Another wasted season
Category: Sports

Lou Pinella sucks.  I didn't give him credit for the Cub's making it to the post season two years in a row.  I gave the credit to the players for playing good ball throughout the year. 
Pinella made some terrible decisions regarding the lineup these past three games, and it even goes back into the past two weeks of the season.  He should have started different guys, and not started others.  I blame my disappointment and the fact that the Cubs are out of it again on two things:  Pinellas inability to properly manage the team in the Post Season, and the team's inability to play under pressure.  The guys looked pathetic all three games, without any confidence or passion.  Certainly not the team with the best record in their league, nor the best run differential in the majors. 
Another wasted season.

11:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Feast or famine....the life of a Cubs fan
Category: Life

I am, by birth and blood, a Cubs fan. I will be until my last breath. Do or die, this is my heritage. I grew up going to Wrigley Field to see the mid 80's Cubbies on hot summer afternoons, when bleacher seats were affordable, and hot dogs were cheap. I saw the '84 Cubs, who played some very good ball, and some very bad Cubs teams. I saw a night game in the first year, '88, that August. Cubs lost by 1. I cried after the '89 Cubs lost. I was 13. And I've seen every team since. I jumped up and down with complete and utter hysteria and happiness when Kerry Wood hit a 2 run home run against the Marlins to tie things up in Game 7 of the NLCS in 2003, only to go on and lose. That's as close as I've come to the happiness of them making it into the World Series.
I can't explain what the drive is for your team to make it there, to win it all. I haven't been alive for most of the past hundred year drought. Only 31 of those years, almost 32. But there is a sanctity to this tradition. It goes back to my father, who worked in the Cub's clubhouse when he was 13, and to his father. To my 84 year old grandmother whom still listens to the games, and shuts them off if they get tense, so she doesn't get upset. To her husband, my Pop Pete, who passed away unexpectedly in 1998, and all the days he spent in the dining room watching Cubs games on WGN, but listening to them on WGN radio. Smoking cigars and playing cards, wearing his old blue hat. The last time I saw Pete alive, he was going for a walk down Lawrence Avenue just outside of Chicago, wearing his favorite Cubby hat. This tradition is part of the air I breathe, for some inexplicable reason. It carries over to friends of mine, whom also share the same hopes and dreams, failures and successes throughout each season. It's the reason I look forward to spring each year, for baseball to start. The struggle between each team, each pitcher, big hitters and great fielders.
There's no rhyme or reason to this inherited passion. Other fans of other teams have their own reasons for their fandom. People inherit it by birth, by place, by design.
For Lou Pinella to downplay the passion of Chicago fans, to discredit the importance of this team to our existences, is a major folly and miscalculation on his part. We don't trade our teams like contracts. We don't pick up and move onto a different team when things get down, or try out a new team when nothing seems to work. We don't get traded like players. Fans realize that baseball, and other professional sports in general, are a diversion from the bigger problems of the world. But it's this diversion that we put our passion into when we need something to enjoy. To cheer on. We've grown up from diapers cheering this team on. We don't have the luxury, nor the want, to just pack it up and start cheering for the next team that comes along and wins. We have a right as fans to want this to be the year, and every year to be the year. I'll always wear my own pinstripes in support of this team, and Cubby blue. It's what I've been born to do.

7:17 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

an unknown icon
Category: Life

a very near and dear person to me has passed away, Tom Tichy.  He was my uncle, although not literally, and not legally.  He was with my Aunt Cheryl for many years as I grew up, although they never married.  I spent many summers at their apartment spending weeks at a time with my cousin Josh, listening to Tom talk about the world much like Hunter Thompson or Charles Bukowski.  He was a gifted artist, skilled in drawing and a veteran, so many of his works of art were images born of the jungles of korea or nam, i imagine.  He was obsessed with indie films and sci-fi, listened to alternative before alternative existed....having the pixies and early pumpkins, frank black, and others in his collection.  He poured through magazines and chose images that spoke to him, and he clipped them out and added them to his own scrapbooks.  He used to visit our family with my aunt in the late 80's and early 90's, to get out of Chicago for a week at a time and attend our Riverfest, to enjoy a slowdown.  We'd walk into town, and he'd always spend hours at Mallach's Bookstore perusing their shelves for new treasures.  He once couldn't wait to make it to the gas station several blocks down, and whipped it out and peed in a viadock tunnel, in the middle of the afternoon.  "When you're my age, and you have to go, you go."  That was Tom.  He viewed the world in his own way, through artistic eyes and sardonic laughter.  He walked at his own pace.  He loved Pulp Fiction, comic books, and talked baseball.  The world has lost an unknown icon in the passing on Tom Tichy.

