I love the hours just before going out on a Saturday evening.  There's a sense of authority that goes along with laying out one's "party clothes" and confirming reservations at Francesca's Forno. I love gathering together my colognes (yes, that's a plural, I own several different brands and am not afraid to use them) and shaving lotion, and dumping them near the sink as I take the second (or third) shower of the day. It's the scent of anticipation that intoxicates most.

But…

As with most self-indulgent meta-babblings, this feeling's prominence may have less to do with its import than with the unending desire to inflate our own delicate egos.  To validate self-worth, many of us construct special social ingenuities to be used in lieu of intellectual and inter-personal contrivances most modern-day thinkers aver creates real power. Yes, there's aura of autonomy dovetailing a Saturday night on the town, but the real question is whether it sticks around Sunday morning?

The toll way has fallen, crouched on one side. Cars like sugar, dust its aching back, and cloister in dense, steel packets. I watched the it with uninterrupted detachment from the conference room of my company’s corporate office. People were standing beside their cars, steely but dejected and searched for any end to the faux blizzard hazard destroying the commute. It was all so mind-numbingly awful. The only thing worse than watching a snowfall-traffic jam on TV is enduing it yourself. Thankfully, I had a ride.

We spoke of the just passed smoking ban soon to take affect in all Chicago restaurants. We spoke of the new accounts receivable girl and how we knew she’d “fit in.” And the demise of Marshall Fields. And of children (neither of us have any). And of the President. And of the Mayor. But mostly we talked about traffic. And snow. And Ice. But mostly traffic.

The day Neil Steinberg hit his wife the Chicago Sun-Times published an article covering the White Sox’s chances for survival in the first round of the National League playoffs. The article was engaging and innovative, at least as far as sports articles go. Instead of formulaic quip/comparison/stat triad, it considered the more organic aspects of the sport and the city’s relation to it. The White Sox, it contended, are to Chicago what Chicago is the country: purity.  No curses, no jinxes, no drama no superstars. People in Seattle don’t wear Sox jerseys. Neither do people in Ottawa or Seoul or Dublin.  The article concluded with the notion that while Cubs gear has become the universal sign for hopeful fatuousness, Sox hats are the universal signal for strength and loyalty and community. What was particularly poignant was that the Tribune, Chicago’s more “prestigious” paper, wasted their sports section on the bland comparisons the Sun-Times so deftly avoided. Not that that’s much of a shocker, the Sun-Times has always felt more organic and less intellectual constrained than its cross-town counterpart. More Patty Smith and less Soren Kierkegaard, to put things in a pseduo-literary context.

And as the Sun-Times remains Chicago’s livelier periodical, so too has its columnists taken a the stage as a thunderous lot of Midwestern luminaries. With the lone exception of Debra Pickett who is the journalistic equivalent of Chai Tea, the Sun-Times employs some of the finest columnists in the world, bombastic and colloquial writing in tandem with the pulse of the city. (The Tribune’s Eric Zorn and Mary Schmich make me want to burst into tears, they’re so unflinchingly pretentious. Schmich at least did some excellent reporting in the wake of Katrina, and that may be enough to restore credibility after that stupid “Sunscreen” song.) Roger Ebert aside (and Robert Novak as well, I suppose) Columnist Neil Steinberg has been the Sun-Times most provocative thinker and one of its greatest asset for years. Not because his writing is particularly insightful—even though it is—but because his cynical worldview hews the periphery of what many in this city think of things. Steinberg speaks from the alleys of southern Pilsen to yews of suburban Northbrook, he writes dark poems disguised as columns and people respond in resounding approval.  He loves the city’s dirty underbelly, but no Charles Bukowski he, Steinberg will be the first to recoil at the rawness in which he revels. Impossible to pin down politically (he hated Clinton and hates Bush) and unafraid to give voice to the Chicago’s silently sane (lambasting Canadians for worrying more about not being perceived as American than being seen as Canadian) I’ve always loved Steinberg’s columns and place him right there next to Jonah Goldberg as one of America’s greatest unsung heroes.

But then late last September Steinberg got drunk and hit his wife. Everything changed then.

