TODAY IN MEDIA OUTLETS YOU SHOULD NOT READBriefly: Our awesome Evanston media roundup

• So you've heard that the CTA is raising its rates because Illinois isn't appropriating a lot of money to it, which kinda sucks. And the buses that run through Evanston aren't being spared.
• And the big debate facing Evanston these days? Whether or not Sarpino's Pizza should be allowed to stay open until 3 a.m. Chiming in with a No is his Lordeth Jean-Baptiste, who says, "I'd hate to have some radical change going on so that we have people hanging out in the parking lot late at night and have to have the police come and end up creating a mess." Yeah. This is the same guy who opposes arresting the crack dealers of the 7th ward.
  

THE LOCALSBriefly: Evanston really loves this black guy who is running for president.

If Bill Smith's FEC tabulations are to be believed, nearly 80 percent of Evanston donations are going to Barack Obama. Jesus, people!

Hillary's a little more popular north of Dempster. Hmm, what do you think the change is there? Racial makeup? Ooh, isn't that where that woman with the cats lived? OK, yeah that wasn't really funny.

Anyways. You all love Barack Obama so so much. Eek.

Evanstonian bet on Barack [EvanstonNow]

FREE CRACKHis Lordeth Jean-Baptiste feeding the monkey again

There is a debate amongst the wisemen of Evanston, and it is about crack. They are selling it over in the 7th ward, which is sort of like far away. I am totally going this September.

And I'd better go soon, because the City Council was like, Enough! Not really because of the crack, but because they've sunk a lot of money into a housing project there. This housing project has had a bit of a problem. All of the residents have fled, because there was a shooting there earlier this year. Yeah, I didn't hear about it either. One more thing for Dickson to blame on the media's relentless pursuit of Lindsay Lohan stories, I gather. Fuck you, Bill Smith.

Onwards. The city spent $44k, which is all it gets from the Feds every year, to redo the property. Now — and this is kind of a literary device, so hold on — the dealers hide the drugs underneath the newly renovated siding. Oooh, urban parable! Sad, but just the way I like my inner city decay: bite-size, and analogous.

Then something predictable happened. Lordeth Jean-Baptiste, who apparently think the crack dealers vote, threatened not to appropriate more money to re-renovate the site.

"I'm going to support the request, Ald. Jean-Baptiste said, "but I want to make sure that Community Development yells at people some times. If we want to make some lasting changes, we don't want to keep throwing money at problems."

Hmm, what are we throwing money at without getting lasting change? The police department, perhaps? Like, maybe, letting the delinquent youths of Evanston drink devil juice and smoke weed?

City vows drug market crackdown [EvanstonNow]

THE VILLAGE WISDOMAnd the Lordeths said: Let the sweet smell of marijuana waft unhindered

Um, how to be funny about this? Evanston aldermen have been debating how to make sure residents have enough neural activity to distinguish between official city websites and those belonging to individual aldermen. Somewhere in there they also decided not to implement a plan to stop "gang loitering."

Well, the residents of the 8th ward, which is probably somewhere no Northwestern student has ever seen, are not happy.

Kristin Doll of 140 Custer St. said she is very sensitive to the issue of criminalizing innocent kids who don't have anywhere to go, but that residents "are very intimidated."

The groups of young people, she said, "smoke pot; have alcohol in their hands."

"I've been harassed for walking by, been called names I won't repeat," she said, "There needs to be something the police can do. So often we call the police, the kids scatter, the police leave and the kids come back."

Oh NO SHE DIDN'T! Whoa! Marijuana, you say? And (ok, presumably) Skol! What did our esteemed Aldermen have to say to that?

Ald. Jean-Baptiste said the police department "already has laws it can enforce, such as disorderly conduct. If the young people have done these things, they ought to be arrested."

He said the ordinance would lead to "fascistic treatment" of the young people. "It would create a society were every corner has a camera and we're still not able to address the issues."

You know what, he's right. Only Nazis would rid the street corners of kids doing illegal drugs and drinking unfiltered devil water. And, dude? No one's talking about cameras. Maybe at the next meeting the wisemen can piss-test his Lordeth Jean-Baptiste for illegal substances.
[EvanstonNow]

THE DEATH STAR COMETHTry and stop this thing. Try.

Nothing gives Evanston media a hard-on like big buildings. And when you're proposing a 49-story monument to the phallus, why not? That's twice as high as anything else in the city! Yet the people of Evanston remain non-committal, sort of like a sorority girl before she's washed down a few martinis.

So think of yesterday's meeting as a, like, gulping of that first drink. What happened, you ask? (Bear in mind we're getting this from possibly depressed, possibly drunk suburban reporters. Seriously. I've met these dudes.)

