First Draft

Weekend/NYE Question Thread

Resolutions? 

I started running again in October. I'd basically quit over the spring/summer, a combination of being crazy-busy with the Irish bar book and then throwing my back out and then just lazy. I missed running, so in the fall when things calmed down a little I started it up again, and now I can't believe I ever quit. 

(I don't have shin splints this time, but I do have this weird pain in my right foot, on the outside of the foot just in front of the ankle joint, and a wicked side stitch that won't go away no matter how many bananas I eat or how much water I drink. Help, runners.) 

I've also done the cliché thing and started a diet, in connection with this evil thing that my friend Jennifer turned me onto. Now I go around looking at labels and considering the fast-food menu seriously instead of just getting the lard-smeared nacho plate, and while it's a pain the ass, I do feel better than I did when I was eating butter shortbread for breakfast.

I have a fridge full of veggies and recipes for 400-calorie meals and if I'm very, very good all day I can still have a glass of wine or dessert or some of the nachos anyway. I've never wanted to be neurotic about what I eat, but look, I ain't getting any younger and women in my family live into their 90s. Stuff need to work a good long time yet. 

I'd like to stick with those things in 2012, because the better physically I feel, the more I'm able to accomplish, and there's so much this year that needs doing. 

What are yours? 

A. 

A scientific rationale as to why designated drivers are hard to come by

Scout got to the Walker fiasco before I could, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain one of the heaviest mysteries I’ve encountered to this stage in life.

Tonight, we’re going out to celebrate The Missus’s birthday with some of her friends. She has some “normal” friends like A and a couple people she met through social engagements and previous jobs. Then, there are her work friends, who have been known to plow through an entire bottle of Red Stag and then give each other “cleavage checks” before they head out to the bars.

We will be going out with the latter this evening.

Early in this process, I volunteered to be the designated driver. I don’t like getting shit-hammered, I really hate hangovers and if I’m getting drunk, I’d like to make sure I’m safe about it.

I think it goes back to my first experience with a drunken driver. When I was 17 or so, my best friend decided no one was driving his car, dammit, and he was just fucking fine. Thus, I found myself riding shotgun, sober as a judge, on the U.S.S. Look Out For That Fucking Light Pole.

When we were inevitably pulled over, my good friend had the misfortune of breathing within 10 feet of the cop who asked, “You drinking?”

True to form and without missing a beat, my friend answered, “Why? Are you buying?”

It was all down hill from there.

In any case, DDing isn’t exactly popular around here. I know at least two people who have court-mandated breathalyzer-keyed ignition locks on their cars and I can’t read the local paper without seeing something about some idiot who showed up drunk to a DUI hearing.

Dennis Miller, back when he was funny for the right reasons, once noted that there are two groups of people in the country now: Those who get pathetically drunk in public and the rest of us poor bastards who are now expected to drive these pinheads home. The first group seems to be growing while the second group seems to be shrinking.

Here’s my logical “Doc-based” explanation as to why.

Let’s start out with the concept of you and a fellow barhopper heading out for a night on the town. If you both have about equal tolerance and start drinking about the same time, you’re getting hammered at the same rate. You thus both find it equally difficult to walk, you both are OK when you want to tell the other person “just one more thing” and you each think the other is fucking hilarious.

You have a very small differentiation in how much of an asshole you are being in your own minds because you’re both drunk. You both might be raging assholes who are puking all over yourselves and trying to grab the bartender’s genitalia, but neither of you notices because the gap between your assholic behavior is so small.

I have labeled this differentiation the A.T.G. or “asshole tolerance gap.”

See Figure 1:

Now, let’s think about you, your drunken friends and your poor designated driver. As you continue from rich to good looking to bulletproof to invisible in your alcohol-soaked mind, your DD is sitting there, sipping a Diet Coke and wondering why everyone else at the table thinks it’s hysterical that the woman at the next table is wearing a “Where’s the Beef?” T-shirt over her A-cup-sized chest. It’s also unclear to your DD why one of your party has been staring at the jukebox for 45 minutes trying to find “That one fucking song… you know what I’m talking about? By that chick… With the tits… And… Fuck, man… It was just here!” Meanwhile, the one girl that everyone hates because because after two drinks she makes it clear that when she says “Let’s blow this place!” it in no way means she’s planning to leave, is over in the corner trying to seduce someone’s husband.

It’s not just your friends that become a problem at that stage for the DD. Your own perception of reality has become something between that of a kaleidoscope and an acid trip as you suddenly come apart on your DD in one of the following ways:

 

1) The “I love you” attack: This is marked by several staggering passes at your beloved DD, who is doing his/her best not to topple over and spill Diet Coke all over the place as you fall slobbering on top of him/her with a “You know I love you, right?”

2) The “horny toad” approach: Alcohol lowers your inhibitions until you suddenly feel like Don Juan or Bella in Twilight. Either way, you sense nothing but yourself, your groin and the DD. There is likely to be a lot of groping, fondling and the inevitable line of “What’s your fucking problem? Don’t you want me?”

3) The “fuck barter” conundrum: Drunks want several things all at once: Food, more booze, sex and sleep. The last one, they really don’t cognitively want, but their body’s putting the squeeze on them to lay down, vomit and start the road to recovery. Still, if you’re drunk, you’re fighting that urge because you “so totally want breakfast/Taco Bell.” Thus, you will offer to trade your DD anything, including a rim job, for the chance to get a stack of waffles or a burrito supreme (no those aren’t euphemisms).

Here’s a tip from me to the rest of the DDs out there: If he/she says, “I will blow you right now for some pancakes,” don’t expect head and don’t bother with the IHOP run. The drunk will be asleep before the second traffic light.

4) The “Dylan Thomas” fight or flight mechanism: Some folks are angry drunks or violent drunks. Some are stubborn drunks. The best way to deal with these drunks is to not be around them in the first place. However, the DD needs to make sure they get home alive. Thus, after what seems like six minutes to you but is actually about 19 hours, the DD will do the “hey, it’s time to get going” thing, which will trigger a “do not go gentle into that good night” moment. You don’t wanna go dammit. That DD fucker isn’t the boss of you. He isn’t the king of Dirk. People can’t tell you what the fuck to do… All of this leads to either a drunken slapfest fight or you running through the parking lot in the middle of a snow storm wearing nothing but a bra, a pair of vomit soaked jeans and one shoe. And if you’re a woman, you’ll likely be wearing even less than that.

