My love affair with baseball, and the Cubs

As long as I can remember, I have been a Cubs fan. Probably before I even realized that baseball was a game, or what a game was, I have been a Cubs fan.
Blame my mom.

As a little boy, before I can even remember now, she took me to Cubs games. I met, well saw and got autographs from, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, and many others. Those were the days where the players hung around the field and the stands before the game, signing autographs and talking to the fans.

No, shit, talking to the fans.
I remember Billy Williams as being the nicest person outside of my family that I had met at that point of my life. I don't have any specific memories of those early Cubs games, when I was 4 and 5 years old, but they set a pleasant tone for the rest of my life, following the Cubs.

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AT&T and John Caponera are just Creepy..

I didn't quite grow up with Harry Caray, unless listening to him do White Sox games counts. I didn't even really like him at first, but he did grow on me. Still, he really isn't sacred territory, make fun of him, so what? What's bad about this latest round of Harry Caray commercials is their creepiness.

You wait ten years and now come out with this? And John Caponera, I've heard you before on the radio, and I might be one of the five people that watched your TV show, has your career really sunk this low, this bad?

Maybe it's just one of those "Seemed like a good idea at the time," deals...
Is it? It has to be something like that, because I can't believe that anyone thinks this is a good idea. Cub fans are offended and everyone else is just annoyed.

Why shouldn't we be annoyed, obviously AT&T believes that we are all just a bunch of drunks who go to the park and laugh at our clowns. Harry Caray, apparently, is one of our clowns, like Bozo, or Mickey and Donald and Goofy. That doesn't mean we need to see a tired, twenty year old bit on every commercial break.

Of course, it is not lost on me that I am linking up to the very commercials that I loathe, but thats just for anyone that hasn't been forced to see them on television, yet.

John Caponera, you look like a stick figure caricature of Harry Caray, more like the weird Six Flags commercial guy than Harry. Every time one of them comes on, radio or,TV, I begin to miss the old days(maybe that was just last week?) when I was getting barraged by Frank Caliendo, at least his material is only three or four years old.

Smodcast - the waiting.....

Over at the View Askew board, thousands are anxiously, sometimes annoyingly, waiting for the new Smod.

Just exactly what does that mean, you ask? Well, the Smod is Smodcast, which I have written about before, a Podcast put out by Kevin Smith, director of several very good movies. As he puts it in the radio ad for 3 minute movies, "I've been known to direct some stuff.." paraphrased. He doesn't make a big production of it, but his podcast was my first, and still my favorite. The first one is always special, right?

The wait is for the last couple months while his usual weekly Smodcast went on hiatus while he was filming his latest flick, Zack and Mary Make a Porno. I mean, c'mon, he does Smodcast for free, what did we expect? From the incessant whining on his message boards, another of my first deep forays, you'd think he took a dump on every one of his fans by not getting somewhere and recording one of the precious Smodcasts.

I admit, I checked back to the download spot for Smodcast quite a bit these last few weeks, and occasionally looked on the message board to see if there was real news, but I was not part of the chorus of whines coming from his Smodcast thread. Oh sure, the occasional voice of reason, but most of the time, whining, on what is usually a very interesting thread.

And so this weekend, finally a new post on his blog, talking about the layoff, and the filming, and generally Kevin being the Kevin that makes his blog and Smodcast very interesting. The guy isn't Warhol, and thats good, he's just a decent guy, sharing what is a very cool life with everyone. I've never sensed posturing or backpatting, and it's almost always fun.

Also, he very often frequents his own message board, chiming in occasionally, but not getting into prolonged discussions. He even managed to reply to one of my first posts, after I had finally caved in and joined up. "Welcome aboard," I think it was, or something of the like. How cool is that?

It looks like the wait is almost over, Kev says, "..as soon as the recording equipment is back in L.A. ", and that works for me. I'll surely write some kind of review then, but for now I just wanted to talk about it, here. Not on the now slightly annoying thread. As I've mentioned, I pop up on the boards now once in a while, there are some good threads, about everything from the Writer's Strike to Reaper.

The header picture and smodcast links are pointing to where I am guessing the next podcast will be, so when they are not broken any more, the wait is over.