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2007-07-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

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Heroes I

2007-06-28T20:24:00.000-05:00

A few years and several jobs ago, KB and I were on a train headed downtown. Last stretch of the two-hour commute home, in fact.

Across the aisle, a young mother was watching her young child bounce around and marvel at the city outside.

"What's that?" she would ask, her voice betraying the not-so-secret wonder and pride she found in this child of hers.

"A train!" the boy would answer with the kind of joy reserved for only the very young and the very easily entertained.

Time and again, we looked over just in time to see him stand up to look out the window, fall down on his behind, giggle and repeat.

Finally, KB turned to me and said "Little kids are so stupid," then adding "but you know, in a cute way."

We laughed at this for a while, until I pointed out that she and I both spent several hours each day going to and from jobs we both weren't especially fond of and weren't getting much satisfaction from. We asked ourselves out loud if maybe the little kids have been outsmarting us all along.

KB laughed until she cried.

Once downtown, we went our separate ways, but I think she took that ride home to heart. Not because we both left the company soon afterwards, nor because we both finally got to work on the lives we wanted for ourselves.

No, what convinces me is that she and I haven't really spoken since.

This Year's Model

2007-06-12T21:46:00.000-05:00

We're having lunch downtown. She feels like celebrating because after a long fight and strict adherence to a new diet and exercise program, she finally fits into the "goal pants" she bought herself late last year. And, I must add, she looks great.

She's going on about her health being better and just what to do with her new found self. For once, she says, she can't wait to go shopping for a bathing suit. Eventually she brings up the obvious topic and informs me that yes, she's getting a lot more attention from the men around her, wherever she goes.

She's going out more, she continues. She likes it now. She says she gets to cut in line at some of the swankier clubs around the city. Strangers smile at her on the street. Bartenders and waiters flirt with her. Boys and men are buying her drinks well before last call.

(That last one makes me want to punch every drunken male at every bar in the face.)

The topic turns to a mutual friend. Good guy, really. One of the few I actually endorse when female friends ask if I know anyone they might like to meet. I ask her if he's one of those boys who looks at her differently these days. She gets quiet. Starts playing with her salad while she tries to get the words right.

"He does, and it's . . . it's weird. We're just friends, so why do I catch him eyeballing me so much?"

Maybe he sees something in you now, I tell her. You accomplished something great. I bet he's drawn to that.

"It's not like that," she continues. "It's just that before, I would try to tell him about things. You know, I heard what people said about me, what boys at bars would call me."

I ask her who said what and tell her I'll kick their asses. She smiles.

"And fuck them is what I always said, and he would just keep quiet the whole time. Like he didn't even hear me when I'd try to open up to him. Now it's just hard to take him seriously. I never knew if he was listening before and now all of a sudden . . .

"It's just like, why is he like this now? Where was this 35 pounds ago?"

The part she doesn't know - the part I swore to him I wouldn't ever tell her - was that 35 pounds ago he was wild about her. Thirty-five pounds ago he would tell me things like "I don't care what anyone says, she's beautiful." Thirty-five pounds ago he was the one taking swings at those guys at the bar when he heard what they called her as she walked by.

Thirty-five pounds ago I would tell him to just ask her out already. Thirty-five pounds ago he didn't listen.

He was afraid she would say no and it would put too much of a strain between them for him to hold on to what bond they already had. Now he was afraid that, with everyone else seeing in her what he thought only he did, someone taller or richer or better-looking than him would steal her away forever. In a very sad way, he had convinced himself he couldn't win with her either way.

I sigh just loud enough for her to understand that I don't know what to tell her, except that maybe she should be talking to him about this instead of me. And I hope she does.

Thirty-five pounds ago, I thought they would've been great together.

365

2007-05-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe it's been a year already, but tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the day I walked away from a stable and promising career to pursue another bleaker, less certain one.

In that time I have authored something in the neighborhood of 500,000 words' worth of assignments, essays, query letters, short stories, option demands, failed submissions, and small-time publication credits. I have interviewed cops, firefighters, politicians, addicts, dealers, low-level criminal operatives, Congressmen, athletes, bartenders, club owners, musicians, building engineers, homeless people, historians, and witnesses to all manner of history.

While all of that has been interesting, the tough part is the constant reminder of the idea that I, at almost 28 years old, am at the bottom of my field. People younger than me are working jobs that I want. People with less education than I have the CV that I am gunning for. People I can refer to as "kids" are doing things I am jealous of.

But the funny part, the part that smacks almost of maturity and reeks just a little of being an adult, is knowing that it's possible to survive out there. That it's possible to go boldly and blindly in a new direction without losing everything. That some gambles absolutely must be made.

One year. Does that constitute success? Does that constitute making it? Hardly, but I've got my own yardsticks for those. All I know is that I had the good fortune to realize there were things I needed to be doing in life besides mapping out project plans and drawing up specs for new client implementations.

...

One of my best friends used to sell computing equipment for a very large company, but after six months on the job he walked away from what was most likely an extremely lucrative amount of money to be a firefighter.

I remember him saying things like "It's something I just have to do" and "This is what I was born to be." God damn if that wasn't an intense thing for one 23-year-old kid to say to another.

And for what seemed like the longest time, he was killing himself to make it. Working crappy jobs, training like a madman, facing impossible odds and rejection letter after rejection letter after rejection letter. But he kept with it.

What he knew was that we were behind him all the way. You only get one shot in this life and he was taking his, and there was no way any of us were going to dare try to stop him.

What he didn't know was how insanely jealous I was of him. Not because I wanted to be a firefighter, and not because I hated my job.

(Okay, maybe I did hate my job but that's beside the point.)

What I was jealous of was that he knew. He knew what he wanted to be. He knew what he had to do to get there. I wanted that to know those things too.

He's doing pretty good these days, working full-time for a mid-size city department and loving what he's doing - including, I suspect, the stories about the calls he hates going on. And how did he get there? Focus. Hard work. Eyes on the prize. Obviously there was a lesson here.

...

Three of my favorite movies are American Beauty, Fight Club, Office Space. Funny and smart, yes, but despite their stylistic differences the thesis of all three of them is essentially the same: what would you rather be doing with your life? For years I would ask myself this. I would go sit at work and write lengthy e-mails to friends about...whatever. I would go home and write about all the things going on in the world around me and in the worlds I tried to create inside my head and about how I wanted to figure it all out. I would sit on the train and write little sketches for stories I would author if only I had the time.

And after a while it hit me. I would rather be writing.

Writing was something I just had to do. A writer is what I was born to be.

From there it became a matter of figuring out what to do next. Throwing out ideas, doing a ton of financial planning, making mental milestones. Sometimes I would chuckle at how much this resembled the project management job I couldn't wait to abandon.

Some people laughed at me when I would tell them my little plan. That I was stupid. That I would never make it. That I should shut up and I had a good job and only an idiot would throw that away. A lot of these are the people who tell me now that they wish they could do what I'm doing.

But you know something? It sounds so good to say it. "My name is Andrew and I'm a small-time writer. I'm getting my Master's in journalism."

...

Still, for all that, what I'm absolutely proudest of writing is this:

May 24, 2006

C_____:

I hereby announce my voluntary resignation from ________ __________. My last day of employment will be May 31st, 2006.

Sincerely,

Andrew M. Reilly

My letter of resignation. Nineteen of the most important words I ever wrote right there. Nineteen of the hardest, too.

Very good year. A very good year, indeed.

Coast to Coast on the 76

2007-05-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

Hrrrrrrrrnnnnnn.

That's the sound a CTA bus makes, roughly 75 times each way, heading up and down Diversey Avenue between Harlem and Sheridan, its engine struggling to push ahead even though everything else - traffic, automotive operating mechanics, ridiculous racial and socioeconomic divides - tells it to just stop moving and quit now while you're ahead.

You hear it pulling out of the Logan Square Blue Line station when that old woman dares have a walker and (gasp!) keep the whole bus waiting an extra 30 seconds while she maneuvered on board and eked her way past her fellow riders too engrossed in their trips and too enraged with this woman's situation to give up their seat for her.

When the guy gets on at Western and starts throwing a fit because the bus driver won't make change for a five, the engine groans again as the driver, not knowing what else to do, tells the guy to either shut up or get the hell off and pulls away.

It's the sound it makes around Damen as the glimpse of Hell that is the Lathrop Homes rises up along the river, gaping holes where there were once front doors and steam rising up through the sewer grates. Past the playing field that sits abandoned, past the broken and boarded-up windows of apartments that people are still living in, past the open secret that soon enough, these places will be torn down and everyone inside will have no place to go.

You hear it when the girl who doesn't know how the CTA works gets on at Paulina, tells the driver she needs to get to some intersection considerably north of Sheffield and Diversey, then gets upset to hear there's no Sheffield bus.

"Don't you know how many people live on Sheffield?" she asks.

"That's not how it works," the driver explains, unaware of just how true that statement is.

It's the sound at Clark Street of more transit options than anywhere else in the city running at full operation, day and night, helping rich and busy people do rich and busy things.

And when all is said and done and that hateful trip across town is over, you hear it again one last time as the beast pulls away from Sheridan Road, a mechanism working against itself in a city that operates despite itself.

But the day is young, you say, and the park sure looks nice. They should all be such postcard views.

God Hates Cleveland Sports...

2007-05-08T23:49:00.000-05:00

...or at least that's what the last semester of journalism school has taught me. Remember, it's just a game. Except when it's not.

Read the result of this writer's hard work here: Sixth City Heartbreak

The Advice Column (I Wish Someone Had Told Me)

2007-05-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

A friend's brother and sister (they're twins) will graduate from U of I soon, and last week I got an e-mail from the brother asking for advice on how best to succeed in the "real world" (his words, not mine). Being the self-aggrandizing blowhard that I am, how could I refuse?

...

Fail spectacularly at least once; you'll learn more from a day at rock bottom than from a lifetime at the top.

Don't be suckered into believing that what makes your friends/favorite TV show/boss/parents/significant other happy will make you happy; only you can decide that. Anyone worth the dirt they'll be buried under knows that one person's heaven can be another's hell, and you should be no different.

Money is nothing to be reviled, nor is it anything to be revered. It will do you plenty of good but cause you plenty of problems as well; be ready for both of these to happen. And always remember that success has nothing to do with how much you make. There are too many people to count who have kicked no small amount of ass in their field that can't pay the rent, and by the same token there are too many rich people that could too easily be classified as failures.

Don't lead people on and don't toy with their affections. Ever. You're not only mocking someone's feelings but you're wasting both of your time.

To young men: At some point, a beautiful woman will ruin you one way or another. And don't for a second trick yourself into thinking you've got the opposite sex figured out. It's like trying to calculate pi or conclusively prove evolution; the further you get, the harder it is to link the data.

To young women: There has never been a perfect man and there never will be. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise.

Don't begrudge other people their happiness and good fortune, regardless of whether they earned it and whether they deserve it. Petty jealousy will get you nowhere and that's time and energy you could've used to solve your own damn problems.

When Harry Met Sally isn't funny because of any jokes, gags or punchlines; When Harry Met Sally is funny because it's true.

Emotional baggage is a very unattractive feature in a woman. Ladies, please do your best to conceal or accessorize around it.

Don't fear change, but don't embrace it too readily either.

Despite their mass e-mails stating the contrary, the company you work for ultimately does not care about you.

Show me someone who doesn't hate a co-worker and I'll show you someone who's never had a job.

Never judge the people closest to you. Listen to them, observe them, take notes, hear them out, but never judge them. In the end, we are only as good as the company we keep...meaning none of us is really better than anyone else.

But hey, what do I know?

Romance IV

2007-04-23T00:03:00.000-05:00

2:18 a.m., Belmont and Sheffield. They're standing on the corner, deciding just where the evening should go from here. She reaches for his hand while he looks up and down the street, his "um"'s and "well"'s doing a poor job of hiding how badly he wants to impress her.

Nice shoes. He remembered to wear nice shoes. Someone told him that once; that women notice these things. Of course he didn't believe it but figured there was no use taking chances. Truth be told, he'd spent a considerably long time agonizing over his outfit for the evening, doing his best to make himself worthy of the company of this beautiful girl who, for whatever reason, decided after so long that yes she would like to go out with him this weekend.

Across the street, he sees the groups of alcohol-fueled young men and women stumbling their way to and from home. Two teenage boys dressed in black are walking together, one's face covered in blood. "We'll get 'em back," the other says. "You're going to be okay, I promise." The bloodied boy starts crying.

Past them walk two men, hand-in-hand, the taller one dressed to kill in stilettos and a black mini. "You look great tonight," one says, to which the other graciously responds "I know."

From the corner, he hears a young man and an even younger woman yelling at each other. She calls him a tactless jackass; he calls her a self-centered bitch. The two get into a cab together, riding off into the night to yell and curse and make amends the way only drunken lovers can.

The whole time, she watches him, watches his eyes dart from scene to scene, watches these little moments register with him. Always looking, she thinks. You don't have to look. I'm right here.

He feels her pull softly on his arm and steps back closer to her, takes her other hand in his. She leans forward and kisses him softly on the lips. The world falls silent and he can't hear the yelling or the laughter or the slurring or the scores of people, just the soft sweet voice of this beautiful girl.

"We should get out of here," she says.

He says nothing, just smiles and looks deep into her eyes before touching his lips to hers once more.

2:18 a.m. The night is young.

"Sorry" With a Smile

2007-04-09T22:26:00.000-05:00

For months, we knew she was cheating on him. She knew we knew. We knew she knew. None of that mattered, though, because the whole time he didn't know any of that.

The worst part was hearing him talk about her. He loved her with the kind of intensity reserved only for the relationships that last forever and the ones that leave scars that last even longer. To hear him tell it, she was the greatest girl any man would ever have the good fortune of crossing paths with. She could do no wrong. The still point in his ever-spinning world.

I remember how we'd always change the subject when he brought her up. For so long, he took this to mean we didn't want him to be happy, that something about her was just beneath us. He'd get mad at us, say we were jealous and bitter that we were going to lose him to her while we were all left to be miserable and lonely for the rest of our lives.

In truth, until we found out about the boy she was keeping on the side, we liked her just fine. She was nice, she was pretty, and the two of them had a good chemistry together. And until that night we saw her in the loving arms of the guy from her work outside a bar in Lincoln Park, we hoped they would last as long as he said they would.

She saw us, of course. Didn't even try to pretend, just leaned in closer to this mystery guy we'd been introduced to as her friend when she and her so-called boyfriend would host parties at his or her apartment. In a way, we admired her for that, for at least having the guts not to hide from the wrong she was doing. It removed the element of doubt and instead allowed us to freely contemplate bigger questions than the ones that started with "was that...?"

Her friend. To hell with friendship.

...

Did we tell him? We debated this to no end. He needed to know, we'd sometimes agree. Then we'd agree that it would kill him. Then we'd agree we couldn't let him keep making a fool of himself over her. If she didn't care that we knew, it was just a matter of time before everyone knew.

For months we kept quiet. Maybe she would tell him. If it didn't matter that we knew, we figured, then she'd probably just try to beat us to the punch and tell him herself. At least that way she could control what he heard or thought, or such was our conclusion based mostly on speculation and conjecture. He was about to get run over in spectacular fashion and none of us wanted to help that along.

So when the day came, finally, that she let him in on the secret, we were not surprised that it destroyed him. We were not surprised that he cried for days and weeks over this. We were not surprised at the weight he lost or at how withdrawn he became or how he could no longer listen to so many of his favorite songs, as they each had become three minutes of Hell. Where he once had such sweet memories, he now had postcards from a time when he didn't so blindly put his love and hope into the care of a woman who, despite her argument to the contrary, didn't want or need those things from him.

The shock came later. We were sitting at a bar one Thursday night, talking about baseball and music and other such trivialities while he kept quiet all the while. Finally, someone asked him how he was doing.

"I don't get it," he finally said.

Don't get what?

He was quiet for a moment, then "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

We knew right away what he meant. What killed us was not the lame answers we gave him; it was that they were all the wrong answers. We'd failed him. And we all knew it.

More importantly, this time he knew. And we knew he knew.

His friends. To hell with friendship.

Frederick Exley Had the Right Idea

2007-04-01T20:46:00.000-05:00

Thursday, August 20, 1992. An era begins.

The Chicago White Sox are hosting the Texas Rangers at what was still then (and, depending who you ask, is still to this day) called New Comiskey Park. A woman and her brother's grandson are sitting in the two seats she purchased this year in a season ticket package she split with her own two sons. Box 528, row 14, seats 8 and 9.

It was a giveaway night. Free yellow seatwarmers for the first 20,000 fans, although on this night there were probably still 5,000 or so leftovers put back into a storage room at the end of the night. Officially the Sox would sell 2.7 million tickets that year, but everyone knew most of those tickets went unused or were just insurance for scalpers to get playoff tickets in the unlikely event the Sox made the playoffs that year...which they didn't, as usual.

Knuckleballer and South Side cult hero Charlie Hough was on the mound for the Good Guys that night, and Texas rookie/nobody Roger Pavlik was throwing for the Rangers. Pavlik was a so-so starter that year, prone to getting battered by any team he faced - except of course for the Sox. Hough, on the other hand, was having a typical White Sox back-end-of-the-rotation year, showing occasional flashes of brilliance but usually just plodding through enough innings to give up 5 runs. Some nights he was absolutely unhittable out there. Hough would start and enemy batters were left looking like they were swatting at flies up there. Other nights, Hough's game was over before it started.

You can guess which one showed up that night.

After giving up a 2-run homer in the 5th to Texas 1B Rafael Palmeiro, Hough was done. With the Sox already down 5-0, he had officially bombed again that night. He didn't know it, but Hough was starting a fifth-in-the-Sox-rotation tradition that would continue through the years. Javier Vazquez, Scott Schoenewis, Gary Glover, John Snyder, Joe Magrane, Kip Wells: all just carrying on what Hough started.

Before Palmeiro even rounded second, the fans were already letting Hough have it. Some boos from over here, a few "you suck"'s from over there. As Sox manager Gene Lamont emerged from the dugout to yank Hough, that boy in the upper deck noticed something bright go sailing towards the field.

Then another from his left. And then another from his right.

Seatwarmers.

And suddenly they started raining down towards the field, the fans booing and the game being delayed for several minutes while the grounds crew came out to restore order. Several rows closer to the front of the section the boy and his aunt were in, a few young men in Rangers gear were laughing about all this, standing up and yelling at the Sox faithful who were participating in this mini-riot.

The boy tried not to laugh when those men started getting pelted with food and beer from above...and more seatwarmers. To this day he wonders where all those bright yellow missiles kept coming from.

He looked to his aunt next to him and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her laughing at the whole scene.

"Aunt Pat, why is everyone so upset?" he asked her.

"Because we're Sox fans," she replied, "and we don't put up with paying to watch crappy baseball. And we don't put up with jerk fans from out of town either."

The boy took this all in and would later tell all his friends about how hardcore Sox fans were. "They hate losing," he would say. "It's awesome!"

And of course the Sox did lose that night, eventually falling 6-1 on their way to another 3rd-place finish while Pavlik threw a 6-hit complete game, faltering only when George Bell hit yet another meaningless solo home run with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th. Years later the boy would ask his aunt about that game, and she would still smile to think about it.

"I'm so glad it worked out the way it did," she said. "Awful game, but you learned about the Sox at just the right time."

He asked her if she still had the seatwarmer.

"God no," she said. "I threw it at those jackasses in the Rangers shirts when you weren't looking."

Birth in the Afternoon

2007-03-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

3:08 p.m. Phone rings.

"It's a boy."

He wasn't the first of my friends to become a father and, I assume, certainly won't be the last. But that it was him calling with such news was the twist.

Not long ago, he was "that guy." The last one to grow up, so to speak. He would call me at 2, 3, 5 in the morning from God-only-knows-where with some story that usually started with "Dude" and ended with "Crazy shit, man." He slept little, drank a ton, tried whatever he was handed.

He was never a wreck by any means, at least not in any sense that led us to believe he needed whatever help we as friends could offer. His problems were different. They weren't about the booze or the party favors, more about the way he kept...moving. Always out late, always out there, always looking to the next scene or club or woman.

To some of us, he had that life we only thought existed in movies. Glamorous nightclubs, beautiful women, exclusive parties, sharply-dressed people, the whole lot of it. When we asked him about it, he would just shrug and say "don't think my life is any better than yours," and that was the end of it.

Until he started opening up. It was a lonely life, he said. Not that he was alone, but that he was living in a world that wasn't based on anything more substantial than what bar, club or lounge to meet at or what was opening this weekend. You never got comfortable, he would say. There were no constants. Nothing to hold on to.

We never believed him, of course. "Grass is always greener," we'd tell him, but he would only shake his head and change the subject. When he met the woman who became his wife and she led him out of the vacuum he was living in, we started to see what he meant. His nights became tamer, his weekends became less outrageous, but he never complained. Never talked about getting old or settling down or admitting defeat or any of the usual macho excuses. Instead, very quietly, he just changed.

Those times were fun, he would later say, but they weren't him. Weren't real. Just a long drawn-out way of looking for what he wanted in the places he knew he would never find it. Some people were built for that kind of life. He wasn't one of them.

And today, on the phone, I heard something in his voice I'd heard only there once before: pure, uncontrollable joy. Finally, he was happy.

About time.

On the Top of the World

2007-03-10T11:05:00.000-06:00

Taking another sip from her vodka tonic, M___ looks back out the window onto the city being drowned in rain and says "I just don't know what I'm going to do now.

"That man, that bastard was all I had, you know? I mean, I loved my job, I loved my friends, and my God did I love him, but now what? He was fucking my best friend and he also happens to sit next to me at work. And she's pregnant. So now what?"

I ask her how she found out.

"Because she - she! - told me! She comes to me in tears the other night and I didn't have the heart to..."