At the time you are engaging in any/all of these behaviors, you appear to be totally rational and in the right. Of course, you’re so drunk you spent three minutes making out with the wooden Indian who is guarding the entrance to the smoking lounge at the bar, so what do you know? Meanwhile, the DD is fighting the urge to try to carry you to the car and swearing to GOD that he/she will never DD again. The reason is because he/she sees reality while you are growing more and more and more disturbed and assholic.

Thus, the A.T.G. is much wider.

See Figure 2:

 

 Everyone has an asshole tolerance threshold. Some people can tolerate anything. Take my mother, for example, who works with eighth graders all day. Her tolerance levels are beyond anything I can possibly comprehend. I really think she could have an armored car dropped on her from the top of Empire State Building and emerge unscathed with a “That all you got?” smirk on her face.

Other people are way too sensitive for their own damned good. I remember getting an earful from a former colleague who was incensed at the dominant-male-hegemonic-hierarchial-paternalistic-hegemonic-hegemony of this world after someone in our group made the mistake of referring to a “covered sewer access opening” as a “manhole cover.”

However, for most of us, we have a moderately OK level of tolerance. When someone farts in public, drops an off-color joke or makes an inappropriate movement, we can grit our teeth, blow it off and move on with life. We don’t like it but we tolerate it.

And yet we all have our limits, which is why the A.T.G. is such an effective and rational explanation for why we have fewer DDs and those who do DD don’t like it all that much.

That said, my other theory, known as the “Who the fuck puked in my car?” axiom, also seems promising.

Friday Ferretblogging: HAPPY NEW YEAR BITCHES!

Continuing today's theme of animals with their mouths open, have a Riot: 

A. 

Friday Guest Catblogging: Tortilicious

This magnificent kitty mouth and set of teeth belong to Sassy who is allegedly my old friend Susan Caldwell's daughter Delia's cat. I say allegedly because Sassy the torti lives with Susan who took this awesomely toothsome picture:

Merry Christmas

The days are dim and cold and short. I think that's what it is. 

I think that's why we drape our homes in strings of stars and light the fire and invite people in: Gather close, because your warmth keeps out the wind. Our traditions date from times when winter meant death, when winter meant the very old and very young and very ill were felled sooner than expected, and a community could expect to lose its weakest members and, if they weren't careful, its strongest as well. 

As we still can, in many places. As we still do, so very close to home. 

Every year, I complain about the cold, about the inconvenience of travel in the snow, about the seeming endlessness of the overcast sky, but winter speaks to me like a muscle-memory, knit into some deep German part of me that knows that cold outside is imperative for warmth within. 

It's an instinct I obey: Prepare. Stock up. Reinforce the window frames, unroll the rugs, take the thickest blankets out of storage. Bake bread and make stew and chili and fill the freezer, just in case. The pantry is full of seasonings and supplies. Is this all those Little House books I read? There are two grocery stores within walking distance and we live on the second floor; we're in no danger of being snowed in. Our traditions are about interdependence: Share what you have, because that way everyone has enough. Maybe I just want to have enough to share, so that if you come to the door I can feed you. 

(If the Detroit Lions came to the door, I could feed them. We won't have to grocery shop until June.) 

I want to gather everyone in. We've had a steady parade of houseguests since Thanksgiving: The only point to having more than one room is to fill the others with people you love. I feel that way about this place, too. Why have this room unless it's full of people? The Secret Santa thing made me so happy, because it showed me and the rest of the Internet how much you care about each other. I've always wanted to have a house full of people like that. 

Especially now, when it's dark, and the wind is howling outside the door. 

A. 

Graduation Day

 

The end of the year means Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Freedom From Religion Foundation protests, Bowl Games, seeing family you love, tolerating family you don’t, gifts, department store return lines jammed with angry people, travel, traffic, headaches and Jenny Craig’s hotline exploding with cries of “I’m too fat!” For me, it’s a happy-sad gathering that involves that involves me wearing the most expensive thing I own that wasn’t autographed by a football player.

Mid-year graduation is always a strange phenomenon for me. I usually end up gowning up in apparel that makes me look like a cross between Henry VIII and a Detroit pimp and sitting through three hours of names being announced in the school gym. I usually end up freezing to death while trying to get to the gym and then sweating to death when we’re all crammed in there. The speakers have eventually learned that they need to keep it short, but on occasion, you run into someone for whom this is like their moment on Star Search: They’re not giving up that mic without someone coming after them with a whip and a chair.

The rule at my previous college was that you had to attend at least one of these things each year. You signed up and if you blew it off, you were up a creek without a paddle. I usually picked the winter one, as it was shorter, easier and had fewer faculty, which meant more space in the faculty seating area. Of course, by the time summer rolled around, faculty had been blowing off stuff and missing in action, so another call went out to those of us easily swayed by Catholic guilt to pony up again.

I went for a number of reasons: I’m a fan of graduation ceremonies for the kids, parents like to meet you and I do look awesome in the regalia, despite the fact I hate dressing up. Doctoral regalia gives you this odd feeling that you know what you’re doing, even if you’re wearing jeans underneath this badge of importance.

I have to laugh about all of that. As an undergrad, I was a horrible student, due primarily to the greater interest I showed in the student newspaper than I showed in my classes. I made the dean’s list one term, got involved in the paper and watched my grades crash like the Hindenburg. In my master’s program, grades didn’t matter, but I did marginally better. In my doctoral program, grades didn’t matter worth a shit, so I never paid attention to what I got, so long as I passed. One day, I got a letter from the school telling me I was being inducted into the journalism honors society on the strength of a perfect GPA. I almost threw it out thinking it was a joke. Turns out, I got a neat medal and the right to wear a purple hat. I honestly think it’s the academe’s way of mocking me.

In this gig, I went a couple times, only to find that most of the kids I knew didn’t attend and faculty presence wasn’t required, so turnout was low. I then made a deal with myself and the kids: I’m not going unless someone specifically invites me. That way, I know I’m going for a reason.

Some of the kids from the newsroom thought I was joking until the year I didn’t show up for a spring graduation and all these parents were there looking to meet the guy who corrupted their children. I got an irate text message from my editor asking where the hell I was. Hey, you knew the rules. Not my fault. I’m waxing my car.

This winter, I got three invites, including one from my managing editor who told me, “If you don’t come, I’ll cry.” This from a woman who bounces people out of her bowling alley/bar every night and walks around the newsroom toting a baseball bat.

