Wednesday, June 5, 2019

City population grows by one

Frank Robert Schneider Sennett


     Congratulations to proud parents Denise Schneider and Frank Sennett, who welcomed baby boy Frank Robert Schneider Sennett on Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 3:54 a.m. Frankie weighed 6 pounds, 7 oz., and measured 20 inches long. All are doing well.
     And if you’re wondering what they’re doing at the top of the column, well, I originally intended to tag the happy news discreetly at the bottom. Why? Blame nostalgia. Not so long ago the paper boasted all sorts of bold-faced columns: Irv Kupcinet and Bill Zwecker, and of course Mike Sneed, who still runs on Sundays.
     There was a vigorous cosmopolitan swirl to those bold-faced columns. We weren’t a city of anonymous nobodies, hog-butchering and clock-watching unheralded and alone, but a glittering array of celebrities and quasi-celebrities and the connected powerful. Folks who counted. 

      Those days are gone, replaced by ... whatever the heck it is we have now. The top Chicago “influencer” is .... a 26-year-old make-up artist named Alexys Fleming, with 2.6 million followers on YouTube and 700,000 on Instagram. Not to take anything away from her. She seems good at what she does, and if the public is far, far, far more interested in learning how to transform into the Night King from Game of Thrones than in reading semi-witty critiques, the fault is not hers. (There’s actually more to Fleming than that; a diabetic, her ”Dumb Things People Say to Diabetics” video is funny and should be required viewing for anyone grappling with the ailment).
     But I digress. To tuck the news of little Frankie’s arrival at the bottom and let it sit there, to be honest, looked strange. And demanded explanation. And the more I explained, the longer it got and I realized that ... one of my favorite expressions when it comes to writing is a line from Napoleon: If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna. No half-measures, no shilly-shallying.
     So if we’re going to have a birth announcement, let’s do it up...

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6 comments:

  1. Bold-faced columns. Took me while to figure that one out, even though it was literally self-explanatory, the names, the topics featured in this column having been printed in bold type. I liked Irv Kupcinet -- he was a very generous tipper whenever I picked him up in my cab during the 70s -- but never read his column except on the rare occasions when the bold type attracted my attention to someone or something I happened to be interested in. Oh...I get it now.

    john

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  2. I wonder if his nickname will be Mack?

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  3. Very nice. But why "no Hedy Weiss to puzzle over from a safe distance." She evidently irritated some people who felt that critics must always be cheerleaders, but thought she was a reliable observer and was sorry to see her leave the scene.

    Tom

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  4. Speaking of proud parents, my son and his wife had twins on Monday! I find myself telling random. strangers about it several times a day, so why should you all be left out?

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  5. First grandchildren. Can you tell?

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