Chicago Trifecta

I have just returned from a brief visit to the homeland of The Shan, Chicago. There are a few little bits of interest:

• The Cross-Town Classic, Cubs vs. White Sox, took place while I was home. My Mom and my brother, and nearly every other member of my family, are White Sox fans. It’s a Southside Irish kind of thing. I, however, place my loyalty with the Northside Cubs. I guess I just like them better b/c they’re prettier; their stadium (Wrigley Field, baby!), their uniforms and yes, their fans, are just prettier. White Sox fans often poke fun at the “glamour kids” of Wrigleyville. They say that we only go to the ballpark to see and be seen amidst an ivy backdrop. You know what? It’s true, but we love our boys, too. It’s just that over the years, if our primary focus was only baseball, we’d slit our wrists. So sue us if we go cruisin’ in the bleachers. Without question the Cubs are a sadder sack of losers than the White Sox. Sure, the Sox have the whole 1919 World Series “Black Sox” debacle, and they can’t manage to put a pennant in their pockets b/c they’re perennial second placers. But the Cubs? Don’t even try to suck worse than we do! We’re the chronic wife beaters of MLB. Every year, we promise that it will be different, and sometimes we even manage to get close enough to taste a morsel of victory, but as soon as you can say “Cubs fan, Bud man,” we’re knockin’ our old lady around again. Don’t let the pin stripes fool you. Underneath our class act jerseys are pit-stained tanks and tattoos with naked ladies on motorcycles.
  The Sox took the series 2-1. They’ve got the best record in the league, and are about 18 games over 500. The Cubs, on the other hand, are bruised and battered with way too many standouts on the disabled list. They will live to suck another day.

• On the plane last night, the guy sitting behind me had the worst breath. I could smell its toxicity a full row in front of him. Yuck! Every time I cocked my head a bit right, to see something out the window, I was punished for wanting see more clouds. Stink. Stank. Stunk. Would it have been rude to just launch a couple pieces of Orbit back at him?
  

• My family is so gay. But I don’t mean gay like homo gay, I mean gay in a fastidious, linen pants, pin curls, ascot, Gatsby sort of intellectual sense. We can be too cute by half, too smart for our own good. And while I was at home, I realized how this must play to outsiders because I pulled back and tried to listen to us as an outsider would. That’s when I realized that if I were to play Trivial Pursuit with us, I’d probably punch somebody. Four of us, all cousins, all between the ages of 32 – 28, were discussing songwriters because I had mentioned that I really enjoyed a cover of “Blue Skies” that Lyle Lovett did a few years ago. Immediately my cousin asked, “Now, who wrote ‘Blue Skies’?” Boom! Gayness had arrived.

“Hmmm. Not the Gershwins, right? Ira and George.”

“Mmmm, I don’t think so. Interesting fact: do you know who wrote the lyrics and who wrote the music?”

“With those two? I don’t know.”

“Ira wrote the lyrics and George did the scoring.”

“Excellent.” Turning to her husband, “Now, you should know that.”

“Whaaa? Why?”

“Actually, I only got it right because I had a 50/50 chance. Well, that’s not true. I watched that PBS special on The American Broadway experience or whatever. Did you see any of that? It was marvelous. Didn’t Ira die at an early age or something?”

“Yes, I did see some of it.” Turning to her husband again, “You should know it because it’s your field, theater.”

“O.K. But who wrote ‘Blue Skies’?”

“Cole Porter?”

“No, not clever enough.”

“Um, could it be Harold Arlen? He wrote ‘Over the Rainbow.’”

“Didn’t he just die?”

“No. He died in ’86, I think.”

“I can’t believe we don’t know who wrote ‘Blue Skies.’”

A tragedy, isn’t it? Can you believe how uptight and nerdy we are? I was prepared to get on the web ASAP to find out, but we dropped it, or rather “pickled it” for later. And just to have the last word, Bill & Andrea, it’s Irving Berlin. He wrote ‘Blue Skies.’

This same group once laughed hysterically because one of us mistakenly referred to the Queen Mother (when she was still breathing) as a centurion. The intent, however, was to say ‘100 years old’ in the most dignified way. Unfortunately, a centurion is a commanding Roman soldier, not a 100 year old matriarch. Oops! Sorry, Queen Mum! The correct word was centenarian. This was so funny to us that we were in tears and gasping for breath. We could not stop. How funny would it have been then to call her a centaur? Ahhh! Oh, stop the hilarity! My girlfriend at the time witnessed this conversation, and I remember her staying completely silent, not cracking so much as a weak smile. I’d imagine that, for her, the interaction was bizarre, and not unlike giving a dictionary to a bunch of clowns at a think tank, telling them to write a sketch. A “Who’s On First” for geeks.

I used to be embarrassed because I was a dork. I cared about the minutiae that no one else did. And I also used to be embarrassed for being a homo because it, too, made me so different and isolated. Now, though, I have to admit that I really like all my gay. I love my un-gay but really gay family, too.