Coping With The Cubs – Get It Now! September 10, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Coping With The Cubs, Cubs, Michael G. Glab.4 comments
It’s the literary event of the new millenium! You’ve been waiting for it and now you’ve got it. Hot off the laptop of one of today’s most compelling authors, Michael G. Glab, the sports fan’s memoir “Coping with the Cubs: A Life of Depression, A Year of Hope” is on sale today.
A Happy Cubs Fan? He’s Gotta Be Crazy!
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Delving into the murky depths of Cubs fandom and his own psyche, Glab offers refreshing and rare insights into those twin maladies: love of the Cubs and clinical depression. A lifelong sufferer of both diseases, Glab provides glimpses into his absurd world, one in which he battles dark thoughts every day, one that too often seems replete with anguish and angst, yet one in which he’s chosen to devote his passions and hopes to the baseball team that never, ever wins! Is he crazy? Read “Coping with the Cubs” and find out.
Tears In Wrigley
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Glab learns, after following the Cubs from afar during the 2007 season, that if he can survive his team’s countless heartbreaks over the last four decades, he can survive anything. It’s a story of hope in the face of hopelessness and triumph where victories are tantalizingly rare. How appropriate, then, that “Coping with the Cubs” should come out today, September 10th, 2008, just as the Cubs once again are free-falling toward yet another memorable collapse. Or will they turn it around? Will this be the year the Cubs slay all their dragons, put to rest all those tales of hexes and curses, and finally win their first World Series in a hundred years?
I Can Dream, Can’t I?
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Anything’s possible – wise words for anyone who suffers from depression. It’s a lesson that can only be understood by someone who’s spent his life “Coping with the Cubs.”
Click on any mention of “Coping with the Cubs” in this post to purchase your copy today.
My Cubs Book & The God Particle September 8, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Coping With The Cubs, Creation Museum, Cubs, George W. Bush, God Particle, Higgs Boson, Iraq, John McCain, Karen Roszkowski, Michael G. Glab, Sarah Palin, Science, War Fever.1 comment so far
Hey, I’m back! The book is finished and has been sent off to my e-publisher. Yahoooooooo!
Keep an eye on this space for the release date of “Coping With The Cubs: A Life Of Depression, A Year Of Hope.”
Cover Detail, Designed by Karen L. Roszkowski
Nice to see that the forces of ignorance have been as strong as ever during my absence. No, I’m not talking about that big powwow in Minneapolis last week. Actually, this is the first Republican ticket that doesn’t make me want to run screaming for the medicine chest. John McCain seems a decent fellow with his heart in the right place (even though he has to play nice with all the right-wingnuts of the GOP.) And I give him a lot of credit for selecting a woman as a running mate. Here’s to you, old Johnny, for putting the first MILF on a national ticket!
Sarah Palin: The First Hot Veep?
No, the ignoramuses I refer to are those Chicken Littles who’ve been trying to stop the first run of the new Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
I’m a science nut so I’ve been geeked since 1995 when funding was approved for the facility. The LHC is now the largest particle collider ever built, making the previous record-holder, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago look like an elementary school running track. The Tevatron has been – and the LHC will be – on the lookout for a little thing called the Higgs Boson, also known as “The God Particle.” The Higgs, if found, would be the most elementary particle yet discovered. It would pretty much explain why there are things in this crazy, mixed-up Universe.
The Bang Gang: CERN Scientists Try To Understand The Big Bang
As always, whenever there’s a huge scientific advancement, the hand-wringers start yelling about how it’s going to kill us all. The scaredy-cats in question fear that the LHC will inadvertantly create a black hole Wednesday when it’s turned on. Some people watch too many sci-fi movies. They envision this black hole popping into existence and sucking everything in the world into itself, rendering the outcome of the 2008 baseball season moot. The LHC already has caused any number of petitions and lawsuits to pop into existence.
There’s an anti-science mood in the world today, particularly here in the USA. Strange, when you consider that we live in the a world where huge strides have been made against disease and hunger, where a person can travel from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Des Moines, Iowa in a matter of hours rather than months, and where every schoolchild can listen to the Jonas Brothers on a miniaturized, portable, self-contained music player even when they’re supposed to be studying polynomials for that big test tomorrow. All thanks to science.
Knowledge Is Good: Don’t You Think? Or Don’t You Think?
Most people in the world (and, again, in the USA in particular) would prefer to be ignorant. And pundits wonder how we could have fallen for George W. Bush’s Iraq war.
Glad to be back. Talk to you next time.
Fretting (As Usual) And Strumming July 14, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Chicago Reader, Coping With The Cubs, Cubs, Joe Satriani, Keith Richards, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Richard M. Daley, Schoolboy.2 comments
I’ve been too busy to rant in these precincts the last few days mainly because I’m hustling to accomplish a couple of other things right now.
