The game: Patriots at Saints
The beer: Riverwalk Storm Door Porter
The result: Win, 36–20; Raiders win, 45–20
The commentary: “What album cover banned or censored because of nudity deserved it the most?” I took out the unnecessary comma after “nudity” but resisted rewriting Johnny Keno’s question for him (almost: “Which banned or censored album cover deserved it the most?”).

Anyone who didn’t vote for Blind Faith can proceed directly to jail: “The release of the album provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic.” God forbid a perverted consumer is presented with an adult cock—it might turn him gay—but an eleven-year-old’s tits—not simply breasts because they’re sexualized here and meant to be ogled—are A-OK with the red-blooded eighty-three percent of voters. When are people going to learn?

Not by coincidence, 1969 is when child-pornography curator Eric Clapton began to suck. Blind Faith was a lousy band and everyone involved—even Rick Grech, who made a couple of decent albums with Family beforehand—was capable of better, proven by the well done and Clapton-less Ginger Baker’s Air Force seven months later. “Slowhand” (what does that even mean?) responded with pure shit, most of which he didn’t even write, like his beige eponymous album and a bunch of directionless collaborations with Duane Allman, Delaney & Bonnie and Leon Russell that he probably sulked through and discredited afterward, per his MO. I’d bet forty more units that all of his circular seventies licks are straight out of George Harrison’s rubbish bin.

Speaking of units—not that kind, Fred—I don’t know how chronic gamblers survive. After last week’s gaze upon and triumph over the Bears abyss I was barely able to continue and so relied upon what Midwestern/Northwestern fucktard Michael Wilbon derides as “chalk” by picking the Raiders against the visiting Jets. The Buccaneers were my other serious contender and also won in a blowout over… the Bears—I just couldn’t do it two weeks in a row, baby. The late-afternoon time slot meant I could set stress aside in the middle of another maize—har! har!—while carefully avoiding the (recording) Pats–Saints score as I checked in to root against the Ravens, Panthers, Cardinals, Titans, Chiefs, Vikings and Bucs to little avail. Drag. The Vikings, Giants and 49ers, of all teams, produced three strikes, the last of which took someone all the way out: farewell, poor Kelli, for I’m no longer anonymizing other participants due to volume. In her defense, it remains unclear what time documented RICO hub CBS Sports locks you out from picking same-day games, which is why Thursday-evening commutes home will serve as a deadline until the end. Until my end. Her exit brings us very slightly down to fifty-six and a magic number of one hundred three, with one to give.

How does one live like this? It was stressful enough to track the overtime Cardinals–Colts while wondering (wandering) if G’s decision to enter the white section of the maze instead of sticking with the yellow was a good idea (I’m here, aren’t I?). There was nothing at stake except for the possibility of competitors being disadvantaged, which is an interest of sorts, just one over which I had no control. I’m not even worried about losing the forty units at this point—it’s already gone and I would have blown that and more on a school night in Cambridge (next paragraph). It’s losing the chance to keep playing that worries me and no more. What if I had a thousand on the line? Six months of mortgage payments? Thumbs? What if I were keeping this all from A. and afraid G. would grow up to discover her father is a degenerate who might have to pull her out of school to find a job? Instead I’ll pout, as I’ve done three times before (the initial effort never got off the ground), because my tracking spreadsheet will turn obsolete after a second loss. If Tavin (somehow not an alias) and I are the final two battling it out in week seventeen, my Bills (shudder) against his Dolphins, it would be unfortunate to watch a quarterback anti-clinic between, I don’t know, Ryan Mallett and Matt Cassel—since Tyrod Taylor and Jay Cutler will have been on IR since before the trade deadline—result in a three-zip elimination loss for me. But the spreadsheet? But the spreadsheet! It were to expire anyway and closure is, in itself, victory. Just not two-thousand-two-hundred-forty-units-in-the-black victory.

Item! Thee Oh Sees sold out! No, not in dropping “Thee” like the Jesus Lizard caving to major-label typographic coercion and setting “The” on its baseline from 1996 to 1998. I mean the Cambridge show last Wednesday sold out… in fucking June! How am I to compete with that? (Spinning Live in San Francisco, the new Orc and several dozen other albums fills the void.) These roving packs of freshmen are scene-motivated because even Quicksand this Saturday is a no-go—it ain’t 1994 and Brainiac ain’t opening this time, poseurs. Ivan blames his own lack of follow-through. I have to agree. Old age is a bastard.

Back to Thee Oh Sees, who will always be Thee Oh Sees to me since I started liking them in a post-Orinoka Crash Suite/OCS/Orange County Sound/Ohsees—and pre- and post-Oh Sees—universe about eighteen months ago. (I hear their next album will be released under the OCS moniker. Not in my library.) It’s a shame to have missed the show as I haven’t attended one since seeing Ty Segall early last year and, no, Will Oldham’s bitchin hot mess does not register. I take comfort knowing I also missed the chance to circle Cambridge’s one-way streets for twenty minutes in search of parking and also, I imagine, a bunch of sweaty Harvard twits who would empty trust funds on multiple thirty-dollar, inferior-sounding “exclusive limited-release editions on bone-colored vinyl” LPs to bring to Turntable Night at those hipster bars that encourage people to spin their own for some reason. Millennial look-at-me-ism at its finest. (I was killing time at Notch in Salem a few weeks ago when it happened to be Bring Your Bluegrass Night or some shit and every song sounded exactly like the one the Beastie Boys sampled in “5-Piece Chicken Dinner.” One of them had to be it but all of them could not.) Instead, as a deliberate affront to all they hold dear (until this cassette phase shifts their credibility standards yet again), I bought Orc on CD for twelve bucks, ripped that bastard into the gloriously portable MP3 format and sold it on Discogs a few days later for nine plus shipping. An enviable margin, considering I still own the music, that might have paid for one and a half beers at the Sinclair—I guess staying home, drinking pinot grigio and re-watching the “Devastator” episode of Mr. Show isn’t too bad an alternative. “He broke his neck and then he drowned!” Anyway, Orc will surely be 2017’s Biff-Banger by default.

Football! In case you can’t tell, I’m not going crazy with “They’re back!” and “MFGOAT!” and all that after one (convincing) win (over a mediocre Saints squad), just like I didn’t queue up for the Devastator after the Chiefs unpleasantness. I’m encouraged by Brady’s performance while concern emerges over a series of “minor” muscle injuries to his receiving pool. The defensive personnel, meanwhile, is an unsolvable problem historically, despite last season’s fluky statistics—this is where poor drafting (Ron Brace, Jermaine Cunningham, Ras-I Dowling, Tavon Wilson, Dominique Easley, Jordan Richards, Cyrus Jones, et al… and these are just a handful of the flameout first- and second-rounders since 2009 who should be in their prime by now) hits hard—and the team will need to win a lot of shootouts. They’re able to, but let’s see what happens against a strong Texans defense… and a bad Texans offense. See? Nothing is settling anything just yet.

(Volume eight of Lamenting Thine Rampart, presented early this season, is brought to you by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Tavins. Won’t you give today?)

Up next: It is in poor taste to make a joke at Houston’s expense right now. Instead I’ll target locally and share that HP Lovecraft’s “The Festival” was inspired by a trip to Marblehead, where isolated weirdos make the police log a must-read. Cheers!