Week nine
The game: Colts at Patriots
The beer: Channel Marker Losing Daylight Dark Mild Ale
The result: Win, 26–3
The method: Live via Paramount+

Week ten (bye)
The beer: Hopothecary Bavarian Analgesic Märzen-Style Ale

The headline: “Flush you like my toilet!” – ESG, “Erase You”

The commentary: G. played me Ray Parker (Jr.)’s “Ghostbusters” on the way to school on Halloween, and though I resisted the urge to relate the “I Want a New Drug” controversy, I couldn’t help but offer my own contribution. “Hey, look up ‘The Mummy’ by, like, Bob something or Rod. Dor? Look up Dor.” She found it—kids are brighter than they should be—and didn’t seem to like it much, which is the correct response because it barely holds up even as a one-off novelty. Nonetheless, she’s played it at least once every morning since then, and if you think the lyrics are redundant—“Watch what happens when I walk up to somebody!”—then try it on repeat. Like, help. Is it too early for Christmas music?

What I couldn’t resist, though, happened Tuesday. “Hey, want to hear another version of this by a band I like? Look up ‘the fall mummy.’” Halfway through she turned it off: “This is terrible.” Mark E. Smith claims another victim.

What else happened Tuesday? Not the fabricated “red wave,” that’s for sure. CNN+ died before I even had a chance to subscribe so I wasn’t sure how I would have watched coverage anyway, probably “live via Paramount+” as I do so many Pats games, but we caught up on The Halloween Baking Championship and then I fell asleep on the couch. My body knew what I needed. When I awoke and (of course) checked Twitter before going to bed, I was ecstatic with the way things were turning out. The week progressed—har! har!—with each day outdoing the last and here we stand with a returning Senate majority and, at worst, a slim minority in the House. “Watch what happens when I walk up to somebody! And plainly inform them that I will strip their rights!” Donald J. Trump claims another victim: himself, maybe, finally. I await Tuesday’s “announcement” with glee—what was presumed to be the start of his 2024 campaign will likely (seamlessly!) shift to promoting a new line of low-end girdles or hurricane tents or whatever as if that were the plan all along. “Erase you!” Flussshhh.

The win over the Colts was nice, at least as far as the defense is concerned. Mac’s twenty completions for under a hundred fifty yards, though, following twenty-four for sub-two hundred, is not the year-two jump we’re looking for. It’s insane that we’re going to have a quarterback controversy next summer.

At least we’re not the Colts, whose management instincts are all over the map when they failed to lock down Josh McDaniels as head coach a few years ago (probably a blessing in disguise), settled for Frank Reich (who held back a pretty good team ever since) and replaced him with their old center. Were unqualified Black ex-players unavailable? Anyway, this should provide enough cover for Jim Irsay to drop ten million on Syd Barrett’s eyebrows before long. These owners have misdirection down to an art form.

A selection of bye-weekend encounters:

G. had a friend over Friday afternoon and that turned into an impromptu sleepover at the friend’s house that night. During the drive over, Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” and its opening drum solo came on Ozzy’s Boneyard.

G: What’s that noise? Is it the radio?

G’s friend: Is something wrong with it?

Me: Absolutely not.

At the post office yesterday morning, waiting in line to give Discogs another eight percent, an elderly woman asked me and another customer “Do you want to see what my son sent me?” The way she carefully removed the item from inside her sweater, I expected it to be an expensive necklace or brooch. Instead it was a “$2020” bill with a picture of Trump on it. “Good luck with that,” I said. “It won’t go very far.”

Following that bit of lunacy and a few other errands, the day evolved into “Hangathon” as we motivated ourselves to make the new house more our own by hanging my framed Mudhoney poster, several other prints and canvases and (for some reason) a giant-ass mirror ahead of my parents visiting for the first time since we moved in July. I expect to be bullied into “Hangathon II” in a matter of minutes to continue the work. Stupid bye week.

Up next: The AFC East, on paper, is the most competitive division in football. That’s what happens when you value an above-average coach over the greatest quarterback of all time. Cheers!