Beer and football VIII — week sixteen

The game: Bills at Patriots
The beer: Two Roads Holiday Ale
The result: Win, 37–16; Ravens win, 23–16; Ben wins, 5–2–1
The commentary: Completing last week's poem:

Wine before beer…
Death, I fear!

Wednesday was not so clean, as happens to the best of us in weaker moments. Weak, like Paul and Undefeated Tim trusting the traveling Lions more than the home Pats and Ravens, respectively.

Week sixteen outcome
Dan – Panthers over Buccaneers
Katie – Chiefs over Dolphins
Oren – Patriots over Bills Panthers over Buccaneers
Paul – Patriots over Bills Lions over (home) Bengals
Robin – Chiefs over Dolphins Bears over Browns
Tim – Ravens over Colts Lions over (home) Bengals

You've got to make it to week seventeen, Paul, if you're saving the Pats for then. And Tim? And Tim! He joins the rest of us with one loss and might be in trouble this week. (As if my locked-in… Lions… and I are feeling any better.) We are down to six, single-elimination style, with all level playing fields leading to playoff tiebreakers. The "Shall we split the pot?" emails are flying and Commissioner Rico isn't having it.

Week seventeen predictions
Dan – Vikings over Bears
Katie – Redskins over (home) Giants
Oren – Patriots over Jets
Robin – Saints over (home) Buccaneers
Tim – Ravens over Bengals

As indicated, I'm not feeling great about the Lions today. Jim Caldwell's hot seat has grown cold (since he reportedly won't be sitting there any longer) and if the Chiefs weren't locked into the fourth seed and starting a rooking quarterback in Denver then I'd be on them instead. Elsewhere, Dan, Oren and Robin should advance/finish easily while Katie, Tim and I are in toss-up territory. Who knows what happens with Rams–Niners so the Redskins are the only team that "makes sense" for Katie. I considered them for a few minutes but they have nothing to play for and probably stink anyway. Had Tim taken my Ravens last week then he'd likely be sweating over the Lions today so what do I know, though he'd still be undefeated and could avoid watching the Bengals purposely injure his team all afternoon as they normally do against NFC North opponents to close a season. What was I thinking with those assholes?

A quick comment regarding Survivor: once Jeff told Chrissy with a straight face that her "advantage" allowed her to choose one person to take to the final three instead of the usual two then they might as well have handed the check right to Ben. It was the equivalent of the AFC and NFC champs being told "Congratulations, you each get to play one more game before the Super Bowl!" Oh well. I actually liked the twist because the final immunity winner always had too much power but call it something else. A "crippler" or a "snafu." At least they're bringing in all new people next season—I think they've gotten the hint that A. and I, the only people in the world who still watch this show, don't ever want to see Rupert again.

More entertainment! Today it is official:

Crowned 2017 Biffy^® champion
(Thee) Oh Sees – Orc

And next year might be sealed up as well with the promise of what looks like a double album. Shades of Emotional Mugger's January inevitability:

Projected 2018 winner
Ty Segall – Freedom's Goblin

Here's hoping the rest of 2018 plays out so smoothly, with (election) results rewarding those who remember a time before "FAKE NEWS" defended all criticism. Someone should change our president's diaper. Pathetic! (But thanks for the Twitter template.)

Up next: Should I have insisted we split the pot after all? Happy new year!

Beer and football VIII — week fifteen

The game: Patriots at Steelers
The beer: Samuel Smith Winter Welcome Ale
The result: Win, 27–24; Jaguars win, 45–7
The commentary: Survivor's Jeff Probst, wisest of the wise, laid on the tribal-council empathy last week and—moments before Devon incomprehensibly voted out his lone ally, positioning Ben as his future destroyer instead of a possible swing voter in a Devon/Ashley–Chrissy/Ryan showdown—reasoned "I cannot look at tonight's vote, I have to look at the end and start looking backwards." Other than the "look" redundancy and my personal preference for "backward" over "backwards" (likewise, "toward" over "towards," etc.) I have to start thinking the same way before I lose my marbles. How will others pick? Who do I expect to… survive… each week based on the teams available to them? Is Undefeated Tim going to ride some Not-Browns bullshit to the end?

Call it the game within the game within the actual game(s). After four eliminations last week—Bengals–Bears took out Andy and Mike, who apparently can't read, and revived some bitter quick sizzle for breaking my streak; previously undefeated Dan similarly busted on the Pats, who struck Whining Peter outright; and the Titans took out Thomas because they're playing well enough to trust wholeheartedly with the Saints, Vikings, Seahawks and Ravens in his pocket (all of whom lost… oh well)—we're down to seven and, unless Paul's Falcons lose tonight, there will again be no movement after last week's relief. Drag.

Still, it doesn't hurt as bad if I see it coming. Four of the six picked the team I would have were I in their positions: Katie and Tim had the Vikings, Asterisk Oren the Saints and Paul the Falcons, even though I couldn't possibly wait until Monday Night Football. Dan decided he didn't want to save the Ravens for the Colts next week—like I did—and Robin preferred the Wentz-less Eagles and another nail-biter against the Geeee Mennnn instead of Saints–Jets. Survive, advance and do anything to keep it interesting.

Week sixteen predictions
Dan – Panthers over Buccaneers
Katie – Chiefs over Dolphins
Oren – Patriots over Bills
Paul – Patriots over Bills
Robin – Chiefs over Dolphins
Tim – Ravens over Colts

Shit, since we're here…

Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers finale forecast
First elimination – Devon (four against one, he votes for Ben)
Second elimination – Chrissy (three against one, she also votes for Ben)
Third-place bystander who receives no winning votes – Ryan
Runner-up drag-along who never stood a chance – Mike (with Lauren's vote)
One! Survivor! – Ben (with the rest, including the producers')

This is fun! A Bucs upset tonight could affect Dan—and certainly Paul—while a Panthers blowout maybe sways Robin to their side. Oren and Paul will be tempted to do the same and push the Pats into a potentially meaningless week seventeen (Jets). Too risky. What do I know.

(That's right, I'm back to talking almost exclusively about the knockout pool. You stopped reading ages ago anyway.)

Pats–Steelers was unspoiled primetime action, with a professional (despite the photo) and surreal (aren't they all?) performance of The Nutcracker in Beverly (same theater) taking precedence that afternoon. Clara might as well have joined us in the audience for the second act. The evening's main event featured a less-itchy trigger finger in order to appreciate how these teams match up—it was an important game and I didn't want to miss anything… except for replays of several huge Steeler gains. For this reason I pouted and blew past the catch/not-a-catch drama, skipping ahead to the inevitable point-after kick. And skipping. What was taking so long? Arriving at Tony Corrente's reversal I was slightly euphoric and, upon watching one replay and determining "No catch!" without wondering how I'd feel were Gronk the tight end, braced myself for a third down that would likely clinch the win. (Later, re-watching the entire sequence, it was obvious that the television angles did not show enough to overturn the touchdown call—was Jesse James's right hand under the ball when it moved?—and that Jim Nantz and Tony Romo didn't even consider an incompletion to be in the cards. Three minutes later Roethlisberger and the offense were equally perplexed and, somehow, seemed unprepared to run another play. Exhibit A if you're wondering why Belichick and Brady have won five in a row and eleven—eleven!—of thirteen overall against these guys.

The acronym holiday party takes place on company grounds tomorrow before we likely regroup at some bar or other afterward. Consensus proclaimed Monday's InterContinental VaGina affair a Pats-usurping, shrimp-less letdown that produced no drama—cutting myself off after four more-or-less chugged Sam Winters was proper etiquette. A respectable train ride home reading Agatha Christie and marveling over my strong core (i.e., bladder) meant I could blast through that steaming pile of Dolphins game in an hour and keep Tuesday equally respectable. Will Wednesday be so clean? What completes the "Wine before beer" couplet?

Up next: The whole hood want Gronk? Fine. Merry Christmas!

Beer and football VIII — week fourteen

The game: Patriots at Dolphins
The beer: Samuel Adams Winter Lager
The result: Loss, 27–20; Bengals lose, 33–7
The commentary: You get what you ask for and this defense still blows. Phooey.

Up next: Mike Tomlin oozes masculinity out of his pores. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week thirteen

The game: Patriots at Bills
The beer: Long Trail Ale
The result: Win, 23–3; Chargers win, 19–10
The commentary: Nothing more about the knockout pool until people start getting knocked out again. Three straight weeks at eleven with the playoffs likely coming into play? Gimme a break. In the spirit of "nothing," I'm a bad father who took no pictures of his daughter last weekend, so here's one Facebook reminded me about from six years ago. Those cheeks! That skepticism!

