Superfans

To follow a team is a tricky thing.

In the city of Chicago there are hundreds of thousands of Bears coats that putter around in the freezing cold, dragging with them the old wrought glitter of the 85' Superbowl win. The greatest team ever, they maintain.

The skies are grey and the wind is too deeply painful to call 'cold.' You see, cold can freeze locks but it takes something harder to freeze a heart. The blues.

People talk about the Chicago blues a lot, but beyond being a reason for electric boasting folks may consider the firmament that made it.

The bigger factory that created Chess Records, extra saucy ribs, sausage everything and the most sinister urban politics of the country. Immigrants from Poland, the South, Ireland and Mexico, all come together to work under the hard wind. No one came for the sun. They only came to load their bellies and trudge.

That pressure has made a sharp blade with few places to grind it. The fewer the outlets, the more voltage you try to get from what's there. Go Bears.

The problem is that the city is broke and it's sportsfans have the same depleted jones of low-stakes gamblers. We're trying to get that that first-high back after 25 years...

But the city has taught us not to expect anything other than hard times and a tongue lashing from old man winter. Play the blues. Industrialize disco. Cheese them fries.


da Mayor

Barcelona played and beat Arsenal to advance in the Champions league. It was a brutal and nerve-wracking game. Violent and full of fouls. A fight.

Barça scored all 4 goals of the game though they only won 3-1 (Busquets marked an own goal to tie the game after heading a miserable corner right into his own net). In fact the team took 100% of the shots in the game and had 70% of possession.

Undoubtedly the goal of the match, the magic moment, came in the bonus time of the first half when it was still 0-0. Fabregas tossed off a careless backheel pass that was picked off by Iniesta and then dished to Messi for a goal that echoed both Xavi's opening goal against Real Madrid in November, and Messi's own first goal in the Champions league five years ago.



The game was a heart attack to watch. The goal offered the kind of relief you get when a dam breaks over Gommorrah. Let's end this shit. Let's get the satisfaction that only justice can bring.

Our golden age is now.