Hoorah! Football is here! We can finally stop youtubing Sarah Palin videos and move on to issues that matter. It's likely un-healthy to do so much deep visualizing about the future, anyway - especially alone in my room. Four years of a Palin Vice-Presidency... then the strategic (but respectfully good-humored) impeachment of McCain... then eight blissful years of Sarah Palin in the White House.... oy vey, that's 12 years from now, longer than I ever expected to live!
Truth is, I haven't been this sexually excited about a political candidate since my freshman year in high school, when this ridiculously hot Senior girl ran for student body president and plastered posters of herself all over school in her bare-midriffed blowjob billboard cheerleading uniform. Tits like the Hindenburg and body like a rack of lamb - no male freshman paid attention in class for two weeks. Obviously I tried to get on her ticket and give her some polling data, but she thought my positions were too mainstream. Live and learn - now I yoga.
Wait, where was I going? Oh, right. Football. Thank you to Lenny for actually emailing the results from Week 1. Because of the clear, diametric opposition between attending the bag payoff and remembering anything about it, I had no idea who anyone drafted and wondered if maybe someone tied me this week at 2-0. But I've never had any doubt I will win this whole season going away. Atlanta and Philadelphia? Come on. You might as well start calling this page my blog.
Still, despite the lack of suspense around the bet, I've vowed to engage with the NFL on a deeper level this season. Not that more engagement is necessary to win the bag bet - that'll be easy enough - just that between my therapist, and the people who love me, all three of them were unanimous in the opinion that I should be a more "present" person and try to "engage." If you're asking, I don't know what the fuck that means, but like most things my therapist says, it's designed to be generally helpful, but just vague enough to keep me coming back and giving him hundreds of dollars. And over the last decade-and-a-half, as I've begun to heal, I've found a way to interpret nearly all those things to mean that I should watch more televised sports, or even more pointedly, drink and watch more televised sports. So far, the results are positive - consider that every minute I spend watching sports is one less minute I spend thinking about how much I hate you all (unless of course you're in the room).
So like I said, I watched some NFL this weekend. Luckily, NFL coverage isn't that big of a transition from Sarah Palin youtube videos. It's loud, larger than life, sexy, shiny, self-aggrandizing, completely devoid of any depth, and everyone is laughing all the time for reasons I can't for the life of me figure out. I really liked it! I like Sarah Palin, too! A whole lot!
Though to be honest, I'm not sure I could pass the test on what I saw on Sunday - even after just a couple of bourbon-and-cokes, I couldn't tell any of the commentators apart, even the ones in the studio. Phil Simms is Troy Aikman is Cris Collinsworth is Howie Long... I mean, what's the difference, and who cares anyway? Just keep talking so I don't have to think. Certainly no problem there - every studio commentator looks as if they've been intravenously force-fed some futuristic hybrid marijuana/crystal meth cocktail, with all the irrationally giggly benefits of weed, but laced with enough unbridled hyperactive meth-energy to make you want to walk out into the street and start happily bashing in car windshields with a baseball bat. Whoo-pee! Actually, this probably is just what my college football hangover needs. "Pass the duchy, JB." (ha ha ha ha - won't he laugh at everything I say, too?)
But beyond secret, intravenous super-drugs, I noticed there is another level of genius the network uses to keep viewers hooked. Just in case you might get sick of all the non-sensical talking and walk away, they do this genius thing where they quickly cut to commercials for inane shit I don't want, played so ear-splittingly loud that I'm literally diving for the remote and spilling Jack Daniels all over the dog, and finally begging for those silly bastards to just please, for the love of God, come back on and start talking again.
But like I said, I liked it, and I even went back for more with MNF last night. Well, sort of. I had TiVo'd Hardball and Countdown because I knew they'd be talking about Sarah Palin, so I started out the night with MNF on picture-in-picture in the bottom-right-hand-corner, so I could follow the NFL action in the little window, while still cultivating a wicked hard-on keeping up with MSNBC's latest Sarah Palin clips in the Daddy screen.
But a funny thing happened: every once in a while, they'd start talking about "the issues" on MSNBC, so of course I'd flip the game back onto the main screen because who cares about all that. Then after a while, I'd see one of those cute little Sarah Palin videos pop up in the PIP window - you know, the one where she's hunting with one of her pregnant daughters, or holding up a big haul of salmon, or decorating the Town of Wasilla's 4th of July Parade float with replica fetuses - and then I'd flip MSNBC back onto the big screen.
But at some point in the night, maybe during a key drive with the crowd in full-throated roar, maybe after several amazing feats of NFL-caliber athleticism, maybe after Rachel Maddow came on, I stopped flipping back to MSNBC and stayed on the game. And not too long after, I turned off the picture-in-picture altogether, and even put my laptop to the side on the couch next to me.
And I found myself once again in the mental grip of the greatest game in the world - the greatest game ever invented - watching athletes competing at the highest level in the their league's most storied venue, commentators blocked out of my mind as I became one with the rhythm of the sport, my laptop's Sarah Palin screensaver quietly humming God Bless America beside me, and I knew I was back. Back where I belonged. Back, back, back, back..... aw, Berman..... ARE YOU STILL FUCKING HERE?
Click.
]]>
Baglovers know I LOVE making it sporting, and what better way is there than to make a ridiculous and potentially costly bet over bad teams? Last year's bag boy and I (pictured) made a wager over which of our bag teams would have more wins - Randie's Poisonous Fish from Miami or my Black GloryHoles from Oakland. The winner of the bet would choose a road game, and the loser would get them there - and so we found ourselves in the rustic confines of the Westport district of downtown Kansas City, MO. But our story doesn't begin there.