With losing my Aunt several years ago, and now Tom, her perfect compliment, the world is suddenly that much more empty.

2:32 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

to breathe
Category: Writing and Poetry

have you ever noticed the perfection
of a tree branching out?
the clouds
floating liquid?
the whispers
drifting gentle,
capturing the essence of alive?
it is this i see,
when i look to you,
across fleeting moments,
shared smiles,
and exhaling chances.
i'll embrace the want,
knowing life as desire,
the gnawing,
a reminder,
to breathe.

11:34 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

through the faces
Current mood: headache
Category: headache Writing and Poetry

can you hand me that pry bar?
i'm trying to remove these spikes
that just leave me hanging...
peel the layers of paint,
skin tight nightmare lullaby,
a silk greeting and soul coughing.
it's the last exit
that gets confusing.
spin wish aftermath episode,
re-run low-fi
grainy, with lines
through the faces.
swerving through three lanes,
chrome oval reflections,
no brake lights, and nowhere to stop.
it's the same road,
a different drive,
and an unknown direction.
wounded apparitions,
swimming at random,
whispers in triumph,
and grace found,
in tremor christ.

2:52 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

a swaying flower (for you, my love)
Category: Writing and Poetry

there are too many left turns,
and not enough slow afternoons.
i want to dive into your smile,
lounge in the drifting clouds,
and linger in sunset kisses.
that is shared perfection.
a swaying flower
is more beautiful,
when captured by the eye,
and held
in the heart.

8:40 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

the grinning wicked
Category: Writing and Poetry

there's only one good reason
to sell your soul,
and the oils guys got it wrong.
you think they're holding
boardroom meetings in hell?
chatting around the
steam boiler.
how's that suit
taking the heat?
fire-engine red staplers,
and three-drawer black file cabinets
full of complaints, wall to sky.
executive decisions,
more souls to annex,
to make room
for the grinning wicked.
you might not see it now,
but your mirror
catches everything...
waiting to be revealed,
after
your eyes are closed.

4:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

charles
Current mood: artistic
Category: Writing and Poetry

the magnificent bastard
stands proud
scratching at random
scruff all over
seventy decibel whisper
opinions in concrete
truths made universal,
he stumbles, and grunts.
at least, thats what i imagine,
of days long past.
charles
binge drinking
walls dressed in tar and
draped in dripping vulgarity,
long legs and loose lips,
enough to make a nun blush.
quick talkers,
wigs,
and quick fingers.
i sometimes confuse his name,
with a major league pitcher
just for shits and grins.
i think it'd be fun,
to see him out on the mound
in front of forty thousand people
on a tuesday afternoon
in ninety degree weather
eighty three percent humidity
and a few stratus clouds...
he'd grab a mic,
and address the melting masses,
swimming in fermented alterations.
'Why the hell are you here?'
'Let's grab some scotch,
go to the track,
and find some fine cubans!'
he'd drop his chinos,
plant a vertical smile,
and take a shit on the infield.
one american icon,
smearing himself
on another.
'Play ball.'
I could almost swear
it happened...

8:38 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

whatif

a ton of words
came and went
zigged and zagged
peeked and booed
and hid,
without the found.
such is the day sometimes
even without attempt
just some frontal lobe warfare,
and the elusive
whatif.

7:27 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

that something
Category: Writing and Poetry

chatter
physical form
clutter
keep that
hiding in corrugated,
evolution to plastic
vampire treatment
haven't seen this
since
two places ago
in use by
puppet shadows
trailing whispers
ticking clocks.
mountains grow
often horizontal
or, in closets.
without a basement,
there is no place
to imprison
part-time memories.
that's something,
i'll need,
later.

1:42 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment