Author: Travis J. Cook

Breaking Down the 2015 Hall of Fame Ballot, Part 1: The Holdovers

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Last year’s Hall of Fame class.

It’s time for that annual holiday tradition wherein I take 34 famous baseball players and analyze their careers and chances at enshrinement them for your observing pleasure. (Down from 36 last year – that’s what happens when players actually get voted in, you see…) Once again, there’s a multitude of interesting discussions, a few near certainties (more on them in Part II), and several candidates who will most likely get their ray of sunshine through simply being on the ballot before falling off and into obscurity/trivia answers. (Did you know that somebody actually voted for Jacque Jones last year?)

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Pop Culture Q&A with Slow Roll Chicago

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Image of Olatunji Oboi Reed and Jamal Julien from Slow Roll Chicago

Olatunji Oboi Reed (left) and Jamal Julien (right)

Slow Roll is an organization that began in Detroit and has since expanded to Chicago, thanks to Slow Roll Chicago co-founders Olatunji Oboi Reed and Jamal Julien. The pair have brought the Slow Roll mission to the Windy City, getting particularly involved in Southside and Western Chicago neighborhoods to promote cycling as a way of life. They are sponsoring a toy and coat drive this weekend at Golden Crust Pizza in Albany Park and at Heritage Bikes on Lincoln Avenue. Donations can also be brought to any Kozy’s Cyclery location at any time this week until Dec. 21. Check out more information online.

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One Last Time: Anticipating “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies”

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The-Hobbit-Battle-of-the-Five-ArmiesMy long-standing love of Lord of the Rings has been covered here multiple times. I’ve written thousands of words on both books and films, devoted countless hours to watching Peter Jackson’s magnum opus trilogy, and read and re-read the original novels at least yearly ever since 1999. You might call me a Tolkien nut.

And yet, my dread is growing greater and greater as the days go by. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies comes out this Wednesday, and that terrifies me beyond measure.

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2014 in Review – Things We Liked

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2014’s been a busy year! Because of this, we’re looking back on things we did or didn’t like in the year, as well as looking forward to what has already gotten us excited for 2015. This is the first part of the series, where we talk about our favorite discoveries of the year.

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#BlackLivesMatter: Marching for Eric Garner in Chicago

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Let me begin by making the following statement:

The Addison Recorder is not a political blog. We talk about popular culture here, and how it affects us at large. We shy away from politics – it’s not our specialty by any means. With that being said, the recent events in Ferguson, MO, New York, Cleveland, etc. (too many to list, sadly) have transcended pure politics and instead have become a cultural movement, a moment of recognition of how people relate to one another in America. This is a national moment, a historical moment, and that’s what drove me to the streets of downtown Chicago on Thursday night (12/4/14) to protest the failure to indict the police officers responsible for the choke-hold death of Eric Garner. I was joined in this by Alex, Andrew, and over a thousand other outraged citizens. Surreal, exhilarating, at times terrifying, it was something that needed to be done.

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Our Month in Popular Culture: December 2014

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We here at The Addison Recorder read stuff. We also watch stuff. And play stuff, even. Sometimes, that stuff is interesting. Sometimes we just need to talk about whatever pop culture ephemera occupies our time. Which brings us to this column. Dumble on.

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Celluloid Obsessions: Whiplash and Birdman

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Image of JK Simmons in Whiplash

Oscar season, like the baseball season I spend much of the year covering, drags on. It’s literally a year-long discussion, and like baseball, has its peak months. We’re entering that stretch now, and it’s an amazing time. Over the next few months, we’ll see a barrage of high quality, high profile “Oscar movies” – a term I dislike because it somewhat discredits (in my opinion) the relative worth of the labeled film as an artistic piece in and of itself. With that being said, my tastes tend to lean towards what might be described as “long shots” – smaller movies with something to say that fall just short of being labeled front runners. (Think Her, Nebraska, and Before Midnight from last year.)

Recently, I’ve taken in two movies that will probably fall by the wayside as the season goes on through no fault of their own, but because they lack the narrative that propels movies like Dallas Buyers Club and the overwhelming weight of 12 Years a Slave.

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Breaking Down the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot: A Golden Era

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Image of the Baseball Hall of Fame

This is Part One of a five part series covering this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame Election. This first part deals with the Golden Era Committee’s ballot, a collection of “candidates whose main contribution to the National Pastime came between 1947 and 1972 – the Golden Era”. (That’s the Hall of Fame’s wording, not mine.) Because I wasn’t around for this particular era of baseball, all I have to go off of are cold hard statistics, which is frightfully dull. Therefore, I turned to the scientific minds of the Recorder to create a time machine, a time machine which has brought back from the past a columnist/man/totally-not-a-gimmick who claims to have witnessed the primes of these respective careers. I give you, for your reading pleasure, Roger A. WASPman.

Roger A. WASPman is a suburban father of four from Springfield. He is an insurance broker with an office on Main Street. (Office hours are 8 am to 4 pm) He enjoys golf, listening to the radio, and watching “Hogan’s Heroes”, and has been a registered Republican since the Eisenhower years. His proudest claim to fame is working his way through college “the right way”, and states that Walter O’Malley is the most demonic man in America next to those damn Kennedys. Enjoy.

Well, hey there, sports! Fancy seeing you all here! This time machine thing sure is swell. Say, how’s Vietnam turn out?

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Super Fatigue: Marvel, DC, and the Blockbuster Bubble

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We’ve all seen the announcements, major events reminiscent of Apple conventions, wherein the stuff of comic books are plotted out in their latest big screen adventures. This year, both Marvel and DC have declared (civil?) war upon movie screens and wallets across America. Over the next six years, there will be over 40 (!) superhero movies featuring the characters of the two comics publishers released, setting the tone for blockbusters for the immediate future to come. On the surface, this sounds exciting – there’s never been a better time to be a comic-book movie fan.

And that might not necessarily be a good thing.

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Thoughts from the Dugout: AwardsWatch 2014

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Image of Clayton Kershaw

Well, that was a fun 2014 baseball season. Time to move on to the next phase of baseball magic: the offseason.

During baseball’s offseason, many interesting things happen. Unusual contracts are signed, granting mediocre players obscene amounts of money that cripple your franchise’s pitching staff for years (sorry, I’m still bitter about Homer Bailey). Odd choices are awarded for fielding awards, using subjective rather than objective criteria (fortunately, nobody awarded anything to Brandon Philips this year). And random-ass Hall of Fame elections happen, resulting in as much head-scratching as they do in triumphant celebration (seriously, who the fuck voted for Jacque Jones??).

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