Leaving work last week the friendly security guard pointed at my copy of Player Piano (not as good as I remembered, though the second half triumphs) and asked how many books I read a year. "Do you keep track of them?" "Um, no. I should!" I met E. Christopher Clark at a local author fair recently and liked the sound of his Those Little Bastards story collection. One sample download later and the opening "Revelation" was strong enough to earn my three bucks on Kindle—he had me thinking of Vonnegut, for crying out loud. A dozen pages later he lost me with the hateful and tasteless "Hacker." Two more sexual-awakening romps reminded that a bag of Doritos also costs three bucks. "Deux ex Machina" returned, with less success, to the enjoyable "Revelation" storyline but the juvenile, erectile, bad-fantasy stink lingered like a broken-in Body of Evidence cassette. Several stories remain, some with promising titles "Death by Cursor" and "Two Weirdos, a Shovel and Lots of Open Land," but Clark has a lot to overcome—keep it to adult themes instead of adult situations, alright? Bokononism weeps.

And hey, sixty-nine (har! har!) cents more and I've got Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Essays, Literary Studies, Criticism, Cryptography and Autography, Translations, Letters and Other Nonfiction Works in response to lingering "complete works" despondency. Now I can read three essays about street-paving techniques of the mid nineteenth century: "Why has not the mineralizing process been adopted in the preparation of the wooden blocks with which we have so frequently experimented in the pavement of our streets?" Compelling!

Speaking of marginalia, is it Christmas yet? Let's start naming these playlists: I'm Weary All the Time the Time.

1. Billie Holiday – Stormy Weather
"Billie Holiday received numerous awards and accolades while still alive and posthumously. These include being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame and the Biff! Bang! Pow! Hall of Early December 2017 Excellence in Holiday Sequencing."

2. Fuzz – Sleigh Ride
Newly anointed "Christmas music" copied over from my regular library this year, alongside Fuzz's "Sleigh Ride": Guided by Voices's "Snowman," Nazz's "Under the Ice," the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's "High Gear," the Groundhogs' "Snowstorm," Unwound's "December," Captain Beefheart's "Steal Softly Thru Snow," the Mothers of Invention's "Uncle Bernie's Farm," DR Hooker's "Winter," Six Finger Satellite's "Deep Freeze," the Misfits' "TV Casualty" ("Christmas cards to which I never reply!") and Metallica's "Trapped Under Ice." Ridiculous.

3. Ginger Baker's Air Force – We Free Kings
That Blind Faith redesign is my crowning achievement.

4. Second Hand – Death May Be Your Santa Claus
Merry proggy Christmas! These are the seasonal problems I create for myself: ten minutes deciding between the standard "Death May Be Your Santa Claus" and its extendo-jam "Reprise" for inclusion in a blog post no one will read.

5. Bobby Timmons – Deck the Halls
Timmons' great Prestige Records release Holiday Soul from 1966—not to be confused with Don Patterson's good Prestige Records release Holiday Soul from 1964—is a welcome addition this year since A. is embracing more of jazz's depth. Meanwhile, G. just wants to hear "Christmas Wrapping" over and over. How much better would new wave bands have been without bad eighties saxophones?

Up next: Sure, go ahead and schedule that InterContinental VaGina holiday party during the Pats on Monday Night Football. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week twelve

The game: Dolphins at Patriots
The beer: Little Wolf Pale Ale
The result: Win, 35–17
The commentary: Discouragement looms over a new installment of "Beer and knockout-pool drama." Six projected outcomes resulted in eleven wins: Katie, the third and final Mike, Robin and I went with the Pats; Andy and Dan with the Falcons; Asterisk Oren and Paul with the Ravens; Peter with the Eagles; Thomas with the Panthers; and Tim with the Bengals. Regret, too, looms as a last-minute decision to forgo the Redskins on Thanksgiving night—karma, etc.—means the Pats are no longer an option. Drag. I'm formally sketching out the remainder of the season with teams I don't fully trust or even understand. Chiefs? Lions? Bengals? Who are you people?

The silver lining is a fair playing field: when Paul related to me Tuesday that he emailed his Pats pick to Commissioner Rico a few minutes after one o'clock on Sunday—am I the only one who cares about this thing?—he was told "Too late, no dice." The lack of mercy is appreciated. The pathetic Texans against his fallback Ravens were not.

Rooting for lousy teams to overcome odds, outside of Chiefs–Giants, has been a degrading experience. Sunday should avoid this miasma, assuming everyone falls in line behind me and the Chargers over the Browns. (Jaguars—who the hell are they, anyway?—over Colts is off the table for all but me.) The Chargers are the pick—everyone can and everyone should. Those who don't are either scared off by last season's affair—I don't know if the Browns' first and last win affected the pool because I was out by then—or… whatever. Garoppolo in Chicago? (Tempting.) Geno time in Oakland? (Not so much.) Gronkowski in Buffalo? (Save it for the home rematch.) "LAC" will likely fill the Excel row despite Rico's Not-Browns disdain and, should that be the case, I'll again root for a lousy team to overcome odds, eliminate eight players and leave Dan, Tim and me with one strike apiece. "No mask? No mask!" Beautiful.

Then next week I can take the Chiefs, the Lions or the Bengals. Goddammit.

Up next: Remember when the Bills were good? Me neither. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week eleven

The game: Patriots vs. Raiders
The beer: Boulevard Tough Kitty Milk Stout
The result: Win, 33–8; Steelers win, 40–17; Brandon Kentaro wins, 4–0–0–0
The commentary: The Geeee Mennnn! Hal, Asterisk Jeff, Stephanie, the third and final Tom and the Kansas City Chiefs were no match for the Giants, G. and me at A&B Burger in Beverly following Pooka in the Woods. "Here kid, color on your own so I can observe my encroaching degeneracy and engross myself in the closing minutes of high-stakes football game"—I am the perfect horrible parent and she's doomed to a casino lifestyle. We're down to eleven, folks, and the bad juju/bad karma elements are gathering as I consider the Redskins over the celebrated Geeee Mennnn tomorrow night. Pats over Dolphins instead to simplify the weekend's rooting interests? Too soon? Is mine a winner's mentality?

I forgot to talk about Kentaro winning Part Two of the Season Finale of Project Runway last week. This is clearly a separate series from the proper Project Runway and if I didn't enjoy the design process so much I'd skip right to Fashion Week. Why bother to watch: Brandon win three times, place or show five more and never once land on the bottom; Kentaro sleepwalk through the season, win one challenge, perform well in three others and nearly collapse down the stretch while ignoring all criticism throughout; Ayana coast before peaking at the right time with a top–win–top sequence in the final three non-finale challenges; and Margarita in general because of her entitlement and atrocious taste. Even Claire and Shawn fizzled out in a blatant attempt to get their own show—stunt casting at its finest. Maybe Kentaro did have the best finale collection but to act as if anything Brandon—or Ayana—did in the previous thirteen episodes was immaterial in deciding the season winner then why am I wasting my time instead of starting Stranger Things upon its release?

I rooted for Brandon all along and was emotionally prepared for Ayana to come through in his place. His collection was a little samey but still good enough to not undo all that came before—I'm not sure the judges had one negative thing to say about his creativity, vision, construction, methods, fabric choices, versatility or styling—and, therefore, he was robbed. Not like Mondo but right up there with Kelly last season. Tim Gunn, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Speaking of inappropriate usage of the N word, the Old Lady Book Club and I discussed Ben Winters's Underground Airlines last night. A's uncle once criticized the motivation behind Mad Men as an excuse to write for prejudiced and chauvinistic characters who smoke all the time and I could apply that thinking here: it's "acceptable" in the Airlines world for black characters to be derided and mistreated so, by Winters's own rules, it's OK for him to profit, financially and critically ("Astonishing!" "Extraordinary!"), from his contrived racism set piece. Good for him, though he should learn how to write. The Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fad is no classroom and Cthulhu weeps.

