Author: Chad
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My Packers: The Emotional Tribalism Of Fandom
[Article republished from January 2010] I can’t sit still when it’s down to the wire. Four minutes to go in the fourth, the Packers are driving for the game-tying score and I’m on my feet, pacing around my room. It’s been a wild shootout at the NFC Wild Card game: Green Bay’s young gun Aaron…
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A Genuine Faith
Rodney Reeves writes on his blog about the “loss by cross” example set by Paul, and how that example is not compatible with American culture. You should read the whole thing, but here’s the kicker: “Thinking like an American comes naturally to those of us who live in these United States. Thinking like a follower of Christ…
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What Is Aaron Rodgers?
A point of pride here: Jason Wilde is the Packers beat writer for ESPNMilwaukee.com and a Twitter fiend and also hosts “The Aaron Rodgers Show” on Tuesdays. He solicits questions for Aaron on Twitter and today on a whim I submitted one. Turns out, he asked the future 2011 league MVP my question. What was…
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Why Wait?: The Adventure Of Marrying Young
Previously published in the North Central Chronicle on April 23, 2010. The PDF version of this article as it originally appeared in the Chronicle is at the end of the story. Antonia and Brian bought a wedding planning book for $14. But sometime later Antonia’s maid of honor bought them a $4 wedding planning book…
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A Morning Brush with Rahm
This morning, I was catching a train at the Clinton green line stop when I go through the turnstiles to see a phalanx of reporters and cameramen gathered before a podium with the Chicago seal affixed upon it. Turns out Rahm Emanuel was due for a press conference on the L’s newly installed security cameras.…
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My Hometown
“I’m going back to my hometown. Gonna sit right down and take a look around. Tall trees talking all around the shore where the wood meets the river at the forest floor. … Does a true heart change or does it stay the same? I think I’ll go on back to from where I came.”…
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Song: ‘Christmastime Is Here’
“Be Still Your Fears (Christmastime is Here)” – Chad Comello This is a demo I made last October, using only my guitar and GarageBand. May it bring tidings of a merry holiday.
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A Different Look at ‘Back to the Future’
For a college class in winter 2008-09, we had to make a “zine” on a topic of our choice. Mine was called The Movies: Take Two. It aimed to “take a different look” at all things movie-related using crowd-sourced haikus, six-word summaries, and some of my own comparative film analyses to cast some of my…
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Why ‘Back To The Future’ Still Rules
To celebrate Back to the Future Week, I’m posting a story I wrote for my school paper in 2008 about my hopeless devotion to the time-bending trilogy. If I were asked to name what I think are the greatest films of all time, I might throw out a few high-brow titles like Rear Window or Casablanca or…
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Steve Jobs Lives
This 1987 concept video from Apple predicts not only the iPad and all of its capabilities, but also Siri, the speech-activated personal assistant that will be ubiquitous technology in a few years given how Apple products usually work. (H/T to Andrew Sullivan for the video) Andy Baio finds this amazing: Based on the dates mentioned in the…
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Rufus Saxton
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. Saxton was, in the argot of youth, the bomb diggity. A Massachusetts native, his father was a transcendentalist, feminist, and abolitionist, which helped form Rufus’ anti-slavery sentiments from a young age. He graduated from West Point eighteenth in this class, then spent the rest of his antebellum…
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Samuel C. Pomeroy
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. You get the feeling like this guy was the Mitt Romney of the Civil War era, because he did some good things but then kept managing to screw himself over. Born in Massachusetts, he served in the state House of Representatives for one year before joining ranks…
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Zebulon Baird Vance
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. This guy had ambition. Studying law by 21 and in the North Carolina House of Commons by 24, Vance made friends and won elections with his oratorical skills and soon entered Congress as the youngest legislator and one of the few Southern supporters of the Union. This…
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Lambdin Purdy Milligan
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. This guy’s tale helps puncture a few holes into the Abraham Lincoln Was An American Jesus Who Was Perfect In Every Way story that kids get fed in grade school. Milligan was a lawyer from Indiana (who had actually taken the bar exam with future Secretary of…
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Clement L. Vallandigham
Part of the Cool Civil War Names series. Opinions abound about this guy, but I think the nickname Lincoln gave him describes him best: the Wily Agitator. An Ohio-born lawyer and Congressman with Southern ancestry, Vallandigham took it upon himself to lead a crusade against the anti-slavery Republican Party before and during the war and…