Some of you may have noticed that the Cubs did not play Thursday. Normally, I get these days confused with the ones where the game is being aired on CLTV, because to me, it’s the same damn thing.

Regardless, the Cubs are white hot now (4-1 since we added the “Oh, no! They suck again!” banner) and nothing has stood in the way of their hotness. Not a rainstorm in Pissburgh or a piss drunk Cardinal trying to hook up with a tow truck at 74 miles an hour.

I’m thisclose to getting a lawn chair and camping out for playoff tickets.

But there’s so much stuff going on right now’s either non-Cubs related, or just tangentially so, that today seems like a good day to catch up.

Let’s start with the immortal words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning who once said,

With a rhyming dictionary, a feather and an ink jar, everybody thinks they’re a fucking poet.

Almost (but not by me) forgotten in the Josh Hancock stuff was St. Louis Post Dispatch nitwit Derrick Goold’s really clever poem about the Cubs.

No Tinker. No Evers. No chance.

Spend all they can, Cubs still chasing the ‘Birds.

Since Tinker and Evers and Chance. (1)

A goat and his curse (2); a scapegoat and his error, (3)

Black cat greets Santo, raising defeatist fans’ hair. (4)

Ernie Banks — one of the greats who never got there.

No Tinker. No Evers. No chance.

Sweet Lou brings his brash to friendly confines.

He once won as much as Frank Chance. (5)

Cubs renewed hopes flourish when Soriano signs.

They tinker, forever, for a chance.

When other clubs reversed curses, Cubs knew they should, (6)

But roster was flimsy, built on Prior and Wood. (7)

Up comes the hymn: ‘Wait ’til next year. Then we’ll be good.’

No Tinker. No Evers. No chance.

Why is it footnoted? Because apparently the writer felt that the good people of St. Louis wouldn’t be able to follow it without some Cliff’s Notes. Honestly, if he really wanted most of the town to understand it he should have read it to them.  I’d post the notes too, but incredibly, they’re even dumber than the poem is.

The most absurd part of this was the reaction by our favorite big league manager, The Genius, Tony LaRussa. Tony felt the need to stand up for the poor, helpless Cubs. He even got into a shouting match with rotund St. Louis sportswriter Bernie Miklasz about it.

Tony then had a weird episode in Milwaukee where he apparently threatened to take a fungo bat to any sportswriter who dared besmirch the memory of Hancock with…uh, the truth, about what happened that night and earlier in the week when he rolled into traffic and had the bumper taken off his SUV by a passing tractor trailer–at 5 a.m. in front of a strip club.

The Bears drafted not only a tight end, but also, as it turns out a poet and a scholar in Greg Olsen. You may remember Greg as the little brother of Christian Olsen who lured little Greg to Notre Dame to play with him, only to find himself behind Carlyle Holiday (the shame) and Brady Quinn so he transferred to Virginia early on in practice, which led Greg to high tail it down to the U. Where he put his poetry skills to good use.

“Whats your name?
G-Reg.
What you do?
Get head.
How you do it?
Drop my drawers, let her see my third leg. Chillin’ on the 7th floor, I gotta let these chickens know Big Greg is in the house, and I’m gonna to make these hoes choke. On my balls, on my dick then I bust a nut quick. On her face, on her chest, stick my dick between her breasts. Come on fellas, let’s get weird. Stick your dick up in her ear. While I’m laughin at these guys, a second nut all in her eyes.
Wait a minute…in her eyes?
In her eyes.”

Now that is quality stuff. What I like is how respectful Greg was. He chose not to use slang for the word breasts, because tits would have been offensive. Nice.

This “rap” is four years old and the story should have (and was) been played four years ago. Except that Carol Slezak is four years behind everything. She’s still driving a Jetta around Bucktown fer chrissakes.

Carol thinks the Bears should have avoided drafting Greg at all costs. I agree, they should not have drafted him in 2003 when he did this. And they didn’t.

There. Cleared that up. Besides, Carol looks like she’s taken one the ear. Don’t you think?