Thus, I ponied up, sweated my ass off and sat through a graduation ceremony. It was actually one of the better ones. I got to meet the family of the kids, a couple of whom looked at me and said, “Oh, I thought you were a student.” With a hat that hides male-pattern baldness, that’s somewhat workable on a campus filled with non-traditional students, I guess.

Afterward, I make good on the traditional promise I make to the kids their sophomore year when they wonder why I’m digitally dissing them: I’ll be your Facebook friend once you graduate. When you become an alumnus, it’s a great way for us to keep in touch. Before that, it’s creepy as shit and given the fact that everyone from columnists and football coaches to teachers and priests seem to be having trouble separating themselves from kids without using a crowbar, it’s in my best interest to not open any doors that might suggest impropriety. One kid one year literally walked across the stage, got her diploma cover and whipped out her smartphone. I got the “friend request” about six seconds later.

Many of these kids are returning students or one of the first in their family to get a degree. Moms and dads come in their best jeans and clip-on ties. Some of them come with husbands, wives and their own kids wearing muddy boots and cowboy hats. Their coats are from the local Harley dealership, the city factory or the Carhart section of Farm and Fleet. They feel horribly awkward standing around looking at all these people they’ve been trained to view as academic elites while their kids pose for photos with these overpaid government workers. I always do my best to try to break through that, once doing so by spending about a half hour talking to a woman’s husband about diesel engines and the benefit of having a good pickle fork when confronting an uncooperative tie-rod.

In looking back at the pictures the kids post from graduation, it becomes clear this means a lot more than many of them are willing to let on. They treat it like an imposition while waiting for their turn on the stage, but when they smile for those photos, you can tell that they know what they’ve earned.

And when I see my own smile there, it reminds me that this is why I do what I do.

Friday Ferretblogging: Have a Tilly, Tilly Christmas

I HAZ A THRILLED.

A. 

Friday Catblogging: Oscar believes in Santa Claus

Or is that Santa blankets?

Friday Ferretblogging

Bucky and Tilly are extravagant nappers: 

A. 

Friday Catblogging: Oscar and the Poinsettia

Friday Ferretblogging

Matilda (Tilly, Tillybean, Tillypet, Tilzabub, Tils) is recovering nicely now, getting all fat and fluffy. She even plays like a baby ferret, jumping and chasing after balls and toys and treats, and she's got much more solid footing now than she did when she came home. I hope she'll have a long, happy, fuzzy life with us.

This is the ferrets' favorite season: Christmas shopping season! It means new boxes delivered to the house, with packing material in them, for maximum fun. You can see Tilly in this vid, poking her stripy little head in with everyone else in the box:

A.

Friday Catblogging: Della Street's Closeup

It's hard to get Della to look right at the camera. Perhaps she wanted her newly luxuriant whiskers on the interwebs. Oscar seems to have stopped nibbling on them at long last:

Friday Ferretblogging: Improvement Edition

So we should do this more often: Leave. Mr. A and I went away for the Thanksgiving weekend, and when we came back Tillie had put on an entire pound and was eating like a bitty fluffy horse. Her face has filled out, and she looks like a ferret now instead of a tiny zombie roadkill raccoon. She's even started to play a little, batting at toys and Bucky to see how that goes and then heading back for some hardcore napping. 

A. 

Hugo

I've avoided the recent revival of 3-D movies like Mitt Haircut avoids the truth. Hugo is the first 3-D film I've seen wearing those stupid glasses. I still don't care for the process: both Dr A and I had mild headaches and a bit of motion sickness at the end of the latest Scorsese opus BUT the 3-D effects were well done and not merely gratuitous. In short, they didn't just throw shit at the audience and see how much of it stuck to your silly glasses...

More knowledgeable people than me, such as the great Roger Ebert, have pointed out how personal this film is to Marty. (Pronounced Maw-tee.) The director was a sickly kid who spent a lot of time looking out the window of his parents' apartment and going to the movies. The eponymous character Hugo watches life transpire at a Paris train station and stumbles into some movie magic when he meets Georges Melies, one of the real life inventors of silent film.

The second half of Hugo is astonishing and I particularly liked it because it's about early film history. I am a sucker for silent film history. It was a time when eccentrics and mavericks, and not corporations, made the movies. Scorsese weaves this history lesson into a story involving kids, washed up film folk and Sasha Baron Cohen as a flic who reminds me of Lionel Atwill's handicapped cop character in Son Of Frankenstein.

Hugo is a great time at the movies, if the 3-D process doesn't make you queasy this is an excellent use of it. If it does, either see it in 2-D, smoke some really strong weed or drop some dramamine. I give the film (what else?) 4 stars.

Friday Ferretblogging: Nursing Edition

So Matilda decided to make her entrance into the family dramatic. Last Saturday Mr. A and I came home from a day out to find her curled up and refusing to eat. She yacked up everything I tried spooning into her, was getting dehydrated and wouldn't play. When a baby ferret doesn't want to play, it is time to sound the nucelar sirens because something is Very Wrong. 

I called our long-suffering shelter director, picked up some stomach medication and shelter food (figuring that what she'd been eating before might have been easier on her system) and spent the next two days giving her this unbelievably disgusting gushy mush every two hours, bit by bit. She would only eat a bite or two at a time, and only from my fingers. When I went to bed, Mr. A took over, coaxing her to drink from a water dish and checking on her to make sure she was still breathing. 

Monday she was a little perkier, and then yesterday when I got home from the shelter she was flopped on the cage floor, head down in the food dish, noshing away. The more she eats, the more she plays, the hungrier she gets. I'm not ordinarily such a ball of nerves about the pets; when the boys get sick it's like eh, they'll eat when they're hungry again. But Miss Teeny Tiny Featherweight Pet has so little meat on her to begin with, the loss of even a gram or two is worrisome: 

It's likely she was just stressed out from moving around so much (her owner to animal control to the shelter to us in the space of five days) and pigged out too much on new food in her starved state. The others have been incredibly gentle with her. Even Bucky has done nothing to her but curl up beside her to keep her warm. I don't think we're entirely out of the woods yet, but she's slowly putting the pudge back on, and in a couple of weeks I hope to see her filled out and full of energy.  

A. 

