The game: Patriots at Chiefs
The beer: Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sue Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 26–10
The knockout: Rams win, 17–9
The commentary: At what point did a slow-news Thursday turn the corner? It’s as if my throwaway observation that Trump “might drop dead just for the ratings” challenged his team to declare “Ratings? Good idea!” And then the shit went down.

You know the shit, “what the shit was and what wasn’t the shit,” because Keith Richards is a wise man. (Present tense: remarkable.) CNN can only be so frequently checked upon, and Twitter so frequently refreshed, to indicate—with hours-long “BREAKING NEWS” banners—what you already know or suspect. Thankfully, in the midst of a whirlwind weekend between Dear Leader’s admission to and discharge from the care of fine doctorbs at such-and-such hospital, a one-time marquee (but still intriguing) matchup between the fan-allowing Kansas City Chiefs and your New England Patriots was to provide necessary distraction! Patrick Mahomes vs. Cam Newton—what football fan turns away?

Only: Twitter. It was Twitter’s fault. Drag.

Down our best player, closer to fifty-third at quarterback (more in a minute) and rescheduled for Decidedly Not “Monday Night Football” in future COVID hotspot Kansas City? Well… the seven o’clock start was wonderful, even minus the shortened commercial breaks. The pure opposite of baseball. With a late start myself, I was still caught up at halftime and glad (well, “glad” is strong considering the outcome) to see we were twelve minutes shy of ten o’clock at the gun. Phew! Let’s switch over to CNN!

Hold on. There was football, and there was football drama yet to come. Hoyer started and I (and most everyone else, despite what they’re now saying) agreed with that. He was the backup all preseason and Stidham never seemed to be an option—he was behind only Brady last year but speculation is that Hoyer was expected to re-sign (not “resign”—language remains a funny thing) after being released in August. On Monday, he (in the words of Belichick) “gave them the best chance to win” and/or (in Fred Kirsch’s) “[is] a thirty-six-year-old father of four! [sic]” who (in mine) “has enough experience to not freak out aboard the game-day traveling petri dish” like Stidham might have ahead of his first start. Was this the case until just before halftime? “And with the sack and the hold, the Falcons Patriots are not in position to add to an eight-point lead do any goddamn thing.” Before the red-zone fumble late in the third quarter? Fuuuuuuck. Hoyer might “[know] the system as well as anyone” but only if said system excludes situational awareness and, you know, basic memory retention after your offensive coordinator undoubtedly shouts some version of “No more timeouts!” into your headset.

Stidham entered the game later than he should have and looked alright—looked like a routinely inactive third-stringer who’s run the scout team for a month—but he did, along with the defense, give them a chance. The Chiefs are the better (best) team and eventually snapped out of it but, factoring everything, it might be moral victory number two of the season. Hindsight, of course, is that Mahomes probably wouldn’t have slept through three quarters versus Cam Newton. Moral something-or-other.

For the record, Julian Edelman and Stephon Gilmore switched places on the best-Patriot scale from second and third, respectively. Edelman’s allowed a bad game—media consensus is that he’s badly broken—but Gilmore played much better than he had all season, and was likely the most responsible for holding Mahomes under twenty points. Imagine if we’d only held onto those interceptions (an emailer to Wednesday’s Patriots Unfiltered addressed more fundamental breakdowns: “McCourty—really? Catch the freaking ball!”) and, more so, if Tony Corrente had refereed Super Bowl XLII. The smallest violin, smaller even than the one G. just started learning how to play in fourth grade. But hey, we still might have a decent defense again! Hooray!

Only: Twitter. Again. It was Twitter’s fault. Again. Drag.

So… they probably shouldn’t have played at all. The NFL needs to figure out some kind of bubble going forward, and not just for the playoffs—MetLife custodians have rights, too. How many more, Mr. Senator? Trump is an outright enemy of the league at this point (though not of most of the owners in charge, including your handjob enthusiast Robert Kraft, and I suppose rich white guys are all Trump cares about) and his example is not one to follow… assuming he actually is/was infected. A. isn’t convinced. This is where we’ve arrived—at paranoid abhorrence.

How about that fly? Flies fuck, Mr. Vice President. They fuck like these two, caught in flagrante delicto on our car in the spring. I couldn’t decide if I wanted Kamala Harris to give him a heads up—har! har!—or not. It would have made her the bigger person—I always want to know when I have something in my teeth—but what would that gain to any Republican’s audience? No matter how respectfully she might have handled this, Trump’s multiple opportunities to misspell “humiliation!” would have overwhelmed him. So I’m glad she pretended not to notice. For two goddamn minutes.

A. and I ordered Thai food and apparently tuned into the wrong debate because we loved Harris’s performance, thought she handled frequent interruptions as deftly as possible and, most importantly, did nothing to lose Biden/Harris a single vote. We also agreed that Susan Page did well as moderator—the follow-ups might have lacked but the questions themselves were excellent. However, every other viewer watched Harris dodge question after question—we counted only the court-packing issue, which is the least of anyone’s concerns right now, and maybe half of the one about abortion—and Page mismanage and lose control of the entire event. What were they to do when Pence went over time, get up and tackle him? It all reeks of the misogyny that will stick around no matter what happens next month, 2024, etc. If CNN—and MSNBC as well, I’m sure, though even I can’t stand that hoopla for more than a few minutes—is serious about a new administration then they should leave the false “fair-and-balanced” integrity to the other side, refuse to give Trump what amounts to hours of publicity every night and shift the focus to what a Biden/Harris victory would mean for everyone (women, people of color, Trump-voters) and everything (immigration, public health, communities affected when Trump is no longer around to reopen “all of those” coal-fired power plants). Chris! Don! We’re already outraged! That’s why we watch CNN! Tell us something we don’t already know or, conversely, tell of something others don’t already mistrust. What else is there to hear, ponder or judge?

“I’m feeling pretty good.”
Donald Trump
January 29, 2020

Right…

“I’m feeling pretty good.”
No one in their right mind
November 3, 2020

But maybe…

“I’m feeling pretty good.”
More than half of America and I
January 20, 2021

Up next: Who the fuck knows. Cheers!