That other inspirational quintet from Champaign, Illinois

With the success of the the University of Illinois men’s basketball team, these are heady days in Champaign, IL. There hasn’t been this much excitement in the college town since the heyday of another famous quintet:

a group of men whose charisma and quality play also inspired legions of loyal fans.

a group of men who kept pushin’, who kept the fire burnin’

a group like no other, but for maybe Styx, Journey and Foreigner.

Yes, we are talking about the legendary heartland heroes, chart champions and pride of central Illinois, REO Speedwagon.

How, say you, are the hip hoopsters like the bushy-haired, tight-pants wearing songsmiths of yore? Well, for starters, the arrival of coach Bruce Weber to campus was akin to Kevin Cronin rejoining the band.

That’s to say, there was some initial getting used to each other, feuds even. Sort of like the one between rockin’ guitar god Gary Richrath and Cronin over control of the band, but more than likely without the cocaine, booze and perms.

But once everybody learned their place in the system, the team, like the band, began making beautiful music together, orchestrating power ballads on the court much like Cronin brought to REO. The team learned that while there is me, tea, and meat in team, there is no I, though there are two I’s in Illini -- much as REO learned that you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish.

Sure, there was one lonely night for the Illini this season, that bus ride home from Ohio State. But they worked it out. Had no doubt. There was no jealousy on this team, not intoleration. Just time for them to fly.

As REO did in that fateful Rocky Mountain Winter, the Illini were ridin’ the storm out against Arizona, and they knew to keep pushin’.

Deron Williams, you’re team was under the gun, so you took it on on the run, baby.

Dee Brown, Luther Head the good times you’ve had together are just about through. But you’re back on the road again, the road to the Final Four.

You are about to make the break that we are on the brink of, to turn some pages (as we assume you all do on study breaks); to roll with the changes, James Augustine.

For us fans, we don’t want to eat, we don’t want to sleep. We just want to keep on lovin’ U of I.

So everybody, here’s what I want you to do before the Louisville game Saturday. Sure, you gotta have on any and every piece of orange clothing you can find. But you also have to raise your Bic lighters high in the air, and just as the team takes the court sing along with Kevin in that distinctively Midwestern nasal voice of his (or, better yet, get Bill Murray to adjust the words):

I can’t fight this feeling any longer
And yet I’m still afraid to let it flow
What started out as friendship, has grown stronger
I only wish I had the strength to let it show

I tell myself that I can’t hold out forever
I said there is no reason for my fear
Cause I feel so secure when we’re together
You give my life direction
You make everything so clear

And even as I wander
I’m keeping you in sight
You’re a candle in the window
On a cold, dark winter’s night
And I’m getting closer than I ever thought I might

And I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
It’s time to bring this ship into the shore
And throw away the oars, forever

Cause I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
And if I have to crawl upon the floor
Come crashing through your door
Baby, I can’t fight this feeling anymore

My life has been such a whirlwind since I saw you
I’ve been running round in circles in my mind
And it always seems that I’m following you, girl
Cause you take me to the places that alone I’d never find

And even as I wander I’m keeping you in sight
You’re a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter’s night
And I’m getting closer than I ever thought I might

And I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
It’s time to bring this ship into the shore
And throw away the oars, forever

Cause I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
And if I have to crawl upon the floor
Come crushing through your door
Baby, I can’t fight this feeling anymore.

Illini Swallow and other big (10) questions

Don’t get me wrong. The University of Illinois basketball team is quite entertaining. Overcoming a 15-point deficit like they did the other night, in a more honest world, would mean they could all get sweet endorsement deals.

After all, they have become media darlings in one of the biggest markets in the US of A. Good for them. They are a cool team.

But that doesn’t mean I still can’t make fun of the frenzy. Here are some questions to ponder before next weekend.

Suggest some of your own if you would.

If Illinois wins the tournament, and the team is suddenly seen as having street cred, a la North Carolina, Georgetown and Duke, will high schools start banning orange as a gang color? Or will Illinois adapt its gear much as other schools have to keep it real for the homeboys?