Friday Catblogging: Quilty as charged

A friend of Dr. A's recently finished a quilt made out of some of our old t-shirts. It's very cool and obviously Oscar and Della approve.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Since Thanksgiving is all about the food, it's a holiday I'm fond of. Here's my favorite weirdo holiday food video of all time wherein Martha Stewart teaches Snoop Dogg how to make mashed potatoes:

 

Friday Ferretblogging: Say Hi to the Internet, Matilda

HI INTERNET! 

Yep. I'm a sucker. She came home with me Tuesday. 

What happened was this. Somebody dropped this ferret off at the local animal control HQ, absolutely starved. As in, she was all fluffy fur and sharp, poking-out bones. She'd been badly neglected, that was for sure, and if she was fed at all clearly it was either the wrong stuff or drastically not enough of it. She's very, very young -- eight months, still a baby with sharp baby teeth and downy baby fur and little baby claws. 

Animal control called the ferret shelter, and our rescuers picked her up and proceeded to text me all weekend with pictures of her and plaintive notes about how thin and adorable and thin and sweet and thin and funny she was. I was already half thinking about it before I went in for my regular volunteer shift Tuesday, and then I sat down with her to give her a feeding. She wrapped all four of her legs around my wrist and would only let go to put her face in the food dish and suck down every morsel. I didn't stand a chance. 

Since she's been home with us, she's mostly eaten and slept. She doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of an idea how to play; she'll walk the perimeter of the room and then perch in a random spot and watch the others as they jump and chase. Riot grooms her and herds her a bit, and Claire is huffily ignoring her, offended beyond belief that there's a new pretty girl at the dance. 

Bucky? Well, Bucky tried the same trick he tried with Claire: He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and started to haul her off to where he stashes his stuffed animals. Matilda let out the loudest shriek I've ever heard from a ferret, reared back and bit him on the head. He scurried away, thoroughly chastened. 

A healthy respect for the ladies is now instilled in him. 

A. 

Friday Catblogging: Oscar the window fighter

Oscar is a mild mannered kitty; except when we've evacuated to our friends Susan and Steve's house in North Louisiana. Then he becomes the Beast of Bossier:

 Betcha didn't know that Oscar could be such a bad ass.

Odds & Sods

We're awaiting the sort of cold front in NOLA that most of y'all would sneer at but I'm looking forward to some cool Northern air. On to today's menu of items, hopefully they'll be properly seasoned:

Worst legal advice ever: I have no idea WTF Jerry Sandusky's mouthpiece was thinking when they granted Bob Costas of NBC an interview. Did they expect softball questions because they're only familiar with my countryman's work as an Olympics host? Wrong. I thought Bob nailed him and Sandusky's responses were classic pedophile answers. He performed a modified limited hangout (sorry for the image in this context) and stressed how much he liked children. Yikes. Sandusky's lawyer should stop horsing around and give him an adequate defense so Coach Perv's seemingly inevitable conviction won't be reversed on appeal.

Cell Phone Blues: I love my smart phone BUT they seem to bring out the big stupid in people. There's a woman who is always on her phone when she gets on the bus and today she dropped it and then berated the bus driver for pulling out too fast. His reply: "I always do that." She whined a bit, picked up her phone and proceeded to have a very intimate and loud conversation about some relative's health.

The other day I saw a woman riding a bike on Magazine, which is a narrow but very busy street. She was wearing a short skirt and flip flops *and* she was smoking a cigarette and texting whilst she rode. I halfway expected to see a fatal accident but did not. I hope that text or tweet was vital but somehow doubt it. It was multi-tasking at its most imbecilic...

Paragraph of the day: It comes from the sublime Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon in a post about the Hoaxidate and pizza:

“The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is,” he explained. “Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! ” [Side note: America, if you ever elect a man with such appalling grammar to its highest office, wild packs of copy editors with nothing left to lose are going to storm the White House and burn it down.] Cain then explained that a real man would dismiss any pizza contaminated with vegetables as “a sissy pizza.” Because Herman Cain’s penis isn’t having it!

Hmm, I wonder if Godfather's ever had horse's head or "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes" pizza? That would surely be butch enough for the Hoaxidate...

NOLA Notes: 11/11/11 Edition

First of all, Happy Veterans Day. I decided to skip the malaka of the week post in honor of our Vets. Additionally, there was so much malakatude this week that my head was spinning like Tommy T's when he reads the freepers.

I'd also like to give a shout out to a NOLA blogger whose blog name I have borrowed: NOLA Notes. Check it out, she's a good writer as well as a very amusing presence on the tweeter tube.

Okey doke, it's time for some random and discursive NOLA Notes:

Get Me To The Quarter On Time: My artist/lapsed lawyer friend Jerry makes part of his living marrying people. He's going to be a busy man today. The last I heard, he had 10 services to perform on 11/11/11. Jerry does a lot of outdoor weddings in Jackson Square and in parks throughout the city. He also marries folks at Pirate's Alley, which is snuggled in between the Cabildo and St. Louis Cathedral. He plans to be there all day today because he'll be too busy to bop around town. I tried to wangle a commission from him but to no avail. I didn't do anything to deserve one but it never hurts to ask...

Say What? Yesterday a Midwestern lady came in to the shop and asked me a question about the significance of the fleur de lis. I gave her my standard spiel about the French royal family and yadda, yadda, yadda. She nodded and said: "That's what I thought. Some clerk in a shop told me it was a new symbol of post-Katrina renewal." I hope that person was pulling the tourist's leg but she thought not. Holy historical, malpractice, Batman.

The Not So Magic Bus: I've been riding the Magazine Street bus downtown to Canal Street a lot lately. One of the drivers and I have a little game: malakas often park in the bus zone at my stop and If it's a luxury car or big ass SUV, he calls it in. If there's a car parked there he'll ask me what state license plates they have. Today it was an Escalade with Texas plates, which we agreed made them a two time loser. Don't park in the bus zone, y'all. You never know who you'll run into:

 

UPDATE: Jerry ended up performing 11 weddings on 11/11/11. Must be kismet, man.

Friday Catblogging: Geaux Tigers

Friday Ferretblogging

Bucky and Claire in their daily wrestling match:

A.

Friday Catblogging: Get in here and feed me now, dammit

Thus spake Della Street:

Trick or Treat

So I live in a big building with narrow walkways and usually on Halloween the trick-or-treaters go right by. There are big houses full of candy around the corner, after all. And usually Mr. A and I are on the road during trick-or-treating, but last year we happened to be home and saw all the costumes from our windows, and felt wistful that we missed out on the fun of seeing neighbors and passing out treats.