To what?

"I can't hurt a pregnant woman. That's just wrong."

So is having an affair with the man in your best friend's life, I remind her.

She pauses. "The baby never hurt me."

She takes a moment to think. She looks back out the window. Raindrops streak the window and I catch her eyes tracing their fall. Little teardrops.

So now what?

"I left him and quit. She can go to hell for all I care. There's just nothing I can do here. Nothing. How am I going to keep up appearances now? How can I think straight? How can I do anything without knowing the other mind at work here is the one that took everything I had? My home, my oldest friend, the man I love...in one motion, all of it, gone. We never got married - stupid me, had to be so goddamn independent - so I can't say half of whatever is mine. I've got my own money and I don't want a bed he was sharing with her anyway. All those years and where has it got me? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere."

She pauses again.

"I'm going to the airport tomorrow."

Where to?

"We'll see when I get there."

The waitress stops over by us. M___ orders another drink. I do the same.

"I'm 31 years old," she says after a long silence. "I've got my education, my ideas, I've got everything I've ever achieved. I've got my whole life ahead of me."

Then "I hope." She laughs briefly before turning back to face the window. I see her expression fall back again. Her eyes well up, and the rain keeps coming down.

Drink up, sister. The world is yours.

Corporate Boy Rocks Out (Jack McDowell Part II)

2007-02-25T16:09:00.000-06:00

May, 2003. Milwaukee, WI.

It was a weeknight and we were here for one reason and one reason alone: Opeth, the heaviest band in the land, is playing TONIGHT and is going to decimate everyone in the building with the kind of riffs and chops that only the Swedes seem to have at the ready.

A co-worker had tickets. We had a place to stay in Milwaukee that night. This was going to be awesome.

We drove up straight from work blasting whatever ridiculous heavy metal CD's he had in the car and generally disregarding all traffic laws and the safety of others in pursuit of getting that much closer to HEAVY FUCKING METAL!!!

After several hours of traffic and hiding out in some bar whose name I forget, it was showtime. And it was awesome. And the pits were ridiculous and the band sounded terrible, as most do at The Rave, and the house was packed to the gills with the full spectrum of disaffected youth and old-school metalheads that make up nights like these.

At some point, my co-worker's brother pointed out a girl he noticed looking at me. Of course I, of the low self-esteem and stupid haircut, didn't believe him until I caught her pointing me out to one of her friends.

She giggled, and we looked away from each other. Whatever.

Some time later the girl approached me.

"There's something I need to ask you," she said.

Okay, I told her. Fire away.

"Why are you so dressed up?" she asked.

Ah, so that was it. We'd come here straight from work, I told her, and I had just forgotten to bring anything more suitable. It wasn't even that dressy, really - slacks and a polo shirt - and I thought the whole point of being an adult was not to get caught up in that kind of thing anyway.

She started laughing at this. "You just really stick out here, that's all."

I asked her if that was good or bad.

"No, it's just...people shouldn't look good at shows like this. You look like you don't belong here."

"Well," I told her, "you could maybe learn a thing or two from me."

"Why's that?"

"Because," I told her, "it took me less time to look this good than it took you to look that bad."

I thought this was brilliant; she disagreed and stormed off. My co-worker saw all of this go down and couldn't believe it.

"Idiot!" he yelled at me. "What's the matter with you?"

"Well," I explained calmly, "sometimes you just gotta throw inside. Maybe she meant well but you can't take that from anyone."

He shook his head in dismay. "You gotta drop this baseball shit."

"No way," I told him. "Maybe YOU just need to learn to do what Jack McDowell would do."

He paused for a moment, then told me ex-Sox players probably wouldn't go around telling girls and women that they were unattractive and stupid.

Actually, I thought, #29 probably just never would've worn khakis to a metal show in the first place. I made a note to myself to find a new line of work...or to at least start bringing a change of clothes for times like this.

My ideas, however, would eventually be vindicated; hours later on our way out, we saw the girl making out with some random guy, pull away from him for a moment to throw up onto West Wisconsin Avenue, then resume their impromptu lovefest as though her emptying the contents of her stomach into the street was just another part of the drunken courtship ritual.

Nasty.

Heavy metal and boyhood heroes had triumphed again, and the world was a better place for it.

Romance III

2007-02-14T00:11:00.000-06:00

[For M. and J. This story, like the world, is now yours to keep.]

Window seat. Always get a window seat.

The boy (why is it always the boy?) was nervous, but that was okay. This was a nervous kind of moment. It was Valentine's Day. A big one at that.

He reached into his coat pocket, felt the small box was still there, still full of his hopes and what he'd promised the girl so long ago.

The train rolled on through the night.

The snow fell hard outside through the yellow city lights and he thought back to that 4th of July. The two of them and all their friends were sitting on blankets and half-broken folding chairs along the waterfront, oohing and aahing the way people do at fireworks shows. In that afternoon they had walked together for hours. They watched children playing, laughed at people getting drunk on cheap beer, stared out onto the waves. The day seemed to last forever.

"Some day," people used to joke, "you two are going to be spending a lot of holidays together." They would laugh this off. Not in a million years.

They were younger then. They were not yet in love.

In the days that passed they had learned to finally see in each other what had been there all along. That he was a thoughtful and charming man. That she was a beautiful and sweet woman. That the reason the two of them had been alone so long is that they couldn't see what was right in front of them. That they could be so happy if they wanted to.

Click-clack, click-clack along the rails.

Like any good romance, theirs was a long string of ups and downs, but mostly ups. The time he wrecked her car. The time she spilled wine on his computer. The time they got drunk in Memphis and screamed at each other all through the night. The time he wallpapered her living room with red roses. The time she drove 100 miles just to surprise him with the old football jersey he had wanted since he was a kid.

Mostly ups.

But also like any good romance, the day came when the only thing left to talk about was the future.

As in, The Future.

She was sure about them. They had been such good friends, even better as lovers. This was perfect.

He wasn't. How could they know? How can anyone? Every relationship dies these days, he thought. He didn't want to see theirs crumble on such a large scale. Maybe it was better to stop this before it got to that point. Kill the romance to save the friendship.

The girl wept for days and weeks over this. All this time she had had it in her head that he was all she needed, and now he was ready to take that away without a second thought.

"It doesn't have to end yet," he told her.

"If it's going to, I don't want to wait," she told him.

"We'll wait and see what happens," he said.

"No waiting," she said. "If you've got it in your head that you can live without me I'd like to see you do it."

And for a little while he tried, realizing soon enough that he couldn't. The way she laughed at his stupid jokes. The way she opened his eyes to a world he might never have otherwise seen. How nice it was to wake up with her as the first thing he saw, and knowing when he would lay down again to dream she would be the last.

He saw now how she had slowly come to mean the world to him. And there was only one thing he could do that would prove that to her.

"Damen is next," said the train announcer. "Doors open on the right at Damen."

This is your stop, buddy.

...

He felt around his pocket again. In his mind, her face was already lighting up. Everything about it would be perfect, he thought. Finally.

He hoped.

She would look at him the way he had for so long dreamed she would. The light in her eyes would shine on him. For him. The way he should've realized he couldn't do without in the first place. The way the engraving on the band said it would, and the way he wished it hadn't taken him so long to understand he would love her:

FOR NOW AND FOR EVER.

He rang the doorbell and waited. Last chance, he told himself. Now or never.

She opened the door.

"What are you doing here?"

Well, he thought, here goes nothing.

Hardcore Bandwagon

2007-01-24T19:20:00.000-06:00

It wasn't a bet, per se.

True, the Bears won that game and true, I didn't leave the bar with any less than I entered it with. Only I had anything on the table and in reality only I had anything to lose. Still, they felt the sting of another loss, although this time it wasn't from the likes of the Steelers or the Broncos or the Chargers, just a careless fan who didn't understand why the city that works didn't have more to show for its efforts.

"They" were those most loyal and devoted of the most loyal and devoted, the Cleveland Browns fans. And I, for a moment, was but a missed field goal away from joining their ranks.

...

Let me backtrack for a second and explain this isn't a slight against the Bears. I grew up here and still look back at 1985 as one of the greatest years in the history of mankind.

I remember how cool Dan Hampton was. I know that no matter what anyone says, Sweetness was the best football player of all-time. I know why Singletary and Dent ruled. I know Jim McMahon was one of the greatest flukes in sports history and I know why his "Don't Be a Punk and Get Drunk" posters were so funny. I know that a George Wendt or Chris Farley "Da Bears" shirt is worth its weight in gold. I know that Ditka sweaters are the ultimate fashion statement. I know a Willie Gault jersey is about the coolest thing I could be wearing right now.

But I also know that this is Chicago. This is the city where the last governor was just sent to jail, where the president of the county board effectively stole the job from his father, and where half of the public transit system is about to be all but shut down for the next three years.

This is the city where the property tax structure has been set up in a way that it's totally legal to steal from citizens and not tell them where the money went.

This is the city where the mayor has been implicated in nearly every major political scandal and has not only managed to dodge charges but is probably going to get re-elected because would-be opponents have too much to lose by going against him.

This is the city where an Olympic bid is being assembled on the strength of a stadium that's going to throw an entire neighborhood into upheaval and a billion-dollar rail line that isn't really going to make it easier for residents to get around.

This is the city...well, you get the point. We take a lot of hell here, be it from our jobs or our commutes or our bills or the parking situation on our street or even something as basic as the damn weather. So is it asking too much for the Bears give us something to cheer about?

...

I'm not saying we don't get our share of victories around here. I remember the Bulls dynasty and of course I remember the 2005 Sox. Unfortunately, those aren't for everyone.

Chicago, for all its high-rises and culture and nightlife, is still one of the most segregated cities in America. Race, class, age: pick your dividing line. And of course this extends to even something as ultimately trivial as our sports teams.

Half the city hates the Cubs; the other half hates the Sox. Unless they're winning championships, the Bulls are nonexistent. Absolutely no one cares about the Hawks.

And yet, everyone - everyone who's not from somewhere else, I should say - likes the Bears. Maybe it's the old stadium. Maybe it's the archives full of footage of guys like Dick Butkus and Richard Dent destroying pretty-boy players on the field. Maybe it's the idea that Da Superfans are not a joke here but reflections of at least someone every one of us knows and loves.

Or maybe it's just the fact that despite making millions of dollars per year, these guys still have to brave the same snow and ice the rest of us do when they go to work.

...

I mean, come on, how does a team that plays in Foxboro, MA, and refuses to align itself with any one city establish a modern-day dynasty? How lame would it be to root for the Midwest Bears as they take on the Canadian Shield Vikings?

This is Chicago. This is a city that can find a way to make anything happen for itself, and yet unifying victory remains all too elusive. In a way, maybe that's some kind of cosmic justice: you can have a World Series, but half your city's going to resent it. You can have six NBA titles in eight years, but just watch how fast the glow of those trophies wears off the people who were so happy about it that they burned down most of the West Side.

Meanwhile, back on the mean streets of the city by the lake, the jobs and money keep rolling. God, Karma, the universe - someone or something up there has been doing a hell of a job beating the spread all these years.

Which gets back to my original deal. If the Bears lost their first playoff game this year, which I really didn't know if they would, I was going to switch my allegiance to the Cleveland Browns. Yes, the Browns are in a sad state these days. Yes, it meant a lot of suffering as a fan. So what? At least when your team goes 3-13 you know where you stand.

Which, if you think about it, is all a man can really ask for in life.

But the Bears won, and won again, and saved this boy from having to make a painful divorce from a team that defined his youth until he learned how to really be a Sox fan. Instead we, as a city, can get excited together about something for a little while.

They're going to win. Everyone in Chicago knows this.

"But Andrew," you might ask, "how can you be so sure?"

Because they have to. Because the players want it, and because they know we need it.

And because there aren't any funny shirts about the Colts.

I Left My Heart In Capital City / Don't Mess With Texas / Keeping Austin Weird

2007-01-09T16:17:00.000-06:00

"This's probably the coldest it's been here in years," the girl at the bar tells me. "That's why no one's out."

This is in and of itself not much of a revelation; in any normal city in America, people tend to become less adamant about spending their Saturday night parading from bar to bar once the weather becomes less cooperative. Then again, normal cities don't have more than 200 places to catch a band at a any given time, don't have a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan along their riverfronts, don't have Mean Joe Greene on their walks of fame, and don't have a bus called the Starlight 'Dillo there to haul all the drunks home for free at 3 in the morning.

Normal cities also don't say the city is dead when only half the bars, clubs and lounges are packed to the rafters, and they certainly don't freak out once the temperature plummets to a mere 45 degrees. Of course, to hear the locals tell it, that departure from normalcy is the whole idea. Keep it weird, they say.

Welcome to Austin.

...

In Austin there is a higher ratio of live music venues to residents than any other city in the world, and like any kind of absurd claim to fame this carries its good and bad. For every Continental Club show featuring Redd Volkaert aka Merle Haggard's excellent former guitarist, there's the live karaoke guy reminding you that so many songs were not meant to be covered. For every scorching blues band on East Sixth, there's two kids from UT playing their brand of Dave Matthews-lite just across the street.

The upside of this is that it works both ways. Had enough of the "Mustang Sally" covers? Go two doors down and someone else might have moved on to "Can't You See" by now. Sad girl with an acoustic guitar bringing you down? Chances are there's a group around the corner that takes the good parts of jazz and blues and whatever else and just plain smokes.

What's odd about all these bands is just how many of them don't sound at all what you'd think a band from the heart Texas would be about. Everyone - and I mean everyone - is in some kind of blues band. When you come from Chicago, it's hard to take any other city's blues scene seriously, but you know the old saying: when in Austin, buying shots will get your favorite song played. The guys on stage at one club whose name escapes me said they were from Montreal and were happy to be playing "the music for everyone who is away from home but we are at home here now in Austin in Texas." So, naturally, what was my request in exchange for that round of JD?

"Sweet Home Chicago."

And you know something? It wasn't half-bad. But hey, this is Austin, where almost any time day or night you can find the best and worst (mostly somewhere in between) bands of all-time playing their best and worst (and again, mostly somewhere in between) shows to date.

...

Sometime towards whenever the cops decide it's late enough, the main stretch of Sixth Street is closed off to vehicle traffic and the masses are allowed to roam freely. This always seemed like such a cool thing that only smaller cities do (and, really, only they can do). Water Street in Milwaukee and Laclede's Landing in St. Louis come to mind as similar hubs of nightlife that become the exclusive domain of the late-night crowd. Whether this is for safety or just to keep people moving I can't say, but there's no sight like thousands upon thousands of people overtaking a downtown area after dark, each of them looking for trouble or excitement or the party that isn't stopping anytime soon.

At some point in the very late hours of Saturday (or the very early hours of Sunday, depending on your viewpoint) there's that moment where everyone's fate for the evening is sealed. They are going out all night; they are going home before it's too late; they are going home with that stranger they just met; or they, for whatever reason that probably makes sense at the time, are in bad shape and are going to bring someone else down with them.

Somewhere behind me I heard two guys yelling at each other. The black guy told the Latino guy to shut up and do something about it. The black guy leaned - not swung at, not tackled, but leaned - into him and just like that the cops were breaking them up.

"Down on the ground!" one shouted.

"Do not resist me!" another shouted. The two guys who a moment ago were yelling at each other were now buried under the force of four cops who had appeared on horseback with lightning speed.

I took a note how different this was than Chicago. In Chi-town, the cops would have waited until the two had beat the hell out of each other, then hauled them off to jail and in the process making whatever money comes through in fines and the expense related to packing the jails with offenders. Here the cops were ready to deliver street-level justice at any hour, one blow at a time.

Why? Because for all the SRV statues and all the painted guitar sculptures scattered about town, for all the talk of progressive spirit and being weird for weirdness' sake, this was still the deep south.

Where the guy on the corner has as much a shot at the big time as the guy playing tonight at Emo's.

Where everyone's in a band and everyone also works at a bar or an office or a pizza place or a record store.

Where you can find a store that sells nothing but hot sauce before you can find one that sells bottles of V8.

Where the best barbecue in town is at Cedar Rock or Stubb's or pretty much anywhere you can find it.

Where even here, miles and miles from the poison ivy of Wrigley Field, people still pledge allegiance to the hated Cubs.

Where the Cowboys roam and the 'Dillo gets you home.

Where the stars at night are big and bright...

...deep in the heart of Texas.

The Sky Is Falling

2007-01-04T14:53:00.000-06:00

It's an offseason of confusion, an offseason of pain, an offseason of trying to remember the good things that come along with backing a lousy team.

The Sox, since we last talked about them, traded away Freddy Garcia, he of the 2005 postseason heroics and near-misses on no-hitters and perfect games in his two-and-a-half-years on the South Side. A few prospects came back in return - none highly-touted enough to get Sox fans salivating over the trade - but the plus side is that the Good Guys have another $10 million to spend. Of course, people are up in arms over this.

The funniest part about it is that the best argument anyone had for keeping Freddy for another year was what he did in 2005. Sure, he was one of the Four Horsemen throwing those complete games, and sure, he threw the game of his (or any pitcher's) life to win the World Series.

But then what?

His fastball dropped off, which means death for a power pitcher like him. Runners stole bases at will. He gave up five runs a game. He led the league in wild pitches.

Is this really what we Sox fans are going to cry over? How easy it becomes to let nostalgia put the blinders on; focusing on what someone did rather than what someone does is a good way to become turn us all into a stadium full of Al Bundy's. "You see that Freddy out there? He might be getting shelled, but once upon a time he struck out four batters in a single inning."

The thing is, with the National League being as weak as it is there's no reason to think he can't shine again. But you never know. We can't take his past away from him, but there's no point in speculating that the future would be any better with him around.

...

The flip side to this was the trade of superstar-in-waiting Brandon McCarthy to the Rangers. Or, as we Sox fans like to call it, "the other trade."

For years we've been hearing about this kid in such vaunted terms as "ace of the future" and "the best pitching prospect in the majors" and (brace yourself) "The Second Coming of Jack McDowell."

"Another Jack McDowell!" we thought. "Holy hell!" I realize it's sad when the frame of reference for greatness among a fanbase is a guy who had an oh-so-brief run at the top before demanding to leave town. But such is life as a Sox fan. There's always another guy, and we were told time and again this was the guy.

This was the guy so highly regarded that the Sox wouldn't trade him for Alfonso Soriano or Carl Crawford or anyone else that quite possibly could've made up the difference between a repeat run at the top in 2006 and the third-place finish we all wept so many tears of pain over. Sure it might've meant scrambling for a new plan in 2007 and beyond, but so what?

We are Sox fans, and to the Sox fan tomorrow for today is always a fair trade.

...

So now, with another couple months until the season starts all there is to do is wait and see. Maybe more help is on the way. Maybe the Cubs will suck enough that it won't matter if the Sox' window of greatness has closed for a while (okay, actually they will but that's for another day). But think about the good times we all had during those out-of-it-by-August days and half-empty stadium nights.

Who doesn't love sneaking into better seats after the 5th inning?

Who doesn't love hoping for a good fight to break out in the stands to provide a distraction from the embarrassment happening on the field?

Who doesn't love buying great tickets in the morning for a huge game that same night?

Who doesn't love...ah, to hell with it. See you in the cheap seats.

The Greatest Gift of All

2006-12-23T09:12:00.000-06:00

A year ago tonight I was walking the three blocks from Nick's Beer Garden to my old apartment when a man - still unidentified - crept up behind me as I was about to open the gate to my building, put me into a half-nelson, jammed a gun into my back and said to give him all the money I had on me, which at that particular moment was zero dollars.

From there it degenerated into an ugly mess of me getting shot at in the alley along that block of Wood Street, lots of swearing, a poor attempt at fighting back, and eventually losing my cell phone and a lot of blood through two separate head wounds received from the barrel end of that still-unidentified man's handgun. Nine millimeter, if I had to guess on a model.

I still have two scars from that night, one just behind the left temple and the other somewhere along the top of my head. I keep my hair really short so anyone can see them, but it's funny having those types of reminders and battle damage to show to the world.

Turn to the side to shave the left half of my face; there's my gun wounds.

Take off my hat in winter; there's my gun wounds.

Smile and bow; there's my gun wounds.

Look to see what's going on over there; there's my gun wounds.

This was what I was given for Christmas last year: a brush with death and a pair of constant reminders that it can happen any time. All it takes is a three-block walk and someone with even less to lose than you think you do.

After the shock and paranoia wore off (which, thankfully, it did), it was odd to see what happens. You don't fear much after something like that. Rejection, failure, loneliness...awful as they are, they aren't the end of the world. Life, despite whatever bad news that beautiful girl has for you, and despite the best-laid plans falling to pieces, and despite the possibility that sometimes things are really really tough, goes on.

Makes you wonder why you were so afraid of them in the first place.

In the back of the ambulance I remember thinking two things:
1) I'm not going to make it.
2) I'd really like to see ___ once more.

I was wrong about #1, which in turn lent new gravity to #2: tomorrow is not just another day, it's another chance.

Here's to another tomorrow, for now and forever.

The Hardest Way to Make a Challenging Living

2006-12-19T17:30:00.000-06:00

Pro tip from Andrew: Don't take a job because of the money. Ever. Unless your job involves either playing a game or being professionally attractive, it's the absolute worst reason to give up that much of your time and of your life.

A girl I know was talking about a company she wanted to work for. The job she was describing was okay, but her reasoning for wanting it was "because it starts at $60,000 a year." After that, she didn't have much to say about it. It wasn't close to being that "dream job" she was always talking about, wasn't located in a place she wanted to live, wasn't going to help her much besides buying some nice toys and nicer clothes.

I shook my head and told her she was showing just how young and naïve she was. She shook hers and told me I was showing just how old and bitter I was.

Touché.