This book sucked and I wasn't the only one at the library—the very same "library" from "Library Book Club"—who thought so. Still, there was much talk of action, intrigue and twists that must have been edited out of my copy. Winters starts with a strong concept (if speculation is your thing), tweaks a few political milestones between Lincoln's time and ours and leaves most of the rest of history untouched by noted quantum physicist Ashton Kutcher's butterfly effect. For every shrewd rewrite shifting economic dominance from the North to the South there remain FDR and LBJ presidencies (at least). The humanitarian outside world shuns the US and imposes trade sanctions… and Michael Jackson is a cultural phenomenon. James Brown abandons the US in favor of European stardom… but he still has the opportunity in the first place. Texas secedes, the Carolinas unify… and the Toyota Altima exists as a practical vehicle. Oh, and the real Underground Railroad has been replaced not with an Underground Airlines—a term the protagonist discredits almost immediately, damning the author's turn of phrase as a throwaway line—but rather with an actual underground railroad: a subway! I'll take my metaphor with a large pile of rocks, please.

Most decisions by Winters and Victor/Brother/Whozits alike are half-baked, as if they started at the solution and worked backward before tiring. Slavery remains legal in the South until some states abolish it as no longer… suiting their needs? It's never explained. "Carolina" exists because "the Hard Four" (decided upon arbitrarily—how does Georgia deviate from Carolina?) sounds better than "the Hard Five." And super-detective Whozits? The runaway is in the drainage tunnel! The driver had the package all along! Martha can single-handedly carry this entire espionage sequence! How did he reach these conclusions? Who cares.

The Martha bit required the biggest leap. She's introduced as a helpless teenager-type who gets busted crashing a cheap continental breakfast and suddenly we're to take her for a dynamic business opportunist with sexual powers? Whose cherished, vulnerable son is written out of the story as "staying with her sister"? I wasn't buying it either. What is Winters trying to accomplish here aside from should-a-white-guy-write-this controversy? (I admit to feeling uncomfortable reading it on the train due to the subject matter but not with The Cold Six Thousand, a more racially brutal book that doesn't hide behind science fiction.) To inform us that slavery is an American embarrassment and racism exists everywhere and always? Thanks for the news brief. The book club's head Lady, raised in Virginia, shared a remark last night from a former psychology professor: "In the South, white people hate the black race and love the black individual. In the North, they love the race and hate the individual." This provokes more thought than any sub-Dan Brown adventure.

Unfortunately I'm missing next month's meeting because of an office party. No, not at the InterContinental VaGina, that's earlier in December. But an open bar rules all, especially when the book is Same Kind of Different As Me and most Amazon reviewers agree it is "heartwarming," "touching" and "inspirational." Pass. The one-star reviews tell me all I need to know: "How many evangelical clichés can you fit in one book?" "By the time the author had the wife on her deathbed motioning as if climbing Jacob's Ladder I was just sickened." "Do you have it in DVD? Because that's what I thought I bought." I'll see you all in January with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. ("A gorgeously poignant novel of hope and transformation." Good grief.)

Up next: It's the annual guilt trip over skunky, expired Sam Adams versus whichever beer I bring to Connecticut. Happy Thanksgiving!

Beer and football VIII — weeks nine and ten

Week nine (bye)
The beer: Down the Road Patchwork Kilt Scottish-Style Ale
The result: Saints win, 30–10

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Week ten
The game: Patriots at Broncos
The beer: Lagunitas NightTime Ale
The result: Win, 41–16; Seahawks win, 22–16

---

The commentary: Root for either the Saints or the Seahawks. Almost: root for both the Saints and the Seahawks in that order. That was the key, and since Saints–Bucs was a one o'clock contest two weeks ago I didn't want to be in a position to kick myself had they won without my taking them. Looking ahead—which I can afford to do with one game still to give (for now)—I assumed the Seahawks would beat the Redskins in Seattle and carry that momentum to Arizona, so why not keep them in my pocket another week? And it worked out, sure, but following that wild finish on a phone—while your wife reads your daughter a bedtime story—is not recommended. A win is a win but a six-point, closing-moments win is not as comfortable as multiple-touchdown differentials since week four. And that safety? That fucking safety. As if I could handle another five-point affair. I'm glad they're no longer an option.

Thursday wins are the best, leaving the weekend clean to anticipate everyone else's picks and root hard against, for example, the Lions. The Browns looked good (on my phone, anyway) for awhile before they went all Browns and dashed a sketched-out "Detroit Music" motif you're reading in an alternate universe. Drag. No losers except for Alex and the Jets for some reason. I admire that to a point—I wish I had the guts to take them over the Bills in week nine—but he went out leaving the Pats, Eagles, Steelers and Vikings on the table in favor of two AFC East also-rans (Dolphins in week three). So long, chump. Fifteen people remain, all but two non-Jarrods—Dan and Tim, whose potential scenarios now play out in a separate spreadsheet—playing a single-elimination game. We need movement—it's almost Thanksgiving!

How 'bout them Patriots? And Brock? That poor guy on the sideline missed becoming the Halloween costume of the year by twelve days—it wouldn't be difficult to affix a football to your forehead and rig a Broncos hat to float three feet behind your head. Lost opportunities aside, I agree with everyone calling this a "classic" Patriots win. The offense capitalizing on an opponent's mistakes, strong special-teams play, adequate defense… this result is and always will be forty points scored and a halftime so free of stress that you fall asleep for the second time this season. It's good to have Tom Brady backstage, waiting for the right moment to be ensnared in my RICO conspiracy. Those others, though: Kirk Cousins, Alex Smith, Cam Newton, Matthew Stafford, Blake Bortles? Movement.

I'm learning that my copy of The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe is not called The Complete Tales, Poems and Essays for a reason, though it could be The Complete Tales (More or Less), Poems and a Handful of Essays, in which case I would criticize its use of "handful" because that's what I've become. The "more or less" qualification comes from my volume's exclusion of the (likely) unfinished "The Light-House" (though its conclusion succeeds without detailing what took the place of "solid masonry"), a cobbled-together draft of his play Politian and the incomplete serial novel The Journal of Julius Rodman, the last of which I've yet to read but is (like "The Light-House") included in a different "complete" collection I've since downloaded to my iPad. So, yeah, just when I thought all that remained was The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Wikipedia calls bullshit on that with a list of "other works." I'll still save Pym for last but the question remains: will I cop out and read the Kindle version or remain loyal to the thick book I've owned for twenty-plus years and, recently, been content to lug around as a carrying case for my Sip Café punchcard? It's odd to have read every word (minus the poetry—that mode of expression isn't for me) and then leave off the closing epic. But the convenience? These are the problems I create for myself.

Meanwhile, I finished this month's "Library Book Club" selection Underground Airlines. It sucked. More on that and the Ladies next time.

Up next: The Steelers won for me on Thursday so I'll pour all of my non-Patriots-in-Mexico energy into a Browns upset, figuring everyone else will run with the Jaguars. "I Love Living in Jacksonville, Florida" motif? Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week eight

The game: Chargers at Patriots
The beer: Murphy's Stout
The result: Win, 21–13; Vikings win, 33–16
The commentary: "Come on you motherfuckers! I'm supposed to win this goddamn thing!" Competition brings out the worst, particularly when your heavy favorite is settling for field goals and your wife and daughter are out of the house. Entitlement is ugly.

Another week correcting earlier damage done by the Dolphins, Steelers (twice) and Falcons (twice more) leaves us with an in-the-black twenty through eight weeks, thanks (presumably) to a forgotten Hotmail password two weekends ago—welcome to the late nineties, Craig. But wait: "in-the-black"? I've plotted out the projected failure rate required for me to win this goddamn thing—the "remaining," "undefeated" (four) and "magic number" (twenty-two) figures are promising against the benchmark (twenty-eight, twenty-eight and fifty-six, respectively) but if the "remaining" line stays flat for three more weeks then I'll be in the red and concerned. Maybe Sunday will be better. Maybe I should relax.

It was a week to drink. Wednesday saw an evening with Commissioner Rico himself! He is knocked out and done with this shit, since CBS's strict anti-gambling policy zero-tolerance racketeering scheme piles on the manual work. "Are you gonna win?" I hope so, man, because it sounds like you aren't doing this next year. My spreadsheet and I remain the logical successor(s) but I won't do the crime since I can't do the time. Put the next round of Lawson's IPAs on Ice Cube's tab.