And then I read this, and my head almost exploded:

We had more kids at our door than we ever had in Oak Park! This time the majority of families were coming from Maywood. We ran out of candy in the first hour and I had to send Andrew to the store to scrounge up anything he could so we could continue to give out treats! In conversations we had at a neighborhood party following trick-or-treating, we were given some advice: buy a small amount of "good candy" to give out to the "neighborhood kids" and then buy tons of "cheap candy" to give out to the rest.

I have been quietly watching what happens on the streets of River Forest as I take my kids around on Halloween night and here is what I have found. Some houses give out full-size chocolate bars, gift certificates and soda pop, but only to the "neighborhood kids". I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this practice. On one hand I realize that , for the kids they know, they want to do something special. On the other hand, I think that the only way for most people to distinguish "neighborhood kids" from the kids coming from Maywood is by the color of their skin.

I get that the economy sucks and that not everyone can afford to buy candy for half the city. I'm not shaming anybody for deciding to opt out, close the door and stay inside. But what in God's name kind of twisted satisfaction does anybody get out of counting out who deserves what candy at the door on Halloween? Every year this happens here too, even though my 'hood is far from wealthy. Some knob whines to the local paper about "those kids" coming into "our" neighborhood and getting candy. Because those Milk Duds were rightfully mine! You're actually going to make a federal case out of a popcorn ball? I mean, okay, but ... really?

Even if this is true, and even if this gets your back up, there is no real solution. What exactly should be done here? Checking parents' driver's licenses for an address in proximity before giving the kid a Twix? Maybe some Republican legislator can pass a law that says you can only trick-or-treat two blocks from your house. Possibly if you are enough of an asshole all those kids will go away! After all, when I was a kid blah blah blah just go watch some TV, would you? Just go watch TV or take a nap or play Scrabble or something. I can't fathom getting that amped about the candy, and I've been eating malted milk balls for breakfast.

Last year I saw some girls up the street with a fantastic idea. They put a card table in front of their apartment building, hung up a sign that said "welcome trick-or-treaters" and handed out sweets all afternoon. So this year Mr. A and I bought four bags of candy (we even had three left by Halloween!) and dragged down the lawn chairs and gave candy to Batmen and a doctor and some teenagers in cat outfits and three ninja daughters with their ninja mom and Smurfette and lots of pirates. Why should we miss out on the fun just because we don't have a porch or a niblet of our own to take around?

We ran out of candy with about 45 minutes left, disappointing a wee ninja turtle whose witch-hatted sister got the last mini Hershey bar. I apologized to him, and he solemnly told me, "That's okay. I can share."

A.

Friday Catblogging: Oscar Begs

Even though he doesn't like most human food, Oscar loves to beg. He's got the cute thing going for him, after all. The expectant look in his eyes means that this involves his favorite human vittles: cheese or rice. Yes, that's right I said rice. He's a true Loooziana cat:

 

As Oakland goes?

Oakland is a city with an inferiority complex: it has been in the shadow of San Francisco forever and is now outshined by San Jose, of all places. I say that because San Jose was a smallish semi-rural town when I was growing up. That was, of course, before the tech boom. Oakland remains best known for Gertrude Stein's wisecrack: "there is no there, there."

Oakland finds itself in the spotlight because of its handling of the #occupy protests:

Police and protesters scuffled in the streets of Oakland on Tuesday as more than 1,000 people marched on city hall to voice anger over scores of arrests at an "Occupy Wall Street" camp.

Police dispersed the crowd once with what appeared to be a stun grenade and several other times set off tear gas to drive the demonstrators away from a downtown plaza that had been at the center of the conflict.

Witnesses reported seeing several people taken into custody during the confrontations, but an Oakland police spokeswoman said the department would not confirm any Tuesday night arrests until Wednesday.

Protest leaders said the march aimed at reclaiming Frank Ogawa Plaza, which had served as a base for two weeks of protests against economic inequality in the city until police cleared it before dawn by firing beanbags and tear gas.

Ain't leadership grand? I got a whiff of tear gas many years ago in (where else?) Athens when the cops busted up a protest rally at Syntagma Square near the parliament. The more things change and all that shit.

I'm not sure where the #occupy protests go from here but I must admit to being surprised by their staying power. They've stuck it out much longer than expected and, if nothing else, came up with the catchy slogan about the 99%. The problem in America is that a good slice of the population wants to be a part of the 1% and doesn't give a shit about the folks they left behind. Some call it American exceptionalism, I call it American selfishness.

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - GBCW edition

Taking a little break, people - I will return as soon as this is fun again, truly.

Friday Ferretblogging: Hibernation Edition

It's been freezing cold and rainy here all week and I've got some kind of combination of sinus virus and general yick, so what I mostly want is to be just like Bucky here:

Humans ought to bulk up and pass out shortly after Christmas, and wake up in May.

A.

Friday Guest Catblogging: Vinny

This week's guest is my friends Wendy and Dan's new kitten. I think he's got crazy eyes, which is appropriate for a tuxedo cat. They're all crazy. Plus young Vinny has a crazy long name: Vinny Buster Keaton Po' Boy Montie. I'm not so sure about the Buster part, Keaton was nototiously deadpan whereas Vinny looks like this:

Autumn In New Orleans

We're having our first cold snap of the fall. The weather this October has been great but we haven't had a blast of Northern air until last night. The high today is 30 degrees less than Monday. It may not be much for our readers from the frozen North but I quite enjoyed breaking out my jeans jacket for the bus ride to the shop.

It's easy to tell, on a semi-chilly day like today, who lives here: New Orleanians go OTT clothingwise when it cools off. I saw heavy fleece hoodies, wool sweaters, overcoats and boots galore on my way in. It's not really that cold but some people insist on breaking out their winterware at the earliest opportunity.

I was punked by one of our readers the other day. He also follows my twitter stream whereon I natter on about the weird shit that happens to French Quarter merchants. Anyway, this rather tall gent entered and made a crack about the astonishingly low doorknob and then asked "Where do I catch the ferry to Mexico?" I immediately smelled a rat but thought he'd been sent by my friend Chef Mars whose life isn't complete without messing with me. He runs a pretty classy eatery, Louisiana Bistro, so I've never retaliated in kind but I've been sorely tempted. As Bela Lugosi said in Glen Or Glenda: "Beware, take care." That means you, Mars.