The flip side to this is what I call "real jobs" and how badly they pay. Teachers, social workers, environmental researchers - the list goes on forever. People give and they give and the end result of their efforts are things of immeasurable worth and what do they have to show for it?

How much is it worth that a child knows how to read?

What's the assessed capital value of getting an abused woman to seek help?

What's the return on investment for helping a crackhead get their life back?

In a world where special-ed teachers make $40,000 to help disabled kids adjust to society and systems analysts make $70,000 to streamline corporate computing operations, it's hard to see how anyone is truly worth anything.

As for that girl, I just told her to go for that job. And to call me when she quit it.

Well, she made good on her promise, and we had a lovely conversation the other night about it when she called to tell me she quit.

She had lasted eighteen months. We both got a good laugh about that.

Romance II

2006-11-30T21:58:00.000-06:00

The story, I'm told, goes like this.

Once upon a time the girl in this story was just a friend of a friend of a friend of the boy. The boy liked her right away, that much he knew. She was beautiful and she was funny and she didn't care that she was wearing a football sweatshirt and warm-up pants at a bar.

"This is just comfortable," she said later, "and it's Sunday anyway."

When they first met, he didn't know what to say to her. The boy wasn't very good at this sort of thing and even if he was, this girl was out of his league. Too pretty. Too clever, too quick. Too much. So he just smiled, and she smiled back, and that was that for a while.

Some time later he saw her out and because of either not caring or not being totally sober he found the courage to go say hello to her. They talked for a bit, about things like sports and growing up and weekend nights and their respective lousy jobs.

"I was wondering when you were going to do that," she said.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Figure out why I was smiling at you so much," she shot back. He knew then that he didn't just like this girl's style; he liked this girl.

He asked her to meet him out one night.

"I don't know," she said. "How do I know you're going to do this right?"

He knew what she meant. He knew there were a lot of bad guys out there, and he wanted to prove to her he wasn't like them.

He gave her the name of a bar he liked. A fairly nice one, at that.

"I'll be there this Wednesday at 8," he told her. "And I'm going to have your favorite drink waiting for you. Just drinks. I'm not going to ask you to leave here with me tonight and you don't even have to give me your number."

"That's putting a lot of faith in me," she said.

"So at least this way it works both ways," he said back.

She looked at him quizzically for a second, then relented. "Okay," she said. "Chocolate martini."

He went home that night thinking how awesome this was going to be. He was going to look nice and do everything right and she'd see that he wasn't just some jerk. And for a little while longer they would laugh and giggle and make smart jokes about smart things and it was going to be a wonderful evening, he thought.

He got to the bar a few minutes early and found a table by the window, just as he had promised. He ordered her a chocolate martini and put it on the table across from himself and the beer he was drinking. And he waited.

And he waited.

And he waited.

And after some time had passed and the room had filled and the ice on her glass had turned to water, he realized his fair maiden of that Sunday afternoon wasn't coming. Down but not defeated, he left the bar and headed home. Her martini stayed on the table, untouched.

Some weeks later he saw the girl again. They made small talk, nothing major. They didn't laugh this time, didn't giggle, didn't make the kind of connection they had before.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"You're acting weird," she said. "Not like I remember."

He paused for a second, then looked deep into her eyes.

"I waited for you," he said.

She fell silent, knowing that the boy meant not just that night at the bar that she never went to but something bigger. That for a moment she was the promise of a beautiful tomorrow, but now just cast back into the abyss of memory and that which never was.

He turned and walked away, and the two were alone again, and their story, like most, ended the way it began. They were friends of friends of friends; to each other, they were no one in particular. Such is life.

Style Ignorance is Style Bliss (4:15 Part II)

2006-11-17T18:34:00.000-06:00

Recently a friend of mine pointed out to me that she liked my shirt. Very stylish, she said. Very well-cut, very nice-fitting, she said. Great color, she said.

"How did you know this would work so well on you?" she asked.

"I bought it because it has a skull on it," I answered.

"Those are pretty hot these days," she continued. "Since when did you become so fashion-savvy?"

"I'm not," was my answer. "I bought it because it was $5. And because skulls are cool."

She just shook her head and laughed in dismay; I just smiled and took comfort knowing that my skull shirt looked awesome. Such is life for the style-ignorant bachelor.

...

I don't like football all that much.

What I do love is hanging out in bars in the daytime, eating junk food, swearing at a television, yelling really loud, capitalizing on food and drink specials, celebrating with strangers, reliving the nostalgia of my youth, making fun of people from Chicago, making fun of people from other cities, chicken wings, chili, Bloody Marys, running into people I haven't seen forever in the most random places at the most random times, burgers, cheeseburgers, turkey burgers, chili burgers, pizza burgers, tater tots, the phrase "3 and 13 season," and the little guy winning in the end.

Okay, I guess football's not that bad.

...

To the Red Sox fans out there: you can never complain about the Yankees buying their way to glory EVER AGAIN. Your team just spent more for the right just to make a guy a job offer than most teams spend on their entire pitching staff, and in fact more than five teams spent last year on their entire team.

...

One of my favorite things to say these days is "I'm a writer," to which people inevitably ask "what do you write?" Good question. What do you say when your best fiction achievement is temporarily selling the rights to something and your best non-fiction achievement is editing a small-time magazine for the art school you go to?

"Stuff," is usually what I go with. Seems to work.

...

Advice to people with attractive neighbors everywhere: don't go for it while they still live upstairs. Seriously. If they say yes, it's weird. If they say no, it's weird. Trust me on this.

...

As much as I think men are stupid (myself included), I do have to address something kind of important. One of the projects I've taken on at school is a paper on the state of masculinity in America and let me tell you, the findings are just plain depressing:

Get a manicure.

NO! Don't get a manicure, that's weak. Get a truck!

NO! Those are environmentally unfriendly. Get a striped shirt!

NO! Those make you look like a complete tool. Get a tattoo!

NO! Those are low-class. Get your eyebrows waxed!

NO! That makes you high maintenance. Lift weights!

NO! Muscle mass doesn't match this fall's cuts and colors. Get a...

You get the idea. Act too soft and you're a metro, which is so last year. Act too tough and you're a retro and that is so last century. Whatever happened to "do what feels right to you and do it with pride because that's what being a man is all about?"

Apparently we have it all wrong. Whatever. I still like my skull shirt.

Out of the Mouths of Babes (In Search of Bill Swerski)

2006-10-31T22:02:00.000-06:00

Not too long ago, a recently-transplanted Michiganian (Michigander? Michiganite?) was asking me about watching sports in Chicago. He's a pretty big football fan and wanted to know specifically what Bears fans were like.

"Remember those old Saturday Night Live bits where the heavy-set dudes were sitting around getting drunk and eating tons of junk food talking about 'Da Bears?'" I asked him.

Of course he remembered. "Oh yeah, those were hilarious!" he said, and chuckled a bit at the memory.

"People in Chicago didn't see those as comedy," I told him. "We saw those as documentaries."

The Michiganian fell silent.

...

I'll admit something right now: I'm not the biggest football fan. Out of civic loyalty I'll say I'm a Bears fan, but will also admit I have threatened numerous times to defect to other teams - most recently the Cleveland Browns - because football's just not my game. Some of this might be due to being raised in a baseball family.

More of this might be equating football with my total lack of ability and being small for my age as a kid, making me a prime target for frivolous tackles and cheapshot clotheslines on the football fields of my youth.

(Don't cry for me: I got my shots in elsewhere.)

Still, it's a fun game to watch; sometimes it's even a fun one not to watch. During the Monday night game against Arizona a few weeks ago, I had the game on the TV with the sound off, typing away at the laptop with my head down. Every now and then I'd hear cheers or a chorus of "God Damnit!" from all up and down my street. Obviously I didn't understand what was happening until I looked at the TV.

Cool, I thought. My neighbors are telling me when I should pay attention.

As the game went on, the noise from outside got louder and the game got way more interesting. When the Cardinals' last field goal attempt missed, my neighbors all ran to their windows and doors to register their excitement up and down the street.

"Oh my GOD!"

and

"UNBELIEVABLE!"

and of course someone yelling

"Da Bears!"

followed by everyone else, myself included, answering back the only appropriate way:

"DAAA BEARS!!!"

...

And suddenly, things start to look different around Chicago. The crowds on the trains and buses and sidewalks are decked out in a little more orange and blue than before. There's a few more flags flying the big orange "C" from cars and apartment windows. Custom t-shirt shops are sporting a few more of those excellent Chris Farley t-shirts in the front windows. Young women are hitting the town in Brian Urlacher and Jim McMahon jerseys that I don't remember ever looking as good as they look now.

A girl I know tried to explain it to me last weekend. "It's the best game in the world, Andrew. It's not even about the game, it's just about...everything. Football is everything. That's all there is to it.

"You have to see it that way, otherwise you're never gonna get it and you're never gonna like it."

Pretty heavy words, and definitely the kind of half-drunken sports-bar philosophy that I thrive on. But what she didn't know was that someone else had already put it to me much better.

As we'd entered the bar, a large, large man wearing a Monsters of the Midway sweatshirt and an honest-to-goodness Foam Dome grabbed me by the shoulders just as the first quarter was ending. Bears 24, 49ers 0.

"Da Bears," he said matter-of-factly, "are on pace to win dis game ninety-six ta zip."

And all I could answer back were those two words that had been forever etched into my brain for times like these:

"Da Bears?"

And from the tables surrounding us a crowd raised its collective voice in agreement:

"DA BEARS!!!"

My new friend smiled at this and together he and I and a hundred strangers drank well into that afternoon, in a little bar in a certain Midwestern city which is home to a certain team that, come February, will be hoisting a certain championship trophy over its collective head.

From here on out, we're all in this together. Why couldn't she just say it the way he did?

The Watching is the Hardest Part

2006-10-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

The World Series starts tonight, pitting the team that took the worst division in the worst league by winning only four more games than they lost against the team anchored by a catcher who never took Jose Canseco's steroid allegations to court and a pitcher who took out a cameraman last year in Texas. Sweet.

There will be much talk out there of how this is redemption for the city of Detroit (which it is) and of how the Cardinals have been here before (which they have).

So what?

For the rest of us, it's another year and another person's favorite team going all the way. And really, who needs that? In the spirit of resentment and spitefulness, here's ten good reasons not to tune in:

10. Albert Pujols. I know the guy is good. Great even. Once-in-a-lifetime kind of talent. I know the guy is probably in line to receive another MVP award, certainly a Silver Slugger, and maybe even a Gold Glove on top of that. Does this man really need a World Series ring to boot? Does anyone deserve that much accomplishment in a season? In a lifetime? Not on my watch.

9. David Eckstein. Anyone who can best be described as "the pluckiest lil' shortstop in the National League" does not belong on top of the world. Ever.

8. Magglio Ordonez. Traitor. Way to hit .182 for the Sox in the 2000 ALDS, get an injury so mysterious that you had to leave the continent to get surgery, then run off to Detroit not only to make more money but to also become a frickin' playoff legend.

7. The Leyland Mystique. I don't buy this line that the Tigers' success is all due to Jim Leyland yelling at his team when they hit that skid in mid-May. "He's got fire." To hell with that! Say he knows how to call for a squeeze. Say he knows when to take his pitchers out. Saying "he wants to win" is the lamest thing since...I don't even know what. Of course he wants to win. Everyone wants to win! That's the whole point of playing the game!

6. Tony LaRussa. TLR, you couldn't do it for the Sox and you barely did it for the A's. Don't you dare carry a National League team all the way, you hear me? Double-switches are not "strategy" and I don't need anyone propagating that myth any further. The Speez pinch-hitting for Josh Hancock...wow. Right up there with forcing the Germans into fighting a two-front war, let me tell you.

5. Last Year's Ratings. The 2005 Astros-White Sox World Series was the lowest-rated World Series in the history of televised World Series games. Let's tune out and do our part to get the Good Guys out of the gutter, okay?

4. Cardinal Fans. They're good people and all, very informed, very knowledgeable and friendly fans, and I count some of them as my best friends...but they're also really weird to the casual observer. Seriously.

3. Ronnie Belliard. I'm not sure why I don't like this guy. Maybe it was all those times with Cleveland where he embarrassed the Sox. Maybe it's that stupid half-do-rag. Or maybe it's the fact that he makes millions a year playing baseball and I, like so many others, am so so envious of that.

2. Fox Sports. You know what? I'm going to let someone else take this one.

1. Last Year. Enough said. God damn is it hard thinking about what might have been. Should have been.

Sigh.

Go Sox.

Love Letter to Pretend Girlfriends

2006-10-10T20:05:00.000-05:00

[Note: I don't usually do favors of this sort, but they asked me to write this. Personally, I think it turned out pretty well; hopefully they agree.]

There’s a picture on the wall across the room of two young women dancing. On the right is the cute blonde with the kind of eyes that keep you looking and the kind of smile that makes you smile back. On the left is the pretty brunette, oh-so-graceful and effortlessly cool dressed in the sleekest shade of Saturday night black. The two laugh and giggle with each other while the rest of the club blurs by, boys and men all looking on, hoping for even just a moment where the girls are looking back. Hoping for a chance to say things like “hello” and “you look great” and “let me give the world to you.”

And the girls, ever so beautiful, dance on into the night.

…

It’s a poster for a movie, actually. One about nightclubs and social lives and dancing and unbearable day jobs and young men and women trying to find their place (and each other) in the world. The kind of semi-pointless thesis on the fact that life after college is really tough that seems to resonate with those of us who have discovered just how true it is.

At some point, though, it became more than a picture from the movie, acting more as a postcard from a chapter of life. A time when that movie went from being a good movie about young adulthood to a good representation of it. Some of this can be blamed on things like job-related stress and uncertainty about the future; most of it can be blamed on the blonde and the brunette. My blonde and brunette.

Their real life counterparts are two friends of mine. Roommates, as it were, bouncing around the North Side of Chicago from apartment to apartment, bar to bar, day to day, inside joke to inside joke.

Once, in real life and not in a movie, the three of us were getting ready to go out one Saturday night. “I like your shoes,” the blonde one said to the brunette.

“You do?” gushed the brunette.

“Yes,” the blonde said back. And the two, inexplicably, burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing,” they both answered, and burst out laughing again. We hadn’t even left their place and already I was lost. The two giggled away, and all I could do was wonder what I was missing out on.

And the girls, ever so beautiful, danced on into the night.

…

Once, in real life and not in a movie, I lost a bet to them. They wanted to say one last goodbye to their neighborhood before they moved out, so I told them they needed to go to every bar on their street in one night – thirteen in total. On the table was dinner, my treat, at Green Dolphin Street. Top-shelf and trés swanky.

Throwing away all regard for their health, for their best interests and for the massive hangover they would have to fight off the next day, they did it. I asked the blonde one how they possibly made it and all she could say was “You should know better than to bet against us!”

Touché.

Reservations were made, and I did something I’d never done for a night out before: I went shopping for a new outfit. We had already agreed we were going to dress up, and it’s not every day (or ever, for that matter) that I was taking two girls out to dinner. This had to be special. I had to be special.

“I’m wearing red, I think, and she’s wearing black,” the brunette told me. How awesome is this, I thought. I was going to dinner with rubies on one arm and onyx on the other.

Most of the evening stuck with me not as one continuous episode but as a series of moments. Of things I remember.

I remember wishing I’d brought them flowers.

I remember the three of us walking down Ashland, over the river, and thinking that the lights of the skyline would never shine brighter than these two did that night.

I remember being the envy of most men in the restaurant and of every man on the street.

I remember stumbling out of a cab towards the Hancock Building, arm-in-arm and arm-in-arm and feeling like the richest man in the world.

I remember wondering when the champagne would ever taste sweeter than it did up there, looking out on the world.

On paper, they chose correctly in our wager. In reality, what happened was the furthest thing from losing. Not by a long shot, not in a million years. Anyone would agree.

And the girls, ever so beautiful, danced on into the night.

…

"Did people ever really dance in bars? I thought that was a myth."

...

Once, in real life and not in a movie, the blonde one asked me to marry her if she’s not already taken by her 33^rd (my 35^th) birthday. I thought about it for a moment and said yes.

Then she changed it to her 35^th.

Then she changed it to my 33^rd.

Then she changed it to my 42^nd.

Then she demoted me to her alternate for her 33^rd.

Then she removed me from consideration altogether.

Then she said okay, her 33^rd again.

I told her I’ll be there, don’t worry. I told her we’d better be rich by then because I want to have the honeymoon to end all honeymoons. She told me I better be a “real writer” by then because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with some unhappy computer guy.

One night the three of us were out, drinking as we so often do, and she asked me why I went along so easily with the idea of being her backup husband. I told her it was because she asked me to. She said that was a bad answer.

“You’re not listening,” I said. “It’s because you asked me to.”

She smiled, briefly. Some song I can’t remember came on and their faces both lit up.

“Oh my god, do you rememb-” “Yes!”

And the girls, ever so beautiful, danced on into the night.

…

Once, in real life and not in a movie, the brunette and I went to a comedy show. At the time, they lived a good ten blocks from my apartment but it was a nice evening so I walked to pick her up.

It was September and the leaves were just starting to fall. The streets were lined with trees changing from green to yellow and red and brown. People were out walking together, playing together. Looks nice, I thought.

On one block close to her place, they had closed off the street for a neighborhood party. Little kids were out playing soccer in the middle of Greenview Street. From a few front yards came the smell of barbecues and the sounds of people enjoying the last light of summer. Looks nice, I thought.

She answered the door in black pants and a pink sweater, said something about needing to finish fixing her hair and she’d just be a minute, and disappeared again into the bathroom leaving me alone in the front room. She came back out a few minutes later and I suddenly realized that the lovely scene outside had nothing on the girl who’d been dressing herself up on the other side of that door.

Later, we met up with the blonde girl for some drinks. We were at a bar on Lincoln, talking about something I can’t really remember and probably wasn’t important, when a song came on that caught the blonde girl’s attention.

“I love this song!” she said.

“Me too!” said the brunette.

And the girls, ever so beautiful, danced on into the night.

…

Once, in real life and not in a movie, the blonde was trying to convince me to come out drinking with the two of them that weekend at some bar I wasn’t especially fond of.

“Come on, there’ll be all kinds of hot babes there,” she told me.

“Like who?”

“Like me,” she said. “And my roommate.”

Ah, I thought. Those two.

The same two who I went out with that Valentine’s Day where I ended up getting hit on by a woman who, once kindly rejected, turned her attention to the brunette.

The same two who conned me into wearing a Cubs shirt one afternoon by exploiting my weakness for women in White Sox t-shirts (the brunette wore one of mine; the blonde wore one I gave her as a joke).

The same two who, along with their then-other roommate, were sweet enough to bring me steak and dessert and wine while my head was still taped up and my thirteen stitches were still fresh. We laughed and joked and played video games into the night and for a little while, I forgot all about how those stitches had ended up in my head in the first place.

The same two who sat with me watching the lights shine on Buckingham Fountain while fireworks and music filled the night sky.

The same two who took me up in the Ferris wheel for the first time.

The same two who proved once and for all that it is possible to have fun at a Celtic celebration without getting drunk out of one’s mind. On the stage behind us, a band was playing traditional Irish songs while the blonde and the brunette did their best impression of an old-time folk dance. “Come on, come jig with us,” the brunette said. But I couldn’t. All I did was laugh.

And the girls, ever so beautiful, danced on into the night.

…

This is what happens. The girls in life become the girls in pictures, and vice versa. My own personal Last Days of Disco, starring the blonde and the brunette as themselves.

Not parallel in character, nor in demeanor, but in their place in a young man’s universe. In the way they remind him that somewhere out there, maybe closer than he thinks, is a reason to keep his eyes open. Some strange, magical combination of distance and intimacy, of friendship and romance, of promise and possibility, of tomorrow night and the rest of your life. In the end, I am left only hoping to find answers to questions that I know have none, the way all those other boys and men hope to catch the blonde and brown-haired girls’ attention, even if only for a moment.

Questions like “Why on earth do they keep me around?”

And “What am I going to do when they’re gone?”

And “How could you not fall in love?”

And I will try, and I will inevitably fall short.

And the girls, ever so beautiful, will dance on into the night.

Death of the Dream

2006-09-25T22:17:00.000-05:00

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
- T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

We knew this day was coming.

The day when it was once again someone else's turn.

The day when we watched someone else shine.

The day when somewhere, out there, they were pinning their hopes onto some other gallery of stars and mutts, of vagabonds and journeymen, of old faithfuls and new favorites.

The day when October was once again time for us to watch someone else make a run for the top.

The day when those guys out there, wearing our colors and playing on our field in our town, were no longer on top.

The day it was over.

...

I won't say for a second that I thought it would last forever. Unless you have the bankroll of the Yankees to put a juggernaut out on the field, or you have the freakish baseball IQ of the Braves and squeeze that much talent out of 25 men, no team stays on top. Not in baseball, anyway.

We all remember 2001. 1994. 1984. And on and on it goes. This city is full of teams for whom the honeymoon was over too soon.

But this was different. This was the Sox.

They weren't supposed to win anything, ever. We fans knew that. We didn't like it, and we sure as hell didn't put up with it, but at least for a while (a long while, I'll add), we knew where we stood.

And suddenly that changed.

Suddenly there was much rejoicing over what was happening on the South Side. Suddenly you didn't automatically get laughed at wearing your Sox gear on the North Side. Suddenly out-of-towners didn't just assume that since you were from Chicago, you liked the Cubs.

Suddenly we could stand tall. And suddenly, we knew what everyone else had been talking about for so long: winning does change everything.

And we wanted more.

And I swear, for a little while, it looked like we were going to get just that.

The team, somehow, got better. Better than the team that won it all. "Is that even possible?" was what we asked.

And oh how wrong we were.

...

I won't sit here and curse them out, one by one. That's not fair and it's not like I could do a better job on the field than they did.

But it's hard.

