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!