Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
A Potentially Historic Sunday at DBB
I used to write an awful lot about football around here, but that was at a time when there were fewer people saturating the market (with mostly boring material). Now I write about Sidney Lumet, and one-act game reactions. Why? Because no one else does that. And if this isn’t going to make me rich, it’s certainly going to make me smile.
Since the fall of 2000, I have missed one Bears game. 24 years. One game. I was in Ireland and spent more than an hour at a pay phone, as my buddy Josh relayed to me the play-by-play of a Bears victory over the Vikings in 2005. I’ve been late to a grandfather’s funeral. I’ve watched the Bears from a Paris hotel in the middle of the night. If they’re playing, I’m watching, and it’s been that way for two and a half decades.
This Sunday, at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY, I’ll be presenting one of my favorite films, the 1957 classic Sweet Smell of Success. It will start at 11 AM, with my introduction, followed by a twenty-minute lecture by yours truly and a Q&A. I won’t be leaving the theater until around 2 PM. There is a bar in Pleasantville that will be showing the Bears v. Patriots, and honestly, I will more than likely hustle over there for the end of Q2 and second half. But why I will do that is becoming something of a mystery.
I was so excited about this team a few weeks ago that I went to Washington D.C. to see them. Now, I’m not despondent or dejected. I’m apathetic. I’ve seen this story before, many times. It’s still boring. You want me to use this space to talk about New England’s turnover differential or third-down conversion percentage? You want me to pick three Bears under pressure? Why? You want me to keep a window on my phone open during the Q&A and double-time it to Foley’s on Sunday? I may do that! But it’ll be more instinct than excitement.
I’ll make a prediction tomorrow, and I’ll probably predict the Bears to win. But honestly, it’s more interesting if they lose! If they lose, there’s something to write about Monday morning, something to talk about. Clearly this structure is not working and it’s not going to work. Something has to change. But this is the Chicago Bears. Something always has to change.
Sunday, at least for me, will be a change.