Week nine
The game: Steelers at Patriots
The beer: Berkley Harvest Ale
The result: Win, 55–31
The commentary: Wow. Look at her! Wow… wow. Just when I think the world is too far gone a moment like this is captured. Everything, somehow, will be OK.
Fifty-five points! Despite two no-calls on back-to-back first-quarter touchdowns by Gronkowski and Bolden—Roethlisberger must have threatened to ask the ref’s daughter out on a date. And just when I think the defense might finally be coming around (I’m the lone fan to have never bought into their quality early this season, even before Wilfork and Mayo went down) they let the Steelers crawl back into the game in the third, once again forcing Brady to carry the team. Luckily they were still the second-worst defense on the field tonight as the once-admired Dick LeBeau chose to implement the “Leave Gronk Alone” scheme. What in the worldwide fuck?
A. and I had a great date night the Friday before the game. G’s caregiver generously offered to watch her through the evening so we stayed in the city for a wonderful meal in South Boston. On the way there we ducked into one of those hipster package stores, whatever they’re called now, with the weekly wine tastings and the fridge full of craft beer. We liked most of what we sampled (South American reds) and agreed to pop back in after eating. Another bottle of red with dinner, some “Shrimp with the heat” (actual menu entrée) and an uninterrupted adult conversation later we were back among the hipsters, among the snippets of “release” and “finish” and other sexually charged sommelier terms and picked out our favorite. I then drifted over to the beer fridge toward which, tasting wine samples earlier, I’d been positioned to stare at for fifteen minutes. Needless to say (for why else would I be telling the story?) I walked out with the Berkley and a second bomber I’ll save for a cold day later this season. Removed from the context of the evening, the ale wasn’t as good as the memory of buying it. Glad it worked out this way and not the other.
Week ten (bye)
The beer: Samuel Adams Cream Stout
The commentary: There’s nothing like a bye week to make one feel like a lousy father and husband. “The Pats aren’t playing today so let’s do something as a family.” What a selfish asshole I am. So Saturday we met friends for lunch in the city and Sunday we ran errands all over the North Shore. Or maybe it was the other way around? These weekends, man, they just run right together and spin you around a few times. It was fun I think?
No football. (Beer? Of course.) No raking. Barely made a dent in The Dead Zone. But G. did her best Jeff Ament impression and used her blue guitar to set fire to the place. It was awesome.
And that’s the bye week.
Week eleven
The game: Patriots at Panthers
The beer: Atlantic MacFoochie’s Scottish Ale
The result: Loss, 24–20
The commentary: Twice now, G. and I have been in the car when an Animals song came on the radio. The other day it was “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and I said “G., it’s the Animals.” “No, it’s not Animals.” “But honey, it is! It’s a band called ‘the Animals.’” “NO!” Maybe she thought it was the Cheese again?
It should have been a sign. “Pass interference… not pass interference.” “That is fucking brutal!” “So long, everyone.” Of course I would never drop an F-bomb on my daughter the way Brady did to Clete Blakeman (Clete? Blakeman?) after the… drama. However, I assure you it was the fucking Animals.
I was never a fan of Mike Tirico and his philandering ways but lately I appreciate that he does a decent job compared to most. Live, I didn’t notice how he and Jonny This-Guy handled the non-call—which absolutely was pass interference, and my certainty stems from the fact that if the teams were reversed I would have been thankful to get away with it—but Awful Announcing’s recap and assessment is fascinating. “[Tirico] explained everything succinctly and made sure to bring in all available parties for comment and analysis. Most importantly, he knew to shut up when the cameras were tracking Brady and Blakeman as they jogged off the field.” I agree wholeheartedly with that first part and it was a refreshing bit of thorough analysis from the play-by-play guy under suspect conditions. (The second part though? Who knows, maybe he was sipping his own MacFoochie’s—“dark as night and sweet as love” and the best beer of the season by a mile—or a stacked ESPN intern walked by. Let’s not automatically give him credit for not talking.) It was handled well, especially well when heard in hindsight and not in a blacked-out state as I was at the time. Compare it to the Greg Gumbel/Dan Dierdorf exchange, described later in the post, from earlier this season with the field goal(s) to end Patriots–Jets II. (Dierdorf, who I think is pretty good for a dry ex-player, actually comes out clean when lesser color guys would have taken the ref’s incorrect explanation for gospel—I can practically hear Collinsworth ranting on some bullshit about the game not being played the right way). Announcers are there to improve the game experience and they rarely succeed, so nice job, Mike. You creepy piece of shit.
