An event like this always brings out listeners I’m getting to meet for the first time, even after all these years on the air.  There’s definitely a special joy to that.

At various times over the weekend at our booth I also met visitors from Germany, France, Canada, Mexico and Great Britain.  Most had been in town all week, most on vacation.  They raved about how beautiful the city was and how much fun it was to attend a festival that offered so much free music.  A fresh pair of eyes are just what I need to remind me of how great a city I live in.

Even though the main stage (Petrillo) had more people both nights, the crowd at the Jazz and Heritage Stage was every bit as passionate about the performers they got to hear.  (The size of our crowd was nothing to sneeze at, either.  I’m guessing we had 2,000+ both nights.)  And take a tip from me:  if you want to hear great sounds and have a ball doing it, there’s no doubt as to which stage you’ll want to be at next year.

They really need to do something about the food vendors at the Jazz Festival.  For someone who wanted to avoid fried food and the blandest of fare, you had to leave the jazz fest grounds and go across Michigan Avenue.  And who wants to do that when there’s so much live music to see?

A printed schedule of performers ought to be something organizers should seriously consider for the 2011 fest.  More people asked me about that than where the porta-potties were.

I always marvel at the global village that Smooth Jazz fans are.  If you want to see Chicago’s glorious diversity in a truly harmonious setting, look around at the crowd at a Smooth Jazz concert.  Music, as always, is the great unifier.

And then there was this, in Monday’s Chicago Tribune, from Howard Reich, commenting on singer Rene Marie’s Saturday night performance on the main stage:

“Unfortunately, this year the nearby Jazz and Heritage Stage ran concurrently with the Petrillo Music Shell (in the past, all the other stages shut down for the Petrillo main event).  So while Rene Marie sang ballads, listeners had to endure the sounds of other bands, in other tunes, in other keys.  Whose idea was that, anyway?”

Howard, if you’re unhappy there was a Smooth Jazz presence at the festival, just come right out and say so (at least you were upfront about that in your online chat—more on that in a moment).  To couch it in a complaint about overlapping sounds from another stage is reaching. For one thing, the Jazz and Heritage Stage isn’t really “nearby.”  In fact, it and the Young Jazz Lions’ stage are the two farthest from Petrillo on the festival grounds.  Furthermore, I spent some time myself at Petrillo, Sunday night during the Kurt Elling performance, which featured as many quiet moments as any other.  The sounds coming from the Jazz and Heritage Stage, with Nick Colionne playing, were barely audible.  I couldn’t make out “other tunes,” let alone “other keys.”

And, speaking of Mr. Reich’s online chat, in case you missed it, here’s his unedited response to a question about a Smooth Jazz stage at this year’s jazz festival:

“There isn’t really a smooth-jazz stage this year … but two smooth-jazz entities (Close Up 2 jazz club and 87.7 FM) are booking some acts on one of the stages. This is not an encouraging development. Many years ago, the Chicago Jazz Festival booked Spyro Gyra, under the auspices of WNUA. That was an artistic disaster.”

I was at that one, too, but I don’t recall anything remotely disastrous about it.  It was the 1992 festival, back when the event featured three nights of main stage music.  The first night, which was Friday, September 4, was co-sponsored by WNUA and GRP Records.  Spyro Gyra’s performance was hardly what you’d call an artistic disaster.  (There were 15,000+ people in the seats that night and, if the lack of any booing was any indication,  I don’t remember a single person being traumatized by the end of their set.)  Mr. Reich also left out the fact that the station’s partnership with GRP also allowed WNUA to add to the night’s lineup the highly respected Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and vocalist Diane Schuur, winner of two Grammy awards in the jazz category.  Add in opening acts Mike Smith and Bobby Broom, and “artistic disaster” would be the last phrase anyone (but Howard) would use to describe what I thought was a very pleasant and entertaining opening night of the ’92 fest.

Whether or not you were at this year’s festival, I leave you with this thought, having just come from two magical nights in Grant Park.  There are lots of people putting their energies into keeping the music alive, from recording artists and their management to radio stations, club owners and sponsors.  Combined with the support and passion that are still in the hearts of listeners and fans, you can be hopeful about the future of Smooth Jazz.

The lane the SUV was driving in had several large puddles but nothing that looked too deep.  Along the unflooded stretches of the road were clumps of mud. I watched as the driver of the SUV charted a zigzag course right in front of me, trying to avoid the puddles and mud for the length of the entire block.  I wasn’t about to try and pass them as they swerved periodically into my lane.

