Its Opening Day

Hello
There is an article in this weeks 3/31 issue of the Sporting News (these guys are great baseball writers) The L word it is an article on losing. The second page of the article is an expose on the Cubs and their Fans, it talks of the clinical psyche of losing, and the attraction that people have with losing, kind of like that whole Freudian pap, about being attracted to that which can do us most harm. The article sites all these songs about the Cubs lament, and the epic errors that cost the cubs opportunities to get into the series, or the ex-factor (when ex Cubs go on to post season success against their former team).Then there is the talk of that stupid goat curse, drawing from an instance that wasn’t suppose to have taken place until the mid 40`s? The real curse is having to listen to the inane rationalizations of people that are on the outside looking in. One of my favorite Cubs fans Brendan Behan once wrote "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."

I have had to sit and listen over the past few years as people spoke about the obnoxious Red Sox curse and How long it had been since they had won a series, then the stupid White Sox and their drought, I didn’t care before they won a series, and I don’t care now!, hell! There are 8 teams that have never won a series! Red Sox Nation My @$$!!

But I digress… okay, In the article Joe Montegne states that he doesn’t understand why cubs fans were so angry with Steve Bartman? we all knew that moment was about to happen and Buttman was just a manifestation of all of our underlying fears. I completely understand. I am not saying the moment was willed in some cosmic sense, I am saying that as a Cub fan we share a common bond like the survivors of a shipwreck. Hell! Buttman had the best seats in the frickin house to one of the most important games in recent memory!! Recently I attended the funeral of a dear friend and I stated that “We shared a passion for the Cubs, he loved the underdog no matter what the cost” for me the Cubs epitomize that underdog not just in baseball but in all of us.

Last year in an interview Soriano was asked about a fight that had taken place between the Cubs and the Padres, he was asked if it may have been the result of a celebrational step that he took as he rounded the bases on a prior home run, Soriano replied; ‘That he was an emotional player, but he would not disrespect himself, the game, or his family’. Who says things like that anymore?! In a world where we applaud the, blind siding ‘cheap shot’ artists of the NHL and NFL players cant stay out of jail long enough to make it onto the field, and once they do make it to the field they cant help but embarrass themselves with how much more idiotic they can be, than the last guy that scored a touchdown.

I know! I know! I have sat in the Wrigley outfield with ‘The Bleacher Bums’ having beer splashed on me like the cheap Aqua Velva that those Guido’s seem to love so much. You get those jerks anywhere, how many times have I attended a Super Bowl Party, having to explain to some, half drunk, O-face, corporate peon, fully adorned in his teams favorite jersey, the ‘pass interference’ rule, what defines ‘possession’ or, what ‘breaking the plane’ means in Football. I am talking about the team, Hell I am talking about the game!!
To me no other group of athletes continue to nurture a respect for a game that has provided so much for them, and the Cubs symbolize to me all the things that are still good about the best game ever! As the great Ernie Banks was known to epitomize in a remark of simple humility, gratitude, and enthusiasm “let’s play two”

-The Jaywalker

On this day

On this day in 1971 "One toke over the line" by Brewer & Shipley, was banned by radio station WNBC in New York and a number of stations across the country followed suit, I dont get it?

Also on this day in 1969 the Zapatista poet Alurista first presented his poem The Myth of Aztlan, this helped to rally the Brown Pride movement of the sixties around the ideal of an ancient North American homeland.
The myth is that, among the many ancient Azteca tribes some chose to flee the violent infighting of their Mexican homeland and migrate back to North America. Numerous Myths place this homeland in any number of places, from Wisconsin all the way to the Pacific Northwest. What the reemergence of this myth did was, to empower a race of native people that had been led to believe that they were immigrants and unwanted in a land that did not belong to them, and instilled in them the belief that Aztlan is their birthright, an ancient promise of freedom and hope that antecedes ideals of a nation that continues to vilify them.

Welcome

Hello anybody (is there anybody out there?)
And welcome to my inaugural Post of The Drunkards Cloak, let me first say that I don’t claim that anything in this blog is true, honest, factual, or necessarily mine. And in the same respect, I don’t believe that anything posted here (in the blog) will in turn be burdened by the same limitations. These are merely vitriolic observations on esoteric hypothesis. I will not subscribe to; good taste, poor judgment, political correctness, honest mistakes, blind justice, good punctuation or, worn out tired thinly veiled arcane obligatory marionettes of mendacity that most people choose to call their morality! Its not that I don’t believe in morality (I am sure I lie to myself as much the next person) but I just want one place where I don’t have to be burdened by it. And if there is one defining principal of this blog it is this “He will not drive us hence” as Milton said. I only hope that as you shuffle through your day, dodging the shit hailstorm, seeking the truth elsewhere, that you are able to take a moment to look in here and find comfort in the fact that you are not alone and I sympathize with your struggles. And if no one ever sees this blog, then it is merely for my own sanity that I write this, or if only one person ever sees this then I hope it helps.

By the way Richard Widmark Passed today he was 93. I remember his laugh in the movie(I think is was "Kiss of Death") as he pushed the landlord lady down the steps in her wheelchair, I first saw it when I was a child and it scarred me, he was really creepy. To his credit he also played Jim Bowie in "The Alamo" with John Wayne, he actually fights off a grip of Mexican soldiers on his deathbed. And he was also in "The Halls of Montezuma" with Jack Webb another classic! You just hate to see these guys go, man they were great, smoking on airplanes, puttin cigarettes out on their tongues, fightin essays off from their deathbed, they just don’t make em like that anymore. I find it funny that in his obit published in the New York Times, and The Washington Post, they talk about what an amazing career he had and they both end with, that his daughter was once married to the great Sandy Koufax, as if he wasn’t cool enough.
The Jaywalker