It's hard watching a pitcher who you know has a real chance of becoming one of the best left-handers in the American League getting booed off the field.

It's hard watching a guy who no one really knew anything about come over from Milwaukee, become a local hero, and then have the bottom drop out of his offense.

It's hard watching the greatest 1-2 punch of middle relief get either run out of the league or automatically shelled every time out.

It's hard watching the uber-prospect centerfielder hit .175 for most of the year.

It's hard watching the errors become runs become games.

It's hard watching the 3-4-5 hitters rise to the top while the rest of the team takes one, two, three steps back.

It's hard watching...well, it's just hard.

...

I won't be paying too much attention to the playoffs this year. Nothing personal against the Twins, Tigers, et al, it's just too soon. Too much time would be spent staring blankly at the TV and imagining what I was doing this time last year.

Watching from the upper deck as the Gooch turned Tony Graffanino's error into a 2-0 ALDS lead.

Running from the train station to the Bucktown Pub just in time to catch El Duque pitching the White Sox Miracle Inning to End All White Sox Miracle Innings.

Not believing it when Joe Crede hit that game-winning single off of Kelvim Escobar.

Celebrating up and down Halsted between 33rd and 35th Streets when the Good Guys clinched the pennant.

Getting to Joe's three hours early that Saturday night and still getting just the absolute last table in the entire two-story bar for Game 1.

Jumping off my living room chair not once but twice when Paulie and Pods were suddenly the greatest home-run wrecking crew in World Series history.

My phone resetting itself over and over again when too many simultaneous text messages came in at 1:30 a.m. reaffirming that yes, what Blum just did was awesome awesome AWESOME and holy hell we are up 3-0.

And that moment. That moment.

Bottom of the 9th.

Two down.

Man on second.

Sox lead 1-0.

"Here's the 1-2 pitch to Palmeiro.

"A ground ball, past Jenks, up the middle of the infield. Uribe has it, he throws...

"OUT! OUT! A WHITE SOX WINNER, AND A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!!!"

At the time it was enough to last forever. Now it's enough to break your heart.

...

In eight other parts of the country next month, it will be their turn to bring it back home. They will have new memories to cherish. Reasons to watch. To care about the sport. Time to bond. To watch. To hope.

While they do, life here will go on. It always does.

And there's always comfort.

Because there's always last year.

Heavy Metal Machine

2006-09-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

At the end of the row is a young man, alone, dressed in all black and sporting a long, scraggly beard. The look on his face says "if you keep looking at me I will cut you."

Further down is a group of skater dudes, the oldest no more than 17. Their sweatshirts are a size or two too big and covered in Independent and Hawk logos. The chains hang low off their belts. Each is more stoned than the one sitting next to him.

At the other end is another group of young men. All are white. All are in in their early 20's. They put a very intense Mountain-Dew-and-Dungeons-&-Dragons session on hold for this so it better be good, lest they post nasty comments about it on their blogs.

Luckily for them, and for us, they would not be disappointed. Not this time. Somewhere at the other end of the arena, Tool was about to hit the stage and rock our socks off.

...

I'll admit it: I like heavy metal. Lots of it. The awesome guitar work, the psychotic drumming, the angst and rage and the darkness and the search for that riff that just makes you want to destroy everything in sight - all of it is just plain awesome. It saddens me sometimes to see the way so-called "serious" music types, be they fans or critics, write off the genre. To say that "Iron Man" and "Master of Puppets" don't stand shoulder-to-shoulder in terms of musical importance with, say, "Hound Dog" or "God Only Knows" is just plain ignorant.

Then again, metal isn't really about caring what anyone says, is it?

It's not just an us-against-them attitude though; in many ways, it's an us-against-us school of music. The goth kids don't like the thrash. Power metal is too soft for the speed-metal freaks. Techno-metal is too soulless for the stoner metal set. And so on and so on. If any other scene more closely resembles the sectioning off and cliquishness of high school, I have yet to see it.

And yet, somehow, the battle cry brings this - nay, us - all back together: METAL RULES!!!

...

For the longest time, I could not get into Tool. I knew they were good because so many people whose opinion and judgment I respect were rabid fans. Friends would go on and on about this band and I just couldn't see what the big deal was.

"You need to look at the big picture, man!" They would tell me about the equations applicable to certain songs. They would forward on garbage about "the holy gift" buried within the band's Lateralus album. They would explain how if you edit the EQ settings on .WAV files copies of certain tracks from 10,000 Days, you would find that you can marry three existing songs to make one new super-song.

And all I could do was laugh and think that this is what happens when some people do too much PCP during their time at art school.

But something happened in between listening to all this conspiracy talk and making jokes about some level 13 wizard sitting in his mom's basement splicing together pirated MP3 files in hopes of finding secret songs buried in his favorite illegally-downloaded album with one hand and popping mouthful after mouthful of Cheetos with the other: the tunes were actually pretty damn good.

As in, they rocked - and they rocked hard.

Heavy riffs, killer drumming, intense lyrics...this were not some stoner-friendly riddles. And yet, no one really talked about that.

No one mentioned how the guys could kill you with in-your-face riffage one second, and then with something as basic as a spaced-out five-minute jam with a refrain of "watch the weather change" the next. No one mentioned how if you listened really closely you'd see how that one song was actually Maynard singing about his mother dying. No one told me about the awesome drop-D tricks that were all over the band's catalogue.

Honestly, are you kids into the music or are you into the mystique?

...

But, as with all things metal, that is part of the deal.

Iron Maiden has Eddie on the cover of all their albums. Megadeth has Vic. Black Sabbath has all kinds of oblique references to death and Satan. Judas Priest, Pantera, Korn, Black Label Society; everything metal is part of something else, something bigger, something more metal.

And yet there at the Tool show, as with the Slayer show and the Opeth show and the Porcupine Tree show and the Ozzy show and the Dream Theater show, the little factions could hang out for a while. The stoners next to the Satanists, the nerds with the goths, the ex-pats with the ex-cons.

Each comes in attire proudly displaying their affiliation. Subtle nods of approval and not-so-subtle barbs of insult are exchanged. In some weird, anti-social way the evening will reaffirm what we knew to be true all along:

METAL RULES!!!

Where We Were

2006-09-11T01:36:00.000-05:00

And so, five years later, we are citizens still adjusting to post-9/11 America and still wondering how and if this war will ever end. The fight rages on, covering more fronts and battles than a great deal of us would be comfortable admitting.

On one hand we have the ground wars and manhunts that are dominating the headlines. High-profile captures and military prisons and invasions and huge expenditures and blood and guts and stuff blowing up right there on CNN Headline News.

On the other we have the secret war of attrition. The one of ideas and propaganda and money and favors and connections. The one that no one talks about because no one really knows for sure what, if anything, is going on with it. The one that we may never win; the one we may have already won.

The one for which we may never be able to discern any kind of end at all.

Five years later and some of us still tense up a bit boarding airplanes. Some of us have found ourselves on the wrong end of a terrorist profiling effort by law enforcement officials or some jerk from down the street or both. Some of us still can't figure out what can be so intense that it drives a person to kill himself for an ideology. Some of us don't like the fact that any bad thing can happen now in America, but as long as it terrorists weren't behind it then everything is going to be alright.

Sadly, we have been forced to change in ways we weren't ready for and, in some cases, weren't all that capable of.

...

I was camping. Joshua Tree National Park, to be exact. My first grown-up job was still a month away. In all honesty, I wouldn't have heard anything about it for a few more days if it weren't for those camping fees I had to drive down the road to pay that morning.

Like a lot of people, I didn't believe the radio broadcast at first. Figured it was an elaborate prank call on the Mancow Show or something.

Like a lot of people, it took me a second to figure out what was happening.

Like a lot of people, I cried some and called my family back in Illinois and a few friends too and wondered how this was even possible and holy shit and are you serious and who did it and what's next and is it over and what do we do now and is it even safe for me to come home and after a while I cried a little more.

Like a lot of people, this was all new to me.

Even out there in the desert, you could see people rising to the occasion. Cash, food, and blood drives popping up in every corner and parking lot. Flags flying from the overpasses along I-10. In Phoenix on September 12th, I watched a boy of no more than 7 years old hand his change jar to a Red Cross worker. Stories started coming out of fire companies all across the southwest sending trucks full of rescue workers on through the night to New York City.

For a moment, we all were allowed to shine even in the worst kind of darkness.

...

As with the deaths of JFK and Martin Luther King and Elvis, and as with the moon landing and the tumble of the Berlin Wall and the horror at Columbine High School, the question will be asked of each of us as we slowly move further away from that morning:

Where were you on 9/11?

No one asks that other, more difficult question: Who were you on 9/11?

And who were you after 9/11?

The Importance Of An OK Education

2006-09-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, the beginning of another school year. A time for fresh starts, for new challenges, for bold new adventures in learning. And of course time for another round of "everything you know is wrong."

An article in today's RedEye and Tribune editions addresses the growing divide between the pro- and anti-higher education camps in America. The argument goes that, depending on your point of view, the diploma so many kids and adults are out there working so hard for is either the new standard of education level for the American worker, or has become so devalued lately because so many people just go to college because it's what others say is the right thing to do.

The point so many people are so quick to jump to is the issue of earnings. The college degree will earn you more over your lifetime than no college at all will; the millions or so alone should justify the time and expense of higher education.

The contrary side will tell you that no one cares about titles or prestige any more, and that "real-world education" is anyone wants to see. Look at Bill Gates, Berry Gordy, Steve Jobs, Cindy Crawford, Steven Spielberg, et al. They didn't need degrees, and they all did just fine.

I think both sides are missing the point entirely. I received my Bachelor's degree a little over five years ago, and looking back I couldn't tell you much of what I learned in the bulk of my classes, nor at this point could I tell you that the degree by itself will guarantee me any kind of money down the line.

Instead what I learned in college - or, rather, the important things I learned in college - were all outside the classroom.

How to make friends in a place where I had none.

How to make a damn fine cocktail.

How to cook dinner for a woman.

How to take the good of what I wanted to do along with the bad.

How to weigh the consequences of major life decisions without actually rolling the dice.

How to look at all sides of everything.

How to schmooze.

How to defend my ideas against people who were smarter than me.

How to plead my case to someone who controlled my professional future.

Do you see where I'm going with this? None of these are about money. This is America - people of all walks get rich every day. But to reduce higher education to simply monetary terms is insulting not only to the institution but to the participants. Ask those political science or English majors how much more they're making these days than if they'd sat college out. I can guarantee the difference is negligible, if even existent.

Those celebrity dropouts? Please. If you've got half the ideas or will that they do, chances are you're not reading this anyway.

No, college isn't for everyone. Just ask the millions who never finished or never even wanted to try. That's their right, just as it's anyone else's right to go for it. But there is so much to be said for that era of a person's life. An environment of pure learning and exchanging of ideas and dreaming about the wide-open future, learning serious facts in the days and important lessons in the nights.

You're going to tell me you can put a pricetag on that?

It's Not Over 'Til The Big Guy Blows a Save

2006-08-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

It almost offends me.

Almost.

The Sox, if you ask any number of pundits, or if you ask any number of fans, are a failure this year.

Their starting pitchers are pitching considerably worse than they did last year.

Meanwhile, the star rookie, the "next Jack McDowell" is wasting away in the bullpen. "Start McCarthy!" they all scream.

The other supposed star rookie, the center fielder, is struggling at the plate in ways we never thought possible and is being benched in favor of, well, bench players.

The star relievers of last year, with the exception of Big Bobby Jenks, are shells of their former selves.

The leadoff hitter, who last year was the darling of this little town, has lost a step since getting hurt last August and has been brought down a notch or two by the same people who made him a star.

Worst of all, two teams currently have better records - in their own division.

What are we, the hungry fans, to do?

Simple: calm down.

...

How quickly we forget what it was like all those years when the Sox had nothing. When the season was over in May and the best we could hope for at the ballpark was a fight breaking out on the field or, better yet, in a section near us. When the highlight of August was knowing that we made another team's run to the playoffs take another day because we might have taken one of three games.

How quickly we forget what it's like to watch a playoff race from the driver's seat. How quickly we forget that there are other good teams in baseball. How quickly we forget, unless you're a Yankees or Red Sox fan, that there should be other good teams in baseball.

Competition, suspense, drama: these are what make for great theater. The way some look to the stage, we as baseball fans look to the diamond. Perhaps our frustration stems not from the fact that we have these things peppered among the rest of our season, but that we simply don't know what to do with them.

...

The Good Guys' next six games are against the two worst teams in the American League, and it's safe to say that these are the most important games of the year. Not because the Royals and Devil Rays have awful records, but because from here on out every game is the most important game of the year.

The Tigers have managed to come out of nowhere and rule the league for most of the year. The Twins went ahead and beat the Sox at their own game, much in the same way last year's Sox beat the Twins at theirs. It's foolish to wait for other teams to just lose x number of games against such-and-such team. I'd take more comfort knowing my favorite team made the playoffs because they were good, not because everyone else was bad.

Some of you will come back with something that starts with "But last year..." and to that I just say stop. Last time I checked, last year is over. If you want to play by last year's parameters then the Tigers and are going to magically lose 50 games in the next 30 days and someone owes Cleveland a few promotions in the standings. While you're at it, put Carl Everett at DH instead of Jim Thome and bring back Cliff Politte to replace Mike MacDougal.

Suddenly, last year doesn't look so good does it?

As long as the Sox are still in it, there is no last year. Not now anyway. Not with a month to go. Not with the difference in the Wild Card leader and sitting the playoffs out being a mere one-half of a game.

One-half! And some of you are already throwing in the towel! Sports writers, I understand your reasoning a little better. You're just doing your job; the favorites failing is as much a story as the underdog succeeding. But for the rest of us...come on. Don't lose hope just yet. Not until you can give me a better reason to than "dude, like, we're not in first place."

Why am I so optimistic? Because, for the time being, there's still this year.

And it feels so good to be able to say that. Talk to me again in October.

High Concept, Low Art

2006-08-29T12:21:00.000-05:00

The young man is nameless; he lays the girl down atop the altar and begs the heavens above him for help. She was taken too young, he says, but I will do anything for you to bring her back to life. Back to me.

The skies open up and a voice beckons. Bring us these trophies, the voice says, and we may be able to help the girl.

Anything, the young man says. I will do anything.

The light shines to a point in the distance. Start there, the voice says, and do not return until you have what we want.

And with that he is off to face challenges unknown, with nothing stronger than hope to guide him as he wanders through the cold and unforgiving world.

The girl, lifeless, will be kept safe. For now. And, he hopes, forever.

...

It reads like some kind of inspirational tale, something out of Greek or African tribal mythology. A nameless quest, love surviving the afterlife, redemption of the dead through the trials of the living, and so on. Some very intense themes indeed, but what comes as a shocker to a lot of the people I describe this too is not that this is a work of fiction, but what that fiction is used for.

Not for life lessons. Not for inspiration. Not for a lecture on morality. Not even as the premise for the last of this summer's swashbuckling epic movies, complete with some hot Hollywood starlet as the comatose girl in a low-cut dress.

It's the setup for a video game, of all things.

A game! That lowliest of entertainment forms! What ever happened to blowing up Commies and using spaceships to destroy other spaceships?

...

No one's sure of exactly when, but at some point video games grew up and they grew up in a big way. Some will cite the maturing of the audience, others will cite the leaps and bounds in development made possible by the new audio and video technologies. Still others will point to the financial growth of the industry giving developers the resources to develop something a little deeper than "finish the race as fast as possible."

Not that Super Mario didn't change a life or two, but when countless gamers out there (myself included) are pushing two decades of home console ownership, you have to just assume that the consumers and the producers figured out a way to mature together.

Where Kid Icarus had us slaying cartoon renditions mythological monsters, we now have God of War leading us to topple the celestial hierarchy itself in extremely graphic detail.

Where Contra had us defending the planet from alien invasion with one gun and one combat buddy, Halo now leads us through tens of hours of staving off human enslavement and fighting a war of epic proportions, complete with platoons and biblical overtones.

The evolution is there even in continuing series: where the original Metal Gear was a chain of simple stealth infiltrations through fortresses and compounds, the Metal Gear Solid games now have us infiltrating the very fabric and foundation of modern government, diplomacy, conspiracy and international relations.

And where the original Legend of Zelda had us conquering monsters to save the girl, we now have Shadow of the Colossus, which leads the player on a mission to...well, conquer monsters and save the girl. But in way more dramatic fashion, as pointed out by the beginning of this column.

...

The sad part is that, despite these leaps and bounds in narrative and storytelling and presentation and gameplay dynamics and themes, there are those who still write off the entire medium.

Juvenile, they say.

Immature, they say.

Condescending, they say.

Glorifies violence while demeaning and objectifying women, they say.

And in many cases, that's true. I'll be the first to admit that Panty Raider is stupid, and the first to admit that the Grand Theft Auto games definitely veer into territory that can be described at best as "grossly sexist." What these critics don't realize is that these things aren't at all exclusive to games.

Up and down the annals of great literature and classic films there are countless blotches of sexism, racism, drug glorification, reckless boozing, and sexual themes bordering on obscene. Ernest Hemingway, revered as the greatest American writer of the 20th century, was no stranger to dropping a few n-words throughout his stories. The great romance at the center of Sergio Leone's gangster classic Once Upon a Time in America begins with Noodles raping Carol - who later becomes the apple of both his and Max's eyes - during the robbery scene. Even the beloved children's tale Alice in Wonderland - both the Lewis Carroll story and the Disney movie - acts as one giant inside stoner joke, replete with hash, opium, pot and mushroom references. And the list goes on and on.

So why pick on video games? Why write off the entire medium as some people do? Why threaten legal action against retailers selling adult-oriented games to minors but not against movie theaters who don't ID underage patrons paying to see bloodbaths like Sin City?

The sad truth is that video games, to this point, have yet to establish their legitimacy in this country. Their artistic underpinnings are only taken seriously within the industry and in the fringes of design schools across America. Compare this to their portrayal across other media: in movies and on TV they are relegated to the obsession that took over someone's life or the inspiration for someone's act of horrific violence. In music, games are name-checked as jokes, even though more and more software titles are producing scores that rival whatever Hollywood studios are using to accompany their latest endeavors.

What it really comes down to is that games are the reigning "low art." In much the same way the book crowd mocked movies, and the way the painters mocked cartoonists, something happened where every other medium put themselves in a position to take potshots at the world of gaming. The evolution of popular art suggests that this is out of fear that games will take over the hearts and minds of the public the way every other form has in some way been knocked down by whatever came after it; the financial figures and the insane amount of money that successful titles are making for their developers suggest that a lot of this is out of good old-fashioned jealousy.

Whatever the case, it's not a stretch to say that it's only a matter of time before no one's worried about games anymore. There will be something more immediate, something that penetrates the culture on a deeper level. And then, the developers out there can shake their heads at this vulgar new "low art."

And they too will finally know just what all those writers, musicians, movie makers, radio hosts, painters, illustrators, comic authors, and television talents were talking about all along.

A Question of Write and Wrong

2006-08-27T13:37:00.000-05:00

A question I get asked a lot is

"Why journalism school?"

And in these times, that's a good question.

The common refrain among so many people for the past few years has been to extol the democratization of publishing thanks to the Internet. And to an unimaginable extent, this is a correct sentiment. Websites are getting easier to set up, discussion groups are getting easier to get involved with, and any number of blog hosting sites are making it possible for pretty much anyone - anyone - to be a published author.

In a theoretical light, these are all very very good things indeed. Theoretically, people have options when it comes to getting their information after so many years of having it filtered through subsidiaries of arms contractors and family-entertainment media conglomerates. The guy coming out of the prestigious j-school and the guy down the street are suddenly equals. Theoretically, the news is back in the hands of the people.

Gives new meaning to the phrase "free press," doesn't it?

The downside of all this is that suddenly there is a lot of room for a lot of really bad and really pointless material to see the light of day. For every Daily Kos or Maddox at work out there, there are a million other people whose contribution to the written culture is some inane blurb about how tired they are or what they bought at the supermarket today.

Ugh.

All filler aside, the bigger problem is the dilution of information and the lack of both accountability and personal experience. No one talks about what they think or what they did or what they saw, but rather what they read or watched. Site upon blog upon newsletter is nothing more than links to other sites and other blogs and other newsletters.

No one's a reporter or a commentator anymore, the world's literate masses instead reduced to one borderless nation of critics and finger-pointers.

...

So why journalism school?

Besides the obvious answer of "I want to write for a living," there's this thing called professional legitimacy that anyone worth their salt should be striving for in what they do. Leaving a software design job, a person has about as much chance of getting hired as a staff writer as they do of being hired as a surgeon: what would ever make someone accept you as qualified?

"Just start a blog dude."

I did. But what so many people don't think about is that blogs, for the most part and for the time being, are a hack's medium. I'm not saying there aren't some great ones out there, because if that were the case I doubt the platform could've become this popular solely on the strength of so many people enjoying hearing themselves speak. It takes little talent and even less material to do it; some of us want to aim a little higher.

Some of us want to get out there and live to tell the tale.

What you see here is the byproduct. The practice space. The on-deck circle.

A place for a man to empty out his big, loud mouth. Which, if you think about it, is kind of the point.

Nothing Little About It

2006-08-24T16:47:00.000-05:00

Last night, we were cheering in this city. The local boys, for a moment, looked like they might just make good.

No one was decked out in shirts or hats or whatever other gear anyone could get their hands on. It was a bit early for that, but no one would really know where to look for it anyway.

What would it be like if they won? Nothing like this has really happened around here before. We had seen the Bulls and the Bears and the Sox go the distance, and even the lowly Blackhawks and Cubs had come oh-so-close to winning it all in our lifetime.

But we weren't watching any of those teams, because last night at every sports bar in this city we had found a new team to pull for. We were rooting for the little guys. Thirteen of them from Lemont, to be exact.