On Friday I met Hector, Ivan and Oleg at the Trillium Beer Garden because eight-dollar beers are better enjoyed outdoors in the dark. Ivan and Oleg were pregaming a Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert (shudder) while Hector wonderfully took his time relating an HR nightmare involving sex, race-bating and videotape. As if management isn't for suckers. Dinner at Mr. Dooley's invited an appreciation for Murphy's stout, "vegetarian" platters consisting of beef stew and shepherd's pie and a typecast Irishman (pictured) playing the music of Pink Floyd—shudder—and other seventies mainstays. Our waitress was made to constantly repeat herself but it wasn't due to the noise. "Excuse me?" Typecast.

Somehow we never hit the Caddyshack bar—"T'anks fer nuttin!" At least Hector didn't get a parking ticket and I caught the nine ten with ease, spitting out two hundred half-assed words while waiting to board. I learned at dinner that Hector and Oleg are semi-regular readers (!) and, therefore, potential members of the "Biff! Bang! Now!" Facebook group I'll one day create in a drunken fever dream. "Yeah, I mostly skip over the football stuff." Good luck.

Up next: Root for either the Saints or the Seahawks. You've come this far, baby. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week seven

The game: Falcons at Patriots
The beer: Anderson Valley Fall Hornin' Pumpkin Ale
The result: Win, 23–7; Cowboys win, 40–10
The commentary: I thought the death blow was coming for us all. Given the reasons I listed last week, none more so than "watch your ass," I suspected an overabundance of Steelers, Panthers, Titans and, yes, Cowboys enthusiasts (since no one took the Chiefs) would be dragged into mediocre depths. Instead the weekend played out as an overdue correction—no losses, no eliminations… even though Craig didn't register a pick. We're down to twenty if he's out. I'll have a word with Commissioner Rico about that.

A fifteen-minute timer designed to wake me after a Super Bowl LI-II halftime power-nap? These are the innovations I create for myself. Falling back asleep minutes into the third quarter? Not so much. I missed nothing except for the possible end of the Falcons' short run of success. And the Pats? Their first signature had-em-all-the-way win of the season. "Maybe, just maybe, there's the one you need." DVR is wonderful.

A different year, a different scarecrow and a different attempt to use distance and scale to keep G. young and small. It won't work forever. Drag.

Up next: Remember, "Frankenstein" refers to the scientist and not the creature. Happy Halloween!

Beer and football VIII — week six

The game: Patriots at Jets
The beer: Ballast Point Dead Ringer Oktoberfest Lager
The result: Win, 24–17; Texans win, 33–17
The commentary: "Recency bias is one of the trickier forms of bias that may interfere with an effective performance review. When managers RICO perps are affected by this they tend to over- or undervalue short-term events to the detriment of the employee's long-term performance one's undocumented winnings. Failing to take into account the entire time period can lead to ineffective and false results." Man, I had to clean up a lot of grammar and redundancy there. Maybe "learn that" before teaching anything else.

I blame recency bias for thirty-six outright eliminations through six weeks so far, a ridiculous total befitting the season. Last week saw Atlanta and Denver wound three players and murder ten more and I was lucky to avoid both: Atlanta because I'd already picked them in a white-knuckle opening week and Denver because, plainly, I hadn't the patience to wait for Sunday Night Football. "Ohhh, Sunday night." Enjoy your artificial career and dipshit fanbase, Carrie Underwood.

Inner turmoil over recency bias—and its backlash—consisted of the following points and counterpoints last weekend:
1. The Falcons are too good to lose two in a row.
2. The Falcons are too good to lose at home to the Dolphins.
3. The Dolphins are awful.
4. Both Jay Cutler and the Dolphins have fucked me before.
5. Thee Falcons? Indeed…

6. The Broncos never lose at home.
(6½. The Broncos never play away from home.)
7. The Giants are awful.
8. As a Patriots fan, the Giants can never be counted out.
9. The Giants are due.
10. "Ohhh, Sunday night…"

11. Deshaun Watson and the offense are good enough to overcome the losses of JJ Watt and Whitney Mercilus on defense.
12. The Browns are awful.
13. The Browns, maybe, are historically awful.
14. The Browns will win a game this season.
15. Watch your ass.

This was the progression and, in the end, I felt pretty good that the Texans would whoop the Browns in a league where such confidence is often punished. I was certain the Dolphins had no chance in Atlanta and would absolutely have taken them birds were I able. Thank goodness for small, twenty-two-hundred-unit favors because the Falcons by themselves are responsible for sixteen strikes, second only to the Steelers and their twenty-five. In related news, I'm considering said Steelers over the Bengals on Sunday.

"I'm feeling pretty good."
Hillary Clinton
October 27, 2016

Here is this week's attempt (so far) to buck recency bias and pick a team that won't keep me awake all weekend, phase one of which lasted until kickoff last night and was rewarded immediately upon waking this morning:
1. The Chiefs are too good to lose two in a row.
2. Charcandrick West is out but Tyreek Hill is in.
3. Derek Carr's fractured spine can't hold up over two games in five days.
4. It would be nice to get a win out of the way before the weekend.
5. Are the Raiders bad enough to doom their season so early?
6. Carr's stats against the Chargers weren't bad for someone with a fractured spine.
7. I'd feel better if the game were being played in Kansas City.
8. The Raiders are honoring Al Davis and the 1967 AFL championship team.
9. It's bad juju to pick against a team after picking them—successfully—to win earlier in the season…

10. The Panthers are due to bounce back.
11. Mitch Trubisky is potentially lousy.
12. The Bears stink.
13. Thee Bears…

14. Domestic violence is preferable to… air-pressure gamesmanship?… so Ezekiel Elliott is playing.
15. The 49ers stink.
16. The 49ers have kept things interesting since week two.
17. The 49ers kept things too interesting in week three.
18. The Cowboys are a total wild card and I have never picked for or against them through four-plus seasons of knockout-pool entertainment…

19. The Steelers are probably kind of pretty decent.
20. Ninety-one percent of NFL "experts" can't be wrong again.
21. Those twenty-five strikes noted above have resulted in ten eliminations.
22. The Bengals have only scored eighty-four points so far but have given up eighty-three.
23. The Misfits are not walking through that door…

24. The Titans eventually looked dominant against a shitty Colts team on Monday.
(24½. I'm still rooting for Jacoby Brissett.)
25. Marcus Mariota can borrow someone else's hamstring for a few hours.
26. The Browns, maybe, are historically awful.
27. In a season lacking sure things, the Titans are not a sure thing.
28. I'd feel better if the game were being played in Nashville.
29. I'd feel better if the Titans were called the Nashville Kings.
30. Watch your ass.

I still don't know whom to pick—or whom to pick against—and I'm overthinking things even worse than I did leading up to 2015's Raiders–Bears unpleasantness. I even resorted to superstition in noting to A. this morning that the Chiefs' loss, after a last-minute recusal, is "maybe a good omen." I'm holding onto this extra life like it's Rush'n Attack and I need to get on with it.

As for the Patriots, I considered them last weekend as well but decided to save them for a later game when their intentions will hopefully be clearer. One can dream. It should never have come down to an overturned touchdown but that's the way it is with this defense. A win is a win (PFW's Paul Perillo admitted to feeling guilty over the touchback and I agree that it is an odd rule) (just like the tuck rule!) but I'm dying for a comfortable blowout sometime soon. It probably won't come Sunday night—"Ohhhhh, Sunday night"—against an equally flawed Falcons team in a game that has generated more talk about whether or not it can be called a "Super Bowl rematch" (since the stakes are different) than about how the teams are sloppy, unreliable shadows of their 2016 selves. Both offenses and both defenses have something to prove and, if I were to gamble outside CBS's lawless haven, I would take the over.

And if I were (shudder) a Jets fan? I'd prefer that a team of overachievers win as many games as possible and compete well in losing efforts. Drew Bledsoe was the consolation prize in 1993, not the goal, and some other dude was a sixth-round afterthought.

Nothing out of the ordinary from the Old Lady Book Club meeting the other night. I timed things perfectly and finished Romantic Outlaws on the train ride home that evening, though only two others were so fortunate—I couldn't read six hundred pages in a month either were it not for my commute. Clearly, bizarrely, I was the most enthusiastic about the double biography and its alternating-chapter format, suggesting that it was the only way to present both Marys in detail while demonstrating the parallels in their lives (so much so that we all admitted to occasionally checking the chapter headers to see whom we were actually reading about). One Lady said the book bored her with constant reminders of female oppression in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries since it was "nothing new," to which I responded that this eye-opening account might be the reason I enjoyed it so much. My input was welcome, I appreciated the discourse—avoiding the instant closure of "finishing one book and starting another five minutes later" like I'm about to do with Ian McGuire's The North Water—and I'm glad I joined. Up next for the Ladies and me is Ben Winters's Underground Airlines, another among a strange batch of "thought-provoking" speculative fiction where the bad guys prevail. "What if the Civil War never happened?" "What if Germany won World War II?" "What if the moon landed on us?" Enough. At three hundred something pages, though, more readers should finish this time.