I’m Learning!
My family’s picnic is coming up on August 3rd. I hope to have the book, “Coping With The Cubs: A Life of Depression, A Year of Hope” completed and published online before then so I can crow about it to all my kin. Also, I’ve been working on getting down the main guitar part for “Brown Sugar,” perhaps my favorite pop song of all time, so I can play it for my nephew Doug, the aspiring musician of the clan. Doug loves the acrobatic-fingered virtuosos like Joe Satriani, whereas I prefer rhythmic kings like Keith Richards.
I bought my first guitar in January and have been teaching myself how to play. My pal Skip Frank, the trombonist and former Louisville-area high school music teacher, has given me a few theory pointers but mainly I’ve depended on instructional books and You Tube vids. It’s a slow learning process but I’m taking tiny steps forward all the time. One obstacle is that my fingers are sausage-like and I have the genetic misfortune to have been born with spatulated digits, meaning my fingertips are abnormally flat and rounded. That makes it only slightly easier for me to master a musical instrument than for an arthritic butcher to become a neurosurgeon.
A Normal Human Hand Over A Big Mike Hand
Still, I’m pretty proud of myself for taking on the challenge in my 50s.
As for the book, my feelings about it are baffling. I love it and hate it. Sometimes I read what I’ve written and think I’m one of the finest scribes who’s ever trod the Earth. Other times I fear my mother won’t even take the time to read it. I suppose that’s the emotional lot of all writers. Then again, I saw Joyce Carol Oates on a panel discussion yesterday and wondered why I couldn’t be more like her. Oates has written 49 complete novels and eight novellas and has published 32 short story collections, at least eight plays, and countless essays, poems, young adult books and children’s stories. What the hell kind of coffee does that woman drink?
Books Written By Oates Last Week
Oates has been quoted as saying, “I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.” My response, with all due respect, is “Joyce, shut up.” I can give her lessons in failure.
Failure, oddly enough, has been missing from the Wrigley Field world this season. We go into the mid-season all-star break with the Cubs tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in baseball. The team is clicking on most cylinders and has about 47 players on the all-star team. How weird and unlikely would it be for the Cubs to end their World Series victory drought precisely at the one-hundred-year mark? Not that I’m betting on it, of course. As I’ve moaned here previously, the Tampa Bay Goddamned Rays will win the Fall Classic this year, defeating the North Side boys. It’s only fitting.
“Apres moi…,”
Ben Joravsky continues to lambaste the Farouk of the Fifth Floor (aka: Mayor Richard M. Daley) in the Chicago Reader. If you’re not up on Bennie’s work on the Mayor’s power grabs and tax-financed war chest you’re missing some of the finest muckraking journalism in the country today.
I understand the Immortal Milo Samardzija has just about completed yet another novel, this one with a science fiction tinge. Sheesh, he must be drinking Joyce Carol Oates’ brand of coffee. Anyway, get on “Schoolboy” right now so you can read this new tome when it comes out. The guy sure knows how to splotch a piece of paper with ink.
Oh, and keep a block of time open for “Coping With The Cubs.”
Big Mike
Catch up, Baby! June 12, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Coping With The Cubs, Karen Roszkowski, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Nelson Algren, Philip Roth, Schoolboy.1 comment so far
I’ve been a long time gone from these precincts. Since April 5th, actually. Been finishing the Cubs book and trying to keep my head above the waters of melancholia (such timely imagery!)
The book finally has a title: “Coping With The Cubs: A life of depression – a year of hope.” Sent some excerpts out to Ben Joravsky and Karen Roszkowski. These children of the former Eastern Block turned in excellent critiques. Based on Joravsky’s take, I’ve been adding a lot more personal info. Karen, on the other hand, would like nothing better than for me to get the damned thing out there. I’m trying to satisfy both of them.
While you’re waiting for my tome to crash your hard drive, try this: “Schoolboy.” It’s a novel about a kid who tries to shoot the moon as a poker player. Written by Milo Samardzija (no relation to Cubs minor league phenom Jeff,) “Schoolboy” is right out of the noir world that gave us “The Man With The Golden Arm.”
I ain’t sayin’ Samardzija is the next Nelson Algren. No more than I’m the next Philip Roth. But Milo (believe me, it’s exhausting to keep typing Samardzija) spins a fascinating tale. “Schoolboy” costs $7.99. Loosen the death grip you have on your wallet and buy it. Hey, the book costs a penny less than one adult admission to “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.” If you can drop your good, hard-earned scratch on that bomb then you ought to spend some on a book that’s worth your while.
Big Mike
