dear nephew, after that devastating bears loss

dear tyler,

what a game that was. what a beautiful and terrible game.

nobody will tell you this because nobody is like your uncle tony. but heres the secret about being a bears fan, that’s different than being a cub fan.

and i can say this because ive been a huge fan of both teams for a very long time. how long? let me just say: i watched bears game on a NEW black & white tv that your grandma bought.

i bet youve never even seen a black n white tv. and for that alone you should be happy.

anyways heres the secret about the bears: they are going to break your heart more often and more painfully than the Cubs ever will.

the thing about the Cubs is they’re the lovable losers. even this season they lost and we loved them. but the Bears, for some reason, always gets our hopes up. they always have players who are so outstanding that you think, oh shit they can and SHOULD win this game.

and they get you right up to the end and they stab you in the heart.

then they get your heart and put it in a pie and put the pie in a box of money, the biggest box youve ever seen, and they give that box of money to jackasses like jay cutler or kickers named cody.

so heres what you need to do. you need to use that feeling inside of you and put it to good use.

i dont know about you, but heres how im feeling: like fucking shit.

but fret not, because shit is in this world for a good reason. you think im kidding but im not. ask your grandma. shit is extremely valuable for growing the most beautiful things in the world. green grass and pretty flowers. in fact the best shit cost money and people seek it out because the better the shit the bigger and more colorful the beauty.

and this is why wrigley field is the most gorgeous place in the world.

so use that shittiness that you feel. use it to make beauty. get your dads keyboards and hook up your headphones to it and play. so many beautiful songs have been based on sadness. i would never lie to you.

either the songs were made from the shittiness of the pianist’s life, or that crappy feeling drove that person to learn to play as a means for escape or a way for them to express themselves other than doing what they really wanted to do like take a giant torch to the entire city and start over.

now uncle tony wasn’t very good at the piano, or the saxaphone or the drums, but when i was in high school we had a dog who died. Chumbi. old Chumbi wasn’t crazy about me and i wasn’t nuts about him neither but when he died i was super sad. so i went down in the basement and i beat the crap out of those drums. for an hour i was the greatest drummer in the world.

and when it was over i learned a valuable lesson. that i should stick to writing.

which is my final bit of unasked for advice. turn that shitty feeling inside into words. if you dont wanna show anyone, fine. fuck em. just write. write and write and write. write truthfully, write a bunch of lies, write a cool combo of the two, but get the poison out. turn it into something that never existed before. use that shit to grow something excellent.

you might suck at first but keep going. everyone sucks at first.

cody the kicker should have practiced more too.

dont grow up and be like him.

practice.

i love you very much. next year they’ll break our hearts in new ways. so we got that going for us.

your uncle,

tony