Louisiana is currently having the dullest statewide election in recent memory. The state Democratic party collapsed post-K and it has gotten worse in 2011: there are no major Democrats running for Gret Stetwide office. As recently as 2003, the Democrats were dominant. This weekend, Gov. PBJ will be re-elected and the only interesting race is for Lt. Gov. It's a relatively powerless office but since PBJ is widely expected to skedaddle outta here as soon as he can it's a more important contest than usual.

The Lt. Gov race features the old school semi-moderate Republican incumbent, Jay Dardenne, versus Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. You may have seen Mr. Fat Fuck during the BP disaster, he spent the entire time chasing cameras and publicity. Anderson Cooper called him "America's Bubba" but I call him a malaka. He's supported by Bitter Vitter, which is appropriate because Nungesser was also a client of the Canal Street madam. And a cheap one: she swears that she had to go to his father to get paid.

Nungesser's campaign has been relentlessly negative and teabagger oriented. His opponent's main flaw  is that he's NOT insane. Since in some ways this is a shadow campaign for Governor in 2015, I'm planning to sigh deeply and vote for Dardenne. He's not really my cup of political tea BUT in this climate, he's the least bad Governor in waiting that we could have. He also won the vile puns category in the Bulwer bad writing contest in 2005 and rumor has it that I like puns. I haven't a clue as to where that rumor started. I've never taken in roomers so it can't be that...

Okay, time to circle back to the weather and post two of my favorite change of seasons tunes by two of my favorite bands, the Kinks and Squeeze:

   

 

 

Tuesday Night Music: Tiny Arrows

Today on Adrastos' obsession with the Jayhawks:

Tiny Arrows is one of the centerpieces of their new album, Mockingbird Time. It's a stone gorgeous tune with the Louris and Olson harmonies that many of us pined for lo these many years. Sheesh, how fanboyish is that?

 

Friday Ferretblogging

Packing peanuts are fun to play in, but they're also fun to curl up in, as insulation on a chilly autumn morning.

A.

Friday Catblogging: Groomathon

Yeah, I know: it looks like a lip lock but Oscar is a vigorous groomer. Just how Della likes it:

Still in Recovery

 G Bitch on trauma and surviving it: 

And that’s been hard for some of us. Some are still stuck in anger. Others have passed through but to a new round of social withdrawal and/or numbing. Some of us have been lucky enough to find a little peace even if the door is opened with a bottle of Abita. Trauma is not simple. First you must establish some sense of safety. Then it is possible to remember, have someone bear witness to your pain and humanity, and begin reconnecting with the world and its people.

 

There's no such thing as getting over, Grandma would say. There's just getting on.

 

(God, lately I would sell everything I owned to have an hour with that woman again. Every single thing. I love you all, but I would kill and eat you, no kidding.)

 

When something traumatic happens people counsel to "take some time" and "talk to someone" and it just always sounds to me like the most infuriating crap. Take some time to do what? Sit on my bed and think about how awful everything is? Talk to someone, so that two of us can walk around with this in our heads?

 

When I'm very angry or very happy talking to someone is exactly what I want. When my chest feels crushed by hopelessness and I can't move because I'm such an utter failure at life, the last thing I want is somebody noticing how badly fucked up I am. I need to get an A in everything. I don't need you telling me the F isn't really that bad and I can retake the course. I know that. And I know that that isn't going to make a damn bit of difference until a couple of days from now, when the crushed feeling has become normalized, and I start thinking maybe I can live like this, bent over under it.

 

This isn't to say friends never help, but mostly when things are caving in and they ask, "What can I do?" the answer is "come over and eat food so that I have to get my ass out of bed and clean my house and make the food." So that I have to get on, when I can't get over. My best friends keep me out of my head, until such time as I can put one foot in front of the other without needing to write down directions first.

 

A.

Al Davis 1929-2011

I grew up in the Bay Area and was a Raider fan whilst a tadpole. The 49ers were erratic at best in the pre-Walsh-Montana era and the Raiders were not only a great team on the gridiron but wildly individualistic off the field. I was smitten and then disillusioned by owner Al Davis's decision to move the team to LA. I also never forgave him for running off John Madden and trading Ken Stabler, which made Davis my first owner hate.

Now Davis has died at the age of 82. I considered calling this post "Just die, baby" in tribute to Al's own motto "Just win, baby." I consulted with my publisher lady and we agreed that it was a bit on the creepy side. Al Davis was the best sports villain of his day but my dislike for him ebbed as the Raiders got worse and worse and worse. The game had passed him by and he was too stubborn and proud to admit it. Al Davis was not a very nice man but he was neither dull nor corporate. 

I'll let the great Joe Posnanski have the last word:

Al Davis was a great American sports villain, the best of his time, the best of all time. He was great, I think, because he played it big. Who else would design their team logo with an eyepatch? Think about that for a minute. Who else would say that the key to winning a football game is that “their quarterback must go down, and he must go down hard.” Who else would insist that the Raiders put “Commitment to Excellence” on all of their official materials after seven straight years of the team winning five games or less? Who else could be summed up with the three words he said more often than any other: “Just Win Baby!”

Who else? Nobody else. Davis lived through times of great sports villains — Steinbrenner, Butkus, Liston, Reggie, Laimbeer, Alzado, McEnroe, Tiger Williams, on and on — but nobody could touch him. You expected him every year to announce before the season began that he intended for the Raiders to win the Super Bowl AND steal the moon. I remain convinced that somewhere in the Oakland Coliseum there is a secret lair where sharks swim, where gas rises in a glass chamber, where a Marcus Allen voodoo doll rests with pins stuck in from all sides.

Friday Ferretblogging

I may have mentioned ten or thirteen billion times that there's a ferret show this weekend. The local news came out and did a piece on the show and the shelter as a promo.

It's only $5, so if you're in Chicago, come on out and see Mr. Binky. Claire commands you:

A.

 

Friday Catblogging: Together Alone

In between demanding that Dr A and I feed her, Della Street spends a lot of time demanding that Oscar groom her. The poor boy doesn't know if he's coming or going sometimes. Of course, that's partially because he's not the brightest bulb in the lamp but he compensates by being so damn cute:

 

Why did I call this post Together Alone? Because I wanted to post a fine but lesser known Crowded House tune, that's why.

