Steve Dahl

 Well, it’s finally here. I am 55 (double nickels). I have already received a lot of great birthday wishes, and I want you all to know how much I appreciate them. I guess I sort of begged for them in Wednesday’s Tribune, but that really wasn’t my point. That said, I like getting them even though they make me feel a little embarrassed. It very much takes me back to when I was a kid. It’s the oddest thing: I want people to remember my birthday, but when they do, I wish they hadn’t said anything because I am embarrassed that I care. This will be the first birthday for me without hearing my mom sing me ‘Happy Birthday’, so that’s currently making me a little sad. I'm glad I was able to spend time with my mom last spring.

When I was a kid, my most vivid birthday memory was getting a “Bun Buster” skateboard for my 10th Birthday. My parents gave it to me before school and I immediately went up on the hill behind their house to start practicing. I ended up being okay at skateboarding, but never really excelled at it. I was always afraid of going too fast (inertia is a bitch) and breaking something. Luckily, there weren’t a lot of tricks that one had to perform on his skateboard back in 1964, so I fit in just fine. There was a fine song by Jan and Dean that captured the innocence of the early skateboard movement in CA called ‘Sidewalk Surfing’. We were not the Lords Of Dogtown, just guys in Madras shirts and white Levis.

Joe Walsh and I share a birthday, as well as a flair for creativity, and an inclination to self-destruct. We do both seem to have the self-destruction thing under control, however. We will be hearing from Joe on Friday’s DahlCast. He’ll be calling in from a limo on his way to the airport in Cabo San Lucas. Ah, the life of a rock star. I’m not sure if he was down there vacationing or playing a gig, but that will be one of my hard-hitting questions during our interview segment. Joe has been a good friend over the years, and I am glad that each of us made it out alive. We both have a lot of friends who didn’t. So, really just waking up every November 20th is a bit of an accomplishment.

 I know that everybody has their own opinions about moving the Terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to IL, and I’m against it because I think it makes us a target. It puts us at the top of the other terrorist’s “to do” as a location, and there’s just no reason to do that. That said, the thing that really has my goat about this whole thing is the fact that we built a prison in Thompson and we’ve NEVER used it. How can that happen? We should at least be housing all of our convicted politicians in there. Maybe a mix of the terrorists, George Ryan, Stuart Levine and possibly Blogo if and when he ever gets convicted might work. That would make for a good reality show. Blogo loves being on reality shows.

That Mark Kirk guy needs to dial it back a few notches. He’s actually giving press conferences that should be called “Ideas For Terrorists”. Also, he seems ill informed. He was running the numbers on the visitors that the Gitmo prisoners would be receiving while in custody in Illinois. He said possibly up to a thousand. The only problem with that logic is that those prisoners aren’t allowed to have visitors. They’ve never had any visitors other than their legal counsel in Cuba, and there’s no indication that they will ever have any here. In the meantime, Rep. Kirk is pointing out O’Hare, a nearby nuclear reactor and The Willis Tower as possible good places to attack when the visitors are in the area. That seems like a bad idea.

I kind of like Mark Kirk and after checking out his web site I think that I would have voted for him (if I lived in his district). But I say let’s not get the terrorists any more riled up then they already are. I know you are a Veteran, Mark, so you’ve got a lot of fight in you. If you want to get mad about something, get mad about the fact that the state you represent used it’s own taxpayer’s money to build a prison that they have never used. They keep calling the prison at Thomson “underutilized”. That is a bit of an understatement since it was in fact never “utilized” at all. And Pat Quinn wants to raise my state income taxes? We’re not even getting the revenue that we should from using that facility as a haunted house during the Halloween season.

 I have an article in the Live section of Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune about my birthday, and birthdays in general. If you have a chance, check it out. You can read it online by clicking the link here on the dahl.com homepage. If you haven’t yet noticed a pattern, I have an article in the Tribune’s Live section every Wednesday. Next week I will be writing about Thanksgiving travel as I speed towards Hawaii on a United Airlines 777. I get a lot of good response to my pieces in the Tribune, and I am very thankful for the opportunity. I’m no Garrison Keillor or John Kass, but then I wouldn’t really want to be them, except at check cutting time.

I have started using my iPhone app called “Lose It” again. It’s a good way to keep track of calories in and out. It occurred to me this morning that my “50 by 50” weight loss program, although initially successful has ultimately only amounted to a loss of less than 20 pounds as I approach my double nickels birthday. Today I’ve had Raisin Bran, milk, orange juice and an apple. As I write this I realize that I could have skipped the OJ. My current calorie count for today stands at 612. At least I had what I believe to be a balanced breakfast. Tom Thayer says I should get up every day and have a big bowl of Raisin Bran. I want to be like Tom. We will talk Hawaii on Wednesday’s DahlCast.

You have to try and watch the Channel Two News at 10:00 one evening this week. Let me warn you that you will also want to TiVo a real newscast on either Channels 7 or 5 if you intend to have any idea about what is going on in the city. On Tuesday night Channel Two led with a story about some retailers not giving customers free gift boxes this holiday season. Some of the stores, like Old Navy have never given them away in the first place. How is that even remotely the most important story in Chicago? I’ll say it again: I am available to anchor the news at CBS Channel Two. I still work for CBS technically so I’m sure we could work something out. I’m fat, but I’m smart and funny.

 As you will learn when you listen to Tuesday’s DahlCast, I have the butt flu. Actually, I don’t know what I have but I had a slight temperature on Monday night and demanded that Janet find me a working thermometer so that I could chronicle my illness. After calling me a woman, she did find one and my fever was less than 100 degrees, so I just shut up and went to bed. I have some sort of discomfort in my lower intestinal region, but whatever it is seems to be staying inside me, like an alien. I know, TMI. The point is that I don’t get sick very often, but when I do, I’m a huge baby. I think it might be a guy thing. We all miss our mothers.

We are heading off to Hawaii next week for the Thanksgiving holiday, but there will be freshly recorded DahlCasts for you on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday’s and Friday’s casts will be “Best Of” DahlCasts (yes we have enough). If you have any turkey preparation questions that you’d like to run by the Lady From Tinley Park, please feel free to call the ButterDahl Hotline at 888-GOB-HOMO and leave your question for the expert. I'm sure that she will be able to enlighten you with her turkey knowledge. I know a lot about breasts, but not the turkey kind. Actually, I’m an ass man, but turkeys don’t have asses by the time we get them.

I am supposed to head downtown to Trader Vic’s tonight to make an appearance at a party and to get some face time with the new General Manager, but I’m still not feeling up to par as David Crosby might say. Actually he said it for sure in ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ on the CSN&Y Déjà vu album. I’m sure he’s said it real life quite a bit too, what with the drug addiction and the organ transplant. I don’t think that I would be a baby about getting a new liver. I’m just a baby when it comes to the small stuff. The big stuff, I man up for. At least, I’d like to think that I do. Tune in tomorrow to find out if I ever manned up and made it downtown and about my bowling team not rejecting me on Monday night.