Beer and football IV — playoffs, week two

The game: Colts at Patriots
The beer: Berkshire Scotch Ale
The result: Win, 43–22; Seth-Aaron, 5–0
The commentary: Quickly, here's what I loved this week.

Turnovers. The defense is trending in the right direction, even if they're still lousy. But turnovers are the great equalizer and more Brady drives can only help against Manning and friends. (So, so many friends.)

The running game? The running game! It demands respect and Brady should be capable of big production through the air against the Broncos. Blount's speed in the open field still amazes me, no matter how many times I see him break one out.

CBS's tasteful goodbye to Dan Dierdorf. Sure, the game was out of hand by then and they could afford to devote time to the man's career, but overall I think it was handled well. Gumbel was genuine and they never made it about Dierdorf the way Fox did about Tim "Ditto" McCarver, with the World Series getting in the way. It was just another football game and they cut away for a minute to give a guy a handshake. And then there was more football. I'll ignore the fact that Dierdorf still can't pronounce Hoomanawanui… starting now.

The Sound FX segment on NFL.com. I thought Dante Scarnecchia's remark to Andrew Luck about how he'll be an NFL champion one day, "I really believe that," was the definition of magnanimous. I'm not convinced Luck heard him—he was already thinking about stray dogs and the Dominators under his bed—but it was cool anyway.

The Scotch ale. It poured beautifully and tasted of victory. Oh shit, I still need a beer for Sunday!

Seth-Aaron winning Also-Rans III. Sorry I'm a week late with this. On a related note…

Having the useless anti-mentor Zanna Roberts Rassi out of my life for a few months. Those twins ought to knock her down a peg.

The phone call from my wife and daughter last week. A. told me how well G. did with breakfast and I heard her yelling "Say 'Yay me!'" in the background. She wanted me to be proud of her and tell her "Yay G!" I was and I did.

More beautiflism with Dressed to Kill. The café was playing this album at breakfast the morning of the game. "G.," I said, "they're playing Kiss." And so she leaned over to gave me a kiss. How I love her.

The songs I heard toward, at and away from my dentist appointment this morning. Here's a representative No Cavities playlist, in order, courtesy (mostly) of an itchy Sirius trigger finger.

1. Les Fleur de Lys – Circles
Superior to the Who's excellent original. The back story of this recording, as told in the liner notes of the Nuggets II boxed set, underscores how fully ridiculous the insular English pop scene (management, contracts, etc.) was in the mid sixties.

2. James Brown – Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved
Switched to Soul Town when "Circles" was followed by weak bullshit on the Underground Garage. Let's clean some teeth! Two times!

3. George Harrison – What Is Life
Heard this triple-album standout while being threatened about my flossing habits. No idea what station they had on but it was pretty good.

4. The Band – The Weight
I'm free! Classic Vinyl: on. Let's go to Starbucks and coat the inside of my mouth with sugar. It always drives me nuts when bands with great singers (Jack Bruce in Cream, Steve Marriott in the Small Faces, Roger Daultrey in the Who and Levon Helm in the Band) make a democratic process out of everything and let lesser talents (Eric Clapton, Ronnie Lane, Pete Townshend and Rick Danko) take the mic. I love the way Helm wrestles it back for the last verse here, though not without struggle.

5. Marvin Gaye – Can I Get a Witness
Sooouuul Town! "Is it right to be treated so bad when you give her everything you had?" Probably not. Is it right to slash your ex-girlfriend's tires while she's working at the hair salon? Only if you have a good lawyer.

6. Jethro Tull – To Cry You a Song
Deep Tracks for the home stretch. Not as strong as the earlier "Song for Jeffrey" but better than any flute-drenched morass that came after. The fade-out carried me into the garage. See you in six months, doc.

Up next: It's the AFC Championship for the third goddamn year in a row. Indeed, G. and I are spoiled. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — playoffs, week one (bye)

The beer: Lagunitas DogTown Pale Ale
The commentary: The bye weekend was spent redeeming $40 of iTunes gift cards and playing in the snow with my daughter. The former resulted in some after-the-fact Christmas songs (to spare me from having to buy them next December) and other non-holiday favorites from Michael Yonkers, the Fall and the Miracles. I also managed only one song more expensive than the stock 99¢ and it was Dr. Lonnie Smith's "Psychedlic Pi," clocking in at almost ten minutes. Surely worth the extra three-tenths of a dollar.