If Illinois loses, will some lame-ass reporter start looking into the curse of the Chief? Here, let me start the rumor: Illinois’ major sports teams will not win any national titles until the Chief is no longer a mascot. The Chief wants the teams to be called the SUVs. The tribal council has spoken.

Keeping in mind that all mascots are pretty stupid (not to mention how goofy one must be to dress up like a cartoon character in front of 20,000 people), if the Chief is so cool, how come (as far as I know) only white frat boys have donned the Wisconsin Dells-like outfit?

Is it true that to be the Chief you must know the words to at least three Cher songs?

Where have they been hiding the Chief? You haven’t seen him prancing about during the tournament.

What is more fun to watch for the sheer inanity, a TV reporter standing outside in bad weather, or a TV reporter at a sports bar interviewing drunken fans?

What does the guy with the big orange wig do for a living? What’s in his FBI file?

Shouldn’t you feel a bit ashamed of yourself if you pay $2,000 or more to sit in a huge domed stadium to watch a basketball game? It’s sort of like owning a Hummer, isn’t it?

Do you think Vern Lundquist prefers being a commentator for college hoops or for Olympic pairs skating?

What do you think the average age of the CBS basketball announcing crews is? My guess: 55

Does anyone really find the montage at the end of the tournament moving, since the soundtrack is that piece of pop poop One Moment In Time? That song is so schmaltzy I’m sure it must have been covered at least once on American Idol?

If you want to meet a Champaign-Urbana cop the places to be next Monday night: CAMS, COD, and just about anywhere else on Green Street. Reminder: they reserve the right to make your orange balls blue, with or without body paint.

What are the best types of body paint and are they ok for your skin?

Why is there a bus line called Illini Swallow?

Do you think Hugh Hefner will invite the team to the Playboy mansion?

Where do you think all the Nobel Prize winners will gather to watch the game?

Does the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights ever worry that people might mistake it for the Onion? They once had a front page banner story on what to do if you drive your car into a body of water. Last week they had a front pager on somebody’s lucky Easter egg (with a mysterious cross marking, since hard boiling it x number of years ago the family has won the lottery and...who cares, cuz it’s fucking stupid.) And every day since the tourney started they’ve has front page coverage of all you want to know about the team -- all the puffy stuff.

What I want to know is, how many college athletes at big time programs already have kids? I couldn’t even afford macaroni and cheese in college, much less raising a baby.

Did you know that the active ingredient in many cold and flu meds is HCL? Hydrochloric acid. That’s like bleach, isn’t it?

Sorry. Digressing. It’s March Madness catching up with me.

What the hell is a Tar Heel, anyway?

More blarney that people should be allowed to endure

The town I live in had its St. Patrick's Day Parade on the Saturday afterward, which actually was St. Joseph's Day this year. It's that kind of town.

A bar had a band playing called the Tossers, a Pogues like group of South Side Irish Old Style drinkers. Only the club they were are has its head up its ass and its Web site said they would be there immediately after the parade. Apparently immediately now means about 8 hours.

The funniest thing though was seeing St. Patrick himself heading out of a pub with a freind of mine, all micked out in his wool sweater and green shirt. Hmm, I thought. Maybe the saint visits places much like Nick does on Xmas.

That begs so many questions: Do you leave a corned beef dinner and a whiskey for him by the fireplace? Does he leave boiled potatoes for the bad kids in their Irish dancing shoes? Does he read Angela's Ashes aloud if you ask him? Does a team of leprechauns tote him about in a sled of some sort? Does he go into pet stores and drive out the boa constrictors? Do you hang shamrocks from a shruberry of some sort?

I should have stopped to ask. But my friend is sort of like Ricky Gervais' character in The Office, and I wasn't up for that kind of adventure, which is to say a sort of Celtic version of I Love Lucy. Plus, I usually wind up being the sober one who has
to baby-sit.