Then it occurred to me.  Isn’t one reason why you get an SUV so you can glide right through–and over–obstacles without so much as a second thought?  Hey, I’ve seen the commercials and you have, too. They’re doing things like ascending sand dunes and fording streams, for crying out loud–things I wouldn’t even dream of doing in my sedan.  And, as for being afraid of a little mud, I was just at a car dealership the other day where they had an SUV which was actually caked in mud from top to bottom on display in their showroom.

I’m not one of those who hates SUVs.  Most of the time the person behind the wheel can be much more annoying.  This was obviously a case where the driver had lost sight of the “S” and “U” aspect of their vehicle, whereas I, in my plain old “V,” was the one who should have been swerving like mad around the hazards in the road.

The store has an impressive selection of Blackhawks memorabilia, from pucks and plaques to framed photos.  Going through a stack of gorgeous pre-matted 8×10s, I noticed one player was conspicuous by his absence:  Antti Niemi.  I asked a store employee if I might have been looking in the wrong place for the Hawks’ netminder.  “No,” he quickly replied, “we’re all out of Niemis.”  He shouted to another gentleman behind the counter, “Do we have anymore Niemis?”  The other guy just shook his head.

“But,” I chuckled, “I see you still have lots of Cristobal Huet.”  They had at least a half dozen photos of the other Hawks’ goalie.  The first gentleman looks at me and says, almost sheepishly, “Nobody wants Huet.”

That’s when it dawned on me how true that was.  I couldn’t help thinking about that as I paid for my pictures and walked out of the store.  Ever since the team clinched the title, every Blackhawk who stayed in town has suddenly become a hot commodity, commanding what I would guess to be premium fees to shake hands and sign autographs at stores, auto dealerships and shopping malls.  Even fill-ins such as Jordan Hendry were getting top billing in some places.  But there was one player who didn’t seem to be making the rounds of the glad-hand circuit:  Cristobal Huet.  Is there any place you’ve noticed that’s hosting a Huet autograph signing?  I bet not.

I don’t know if Huet had a reason to leave town right after the celebration or if he’s still here but laying low.  Either way, it’s not fair that he’s become persona non grata among fans, especially after being a contributor to the Blackhawks’ greatest season going back almost 50 years.  Huet was actually the starting goaltender when the ’09-’10 season began and, along the way, appeared in 48 games, earning the same number of wins as Niemi, 26.  True, he wasn’t a world-beater, performing below league average some of the time, and his wobbles at the end of the season couldn’t have come at a worse time for fans and their short memories.  Furthermore, it doesn’t help that his large salary is often cited as the reason the Hawks have serious cap issues this off-season.  But Huet was always ready when the Hawks counted on him, especially in the early part of the season, and his salary is the fault of Hawks’ management, not him.  Fans should also realize that, even on championship teams, players can have subpar years.

Since the team clinched the Cup two weeks ago, Blackhawks fans have been a happy, contented lot.  I’m proud to say I’m one of them.  But I’m a bit disappointed in my fellow fans who’ve been giving Cristobal Huet grief, from booing him at the rally downtown to totally ignoring him at the souvenir stands.  At a time when there’s plenty of celebratory afterglow to go around, Huet deserves to bask in his share of it.  At least his name is on the Cup, where it’ll be forever.

As for the Hawks themselves, how could you not root for them?  The Blackhawks were an exciting, energetic team that appealed to everyone, from young fans to people like me from the Tony-O/Golden Jet/Stan Mikita generation who never got to see that stellar crew win a Cup.  The 2010 Hawks went 16-and-6 over their last 22 games against premiere competition.  They methodically overcame everything that could have been used as an excuse for failure:  losing home ice advantage, questionable officiating, their opponents’ physical play against their speed and finesse game.  They rose to every challenge and won with dignity, class and old-fashioned hard work.

Then came all the celebrations which followed Wednesday’s clincher.  There were so many high points we don’t have enough space here to list them all.  Let’s review just a handful that had me reaching for the kleenex:  Toews’ emerging from the plane in the wee hours of Thursday morning to give us our first glimpse at the Cup; the throngs that greeted our conquering heroes downtown Friday morning; the reception Hossa got up on stage when his name was announced; the young players looking like they were truly soaking it all in and not taking it for granted.  And, when it was all over, the crowd eventually went home, no storefronts were smashed and downtown was left perfectly intact.

I’m proud to be a Chicago Blackhawk fan.  At the same time, I’ve never been prouder to be a Chicagoan.  We showed the world a big city can still celebrate a sports championship the way it should be.

I can only wonder how long it will take Julianna Canabal-Rodriquez to get over the sting of being unfairly bounced from the finals of the recently concluded 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee.  Unlike Armando Gallaraga, the Tigers pitcher who received an apology from umpire Jim Joyce, who denied him a perfect game with a badly blown call—Julianna, to my knowledge, hasn’t heard a word from Jacques Bailly, the official of the Scripps Spelling Bee whose careless pronunciation caused her to misspell her word in that fateful 6^th round last Friday.