The snow? The snow! It's hard to tell exactly how much, due to intense drifting that revealed bare spots of grass, but about a foot of the light, fluffy variety fell from Thursday to Friday. Work was closed—as closed as working from home can ever be—and shoveling early Friday evening (with a can of Newburyport Pale Ale cooling in a nearby snowbank) wasn't too difficult. We were excited the next morning to take G. out in the snow for the first time (we didn't have the right clothes last year) but it was cold and not worth the risk, especially since Sunday was supposed to warm up anyway. And it did!

After eggs and muffins we bundled up and decided that a playground up the road was a good destination. It was familiar and, more important, well protected from traffic. A. stayed behind as father and daughter set off! Ten minutes of semi-shoveled sidewalk and occasional demands of "Carry me!" later we approached the southwest corner of the little league field (I have no idea if it actually is the southwest corner). Some boys were sledding down a snowbank across the field, if you can call that sledding, and G. started with "I don't want to see the boys. I don't like the boys." Wonderful philosophy. OK, let's walk up a little farther. That's where the swing set was anyway, my backup plan in case this introduction to the lifeless depths of frozen nature was a failure—during the walk she'd gone so far as to stick an eighth of an inch of three fingertips into the stuff. Hard to say how we'd make out.

It took some time but I eventually got her to walk in the packed snow on her own, and all I had to do was point her straight at the swings. She's likely old enough to be able to use the regular ones, the kind that you (!) and I use, but I still favor the "baby" ones for her because I can push as high as she wants to go while she's safely secured. Those snow pant-swollen thighs were a tight squeeze through the harness but it was worth it—we both had a blast. She wasn't ready to stop for fifteen minutes and I was aware the entire time that we were wasting the Winter day on Summer activity. Let's get familiar with this white stuff already!

I plucked her out of that swing and lost one of her boots in the process. I took advantage and carried her over to a bench, sat her down on my lap to put the boot back on and asked "Hey, do you want to walk in the snow some more??" As if it were the greatest thing. She said "No!" with such passion I'm not sure how I ever got her to do it. Those steps were really something to witness. Is anything a mystery anymore? That's sort of what I like most about being a father, just watching G. understand more and more how the world bends around her.

The photo was taken moments later, her first real steps through the deep snow. She wandered into this strange little pen, between the swings and the basketball court, that houses a stone-and-bronze monument (for some reason) and took it all in. Holy shit, this outfit. How I wish I could have made a mold of those boot prints. From here we trekked over to the playground and its large-scale multiple-slides-and-things apparatus. She climbed up the steps, ran up the ramp and darted toward the cluster of slides. This part, as the lone adult, always makes me nervous because I can rein her in at either the top of a slide or the bottom. Not both. Gravity works one way so I stayed on the ground and had faith that her choice of slide—all starting within a few feet of each other but ending as far as thirty feet apart, with the "bridge structure" in between—would be close to predictable. At thirty-nine, am I quick enough? Am I quick enough in six inches of packed snow? I would have to be. Several rides on the "funny slide" (long and steep with a gradual curve) and even more on the "crazy slide" (corkscrew; and these are her terms) soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread—old age and gravity, mean bastards both, had taken the day off. The worst part was when an evil ogre—her father—appeared to end all the fun, carrying her off kicking and screaming toward lunch and a nap. I did let her walk along the top of a low stone wall for a couple of blocks and we spotted some snowmen that made her laugh so she was in good spirits in time to see mom. I'm still beaming.

