July 06--FIFA awarded Germany about $35 million for its 2014 men's World Cup championship but allotted just around a $2 million prize for the 2015 women's World Cup winner, despite a massive cash reserve. Guess FIFA doesn't make enough over-the-table payments to remember they invite scrutiny.
Dick Van Dyke's childhood home in Danville has landed on the local condemned list. It was almost impossible to walk through the living room without tripping over something.
Amazon plans a "Prime Day" sale July 15 that it says will rival Black Friday, offering its Prime customers the sort of deep discounts associated with post-Thanksgiving mall madness. No word yet on how crazed online bargain-hunters will assault each other, per Black Friday tradition.
Redmoon Theater plans to stage a second Great Chicago Fire Festival, this time on Northerly Island, following an anticlimactic inaugural effort last year that Ald. Edward Burke dubbed "the fiasco on the river." Supporters say the flameout was unique, practically matchless.
The fire festival's budget has been cut to $1.2 million, which reportedly is subsidized by $100,000 from cash-strapped Chicago, $75,000 from Chicago's cash-strapped park district and $20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts. So if nothing else is burned, there are always taxpayers.
New York's landmark 30 Rockefeller Center has been formally rechristened. As the Comcast Building, it still has 70 stories, but it's not interested in yours or anything else you try to tell it.
Introducing Oreo Thins to an overstuffed marketplace, Mondelez looks to peddle a version of the cookie with fewer calories because there's less cookie. It brings to mind Monty Python gourmand Mr. Creosote. Finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin Oreo.
The $30 million interactive "Marvel Experience" national tour has been abruptly aborted just before a planned three-week Chicago stop. No one takes down Marvel superheroes like co-producers Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris of Broadway's "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and now this.
Joan of Arc was acquitted of heresy 559 years ago Tuesday. This no doubt would have pleased her had she not been convicted and burned at the stake 25 years earlier.
philrosenthal@tribpub.com
