The Grand Prize Game

Apparently it's now time to get up early and play beat the heat. Coco and I were at the basketball court fairly early practicing this morning and yet the heat and humidity still attacked us hard. Oh well, I'll take this over January anytime.

The Summerfest Big Bang fireworks is officially postponed until July 1st because of the ongoing London type fog. I'm not sure if London is really that foggy but it certainly was in every Basil Rathbone version of the Sherlock Holmes movies. Apparently this past winter actually created our fog problem as Lake Michigan is 12 degrees cooler than it usually is at the end of June.

Our neighborhood is filled up with cars again and people circling looking for any place to park. World Cup mania is still going strong and the local pubs are raking in the benefits.

We're getting ready to head down to the Summerfest grounds shortly. Looks like we'll catch the shuttle from Jack's Pub again. I think we'll take it easy tonight especially since I'm still recovering from friday's marathon of a day. Plus, it looks like it's boy band night so I know I'm already going to be a bit aggravated by the crowd before I even walk in.

Hopefully someone out there still remembers Bozo's Circus and the Grand Prize game. For years in Chicagoland it was a noon telecast with the Grand Prize game being played at the halfway point. It was actually the biggest daily gambling event in Chicago. Thousands of blue collar pubs would be filled with worker's grabbing a sandwich and a beer at lunchtime. In all of these pubs everyone gambled on the kids playing the Grand Prize Game and predicting what bucket's the children would get to. Eventually, Illinois politicians wisened up and decided to start something called the Illinois State Lottery. Yep, the Illinois Lottery was started by a clown in more ways than one!

Later