Running the Race of Life

I don’t really understand why sports teams have the names that they do. What exactly do Bulls or Cubs have to do with the city of Chicago? Or the New Orleans Hornets? I realize the Jazz used to play out of New Orleans and that made sense, but then they moved to Utah. At least, the Los Angeles Angels makes sense. Los Angeles is the city of angels after all. But before they were the California Angels, which doesn’t make as much sense, though the name does have nice ring to it. New York Knicks, I understand. Knicks is short for “knickerbockers,” which is a term for New Yorkers. Boston Celtics makes sense since they’re a lot of Irish living in Boston. Orlando Magic makes sense since Disney World is down there and Miami Heat is self-explanatory. The name I really hate is the Los Angeles Lakers. Are there even any lakes in Los Angeles? It’s right near the ocean. I know they were originally the Minneapolis Lakers and Minnesota is full of lakes, but I reserve the right to be annoyed. If I am a sports fan, then I have the right to criticize. It is my money and that of other fans who pays the players, coaches, referees, and more.

My girlfriend has been thinking about moving to Chicago for a while now. Before she moved out of her first apartment, she was looking pretty closely in Chicago in the north side area. She finally settled on the Gold Coast after looking at all of the Chicago Neighborhoods, but ended up staying in the suburbs. She now lives about ten minutes away from work, which she loves, mostly because it saves her a bundle on gas. That and the commute is not at all as bad as it used to be for her, or how bad is it would be coming from Chicago. That is the big thing that kept her from living in the city. She hates coming down to see me as it is because of the construction, she would really loath making that commute everyday, five days a week, which I understand but she also wants me to think about moving in with her when my lease is up. However, I could not make that commute either and I hate the idea of living in the suburbs. I love the city way too much and I think I would go crazy living in a place where everything closes at nine o’clock.

Temp staffing firms are the tools of Satan. Well, maybe not all of them. Maybe just the ones that I’ve gone through to get work. While it is nice to have someone who negotiates your salary and hours and everything for you, they also tend to take a nice chunk out of the money you make. I understand that’s how they get paid themselves, but sometimes they take too much. And you have to call and call and call them to get work. Sometimes, I’ve emailed them 8 times during a week just to get a response. The jobs they give me aren’t all that interesting. I’ve had stints in offices where I didn’t really understand what the business was but I got by just by making copies and sending faxes. I’ve worked in factories and have done customer service. Do you what customer service is? It’s getting on the phone with customers and getting yelled at because they don’t know what they’re doing with what they bought. And it’s always your fault that they don’t know what they’re doing and never their own fault. Do you understand why I get annoyed if a firm takes a slice out of my paycheck? I really earned that money.

One of my favorite things about going to Cubs games is how suddenly every single person sitting around you is your new best friend and person to debate sports with. Last week I was at the game and ended up chatting the entire game with a guy who is from Chicago, but is now a Cincinnati bankruptcy lawyer. He was telling me all about how the Reds have such a nice stadium in Great American Ballpark, but that they really struggle to fill it since the team is so bad. He was saying how with Dusty Baker there now that there is a renewed sense of hope. We joked about remembering the same case for the Cubs when he first came to Chicago, and how disenchanted the city became with him. I told him I liked Dusty for the fact that he was a great motivator and was able to get the most out of his players, but that he was a terrible game day manager and that he could not manage a pitching staff to save his life. He agreed with me and added that he also did not like how he never got angry. We both agreed that sometimes a team needs a Lou Piniella type freak out.

It is really funny to see the different paths people take after college. One of my good friends from the journalism school took a totally different career path than I did after graduation. I sought out to become a journalist, and my friend Evan opted for law school. We had met our first year in the journalism school, and we hit it off when we realized we were both avid sports fans. We ended up taking all of our journalism classes together. He is now a Brooklyn Bankruptcy Attorney. It is really funny for me to think of him as a lawyer. To me he will always be the guy who would decide he had enough class in a given day and walk back home and not go to his next class, despite already being on campus for it. Our other friend Zack could never understand that. He always figured it was one thing to not want to go to campus to go to class, but he could not fathom already being on campus and not making the effort to go to class. Zack jokes all the time that Evan could have two meetings in a day with clients, but he will not go to the second one because he wants to go take a nap.

My brother, me, and Dan were sitting down in Matt’s basement watching the Bulls play the Cleveland Cavaliers and, eventually, we got bored with the game and started playing Nintendo. The Bulls had gained a huge lead and, after that, there’s not much point watching the rest of the game. Matt had set up the classic Nintendo with all the old games on it like Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and even Duck Hunt. Duck Hunt was a game with a plastic gun where you shot at ducks flying across the video game screen. That was entertaining for a while, but we’d all grown up playing those games and had already played them through time and again. Zelda and Final Fantasy weren’t even all that great, despite being role-playing games that could take up hours and hours because we’d already beaten them before. So we’re sitting around and I see a pair of scissors lying on a table. I snatch them up and snip off some of my brother’s hair. Actually, I think I cut off one of his bangs. We all laughed and he cried, but, really, he needed a haircut and, in fact, got one the next day. From my perspective, I just helped him.

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