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

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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!