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!
~
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
~
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?
~
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
Shootin’ Irons, Sputnik, and Lunacy July 3, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Cubs, Dementia, Guns, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Schoolboy, Sputnikfest, US Supreme Court.2 comments
So, with recession slamming us, gas prices rocketing toward the moon, the housing market flopping, and the very real possibility that the US will elect a (somewhat) black man as President this fall, the Supreme Court issues a death blow to municipal firearms bans. Yikes!
The Real American Girl
The five black-robed Solomons (all nominated by Ronnie Reagan and the Bush Dynasty) who signed off on the majority opinion last week are essentially telling the American public that its right to keep, cherish, and rub shootin’ irons all over their bodies is, well, sacred. Great. Just what we need in a time of economic malaise and jarring social change.
~ This turn of events might have made me depressed (or at least even more so than I usually am) if I hadn’t discovered that the lovely town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin is holding Sputnikfest on Friday and Saturday, September 5th and 6th.
The First Sputnik
It seems a chunk of Sputnik IV crashed onto the streets of said burgh back in 1962. Now a bunch of awfully cool people have come up with this first annual gala to mark the historic event. It’ll be a combination art fair, music fest, food orgy, beer bash, and overall hoot.
Manitowoc is on the way to Door County from Milwaukee and Chicago, so I’d suggest heading there for the weekend (organizers promise to name a Miss Sputnikfest, as if you needed more encouragement) and then driving up to Wisconsin’s thumb for fish boils, fab scenery, and cherry pie.
~ My pal Ben Joravsky tells me my recent post on the Cubs is prima facie evidence that I’m fairly well along on the road to psychosis. I predicted that the Cubs will break my heart this fall by losing the World Series to the Tampa Bay Rays. Here’s an excerpt of his response:
…and you’re doing this fretting in june, mind you, months before the post season begins. the cubs haven’t even made it to the playoffs — much less the world series — and you’re already worrying about losing the series to the rays. it’s like you’ve conjured up the worst of all possible endings to a wonderful season and convinced yourself that it will come true. i love you dearly, big feller, but when it comes to the cubs, you’re nuttier than a fruit cake….
Yeah. Wonderful season. And he tells me I’m crazy.
The Rays Win! The Rays Win!
~ Hey, have you bought Milo Samardzija’s book, “Schoolboy,” yet? If not, why not?
Big Mike
An October Tragedy? June 30, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in 9/11, Barack Obama, Big Mike, Conspiracy Theories, Cubs, Dr. Strangelove, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Michael G. Glab, Neo-conservatives, New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, War Fever.2 comments
I’ve been moaning to everyone I know that my heart will be broken this fall when, after the Cubs reach the World Series for the first time in 63 years, they will be beaten by those no-good, dirty lousy schmucks from Tampa Bay, the Goddamned Rays.
Yeah, yeah. Funny and ironic, it’s a scenario that plays in nicely with any good Cubs fan’s dearly-held mystical narrative of catastrophe. But you know what? I’m even more afraid that this coming fall promises a far more real and serious heartbreak.
President Ahmadinejad inspects Iran’s bomb kitchen
Seymour Hersh in today’s New Yorker writes that US military special operations have already begun in Iran, laying the groundwork for the shoot-’em-up that’ll be Bushie Boy’s farewell gift to the world. The Bush administration came into office salivating for Iraq. After the events of September 11th, 2001, the gang decided to remake the entire Middle East. The neo-conservative wonk-bullies who made up Bush’s inner circle saw their mission as quite nearly divine – to conduct a modern Crusade to rein in rampant Moslem fundamentalism and make the world safe for oil billionaires.
Now, at the end of what is without a doubt the nation’s worst-ever presidency, Bush and his croaking toads seem to want to finish the job. The whole thing makes a lot of sense, if your moral position resembles that of Dr. Strangelove. Radical Moslem fundamentalists, we all agree, need to be, well, neutralized. The attacks of 9/11 were so fortuitous for the Bush gang’s long-range plans that conspiracy theorists couldn’t help but adding two and two and coming up with a gazillion. And with China and India suddenly becoming huge consumers of oil, it’s imperative that the Middle East’s black gunk be controlled by trusty fellows who pay more heed to the value of the American dollar than to the writings of the Koran. Finally, an impending war around election time favors the candidate who’s a decorated war veteran and not a martini-sipping wall-leaner.
Future candidates: McCain in uniform, Obama in the library.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope the worst thing that happens in October is a Tampa Bay rally from a three-games-to-one deficit to win the World Series over the Cubs. But this is George W. Bush we’re talking about. Expect the worst.
Big Mike
100 Years of Ineptitude June 24, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Cubs, Michael G. Glab.add a comment
Alright, I’m neurotic. Paranoid, too. Obsessed with the Cubs – of course! I don’t buy into the concept of hexes or curses or any other woo-woo claptrap. But I know, I know, I know with every fiber of my being that the team with the best record in Major League Baseball on this date (yep, it’s my Cubs!) is going to break my heart by the end of October.
