Chicago

by simplesinger on Oct 21, 2005 12:31 PM CDT

I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
- H. L. Mencken

Chicago By nights when the yellow salamanders of the EL bend all one way and the cold rain runs with the red-lit rain.

the way the city's million wires are burdened only by lightest snow;

When chairs are stacked and glasses are turned and arc-lamps all are dimmed.

By days when the wind bangs alley gates ajar and the sun goes by on the wind.

By nights when the moon is an only child above the measured thunder of the cars, you may know Chicago's heart at last.

from Nelson Algren's "Chicago: City on the Make

Chicago

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.
- Nelson Algren August 13, 1984

4 more games.

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A Song...

Then stand to your glasses steady
And drink to your comrade's eyes
Here's a toast to the old sox ready
to fight and win or die.

- Adapted from a drinking song popularized by Chicago reporters at the Whitechapel Club

Great players make great plays.

by simplesinger on Oct 21, 2005 12:44 PM CDT reply actions

Lovely

I've been waiting for these since you posted the Sandburg quote before ALCS. Thanks.

by Landfill on Oct 21, 2005 2:18 PM CDT reply actions

Yeah, thanks

by spengler on Oct 21, 2005 4:00 PM CDT reply actions

Your Welcome

You guys wanted some more literary mojo, so I did my best. Here's to hoping it works.

Great players make great plays.

by simplesinger on Oct 21, 2005 4:43 PM CDT reply actions

It will work

And the White Sox and their faithful should be damn glad that we have Nelson Algren for literary mojo... who the hell do the Houston Astros have? No matter what happens with this series, Algren remains with the Sox..

did you ever read The Man With the Golden Arm?

by spengler on Oct 22, 2005 12:12 AM CDT up reply actions

as an ex-wicker park resident

I absolutley loved it. Living there in the 80's you could still kind of feel some of it. My next door neighbor had lived there since the early 50's and he used to tell me stories about the place. Then I'd get too drunk at places like the goldstar and innertown and rainbow, dreaming of falling all the way in. I could imagine the characters coming and going. It was still dirty, a little dangerous, ethnically muddled, kind of a sepia place.

Thing of it was, there's nothing at all romantic about the story. In fact the way I connected with it is I saw that quiet desperation of the young working class, much like people I knew, some people in family. I went to college but always felt I was more them, the Frankie Machine-class than I was supposed to. It's agood book for a drunk young man.

There's a quote from Algren about how all these kids came back from the war with their addictions, but I think it was merely a portent of the social disruptions that came a little later on. It's just that a sufficient level of fear, the commies and the cold war, lead to stifling conformity and a kind of internal xenophobia. Not that anything like that would happen today...

Don't ever see the movie and especially if you haven't read the book. The book is fabulous sad. The movie is terrible.

By the way, Studs Lonigan was a big Sox fan and I remember some passages about them. I only read the first book of the triology. It was really interesting from a historical south side perspective, sort of a nice Sein und Zeit piece, but Farrell wasn't a great writer. I'd love to dredge up some stuff from that but I just don't have time.

alia iacta est - win now

by dyspeptic on Oct 22, 2005 1:00 AM CDT reply actions

Iloved the book

But I won't touch the movie...I'm not from Chicago, but I got that sweet grimy feel from the book. I know that feel from pretty much every place I've lived for the last 20 years.

But godamn, the Sox are 1-0.

by spengler on Oct 23, 2005 12:28 AM CDT up reply actions

I'm too busy reading and posting on blogs

after midnight.

What an ass I am

alia iacta est - win now

by dyspeptic on Oct 22, 2005 1:03 AM CDT reply actions

I know what you mean

Wife out with her friends, daughter finally in bed...Saturday night with the craptop...

So pathetic it hurts. Blog on, bro.

by spengler on Oct 23, 2005 12:26 AM CDT up reply actions

No Pity Needed

I disagree. In whatever weird, 21st Century medium we have here, I think this a form of community and connection. Books are wonderful, but they are so often solitary. Interacting through and sharing with a site like this is a kind of human connection that is different in form but not in kind than what has come before. So don't condemn yourselves to pity. Rather, enjoy the fact that, in addition to companions and family, you have a handful of virtual friends who share your irrational attachment to a bunch of strangers who wear our livery.

by Landfill on Oct 23, 2005 12:44 PM CDT up reply actions

OK then

here's to the Sox! 3 more wins... and FYI that link to the Venezuelan newspaper posted by jimgstl is invaluable... ozzie's latest (Oct. 18) entry adds some fuel to that normative/non-normative discussion we were having in the other thread, as it's all about the team chemistry the sox enjoy, as intangible and unquantifiable a factor as canbe imagined. It also sheds a little light on the discussion regarding Kenny Williams' performance as GM, as ozzie refers directly to the "swoon" phase of the season where fans and pundits were screaming for a trade to be made for a bat...maybe I'll work up a more detailed diary about that at some point, but one thing is for sure, Oswaldo is keenly aware of what is going on around him.

by spengler on Oct 23, 2005 1:46 PM CDT up reply actions

one of the nice and human

things about this connection is that you can go on and on and the person you are talking to doesn't have to feel like they have to look you in the eye, agree, punch you in the nose or buy the next round.

I like to talk to strangers and people with similar interests to my own, but when the guy on the stool next to you asks you if you've ever read the Protocols of Zion, you got to find the exit. I've really enjoyed these discussions and the coincidence with of the White Sox success only adds lubrication.

Wear our livery indeed.

alia iacta est - win now

by dyspeptic on Oct 24, 2005 4:58 PM CDT reply actions