The Little League World Series was on.

...

It's strange watching Little League after spending so much time wandering around big-league parks. There were no gaudy billboards along the concourse, no endorsement deals to consider, no individual awards to try for. Suicide squeezes, throwing from the ground, diving catches over the outfield walls. These things were not done for flair. These things were done because they were the right things to do.

No one on the field was wondering which agent could get them the most money, even if it meant leaving the team and city that loved them.

No one worried what the press would write about them if they tried to make a play that was by all measures impossible.

No one's errors were going to get them booed by a stadium full of fans who forgot there's a reason that some of us are on the field and some of us are in the stands.

No one was worried about how giving up an at-bat to help the team would affect their contract incentives.

No one going 0-for-3 would have to worry about their chances of headlining a very unflattering piece on SportsCenter.

The ones who lost cried. The ones who won celebrated. Neither side cared how that looked, because in that moment of the final out they were allowed to experience baseball in its purest sense. Not as a business and not as a career.

But as a game.

...

Sadly, last night's game marked the end of their run at the title. Some of them may go on in the sport. Some may decide they've had enough. All experienced the kind of athletic rush that so many of us never have known - and probably never will.

They won't be hoisting the trophy in Lemont this year, but for a little while we were all reminded what sports are really about: trying, failing, succeeding, and trying again.

To one side of the TV showing the Little Leaguers was the White Sox game, the one that they had to win or else get absolutely mauled by the sports press this morning.

To the other side was the Cubs game, the one that 40,000 fans inexplicably paid good money to see despite the fact that the Small Bears gave up on the season before it even started.

And there, on that middle screen, was the game that really mattered. The one we fans so badly needed to see at a time like this.

This is why those thirteen kids, despite last night's loss, will all come home as winners.

The 4:15 Manifesto

2006-08-21T16:19:00.000-05:00

I don't drink regular sodas, except in mixed drinks. I figure that when I get old and my health inevitably deteriorates, I don't want a doctor telling me something weak like "cut back on the Pepsi." I'd rather hear something to the effect of "lay off the bourbon and cheeseburgers."

...

By the same token, I don't believe in light beer. Alcohol - in all its forms - is pure poison and evil. It destroys your organs, reduces people to bumbling idiots, and kills more Americans every year than anything except tobacco and sloth. If you're going to poison yourself, it stands to reason that you might as well go all the way with it. Watching the calories in your booze is like saying you're only going to cut off one of your hands, or you're only going to shoot yourself in the leg once.

...

I don't understand a lot of single women. They'll tell you that they want to meet people when they go out, but then once they're out, they're automatically suspicious and mocking of every boy and man who dares to make contact. What gives?

...

I haven't been to a McDonald's since April of 1999. Not out of health or monetary concerns, nor of any kind of ethical or moral outrage but because the McDonald's on Main Street in Peoria was (at the time) just so dirty and poorly-run that it seemed stupid to give any more money to a company willing to put their name on it. They'll keep getting bigger and richer, of course, but at the very least I will be able to say that it's not because of me.

And yes, I realize how pathetic it is that substituting Burger King for McDonald's is my greatest moral crusade.

...

I think every guy needs to know the rules about asking out a waitress or bartender:

Don't think for a second that her being nice and flirty with you is the same as her liking you. Remember, they make their money on tips.
Yes, she does say that to all the customers. You are not special. Get over it.
Leaving a ridiculously large tip is not the way to win her over. It doesn't make you look sweet, it makes you look like someone who's trying to buy her affections. And, unless she's a gold-digging skank (or a flat-out whore), it'll just come off as creepy.
If you ask her out and she says no, you are not allowed to go to that bar or club on nights when she is working. It's just awkward for all involved.
If you ask her out and she says yes, you are not allowed to go to that bar or club on nights when she is working. It's just as awkward as if she said no.
If she never told you what nights she works at that bar, you were not even close to being in a position of getting a yes. Why? Because she was probably thinking about the same yes/no consequences (see #'s 4 and 5).
Regardless of her answer, and I can't believe some of you guys out there need to be told this one, you are not allowed to ask out any other staff members for a minimum of six months. It's just like getting shot down by any other girl: you have to give it some time before you go chasing after one of her friends. Why? Because no one wants to feel like a consolation prize.

...

And, as usual, the biggest lessons are learned in the stupidest of ways.

I was out shopping for a laptop bag and actually had my eye on one of those really nice Swiss Army laptop backpacks. Comfortable, light, didn't pinch at the shoulder the way most messenger bags do. All the good stuff, until someone pointed out to me that I couldn't dare buy it.

Why not?

"Are you trying to look like a professional or like some stupid kid showing up to work on his after-school project?"

Professional, I guess. Why?

"Because you're going to just look like a damn amateur if you're going to interview someone and you reach into your freakin' backpack to get a pen!"

She was right, of course. Still, it stings a little to know that looking professional also means looking like someone whose back hurts.

The Greatest Hype In Sports

2006-08-18T14:47:00.000-05:00

Sports headlines around the country today are highlighting the so-called "greatest rivalry in sports" as the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees square off for a five-game series this weekend at Fenway.

The New York Post declares "Whenever They Meet, It's Apocalypse Now."

The front pages of ESPN.com, SI.com, and FoxSports.com all have the series listed as a very, very big deal. Even MSNBC jumped in on the act.

And really, can you blame them? The Yankees and Red Sox are two very fabled and very famous teams, and any self-respecting news publication owes it to themself to give their readers what they want. Revenues (and payrolls) for both teams are beyond normal figures for sports franchises, and a lot of people (this writer included) really do like watching those old fight reels on ESPN Classic.

But now, in 2006 does anyone really care anymore?

...

Look at the rosters of the two teams being put on the field this weekend. How many of these guys are the hardcore, hard-line, hard-nosed Yankees and Red Sox that made these games even remotely interesting to anyone outside the Eastern time zone?

Are Matt Clement or Jon Lester going to be gunning for Bobby Abreu's head?

Are Coco Crisp and Jason Giambi going to be meeting in the tunnel before, during, and after the games to beat the hell out of each other once and for all?

With Bronson Arroyo now in Cincinnati, is there any Red Sox pitcher left that Alex Rodriguez would go after for pitching inside?

"But look at the history there," some of you will say. "It goes deeper than that."

Twenty, even ten years ago I would've agreed. But come on, how many of those guys you're seeing this weekend are homegrown talent? How many bleed Yankee blue or Sawx red? In an era of ridiculous trades and even more ridiculous free agency, do rivalries really mean as much as they used to?

Look at a guy like Johnny Damon. After spending four years in Boston, he ran off to the hated Yankees because they, as the Red Sox had done after the 2001 seasons, offered the highest dollar to him. Do you think he gives a flying fuck about Fisk or Yaz or Pesky or Cal Schiraldi? And you Yankee fans can stop laughing about how you landed him, because in four years it'll be some other city laughing at how you all turned on him and he went to another team where he turned from punchline to star once more.

...

The two highest-paid teams in baseball, each fully-stocked with players they outbid every other team for, each dominating the press with headlines about history and angst and suffering despite having a collective World Series drought of eight years. This is the greatest rivalry in sports? Greatest for who?

As someone who's spent the better part of two decades hating a certain baseball team from the North Side of Chicago, I understand how good it feels to have a team to just absolutely despise. I understand that it means almost as much as having a team to love. And that's fine...for you.

The rest of us - the fans of the other 28 teams in the other 48 states - are tired of it. Talk to me when both of your teams spend a half-century as neighbors in the gutter.

You want a great rivalry? Go watch some soccer. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems to me that burning down the stadium is a little more intense than wearing a shirt proclaiming that Derek Jeter has AIDS.

Then again, I always did think those "Cubs Suck" shirts were pretty funny...

SOAMFP

2006-08-17T17:47:00.000-05:00

It's finally here.

The day that has been so eagerly awaited by legions of fanboys, onlookers, gawkers, curios, Internet trolls and aficionados of the word "motherfuckin'" for the better part of a year.

It has spawned countless websites, contests, and fans. Songs have been written about it. Reams and reams of press have been given to it. Joke after joke after punchline after joke about it have made it that much more immediate. Homemade trailers, hilarious fake posters, massive fan campaigning to get a crucial addition made to the script.

All this, because a film came along that finally answered Shakespeare's famous posit: "What's in a name?"

The answer? Everything, that's what's in a motherfuckin' name.

Tomorrow, in all its hyped-for-no-real-reason glory, Snakes on a Plane finally opens in theaters across America.

...

I will never, never, never forget that day. Goofing off, as usual. Scouring website after website, page after page, link after link...until I saw it. The funniest thing I had read in a looong time:

"...Snakes on a Plane is perhaps the greatest movie title since Leprechaun in the Hood. The title lays out exactly what you're getting: There's a plane and there are snakes on it. As [star Saumel L.] Jackson himself puts it, "You either want to see that, or you don't."

"Whether or not Snakes on a Plane receives critical acclaim on the level of Brokeback Mountain is a moot point. Brokeback Mountain may have gay cowboys, but Snakes on a Plane has snakes. And a plane."

I couldn't wrap my head around it. Was this real? When did this happen? Who decided that this was something worth going ahead and producing? And was there any way this wasn't the stupidest movie of all time?

...

The film and its cult say a lot about us as a culture. Some millions of dollars were poured into its creation and promotion. Individuals around the world poured immeasurable creative energy into goofy signs and doctored photos poking fun at the film and its foul-mouthed star. Dollars that could've been given to research the treatment of awful diseases; energy that could've been used to create beautiful works of art; time that could've been better-spent doing just about anything.

And yet, what was it that brought this on? Not some brave new dramatic piece, or a bold animation experiment that came out of left-field, or even one of those really big-budget jobs where the guy blows everything up and defeats the bad guy and rescues the president and gets the girl with the really big boobs. Not a thinking man's piece. Not even a lowest-common denominator piece.

No, what got people excited was nothing more than big dumb fun. Four-hundred snakes unleashed on a plane, and the guy who played Ordell Robbie is the only person who can get things under control.

It's so stupid. So insulting. So offensively cliché. Part of me wants to go on a lengthy rant about what a low opinion movie executives and producers must have of the American public.

And yet, that part of me chooses to stay silent, at least for now.

...

It's going to be the worst film of all time, this much we know for sure. So what?

In an age where jobs people spent years clawing their up to way are being shipped off to other countries, where the government has started a war it has no means of finishing, where terrorists may lurk around every corner and where gas prices are through the roof and where the divide between rich and poor is getting wider every single day, can we really concern ourselves with the artistic merit of Snakes on a Plane? More importantly, should we?

Do with it what you will. Sadly, snakes aren't the worst thing conceivable on a plane these days anyway. And I am sick and tired of these motherfuckin' hassles in our motherfuckin' lives.

Hope Sweeps Eternal

2006-08-14T12:45:00.000-05:00

Attention fellow White Sox fans:

COMMENCE PREMATURE WORLD SERIES CELEBRATION IMMEDIATELY.

Okay, okay, that might be a bit much. The Tigers are still 5-1/2 games up right now, the Red Sox and Twins are nipping at the Good Guys' heels for the Wild Card, and there are 46 games left in the regular season. Add to that the fact that 19 of those 46 games are against the aforementioned Red Sox, Tigers, and Twins. There's a long way to go.

But still...

...

We all remember what happened at the trade deadline last year. No Ken Griffey, Jr., no Miguel Tejada, no Barry Zito coming to town. Instead Kenny Williams brought some nobody utility man named Geoff Blum over from the Padres.

Geoff who?

We all screamed that this wasn't what we needed. We needed power. We needed a legend, a leader. Someone whose mere presence would let other teams know that we were serious. And we got a benchwarmer instead?

Blum never put up Hall of Fame numbers and wasn't much of a power threat either. But that home run he did hit...mercy.

Turns out Kenny's trading gambles paid off. And this year, despite the heavy rumors about Alfonso Soriano wearing black, nothing major went through. Just a pair of decent middle relievers named David Riske and Mike MacDougal. Nothing legendary there. No fabled careers to be mentioned for either of them.

Now, I'm not saying that David Riske or Mike MacDougal will turn out to be South Side legends like Blum did. I'm not saying we're going to surprised by what these guys can or cannot do. Nothing's a guarantee in this game, and at this stage you can't pin your postseason hopes on anyone - especially when the season's this far from being over.

But still...

...

We also remember what happened last September. Specifically, the Sox were awful. Dropping seven in a row, losing left and right to the Kansas City Royals of the world. Watching what was once a fifteen-game lead shrivel up and almost die. We watched another team come out of nowhere and almost knock us down for what would have been the most embarrassing collapse ever.

Obviously it didn't pan out as badly as we feared (or as some hoped) it would. Our guys went home with the goods while everyone else's guys just went home. We know now that those guys can live through, and thrive after, a really rocky stretch of the schedule.

Other teams, and other fans, don't. The Tiger camp up there in Detroit is only two years past losing 119 games; many of their fans are too young to remember those glory years in the 1980's. Now is their time to have their late summer heart attack and luckily it coincides with the Sox getting over their own.

I'm not saying the Sox are going to run the table from here on out. Detroit has some remarkable talent and has a few guys on board who have been through this before.

But still...

...

All we as fans know right now are the following:
- The Sox have won five straight series, three of which were against top teams
- The Sox are also coming off possibly the toughest part of this year's schedule
- The Sox are 7-2 against the so-called-best-team-in-baseball Tigers, including last weekend's sweep
- The Sox have the best head-to-head record against .500+ teams
- The Tigers have the worst head-to-head record against .500+ teams

The point of all this is not that the Sox' ultimate victory is absolute.

In 2003 they were oh-so-close but watched the Twins pass them down the stretch.

In 2004 they were again oh-so-close but fell apart down the stretch.

Both times, we just shrugged our collective shoulders because these were the Sox and this was how White Sox baseball worked. "Remember those two weeks in July of 2003 when the Sox were in first? That was awesome!"

The point is that last year, the team learned how to win. More importantly, we learned there was reason to hope. Have faith, we learned, and September might not break our hearts this time.

A Failed Attempt at Alternative Computing (Stodgy Business Sense Beats Hippie Adventure Sense)

2006-08-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

"Are you kidding? Do you know what I do for a living?"

No, I told him. I thought he was a loan officer or something.

"No, jackass. I run the creative department. That's all we do is design and publishing and graphics stuff. And we use PC's."

You do? I'd known him for years and had the wrong idea all along.

"Yeah," he continued. "The only reason to get a Mac is if you're some kind of hippie and just want to be weird."

...

So his line of reasoning was a little harsh but it got me thinking. I was in the market for a new computer (the one I got in college was starting to show its age) and was very seriously considering a MacBook as a replacement. The short list of things I'd be doing were:
- word processing
- music playback
- light photo editing
- wasting time on the Internet
- audio engineering and editing
- maybe some kind of desktop publishing for school

No number-crunching there, I thought. Just all sorts of creatively-oriented endeavors. The obvious answer there is to go with a Mac. Isn't it?

Consider that for years I've been doing all of those things on my trusty desktop - a desktop which hasn't been anywhere near top-of-the-line since the summer of 2000. Transparency, filtering, dither, MIDI interfacing, sequencing - all supposedly hardcore tasks, and all supposedly impossible to do on a Windows-based machine.

By the same token, the old adage still rang true that "change is good." Shake things up. Go left where you once went right. Ride the lightning. Et cetera. Plus, I thought it would be cool to be one of those Apple guys for a little while.

You know, like the guys you see sitting in a coffee shop or park or store or café or restaurant or other public place with their laptops out? And it's usually some weird time of day (or night) and they're staring intently at the screen, obviously working on something so huge that they just had to leave the house and sip on some kind of ridiculously named beverage while getting their script/video/song/story/inane blog post/"project" ready to unleash upon the world? And everything I own has an "i" in the name?

"Check out how I can capture to iFilm with my iSight and can export it to iTunes to play on my iPod and then re-upload to iLife. Oh, and I'd like a iBurger with an iShake please."

Yeah, I was going to be that guy. Minus the eyewear. Maybe not so heavy on the iWear either.

...

But in the end I went with a Dell. Why? Because the MacBooks are still a new product and are still getting the kinks worked out (like the mooing and the staining and the notorious glare). This, as some of you know, flies squarely in the face of the First Rule of Information Technology: never adopt the first generation of a technology or a product unless waiting will cost you your job.

So I listened to my inner IT professional - the one I thought I'd left for dead - and stayed the course. No big deal. Instead of the MacBook guy at the Starbucks, I'll be the Dell guy at the bar.

Sounds more fun anyway.

StL heart AP

2006-08-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

It's hard to explain.

They're kind of a scary bunch, that much I'll say. Generally friendly and very knowledgeable for sure. Devoted without question. Proud and steeped in tradition.

Still, there was something unnerving about the lot of them. Maybe it was the heat; maybe it was the fact that utility man Scott Spiezio ("The Speez") was arrested for assaulting a cab driver in Chicago last fall; maybe it was just the sight of 40,000 people all wearing the exact same shade of Cardinal Red.

...

In February, we had purchased our Standing Room Only tickets for this past Sunday's Cardinals-Brewers game.

Wait, stop. Think about that one for a second. We went looking for tickets to a meaningless Sunday afternoon game against a basement-level team that was happening in St. Louis in August when it would be roughly 100 degrees out and absolutely miserable spectating conditions, and all that was left ten minutes after tickets went on sale were passes to stand around in certain areas of the park. No seats, no view, no comfort, just the right to sizzle under the Missouri summer sun - and they were snatching them up by the thousands.

And all I could think was "who are these people?"

...

I should stop a moment to point out that I really do like the Cards. They run a very smart organization and manage to put a winner on the field year after year despite playing in one of the smaller baseball markets in America. They found what may be the best hitter to ever play the game in Albert Pujols. Manager Tony LaRussa cut his teeth with the Sox and was the force behind the fabled-on-the-South-Side "Winning Ugly" team of 1983.

More importantly, we have a common enemy in the Chicago Cubs. Sox fans hate the Cubs for their pettiness, their perpetual embarrassment of the city, and for their blatant trivialization of the sport. Cardinal fans hate the Cubs because, well, their teams are actually in direct competition with each other.

Like I always say: whatever works.

...

By the same token, there's this weird, almost sick behavior among certain Cardinals fans and it must be addressed.

I'm talking about the rampant Pujols man-crushes. In the Busch Stadium gift shop there were no less than 20 kinds of shirt that had either "Albert," "Pujols," or "5" (Big Al's number) on them; a mere four of them were available in women's sizes.

"Got Albert?" read one. Cute.

The guy's great and all, but that kind of star treatment is just bizarre. As though Pujols were as much a reason to be a Cardinals fan as family or civic pride were. As though Pujols was the guy engineering the trades that built the organization. As though Pujols was the entire team. He's not, and even the most casual glimpse of an interview with him reminds you that he knows this. You wonder if the grown men in the stands wearing those $300 authentic replica just-like-the-pros-wear jerseys know this too.

And yet, they keep coming out to the stadium. Flaunt the Pujols man-love as they may, 40,000 people do not come out in 100-degree weather to see someone make routine plays at first base and get four at-bats. Not 40,000 Cardinal fans, anyway. They've seen Brock and the Wizard and Stan the Man and a laundry list of other greats, and they've seen their team win it all and they KNOW there is more to the game than just watching some guy they'll never meet hit an absolutely insane number of home runs.

Some of you may be quick to point out that Chicago is no stranger to this. "Dude," you'll say, "you guys had Michael."

Good point, but that's different - that was Michael. Don't even go there. And don't make fun of that MJ shirt I had until the shirt got so frayed that the collar came off either.

...

So what's to say? Not much, except that they must be doing something right. A solid team playing in a great city's beautiful new ballpark. Sounds like a winner to me.

And if that's not enough, just remember: the Speez could probably take most of the National League in a bar fight.

Birthday Boy Hits The Road

2006-08-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

I'll be out of town for a few days, watching my beloved White Sox play in fields far from home and scouring the American countryside for more things to write about.

In the meantime, the archives are still well-stocked; a new column should up next week. See you then!

Big Brother Goes Drinking

2006-07-29T18:58:00.000-05:00

I was dreading that day, but it finally came and went. There was no bar fight, no call from the sheriff, no remorse over the damage done to her or anyone else.

Last week, against all my wishes and despite all my protests, the inevitable happened: my little sister turned 21.

...

A girl I know asked me why this was such a big deal. Sis already has a boyfriend, she reasoned, and already drinks with her friends, so what does being 21 really add to the equation?

I told her I had seen too many stupid girls out for their 21st birthday. Too many disgusting shots, too much public vomiting, too much making out with random and slutty boys. No way did I want any sister of mine engaging on that.

The girl and her friend both looked at me with what could best be described as a combination of confusion and disgust. "Um, I don't know where you've been hanging out but I know I definitely wasn't doing that on my 21st birthday."

"Yeah Reilly," her friend agreed, "what girls have you been drinking with?"

Um, no comment.

...

In the spirit of being a good brother, I took her out drinking over the weekend. We did a good little tour of the city if I may say so, and all the while I was consciously avoiding the more obnoxious bars out there - there are some places I just don't approve of and if she ever decides to start hanging out there I at least want to be able to say it's not my fault.

It was the first time I'd ever drank with my sister, and while it was of course a little weird it was also a bit perplexing. She doesn't like doing shots, doesn't like whiskey, doesn't like beer, and she didn't want to drink herself stupid. Are you sure we're related?

My favorite part was at a bar in Bucktown where some kid took a liking to her. Of course he waited until I was in the bathroom to swoop in - come on dude, everyone saw that one coming - and sure enough was giving it his best drunk-guy-in-a-bar effort when I got back. She whispered to me that this guy was kind of weirding her out. No problem, sis. I put my arm around the guy's shoulder and pulled him in.