On the subject of television, here are a few things I’ve been meaning to write about. I’ll keep it short:
The 30 for 30 on Jimmy Connors’s 1991 run at the US Open was enjoyable. I was right in the tennis sweet spot (har! har!) then, beginning my senior year of high school when I was on the verge of abandoning the game because asshole coach Chip Hill, Chip Hill with the really bad teeth, only played his team favorites and I wasn’t one of them. So my game regressed and I lost interest. Anyway, as a kid I sort of liked Jimmy Connors. He was funny and successful, which is a good combination in a sport of mild personalities, right? Everybody was rooting for this guy and his ridiculous racquet in ’91. However… what a douchebag he was! McEnroe had his thing: he hated the umpires and linesmen and wanted them to know it. But Connors? He hated the umpires and linesmen and wanted the crowd to know it. I get the sense that tennis wasn’t too important to Connors (nor was compassion, with the Aaron Krickstein fallout). It was the spectacle of competition (and not the competition itself) that kept him playing. Gamesmanship instead of athleticism, as that extended nonsense with the racquets and towels during the Krickstein match was a dead ringer for Carolina’s milking of the clock, slowing the tempo down to such a crawl that I thought Daisuke Matsuzaka was playing quarterback. I never did get McEnroe for some reason, but looking back he was the player I should have liked had I been a little older: cerebral, talented and anti-authoritarian. Right on. Connors was just a gifted prick. Excellent hour of television.
Project Runway double dose! Season twelve ended as it should have with Dom the winner. No one else had a chance—the ones who embrace bold prints (and actually know what to do with them) will always win in the end. And only in the end, in Mondo’s case, because the producers at Lifetime (the Network for Women and Jarrod) don’t like people with the HIV. In retrospect my sleeper pick of Ken was way off the mark: that motherfucker is nuts. I won’t apologize for thinking Bradon would win the whole thing though. He’s obviously talented but I couldn’t have known he’d wait until fashion week to unveil a color-blind-old-lady mess (the “know what to do with them” ingredient, noted above, went missing). His proposal earlier in the season annoyed me too. Was it any better than some goofball in a backwards hat doing it on the big screen at Fenway? Likely worse. Also worse: what the hell got into the usually lovely Tim Gunn during the reunion show? That was a despicable display normally reserved for Zanna Roberts Rassi. The affair was bitter and ugly all around. Excellent hour of television.
Oh, Zanna Roberts Rassi. As much as I didn’t like Tim Gunn on the reunion he’s picture-perfect on the show itself (though I think he and the AIDS-victim-hating producers coddled crazy Ken too much by giving him his own room and not kicking him off the show) and, as a teacher, is a genuine mentor. But Rassi on the new season of Also-Rans? She must be trying out for an off-Broadway Heathers revival. “Just show me the sketch, jerk.” How I love to hate that woman. I’ll keep rooting for Jeffrey even though he doesn’t seem long for the show. After him I’ll probably fall to Seth-Aaron, whose designs I adore (or used to, at least) even as he annoys the shit out of me—these “Look at me, I’m so outrageous!” types always do. Maybe he’ll slice open Viktor the Fop on camera so we no longer have to deal with that little fan of his. That would make for an excellent hour of television.
Lastly, if you attend a Monday Night Football game and try to get on camera by spelling out its acronym, I suggest sticking to initial letters. That’s why they’re called initials. MOST NASTY DEFENSE most certainly does not qualify, you lazy goddaMN motherFucker. Good defense, though. I’ll give you that.
Up next: It is on. Cheers!
More Cream Please 