It Can’t Happen Again – Can It?
In fact, I even know how it’s going to happen. Cubs heartbreaks don’t come in plain brown wrappers. They’re not going to fall short by being beaten by a superior team, a team with a history like the Yankees or the Red Sox. Oh no, that’d be too humdrum.
I’m predicting right here and now the Cubs of 2008 will finally, after 63 years, reach the World Series. Mark it, baby!
The Cubs (and it’s difficult for me to type these words because it all sounds so odd) are the cream of the National League. No other team can touch them, even with Carlos Zambrano and Alfonso Soriano cooling their heels on the disabled list. I love this team.
The Black Cat Will Arrive Late This Year.
The hitters are smart, working counts, not trying to win games with six-run home runs, going with the pitch when necessary, taking the walk when the opposition pitcher gives it to them. Aramis Ramirez is a wonder. Derek Lee is steady and strong. Soriano is a greyhound. Geovany Soto is a dream come true. And Kosuke Fukudome is a ballplayer.
The pitchers have learned to throw strikes. Ryan Dempster no longer tears our guts out with his ninth-inning high-wire act; he’s one of the top starters in the league this year. He, Zambrano, Ted Lilly, and Jason Marquis form a dependable rotation. Kerry Wood now blows guys away in the ninth inning. Lou Piniella moves his relievers in and out of games like a chess master.
And in the field? The Cubs now catch the ball, throw it, and hold on to it when necessary as if someone has actually taught them a few basics of the game. Lou spent the first third of last season demanding they execute plays like professionals. His hard work has paid off.
The Cubs’ record is no fluke. They lead the league in runs scored and have allowed the fewest runs. That’s dominance. World Series here we come.
Now, for the sick part. The Cubs will not win the World Series. That alone shouldn’t be too much of a kick in the belly. If, say, the Red Sox take the Series in six games, we could console ourselves by saying, Heck, they’ve won a few championships lately. They’re the Red Sox!
But Boston ain’t gonna win the 2008 Series. Nor are the Bronx Bombers in their last year in Yankee Stadium. Not even the Angels of Southern California, they of the intimidating pitchers and Vlad the Slugger.
Here’s who’s going to win the 2008 World Series over my beloved Chicago Cubs. It’s a team that isn’t even a dozen years old. It’s a team whose attendance is lower than all but one other franchise in the American League. If this team decided to pack up its belongings and move clear across the country tomorrow, the yawn emanating from its hometown would be deafening. It’s a team whose manager is a bespectacled wonk who, by appearance, would seem more at home sitting in the cubicle down near the photocopy machine. It’s a team full of John Does who, admittedly, are talented, young and exciting, but most of whom probably need to flash an ID every time they want to enter the ballpark.
Make no mistake – the Cubs will take the early Series lead over them. Chicagoans will be dancing in the streets in anticipation of the first Cubs championship since before the development of broadcast radio. But the aforementioned team will come back. The visceral pain I experienced on September 25, 2004, and October 14, 2003, and October 7, 1984, and September 10, 1969 will be nothing so much as preparation for the agony I’ll experience in four months. I’ll even predict the new entry to add to this assemblage of infamous dates: Sunday, October 9, 2008.
Better Stock Up On Kleenex.
That’s the day the Cubs will have the a World Series championship snatched from them by a bunch of anonymities from a town where nobody really cares about them. On that day, the Tampa Bay Rays, will win Game 7 of the World Series in Wrigley Field.
The Tampa Bay Goddamned Rays.
I love the Cubs with all my heart and soul. But I hate them, too.
Too Much Tim, Spooks, And The End Of Days June 16, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Apocalypse, Big Mike, Cubs, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, MI5, Michael G. Glab, Princess Diana, Tim Russert, Toronto Blue Jays, Walter Cronkite, al Qaeda.add a comment
~ Okay, he was a great guy and a fine journalist and it’s Father’s Day and he wrote some book about his dad, but jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez! enough already! We get it. TV news has been all Tim Russert, all the time since Friday afternoon.
Journalists can be pack animals as much as any other gang of people. Witness their general treatment of one George W. Bush for the first four years of his presidency versus that since then. But, boy, have they circled the wagons over Russert’s untimely demise.
I don’t mean to be a crank here (alright, yes I do) but I’m merely trying to point out how easily people fall into group-think. When our mainstream news media goes on a bender we all wake up the next morning with a hangover.
I stopped in at Barnes & Noble this morning and learned that Russert’s books all sold out yesterday. Hmm. How many of those purchasers actually gave a single though to Russert’s existence in the week leading up to his death?
Maybe I’m out of the loop. (Duh. Of course I’m out of the loop; I spend my entire life trying to be contrary.) Maybe Tim Russert really was one of those celebs who’d become a member of the family. Had Walter Cronkite collapsed at the CBS studios back in 1968, the nation would’ve mourned. Heck, the world mourned when Princess Diana died in 1997. There are, I admit, people whose passing would be traumatic.