"You like her?" I asked him.

"Yeah dude, she's totally hot," he said.

"Yeah? Guess what else she is?" I asked him.

"I give up, what?"

"She's my fuckin' sister, that's what," I told him. He backed away slowly and disappeared. My work was done. Happy birthday!

...

I guess it could've been worse. No one threw up or got in trouble or got lost or anything like that, which come to think of it is the first time in a long time that a night out has lacked those things. Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

She's all grown up now, and something tells me she's going to be pretty good at that. She will learn and live and love and love again, running headfirst into the world the way she always has. This is progress; this is growing up; this is life itself, and she knows I'll be proud of her every step of the way.

But in the back of my mind, there will always be a picture of an eight-year-old boy and his two-year-old sister at the beach, the boy building a castle while the sister digs in the sand. The boy watches her flailing away at the shore, laughing with her as she runs along the water. In his eyes is the look of the curious protector, ready to see her shine but still making sure she isn't swept away with the tide.

A Nice Part of Town

2006-07-25T00:26:00.000-05:00

My first big city apartment was in Ravenswood, and when my roommate and I signed the lease we were convinced we had just landed the coolest apartment in the history of renting. We were getting three bedrooms AND hardwood floors AND huge closets AND a dishwasher AND heat was included in the rent AND we were close to all kinds of transportation AND every kind of essential shopping (i.e. grocery store, Walgreens, Rayan's Liquors) we needed was just down the block. Perfect, I thought. Absolutely perfect.

When you're moving from the suburbs to the city, there are a few things you don't notice until it's too late. Things like how loud a radiator is when it kicks on in the middle of the night. Or how the whole building shakes when that oh-so-convenient Wilson Ave. bus runs by your building. Or how very little noise from a very major street is kept out by your paper-thin windows ("Are you outside?" was what my mom always asked when we talked on the phone; No, mom, I'm actually in my kitchen).

Remember those hardwood floors? They look real nice...but you start to hate them after a) you realize they're all warped and your rolling desk chair won't stop rolling and b) you get new upstairs neighbors who have what sounds like ten children that like to run around like wild dogs (Other hobbies of these kids included jumping up and down, dribbling basketballs, playing in the main stairway of the building, and screaming their guts out day and night).

And we'll leave the collapsing bathroom ceiling story for another day. Two other days actually, since it happened twice. In the same week. Nasty.

...

The next (and current) neighborhood was Wicker Park, where we landed in hopes of better nightlife, fewer kids upstairs, crazier times and a move on up, so to speak. And for the most part we found all that...at first. There are a lot of places to go in this part of town. Lots to do and a lot of people to meet.

The downside of that is the pricetag attached to it all. I'm not just talking about the exorbitant amount we're paying for a 2-bedroom garden apartment (I prefer the term "dungeon"), or the $300 gas bills that come along with our recently-discovered-to-be-leaking heating system.

Shockingly, right here in this upscale and top-shelf neighborhood we suddenly found ourselves more surrounded by crime and uneasiness than at our old, boring, middle-of-the-road place. Constant fear of muggings, cars getting broken into or flat-out stolen, nearly every building on my block getting broken into over the course of the past 18 months, and so on and so on.

It's funny how that works. At the old place I would walk home at any weird hour from the Wilson Red Line stop through allegedly-sketchy-at-the-time Sheridan Park not thinking twice about what could happen - probably because nothing ever did happen. Our cars and apartments and bodies got left alone. Maybe people in that part of town had better things to do than smash in a windshield or a stranger's head.

The idea that moving to a so-called "better" neighborhood would actually leave me surrounded by more danger and peril never even crossed my mind. And why would it?

But like one of the area police officers told me: "If you're going to steal things, you have to go where there's things to steal, and neighborhoods like this one have plenty of that."

...

I was searching the listings a few weeks ago and found a promising place: nice neighborhood, well-lit, heat included, three bedroom apartment for two-bedroom rent. It had a dishwasher and was close to public transportation as an added bonus. Not too shabby, I thought.

I was about to take down the number until I saw the address and immediately realized why it was such a deal.

It was my old apartment, bus traffic and all.

For a minute, I let myself smile thinking about that afternoon spent in the Starbucks down Wilson Ave., reading over the lease and trying to figure out how to get to the property manager's office. Back then I only thought about how cool hardwood floors were. Now I wonder who's going to be following me home at night.

But I kept right on looking. It's a big city out there and there's no way some overly persistent junkie can scare me into thinking I'm done with it just yet.

[UPDATE 7/26/2006: No sooner had I posted this than the girls down the street got robbed WHILE ONE OF THEM WAS HOME!!! Unbelievable. New condos be damned, I am paying way too much to live in this awful neighborhood.]

Everything I Need to Know In Life I Learned From Jack McDowell

2006-07-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

[Part 1 in a Series]

My 7-year-old cousin was in town with my aunt and uncle a couple weeks ago. Like a lot of kids, he likes baseball, and like a lot of 7-year-olds he plays Little League, and like a lot of my relatives his favorite team is the White Sox.

I was talking with him at a family picnic and he was asking me a lot of questions about the game. He wanted to know what kind of hits he should try to get, what positions were good, what teams were good. Things that a 7-year-old wants to know, you know?

I asked him who his favorite player is. Without hesitation he replied "Joe Crede."

Good choice, I told him.

"Who's your favorite player?" he asked me.

Hmm. Good question.

...

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up. And I think I could've done it, except for the fact that becoming a professional athlete requires a lot of dedication and a lot of athletic skill. I, unfortunately, had none of the former and very little of the latter.

I didn't know yet that it wasn't going to happen, but what I did know was that my all-time favorite, coolest-guy-ever, I-wanna-be-just-like-that-guy player was Sox pitcher Jack McDowell, who came through and kicked no small amount of ass around the same time that I was playing Little League baseball.

The guy, in my pre-pubescent mind, was as awesome as they got. He struck guys out despite having relatively weak pitches. He won games day in and day out. He went after batters. He threw inside and he threw inside hard. He was tall and skinny and had this evil goatee and looked like he had no business being a star.

How could I not look up to him?

On the off-chance I got to pitch in any actual games, I would try my best to emulate "Black Jack" out on the mound, and to some degree succeeded. I threw right-handed. I had the long leg motion down. I had an evil goatee made up of exactly three whiskers. I had very few pitches and what pitches I could throw, I threw inside.

That last part actually led to me increasing my arsenal, adding the infamous "Hit the Batterball" to my already-dangerous arsenal including the "Walk On Four Pitchesball," "Serve Up a Homerunball," and "Bounce One Off the Plateball."

...

I remember once when a kid who went to my school - a kid I wasn't exactly fond of - came up to bat and stood watching as I threw five pitches right past him. Full count, and the kid hadn't even swung the bat. I stepped off the mound and raised my arms up to him in this kind of half-shrug, as if to ask him what the hell he was doing up there.

"Throw something good already Reilly!" he shot back.

The next pitch hit him square in the back and knocked him down to the ground. The other team's coach was screaming at the ump to toss me from the game (as were the kid's parents in the stands). He didn't, but it didn't matter because my own coach took me out before the next batter came up.

"What are you doing out there?" coach asked me.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Don't hit guys on purpose, Andrew. You could've really hurt that kid."

"I was just doing," I told him curtly, "what Black Jack would've done!"

I thought I was right, but coach disagreed. It would be a while before I was asked to pitch again, but what did he know? McDowell won 20 games that year; our entire team won 4.

Pretend you're me in that situation: Who would you listen to?

...

In 1994, Jack and I went our separate ways, so to speak. The strike ruined what was at the time the Sox' best chance to win the World Series. Black Jack wanted more money and went to the Yankees, and after hearing what some of my relatives had to say about the sport I took a few years off of watching.

That was also the year I quit playing. At that age, players essentially fell into two categories: those who were really good, and everyone else. It didn't take a genius to realize that I, with my wild pitching, spotty defense and streaky hitting, fell squarely into the latter category, although I was getting pretty good at pissing off kids on other teams and was easily leading the league in getting into fights with my teammates.

But, as luck would have it, there's no "designated jackass" position in baseball. So that summer, at the tender age of 14, I hung up my spikes forever.

...

Getting back to my little cousin's question: No, I don't have a favorite baseball player. Not anymore, and I won't ever again. The game has changed; the players have changed; I've changed.

It still gives me a little chuckle to think back to those days though. Stand tall. Be aggressive. Let 'em know what's yours. Stand by your decisions. Don't be afraid of anyone. And never, ever back down.

Life's lessons as learned from the far end of the bench and from the backs of baseball cards.

It's true what they say: the most important things really are taught outside the classroom.

"We're Not Really Dating" and Other Bad News

2006-07-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

While far from being the worst thing a person could hear, it always breaks my heart when the newest object of someone's affection lets them in on the awful truth about their current situation.

You know what I'm talking about, and I'm sure we've all heard more than enough versions of it.

"Actually, there is someone else, kind of..."

"Well, I have a friend, I guess you could call it..."

"My boyfriend and I have an agreement..."

"Well, technically we're not dating..."

"We're not going out, but we have an arrangement..."

You get the idea. Nothing dampens the sweetness out of a new relationship like finding out that you're a sideshow to the regularity of an old relationship.

...

For the record, this is not a condemnation of testing the waters, exploring your options, dating around, juggling multiple relationships, trial-and-error, blatant whoring, or any other method of finding the right person and right situation. "You do what you gotta do" is as good a motto as I can think of.

But what I never understood (although, in a way, sort of envied) was how some people can do it so effortlessly.

A girl I know found out that the guy she'd been seeing was also dating another girl - and had been for the better part of a year. She stuck with him for a few months, but when it ended she told me that the other girl never factored into the equation.

"She took a lot of the pressure off of me, that's for sure," she told me. "I didn't know anything about her and didn't really want to, and he never talked about her. I was the fun girl. Or at least I let myself think I was."

On the flip side of that is what a guy my age told me about the girl he was seeing who had a live-in boyfriend: "Easy action, or so I thought. We were going nowhere and we both knew it, which was great at first, but I was kind of glad when she dumped me - it's kind of depressing knowing that the clock is ticking, even if it was half-assed the whole time."

...

So how does anyone get over that? It might sound a little old-fashioned, but I always thought it was better to let a relationship live and die by its own merits and faults and strengths and weaknesses, not by what some outsider in a low-lit room is better or worse at.

If you get together with person A while seeing person B, what's the proper etiquette for scheduling? "I'll go out with you on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and ever other Sunday. My current boyfriend already has me Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and the 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month, and if there's a 5th I get it to myself."

How are jurisdictions decided? Do you really want to know if they went to dinner the other night at this exact same restaurant you're sitting in right now? Why? Why not?

How is precedence determined if both want to see you on the same night?

What's the courteous time to allow between sexual encounters with person A and person B? Does it bother you that this person you like might be at your house fresh from some stranger's bed? Why? Why not?

...

Difficult questions, yes, and maybe a little stupid - but questions that need to be asked all the same.

Such is life when you're looking for a girlfriend and not a custody battle.

Le Quatorzième Juillet

2006-07-14T17:43:00.000-05:00

...and so, in honor of the big holiday, I present to you five great things from, about, and relating to France.

Yes, that's right: five.

1. Léon the Professional. So it's set in New York City - so what? The director is French. The star is French. The violence is presented tastefully and yet is bloody to shocking effect - how French is that? It's a French movie. So get over it. And go see it. Now.

2. Wine. Ah yes, my old friend wine. Who could resist the light-headedness, or the half-sophisticated kind of drunken banter that only the finest vino brings out, or the way it stains a couch or a carpet or a dress like no liquid should? Not me, and certainly not today. Loved by one and all from the corner office to the corner of Lonely Street, we stand together and forever indebted to ancient drunkards on the fields of Brittany.

3. Theirry Henry. Team France lost in the finals this year, it's true, but you know you can't blame this guy. He's a star on an Arsenal team of stars, and arguably the best player in the Premier League - if not the world. Not only that, he also had the guts to launch the Stand Up Speak Up campaign to get those white supremacist assholes out of the European stadiums. No small task, and anyone who's willing to take a stand on such an important issue on such a large scale commands the respect of both you and I.

4. Beyond Good & Evil. Media cover-ups, government scandal, propaganda wars, unintentional cannibalism, evil leaders and photojournalism as a weapon - who else could make a video game out of all that?

5. Melissa Theuriau. I'm sure she's a good reporter. I'm sure she's unbiased in her approach. I'm sure she does a great job when the cameras aren't rolling. Sadly, I don't speak French so all I can say is this:

The most beautiful woman to ever happen to broadcast journalism. Ever. Vive la France!

Yes, France, you're a good one indeed. Don't let those "Freedom Fries" pigs get you down - you know we love you. And tonight, I will raise a glass of Dremmwell Brune to that.

Jour De Bastille Heureux!

Romance I

2006-07-10T23:08:00.000-05:00

"Don't tell anyone," she said, "but I have a date."

"You do? With who?" I asked her.

"Just this guy, he's kind of friends with my friends, I don't know."

"Sounds good," I said, "but why so hush-hush?"

"Because," she explained, "I don't want to jinx it."

Makes sense. I guess.

...

New couples are always fascinating to me, and by couples I'm talking about people who are actually together, actually on the way towards itemhood, actually looking at some kind of potential in the other beyond the next meal or the next sleepover. (There are other terms for those last two and I'll let you insert your favorite here.)

Think of those early times together. When is anyone ever again so fascinated by what someone else has to say? When else could the smallest things become grounds for a person investing so much hope in another person?

One friend was sold by the fact that the girl he had dinner with liked Old Style as much as he did.

Another was convinced that her new guy's love of '70's rock was a sign that he was something different.

Yet another swore that the girl he'd been set up with must be the one he was destined to spend the rest of his life with, because she also cited The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for Super Nintendo as one of her biggest influences in life.

Old Style? Video games? "Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth? Is this what we're putting our hopes into? The casual observer might say that if these are the things determining the future of our species, we're all surely doomed.

I respectfully disagree.

...

In all honesty, what else do we have to hold on to in anyone else? Where else is there to start?

How many people lament the fact that things would be okay if they could just find someone who was as into [insert defining interest here] as they are? Reading, science, art, music, computers, travel, antiques, Dungeons & Dragons...the lamentations are almost endless.

Judging by my friends' comments, it seems the hope runs just about as strong as the list runs deep. All things start somewhere, they say, so why not with cheap beer and sleazy rock anthems? Even if someone has only that shred of possibility to cling to today, chances are that's more than they had yesterday - and I always thought that was the whole point.

...

As for my friend going on that secret date? It turned out they both loved the Bears and the Sox, so overall it went well.

And no, I didn't tell anyone. But I'm sorry to say that the secret is long since out; this past weekend, two years after that night out, they were married under the smiling eyes of those of us who knew all along that they would.

The Tough Guy Goes Back to School

2006-07-07T00:57:00.000-05:00

The makeup of my journalism classmates, so far as I can tell, is some combination of:

People who have degrees in journalism
People who have degrees in English
People who have degrees in literature
People who have degrees in some kind of fine/performing art
People who have worked in one or more media fields
People who are already established or semi-established as freelancers
Me

Who knew that "ex-software flunkie" was such an uncommon starting point? Not me, that's for sure.

But yes, it's now official: you are reading the work of a graduate student. Doesn't that sound so legitimate? So qualified? So expert?

"He sure rattles on about the White Sox a lot."

"Yeah, but that's some graduate-level rattling he's doing there."

...

The hardest part was in the very beginning when we were introducing ourselves. Everyone had such direction and clear ideas about where they were heading: news reporting, fashion, entertainment, TV production, and so on. The answers were all very clear, until it was my turn.

"Um, I think I'd like sports writing, but not like regular sports reporting but like really, like, deep sports writing, but not like deep like deep but deep like thought-provoking.

"But definitely travel stuff too. That's the big one. You know, like, postcards from the middle of nowhere or something. Weird festivals. Big happenings in small places, things like that. Real literary-type stuff, you know? But still with a very real side to it. Kind of a Hemingway-meets-Hunter-S.-Thompson-with-a-splash-of-Dave-Attell kind of thing.

"Maybe a column of some sort too. But not like a news column. Like some other kind of column I don't know, I'll figure it out."

And with that, a solid twenty minutes into my master's program, I had made myself look like a directionless and bumbling idiot.

Correction: graduate-level directionless and bumbling idiot.

...

What amazes me the most is not the intensity displayed by a lot of my classmates, or the ease with which everyone faces the uncertainty of their future, or the sheer volume of work that is just so casually thrown at us.

No, what amazes me is that in the end, very little has changed since that August morning in 1984 when mom and I made the long walk to my first day of kindergarten. Back then, I worried about things like waiting for the bus and permission slips and not forgetting my lunch and waiting for recess.

Now?

Well...

This week we visited the site of the former E2 club and received an excellent presentation on front-line reporting by Frank Main of the Sun-Times. Afterwards, we waited forever for the #4 to show up to take us back to campus, then took an extended lunch break.

Yes, that's right: we took a field trip, rode the bus back to school, then had a long recess since the weather was so nice that day.

And I realized that I, just like back then, had forgotten my lunch. As it was, so it remains and so it shall be.

Did someone say "graduate-level"?

Flowers for the Birthday Girl

2006-07-05T00:44:00.000-05:00

ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeooooooooooowwwww....POP!

And with that joyful noise and a million others like it, oh my oh my did we make sure she knew we were glad she was alive.

From the high-rise rooftops up and down the Gold Coast to the three-flats in Pilsen to the walk-ups in Humboldt Park, we made sure she knew we were ready to help her celebrate.

Everywhere you looked, the sky was painted every shade of every color. Gold flowers, red stars, blue streams and flashes of the most brilliant white you have ever seen against a nighttime backdrop.

Sure, some of us fought with her. Any good relationship has that. Maybe we didn't see eye-to-eye but we all thought - no, knew - she'd come around. She did before; she would again.

"You've been through much," we'd say, "so how can you look past this?"

She's given us grief, that's for sure. Run over every man at least once. (Okay, almost every man...) Alienated more than a few women to boot. Stepped on more than one person on the way to becoming who she is. We know this. We accept this. We forgive this. Because we know in our great big heart who she can be if she'll just listen to us. To herself.

Which was why, tonight, through all the good and bad, we put on a show and she couldn't help but know what we meant. From the six points on the way to the Ridge to the Corridor aqueduct; from the view of the Park to the back way through the Yard; from the highest balcony to the lowest gutter and every place in between.

It was our way of telling her: Happy Birthday America.

Postcard To the Cubbie Faithful

2006-07-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

Dear Cubs Fans,

I had the good fortune of spending two of this past weekend's crosstown games in your part of town (Friday on a rooftop, Sunday behind a pole down the third-base line). The Sox took two, the weather was mostly great, and a good time was had by all. However, there is something that needs to be said, not just for myself but on behalf of Sox fans everywhere:

You disappoint me.

"How's that?"

Allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, this year's team is just plain bad. You know this, I know this, the entire sports world knows this. Meanwhile, across town, the reigning World Champion White Sox are currently sporting the second-best record and nipping at the heels of standing atop what is finally the best division in baseball. And yet, what did I hear all weekend long from the masses in Cubbie blue?

"Sox suck!"

Do tell.

"Dude, this is Wrigley Field, I mean COME ON, how can you not want this for your own?"

Dude, you're already changing the argument. Each person's tastes in venue are their own, but I will admit to liking the following: JumboTron displays, fireworks, pre-game video montages, player introduction music, between-inning crowd amusement, the best food at any sporting stadium in America, not sitting behind a pole, and post-game celebrations. I only know of one place in Chicago that has all that. And yes, it too has ivy in center field.

"Okay, but how many bars are there by U.S. Cellular Field?"

Plenty, and I'm not telling you where they are. If you drunks find out that there actually are great places to hang out in Bridgeport, you might just realize what a stupid argument this is. And besides, I don't what that element polluting the area around my favorite ivy-covered ballpark.

"The Cubs are America's lovable losers."

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. America didn't become the last superpower standing by sitting around telling its losers that it's okay to fail at what you do. Nobody likes a loser. I'd rather see my team hoisting that World Series trophy than seen them throwing away yet another chance at glory. In fact, last fall I did just that.

"Will you guys ever shut up about that World Series? That was like a year ago."

No, we won't. Ever. You're telling me you'd downplay something like that? In my mind, the victory parade never ended.

"You know the Cubs parade would be like twenty times as huge."

We'll talk about it when it happens. Which it won't.

"But people at Cubs games are so much more invested in it."

This is arguable. I'll give credit to the hardcore Cub fans. To the ones I saw crying in 2003. To the guy who had his head on the dugout Saturday afternoon. The other 35,000 people are too suspect. Look no further than the crowd chanting over the weekend. "Let's Go White Sox" came on like a rumble, a crowd roaring like a thunderclap. The "Let's Go Cubbies" was soft. Boring. Reeked of "let's go to Starbucks or Cubby Bear after the game, yay! Go Cubbies, yay! I love losers, yay!" Where's the emotional investment in that?

"Real Cubs fans are just as intense as real Sox fans."

After Sunday's game, which the Sox gave away packaged as a 15-11 home run derby, I was ready to find out if this was true. Having spent the better part of twenty years giving all kinds of hell to people wearing the opposition's colors on the way out of Sox park, I figured it was at least fair that I get it in return. They were going to kill me, I thought. The Cubs beat the Sox at Wrigley and there I was sporting my Esteban Loaiza t-shirt. This would be the longest walk of my life.

And do you know what I heard? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was ready to get attacked to my very core of existence and instead all I got was an invitation to a party at Murphy's Bleachers. Friendly confines, indeed.

"Yeah, well, you'd be nowhere without all these bandwagon fans."

Totally. And I bet those tour buses parked out front are full of nothing but the hard-to-the-core, bleed-Cubbie-blue fanatics. You know who those bandwagon fans are? They're the people who last year were shelling out good money for those Kerry Wood t-shirts. You want casual fans, you have to earn them.

