There are Many Here Among Us Who Feel That Life is But a Joke

A great column in today's NY Times by David Brooks on the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's seminal novel On the Road. It seems that On the Road is one of those novels that should be required reading for everyone growing up in America, along with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I'm pretty sure that might be the Mount Rushmore of novels that should be read by each American high school student, but I could be wrong on this one.

If anything, I've added On the Road to knock The Scarlet Letter off the required reading lists. I loved almost every book we were required to read in high school, but I would rather stick hot pokers in my eyes than sift through Hawthorne's dense prose. Also, simply because the song begins with the lyrics "There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right...", I'm giving you The Hold Steady's "Stuck Between Stations" free of charge.

On the baseball playoffs front, since the Rangers have once again left me languishing in the October cold (or in Texas currently, heat), I have decided to pick up a new team to support for the month. That team is (insert drumroll here) the Cubs!!!



I know, I know. I can hear you out there deriding my choice because, well, who wouldn't want to see the Cubbies end 99-years of misery and finally bring home a championship to the North Side of the Windy City? It's not that I'm trying to pull anything jumping on the Cubs' bandwagon, it's more that I feel as though I trying to prepare for my future with the baseball gods. Let me explain...

My great-uncle Beck was born in Tennessee. When he was a young man, the Volunteer State didn't have a major league club, so he didn't follow a big league team until he moved to Indiana after World War II. After moving to the Hoosier State, he began to follow the Cubs. Everytime we would visit Indiana, I would always watch a Cubs game on WGN with Uncle Beck and listen to Harry Caray talk about this and that as the Cubs ground out yet another unfulfilled campaign.

Now, Uncle Beck, Harry Caray, and thousands of other Cub fans who waited their entire lives to see their team take home the World Series title have passed to the great beyond. I feel as though when I cheer for the Cubs, I'm hopefully storing up points with some future baseball fan who will cheer for the Rangers to finally bring one home after it's my time to go.