The NBA has returned to Chicago (that joke never gets old) and the Bulls are getting a lot of credit for becoming the first team to ever sweep the defending NBA champions in a best of seven first round series.

It’s a heady feat, but one that might be more impressive had the NBA not only gone to seven game first round series in 2003.  I’m just saying.

What I do enjoy though is so-called NBA experts who spent the entire month leading up to the trade deadline telling everyone that the Bulls HAD to trade for a low post player if they wanted to take the next step.

First of all, they hadn’t won a playoff series since 1998 so the “next step” wasn’t all that high.  Secondly, getting a creepy bearded Spaniard like Pau Gasol seemed like a good idea, except for the fact that NBA Logo and then Griz GM Jerry West wanted the Bulls two best players for one Pau.  Ben Gordon and Luol Deng were the reason the Bulls swept the Heat.  Something tells me if they were at Memphis in May this week and watching the NBA playoffs from a bar on Mud Island that the Bulls would not have been the ones with the brooms.

It also helped that Shaq was in fine shape this season (round is a shape) and that Dwyane Wade played with one arm. But any series that ends with Antoine Walker, James Posey and Alonzo Mourning in tears is a good one.

Back to the NFL draft, the slide of Brady Quinn from could-have-been third pick to should-have-been ninth pick to holy-crap-will-he-ever-get-picked was entertaining, even for those of us who actually like Brady.  It’s not like having to wait four extra hours to become a millionaire is anything to really pity him for.  Sure, he lost a lot of money by dropping at least 13 spots, but he’s still looking at $10 mil guaranteed from this contract.  Let’s not have any bake sales for him.

But more curious than Brady dropping was what the hell were some of the teams who passed on him thinking.  Some teams who apparently think they have a QB like Buffalo (JP Losman?) and Minnesota (Tavares Jackson?  Hee hee.) got stud running backs with their picks.  They’re excused.  Sort of.  We all know that Miami just proved that you don’t need Dave Wannstedt or Rick Spielman in your war room to be dumb.  Ted Ginn, Jr.?  They saw the impact that Devin Hester had on games and they want that.  Except that Devin Hester’s don’t grow on trees (and they aren’t built like little Teddy) and the Bears didn’t use a first rounder to get him.

Another team that should have looked good and hard at Brady was the team that let Cleveland butt back into the draft pick line.  Dallas thinks it has the answer with Tony Romo.  Truth is, after a hot start to his NFL starting career, Tony was pretty bad…actually very Rex-like…late in the season and into the playoffs.  Dropping the snap in Seattle won’t stunt his career, throwing balls to the other team will, though.  But hey, at least he’s got Wade Wilson to tutor him now.  Uh…never mind.

I’m not saying Tony’s going to be a complete bust out, but let’s just say that if it’s truly an option, he needs to stick it to Carrie Underwood in the next seven months, because she’s going to be famous a lot longer than he is.  That might work, his ears are big enough, he could pass for a long lost Lachey brother.

In the summer movie preview edition of Entertainment Weekly, Kirsten Dunst talks candidly about how much she hopes Sam Raimi will stick around to direct the inevitable Spider-Man 4.  She goes as far as to say that if he doesn’t that she doesn’t want to be in the next movie and that they “can’t” make Spider-Man movies without Sam, Tobey Maguire or her.  Yeah, because it would take about eight seconds into Spider-Man 4 for people to forget who the hell played Mary Jane in the previous three movies.  But I’m sure that Lance Briggs read that same thing and thought, “She’s right.  She’s totally right.”

I get accused of mercilessly bashing the Cardinals, and the reason I get accused of it is likely because that’s exactly what I do.  But don’t pretend like you didn’t see that WGN shot of a hatless Albert Pujols in the Cardinals’ dugout last Friday night and marvel at two things.  How little hair Albert has left, and how ridiculously big Albert’s head has gotten.  That hat size has gone from 7 3/4 to “Bonds” the past couple years.

You know his head has gotten big when pitches thrown up and in don’t end up in the catcher’s mitt because they are too busy orbiting Albert.