Beer and football VII — week fifteen

The game: Patriots at Broncos
The beer: Lefty's Barrel-Aged Scotch Ale
The result: Win, 16–3; Adam, 10–0–0; Erin, 4–0–0–0
The commentary: I don't know about the barrel-aged beers anymore. A little rich for me. The Northampton Brewery didn't have Maggie's Wee Heavy on tap last weekend so this "Scotch ale" from Provisions was a no-brainer. Intense! (Are "Scotch ales" and "Scottish ales" two different things?) This is why I chose a tequila shot instead of whiskey at that shitty bar following the company's InterContinental VaGina Christmas party last week. I still made my nine o'clock train and didn't sleep through my stop. For the win.

I personally flexed Sunday's game to a late primetime start, for some reason not getting around to watching until after ten. Oh, the hubris that comes with avoiding updates inside a Trader Joe's full of people wearing Gronk jerseys. As such I ignored all context in an effort to avoid falling asleep on the couch and skipped through from play to play—the opposite of fandom. It was one of those tension-filled games anyway, my desire to know right away if a recovered fumble would be upheld after replay, etc., overpowering competitive interest but falling short of Google. "Just tell me what happened! Almost!" Only toward the end when Devin McCourty made his first above-average play of the season and TJ Ward lost his mind by flexing a post-suplex exclamation point was I confident. Unlike Terrell Suggs & Friends, I want no part of facing the Broncos in the postseason, even away from Denver, and…

"I'm feeling pretty good."
Leno LaBianca
August 9, 1969

Just take out the Giants, somebody. Please. (It's not looking good. Shades of peaking at the right time and the resulting unpleasantness, parts 1 and 2.)

Reality television update! For obvious reasons, The Celebrity Apprentice is officially deleted from our DVR series settings. Two others not (still!) produced by our future Crony-in-Chief have just wrapped up their thirty-third and fifteenth seasons, respectively: Survivor and Project Runway. I'm a goddamn dinosaur.

The Survivor finale was anticlimactic as it became obvious the season-long saga of Adam and his ill mother would have a… happy?… ending. During the final tribal council it was clear that Ken was getting no respect (winning multiple individual immunity challenges does not carry the weight it once did) but frisky Hannah was talking herself up quite a bit, even convincingly so if viewers hadn't witnessed her cunning indecisiveness and bravado panic attack during a challenge she watched from a shady bench. The dream final three of Jay, David and Adam would have been one for the ages and the missed opportunity drags the whole affair down for me. At least Michaela will be back for Game Changers in a few months, even though I hate when they bring back former players. Oh good, it will be a season full of returning players. Goddammit.

On to Project Runway. From last week's warm-up to Friday's showdown I was pulling for Rik because he's a nice guy and I liked his looks the best. Somehow he was the only one to use primarily leather (Laurence plain lost her way) and even though the denim swirlies weren't my favorite—more "She Bangs the Drums" than "A Day in the Life"—his runway show was my favorite the first time through. Upon re-watching, though (because A. had fallen asleep), I preferred Roberi's from beginning to end. He was the artist of the season, riding the creative highs and lows without pretense—enviable in itself. His dresses were cool and versatile and looked well made and styled. Rik was a close second while Laurence's plain-bagel assembly line took the bronze. (She's lucky her medal isn't turd-brown like that one jumpsuit.) And then Erin. More on her in a minute.

From the post-runway critique—we determined the show can't take place earlier than eight in the morning, which makes Michael Kors's shades-wearing appearances extra silly in past seasons—I thought Roberi had it in the bag because everyone loved his collection aside from the closing dress, which I thought was fine (the eighties-wash jeans look was my exception). Similarly, Rik was received with only enthusiasm until, in private, Nina went all "I don't know who he is as a designer" and called him a "chameleon." Unconventional challenges, prom dresses, day/evening wear… Nina, the whole show requires designers to be chameleons! It drives me nuts when the judges forget their own rules. Rik was eliminated even before Laurence, whose looks Heidi and friends universally disliked. Mixed messages all around.

Brief production aside: Runway episodes normally run ninety minutes and that is just right, with ample time allowed for the creative process, the runway, the critique and the bitchy one-on-ones with Cornelius, the biggest waste of a Tim Gunn Save in the show's history. This finale episode was drawn out for two hours and it felt like it, even when fast-forwarding through the nine-minute commercial breaks. I don't care if these interruptions were peppered—or rather, cap-unscrewed, pepper-dumped—with segments introducing us to those participating in the second season of Project Runway Junior, something better served as its own half-hour preview episode in the past. Almost as dreadful a presentation as last week's quasi-blowout Monday Night Football. (Sean McDonough was excellent as the play-by-play guy for the Sox a hundred years ago—before he was run out of town on a low-budget, VORP-stained rail—but even he can't account for bad camerawork, enormous score bugs and fucking Jon Gruden.)

Back to it. Roberi, Rik, Laurence and Erin, in that order. Glorified, inevitable Erin, whose contrived kookiness won the judges over from day one even as her failures were barely worse than her multiple winning looks. (Sure, I'm biased, I recognize and appreciate that the looks she created for episodes eleven and twelve were downright awesome.) During her critique, when it became clear that Zac and Nina were not impressed (even as they admired her whimsy, which might matter in alternate-universe programming Project Potential), I said aloud "Wow, she's not going to win" and forgot the key difference between reality and reality television, here being the influence of Heidi and the producers. (Zendaya? She might as well have said "My new album, Zendacious, is available Friday" every time they asked her opinion. I made up that title but I'll put money on it.) I took back what I said when Heidi admitted she wouldn't wear the banana dress and it still got more camera time than anything else. The fix was in—she could have frozen her own urine for earrings and been lauded—and the only suspense centered around a fake-cry-off between Erin and Zac at the conclusion. Weird.

The right four made it to fashion week but it was all for show once Erin's fate was decided weeks earlier (as with politically correct Ashley last time) by someone High Up. Drag. I mean, those shorts she wears. The eye make-up. Prospective "Cambridge type" status. "Dope." Enough.

Up next: "Fuck this game" becomes a rallying cry and the Jets keep it closer than everyone expects, just not close enough. Merry Christmas!