Up next: Julio Goddamn Jones. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week five

The game: Patriots at Buccaneers
The beer: Bear Republic Racer X Double India Pale Ale
The result: Win, 19–14; Eagles win, 34–7
The commentary: Too soon? But that's my ET stuffie since Christmas 1982!

This fucking defense still blows but what are you gonna do? Trade Malcolm Butler for a tight end? No thanks. An off day for the offense forces Nick Folk to lose the defense to win this one. Win. Any way you can get one.

Just ask the twenty—twenty!—people whose Steelers got thumped by the Jaguars on Sunday in the ultimate stay-away game. Eleven of these motherfuckers are now eliminated, along with three who staked their survival on the Giants—I get it, they're going to win eventually, but shouldn't you witness it before guessing? This marks three straight weeks of an upset wiping out a collection of rash Peter King followers after fifteen casualties/one fatality for Miami and ten/three for Atlanta. We're down to thirty-two after five weeks (smell the magic: thirty-eight) and this is progress I never anticipated, especially since twenty-four of us—though not I—have already lost once. A league full of mediocre teams and toss-up contests will do that. Who are the dominant teams? The Chiefs alone are undefeated—three remain winless, which is just as red-flaggy to me—but can they be trusted much longer? Not by me until they lose, which might happen Sunday against the confounding Steelers. Who knows. Good grief.

Gimmes are few and far between and my choice of the Texans over the Browns, sitting at a solid ninety-eight percent at NFL Pick Watch (and only because a substandard and panicked Jason LaCanfora is resorting to a string of improbable upsets to boost his rating), is likely to be a common one. Will orange (strike one) and red (strike two and you're out) instances of HOU populate an otherwise black row on Monday? Let's hope not, for my sake. For my spreadsheet's sake.

Two nights ago, some dogmatic bastard with an unread blog indicated to Commissioner Rico (not to be confused with RICO, though coincidence becomes a pattern) that shenanigans were afoot. Shenanigans! Player Oren was granted an apparent third life after losing in weeks three and four but my man admitted he accidentally gave him the Chargers instead of the Cardinals two weeks ago. (I believe him because who takes the Chargers at all?) (However… who takes the Cardinals? Hmm.) Rico is learning the hard way that the CBS RICO environment cannot handle a two-strike league and so he has to manually enter picks for those of us—though not I—with one loss, work he hoped to avoid by offloading data management to the inter-net. Drag. Errors are inevitable and I am watching everyone like a hawk. (The easy solution? I should run this myself. The complication? It's a legal minefield I want no part of.) Take one of the Jeffs: CBS recorded a skipped week four (equating a loss) but Rico took the blame, claiming Seattle was the emailed pick that was never entered. Fair enough—eighteen others took them as well (Colts blowout) so skepticism wanes, since eliminations are in Rico's interest given hist last-leg urgency (thanks again, Dolphins!). I'm also keeping an eye on Kim and one of the Matts, for they each have several empty cells after losing for the first time in weeks three and two, respectively. Stay dead, you. These four are marked with asterisks and the fury will manifest should one of them win the pot. Enabled macros never forget.

Up next: Sure, go ahead and schedule that birthday party during a Pats game for the second year in a row. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week four

The game: Panthers at Patriots
The beer: Castle Island Candlepin Ale
The result: Loss, 33–30; Packers win, 35–14
The commentary: This fucking defense blows. This? Fucking defense! Blows this. Fucking… this fucking defense blows. This fucking defense—this fucking defense—blows. Blows!

Up next: This fucking… defense?… blows. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — week three

The game: Texans at Patriots
The beer: Warsteiner Dunkel
The result: Win, 36–33; Rams win, 41–39
The commentary: Football! If I can survive the Rams game (those color-rush yellows were it), with Brian Hoyer (!) evaporating a fourteen-point third-quarter deficit while I remained blissfully unaware until switching over to the NFL Network after Project Runway, and another—another!—epic Brady comeback then I am a golden god. But wait! Do I really consider a second consecutive Thursday Night Football pick tonight, this time against the goddamn Bears?? It's either that, the bewildering Seahawks over the Colts or the Saints over Jay Cutler (shudder) and the Dolphins in London. Prepare the gilding, motherfuckers.

I am not alone (though I was early: see weeks two, four, ten and seventeen from last year's "top-rated" season and the archives back through beer-and-football's inception) and there is much falling-skies talk in New England regarding Matt Patricia's crew of merry Pro Football Focus subscribers. No pass rush, poor on-field communication, little confidence in presumed role-players who got paid in the offseason, a lack of "Free Free Safety Advice" instructional videos on YouTube… lucky for us that pliable old quarterback is rolling along. Gronk, White, Cooks, Hogan, Amendola, the goal-line version of Gillislee, some flailing man named Dwayne Allen who has as many catches as I do: this offense is averaging thirty-two points a game behind an atrocious line and some (dwindling but ever-present) questionable Josh McDaniels calls—fun to watch and root for as various acids churn away downstairs. This will be a season full of action.

Football (pool)! It was a goddamn slaughter, distributing twenty-two strikes (two-thirds courtesy of Jets–Dolphins) and fully eliminating Ken, one of the Brians and maybe a Matt—the CBS RICO app could use a data-visualization and user-interface overhaul. Meanwhile, my spreadsheet blossoms as strategic color application and a new (this week) magic-number calculator (now seventy-nine) put the commissioner to shame. Again. Prepare the units, motherfuckers.

A guest brought the dunkel to G's birthday party a few weeks ago—I don't know how many successive parties' refrigerators it passed through but it found a home here and wasn't bad. I was prepared to write about a blowout win signifying the good guys "dunking" and/or declaring "war" on the league but that metaphor expired early… until a Rumsfeld Brewing Co. Warhammer Slammer IPA toasts a win against the Falcons in three weeks.

Quick sizzle: On the train the other day I misread a guy's TOUGH MUDDER shirt as THOUGHT MURDER, which will be the name of the black-metal song I compose after the same Falcons game.

Up next: "Charlotte Gordon has written a book about two women who changed not only the way we think, but the way we are." Hoo boy. Cheers!

Michael Irvin and Tom Bombadil walk into a bar

Updated: January 1, 2018
Chronicling, for some reason, every book and short story I've read since The Lord of the Rings late in the Spring. This is a companion to the rabble-rousing "Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club," protested openly by AARP, NOW and other pro-civility agencies. You cannot spell literati without ire, nor geriatric without rage.

Critical remarks are avoided in similar fashion to another fine list. Rereads coopt the register-mark symbol and establish that "rereads" and "coopt" should not be hyphenated. "Library Book Club" selections are noted in red to represent the spectre of death.

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JRR Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
The Two Towers (1954)
The Return of the King (1955)

Stephen King
From The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982/2003 revision)
"The Gunslinger" (1978/2003 revision)
"The Way Station" (1980/2003 revision)
"The Oracle and the Mountains" (1981/2003 revision)
"The Slow Mutants" (1981/2003 revision)
"The Gunslinger and the Dark Man," a.k.a. "The Gunslinger and the Man in Black" (1981/2003 revision)

Agatha Christie
Sleeping Murder (1976)

Edgar Allan Poe
"Review of The Quacks of Helicon" (1841)
"Astoria" (1837)

Elmore Leonard
Glitz (1985)

Agatha Christie
The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side (1962)

Edgar Allan Poe
"The Domain of Arnheim" (1847)
"Landor's Cottage" (1849)
"William Wilson" (1839)

Jeff Pearlman
Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty (2008) ®

HP Lovecraft
"The Nameless City" (1921)

Keith Cameron
Mudhoney: The Sound and the Fury From Seattle (2013)

Elmore Leonard
Pronto (1993)

HP Lovecraft
"The Festival" (1925)

Edgar Allan Poe
"Berenice" (1835)
"Eleonora" (1841)
"Ligeia" (1838)
"Morella" (1835)
"Metzengerstein" (1832)

