Tag / United Center

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25 Rings

What was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Purdue men’s basketball team, following the loss of Jaden Ivey, Trevion Williams, Eric Hunter, Sasha Stefanovic, and Isaiah Thompson, turned into the program’s 25th Big Ten Conference championship.  Matt Painter and company last won a share of the conference title in 2019 and last won it outright in 2017.

Their 25 titles are the most amongst all Big Ten schools.  Indiana, of course, is second with 22 championships.  After closing out the regular season against Illinois tomorrow in West Lafayette, Purdue comes to Chicago next week as the #1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament at the United Center.  A deep run should guarantee them a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament as they try to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1980.

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Travelling The 50 States – Illinois

Over my 47 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning.  Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 21st state to be added to the Union: Illinois.

State: Illinois
Joined the Union: 1818
Visits: 16,000+

How do you track how often you’ve been in the state you’ve lived in your entire life, save for your time away at college?  My first “visit” came nearly 48 years ago on the day I was born at Mercy Hospital on the south side of Chicago.

I’ve managed to do 18 of the Bicentennial Bucket List: 200 Things To Do In Illinois, published by the Chicago Tribune in 2018 to celebrate the best the state has to offer in history, food, architecture, culture, sports, nature, drink, and oddities.  Among the places I visited were Water Tower, Morton Arboretum, Route 66, United Center, Skydeck at Willis Tower, the former Arlington International Racecourse, Rialto Square Theatre, Lake Michigan, The Second City, Chicago Sports Museum, and the Superman statue in downstate Metropolis.

I’ve seen baseball games at Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, and Guaranteed Rate Field.  I’ve seen football games at Soldier Field, Memorial Stadium, Ryan Field, and Wrigley Field.  I’ve seen basketball games at the United Center, Welsh-Ryan Arena, State Farm Center, and Allstate Arena.  I’ve seen hockey games at the United Center.  I’ve seen both the White Sox and the Cubs win the World Series.  I’ve seen the Bears win a Super Bowl.  I’ve seen the Bulls win 6 NBA Championships.  I’ve even seen the Blackhawks win a Stanley Cup or two.

I’ve seen concerts at Wrigley Field, City Winery, Ravinia, the Riviera Theatre, Abbey Pub, Metro, the Chicago Theatre, United Center, Charter One Pavilion, Allstate Arena, The Vic Theatre, House of Blues, World Music Theatre, Soldier Field, and Mabel’s,

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200 Things To Do In Illinois – United Center

Illinois celebrated its bicentennial as a state in December of 2018. To celebrate, the Chicago Tribune published the Bicentennial Bucket List: 200 Things To Do In Illinois, celebrating the best the state has to offer in history, food, architecture, culture, sports, nature, drink, and oddities.  Now that the state is starting to open back up following the corona virus outbreak, I figured this was the second-best time to look through this collection and cover the ones I’ve done/eaten/seen.

We kick things off with one of the entries from the Sports category: United Center, from Chicago, IL.

Seeing the stars of the Bulls and the Blackhawks go to battle in the Madhouse on Madison is thrilling – or infuriating, depending on how the teams are doing.

But no trip to the Near West Side stadium is complete without genuflecting at a trio of statues commemorating former Chicago hockey and basketball greats Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Michael Jordan.  You’ll find Hull and Mikita outside, while His Airness is enshrined in an atrium that opened last year.

I’ve been to the United Center 10 times, for 4 Bulls games, 4 Blackhawks games, a 2011 NCAA tournament game, and a concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  My first two Bulls games came in 1997, a month or two prior to Michael Jordan’s return to the team.  My only game during the championship years came in November of 1997, when I saw Jordan and Bulls defeat the Hornets.  3 of the Blackhawk games came during their lean years, with just one coming during their championship runs.  The NCAA tournament game saw the Purdue Boilermakers fall to VCU in a surprising upset.

 

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Fitbit Week 4

Week4_FBAnother typical week, with the weekends struggling to break 5000 steps while the work week tries to bring up the average.  Wednesday and Thursday were missing the daily coffee trip to North Plaza due to leaving early to watch Danny and Michael.  Friday was a day off, with a total nearing 6000 thanks to a trip to the United Center to see the Bulls defeat the Timberwolves.

Weekly total: 38,720

Daily average: 5531.4

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Concert Flashback: Star Wars In Concert

09starwarsIn 2009, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra went on tour performing the music from John Williams’ Star Wars scores, featuring edited footage from all 6 films and narration from Anthony Daniels, who played C-3PO.  Given the early December date of the Chicago performance, I planned on getting Danny tickets for his birthday.  In a twist of fate, there were plans afoot to get me tickets for my birthday as well.  So, we got a set of 4 and split them up, 2 for me and 2 for Danny.

As the date of the approached, an interesting conundrum popped up.  I was offered a trip to Belfast for work, but would need to leave the day before the show, on December 5th.  Initially, I turned down the trip, but was eventually able to finagle my way into a Sunday afternoon flight, which meant heading straight to O’Hare from the United Center and arriving in Belfast Monday morning, heading straight to the office.

The concert itself was a faithful recreation of the score from the favorite films of my childhood (plus the later 3 abortions).  The mixture of the film clips worked well given they were the original source of the music, and Anthony Daniels led the proceedings with the familiar voice we had all come to know and love.  This was my first, and so far only, concert at the UC.  It doesn’t seem to be the best venue for it, but it got the job done.

It turns out that George Lucas himself was at this show, only the second time he had seen it in person and the first time in this country.

 

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March Forth

Danny takes center stage in March, with two portrait pictures combined into one to match the landscape format of the calendar.  The photo on the left shows Danny with the Michael Jordan statue outside of the United Center before Purdue’s unfortunate ouster in round two of the NCAA tournament last March.  In photo on the right, Danny poses with Neil Armstrong on the Purdue campus before the homecoming victory over the Fighting Illini last October.