I went home and watched basketball instead.

And in the evening, I went to see Nicolas Cage's brother, Christopher Coppola, present his movie The Creature of the Sunny Side Up Trailer Park, to the friends of his producer.

The movie was shot in high definition video, so it looked great. It was was it claimed to be, a B-movie, drive-in style camp joint, no more, no less. It had a pulp, comic book quality about it.

Only thing was, the crowd was well-to-do suburban socialites, not collegiate hipsters all dressed up for a benefit.

That made it even funnier to me.

Coppola introduced his film, all decked out in leather pants, a mustard sport coat, and a do-rag. He split. They couldn't find him afterward.

It was that kind of Saturday.

Whose will?

I am glad our president is so divinely connected that he knows it is God's will to keep someone alive on a feeding tube for 15 years.

But if only God can decide when to take a life, doesn't Buhs play God with the death penalty and by sending people to war?

The right wing doesn't like it when science plays God with genetic engineering and stem cell research. And some of them don't accept the theory of evolution. Yet, when science can keep people "alive" in far, far, far, far less than human ways, that's OK, that's God's will.

I don't know all the details of the Schiavo case. I think that should be a private, family matter. What horrible choices to have -- allowing someone to starve to death or to live on by means of a feeding tube.

Since the government is willing to step in, is it going to provide for the costs of keeping someone alive indefinitely in such a state, emotionally, physically and financially?

I'm Black and I'm Proud: Musings on Irish (rock) music:

Blacks and the Irish. Blame us for rock and roll.

Being Irish, I know we like to take credit for a lot of things. Many of the claims are blarney, but in the case of rock music, give credit where it is due.

American country grew out of Celtic music. Country dated the blues of African Americans and as the song says, they called the baby rock and roll.

Not to get PC about it, but the Irish, like blacks, were an oppressed people. The niggers of Europe they were often called.

While the troubles of Ireland today have morphed to involve thugs and gangs and drug dealers, it is a little hard to forget that about 150 years ago the English pretty much tried to starve the country it occupied to death.

Then there is the matter of the Catholic Church and its iron-fisted grip on the populace which still has a bit of (rusty) grasp left.

All this made for Irish rebels, and what would rock be without rebellion? The Irish stereotypes of hard-drinking artists types plays well into the rock mythology, too.

Bob Dylan ain’t Irish, but he takes his name from Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet. And his music owes more than a bit to the likes of the Clancy Brothers.

Paul McCartney is Irish, but hey, no place is perfect. His wimp side is part of his heritage -- the Irish show bands. To this day, there is quite a bit of schmaltz in the IRL in large part because of this tradition -- that is the Danny Boy singers who perform that song -- the Stairway to Heaven of Irish ballads -- in mawkish Manilow fashion.

There's also Irish folk and dance which made a resurgence in the 1990s. Riverdance combines the worst of both worlds, taking step dancing to Vegas proportions. The ancient Chieftains for all their musicianship, to be honest about it, are sort of boring.

I saw them recently, and they seem like nice guys. They even invite locals to sing, dance and play with them, including a Chicago cop piper (Guess what? He was chubby, had rosy cheeks, thick calves and short hair. Go figure.)

But, still they are way more NPR than rock.

The Irish did help invent punk. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols is Irish, which might explain why his vile against the queen seemed so genuine.

The Pistols inspired Irish kids to form great punk bands such as Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones, whose Teenage Kicks should be required listening for all the punk wannabes/skaterboys around now.

We can blame Bruce Springsteen for Thin Lizzie, Boomtown Rats, the Saw Doctors, and, to a certain extent Black 47. The latter could have been a contender but for its own pretensions.

Now they are a hit on the Irish festival circuit. You have to hand it to the Irish - go to a blues fest, its mostly white yuppies. Go Irish (like to the big one every summer in Milwaukee) and the people are there enthusiastically listening to every band, clapping and singing along and proud of the music -- even if way too much of it has become slick and touristy, and many of the so-called rock acts are really middle of the road.