Stephen King
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) ®

Edgar Allan Poe
"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844)
"The Spectacles" (1844)
"The Duke of l'Omelette" (1832)
"The Oblong Box" (1844)

HP Lovecraft
"The Colour Out of Space" (1927)

Edgar Allan Poe
"King Pest the First" (1835)
"A Succession of Sundays," a.k.a. "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841)
"The Devil in the Belfry" (1839)
"Lionizing" (1835)

HP Lovecraft
"The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)
"The Dunwich Horror" (1929)

Charlotte Gordon
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (2016) 👍

Ian McGuire
The North Water (2016)

Edgar Allan Poe
"The Rationale of Verse" (1848)
"The Poetic Principle" (1848)

Mary Shelley
Frankenstein (or: The Modern Prometheus) (1818)

Edgar Allan Poe
Politian (1835)

John William Polidori
"The Vampyre" (1819)

HP Lovecraft
The Whisperer in Darkness (1931)

Edgar Allan Poe
"The Philosophy of Furniture" (1840)
"The Light-House" (1849)

HP Lovecraft
"The Dreams in the Witch House" (1933)
"The Haunter of the Dark" (1936)

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
"The Big Trip Up Yonder" (1954)

Ben H. Winters
Underground Airlines (2016) 👎

Edgar Allan Poe
"Eureka" (1848)

Andrew Boylan
Sacrifice (2016)

Edgar Allan Poe
"A Few Words on Etiquette" (1846) *
"Morning on the Wissahiccon" (1844)
"The Philosophy of Composition" (1846)
"A Few Words on Secret Writing" (1841)
"Fifty Suggestions" (1849)
"Some Account of Stonehenge, the Giant's Dance, a Druidical Ruin in England" (1840)

Robert W. Chambers
From The King in Yellow (1895)
"The Repairer of Reputations"
"The Mask"
"In the Court of the Dragon"
"The Yellow Sign"

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Player Piano (1952) ®

Edgar Allan Poe
"Byron and Miss Chaworth" (1844)
"Harper's Ferry" (1842) *

E. Christopher Clark
From Those Little Bastards (2002)
"Revelation"
"Ezekiel and the Harvesters"
"Hacker"
"Vamp"
"Sylvia's Masterpiece"
"Deux ex Machina"

Edgar Allan Poe
"An Opinion on Dreams" (1839)
"Instinct vs. Reason: A Black Cat" (1840) *
"Pay of American Authors" (1845) *
"Wood Pavements" (1845)
"Why Not Try a Mineralized Pavement" (1845)
"Old English Poetry" (1836) *
"The Capitol at Washington" (1839) *

Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City (2003)

Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Edgar Allan Poe
"Our Magazine Literature" (1843) *

Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club

I read a lot. Two hours on the train every day, there's no excuse not to—I pity those who feel the need to jab at giant laptops in a can't-leave-work-at-work cry for help. Newspaper Luddites filling up on yesterday's analysis and the weirdos who stare straight ahead without listening to headphones or looking out the window are best left alone. And adults who play juvenile sensory-overload games on their iPhones, buying "lives" from Tim Cook every twenty minutes? These halfwits might as well come from Mars. Books, people. Portable, digestible books! It's not all The Brothers Karamazov (though that is on the shelf) and it's easy to embrace such lighter fare as macabre satire and sports-celebrity excess. Why not chuckle, wince or cry in front of commuters you partner with every morning and/or evening? You make nicknames for them and they probably have their own for you. Reading, at the very least, will pass the time. More likely it will give you something to contemplate… or to look up on Wikipedia afterward.

Nothing is so anticlimactic as finishing one book and starting another five minutes later. There are times when I'll lug a second book to and from Boston in order to avoid skimming outrageous Trump-related headlines on my phone for any stretch—the heart can only take so much. Often, lately, this filler consists of portions from one thousand plus pages of Edgar Allan Poe's collected Complete Tales and Poems so I can cleanse the palate with a handful (watch it with that word) of short stories—this has been the drill for about a year and a half and its concluding The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, plus a couple of essays about poetry that I may or may not read (though likely not the poems themselves), are all that remain. One hundred sixty pages of Poe's Greatest Hits, in chronological order? I'm glad you asked!

1. "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" (1835)
2A. "The Psyche Zenobia" (a.k.a. "How to Write a Blackwood Article") (1838)
2B. "The Scythe of Time" (a.k.a. "A Predicament") (1838)
3. "The Man That Was Used Up" (1839)
4. "William Wilson" (1839)
5. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841)
6. "A Descent Into the Maelström" (1841)
7. "The Gold-Bug" (1843)
8. "The Black Cat" (1843)
9. "The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." (1844)
10. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845)
11. "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846)
12. "Hop-Frog (or: The Eight Chained Ourang-outangs)" (1849)
13. "X-ing a Paragrab" (1849)

A. had at least read "The Black Cat" and so discussion ensued over that and the similar buried-alive treatise "The Cask of Amontillado." So stimulating! The opposite of FOMO, to be able to engage another over something still fresh in your mind. After that though? Plans for us to see The Dark Tower petered out thanks to lukewarm reviews and a why-bother ninety-minute runtime. Maybe it will be on Netflix or Amazon Prime before long. Maybe I'll keep rereading the books instead.

This literary… malaise?… compelled me to seek out other readers—given the success of hack superstar David Baldacci, the world must be full of them. Full of something. I will join a book club! (How does one join a book club?) Searching the office intranet came up empty outside of bullshit for finance enthusiasts to pretend they understand. Not for me, more cries for help and all. Local Facebook groups also turned up nothing and maybe that's for the best, as I can see "book club ;-) bring muffins" fronting a vibrating gaggle of perverts. Pass.

Consulting my local library's website, then, the "Library Book Club" (a little on the nose) and the "New Book Group for Nonfiction Readers" (let's get a brand manager in here!) were listed, and since the nonfiction coordinator didn't respond to my email—hard to get a new endeavor off the ground that way, dude—it was the former by default. If the… aged… voice of the woman who answered the phone didn't paint a picture then her reaction to my interest surely did: "You'll be our first man!" Not only this year but in her sixteen years participating! Hoo boy.

Nonetheless I persisted. Last Tuesday was the initial get-together and I was one nervous motherfucker ascending the staircase to the library's second-floor meeting room. There, ten or so women with a mean age around seventy—my mother is seventy, but theirs is an old seventy—greeted me with "You must be Jarrod!" The energy was appreciated and awkward. Still I sat and introduced myself, explaining as above that it's a shame to finish a book and forget about it, before additional demographic arrivals totaled sixteen of X and one of Y. Many were kind, even lovely. Some couldn't be bothered—"What's this guy going to contribute, anyway?" Still preferred over the not-quite-hostile "Interloper!" expressions I read on a couple of faces. I see their point, though it's not as if any of them showed up in their nightgowns carrying boxes of chardonnay. Or that I was quoting Caddyshack. They just like to read. So I settled in, demonstrated attentiveness and only glanced at the clock about fifty times. It was right across from me.

Stacked in front of the others but not me—I missed the memo, which was probably an actual memo—were two or three books each to be nominated as the club's choices for the next twelve months. (Eleven, actually, since the community "one book" selection—Charlotte Gordon's pink-spined Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley—was already in place for October.) Many of these had flowers and shit on the covers alongside—shudder—female author's names. (The stairs are right there! Flee, and let gravity do the rest!) Call me old-fashioned but female fiction authors, in my experience, often write for a female audience. (Men are as guilty but, right or wrong, double standards usually work out in my favor.) Going around, everyone took turns holding up recommendations and I had to improvise mine, figuring others might be lost jumping right into the third The Dark Tower book—"Does anyone relate to Gasher? What motivates him?" Instead I suggested female author Lynne Olsen's Troublesome Young Men and Matthew Dicks's Something Missing, a quirky novel reminiscent of Monk that I enjoyed a few years ago. Surprise, everyone, for I have depth! The latter option filled a comedy void and so it's become our June assignment, with yours truly presenting—"If you're still with us," joked one. No kidding.

An hour later I'm pleased to report that the Ladies (as I'll address them here) came through for me: for every author named Angela there is a David, a Ben and a Graham, and that is a ratio to celebrate. Getting together with… my book club… one night a month through August? I can handle that, and maybe I'll even experience the satisfied closure I seek with each completed book. Worst case? I'll read a few I might not have otherwise and take my time planning a graceful (eventual? inevitable?) farewell. Something along the lines of: "It's not you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you… or you. It's me." Why must it always be the man's fault?