I just never figured Tim Russert would be one of them.
~ Nice juxtaposition with the opening of “Get Smart!” this week and the news that British spooks have twice left top secret papers on commuter trains in the past couple of weeks. The papers had to do with Iraq, Iran, and al Qaeda.
The new Max, top. The old Max and the Chief, bottom.
Is the British spy apparatus peopled by bumbling oafs? Or is something even weirder going on around here?
Perhaps the documents were no more sensitive than most other office communications floating around a massive bureaucracy. For all we know, spies might stamp “Top Secret” on everything from a counter-terrorism strategy to the flyer for this summer’s office picnic.
I have a hard time believing mid-level functionaries, while riding the London Tube, are reading documents pertaining to the fate of the world.
~ The Cubs just took two out of three from the Blue Jays up in Toronto this weekend. The boys continue to maintain baseball’s best record. Will the hundredth year be the charm? Should I begin preparing for the apocalypse now?
The Mark of the Beast
Harrumph. June 12, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Alfonso Soriano, Barack Obama, Boystown, Bravo, Britney Spears, Cubs, Earl Warren, Emmy Awards, George W. Bush, Jim Belushi, John McCain, Kathy Griffin, Loving Day, Loving v. Virginia, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mildred & Richard Loving, Oak Park, Race, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Richard Roeper, Scrabble, US Supreme Court, Uncategorized.add a comment
Imagine my displeasure this morning when one of the first things I noticed in the New York Times was a photo of Oak Park’s own Kathy Griffin. Thankfully I had nothing in my mouth at the moment otherwise the fellow sitting at the Starbuck’s table next to me might have been wearing my breakfast. The reason for this nightmarish apparition was a review of this year’s first episode of Griffin’s reality series, “My Life on the D-List,” now beginning it’s fourth season.
That’s right – fourth season. Griffin, a gargoyle with red hair, pancake makeup and a grating voice, has made a career out of talking about herself and her brushes with celebrities, topics about as riveting as a game of Scrabble between George W. Bush and Britney Spears.
Here’s the kicker: Kathy Griffin has won an Emmy award for her show, seen (where else?) on Bravo Thursday nights. Bravo has remade itself into the channel of choice for the gay middle class. Griffin’s core market, if one is to judge by her choice of monologue topics and cutaway shots of her live audiences, is decidedly Boystown.
What in the living hell do they give Emmys out for anymore?
Griffin holds down an honored spot in one of my Excel lists entitled Life-Is-Not-Fair. Joining her on the list are such Chicago area luminaries as Jim Belushi and Richard Roeper. I read through the list whenever I begin to think that the world has some rhyme or reason. Invariably when I think such thoughts I become disappointed, discouraged and ultimately fall into a funk. If these three hyenas and others on the list can earn fabulous livings utilizing their scarcely identifiable talents, then there is no logic to be found on this hunk of rock. Life ain’t fair, baby.
Those of us who cling to the notion that the concept of fairness should hold sway are doomed to constant disappointment. So in a way, Kathy Griffin and the others do me a service.
Speaking of unfairness, the Cubs’ Alfonso Soriano suffered a cracked bone in his left hand after being hit by a pitch in last night’s game against the Braves. Dang. He’ll miss up to six weeks while his paw heals.
I should have expected at least a little bad news to come out of this dream season. Soriano’s loss probably will slow down The Century Express a bit.
This question has been on my mind the last few days as President Bush travels through Europe talking tough about Iran. Is he ramping up the rhetoric in order to help make Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a Vietnam vet and former POW, look better come November?
After all, the rap against Dem Barack Obama is that he’s inexperienced and far too conciliatory. And, of course, he’s a sleeper agent for the Islamic terrorist cabal that wants to destroy America. If we’re on the verge of war with Mahmoud Ahamadinejad this fall, the Republicans can crow that we’d be better off with McCain as Commander in Chief. It seems the GOP’s only hope.
Happy Loving Day! Didn’t know it was Loving Day, did you? Admit it, you don’t even know what Loving Day is. Today’s the 41st anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision overturning anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states. Yup, within my lifetime a significant swath of the Union held marriage and/or the sexual coupling of people from different races to be criminal acts. Yikes!
And people wonder why the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has such a chip on his shoulder.
In 1959, Mildred and Richard Loving pleaded guilty in the state of Virginia to the heinous crime of being husband and wife. She was black and he white. You’ve gotta love the statement issued by the deep-thinking Judge Leon Bazile who ordered the Lovings to leave Virginia after their guilty plea:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.
Wow! And where do the Malays get off, having their own race?
With the ACLU behind them, the Lovings pressed their case to the nation’s highest court. In a unanimous decision, Earl Warren’s court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were racially discriminatory and violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. For its part, Virginia argued that since both blacks and whites were equally penalized for violating the law, it couldn’t be discriminatory. Nice try.
So take a look at your friends and relatives who’ve married or live with someone outside their races and know that less than half a century ago they would have been felons.
Big Mike