Okay, perhaps that’s being a bit lugubrious because not much really changed for me. I was stunned to read that one of my favorite writers had committed such a craven act of cruelty but my life certainly didn’t change much as a result. I read the articles, how he’s slapped her and she, rightfully unwilling to endure even a second of battered-wife-ness, immediately phone the police. I waited patiently for Steinberg to finish rehab and to tell his side of the story. I had expected some degree of demonstration against Steinberg and to be sure, there are many who will never read him again, but these represent the holy rollers who probably never liked the man in the first place. Most likely these people were more upset that a newspaper communist made a mistake rather than the mistake he made. It just feels weird. News people don’t even understand mistakes, that’s why they have ombudsmen to set us straight. But mistakes happen. People do stupid, horrible things sometimes, especially when they’re drunk. Articles on the incident clearly indicated that this was the only time he’d ever hit his wife and that he was truly ashamed of his unthinkable actions. My faith in humanity is such that I was able (easily) to give him the benefit of the doubt, fallen icons are nothing new to this city and nothing new to this life, and it’s in redemption where icons become heroes. It wasn’t easy looking past the mistake and perhaps if I were a woman it would be damn near impossible, but salvation is two-way street and in this city it’s woven in the fabric of every Sox Jersey, back pizza joint and downtown high-rise in our system. 

Steinberg’s first column after rehab went to press last Monday. It was contrite, but hardly heartbreaking. A mea culpa here, explanation there, but he kept his persons life to himself. He paid homage to his wife, a woman of impeccable integrity and strength and good will. He spoke from the heart—the heart of a cynical Midwestern; admitting fault but finding solace in faith, deliverance and the benevolent heart of the city and the woman who loves him.

I will continue reading his column. Clearly, the man needs a lot of help and but based on his return piece it appears that he’s getting it. I try not to confuse goodness with greatness and intelligence with perfection. Neil Steinberg and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times and White Sox. Bless and forgive them all.

Us all.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steinberg/cst-nws-stein28.html

“I don’t like this place,” she said. “Tell me a story and make me forget it.”

I coughed and took a sip of coffee. I told her about the time when I was fifteen and my friends and I stood in the center of the Wilson St. Brown Line station and passed around a log of cookie dough, pulling shreds from it like carefully like lovesick children and flower petals. I spoke of the time my grandmother took me to Crawford’s Department store dressed me in like miniature lederhousen, and paraded me around the store in dog-show like pomposity. I told her about the first time my dad let me take a sip of his wine.

Suddenly a waitress appeared and I lost track of everything. The only sounds my mouth could make was “tuna” and  “tomato soup.” Not that that was a bad thing, the tuna there is always good: fresh and lightly spiced. But there was something wretched in the interruption that set me, against all logic, against our server and she slinked dumbly away, I imagined her getting the order all wrong and looking at us meekly, apologizing yet still cursing us out.  The restaurant reeked of dirt and rotting food, yet the dominant scent was of grilled onions and it ruled emphatically. It made her sick, she said as if rationalizing her bald discomfort.

But there was no rationalizing with Laura. She picked the place because she knew it was good and a convenient spot to rendezvous on a bust Thursday afternoon. But before we’d even stepped in she was clutching my arm and drawing herself into the billowy tufts her Burberry scarf.  She often did this when she was about to do something either rude or ribald though often enough it simply became an attempt to look like a scene from any of the random noir films she keeps strewn about her house. Yet even as she told herself how ridiculous it all was, she’d see herself fading within her clothes and her companions, coasting on the rapids of noise and electricity that so often used to consume. Sometimes I imagine her as Mustard Seed, fading into and out of the reality, her sole purpose to keep us safe.  

At the table next two us five women in nurses uniforms spoke in hushed tones about the condition of a certain patient. I caught bits of conversation and was instantly intrigued. One of them, a woman in her mid fifties with Peter Pan-ish blonde hair and wire-rim glasses noticed me but continued to speak as if she hadn’t. My girlfriend noticed this as well and told me that she never understood why death should be such a secret. I told her that it wasn’t death that was brushed under the carpet but the life that it cowed. That was the big secret, although it’s pretty safe to say by now that the jig is pretty much up.

