Beer and football V — week fifteen

The game: Dolphins at Patriots
The beer: Northampton Humbug Ale
The result: Win, 41–13; Natalie, 4–2–1
The commentary: Nine o'clock: I knew something was wrong when I queued up Patriots Game Day, which I only record for its three-minute segment with Mike Reiss. "OK, fast-forward through this Steve Burton crap. Fast-forward through Dan Roche's fantasy crap." Hey, why is the screen black? Why isn't the little progress tracker moving? Oh no. The game. The game! Black. None more black. This has happened in the past when shows mysteriously would seem to record—they would be listed right there alongside The Simpsons and six-month-old documentaries on Penn Station, they would take up space on the DVR drive, but "playing" them resulted in the void. "At least it wasn't the Pats game," I would tell a nonexistent Keith Morrison. "I can live without your carnage."

Not this time. All day we're running around, eating breakfast, shopping for Christmas (we're hosting for the first time ever), avoiding the news. (Yes, it's also a matter of time until my media blackouts are sabotaged during a self-imposed eight-hour game delay.) After trying to skip ahead, rewind, delete, restore, restart… the so-called recording was only watchable in some alternate reality. I deleted it for good, pouted for a few minutes, watched the rest of Friday's Patriots All Access (fast-forwarding through Scott Zolak and Christian Fauria's "Teaching U Repressed Homosexual Tension" crap) and resigned myself to the fact that I would not make it to Solution (x) without learning what happened. Out comes the phone and the score reveals itself, a twenty-eight point hat-and-T-shirt victory by the good guys. Great! Rats!

I then set about ways to watch the game and found that the best option—and the lone legal one—was to sign up for a free trial week of NFL Rewind on NFL.com. The rub was that no week fifteen games would be made available until the primetime game was over, which meant Patriots–Dolphins would be my own non-Saints, non-Bears Monday Night Football affair. I'll take it. Until then, I could boost my spirits with the knowledge that the Chiefs had won earlier, and I would have taken them had I not already won my knockout pool. It felt significant as I collected the lone deadbeat's forty-five units yesterday. Meanwhile, my "week sixteen pick" Eagles lost to the Redskins today. I am now properly motivated to win again next year.

Monday night—Monday Night—I navigated an unusually seizure-inducing NFL app interface on my dusty Xbox 360 (because it wasn't available to stream on our Roku) (because… why exactly?) and eventually figured out how to use the controller as a remote control. It was awkward all around but the quality was decent, and I could appreciate how beneficial the package would be to someone who wants to watch a bunch of out-of-market games each week. People without jobs. Just remind me to cancel by Sunday night.

I knew of the game's ups and downs from skimming Monday's headlines and understood the first half would be ugly. I'd already seen highlights of Collins's field goal block and Harmon's interception and was curious how I'd have felt were I watching live. Likely, outside of fifty–fifty hindsight, it would have been one of those where I'd felt comfortable up by a point at halftime after the way they were playing. I wouldn't have guessed they'd turn it around so thoroughly in the third quarter—I know nothing about football—but some improvement had to be expected. This felt like a playoff game, even if it was played against the opposite of a playoff contender. Can Brady play this way for two quarters against the Ravens or the Broncos and expect to win? I'm not sure. But I don't rule it out.

Survivor XXIX was a good season. Even Logan Ryan doesn't create as many opportunities for me to yell at the television as Survivor or Project Runway. (Also-Rans finale coming soon!) Oh, Natalie. I'm impressed by her win but she maybe (maybe not) made it harder than it needed to be. Two weeks ago when Jon won immunity, she decided against (and, onscreen, never considered) voting out Jaclyn in order to cripple him. Pardon me? She then excellently knocked him out the following week and was lucky to have the opportunity. Wednesday night, Keith wins immunity so she masterminds Missy's Baylor's exit, which is a brilliant strategic startling mindfuck maneuver. I'm not sure Baylor would have gotten a single vote in the end, even from her mom. After that—knowing Jaclyn really had no chance to win—she had to choose between Keith (who, it turns out, would have won had Natalie taken him) and Missy (who A. and I grossly overrated as someone people would vote for) instead of Keith and Baylor, which would have been a no-brainer. Oh well. She won and she deserved to, but probably could have used less antiperspirant if it were her, Jaclyn and Baylor in front of the audience. I know nothing about Nicaragua-based reality television competition. And Alec knows nothing about breathing through his nose.

On Saturday we drove to Northampton to get dinner at the Brewery, sell more CDs at Turn It Up and, apparently, buy a pink and purple stuffed kitten before heading to "Bright Nights at Forest Park" in Springfield, by some accounts the most depressed city in the country. I printed a coupon and everything. We hit traffic within a quarter mile of exiting 91 and, despite G's pure rage, turned around to go home, offering vague promises of returning by year end (probably the weekend after Christmas). On that note of disappointment, in between last week's company Christmas party at the InterContinental Vagina and next week's acronym subset one at a Mexican joint—and in honor of new family member "Spotty Kitty"—I present 2014's playlist to enjoy while trying to pry your wife and daughter out of Thorne's Marketplace. Set it to repeat for as long as necessary.

1. Lightnin' Hopkins – Santa
On my iPod I break Christmas songs into three playlists: "Christmas," appropriate for family events with Perry Como, Jimmy Smith and friends; "Xmas," introducing newer pop stuff like Belle & Sebastian and Yo La Tengo that A. and even G. would enjoy; and "Xmas Blues," of which around fifty percent is blues, twenty is soul/funk, fifteen is punk/metal, ten is rap and five is psychedelic (only because there isn't that much out there).

2. Kenny Burrell – The Little Drummer Boy
It was this or Beck's "The Little Drum Machine Boy," up there with "In a Cold-Ass Fashion" from the Jabberjaw series as one of his great unknown contributions to Western culture. Burrell's brass punctuations in the last forty seconds won over the Youth Percussion judging panel.

3. Bing Crosby – Looks Like a Cold, Cold Winter
I heard this in Crate & Barrel the other day while browsing the cutlery section. I am forty years old.

4. George Harrison – Skiing
Presented as "Ski-ing" on 1968's Wonderwall Music sleeve but that looks odd. Trust me, George, to understand that "the act of traveling over snow on skis as sport or recreation" is not pronounced skeeeng. Featuring a soon-to-be-irrelevant Eric Clapton.

5. Vashti Bunyan/Twice As Much – Coldest Night of the Year
Sound Opinions aired its annual Andy Cirzan holiday playlist last week a good fifteen days after I downloaded "Coldest Night of the Year" from the Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind compilation. I guess you don't have to dig through dusty Alabama record bins for everything.

Up next: Thee Geno Smith. Merry Christmas!