The Cubs say the high local amusement tax they pay necessitates state assistance.
As the New York Times reported last fall, the Cubs have had their eye on upgrading Wrigley, set to celebrate its 98th birthday in 2012, for some time -- and they have claimed that the high local amusement tax they pay means they will need state assistance to make the improvements they need to remain competitive with other teams' stadiums.
Newer plans for a $1.5 billion redesign include themed restaurants, high-rise hotels, lots more shops and a fancy, high-tech amusement park.
One component of dubious value is attracting attention: "Rain Room," a high-tech amusement in a temporary structure next door to MoMA's 53rd Street building in Manhattan.
People who think the mushrooming world of wannabe polemicists and their Web logs, or blogs, is merely a high-tech amusement should talk to Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican.
One day last week, Mr. Reiss put on his noisy hat and wandered through the snow-covered park that sprung from the imagination of his father, Julian Reiss; a park that in this age of frenetic, high-tech amusement seems so earnest and retro.
The book's thrilling pace makes the latest high-tech amusement park rides seem tame.
There is little of Kerouac to find here, though, considering his brief stint with the US Navy, you could get your 21st-century kicks at popular Navy Pier, a distracting bevvy of fast-food restaurants and high-tech amusement rides.
And yet "Solar" offers both high-minded amusement in its skewering of environmentalist, postmodern and objectivist pieties, and, in the North Pole scenes in which Beard braves subzero cold and a hungry polar bear, something awfully close to slapstick.
