The game: Patriots at 49ers
The beer: Berkshire Hoosac Tunnel Amber Ale
The result: Win, 30–17; Giants win, 22–16
The commentary: The Pats played the late game and the Giants and Bears warmed me up on Fox before then, presenting a rare opportunity to watch my knockout contest. It was not a comfortable experience as the Bears made it too goddamn interesting. I have now entered the phase of my relationship with the Bears when, formally, I am pushing my luck. This week I considered the sub-five hundred Titans visiting Chicago but that smells of a desperation to keep the Seahawks in my pocket another week. Six remain with no losses last week so we’re inevitably targeting New Year’s Day and even beyond, however that would work. I was also on the Bills (five wins, five losses) over the Jaguars and the Ravens (same) over the Bengals but is that how I want to go out? A. and I enjoy Project Runway every week, in spite of an uninspiring current season, and the auf’d designers who show pride in what failed them instead of regret over unfinished/unrealized concepts are not as emotionally wrecked. If (when?) I lose, I hope my remorse stems from “There’s nothing I can do about Russell Wilson having an off day” and not “I guess the Ravens still kinda suck.”

I also liked the Lions and the Cowboys on Thanksgiving but I feared they would turn into the nail-biters they were and, stuck in rural New Hampshire with no cell signal, I didn’t want to retire away from the family every five minutes to check the broadcast downstairs. I’m a better son, husband and father for it.

Now that organizer Rico (not his real name) is eliminated he’s OK with emailing everyone’s picks before Sundays because that’s not shady at all. And this will be the week that was: as much as I nicknamed the Giants’ Landon Collins “My Man” because he was so much a defensive star to make me hope he played on special teams as well, I will be rooting heavily against him this week. For three people chose the Giants (in New York) against the winless Browns. And not just any three people, no, but the three who possess the godforsaken “golden ticket” that I will rail against next year. Should the Giants lose, which all four Around the NFL heroes predicted—with the understanding that it’s difficult to lose sixteen games and the scraping-by Giants are one of two winnable games left for the Browns—then everything changes. Such an achievement would be wonderful karmic retribution against said advantage (shit, I’d be undefeated too if the Dolphins hadn’t given Roethlisberger’s knee the what-for in week six) and put all of us on a level, single-elimination playing field. They’d be crazy not to buy back on five-to-one odds (Jim Morrison weeps) and the extra seventy-five units would top us off around a thousand. Nice. However, if the Giants do win, it’s difficult to see myself outlasting all three at this point. Drag. (The other two picks? Aforementioned Bills and Titans. If the Seahawks win in Tampa I’ll surely be thankful.)

The Hoosac Tunnel ale was a welcome break from themed this and imperial that. Last month, in the midst of a period of prolific literacy not seen since I chose a series of Stephen King novels over homework throughout high school, I worked my way down the stacks to a couple of hokey “local hauntings” collections entitled Ghost Stories of New England and Cape Encounters: Contemporary Cape Cod Ghost Stories. Here is a representative conclusion of every… anecdote?… in each: “Bob and Sandra surmised that the spirit was that of Hannah Thomas, although they had no way of confirming their suspicions.” Thanks for disavowing everything for which you stand over several hundred pages. The former volume devotes five pages to the Berkshires’ own Hoosac Railroad Tunnel, a.k.a. “the Bloody Pit” that claimed almost two hundred lives during its construction. “The victims died in fires, explosions, tunnel collapses and, in one case, at the hand of another worker.” Compelling! Well, maybe it was murder. Can a suspected vengeful ghost be so charged? Other Hoosac tales relate a “battered and incoherent” hunter who “told of hearing voices that instructed him to enter” the tunnel. “Upon entering, he was confronted by several ghostly apparitions.” The end. See what I’m talking about?

Up next: Thomas Edison, Grover Cleveland, John Fenwick, Joyce Kilmer, Clara Barton, Vince Lombardi… Walt Whitman. Cheers!