 When she went to the bathroom I wrote her a note. It was short; I finished in less then thirty seconds. After she came back we finished our lunch, kissed in the parking lot and made plans for tomorrow. It was cold today, upper twenties, I think. She always looks taller in the wintertime—grander, more comfortable. I think I do too.

He tucks a red bandana beneath his newsboy hat, and twirls the chain around his pocket dervishly when he walks. When he walks, his steel-toed shit-kickers fasten to the floor like matadors to a bleeding bull.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if my friend Curtis is mimicking rock and roll or subtly converting it, but one thing’s for sure, when he plays a folk tune, there’s simply no room for pretension to hide. He can’t sing very well or play with much versatility, but when Curtis plays things just seem to fall into place. Curtis is sui generi s—musically he doesn’t deserve to be any more than he, but he’s at peace being there.  We should all be so lucky.

A running joke amongst computer programmers is that there are “11” types in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.  The gag here is that “11” in binary actually represents the number two, so it’s kind of a play on words. I guess. Go ahead and laugh anyway though, it’s funny.

Or maybe it isn’t. Perhaps funny isn’t quite the right word here because it implies a sense of gaiety or at least good-natured amusement while the maddening world of information technologies is more infuriating than anything else. Is there any other way to describe the act of spending four hours trying to quarantine a virus only to discover that you’ve somehow managed to totally remove your Microsoft Office suite? In Yiddish we might call it being ferblunjit, or mixed up, but infuriating works just fine. The problem is when a computer breaks down most of us are left the elective largesse of America’s slash-dot consortium who, depending on any number of extenuating circumstances—how intense the “challenge” leaps most immediately to mind—may help you. It’s reached the point where one is tempted to jpin Kurt Vonnegut in luddite fealty. Sadly, however, in today’s digitized society computer literacy is less a quirk than a necessity and while old-fashioned foibles of this caliber may endear hoary, octogenarian Nobel Prize winners, in the real world is much crueler to luddites than most are ready to admit. Just ask your mother.

Even more frustrating is that when something in your CPU goes all HAL on you, odds are it’s because of something you did. This opens the doors for all kinds of guilt that only gets deeper and more perverse with every hazy flicker of the power button. Press a key, the computer goes “boink,” shut it off, the computer turns on—it’s the sort codependency usually reserved for daytime TV. Nevertheless, I took my lumps this week and asked a friend of mine to investigate why my computer stopped doing anything I asked it to. A sit turned it, it was because I opened a virus (who knew they were spread by e-mail?) and corrupted my hard drive back  to 1920’s Cicero—not pretty.

“Geez, Adam, what did you’re computer do to make you treat it so bad?” My friend said for what I suppose was our mutual amusement.

I tried to keep things light. “Well, for starters my mail order bride never arrived.” I probably should have recalled that he’s Russian any takes any slaps at the Motherland with uncharacteristic sensitivity. He reminded me that I sound like Peter Brady and continued fixing my machine.

And so, two days and six bowls of borscht later, here I am.

Being a Jew colors everything I do. It sorts things, life, in fashions and patterns not immediately perceptible to those not of this faith but clear as day to those restless souls who recite the daily Sh’ma. Or at least it seems that way to this Jew, but after all, there’s always the old card about there being two Jews and three opinions. Nevertheless, there’s an implication of metaphysical urgency at the core of the Jewish ethos that unites practitioners of this religion regardless of politics or  religious interpretation. I sense my innate Jewishness in the immediate way I view the world—the notion that wrongs must be righted, injustices addressed and life made somehow more holy instantly and without the luxury of a postmortem payoff. Being a religion of the here and now, Judaism doesn’t dwell on the cosmic rewards of great beyond, leaving such lofty notions in the far more capable hands of our gentile brethren. But because beachfront property in Eden isn’t much of a factor in Jewish thought, a pressing sense of universal equanimity and moral translucence becomes the driving force behind all religious actions. It’s been said that there’s a messianic undercurrent inherent in the Jewish faith and I’d agree. Why shouldn’t there be? What good is religion if not to make the world a better place?  With so many out there who hate us and would do us harm, can Jews be blamed for striving for postivity now?