Beer and football VIII — week two

The game: Patriots at Saints
The beer: Riverwalk Storm Door Porter
The result: Win, 36–20; Raiders win, 45–20
The commentary: "What album cover banned or censored because of nudity deserved it the most?" I took out the unnecessary comma after "nudity" but resisted rewriting Johnny Keno's question for him (almost: "Which banned or censored album cover deserved it the most?").

Anyone who didn't vote for Blind Faith can proceed directly to jail: "The release of the album provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic." God forbid a perverted consumer is presented with an adult cock—it might turn him gay—but an eleven-year-old's tits—not simply breasts because they're sexualized here and meant to be ogled—are A-OK with the red-blooded eighty-three percent of voters. When are people going to learn?

Not by coincidence, 1969 is when child-pornography curator Eric Clapton began to suck. Blind Faith was a lousy band and everyone involved—even Rick Grech, who made a couple of decent albums with Family beforehand—was capable of better, proven by the well done and Clapton-less Ginger Baker's Air Force seven months later. "Slowhand" (what does that even mean?) responded with pure shit, most of which he didn't even write, like his beige eponymous album and a bunch of directionless collaborations with Duane Allman, Delaney & Bonnie and Leon Russell that he probably sulked through and discredited afterward, per his MO. I'd bet forty more units that all of his circular seventies licks are straight out of George Harrison's rubbish.

Speaking of units—not that kind, Fred—I don't know how chronic gamblers survive. After last week's gaze upon and triumph over the Bears abyss I was barely able to continue and so relied upon what Midwestern/Northwestern fucktard Michael Wilbon derides as "chalk" by picking the Raiders against the visiting Jets. The Buccaneers were my other serious contender and also won in a blowout over… the Bears—I just couldn't do it two weeks in a row, baby. The late-afternoon time slot meant I could set stress aside in the middle of another maize—har! har!—while carefully avoiding the (recording) Pats–Saints score as I checked in to root against the Ravens, Panthers, Cardinals, Titans, Chiefs, Vikings and Bucs to little avail. Drag. The Vikings, Giants and 49ers, of all teams, produced three strikes, the last of which took someone all the way out: farewell, poor Kelli, for I'm no longer anonymizing other participants due to volume. In her defense, it remains unclear what time documented RICO hub CBS Sports locks you out from picking same-day games, which is why Thursday-evening commutes home will serve as a deadline until the end. Until my end. Her exit brings us very slightly down to fifty-six and a magic number of one hundred three, with one to give.

How does one live like this? It was stressful enough to track the overtime Cardinals–Colts while wondering (wandering) if G's decision to enter the white section of the maze instead of sticking with the yellow was a good idea (I'm here, aren't I?). There was nothing at stake except for the possibility of competitors being disadvantaged, which is an interest of sorts, just one over which I had no control. I'm not even worried about losing the forty units at this point—it's already gone and I would have blown that and more on a school night in Cambridge (next paragraph). It's losing the chance to keep playing that worries me and no more. What if I had a thousand on the line? Six months of mortgage payments? Thumbs? What if I were keeping this all from A. and afraid G. would grow up to discover her father is a degenerate who might have to pull her out of school to find a job? Instead I'll pout, as I've done three times before (the initial effort never got off the ground), because my tracking spreadsheet will turn obsolete after a second loss. If Tavin (somehow not an alias) and I are the final two battling it out in week seventeen, my Bills (shudder) against his Dolphins, it would be unfortunate to watch a quarterback anti-clinic between, I don't know, Ryan Mallett and Matt Cassel—since Tyrod Taylor and Jay Cutler will have been on IR since before the trade deadline—result in a three-zip elimination loss for me. But the spreadsheet? But the spreadsheet! It were to expire anyway and closure is, in itself, victory. Just not two-thousand-two-hundred-forty-units-in-the-black victory.

Item! Thee Oh Sees sold out! No, not in dropping "Thee" like the Jesus Lizard caving to major-label typographic coercion and setting "The" on its baseline from 1996 to 1998. I mean the Cambridge show last Wednesday sold out… in fucking June! How am I to compete with that? (Spinning Live in San Francisco, the new Orc and several dozen other albums fills the void.) These roving packs of freshmen are scene-motivated because even Quicksand this Saturday is a no-go—it ain't 1994 and Brainiac ain't opening this time, poseurs. Ivan blames his own lack of follow-through. I have to agree. Old age is a bastard.

Back to Thee Oh Sees, who will always be Thee Oh Sees to me since I started liking them in a post-Orinoka Crash Suite/OCS/Orange County Sound/Ohsees—and pre- and post-Oh Sees—universe about eighteen months ago. (I hear their next album will be released under the OCS moniker. Not in my library.) It's a shame to have missed the show as I haven't attended one since seeing Ty Segall early last year and, no, Will Oldham's bitchin' hot mess does not register. I take comfort knowing I also missed the chance to circle Cambridge's one-way streets for twenty minutes in search of parking and also, I imagine, a bunch of sweaty Harvard twits who would empty trust funds on multiple thirty-dollar, inferior-sounding "exclusive limited-release editions on bone-colored vinyl" LPs to bring to Turntable Night at those hipster bars that encourage people to spin their own for some reason. Millennial look-at-me-ism at its finest. (I was killing time at Notch in Salem a few weeks ago when it happened to be Bring Your Bluegrass Night or some shit and every song sounded exactly like the one the Beastie Boys sampled in "5-Piece Chicken Dinner." One of them had to be it but all of them could not.) Instead, as a deliberate affront to all they hold dear (until this cassette phase shifts their credibility standards yet again), I bought Orc on CD for twelve bucks, ripped that bastard into the gloriously portable MP3 format and sold it on Discogs a few days later for nine plus shipping. An enviable margin, considering I still own the music, that might have paid for one and a half beers at the Sinclair—I guess staying home, drinking pinot grigio and re-watching the "Devastator" episode of Mr. Show isn't too bad an alternative. "He broke his neck and then he drowned!" Anyway, Orc will surely be 2017's Biff-Banger by default.

Football! In case you can't tell, I'm not going crazy with "They're back!" and "MFGOAT!" and all that after one (convincing) win (over a mediocre Saints squad), just like I didn't queue up for the Devastator after the Chiefs unpleasantness. I'm encouraged by Brady's performance while concern emerges over a series of "minor" muscle injuries to his receiving pool. The defensive personnel, meanwhile, is an unsolvable problem historically, despite last season's fluky statistics—this is where poor drafting (Ron Brace, Jermaine Cunningham, Ras-I Dowling, Tavon Wilson, Dominique Easley, Jordan Richards, Cyrus Jones, et al… and these are just a handful of the flameout first- and second-rounders since 2009 who should be in their prime by now) hits hard—and the team will need to win a lot of shootouts. They're able to, but let's see what happens against a strong Texans defense… and a bad Texans offense. See? Nothing is settling anything just yet.

(Volume eight of Lamenting Thine Rampart, presented early this season, is brought to you by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Tavins. Won't you give today?)

Up next: It is in poor taste to make a joke at Houston's expense right now. Instead I'll target locally and share that HP Lovecraft's "The Festival" was inspired by a trip to Marblehead, where isolated weirdos make the police log a must-read. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII: What more is there that I can be?

Week one
The game: Chiefs at Patriots
The beer: Maine Lunch India Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 42–27; Falcons win, 23–17
The commentary: "There goes the no-hitter," as I would say—every time—in the days when I attended Red Sox games. "Patriots eat shit in front of God and everyone," says some "unionized" basement-dweller under the Deadspin banner. It happens. Check with us in January, Emma.

Losing Thursday was weird. I started the game later than I'd hoped after A. pouted a bit over Project Runway's postponement (it is pretty great so far), catching up to the broadcast at halftime and assuming Belichick would straighten everyone out in the interval. Maybe next weekend.

After a fast start by Brady that pointed to blowout city, the Chiefs outclassed the good guys in literally every way. Offense, defense, special teams, coaching, general enthusiasm. The new banner was blue, right? The Pats were wound too tight, made evident after Gronk's overturned touchdown—he appeared to have the wind knocked out of him (let's hope that's all it was) and recovered enough to never enjoy himself. No one did. The gloom stuck as Amendola and Hightower went down, various defenders got dusted like it's Tecmo Bowl and Mike Gillislee scored three touchdowns when he wasn't stuffed on fourth down(s). By quarter to midnight—this was a long game—I fought to stay awake for, I don't know, principles. I'm still paying for that. At least the undefeated talk can go away, "We're on to New Orleans" and all. I just don't know if talk of this historically bad defensive performance will disappear so quickly.