 

Friday Ferretblogging: Behind the Music Video Edition

So last week we put Bucky into a sweater and bribed him with the thrilling taste of his own paw in order to thank you all for donating to the First Draft annual fundraiser.

Here's a behind-the-scenes shot that shows you how much fun that was.

A.

Friday Catblogging: Shameless Plug Redux

I try not to abuse what little power I have here at First Draft but it's time for another plug for one of Jennifer Roches awesome hand painted cat tiles. You know, the ones I sell at my shop:

 

First Draft Fundraising Ends: Thank You All

Bucky is so happy you all donated so that he could afford this fine, fuzzy sweater.

In all seriousness, thank you all for supporting the site. I know that this is the worst economy in the history of the world, and so it means a lot to know that you think what we do here is worth your time and your generosity. You've made it possible for us to keep the lights on another year, to keep doing what we're doing, and we couldn't be more proud of our community of readers. 

Onward to what looks to be the weirdest election of all time.

A.

Friday Catblogging: Is that a bird?

Della Street is a house cat and has little interest in exploring the great outdoors; unless, that is, she hears a bird chirping. Oscar and Della actually got a bird once. It had somehow gotten into the house and when we came home I found a decapitated bird head, a pool of birdie blood and two very proud hunter gatherer kitties. I hope it never happens again but ya never know...

This is Della in alert, bird stalking mode:

It Gets Better...

(Ed. Note: I wrote this after a weekend in a place that had no wifi, no cell service and more deer than people. I was stuck in the Newark Airport in what appeared to be a "boarding call auction" when it came to when we were going to take off: "3:30? Got it. Do I hear 3:45? Thank you! Anyone for a 4 p.m. delay? Yes! in the corner! Do I hear 4:15... A said if I could post before midnight, I'd be fine. Consider this early by journalistic standards. Hope you enjoy it. - Doc.)

I spent the weekend in the middle of nowhere to attend the wedding of a former student. As a teacher or a professor, you get a lot of these and since the students are usually transitory, you tend to get asked to fly all over Hell and Creation trying to meet your responsibilities. In most cases, I send a card, a gift card and my apologies for not being able to make it.

This time, The Missus and I drove to Milwaukee and flew to Detroit, where we were told we might be bounced from our connection.

The reason? “Weight restrictions.”

The Missus, who had not been properly caffeinated and is likely to kill people who make “weight-related comments” to her, told the woman, “We have a rehearsal dinner tonight.” The response? “Well, I’m sure that’s important TO YOU.” 

It’s a miracle we didn’t land on the “no-fly list” after that.

We eventually boarded the connection to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we are quite certain we dropped a load of fertilizer on final approach and began a hour’s drive to some place that gets no cell reception. We lovingly started referring to this place as “Fugawi, Pennsylvania,” drawing on a somewhat racially insensitive joke and our own sense of how far from civilization we were.

The hotel was “quaint,” which roughly translates to a shed with a bed and an air-conditioner jammed into the wall. The bathroom was well worn, with 1960s tiling and some meat bits someone recently flossed out of their teeth stuck to the wall near the sink. When I tried to check in on FourSquare, my phone just looked at me and said, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” It was also the first time I’d seen my phone just give up on trying to find service and just slap a big “O” on the reception meter.

On Saturday, we stood in farm field for about 10 minutes, watched a kid I taught exchange vows with a woman I’d never met and then drank until we nearly froze to death. Outdoor weddings always sound like a great until it’s 8 p.m., pitch black and you can see your breath when you are asking for your third or fourth whiskey of the night.

DJ was solid, restroom was a port-o-john and the local people (read: not us) brought a change of clothes, so they were toasty and comfortable and we were not. The night went from elegant strapless gowns to women stealing every available piece of clothing off of their men. By the time the night was over, The Missus was reduced to walking barefoot through frosted grass in an attempt to find our car in a field.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would have the makings of a rip-roaring, sarcasm-soaked post. Instead, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Milwaukee-to-Detroit-to-Scranton-to-Fugawi-to Scranton-to-New Jersey-to- Milwaukee jaunt that cost about as much as my first car would still be worth every dollar I spent even if it cost twice as much as it did.

 --- 

In my field, you can’t pick favorites. It’s not allowed. As an educator, you need to be fair. As a journalist, you need to be fair. Put the two of those together and you get me: the guy who has to make sure everyone feels equally good or equally shitty.

Still, sometimes, you just can help it.

The kid I went out to see was a favorite. I taught him his first major writing course and disabused him quickly of the notion that the bullshit he was used to slinging wasn’t going to work here. For years, he’d been told he was a great writer and thus, he learned to eat lunch off of that appraisal. When he got to the bigger pond with bigger fish, he still tried to rely on that. It worked in his gen ed courses and his intro courses and he seemed to think it should continue.

Despite his awkwardness, his bipolar level of self-assurance and his general ability to be a sarcastic smartass, I realized he was worth the effort. I felt like the trainer who first saw greatness in Seabiscuit.

He wasn’t the best.

He wasn’t the fastest.

He wasn’t the one you’d pick first.

And, yet he simply had something that made you want to make him better.

After that first class, I never taught him again, and yet he and I always stayed connected. I served on school committees with him, he found his way to our house for Thanksgiving and so forth. The Missus adopted him and treated him like the goofy little kid in the neighborhood who wore mismatched socks and always had a runny nose. She fed him and hugged him and when shit went wrong, she told him an important truism, long before it became a trendy term:

“It gets better…”

When he graduated, he quickly fell into a trap that befalls most of the students I taught at that university. When you are at the “best school” for anything, you feel you must have a “best school” job when you leave. The students measured their value by the size of the paper’s circulation or the market size of the TV station at which they worked. It became the purest of all dick-measuring contests and he was bound and determined to win it.

When his cohorts moved from writers to editors, he felt the pull to become an editor.

When they moved forward and upward along the circulation route, he sought worse jobs at bigger places.

When digital became a bigger deal, I wasn’t shocked to see him try to be a digital guy.

Each stop was “better,” but at each stop he felt worse and his personal life didn’t help matters.

He was a smart kid, a good kid and a kind kid, which meant that in the world of mid 20s relationships, he couldn’t find a date in a morgue. The lack of companionship was always a problem for him.

“At work, I work hard and I end up getting what I want. In school, I worked hard and I ended up getting what I wanted. In love, I work hard and nothing ever comes to me. Why? What am I doing wrong?”