Faith makes prophets of us all and like the antediluvian sages of Israel, we are beholden to the messages that drive us. Actions stemming from thoughts, stemming from senses, stemming from verve enhance our perceptions and sweeten our souls. Like the tattoo on “Parker’s Back,” Flannery O’Connor’s testament to Holy principles, our belief in a G-d we cannot see becomes the walkway between morality of the soul and mortality of the senses; the connection often intertwined but never identical. Being a Jew and holding sacred the precepts of the Torah, regardless of my overall secularism, means I have the responsibility to make the world somehow better and to do it now; because G-d manifests Himself in real time and His miracles are best enjoyed live.

One of my greatest fears is to leave a party and find a tire has gone flat. This fear is compounded by the scenario, however improbable, that I may have a female companion (or two?) in tow and that they would endure the sad spectacle of Adam’s automotive asininities. The reason why this worries me more than anything I may or may not do at a party is because unlike the pretentious soirees I usually attend flat tires do more than demand I question authority and pretend I listen to “This American Life.” Flat tires actually present a direct challenge to an element of autonomy perceptively fading in masculine culture, what Fraser might have called, “wussiness.”  The thought of actually having to change a tire and worse yet having people watch me is enough to make me swear fealty once again to the haughty G-ds of the Chicago Transit Authority. 

I should probably pause and state for the record that I do know how to change a tire. I took auto shop on high school, so I could also change my own oil if I were so inclined. You see, as far as problems go mine is not a lack of know-how, it’s a matter of timing. The way minutes spent pumping a carjack can ooze into the air like a narcotic. The greasy wheels, the dusty tires, the anxious smack of the bumper against the curb, the dreadful fumbling of bolts and levers, the way metallic joints fold into one another and into yourself. The whole thing’s enough to make even the fiercest arm-wrestling match look like “heads up 7-Up.”  We all know that the whole man versus machine song and dance has been done to death but for those of us who on the front lines in the war on error, every second counts.

For a team as perpetually maligned and disrespected as the Chicago White Sox, there was an awful lot of “I told you so’s” floating around the Bridgeport home of one its biggest fans earlier tonight. Before I’d even stepped through the door, I could detect the unmistakable sound of super-human glee wafting from half-cracked apartment windows and the bowels the CTA roadrunners. Not that one can blame Sox Fans though, if any baseball team has been as ill treated as the Chicago White Sox I’d certainly love to hear about it. Let them—us—gloat.

Sadly—or perhaps happily—Chicago’s relationship with its black and white has been one of the rockiest in baseball history. Sure the city likes its southside sluggers, and hey, a few years ago taxpayers forked over a helluva lot of bus fare to build them a new, albeit painfully discomfited stadium but does all that mean that Chicago actually cares about the White Sox? Everyone knows that save for a few blocks in Bridgeport and a few more in Beverly, this town bleeds Cubbie blue, and this while “bi-sox-ual” thing is so vapidly ostentatious that it practically reeks of thirty-somethings at a Sam Adams tasting. But the White Sox have their fans and until now, that’s been good enough. But today they have their respect.

There’s something wonderfully Homeric about our much ballyhooed, “throw-away” team ascending to the upper echelons of baseball’s elite. Like Odysseus: besmirched, forgotten and left for dead, they have vanquished and returned triumphant to the bed of the trembling Penelope.

Er..well…maybe not that last part, and in truth maybe not the first part either because when all’s said and done they Sox haven’t taken home the big prize yet. But even if they don’t the south siders accomplished something their beer-soaked brother could never do: they made it alone. Sensibly enough, eighty-eight years after their last word championship and eighty-six after the infamous “black sox” scandal—a tale that grows more devious and convoluted with every 3 a.m. showing of “Eight Men Out”—the Chicago White Sox have trouble filling the stands, with attendance so sparse earlier this year that some even suggested giving tickets away for free. Compare that to the onslaught of sold-out Cubs games day after day after day and one can’t help but come sway with a little Homeric determination. And a little disgust as anyone who’s been to a Cubs game and observed rows of fans all but ignoring the action of the field can attest.