But back to guilt: Shane MacGowan only has himself to blame. I have never seen someone so drunk lead a band as I did when I saw MacGowan and a festival in New York City. Despite reveling in Irish cliches (booze, drugs, no front teeth, rent the documentary If I Should Fall From Grace With God), MacGowan fused punk and Irish folk with the Pogues (from the Gaelic for “kiss my ass.”

Their best album, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, was produced by fellow expatriate in London, Elvis Costello. Costello wrote the best song ever about Margaret Thatcher, Tramp the Dirt Down (or as I like to call it, Take That, Bitch!)

The Pogues spawned American Irish kids 10 years or more on to form Drop Kick Murphys, Flogging Molly and, best of the lot, Chicago's Tossers. (And Green Day's weepy ballad Good Riddance is nothing but a tricked out Irish tune.)

Gender benders Morrissey and Boy George have Irish roots, just like Oscar Wilde, who, if you think about it, was a rock star for his time.

And in the early 90s, My Bloody Valentine pretty much invented the shoe-gazer sound that was a big influence on lots of 90s indie rock bands.

I've skipped over the Holy Trinity of Irish rock: Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor and U2 -- at least for Americans. (Among Irish I know, Christy Moore is their Bob Dylan. In the great Irish tradition, Moore is a bit of a prig in concert. Some friends went last time he was in Chicago, and he banned smoking and would stop if he heard people talking when he was singing. On second thought, more power to him, the self-righteous bastard.)

My politics are probably closer to Bono’s than W’s, but there's just something about Bono that makes you think he's a wanker.

The signs were always there -- the flag-planting, mullet-wearing Bono in the Red Rocks video; the “all we have is three chords and the truth” line; the Noble Peace Prize nomination; the tour of the Midwest with fawning reporters as he preached about world debt; the World Bank talk about him possibly heading it; those goddam sunglasses; the fucking annoying iPod ad.

My favorite Bono moment: I saw U2 in the late 80s in Chicago and he got miffed after fans didn't know the words to a cover of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready.

That sealed the deal for me: Bono is a pain in the ass, and, like the Chieftains, the music is often nice, but awfully boring. Bone is often way too Sean Penn and not enough Shane MacGowan.

O’Connor, of course, is a flake. But she's a flake with THAT VOICE. I just listened to her sing Skibbereen, an old folk song about the Irish famine. I don't believe in archetypes, but damn, she's a Banshee. Longing and misery have never sounded more beautiful that when she sings about it -- and that's Irish.

Which brings us to the grand old crank of Irish rock, Morrison. On the same disc, he sings the American folk song Shenandoah, and it has a pretty schmaltzy arrangement. But Morrison has me hooked from the first note.

Sure Morrison is stuck in the past, and rests too much on his laurels, and bitches too much about fame in a lot of his more recent music.

But that baritone is like crack for me. He hits the right note, and I am there staring out from the greenest cliff over the bleak Irish sea. I turn into a trite Mick and fuck it, I don’t care.

Because that voice at its best is the Irish Ray Charles. It is the raging against the dying of the light. It is soul.

U2 sucks: Celtic Rock Guide for Beginners

Best Chicago trad band: Bohola
Best Chicago trad musician: John Williams
Best Chicago Irish punk: Tossers

Irish rock pantheon: Van Morrison; Sinead O’Connor, Pogues, Stiff Little Fingers, Undertones, My Bloody Valentine

English-Irish: Morrisey; Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney

Have their moments: Fatima Mansions; Damien Dempsey; Ash; Thrills; Waterboys; Proclaimers; Rory Gallagher; Saw Doctors; Simply Red; Chieftains

Forgive us for: Dexy’s Midnight Runners; Afro-Celt Sound System; Damien Rice; the Irish Tenors; the Corrs; Clannad; Enya; the Irish Rovers; U2; Boy George; Horse Lips; Michael Flatley; Gilbert O'Sullivan

Scary white people

(NOTE: I wrote this two years ago. Since I'm pretty sure only about 10 people read in then anyway, I thought I would post it again, as it has become relevant in light of last week's events.)

