The game: Patriots at Browns
The beer: Lagunitas Bitter Oats Ale
The result: Win, 33–13
The commentary: Ten point five percent! Who drinks so heavy a bastard during a one o’clock game? I’ll admit I didn’t notice until checking the bottle after my first sip—I was so caught up with the “Bitter” name that, of course, had to represent Brady’s return from an unjust overreaction. You know I took the full three hours to drink it though—no sense in slurring my way through Candyland and Uno before dinner. Look for other event-themed beers in the coming weeks—what a time to be alive!

Yes, I picked the Patriots in the knockout pool this week. After five games we’re down to thirteen out of twenty-eight… contestants?… and the pot has ballooned to eight hundred ten units, which is more than I won two years ago. I’m already spending the money in my head and I need to knock it off.

We’re a few posts away from two hundred. Unbelievable—legitimately so once longtime readers (!) realize we’d be way beyond it without the death of quick sizzle. (It did make a bitter curtain call the following year when I referred to those behind “Biff Bang Pow,” a web marketing blog, as “dirty rat cocksuckers” and critiqued their design aesthetic by wondering “Maybe I should force-justify all my post titles because that looks real sharp.” That post’s deletion is for the best.) I feel I need to hustle to compose and publish the Trout Mask Replica bullshit in order to salvage any remaining inter-net credibility. Like when Coltrane’s Ascension was the actual one hundredth post? That was the real shit. So deserving a subject. Since said pruning it’s now a basic beer-and-football affair, albeit with a contemplative four-month-old G. and some embarrassing Tim Tebow analysis. Beefheart as two hundred would be an achievement on par with a five-year-old suddenly doing the monkey bars by herself, even getting up there. She’s the best. I wonder if she’ll read all this one day.

Up next: The royal Bengal tiger is the national animal of both India and Bangladesh. In Indonesia it’s the Komodo dragon, the largest member of the lizard family and a filthy liar. Cheers!