"Yeah dude, people want to hang out with lowlifes."

That's pretty tough talk for a fanbase that prides itself on drinking too much, tossing home run balls back at players, and throwing garbage into the outfield.

"Well, uh, um...where were you last April, huh?"

I'll tell you where I was: section 103. Right field, hoping that I hadn't wasted my money on witnessing yet another year of White Sox shortcomings and all the while laughing at the guy across town who payed $60 to sit behind a pole.

Sincerely,
Guy in a Sox Shirt

The Token Straight Guy

2006-06-28T15:33:00.001-05:00

You learn a lot about yourself and about others at the Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade. Things like...

...it's possible to "look straight." Yes, you read that right: gaydar works both ways. After talking to "Ryan" for a few minutes, he looked me right in the eye and said "You're straight. I can tell." This was quickly followed up with "But don't worry, it's a good straight." Thanks for the, uh, compliment.

...people like drinking and smoking and ingesting who-knows-what-else to get a good buzz going. Everywhere you looked , you saw people passing bottles, bumming cigarettes, tapping kegs, mixing cocktails, lining up for the bars, raiding the liquor stores, and on and on and on.

...people also like making out. I'm pretty sure this isn't news but there must have been something in the air that afternoon that got people moving. Men kissing women kissing women kissing men kissing men kissing...you get the idea. Maybe it was the party atmosphere, maybe it was the nice neighborhood, maybe it was the drinkables and smokables doing their job. The whole scene was like a better-dressed version of Mardi Gras.

...men, by and large, have the worst pick-up lines. Ever. I'm not going to say I'm some expert in this department, but I know clumsiness when I see it. When person A goes up to person B and says "You know, you really look great in that shirt," it's sweet. When the next thing out of person A's mouth is "So you wanna go back to my place?" it's just cheap. Commendably bold, but definitely cheap. Come on guys, not everyone wants to be treated like a whore.

...everyone wants what they can't have. At one of the parties we went to, a guy was coming on to me pretty aggressively. I asked him if he knew I didn't swing that way and he said yes. I told him that was good, because far be it from me to be a tease at a stranger's party. His response was "no honey, it just makes you forbidden fruit and you know everyone's going to want a taste." Unbelievable.

...getting hit on by gay men, despite the cheesiness or cheapness, is flattering. There, I said it. Yes, I do work out. Yes, this shirt does fit me nicely. No, no one ever told me I have nice eyes. Thank you, random gay men of Chicago, for telling me the things that you, random straight women of Chicago, don't.

...straight men in straight communities are not in an enviable position. We're under a lot of pressure to act a certain way, to carry ourselves a certain way, to check off a list of things we're done with our lives. Straight women, you're not much better off, and you can look no further than the images and products thrown at you all day, every day. Be thinner, look younger, get taller, eat less, and so on. It's a rough world out there when you have to worry about what the opposite sex is thinking.

Boystown, you throw a hell of a party and I say thank you for inviting everyone.

And to those hatemongering protesters on Halsted: get a life. If the world is going to hell, I can assure you it's for things far greater than who likes waking up next to who. We're all adults here.

Aren't we?

A Late Summer's Rain, A Late October's Persistence

2006-06-26T01:38:00.000-05:00

Same game, different episode.

Sox-Astros rematch this weekend. Random heroics; unexpected stars; the dependables falling apart. The scene just set itself up for nostalgia. A young man's memory playing a personal highlight reel.

It was raining that night, that much I can say for sure.

Late October.

Lottie's Pub, Bucktown.

I didn't notice that we'd racked up a substantial tab.

I didn't notice that I might've tanked on the GRE that afternoon.

I didn't notice that I had to work the next day.

I didn't notice that this was what my grandpa was always talking about.

I didn't notice that the TV by our table had a yellow tint in the picture.

I didn't notice that some people didn't make it to the bar that night.

I didn't notice much...

...because that night, in the rain and fog under the Chicago moon, we saw with our own eyes that they had done it.

For that one magical night, the Sox were the undisputed best team in baseball. And we celebrated, and we danced and we drank and screamed our lungs out in the streets because here, because now, there was suddenly reason to celebrate being a fan. We had given them years of devotion and love and finally, finally, finally we got the payback.

Elation, joy, and civic pride in exchange for a lifetime of misery. It was a fair trade, and I'd make it again in a hearbeat.

And from there, it's hard to get worked up about smaller pieces of the season. They will win again. They will lose again. For now, those are just hurdles. Details.

It's not the post-game show that anyone is thinking about anymore. MVP races, leader boards, Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves...they're nice, but so what? We're past that now. There are bigger things to root for.

Celebrations two-million people wide. The streets covered in black and white and Sox logos. Holding your head high and saying "you're goddamn right I'm a Sox fan." And that moment.

That moment. When they win; when we win.

Baseball as theater. As the human drama.

It's the idea that two people will pass each other on the street. One is wearing a Comiskey Park t-shirt. The other has his Carlton Fisk jersey on. And the two will nod in silent agreement in the cold of a rainy October night.

Without a sound one will say "We did it."

And, without a sound, the other will answer "Let's do it again."

Heart And Seoul

2006-06-22T23:54:00.000-05:00

[Author's Note: Another one from the vault, this is a dispatch sent out following a brief trip to Seoul, South Korea, November 1-2 of 2005.]

From: Andrew Reilly
Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2005 4:57 AM
To: Everyone
Subject: Heart and Seoul

First of all, thanks so much for the kind inquiries about my pursuit of the beautiful Korean actress that I was going to marry. I kept my eye out for her but apparently she doesn't hang out in seedy back-alley markets, Burger King, or at tacky souvenir stands. Typical.

Seoul was a blast as expected. The flight touched down bright and early and the first stop was...okay, I'll admit it, the first stop was KFC. What can I say? I slept almost the entire flight and was not in the mood to start experimenting with my diet. I was all excited for my number 6 meal until I realized that none of the staff understood a thing I was saying.

Me: "A number six please."

KFC: "You want at 6:00?"

Me pointing at a picture of the meal: "I'd like one of those."

KFC: "We no have that."

You can see how a young man might feel defeated after a few minutes of this, so it was off into the city I went.

Why do people assume that if you're a white young man travelling alone in an Asian city you are either a soldier or completely clueless about how to get where you're going? Of course, like an idiot, I answered no when people asked me about either of those. Sure showed them!

Through some accident of good fortune I made it to Gyeongbokgung Palace, situated nicely in one of Seoul's downtown business districts. The palace grounds were bordered by mountains to the east and the rest of the city to the west. I won't even try to describe how awesome the place was; hopefully the attached pictures can show you what my feeble writing can't.

Walking out of the grounds you come upon Insadong, one of the traditional market areas of the city. You know those scenes they show in any major movie involving either Asian cities or an Asian neighborhood of an American city and the crazy back-alley scene complete with haggling, ripoffs, counterfeit goods and live chickens running around? That's what Insadong is like. Well, I didn't see any chickens but then again I wasn't looking very hard. I picked up some clothes for myself and some things for a few people reading this email. If you want to feel like you've lived, try dealing with one of the saleswomen in the area.

Saleslady: "Who you buying for?"

Me: "I don't know yet, it depends what I find I guess."

Saleslady: "Here this, very good for girl. Very pretty, this all mean good in Korean, success and happiness."

Me: "It is nice, I'll take it."

Saleslady making all-knowing faces at me: "You give this girl she be loving you, you be happy man!"

Me: "I suppose so."

Saleslady making ultra-suggestive hand motions: "She be 'wow let me show you how I like this from you!'"

[awkward laughing by Andrew]

Saleslady: "You be smart, you do good with this one, she lucky to love you so much, you good to love."

[silence]

Me: "It's for my sister."

[awkward silence]

Saleslady: "Oh this good, you good sister."

[more awkward silence]

Saleslady: "So you still buy ok? Gift wrap over here."

So it was off to the hotel for some junk food and a few more hours of sleep. Midnight and it's back outside, this time to the bars. I didn't really go too far this time, not because of the language barrier but because after a few minutes out in this particular part of town I started to figure out what "hostess bar" really means. Again they see it: young white man, travelling alone, far from home, middle of the night, shady part of town...you get the picture. Some of you asked if I met any women in Seoul, and to you I answer yes, but that's only if your definition of "met" means "had extremely lewd offers and propositions made to me by." Sorry ladies of the night, I'm saving my money for postcards and bookmarks!

Tuesday was a field trip to Olympic Park where the 1988 summer games were held. They actually did a nice job of keeping the place usable even damn near twenty years later. I took a walk around the grounds, soaked in the views, thought about how this might be the best layover I've ever had (Previous champ: 46 minutes in Atlanta. So sue me for not flying much.). One of the more popular uses of Olympic Park is for schoolteachers to take their kids on recess-type excursions. And once again, there I am walking through this crowd of five- and six-year-olds and trying not to be a spectacle. Say it with me: young white man, travelling alone, far from home. I was spotted.

But instead of trying to rip me off or sucker me into an alleyway brothel, the kids wanted something simpler: they wanted to practice their English! One would start out saying "hi!" until I'd say hi and wave back. Suddenly they all see this and break out almost in a chorus. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" And another would try "What's your name?" until they got it right, and I'd say my name. The third part of what they teach these kids must be to ask how old you are, because I haven't had to keep saying how old I was to that many people since my last birthday.

Little kids: "Hi! Hi! Hi!"

Me: "Hi!"

Little kids: "What's your name?"

Me: "Andrew."

Little kids: "Hi Andrew how old are you?"

Me: "Twenty-six."

Little kids: "Hi Andrew twenty-six!"

So what's the lesson in Andrew's trip to South Korea? That even ten-thousand miles away from home, little kids can still be so much cooler than everyone else.

What Would Jack Daniel Do?

2006-06-20T15:40:00.000-05:00

Oh, Miller Lite.

I know you mean well. I know you're in constant battle with those guys over at Budweiser for a piece of the American beer dollar. I know you have a lot to gain by cleverly marketing your watered-down version of the vastly superior MGD to boys and men who need to feel secure in their choice of beverage. And I commend you for gathering a hell of a lineup to sit around your Square Table.

Jerome Bettis? Burt Reynolds? Excellent.

Aron Ralston? Absolute hero.

Some of the Man Laws are even funny. But there's one problem, and it's one that I know I'm not the first to point out:

Miller Lite is not manly. Miller Lite is not tough or intense or anything resembling that, and is the absolute last source of information on how to be a man in America - or anywhere else, for that matter.

You want manly drinks? Let's talk Jack Daniel's. Let's talk Sierra Nevada. Let's talk Jim Beam. Stuff that kicks you when you drink it. Stuff you can't mess around with. Symbolic of the larger uphill battle we men find ourselves in - push yourself and see what pushes back. Who knew whiskey drinking could be so poetic?

Not that any of them would waste time on concepts so petty as when to help your friends move (always) or when it's okay to take back the booze you brought to someone's house (never).

More importantly, and more foolishly, what Miller Lite is doing is further propagating the stupid idea that alcohol consumption is manly, that drinking is what tough guys do. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

Look no further than their own spokesmen. All up and down that list are men who became who they are through a simple concept: having a dream or a vision or an idea, and then having the guts to actually follow it. Where's that Man Law? Having spent more than a few years in corporate America, I can say with almost no doubt the ad execs wouldn't be too enthused by some bright-eyed storyboard designer coming in and saying "Let's have Eddie Griffin and Triple H tell people that hard work and dedication is the key to success, and that you are not what you drink."

So what are we left with? A weak beer pushing off weak ideas to what someone in the marketing department hopes is a weak audience. It'd be tragic if it wasn't so common.

A White Sox Yankee in King George's Court

2006-06-14T22:06:00.000-05:00

"You can almost feel the winning."

This was what I was always told about Yankee Stadium. Oh, there were plenty of other things I was told - some nice, some not so nice - but that was the only part that sounded any different from what people say about every team in sports. This past April I had a chance to find out if that was true.

I was in New York for a conference, and rather than attend the second day of panel discussions and workshops on topics that were (at the time) completely irrelevant to me, I took the subway ride up to the Bronx to watch the Yankees host the Blue Jays. As soon as you step off at 161st Street, you are greeted by the Yankee mantra: 26 Time World Champions. And you see that again when you walk up to the ticket windows. And again once you pass through the main gate.

And again when you wander through the concourse.

And on t-shirts.

And on programs and scorecards.

And on the concrete wall between the lower and upper decks. And on...and on...and on it goes.

Not really caring about the game (Yankees vs. Blue Jays), I opted for a seat in the upper deck, which in all honesty was one of the better set of cheap seats I've found myself in. Not that $20 for the nosebleeds is all that cheap. Still, it was a nice view of the whole park and, shockingly, a nice view of the Bronx. I made a note to tell everyone how that part of the city at least looks nice from way up high.

The Yankees were still taking batting practice, which in most parks means no one's there but at Yankee Stadium means everyone's there and they all want a piece of A-Rod and Bernie and Deh-rik Jee-tah.

All up and down the first few rows were people yelling and cheering, offering tips and some not-so-constructive comments. It was hilarious watching this. "Choke up Alex!" and "C'mon Bernie you're gonna hit three outta here today!" and "That's my Giambino baby! YEAH!"

Understand that I'm all in favor of kids coming out and learning a thing or two by watching the pros take some swings. What I can't get behind is grown men, out-of-shape and past their prime, trying to tell another man how to do his job. Or a guy and his girlfriend wearing the exact same Johnny Damon shirt, oohing and aahing when their shared fantasy male hits one into the left-field bleachers.

The whole scene was just creepy. I asked someone why people were so into this, and his response was a scream of "'Cause this is Noo Yawk baby!"

Whatever that means.

Once the game was underway, the real show started. Everyone around me was going on about how Moose is Loose, and Jason Giambi was back, and Johnny Damon was going to be MVP, and George is gonna get us some pitchers, and how dare those Blue Jays keep hitting to shallow right field even though Bernie Williams' knees don't work anymore. "The man's a legend. No respect," they said, and I couldn't help but laugh.

My favorite was the guy in the row in front of me telling the story about how his friend got hit in the head by a foul ball that Derek Jeter hit in batting practice. Apparently his friend took it in the cheek, lost a couple teeth, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile the guy reached down and snatched the assailant baseball and kept it for himself, to which the guy next to him said (and I quote):

"You got a Derr-ik Jeetah ball? That's fuckin' awesome!"

If I could write humor this good, I promise I would be a very rich man.

After a few innings of all this, I started asking some of the Yankee fans a few questions, just to gauge their answers and whether or not they were aware of how the rest of the sports world views them. They were not amused.

Andrew: "Remember last winter when Randy Johnson said he wouldn't go to the White Sox because they weren't going to win anything, and instead he came to the Yankees and turned out to be not all that great and then you guys tanked in the playoffs? Joke's on him, huh?"
Random Yankee Fan: [momentary silence] "This year baby, Randy's gonna do it, George was right!"

A: "You know why you've got the best shot at signing Roger Clemens? Because no one else can afford him!"
RYF: "You got it! This is the Yankees, we get what we want!"

A: "You can't seriously think that Jaret Wright and Carl Pavano are going to be the back end that you need."
RYF: "We're gonna get that guy from Tampa Bay and whoever that guy is on Chicago. Boston can suck it!"

This was followed by my entire section busting out in a chorus of "Boston Sucks," which was extra-hilarious considering that the sum of Red Sox hats, shirts, players, keychains, pennants, and signs was zero. The closest anything in the whole stadium was to being Boston-related was that center fielder they stole away from their hated Carmines last winter.

In the end, the Yankees beat the Jays 4-1 and most of the stadium went home happy, except for the few Toronto fans scattered throughout the park, but even they looked a little tired. Perhaps it was the unseasonable warmth; perhaps it was the drain of sitting through three hours among that kind of sense of entitlement and self-absorption, the kind of centrism that comes along with your team coming out on top year after year after year after year.

It's not that you feel the winning; the winning just doesn't shut up.

Unemployed In Summertime

2006-06-12T23:08:00.000-05:00

It's been roughly a week and a half since I left my job, and a question I've been getting a lot is "how does it feel?"

In a word: awesome.

In six words: it's everything I hoped and feared.

When I was still with The Company, I remember thinking just how much I would get done if only I had the time. If I didn't have to commute, didn't have to work, didn't have to follow an external schedule, I reasoned, my mind and body would be free to succeed in ways that I (at that point) could only imagine.

I would finally finish writing the book - the book - which has sat in a state of suspended animation for the better part of two years now. All those brilliant ideas I'd been stockpiling for all those years behind the desk would be free to flourish and the world could finally see what kind of literary genius had been right there all along.

I would record that album I had been threatening to for so very long. Genres would be bent to my will. The very concept of songwriting and musicianship would change once the world heard what I had been working on.

I would become the perfect fitness animal. Hours would be spent turning my arms and legs into immaculately sculpted testaments to the awesome power of intense weightlifting and unwavering attention to nutrtion. Each calorie would be weighed against itself, each curl would be the model of arc and execution, each press and lift the very definition of conditioning.

Or so I thought.

The most amazing part about abandoning one schedule and way of life is how very difficult it is to adopt another. Wake up before 11? Sure, but why?

I could work on something resembling a life goal, something whose incompletion has haunted me for years...or I could go to the beach.

I could catch up on all those projects I've been kicking around for so long...or I could play video games.

I could seize the opportunity to see more of the world...or I could watch the NBA's Greatest Games on ESPN Classic.

What you end up with is a sort of cross-breed of motivation and convenience. I've fallen back into good musical habits, but have also been staying inside more than I'd like to. I've gone to less Sox games than I want to, but I've read up more on the team than I ever did before. A day's work may only entail going to Target or to the bar down the street, but at least I've learned to make a game of it (I like to call it "Who The Hell Are All These People At The Stores And Bars In The Middle of a Weekday Afternoon?").

So on one hand there's this knowledge that anything is possible. On the other is the knowledge that my room is very dark and it's very easy to sleep late. I suspect these two will be arm-wrestling for some time.

Whatever. School starts in a few weeks and at least then there will be something to complain about.

Besides...Metal Gear Solid 3 is a hell of a game so far. And if anyone knows a scenic route from St. Louis to Maine, let me know.

It's a Shame About Ray's

2006-06-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

[Author's Note: Simply Ray's Pub and Grub at 4709 N. Damen, Chicago, was the first bar my friends and I called home after college. It had everything; great food, great specials every day of the week, cute waitresses and its character of an owner, Ray. It was a Sox bar, it was a dive bar, it was a neighborhood bar. It was our bar.

Ray's closed its doors in April 2004 for reasons which vary depending who you ask. Whatever it was, and wherever Ray went, the end of Simply Ray's marked the end of a brief but forever memorable era in our lives.

If anyone knows what happened to the bar, or if Ray and pals have set up shop elsewhere, please post a comment below or drop me an email. I'd love to hear about it, and I know a few others who would too.

What follows is the eulogy I wrote that coldest of springs in honor of our favorite haunt.]

"The number you have reached, 561-1757, has been disconnected."

I believe this makes it official. Driving home yesterday I stopped out front to see if there had been any news, any changes, maybe even a letter taped to the front door for the beloved owner to at least address his faithful followers.

Nothing.

Instead I was greeted with a glimpse through the windows of our holy place, and it was a sad sight indeed. The precious few points where the taped-up newspaper had either been removed or fallen offered little in the way of hope or encouragement. The chairs and stools were gone. The walls were stripped of their oddly interesting collage of Three Stooges, Beatles, and White Sox decorations. The jukebox was off and the area behind the bar - the area which had so many times given any of us one to sixteen ounces of comfort, refuge, sanctuary and release - was dry. It was as if someone had come into our church and drank all the holy water.

There was no smoke in the air. There was no cast of local characters in their various states of despair and intoxication. There was no college basketball on any of the poorly-placed televisions. There was no one who loved the Sox. There was no one who hated the Cubs. There was no one looking for a hearty sandwich or a ridiculously-designed pizza which would turn out to change their life. There was only a light on over the dirty and storied wooden altar which ran the length of the front room where not too long ago we would have might have seen the Man himself enjoying a round with his patrons who he loved as he would love family, and who in turn would express the love they had for him in the only way they knew how: with another shot of blackberry brandy.

And that light, my friends, had written on it two words which I believe in my heart of hearts will ring forever true to the five of us. They were two words of hope. Two words of calm and two words of beauty. They were two words with which I will raise a silent toast to the greatest bar the city of Chicago ever has known and ever will know.

Some of us already knew this, but I thought I would take a moment to make sure we all knew: Simply Ray's closed its doors not too long ago. No one seems to know why but the consensus is that the bar is not reopening. Maybe everyone's wrong, and maybe our favorite place to go whenever the hour hand is pointing at 11 will return from its hibernation with more drinks, more food, and more ways than ever before to make every hour into a happy hour. But until that happens, my friends, I don't believe things will be the same for any of us. All we can do now is remember the good times we had at Ray's and go find ourselves a giant sandwich and a bottle of brandy.

Oh, and you're probably asking, what were the two words I saw on written on that tattered barroom light? They were the only two words that matter at a time like this:

Old Style.

We love you Ray.

The Pretty Face Girl

2006-06-05T14:50:00.000-05:00

One of my least favorite things to hear girls and women discuss is their appearance. It's not that it's boring (although sometimes it is), and it's not that it revolts me (although sometimes it does), but ladies, sometimes what you say is just plain depressing.

"I need to lose five pounds."

"I wish I had her body."

"I'd be happy if I was taller."

And the question I can never get an answer to is "Why?"

What a lot of movies, TV shows, magazines, etc., all like to say is that it's the size and shape of a few choice body parts that defines beauty. To an extent I guess they're right - no one ever faulted anyone for having nice legs - but to say that's the entire package is a gross understatement. It's not just what a woman has that makes her; it's how she carries it.