Julianna’s word was “gyokuro,” (correctly pronounced “gyOH-ku-roh”) which we were told was a type of high-grade Japanese tea.  Bailly, the “official pronouncer” for the annual spelling bee, mispronounced the word on his first read-through as “gyAH-ku-roh.”  He mispronounced it again on his second try.  Then, when asked by Juliana to repeat it, he mispronounced it several more times, never getting it right during the two-and-a-half minutes she stood at the microphone before eventually misspelling the word and stepping away.

Watching Julianna you could tell she was grappling with what came down to two choices in her mind:  going with “g-y-a” or “g-y-o” to start the word.  By her repeated requests for Bailly to repeat “gyokuro,” it was obvious to me that she was leaning toward the correct spelling but that the way he was pronouncing the first syllable was pushing her toward a spelling she had no confidence in.  In the end, she went against her gut entirely because of his pronunciation.  She was eliminated from the tournament as a result.

As she was walking off the stage in stunned disappointment, the commentators were remarking about how Bailly had seemingly led her down the wrong path, having Anglicized the word when he pronounced it “gyAH-ku-roh.”  They were right.  No one speaking correct Japanese would have said it that way.  Even I, for whom Japanese was a first language when I was growing up, would have ended up spelling it incorrectly after being given that erroneous hint.

For a contest predicated entirely on absolute precision, the E. W. Scripps Company ought to be as demanding of perfection on the part of its officials as it is the young men and women who courageously compete each year in its famous spelling bee.

Quick:  when was the last time a Stanley Cup Finals featured two Original Six teams?

We’re a couple of major steps from having that happen, but wouldn’t it be neat if it did this season?  To wit:

1. The Bruins would have to beat Philadelphia tonight to insure an Original Six team would represent the Eastern Conference.  If the Flyers win, then the Canadiens would have to beat them in the conference finals.
2. The Blackhawks would have to beat San Jose.

As for the latter, the Hawks are a better team than the Sharks.  But who’s to say which Hawks team will show up on any given afternoon/night—the one that manhandled the Canucks all three games in Vancouver or played totally uninspired hockey in both home losses during the series?

Still, I’m feeling good about the whole thing.  Rick’s pick:  Blackhawks in seven.

I’m not going to use the word “choke” because, at the highest level of professional athletics, I’m not convinced it ever happens, but the Bruins’ dropping four in a row to lose their round with the Flyers is a collapse of mammoth proportions, far exceeding the ‘69  or ‘03 Cubs or ‘64 Phillies.

It’s a dirty rotten shame that the network playoff practices currently in place are keeping Pat Foley out of the broadcast booth from here on out.

In baseball, we’re one month into the season, and I’ve already seen three things I’ve never witnessed in 41 years of watching the game:

1. Mark Buehrle’s between-the-legs desperation toss to Paul Konerko to nail the Indians’ Lou Marson at first on Opening Day.
2. Marlon Byrd’s no-look behind-the-back catch.
3. Starlin Castro driving in an MLB record six runs in his very first game.  (Know how hard it is to break an MLB record anymore?  The game’s been around forever, and most benchmarks are out of reach.)

I’m getting the impression that Jim Hendry is much better at solving problems than avoiding them.  Unloading Todd Hundley and getting Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros in 2002, for example.  And sending Milton Bradley to Seattle for Carlos Silva this past winter.  But who backed the Cubs into the financial corner they find themselves in right now with those untradeable contracts (Soriano, Fukudome, Zambrano)?

Of the top five highest payrolls in MLB (Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies, Mets), which team is the one most obviously underperforming?  And the Cubs are likely stuck for the next couple years, because they can’t take on any significant salary.

So, which of the Chicago baseball teams will be the first to reach .500?  Will either?  At that point in the season, will we even care?

(The last Cup Finals to feature two Original Six teams was 32 years ago:  1978-1979, when the Canadiens defeated the Rangers in 5 games.)

In my nearly 20 years at WNUA I can recall only two instances where an on-air host didn’t show up for their shift without an explanation.  (That’s significant, if you think about it:  five shifts a day, 365 days a year—doing the math, that’s 36,500 shifts in 20 years, and only two were left uncovered.)  Both cases, however, involved the same person, and that person ended up with one of the shortest reigns of any full-time announcer I worked with on 95.5.  I am positive this wasn’t a coincidence.  I also had the misfortune of doing the shift immediately before this announcer’s, and I ended up having to cover most of their shift myself both times.