What doesn't disappear is the past. (Right, Mark Wahlberg? Manage to make it through this one?) Hours of new LI-centric television will heal all opening-week wounds, even if Edelman's shameless, douche-y plug of his children's book throughout America's Game means less screen time for the always affable LeGarrette Blount and the insightful and rightly proud Dont'a Hightower—"Duntuh" addressing Orange Is the New Black is a nice touch. A rerun of February's Turning Point (answer: Hightower's strip-sack), Top Ten highlighting an odd selection of Brady's "best wins of all time" (XLIX at number four??) and—saving the best for last—Do Your Job, Part II will keep me afloat until Sunday. It's a looong season, despite levels of panic that should be reserved for hurricanes and, you know, incompetent presidents. Patriots fans are the worst.

On the bright side, the Thursday game meant Sunday was wide open to eat away at my stomach. G. attended a fun bowling party at Market Street in Lynnfield, allowing A. and me to duck out for some adult time. And so: Starbucks! It was the first stop even though we neglected the Lululemon/Ezekiel Elliott (!) dress code. Ineffective window shades demanded indoor sunglasses as we stared in horror at preteen girls ordering Frappuccinos and wondered when G. and her friends would begin stunting their growth at the hometown coffee shop. You're in for a future of headaches, ladies, should you ever fail to get your caffeine fix before noon.

A. left a bit before one to do some shopping while I nursed my coffee and wondered why the CBS Sports app wasn't displaying anyone's picks yet. What does it take? Eventually, by the time I walked over to Kings to pick G. up, the early-game blanks were filled in and a convincing majority—thirty-six out of what ballooned to fifty-seven of us, as if this thing wasn't already dragging into next season—went with the Steelers over the Browns or the Bills over the Jets. They all had a lot less to worry about than I did, with the fragile Falcons—in a game that would have ruined their season and beyond had they blown it—keeping things interesting with my heart pounding and my palms sweating on the wheel circa four o'clock. Exiting the Trader Joe's parking lot I knew the Bears—isn't is always the Bears?—were advancing and time was expiring. I awaited Iggy proclaiming "Yeah!" out of my phone to signal either a game-tying score by the Bears (and a deciding PAT attempt to come) or the end of the game—oh, to be able to assign different ringtones to different outcomes. Iggy kindly sounded off at a red light and a peek at Android Oreo's creamy-filling notifications indicated survival, barely, prompting an apology to my family for several minutes of agitated silence. I am not cut out for this.

Houston's handful of fans were not so lucky—I've been on both ends of that. They and someone who miscalculated a Cardinals rebound represent the weekend's six losses, as my silver-lining scenario of the Pats taking people down with them never panned out. Drag. At least I already won the privacy contest since no one else chose to mistrust the inter-net and obscure his or her last name and email address. Good luck with that next credit report, losers. Otherwise, with all participants given two strikes and no buybacks, the magic number is one hundred six. Good lord.

Up next: Tom Brady improves upon his bottom-dwelling completion percentage. Cheers!

Beer and football VIII — training camp/the all-important third preseason game

The beer: Ipswich Blueberry Shandy
The commentary: I dreamed I was Julian Edelman. On the goal line leading 4–2 (!) over the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl or the opening game—there was tension beyond what the scheduled week-four matchup deserves—"Julian" went in motion behind Brady and told him "I want a touchdown!" I/he scooted past Brady before the snap as he stuck the ball forward for me, over the line of scrimmage, into the end zone, and I lunged forward to pluck it for the score. An irate (understandably so, given the blatant false start/illegal motion/chicanery) Bucs assistant coach bolted onto the field, got in my face and throttled me until he either stumbled to the ground or I knocked him down. He was not out of options and so grabbed onto my ankle like a bear trap, refusing to let go as I taunted him with "Look at the scoreboard!" even though "we" were only up 11–2 in a dreamworld where touchdowns counted for a full seven points. Edelman is a douche even when I'm playing him in the ether.

This occurred days before he was lost for the year during the all-important Detroit layover. I'm cautiously optimistic in that Danny Amendola and Malcolm Mitchell, plus whichever rookie sticks to the roster, can fill in for him while Chris Hogan, Brandin Cooks and Gronk expand the field beyond dinks and dunks. We'll see how many of them can stay healthy. It's the preseason, sure, but Brady and company looked pretty great against the Lions' starters. It should be fun.

Training camp was a little subdued for G., my father and me this year as an overwhelming crowd obscured much of the action in a joint session with the Jaguars. I appreciated Papa's vow to appeal to Robert Kraft about moving a particular tree—passion over right and wrong, or over things in our way, runs hot in the blood. G. didn't like how "the flavor" kept seeping to the bottom of her slushie and more or less refused to have her picture taken. I managed to get a couple of keepers before a lack of balloons at Red Robin brought it to a full stop. At least 2016's Etsy dress still fits, even though we needed to bring it to a seamstress—whose workspace resembled a Hobbit hole—for repairs. Beware the internet and its shoddy stitching.

New England (the region) enjoyed a proper, old-school Summer this year and we took full advantage of a general lack of humidity, a welcome amount of rain after last year's drought and all-around excellence. The last week of June was spent around Penobscot Bay in Maine, where Belfast and Rockland suited us better than an overrun Camden. Our cool lobster-boat tour did originate from there, though, and finding the dock took Olympic-level skill over a slalom course painted shades of gray and pastel.

A month later I took a… butterfly mermaid?… to "Daddy Daughter Princess Night" with the Lowell Spinners, an A-level Red Sox outfit. Who doesn't love visiting Lowell? It was a fun night capped off by a costumed Princess Jasmine's bosom and a fairly spectacular fireworks display, both (all three?) of which approached a kind of danger. An earlier snafu at the box office left a bitter taste, though, as I had the audacity to request a seat next to my daughter—by the time everything was sorted I'm sure the guy behind the glass hated me as much as I did him. Good luck with your ticket-distribution career, failed hipster meathead.

Outdoor dates with Circus Smirkus and a Snow White/Alice in Wonderland mashup followed, where irresistible trees beckoned children until we were told they were imported from Japan and therefore unsuitable for climbing. Good luck with your woodland-authority career, public-theater roadie lady.

And Canobie? And Canobie! The lady behind us in line at the Ferris wheel was stroking a stuffed Moana pig and complaining that Columbus didn't discover the New World because "Cuba isn't America." You can see her and her bra straps in the other car while G. posed for a Heroes reissue shoot.

The Dragon Coaster was in full effect this year as my six-year-old monkey embraced rides beyond the carousel and the Ferris wheel. She started a little slow with the Kiddie Canoes and said afterward that the cave was full of spiderwebs.

Eventually she perfected her horror-queen scream on the Dragon Coaster, Flower Power and Over the Rainbow before mellowing out with the Sky Ride (a favorite in my youth) and the Alpine Swing. You might be on your own on Untamed next year, kiddo.

Downtime with Rosie and her infamous vanilla leg was and is valued as well. It's not all beaches and T-shirt cannons.

The knockout pool, you ask? It's back! In corporate form, as the organizer has outsourced management and tracking duties to the home of Silk Stalkings. How CBS Sports can get away with enabling illegal stakes is beyond me—hopefully it at least means we'll find out everyone's picks before the games are played. Other changes: instead of running several separate contests (of which I participated in one), my man is lumping everyone together. More people means more total units to win, especially with a one-time contribution of forty each instead of twenty and no buybacks this time—great, right? However. The odds of a single winner emerging by the end of the regular season are nil because everyone gets two strikes and ties now equal wins. I'm not allowing myself to get too worked up over the latter because ties are rare enough but, with fifty-three people and one hundred six strikes, we'll be lucky to have fewer than fifteen left come January. A popular vote among those who remain will supposedly decide between various split-the-pot or kick-in-more-and-keep-going scenarios that I'll worry about should I be involved. Mudhoney's fantastic The Sound and the Fury From Seattle, in the meantime, will assist in maintaining realistic expectations… excepting local football heroes, of course. "Fuck you! Keep it outta my face!"

Up next: Don't all teams have a chance at three championship titles in four years? Twice? Cheers!