Week thirteen
The game: Patriots at Texans
The beer: Newburyport Pale Ale
The result: Win, 34–31
The commentary: Readers (!) wondering why I comment so infrequently on game details have by now learned the truth: even in the rare week where I post before the next one is played, usually it’s like Saturday night or Sunday morning and anything that might have stuck out has stuck itself back in. Old age is a bastard. Increasingly, of course (especially compared to the first season of beer and football way back in oh-ten, when I even found time to mix in love letters to monumental works of art and questionable technological directions), it’s multiple games at once or nothing at all. So here’s what’s left in this impotent brain of mine regarding the Houston game: running backs. Stevan Ridley, dead man walking the sideline with a football in his arm. I wonder if anyone tried to knock it out of there. Then there’s James Develin with his performance of “The Season’s Greatest Touchdown,” featuring the 2014 Number One Draft Pick Players on defense. I love that song. And that’s it—go Patriots!
I finally caught the Hendrix episode of American Masters on PBS. Much of the material had already been used in other documentaries, in particular the sit-down with Chas Chandler that was featured prominently in the Classic Albums piece on Electric Ladyland, but it was still worth watching. I enjoyed the Miami Pop Festival footage and will probably download the album, since that period of the band’s live sound (spring 1968) isn’t well represented. Noel Redding comes off as bitter as ever without any regard for the fact that “She’s So Fine” and “Little Miss Strange” sound like they were written by the psychedelic equivalent of my two-year-old next to Hendrix’s adult, progressive compositions. Lucky for him Fat Mattress went on to superstardom as the closing act at Woodstock—that cover of “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb” segueing into “Petrol Pump Assistant” will live forever.
Unwelcome were the send-us-money interruptions that saddle so many PBS experiences. Local has-beens John Laurenti and Henry Santoro, former DJs at once-listenable WZLX, were reanimated to explain to us that Hendrix was an important musician (I might agree but doubt lingers as I consider the source). The “conversations” between a lazy-eyed Santoro and a disheveled Laurenti were the opposite of enlightening:
Laurenti: “What was your favorite song off the first album?”
Santoro: “Oh, I think ‘Foxy Lady’ was just it.”
Jarrod: “Really?”
Laurenti: “Yeah, it made such a great impact. [Glances down at notes.] And the fact that he released three albums with the Experience and [refers to notes] one with Band of Gypsys and then did… twelve… posthumously is just amazing.”
Wikipedia: “You’re welcome.”
Leave it to Laurenti to not know what he’s talking about. I love the idea that “releasing” twelve albums since death is an accomplishment—just because Hendrix recorded everything doesn’t mean People, Hell and Angels should have exposed itself. Anyway, I remain convinced that if Hendrix had survived the vomit, and then survived an evening with Ginger Baker (who, I learned in Beware of Mr. Baker, was looking for Hendrix the day he died), he either would have continued to create the slick, overproduced boogie music of his late period that I didn’t much care for or, wistfully, ditched the whole scene and embraced blues music like he’d wanted to all along. I favor the latter.
The three of us drove to Connecticut for a nice Thanksgiving, and the night before (in order to avoid bottles of Sam Adams that have probably vacillated between warm and cold for years) I grabbed a canned six-pack of Newburyport Pale Ale to accompany my brain. The in-laws insisted I take the leftovers home. Sure! Cans are the rage, of course, as craft breweries “are seeing the benefits of canning beer,” which I imagine translates to “cans are cheaper to produce” since suitcases of Bud Light don’t come in bottles. No matter the vessel, a leftover pale ale this week might have been the best game-day beer of the year. And I earned that motherfucker because newfangled can carriers have evolved from simple fish-strangling strands of plastic to angry clutches of inertia.
Week fourteen
The game: Browns at Patriots
The beer: Rising Tide Tempest Coffee Porter
The result: Win, 27–26
The commentary: Following the Browns’ first third-quarter touchdown and subsequent failed conversion I wrote “They shouldn’t have gone for two.” I didn’t see the point (har! har!), that late in the game, of securing a two-touchdown lead. There was a lot of football left to be played (obviously, considering what went down) and this reeked of one of those seemingly aggressive but actually trepidatious moves that dooms a team. The Browns lost by one point, and even if the final might instead have been 28–27 (since the Pats would have kicked the extra point at the end instead of going for two) there was a chance to block the kick. Teams get weird when Brady and Belichick are on the opposite sideline.
I still think Ward’s hit on Gronk was a cheap shot. So in order to avoid an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit the only alternative was to go for his knees? I don’t buy it. And now we might be fucked. Incidentally, the way it went down I thought at first that Gronk re-broke his forearm. Flipping end over end and landing awkwardly on his left arm like that? How many times can you break the same bone before you become an accountant? Well, it wasn’t his forearm. Lucky him? Some reports, including one from the ever-reliable Karen Guregian (she’s clearly on the Gronkowski Family Christmas card list), indicate he could be back in time for the start of next season. We’ll see about that. In the meantime, can this team win a playoff game without him?
Week fifteen
The game: Patriots at Dolphins
The beer: Blatant India Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 24–20; Tyson, 7–1–0
The commentary: What the hell, Colette Lala? This wasn’t my favorite season of Survivor either and I’m equally annoyed by repeat offenders (the dream is dead, Rupert, it’s dead!). But at least the right person won… on his third try… and now we have Survivor: Nashua or whatever they’re calling it to look forward to in February. Here’s hoping it features twenty people I’ve never heard of—I can’t remember the last time that happened, sure, but the show is much more enjoyable with you slapping ones and zeroes on my internet. Make 2014 your year.
More internet talk: please and thank you. More people need to know how useless Dan Shaughnessy is, how representative he is of yellow journalism, cretinism and degeneracy. Bruce at Boston Sports Media Watch kills it from all angles—media criticism, sports or otherwise, at its finest.
Music criticism at its finest: the next big thing after the MP3 is apparently the “mastered for iTunes” M4As or 96Ts or whatever “It sounds better!” bullshit Steve Jobs’s corpse invented. (Or it’s Spotify, because everyone knows that bandwidth-reliant digital music is of a higher audio quality than “ridiculous-sounding” locally stored digital music. Also: mashups.) This time it’s called The Complete Studio Recordings The Definitive Collection The Complete Studio Albums. Tune in by, say, November 2016 for the forty-fifth anniversary of “Stairway to Heaven” and the (x) format release of Led Zeppelin: The Redundancy. It’s your own fault and probably mine too.
Up next: A surging Ravens team and a holiday playlist. Cheers!
More Cream Please 