That final point is the reason why this rule is so sacred.  Radio stations have no one waiting in the wings to take over in a pinch.  Most part-time and vacation relief announcers hold full-time jobs elsewhere.  Whenever you heard a Scott Adams or Domingo Castillo filling in for someone else on WNUA, for example, realize that they had to make their own arrangements to take time off their other jobs to fill in as a substitute announcer on 95.5.  They couldn’t just drop what they were doing and come in. In other words, leave your shift uncovered without a replacement, and you set off a mad scramble (and a string of frantic phone calls) on the part of your boss, the program director, a person who definitely has better things to do with their time.  In my experience, that’s something the typical PD has a long memory for.

Miss a shift without explanation once, and it’s likely to end up in your personal file.  Miss a shift more than once, and they’re starting to work on your severance papers.  Going AWOL in radio does come with a very harsh penalty.  Thankfully, in an era of cell phones, you’d really have to try hard to mess this one up.

When I was learning penmanship in the second and third grade, it was the Zaner-Bloser method that my grammar school taught.  The handwriting textbooks which we used every day and the light green lined writing paper—they all came with the name “Zaner-Bloser” on them.

My teachers were sticklers for precision, and I recall my seven-year old left hand was ultra steady and obedient.  My tall letters went up to the top line and stopped right there; my small letters hugged the dotted center line of the page without ever going past.  When it came to cursive, my loops were nearly perfect and I could duplicate them at will.  At least in the beginning I was an A student in penmanship.

Then came junior high (as we called it back then) and a strange thing happened.  Style points gave way to speed, and I developed bad, bad habits, habits from which I’ve never recovered.  I became a juvenile penmanship delinquent, and as a grown-up I’ve never reformed.  In fact, at our house it’s become something of a joke.  My wife orders me to keep away from the checkbook, because she can never make out my letters or my numbers.

These days it’s rare for me to receive anything written in longhand, but occasionally I do.  It’s even rarer for me to receive something from a letter writer who obviously still has the skill and patience to form their letters carefully, precisely and legibly, while adding touches of their own unique style.  Penmanship, it is clear to me, is becoming a fading art.  And, with email and texting dominating our lives these days, I don’t hold out much hope that it’ll ever return to its former glory.

This year’s event will take place at 9:00 am on Saturday, May 1, at Montrose Harbor.  Last year’s Bark drew nearly 3,500 two-legged participants, most of whom did the 5K walk with their four-legged family members.

Joining me at Bark will be ABC-7’s Hosea Sanders and Roz Varon and longtime Chicago radio traffic voice Bart Shore.  For those of you who might be wondering about him, our beloved bulldog Mike will not be part of the festivities this year, however.   He’s no longer the rambunctious pup who had the boundless energy and exuberance (and pain-free hips) to do the walk with my wife and me a few years ago.  He’ll be there in spirit but otherwise contentedly napping in his dog bed at home that Saturday morning.

New to the event this year is a formal attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records ® Largest Simultaneous Dog Stay record.  If we can get 628 dogs to sit and stay for two minutes, we’ll set a new mark.  Hey, it’s worth trying!

For more information, please go to www.BarkInThePark.org.  And, on May 1, look for me in the Hospitality area.  I’ll be there leading the event’s best volunteer crew and dispensing human treats to those who finish the walk.

When it comes to earning style points, Smooth Jazz artists have taken a quantum leap in two decades.  I don’t know how many of you remember this, but in the early days nearly everyone had the same look:  garage-band-but-sadly-lacking-the-hipness-of-grunge.  Worn-out denims and a jazz festival t-shirt were a common ensemble.  At the time it didn’t seem particularly inappropriate because artists were being booked into places such as the Cubby Bear, Jazz Bulls and China Club in those days—venues that were bars or converted industrial space.

As Smooth Jazz began to blossom in the middle ‘90s and concerts moved into larger, more elegant venues, artists instinctively reacted to this move up in class by becoming more style conscious.  Led by African-American artists who seemed to be the first to recognize there should be a certain visual vibe to the whole Smooth Jazz concert experience, the fashion bar was raised significantly.

These days, it’s rare to witness a performer who hasn’t dressed for the occasion.  From the sartorially resplendent Nick Colionne to the dapper Dave Koz & Friends Christmas group (including Brenda Russell, who always looks as though she’s ready to walk the red carpet at the Oscars), Smooth Jazz artists get it—there is value to looking good.  But they’re only continuing a tradition.  If you go back far enough to remember that the likes of Miles Davis and Billie Holiday were as influential with their fashion as with their music, you’ll realize live performance in jazz music has never been about just the music.