .''

Weepy Reagan Tribute-Free Zone

That's it. While I'm sorry Reagan is dead -- though at 93, we saw that coming, didn't we? -- I'm going nuts with the tributes. It's as if he was a 16-year-old couple who drove into a tree, with the candles and the floral tributes and such.

We've become a culture of babies, where every death is Princess Diana's. It's enough to sour you on the departed. Over the years, I nudged closer to a grudging respect for Reagan, but this overkill is sending me back toward being the person who had a "REAGAN SUCKS'' button on his bulletin board. I've been having these wicked 1980s flashbacks. About the 25th time I saw "Ronald Wilson Reagan'' in another somber tribute, I found myself thinking "Ronald Wilson Reagan ... each name has six letters ... 6-6-6 ... the Mark of the Beast.'' That thought is 20 years old; we used to think stuff like that. It was a wild exaggeration, of course, to view Reagan as the Master of Evil. But this adorationfest is a wild exaggeration, too.

Which teenage slut is the mom?

Is it possible that no one has ever written a profile on Maury Povich? After the 100th stomach-turning stumble across his hideous WGN freak show exploiting the slow-witted and the deformed, I began to wonder -- and this is sincere, not sarcastic -- how this man can wake up every morning and not slit his throat while shaving. I looked for a story, but couldn't find one. I would like to read about him because I truly wonder how he lives with himself. I'm sure the money's good, and I can imagine doing a lot of things for it. I might host "Barbequing Puppies with Neil'' if the price was right. But I can't imagine doing what he does to humans -- celebrating their slut children, airing their infidelities, springing their paternity results on them. Povich is 65 years old. How does he do it? Theories?

Live and on the air!

Barely a day goes by when a reader doesn't ask when I'm going to be on Steve Dahl's show again. The answer is today, at 5:15 p.m. I haven't talked to him since I wrote something positive about his former partner, Garry Meier. It wasn't that I didn't know they parted on bad terms -- I just figured, it's been years, the sting should have eased by now. If I held a grudge like that against everybody who did me wrong . . . actually, now that I think of it, I do. Anyway, I'm hoping for a fun program.

Closing shot

It's June, and people are getting married, judging by the logjam of wedding advice in newspapers and magazines. Since their central point -- "Spend enough and it'll be perfect'' -- is 180 degrees opposite of life, I feel compelled to weigh in. My top three wedding tips:

1) Something always goes wrong. No matter what you do, no matter how much you spend, there is always, always a screw-up. Far better to expect it, so that when it happens, you smile and say, "Ah, so this is what's going to go wrong at my wedding.'' Savor it.

2) No light bulbs. At Jewish weddings, they step on a glass wrapped in a handkerchief. But some people, either too cheap to spend $3 or worried they lack the strength to break a glass, use a light bulb. Light bulbs pop instead of break, and the entire audience thinks, "A light bulb; how cheesy.''

3) Enjoy it. It was a long time coming, to quote the song, it'll be a long time gone. Congratulations. I've done a whole lot of things I regret in my life, but getting married isn't one of them.