"My generation says, I can walk to Whole Foods and Starbucks, what else to I need?" Larry Booth, the tower's architect, said.

He said the new tower would be "an elegant residential building, visually light and delicate, that would combine an intimate pedestrian experience with high residential density." (EvanstonNow)

Of course, you can't walk to Starbucks or Whole Foods without a 218-foot death star to.. assist you, is it? And what the fuck is an "intimate pedestrian experience"? Continuing:

The residential tower would be set back from the street. The tower is slim in appearance -- critics have dubbed it different -- so as not to appear out of scale with the street. (Evanston Review)

Right, because a fifty floor building looks right at home next to a three story building from the 1930s. And who are these "critics"?

Do tune in next week for our follow-ups on the Evanston Plan Commission's review of the building. Or, as we refer to it in journalistic parlance, ejaculation.

Tower developers meet neighbors (Great headline, Bill! Yay!) [EvanstonNow]
Tower hearings under way [Evanston Review]

THE LOCALSThe Norshore booze-supplying-parents-crackdown continues

Ok, so the parents in Northfield Township who gave their kid and his friends alcohol were charged with misdemeanors today. But the parents in Glencoe who gave their kid and his friends alcohol were convicted of three charges and face a year in jail.

Yeah, so, if you're going to ply your kid and his friends with alcohol? Maintain a strict one-beer-bong-to-the-face/hour limit and, you know, make sure no one hits a tree and dies on her way home in your driveway. Easy!
[Glenview Announcements]

THE LOCALSIn Brief: Past the impasse: Bill Smith shows a second emotion

This is more than "news people are talking about." This is news people are angry about.

Apparently Linda LaFianza, whose name is really more lezbot than Republican, is robo-calling residents! Evanston's favorite curmudgeon, Bill Smith, owner and purveyor of EvanstonNow, is not happy. After a brief shpiel, though, he comes to his journalistic senses. He's really against robo-calling from all parties! Yay balance, Bill!

[EvanstonNow]

THE LOCALSDrunk teens? Yeah, not going anywhere.

This week in stunning revelations produced by courageous suburban reporting: Yes, the parents who let their teenage son throw a really rather boozy party in their basement were convicted of, like, several things. But, and this is quite a but!, teenage drinking will persist, students say.

First, a little perspective. The party, well attended by students of America's High School^®, resulted in two deaths. The parents, Jeffrey and Sara Hutsell, were from Deerfield; the article does not say where their son goes (went?) to high school.

And, our reporter? J.T. Morand. Well, initials aren't what they used to be. While usually relegated to the "Here comes Harry Potter" beat (sadly, a real headline), Morand has some experience tracing liquor-and-coke-laden stomachs back to the whereabouts of their intoxication. In fact, Morand reveals, the two cases are related!

Suzanne Savin, mother of Jessica Savin, the Glencoe teen who died when she fell through a skylight atop a building in Chicago in April, is praying for the Deerfield couple.

Jessica Savin was the former girlfriend of Jesse Trace, the twin brother of Ross Trace, 18, who died in the car crash that also killed Daniel Bell, 18, outside the Hutsell home the night of the party last October. They had been at the party and were returning to it. Three other teens in the car sustained injuries.

With all this alcohol-related death, you might think New Trier students would be reconsidering their weekend bacchanalia. Not really, Morand discovers when asking the young sun-worshippers at Gillson Beach in Wilmette:

"Kids don't care enough to stop," said Lynea Martin, 15.

"Kids will still do what it takes to get drinks," added Erin Guza, 16.

And Jesse Trace, who has now lost his twin brother and his ex-girlfriend to a combination of alcohol, a skylight and drunk drivers? Perhaps we will find out when the reporting takes place somewhere other than the lakeshore. [GlencoeNews]

Daily roundup: Smorgasbord of the unsurprising

From Wednesday's editions:

• As long as Levine is "exploding the curriculum," cover the Medill shake-up as needed, says Public Ed David Spett. Guess we'll see no more of the oh-so-amusing public spats with the EIC.

• NUIT debuts a roving "laptop ER."

• Zinn blasts war, Bush, balding. The solution: Imperialists anonymous.

• The men of Skokie want their chicken. Badly.

Daily roundup: NU vs. Evanston, ASG vs. Flicker, limbs vs. whiskers

Friday's odd-job throwdown edition:

• Try the harmonica.

• Tech moves on from regrowing human limbs to developing human whiskers.

• The Devo Duo ante up in the increasingly caustic Evanston-NU battle royale. Seems that the overzealous city may seize the NU-owned parking lot it may want to transform into a government hub. Constitutional whoop-ass. Woot.

• Forum gives the Flicker Film Festival folks a "guest column" to open fire on ASG for wrongly accusing them of bouncing checks and reducing their budget as a result. They call it a "capricious dispensation of discipline." Egregiously lenghty sentences ensue.