Despite the best effort of his female friends and those of us who knew him well, he never felt comfortable with the answer that sometimes things don’t work out that way. It wasn’t much easier when his friends were getting married and he kept hearing the hollow cliché of “Don’t worry, you’ll eventually find someone perfect for you.”

My phone was constantly abuzz with calls from his latest outpost. He’d sadly recount his exploits and wonder if he’d ever be happy. I’d put on my best face and tell him what he needed to hear, even if he didn’t want to hear it.

“Do what makes you happy. Stop chasing pointless shit. Worry less about other people and more about you.”

“It’ll get better.”

---

Somewhere along the way, the calls of desperation and sadness slowed to a trickle before ceasing all together. He’d found a job selling websites to student media and he was good at it. He felt he was doing something important for people who aspired to be where he had aspired to be.

He met a nice girl, moved to nice place and found some peace, if not perfection, in the heart of Chicago.

Eventually, the calls started up again, but with a positive feel. He wasn’t asking anymore. He was telling.

Stories about the girl he loved and the wedding he was planning.

Stories about his home and his attempts at fixing crap around the condo.

Stories about how happy he was.

Saturday, as we watched the shortest wedding ceremony ever, I looked at him as he waited with his parents. He looked as awkward as always, but yet so damned happy. He and his bride-to-be had decided against anyone standing up for the wedding. Too many people might be insulted, he explained, as he’d stood up for pretty much every wedding from 2001-2010. (Hell, look back at your wedding photos. He might be in there.) Even more, though, I got the sense that he finally had the sense that he didn’t have to impress anyone anymore. He didn’t need to be surrounded by people who would tell him what to do or how well he was doing it.

He had become comfortable in his own skin.

As the bride made her way up the hill to the site of the ceremony, she smiled without ceasing. She had this look of unending joy about her, like she had found a treasure in that field and would give up everything to keep it.

When she arrived and they met by the minister, the happiness just glowed from them. Those of us who were with someone we loved instinctively reached for that person and cuddled in. It was the first wedding in a long time for me that didn’t end with a call to Vegas, checking the line for the couple’s divorce and then immediately taking the under.

---

We spend so much time telling high school kids who are picked on for their sexual orientation, social graces, lack of money or a million other things that “it gets better.” God love Dan Savage for his efforts in this area, because someone needed to say it and plug up the hole through which the kids kept ending up in.

However, the view that high school is the hurdle that must be conquered seems troubling to me in some ways. Sure, high school sucks, but college isn’t much better. You’re on your own, you need to find your way and you often feel that everyone out there has it all figured out while you couldn’t find your ass with the help of a searchlight and a posse. The generation before you and the one before that view you as spoiled, ungrateful mysteries that need to shut up and sack up and do it the way they did, only better.

And then it gets worse, because you graduate, smile for the photo no one buys of you in your cap and gown and boom… You’re even more alone. Your friends also are foraging for an existence, the responsibilities set in and life goes from suck to blow.

You aren’t a kid anymore. You aren’t an adult in the eyes of those who have much more experience being adults. You wonder if you somehow decided to play the wrong hand and now you have no hope left.

Or, as Athenae would say, “I should have gone with the fours, but I didn’t, because I’m a dumbass…”

And then you suddenly get one good thing. And then another. And another. Your fortunes turn with luck, skill, work and faith. You realize that nothing is perfect and that’s fine. You figure out that you are grateful for things because they’re incrementally better than they were or not as bad as you expected.

And that’s how you find yourself in Fugawi, Pennsylvania on the top of a hill in a suit, awaiting the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen who can’t wait to get to you so you can begin sharing the rest of your life together.

It’s why people from as far away as California and Georgia and as close as Hawley and Narrowsville travel to that hill and stand in appreciation of not just your love and your joy but also of your perseverance and your strength.

It’s why I find myself sitting in the Newark airport watching The Missus sleep and muttering cusswords under my breath each time Orbitz tells me we’re getting delayed again.

It’s because we all wanted to be there when “It Gets Better” came true.

Weekend Question Thread: Answer Post

Well, you asked. Replies below the cut:

Weekend Question Thread: Your Turn Edition

We did this a while back and it was fun, so let's do it again: Ask me something and I'll answer in a post tomorrow night.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging

Another shelter installment. We have a group right now, of 10 ferrets, that all came in together. They have an extra-large cage to live in and get as much playtime as we can give them, but sometimes such a large group deserves an extra treat. Like a giant box full of packing peanuts in their playpen:

A.

Friday Catblogging: Hello, Mr. Soul

Operation Ferret Dominatrix was a dismal failure. Della stayed away from Athenae who was, quite naturally, very taken with Oscar. Oscar would be a great ferret groomer but we're keeping him. The soulful look on his face tells you why:

Writing this post gave me a Buffalo Springfield earworm. Notice that Neil had mutton chops even as a youngun:

 

Friday Ferretblogging

Claire is iddy biddy.

A.

Friday Guest Catblogging: Biscuit 4 Louisiana

It's official: Louisiana is now the Gret One Party Stet. No major Democratic candidates are running for statewide office this fall. There is, however, a lone figure dedicated to taking on the GOP steamroller: Biscuit. He's a cat and not on the ballot but he's ready, willing and eager to take on PBJ in between power naps. You can follow this intrepid Democat on twitter. 

Here's the indefatigable Biscuit staring down an elephant:

Losing Ugly

College football is back and my LSU Tigers played a helluva game without their first string QB who is suspended for having 49 pairs of sneakers. Actually, Jordan Jefferson is accused of kicking some drunk douchebag in the head whilst wearing sneakers but the number 49 has stuck in my head. The only kicking I saw last night was of Duck ass: LSU 40 Oregon 27. The game wasn't as close as the final score either.

It was a great opener and young Tyrann Mathieu scored the first TD of the season for LSU by recovering a fumble. I mention him because his father Tyrone is my UPS man and I have derivative bragging rights. Tyrone is a rock star in his own right: he was Zulu King in 2009.

I came not to praise LSU but to ridicule the Oregon Ducks uniforms. There was much mockery of their jammy looking unis on the tweeter tube and I came up with a frequently re-tweeted one liner: The color of Oregon's shoes is regurgitated margarita:

Oregon wasn't the only losing college football team to wear hideous uniforms in their 2011 debut. How about dem Dawg unis? 

 

A rule of thumb is that when you play in your pyjamas, you will get your ass kicked...