What’s wrong with this picture?

I am not a sporty guy. I’ve tried to get into sports, and I’ve touched on this subject here in the past, but we are just a match that is not meant to be. For instance, when I went through a baseball phase in the mid-to-late ‘80s, which in retrospect I consider to be a pretty golden era in baseball, I realized that my obsessive nature was more inclined to collect baseball cards than to watch a baseball game. I don’t know, maybe my obsessive love of music, reading, writing and a dozen other things just fulfills my quota of interests and sports didn’t make the cut.

I do actually enjoy attending a number of sporting events. Soccer can be fun to crowd watch, hockey doesn’t bug me either and baseball is the one game I view more as a social experience than as sporting event. Especially Cubs games at Wrigley Field.

Especially last minute double-headers at Wrigley Field during which the Cubs clinch a divisional title.

And I’m sitting in the fourth row just to the left of home plate. Pretty sweet huh?

Anyone who actually cares about the subject probably knows this particular game inside and out by now so I won’t really extensively comment on anything that happened on the field. What I did find interesting is just how miserable most Cubs fans looked about fifteen minutes after the end of the second game as their relief that the Cubs actually made it to the playoffs turned to dread as they realized…oh crap, the Cubs actually made it to the playoffs!

A Cubs fan is a unique fan. Sometimes I think the fans are more important than the actual team. And I think at this point it’s impossible for a Cubs fan to truly savor any kind of victory with out fearing the ultimate stumbling and defeat they’re grown used to seeing. I think the agony is even intensified post-season as the true fan hopes for victory and strains to remain sane when every logical cell in their body is arranging itself to deal with the uncompromising letdown of certain defeat.

Me? I hope the Cubs do well and the fans get to celebrate a while longer. Ultimately I hope they don’t make it to or win the World Series because I think if the Cubs were ever truly victorious, that little something that makes them so loved by the city of Chicago might be lost forever. And that would be truly tragic.

Strokin’

I finally got to listen to the new Strokes disc Room On Fire and I can say with confidence these New Yorkers have side-stepped the dreaded sophomore curse by sticking to familiar production values and dependable songs. I think part of the band’s charm actually derives from their records sounding like they’re being pushed through amps with cones just barely held together with duct tape and vocals that sound transmitted from 1933. Thank god they didn’t use Nigel Godrich or the whole thing probably would have sucked.

Of course these charming qualities would be worthless without killer tunes and Room On Fire is full of them. “What Ever Happened” opens the disc with a punch and a growl while further on “The End Has No End” crams synth-pop ideas into snarling guitars. Dig it.

Some help?

Finally, I’m looking for a little advice. I’m going to purchase a ’94 two-door Honda Civic but the thing has no stereo. Can anyone out there recommend some reasonably priced speakers and a CD player that also has auxiliary inputs so I can play my 30 GB iPod? Any e-mails to tankboy at aol dot com or suggestions in the comments section below are fully welcomed.