• Though its headline may be an embarrasment to journalism, the Schlossberg Friday roundup remains a lovely read.
  

Daily roundup: Today in boring man-made structures: CCS, Tech and parking lots.

From Thursday's snow-slickened editions:

• Tech is leaking gases again, but this time they're not exploding.

• ASG puts the slapdown on the Flicker Film Festival for forging signatures.

• EIC Ryan Wenzel "risk[s] sounding melodramatic" to tell public editor David Spett he was really, really mean to say the Daily's website could use an overhaul. Does anyone else think the better retort to this is to simply say, We don't devote twelve column-inches to the glaringly obvious?

• The good columnist says Kim Jong-Il looks "exactly like a thumbs-up with a smiley-face drawn on it." Other than that, it's pretty much a morbid exercise in international-relations-flavored black humor.

• More NU-owned parking lots are being built to accomodate the cars expelled when Evanston's government moves in to that other one. Or something.

• This just in: CCS is just as boring as you thought.
  

Daily roundup: Badgered and buglarized campus moves onto Greco-Roman stage of post-collegiate job hunt

From Monday's editions:

• Sports offers us not one, not two, not three but four articles blasting (ok, analyzing) the Wildcats' 41-9 loss to Wisconsin Saturday. Tragically, students weren't able to take in the slaughterfest due to an unknown error between ESPN.com, which was supposed to broadcast the game, and NUIT. Why does none of this shock us?

• University Police release a report saying that burglaries are up 21 percent over last year. A spokesman also says students are safer than in recent years. That's right, folks, former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan is now working for NUPD.

• The senior job hunt is on. No word on whether it's so on.

• Someone at Tech is planning to regrow human arms. We're not kidding.
  

Daily roundup: labyrinths, wimps and roller-skates

Wednesday's appetizers:

• The Public Editor evidently wandered onto the Daily's online offerings (blaspheme!) and discovered that the labyrinthine layout is shit.

• Even Republicans want to lose power on November 7.

• Career services opens new office in the 9th ring of hell. That's Dante's own translation for the "core reserve" section of University Library.

• City eds hope for a return to the halycon days of west Evanston, when we could all don our roller-skates and head down to the Y for a study session. No word yet on possible homosexual overtones.

• Sports takes us on a psychoanalytic ride to the heart of Big 10 football. Amazingly this article is a good read.
  

Daily roundup: Caffeine new trans fat, America doomed, building longs for neighbors

From Tuesday's possibly-printed, rain-soaked editions:

• Not only is your caffeine pricier, it's also deadlier when canned. Devo writers apparently can't withstand the scalding calefaction of coffee, instead choosing to rinse down the age-old beverage with gallons of pus-colored, candy-flavored energy drinks.
  
  And watch out now -- their convenience can kill ("Energy drinks contain no more caffeine than a cup of coffee, but they are easier to overdose on because of their convenience," according to two Weinberg sophs.) We'll skip the caffeine in a can, but we wish we'd been told two weeks ago about Starbucks, lads, when we heard about it in the Trib and in RedEye. We may have to return to CCI for another nickel!

• In case you were in a mine cart beneath the surface of the Earth, we had hail last night.

• Deep, deep within this idiotic polemic is the idea that our grandchildren will be migrating to Asia to find decent work due to our lounging in complacent jobs as "stock traders, marketing specialists and efficiency consultants." Dude! Global warming will totally have knocked us all off by then.

• Somebody buy this Citywatch writer a dildo. Any more tantalizing screeds about the lonely phalluses -- excuse me, skyscrapers -- of downtown Evanston and we may gag ourselves.
  

Daily roundup: Zambia remains a figment of the collective Northside imagination, pretension is so out and Skype defies linguistic boundaries

From today's menu:

• The Daily remains reasonable sure Evanstonians' African geographical ineptitude is as big as the Ngorogoro crater.

• Faux gras introduction is definitely detering seitan-chomping South Side masses from schlepping to Evanston for their fattened goose liver pate fix.

• Devo writer Kathrin Hanek flaunts the syntactical verve of an exchange student ("Skype is recently finding favor among Northwestern students") to better explain the keyboard dialings of hundreds of foreign students phoning home. No, Kathrin, we haven't Skyped anyone yet. After reading your article, we don't think you have either.
  
• Reader brands Daily's music coverage pretentious ("Because pretension is out, guys. It's so out.") Her reaction to GossipDesk remains eagerly awaited.

• And, finally, because color commentary grinds EIC Ryan P. Wenzel the wrong way like Whoa, drunken football fans at the Globe Café calmly chant, "get them, get them" after touchdowns. And yes, friends, café has an accent.