A Proposed Dichotomy for the Debaclypse

A Proposed Dichotomy for the Debaclypse

It's a rough universe out there. Lots of Battles for Supremacy goin' on, and that's for damned sure. Those classic battles of Good vs. Evil. They never go out of style. Then there are the more symbolic ones of Light vs. Dark. That's always a good one. Oh yeah, W. has the With Us vs. Against Us battle, but that is hardly catchy. I'd like to propose that the War of All Against All be fought in different terms: Awesome vs. Suck. And if you don't believe that such battles are not being waged in this mortal coil, I ask you to consult the struggles of awesome Arrested Development against its inimical (and sucky) Murdochian Overlord. That's right; it's on!

Wrigleyville, Chicago, IL: The stage for this Eternal Struggle

I love baseball and I think that it is especially good in Chicago. And after spending my childhood trying to watch games at Shea Stadium in Flushing (if you haven't been, Shea has the twin draws of being a stadium of monumental hideousness and LaGuardia-adjacent so fans and players are in constant fear of being sucked into the engines of passing jets like a bunch of geese) I very much enjoy the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field. But I fucking despise Cub Fans...and I don't simply mean people who root for the success of the Chicago Cubs Team in the arena of competitive baseball. I mean "Cub Fans" in the local colloquial sense: (1) drunken frat boys who know nothing about baseball but are master calligraphers when given the right tools: a bladder full of cheap beer, an alcohol-deflated cock (in-hand of course), and the fence out back of Murphy's Bleachers and (2) the women who love them.

Last weekend the baseball season opened and there were hordes of 1s and 2s bumping into each other, buying one another Old Style, and screeching slurred pick-up lines across Clark St. One assumes that groping and anonymous sex ensued. There was one funny scene. It was at Southport and Waveland (roughly). Two guys were standing on opposite corners trying to maximize their probability of hailing a cab. Cub Fan One, lets call him Dean, took his eyes off the prize and a trixie beat him out for the cab. Cub Fan Two, I think "Brandon" works, got enraged at this sloppy execution of taxi-hailing offense (rather Cub-like in his failure to execute the fundamentals, Dean was). Brandon flipped and got all Mike Ditka on Dean. "What the fuck was that? Did you take initiative? You gotta take initiative!" It's a true story, but it's a life lesson too.

I was in Wrigleyville not to proselytize to the "Cub Fans," but to see Gogol Bordello at the Metro. People, listen to me. If you have not seen this band live, you need to. To quote a friend of mine after she saw them for the first time, "I forgot who my favorite band was." Their lead singer is simply a charismatic gypsy lunatic (and former busker, a favorite word of mine) who may actually be made of pure energy. They used to describe themselves as "Ukranian Gypsy Punk Cabaret." But now they also have this hispanic guy who comes out and grabs the mic every now and then for some reason. I guess they are more populist gypsy punk manic freakshow, with accompaniment.

If you didn't go to the show, you missed:

• Seeing a guy who appeared to be a Russian Vampire (he was about 6'6", wore a huge leather jacket, a number of gold chains clearly styles after the Mr. T jewelry oeuvre, sunglasses, knee length boots with a ring of 2 in. spikes radiating around the ankles, and a big black furry hat.
• Hot Asian art school dancers.
• Sergei!
• The fire pail.
  
• Eugene Hutz and Pamela Racine crowd-surfing on a bass drum, at the same time.

A blog is about the worst place to try to convey the energy of a GB show to someone who hasn't been. Come to think of it, pretty crappy idea for an entry in retrospect. The point is that the Awesome of Bass Drum Crowd Surfing must rise up to stop Tom DeLay's Army of Drunken Minions before, say, the All-Star Break. Yes, that was definitely the point.