I'm reminded of a girl I know. Once upon a time, we (I) called her "The Pretty Face Girl" because she had a very nice-but-average body but did have two things that made her exceptional: she was a very sweet, very fun girl, and she had possibly the most beautiful face we (I) had ever seen in the flesh.

There were a lot of women out there with better physiques than this girl. There were narrower hips, there were flatter stomachs, there were bigger busts. But those girls couldn't do what the Pretty Face Girl could do. They couldn't capture us they way she could. Couldn't light up a room with a smile or hypnotize you with those big brown eyes. Through her we (I) realized that "it" is all there in a woman's face. Her appeal. Her beauty. Her magic powers, so to speak.

At some point the Pretty Face Girl decided it was time for a change and we watched her morph away from the girl we were all so wild about and into the girl that everyone just wanted a piece of. She lost a considerable amount of weight, got her hair highlighted, started dressing more provocatively. More an emphasis on sex appeal, less an emphasis on being just the Pretty Face Girl.

Not worse, of course. Just different. Her body was hers and it's not like anyone was complaining about this brave, bold, alluring new girl.

The sad part was that it took all that work for her to realize what she had. She'd been given the gift of unrivalled natural beauty and didn't even know it, instead deciding that she needed to fit into a certain size skirt before she could be at peace with her body, her image. What she didn't know was that the gym and the makeup and the clothes didn't make her someone else, they were just sideshows. Accessories.

I saw her a couple weeks ago and she still looks great. I'm as big a fan of metamorphosis stories as anyone else, but with her it's not the same. She wanted to be something different and in a way, both comically and tragically, she never knew that there was no reason to change in the first place.

Perhaps we (I) should've spoken up sooner. Not to change her mind or anything like that; I just think more people should know what they have going for them.

Such a shame that major media outlets and nervous twenty-something boys aren't doing a better job of that.

Freak Out!

2006-05-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Upon breaking the news to my employer that I am leaving to chase this writing thing full-time, I have received exactly three categories of response from acquaintances around the company:

That's awesome.
You're crazy but that's awesome.
I've been thinking about making a change as well.

All of which are encouraging; well wishes are not a guarantee of anything, but at least no one is telling me that I'm stupid for trying.

So why now? Why jump ship after spending the last four-and-a-half years establishing myself? Why throw away whatever professional credibility I've gained since college? Why reduce myself to starting over entirely?

Simple: because if there's ever a time, this is it. I remember when I was a sophomore in college and deciding between majors, and I had my choices narrowed down to either a career in computers or a career in writing. The former, while not my favorite topic or pastime in the world, was (at the time) an easy and extremely comfortable living for those who knew what they were doing. You have to remember, this was around 1997, 1998 - things were different for the average MIS major.

The latter was going to be hard. It was not going to be very glamorous for a very long while and there was an extremely high amount of uncertainty associated with it. So I passed, despite knowing in my head and in my heart that I belonged in a life devoted to the written word. No big deal, I thought.

But things change between the time you're 18 and the time you're 26. You start to realize that money and status are not everything they're cracked up to be. One of my favorite lessons in college was one day in Dr. Stoner's Leadership and Interpersonal Behavior (BMA 357 for all you BMA/BCS majors out reading this - go Braves!) class. It was a senior-level class, and the good docter went around the room asking each of us what we were looking for in our job searches. The answers were pretty uniform; money, prestige in the employer name, responsibility, and so on.

He then asked us what we thought people over the age of 30 said when asked to rank what they were looking for in a job. At the top of the list were intrinsic satisifaction, pride in their work, and flexibility. Pay ranked absolute last.

Pretty sobering stuff. I of course laughed it off. What's not fulfilling about making $250k a year by the time you're 35?

We'll fast-forward to last year and one of my managers asking me what I thought was next in store for me. It was nice to think about, but the hard part was realizing that I didn't know the answer. Design? Management? Sales? None of them were very appealing. So I started thinking deeper: What Would I Rather Be Doing?

And I thought about what I did when I went home. About what I did when what I did was up to me. When I didn't have to think about how I could put it off or how I could align it with someone else's agenda, priorities, and goals.

So here I come, world. Armed with nothing but a life savings, raw talent, and the will to suceed, this will be my time to shine. It has to be.

I'm betting my life on it.

Classified

2006-05-16T22:52:00.000-05:00

I posted this today on Craigslist; hopefully I'm not the only one who realizes I'm only half-serious. For a fun game to play at home, try to guess which half that is.

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Aspiring Writer Seeks Aspiring Sugar Mama - 26

Reply to: pers-161612599@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-05-16, 10:30PM CDT

Dear Girls and Women of Chicago (or other cities if you want to fly my soon-to-be broke ass out),

This week I took the bold step of quitting my job as a software engineer and leaving with it all the pay, benefits, and opportunity for advancement that comes along with it. I had a good run of it, even got promoted a couple times in my few years since joining the firm, but in the end realized I wasn't happy with it so I am going back to school for a Master's in Journalism.

Yes, that's right. I am walking away from a pretty sweet and quite well-paying gig in the hopes of making half of what I was making at 25 by the time I turn 30 in addition to being tens of thousands of dollars more in debt. Can you believe I'm single?

This in turn means I'll be broke and totally uncertain about my future for the next two to four years, and experience tells me that's going to render me pretty much undateable among women my age. Which is unfortunate, because I know some nice ones (and some nice ones who aren't my age as well). But women know what they like and I don't think that starving and unemployed is very high on that list.

So this is where you come in. These are modern times we live in and in the spirit of progress I want to volunteer myself as arm candy and designated party/dinner/wedding guest to any willing females out there.

"Who the hell is this guy?" you're asking. Well, here's what you're getting:

For starters, I'm educated and pretty smart. I have a bachelor's degree in management and business information systems from a fairly prestigious university.
I've travelled to the far corners of the world and have read a lot of books so I have a lot to talk about and can be more than just the stupid guy you shouldn't be bothering yourself to see.
I can play the piano and the guitar and will learn any song you want to hear.
I'm pretty funny. Or at least I've been told I am.
I'm also pretty good-looking...or (again) I've been told I am. Your picture gets mine.
I'm a hell of a writer, which means I can write things for about and to you. And who doesn't like that?

What I'm getting from you: Honestly not much. Take me out sometimes because I'm going to miss the nightlife I used to know. Give me a little encouragement. Be someone I can just have a good time with (it goes without saying that making out would be nice too, doesn't it?).

Otherwise I guess I'll just have to struggle and toil away in my apartment and let's face it, there are too many starving creative types in this city as it is. Do us all a favor and get me back out there!

http://chicago.craigslist.org/m4w/161612599.html

The Bells Ring Forever On

2006-05-11T20:39:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I will wake up at 5:30 a.m., leave Chicago, and drive through the rainy Illinois countryside in hopes of reaching Des Moines, Iowa, by noon. I will be running on very little sleep and I will using every ounce of strength in me not to scream or panic or otherwise freak out about the fact that westbound I-80 is, in fact, Hell on Earth. I will be dropping $40 for each tank of gas my car burns up. I will eat garbage that I buy at truck stops and cling to the dream of stepping out of the vehicle without looking back.

And why, you ask? Because two of my friends are marrying each other this weekend.

Two people, so wildly in love with each other, making vows and plans and both knowing that today, while wonderful, is only the beginning. Some will say they will never be more in love with each other than when they stand at the altar; I say that's not true.

Again, why? I believe in my heart of hearts that the union between loving adults is the purest thing in the world. And I mean that - between two people who love each other. Not people who need or like or want or better hurry up with each other. Not people who hear the clock ticking. Not people who see a means to an end.

People - men, women - who find in the eyes of another the endless possibilities of their life together. That they will lift each other up and lay each other down. That one's successes are the other's joys. That when one falls, the other will catch them. To have and to hold, forever and ever.

They will stand there, hand in hand, rings and vows exchanged, and in the moment they say those two simple words we all will know what they mean.

One moment together becomes a lifetime together. They will grow, they will laugh, they will cry and then laugh once more. And through those times they will be reminded time and again what they meant when they said what they said:

I love you.

and then

I do.

Through years and months and days and hours and simple time together, what is clear now becomes unspoken and understood later; David and Liz, you have only just begun.

I'm sure of it.

Countdown

2006-05-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

Think, for a second, about the absurdity of a countdown of any "greatest" thing in music.

40 Greatest Metal Songs.

100 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The Best Albums of the '90's.

The list goes on and on (and on and on), and something I never understood is why. I know controversy is good for circulation and viewership, and I know the guy from Blender has been waiting for years to get back at the "Breakfast At Tiffany's" hacks. But then what? Are we really supposed to take any of this seriously?

As an example of how pointless the idea of comparing music is, here's something you can try. I'm going to name two songs and I want you to explain to me, in no uncertain terms, how one is superior to the other without using the words "important," "landmark," "significant," or "classic." Remember, we're talking quality and mechanics here, not impact. Ready?

The first song is "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.

The second is "Open Your Heart" by Madonna.

Go!

Got it yet? No? Tough to do, isn't it? Is this starting to make sense?

I won't for a second say "Hey Jude" is a bad song, nor will I claim "Open Your Heart" has touched nearly as many lives as McCartney's ballad. What I will point out is that the argument is impossible to make. Is Eb a better key than C? Does one tempo reign supreme over another? Can an outro really kick that much ass?

What's never been made clear is how a survey of industry insiders is supposed to put all this to rest. As though there's any way to measure these things. As though the biggest know best. As though I should believe Ritchie Sambora when he says Glenn Frey is the best thing to happen to rock music.

As though greatness were anywhere but in the ears of the beholder.

The New Age of Reason

2006-04-23T22:13:00.000-05:00

We celebrated my friend's birthday this weekend. He's all of 27 now, meaning that soon I'll also be 27 and vaguely described in different terms:

Single. White. Male. Late twenties.

Late twenties? It always sounded so old, so far away. So mature. So absolutely adult.

We would all have it figured out by now. Dining out and having spirited discussion and debate about current events. We would be informed. We would be so sophisticated. Managing or directing or creating or somehow being on top of the world.

But it's funny how things are so much different than that. Here it is now, five years out of college and still sustaining on reheated pasta, awkward interactions with the opposite sex, $1 bottle nights and the occasional all-you-can-drink party at bars we hate. Working a job that just kind of is to go out and do things we just sort of do...in the end, it's like some kind of warped Durdenian prophecy come true.

"You are not your ridiculous bar tab!"

As for my friend's celebration? We ended up at Nick's until 5 a.m. and had some birthday burritos afterwards. The sun was up when I got home.

Sophisticated? No. Mature? Probably not, but definitely a better time than the alternative.

Now if you'll excuse me, my pasta's almost done.

Fictional Interview with Unknown Subject, May 2004

2006-04-17T18:31:00.000-05:00

I: You’ve been rather busy these days.

S: (Laughs) Well, you caught me in a good stretch. Sometimes you just get on a roll, other times you get nothing done for weeks at a time. It’s very unpredictable. And annoying.

What have you been working on?

Bits and pieces, as usual. One thing I’ve noticed is that, usually, nothing I come up with ever seems to come together as a whole piece until the end. I’ll start with a word or a note here, a paragraph or a riff there, and eventually I realize that I’ve been working on the same thing from two different angles.

That must make for some unique experiences in the editor’s chair.

Yeah, well, it’s hard sometimes. A lot of my heroes out there, they all say the same thing: get it all out at once. I’ve never been able to work that way. For a while I thought something was wrong with the way I was approaching things. It took me a long time to realize that what was wrong was thinking that I was approaching things wrong. You’ve got to work the way you know how to. Anything else is just forcing things.

Like who?

U2, for one. I know that they write their songs in one motion. Dream Theater. Stephen King.

That’s some pretty ambitious company to put yourself in.

(Laughs) Yeah, well, you’ve got to aim as high as you can.

Describe your creative process.

Well, it’s pretty much a matter of finding the time to get everything down or to come up with something. I mean, I am still working a day job and that takes up a lot of my time. But even if it’s in small bursts, I still try to make as much time as I can for writing, for playing, for anything that lets me get whatever’s inside of me out. It’s what’s important to me. Maybe I’ll get a few lines down on the train ride to work or jot a verse or (sighs) a short poem. It might not be much, but at least I can still feel like I did something. And like I said, usually it becomes part of something bigger.

I noticed you cringe when you mentioned writing poems…

Was it that obvious?

You do seem to downplay that side of your output.

It’s not a matter of downplaying, it’s just that I hate that word. Poem. Poetry. When I write these things, I’m thinking not in terms of your typical coffehouse open-mic type of lamenting and bemoaning. More like a voiceover for a small chapter of a person’s life.

Your pursuits seem pretty diverse. What would you say is the most important of your outlets?

The writing. Definitely the writing. After that the music, and well after that the pictures. It’s what comes most naturally and it’s what I feel most comfortable doing. And I think a lot of that type of work, at least the narrative and mood elements, come through in the music and the photography.

That’s an interesting statement considering you almost exclusively write instrumentals.

(Laughs) Good point. That’s really more because I can’t sing. Seriously, my singing voice is terrible. Maybe I can pull off a backing vocal or a harmony but other than that…you don’t want to hear it. I write a lot of lyrics, but the problem is that I just don’t know anyone who can pull it off. Maybe I need to get out more.

Anti-Cubs Venom and Junk E-Mail Legend

2006-04-11T19:52:00.000-05:00

I know this has made the rounds several times over by now, but I want this to be out once and for all: I wrote it. At work, no less, after another morning drive spent hearing about how Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, et al., were going to bring a championship to the north side. To hell with them, I thought, and a hilarious forwarded e-mail was born. Below is the entire original text, unedited and in the same form as what I sent to eight of my friends...because I, like many Sox fans in February, was pissed-off and bored.

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Some things are funny year-round...pitchers and catchers report next month!

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2006 Chicago Cubs Promotional Schedule

April 7: Home Opener and raising of the "Attendance Flag" to commemorate the magical 2005 season in which the Cubs were a bigger draw than any of their hated rivals. Not being raised: World Series Champions flag.

April 8: Presentation of the "Nice Neighborhood" rings to members of the 2005 squad in commemoration of their capturing of the city's heart by playing in such a cute little part of town. Not being presented: World Series Champions rings.

April 9: Home Opener Weekend festivities conclude with the Cardinals completing a sweep of the Cubs at Wrigley.

April 24: Win a Mark Prior autographed picture! 100 lucky fans will receive a 5 x 7" photo signed by the Cubs' 11-game winner!

April 25: Turn Back the Clock I with throwback jerseys, old-timey music and special guests and relive the magic of the Cubs' epic loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS.

May 13: Turn Back the Clock II with authentic 1984 uniforms jerseys and an even-more-authentic loss to the 1984 NLCS champion San Diego Padres.

May 14: Precious Moments figurine doll to the first 10,000 female fans*.

June 15: Kerry Wood bobblehead day. The first 10,000 fans will receive a bobblehead doll of the Northsiders' all-time leader in simulated strikeouts!

June 16: Turn Back the Clock III - Kick off a rematch of the Cubs' most recent World Series appearance as they welcome the Detroit Tigers and try to beat them for the first time since 1945.

June 30: Crosstown Amnesty Day - All managers and first 25 players on the White Sox active roster will receive a complimentary win.

July 1: Turn Back the Clock IV - 1906 World Series rematch. Authentic memorabilia will be given out to lucky Cub fans, as will an authentic 1906-style massacre of their lovable losers.

July 2: Lovable Loser Day - First 15,000 losers get to fall in love with the Cubs even more as they are handed yet another staggering loss at home by yet another area team that has built something more substantial than their own ticket-scalping empire**.

July 14: Harry Caray Day, featuring an all-star tribute to the late and beloved former White Sox and Cardinals announcer.

August 1: Nine Games Back Day - First 10,000 fans in attendance to correctly explain what "Nine Games Back" means receive a Cubs t-shirt***.

August 19: Playoff Day. Come out and root for the Cubs as they stand on the brink of elimination against the Cardinals with forty-one games still left to play in the season. First 20,000 fans wearing Cubs gear receive a White Sox t-shirt.

September 2: Turn Back the Clock V - Cubs fans, come out and party like it's 1989 in this showdown against the 1989 NLCS champion San Francisco Giants!

October 1: Final Home Game / Wait 'Til Next Year Day - First 39,538 fans are idiots.

(*) This one's real, believe it or not. Precious Moments? Come on.
(**) Wrigley Field Premium Ticketing Services, 3717 N. Clark St.
(***) Contest runs through the end of the 2006 season. Okay, 2007 season.

Petty In Pink

2006-04-10T22:17:00.000-05:00

[Author's note: I wrote this in August of 2005 on the suggestion of a good friend. It was meant to be a "practice column," but I like the way it turned out. With another baseball season upon us, I thought it would be a fine time to put it out there. Enjoy!]

Go anywhere in this city and you’ll see Cubs and Sox fans out and about, each side wearing their allegiance with pride. Black and white for the south side. Blue and red for the north. Pink t-shirts all around.

Pink?

No one’s really sure how, but at some point it became fashionable for team colors to be left off of team apparel. It says Cubs, it must be a Cubs shirt, right? I don’t think so.

Teams are not just names on the front of jerseys. Teams are made of players and heroes, of stars and supporting acts and the stadiums they all call home. But you can’t take the front gates or the concourse or the parking lots with you. All you have is good memories and your favorite squad’s shirt on your back.

NYY. TC. These are just symbols until you paint them in the right home team shades, and then you take note of someone getting behind the Yankees or the Twins. A pink baseball shirt is the equivalent of a grade-schooler writing his favorite team’s name on a notebook; the sentiment is pure, even if the execution isn’t perfect.

It would be equal parts ignorant and stupid to say people can’t support their team any way they choose; the whole point of sports is that they belong to all of us. But people should be careful not to cheapen what that team means to the rest of us.

Even if they do look good doing it.

Choose Your Illusion

2006-04-04T20:09:00.000-05:00

Any band that makes it big will tell you that the second album is the hardest; while you had a lifetime to craft the debut, you’re now up against the clock for the follow-up. When the debut in question happens to be one of the finest hard rock albums of all-time and spawned no fewer than three of the most enduring tracks of its era, the pressure becomes considerably higher.

The debut was Appetite for Destruction, the year was 1991 and the band was Guns ‘N Roses. Having planted themselves atop the rock mountain four years earlier, it was time for the encore. Fans’ patience was rewarded with not one but two full-length albums worth of new material – Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Sales records were crushed, a legend was further cemented and world domination continued.

But what about the music?

The albums were not only split by time constraints of the compact disc format, but even within each disc there’s an obvious divide in the two (sometimes three) directions the band was heading. Axl Rose was writing ten-minute schizophrenic piano ballads (“Estranged,” “November Rain”). Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin was bringing time-honored rock grooves to the table (“Double-Talkin’ Jive,” “14 Years”). Guitar god Slash was falling somewhere in between (“Coma,” “The Garden”). What we the fans were being handed was pretty much everything – good or bad, this was Guns ‘N Fuckin' Roses. Love it or leave it, right?

Not necessarily. If you dig past the tracks that are filler and the tracks that are simply lunatic ravings (or in the case of Use Your Illusion II’s closer “My World,” both) there’s a lot of great music to be found – no great surprise considering the minds behind it all. The filler and the ravings, however, were often so meandering or labored that they bordered on the unlistenable. A great record was hiding somewhere in there, and in the spirit of this modern age of playlists and mix discs, we’ll trim away the fat and introduce a new masterwork to the world: behold, Use Your Illusion.

Civil War
You Could Be Mine
Double Talkin’ Jive
Don’t Cry (Original)
Breakdown
Perfect Crime
Right Next Door to Hell
The Garden
Yesterdays
Estranged
14 Years
Garden of Eden
You Ain’t the First
Dust ‘N Bones
November Rain

Instead of taking the previous Illusion albums’ approach of letting the listener digest everything at once in a seemingly random order, this new track listing and sequencing puts a more flowing structure to the listening experience. Simply put, we’re following the tried-and-true arc of countless classic albums. Come out swinging and keep on rocking; slow it down a few tracks in; build up to a huge centerpiece; delve into the experimental; and finally, (some would say most importantly) close out with an epic to end all epics.

In this light, the album picks up a kind of cohesiveness that the original pair was so sorely lacking. Rather than having contrasting song styles butt heads with each other, the songs now actually support each other and highlight each other’s strengths. Note how the classical acoustic guitar solo that ends “Double Talkin’ Jive” leads so nicely into I’s version of “Don’t Cry,” or how the opening piano chords of “Estranged” pick up exactly where “Yesterdays” ends its coda. Even better, the suite of Izzy-‘n-Slash songs towards the end provide a nice counterpoint to the Axl Rose indulgence that bookends them. Where “November Rain” was originally plugged in as a marathon between two shorter sprints, here the song has no subsequent tracks to answer to and is allowed to shine on its own, leaving the listener to hang on that final synthesized orchestra note and realize that there is nowhere for the band to go from there. The band has by this point shown all its cards; the album naturally follows suit.

By looking past everything the group did wrong here (and would do wrong later down the line as well), we’re allowed to see how great they truly were and wonder what could’ve been had they not self-destructed in the years following the Illusion releases. We see Stradlin toeing the line for classic rock purists everywhere and proving once again that there is a place for blues-based boogie shuffle in the heavy metal world. We see that Rose’s epics could be contained and his venom could be kept in check. And we see that Slash had more to offer than mere guitar heroics, even if the pyrotechnics are still in high supply here. From the belligerent swagger of “Dust ‘N Bones” to the screaming solos of “Estranged,” from the power balladry of “Don’t Cry” to the heavy metal slither of “You Could Be Mine,” it’s obvious that something great was right there all along.

And they wonder why the follow-up has taken so long?