Sitting in a local bar with my buddy Tim, the state trooper, was a bit like one of
those Miller Lite ads where people swap interesting stories (or imagine hot babes mud wrestling).

Tim was, indeed, drinking Lite. I was having a pale ale — a shade fitting for the occasion.

Tim just returned from Alabama, where he goes every January for a meeting with the Southern Poverty Law Center on hate crimes. He teaches classes on that subject to
cops across the country. He also keeps tabs on groups that specialize in such activities. This includes groups like the World Church of the Creator, whose leader — the pride of East Peoria, Matt Hale — is in jail awaiting trial for soliciting someone to kill U.S. District Court Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow.

Lefkow was overseeing a civil case in which an Oregon-based religious organization claimed Hale’s group infringed its trademark by using the name Church of the Creator. The Hale fellows are supposed to destroy anything with that name on it.

At the Dirksen Federal Building, Hale’s churchgoers were ranting that Lefkow was married to a Jewish man and had mixed-raced grandchildren. Not that either
point should matter to anyone with a brain, but neither claim was true.

Tim didn’t get to see Hale being hauled off, so I filled him in. In turn, he gave me a hate group update. While there are about 650 such organizations, Tim says most
of them are both small-minded and small. Hale’s group is considered one of the three most organized and potentially dangerous of the lot. But even it isn’t as big as some might like you to think.

According to Daniel Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door (Thomas Dunne Books, $27.95), Hale has never had more than several hundred followers. While he is
in jail, the other two groups haven’t been faring too well lately, either.

A couple of summers ago, the Aryan Nations did something dumb that cost them, big time. Two people had the misfortune of their car backfiring near the group’s Idaho
compound and were attacked. The Southern Poverty Law Center got involved and helped the victims successfully sue the Aryans for all they are worth. The white guys
wound up selling their Idaho property.

The group, which has many factions and is led by octogenarian Richard Butler, is split between locating headquarters in Pennsylvania and California. The lawsuit crippled the Aryans, and internal bickering is hurting the 28-year-old National Alliance. The rift started after leader William Pierce, who died last year, made some backstabbing remarks on Hitler’s birthday.

(Aside: If you see anyone with an “88” tattoo, if it aint' for a NASCAR driver, it could stands for “Heil Hitler.” H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Pretty clever, eh?)

For those not up on their radical-right lore, Pierce is the author of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh’s favorite book, The Turner Diaries. Before he took the
voyage to Valhalla, Pierce made comments attacking members of ther hate groups as freaks and weaklings, specifically Aryan Nations and World Church of the Creator folks.

Pierce wanted his successor, Erich Giebe, to build a kinder, gentler version of the white power movement, a la David Duke. Others, including deputy membership
coordinator Billy Roper said, “Hey, wait a minute. We are all brothers under the sheets.” Or something like that.

These posses didn’t take kindly to being labeled “dorks” — especially since they
buy a lot of skinhead music put out on the Alliance’s label, Resistance Records. (I’d suggest they all get together and sing “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” But I
don’t think they like ’70s soul.)

Tim’s most colorful story involved a guy named Leon Felton. In 2001, Felton and his Cape Cod-bred girlfriend were arrested in Boston after an off-duty cop caught them trying to pass funny money at a doughnut shop. (Who’d have thought you’d find a cop at a doughnut place?)

Turns out Felton and a pal had robbed a bank and were planning to blow up the New
England Holocaust Memorial. Felton is no stranger to prison. It’s where he firmed up his ties to white supremacists.

Only thing is, according to the law center’s intelligence
report, Felton’s dad is a light-skinned black architect. His mother, a former nun with a Jewish grandparent, raised him with her lesbian partner. When all that came to light, Felton lost all his racist buddies and tried to kill himself with a safety razor.

It was enough to make me order another round. Stories like this are why there’s “Miller Time” in the first place.