Note: I originally wrote this in 2007. I am now reposting it with no modifications other than adding this note and updating the copyright date and other such to match my new web site.

Who cares, Chicago Bears?

Who cares, Chicago Bears?
They're all I hear about on TV.
Who cares, Chicago Bears?
It's all incredibly boring to me.
I really just don't give enough of a damn
To write these middle lines.
Who cares, Chicago Bears?
Here's another line I don't care to write.
They're the pride and joy
of Illinois?
Chicago Bears, who cares?

Performance notes
Deviate from the tune as necessary to make "pride and joy of Illinois" sound like a question.
The last "who cares?" should not be sung, but spoken with exasperation, and not keeping with the tune; but if you sing it more than once through, do this only the last time.

Why did I write this?

Simple. I'm sick and tired of hearing about the Chicago Bears. (I usually refer to them as the Fuzzy Wuzzies, thanks to a nursery rhyme my father carried much too far into my life:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
If Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,
He wasn't very fuzzy, was he?

But I digress.)

The local news, all channels, always starts with the Bears. Sunday morning, they spent five minutes tellling us that the Bears were flying to Miami at noon, then moved on to two teenagers killed in a car crash just one day after four teens were killed in a different crash. Hello? What's the real news item here? Everybody already knew the Bears were flying to Miami at noon Sunday, we'd known it for days. And now CBS has a countdown to the Super Bowl in the corner of their screen. Memo to all CBS advertisers: I will not watch any CBS show as long as that countdown appears. UPDATE: Friday morning, as I'm finishing up this page, channel 9 is telling us about the tornado in Florida before moving on to the Bears, but I bet they're only doing it because it's Florida and that's where the Bears are.

During one of the playoff games, my neighbors were watching the game. They were very noisy. Every time something bad happened to the Bears, someone would yell "F---!" "F--- f--- f--- f--- f---!" Then, a couple hours after the Bears somehow managed to win despite all the f---ing they caused, the neighbors launched into a chorus of "Bear down, Chicago Bears." When they finished, I quietly added "Who cares?!" And I decided to write my own version of the song.

I want to make it clear that I have no particular animosity toward the Bears. I'm not a fan of any other team. I don't want them to lose. I just think football is boring, and that this whole thing is being blown out of proportion. As I say on my home page (no link, but it's not hard to figure out if you have a brain), the only thing in all of sports that I care about is the Cubs, and even if they were in the World Series I would still want real news to be covered first.

Update:

I think it's about half time right now, but I'm not watching so I don't know. I just dug up a haiku (Japanese style of poetry) about football I wrote 9½ years ago:

Football. Men running.
Smush his face into the grass.
Then do it again.

It still pretty well expresses how I feel.

You may respond to this at david@davidstreeter.net. Certain responses may be posted here, if I feel like it.

No responses worth posting so far.

This page was created on 1/29/2007. Finished and posted 2/2/2007. Modified 2/4/2007. Posted at davidstreeter.net 1/18/2011.