| Deal clears way for single open-wheel series in America
The open-wheel deal that had to happen finally did. The Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series completed a deal Friday to unify the two American open-wheel circuits, bringing them under the umbrella of the IRL. "I'm glad that they were able to get it done," said A.J. Foyt, the first four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 and an IRL team owner. "It'll eliminate the confusion for the race fans and the sponsors because there'll be just one type of car and one type of motor and everyone will be running together. May the best team win." After 12 years of bitter rivalry that confused fans, promoted apathy and nearly buried the sport, Champ Car agreed to cease operations, giving the surviving IRL the opportunity to rebuild open-wheel's lost prestige.
Rocchi's Retro Rental: Roy Scheider, 1932-2008
Roy Scheider died on Sunday as the result of complications from a staph infection that ended a battle with cancer Scheider had been fighting for years; he was 75. Scheider had two Oscar nominations in his career -- for The French Connection and All that Jazz. More importantly, he had the sort of career where you not only look back and marvel at how one actor could be in so many good films, and so good in them, but can't help but notice how he was good in many of his lesser films as well. He played cops and rogues and tough guys; worked with directors like Spielberg, Frankenheimer, Friedkin, Pakula and Fosse; and constantly conveyed the delicate tightrope act inherent in the contradictions and challenges of the modern leading man. While he managed to convey the deeds and decisions of the characters he played, he also always conveyed what those deeds and decisions took.
Walshe proves her worth for Cup team
At times, she was sure she'd get picked. Other times, she wasn't convinced. "It was," said Alison Walshe, "kind of uneasy at times." It was early January and the calls from the United States Golf Association would be made the following week, so there was little Walshe could do except to prove she belonged on the prestigious Curtis Cup team. The Harder Hall Women's Invitational in Sebring, Fla., was that opportunity, and with grit, the woman from Westford went out and won, closing with rounds of 68-68 for a 7-under-par 281, three strokes better than her nearest competitor. No surprise, soon after came the call asking Walshe, a senior at the University of Arizona, to join the premier amateurs in the country for the Curtis Cup this spring. "I'm not sure whether I would have been on the team," said Walshe, "but obviously winning had an effect." Walshe will be the first from Massachusetts to represent the US in the Curtis Cup against Great Britain and Ireland since Noreen Friel in 1978, and what makes it even sweeter is the fact the competition will be held May 31-June 1 at fabled St.
Only Cubs can warm Chillcago
When we weren't looking, the city was renamed. It's now called Chillcago, surrounded by three-foot snowbanks and clogged with cars sliding off frozen-slush roads while besieged by too many Steve Baskerville/Ginger Zee/Jerry Taft weather updates. Al Gore can visit anytime he likes, and when he walks down Michigan Avenue amid 35-below-zero wind gusts, he can deal with the icicles dangling from his nose hairs. Because global warming sure seems like an inconvenient lie here. .
Obama's Double Bubble Trouble
So if you say "there is something narcissistic about homosexuality" that makes you a "deranged bigot"? The range of Sullivan-approved discourse gets smaller and smaller! Freud wouldn't have a prayer. ... 2:55 P.M. Thursday, July 27, 2006 I'm not paranoid enough: This isn't quite a syllogism. More like a conspirogism: 1) The Republicans will only swallow hard and nominate John McCain if they are really scared of losing in 2008. 2) If the Republicans do very badly in the 2006 midterms they will be really scared of losing in 2008. 3) A big reason they might do very badly in the midterms is that President Bush's misguided "comprehensive" immigration semi-amnesty has demoralized conservative voters. 4) One of the main people pushing Bush to pursue a misguided immigration semi-amnesty is John McCain.
How I wrote Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
The only thing I knew about doing a story well was being honest," he says. "I wasn't going to show off. I wasn't going to make the people I was writing about or the places I was writing about better than they were. For one reason or another, that was a thing that I knew as if it was from nowhere." The son of Igbos who converted to Christianity, Achebe was not intimately familiar with Igbo culture. Before going to University College of Ibadan, from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1953, he had attended missionary school in his home village, Ogidi, and then a government regional high school in Umuahia. "I didn't get to take (Igbo society) for granted, because I didn't know anything about it," Achebe says now. His non-Christian schoolmates had participated in initiation and other tribal rites.
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