I sort of glossed over Saturday. Jumped right from Friday to Sunday! That afternoon, G. absolutely would not nap. We left her alone in her room for almost an hour (I was writing most of last week's post) and could hear that she wasn't quite asleep. Wasn't quite non-violent, either. Eventually I resigned to check on her, make sure, oh, she hadn't gotten into my closet, pulled all my neckties off the rack and piled them up in the middle of the rug so she could roll around on them. Also, to make sure, in the off chance any of this had happened, that she didn't have a diaper leak. Well…

In an effort to jumpstart a bit of rest—and, honestly, to settle parental impatience—we decided to leave early for dinner. Car rides usually do the trick so we took the scenic route to Burlington—home of the mall, some restaurants and absolutely nothing scenic. Tonight it was Tavern in the Square with friends whose son (irregular tube socks) is less than a month younger than G. (Say what you will about chain restaurants but they're overtly family-friendly. They have to be.) The steak tips and pale ale were yummy and G. settled in pretty well, opening up enough to yell "It's a blowout!" at the television when the Chiefs were achieving just that. Oops! We know nothing about football. I'm sad that tonight's game will air too late for her to watch (she's napping as I write this and, with dinner to follow, will maybe catch the end of Seahawks–Saints II). Hopefully the football-shaped balloon I got her yesterday will soften the blow. I am an excellent father.

Up next: The Colts try to hold the Patriots to fewer than fifty-nine points. The Patriots try to hold the Colts to fewer than fifty-eight. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — week seventeen

The game: Bills at Patriots
The beer: Wachusett Larry Imperial India Pale Ale
The result: Win, 34–20
The commentary: During the Browns game a few weeks ago I got into a shouting match with color man Steve Tasker. He said something critical about the Pats or their play-calling (I was bitter because Jason Campbell was beating my team) and then I turned it around on him, "You're off your case!" or something to that effect. Tasker is clinically retarded and the thing I said, whatever it was, was super clever and funny enough that I typed the exchange into Evernote to include in that week's beer-and-football breakdown. Then, like the clinical retard that I am, I overwrote the whole thing by accident. Shit happens and genius flies away like so much… shit? Oh, internet.

So in this installment of beer and media criticism (seems like more of my writing falls into this category year over year) we'll be dissecting the work of Ian (pronounced "Eye-Anne") Eagle and Dan Fouts. In short, they were (are) an embarrassment. In detail…

Second quarter, Bills facing fourth and one at the Pats' forty-five. Fouts quotes The Waterboy (more on that in a second) when explaining that the Bills should go for it and Eagle makes fun of him for it. "Shut up, Eye-Anne." "Whoa!" Lots of laughing. These are professionals. Meanwhile, the Bills are in offensive formation with no punter on the field and only after they snap it and fall two yards short does Eagle realize "They do go for it, and they're denied!" Repeat: the whistle blows and Eagle informs us "They do go for it!"

Clearly they're not even watching this game. Later on, in the middle of regaling us with some Edelman anecdote (because they sat down with Edelman the night before the game and needed us to know), Brady and the offense rush to the line in hurry-up mode and Buffalo's defense is clearly struggling to line up properly. Kyle Williams has enough and, frustrated, calls time out. Only then does Eagle announce, plainly, "Time out called." You suck. And where's the analysis? Isn't this where Fouts, as a former quarterback, should be keen to understand and communicate the defensive miscue to viewers? I can't believe I used to enjoy this guy on Monday Night Football. You suck. And Dennis Miller now thinks it's OK to shoot a bunch of schoolkids? You suck too, Dennis. But we'll always have The Bear.

At the end, with the Bills about to attempt an onside kick, Fouts seriously ponders "Why wouldn't you practice your onside kick during pregame warm-ups?" Because you're an idiot! Did the Pats practice it before the Browns game? Idiot!

As a big-picture summary, these clowns have had over a year to learn how to fucking pronounce Hoomanawanui. Why didn't you interview him Saturday night and nail it down? "You remember, Dan, when we were talking to Hooman last night, and he was all 'It sounds just the way it looks, Huh-oh-mah-nah-wah-noo-wee.' You couldn't believe it, kept saying 'Hee-ho-mah-nee-ho' in that stupid Adam Sandler voice." "Shut up, Eye-Anne." "You know I love you, big fella. Want to come over and watch The Mentalist tonight?" "Will your wife be there?" "She hasn't been for three months. My balls are blue. Oh, it looks like Dareus chopped of Brady's arm with a machete on that last play. Coach Saban, always preparing his kids for the pros. Back after this." (Their pronunciation of Sealver Siliga's last name is also fishy. It was "Silinga" for three hours, even though there is no N there. I can't necessarily blame them for this one because everyone in the local media is saying it the same—maybe it's a Samoan/Utah thing. So they get a pass… until it's proven that everyone with a microphone is an idiot and the nonexistent N really is silent.)

I'm sure there was more but these examples seal it. Wouldn't you rather hear the Waterboy story anyway?

The worst day of my life fell in March 1999 when I flew too close to the Kentucky sun on wings of vomit. I traveled to New Orleans for a conference and the entire affair was madness. Madness! The signs were present on that last night before returning home—two snapshots from dinner are the only portion of the evening captured for posterity. I call these events "The Prelude."

Clearly I was toasted and very content with how my life was progressing to that point—I must have been several snub-nosed local beers into the ether. I also had a major crush on the older woman tugging on my heartstrings beads. It's hard to tell in the scan but I think she's wearing Judith Light's blazer here.

Speaking of older women, this is a man. And that's me with money in my hands looking like I finally understood true love. I can't get over how strange I look without sideburns.

I don't remember much about what followed (those chunky white beads went a long way), but what good could come out of either of those… grins… I had on my face? Naturally, I blacked out in my hotel room without having packed and woke up the next morning (after "sleeping" through several rounds of my colleague banging on the door, since we were to ride to the airport together) to discover that, in the wee hours, I sat up in bed and projectile vomited into my suitcase. I projectile vomited into my suitcase! How does that even happen? Following a cursory clean-up (I had to leave) I chucked all my clothes into trash bags before stuffing them into the barfy suitcase and flew downstairs for a cab. "I need to be at the airport, like, now." The driver did an admirable job of getting me there like-now but it wasn't like-now enough because I missed my direct flight home. (Recycled air at thirty thousand feet for three hours? Probably for the best.)

There was a standby flight to "Cincinnati" airport (actually in northern Kentucky) where I could be put on standby for a flight to Boston. What else could I do? I made the first leg just fine—hey, maybe this was going to work out. But the Reds must have been playing at Fenway because I was shut out of the next one. Drag. They properly booked me onto a later flight… hours later. Several hours later. Well, there must be something to do in Cincinnati, right? There just must be! Maybe the Reds are in town! (Oh fuck, they're at Fenway!) Except Cincinnati the city is about fifteen miles from Cincinnati the airport. We're so goddamn spoiled in Boston, with Logan a quick cab or subway ride from downtown, and I just assumed all cities were like that. Drag.

What to do in the meantime? I probably force-fed myself something before deciding a movie was the best way to kill time. Sound thinking, actually. I jumped in a cab and asked to be taken to the closest movie theater, which felt too far on the way there but who cares, I was going to expense this shit anyway. The only showtime that lined up with my return-flight window was, yes, The Waterboy. I sat in a mostly empty theater with a handful of people who also must have missed their connecting flights to Not-Kentucky. I have no memory of the story or the characters aside from the "Oh no, we suck again!" quote that PFW in Progress slips in from time to time. When the lights came on I called a cab from a lobby pay phone—a pay phone!—and stumbled out into northern Kentucky sun. Over time I started to worry that easy Southern living was keeping the cabbie from attending to my urgency—I waited in that parking lot a long time. Eventually I was back at the gate with time to spare and—hooray!—there's a blizzard in Boston. Drag.

By this time I knew the layout of the terminal like it was the Lambda Complex. Naturally I was afraid to venture too far from the gate because I was not going to miss my flight again. I was not. So I browsed the same bookstores. I pissed in the same urinals. I wondered what my suitcase smelled like. After a spell (night time by now) and several flight status checks I bellied up to a bar for some dinner, a hockey game and, yes, a beer. Ah, the recovery of youth! I was a bit far from the gate but it was close enough for me to see, and I could probably hear the announcements. Right?

I was aware enough to pay my tab as soon as the food arrived because I was not going to miss my flight. Soon after, out of nowhere, people are running behind me. Why, and toward what could they be running? It was at this moment I realized the reason I could see my gate is that it was a straight line down the terminal from my stool. A long, straight line to the very end of the terminal. The terminal's terminal. The people were running toward my gate. And then I was running too.

Just when you thought the story could get no worse! Actually, it doesn't. I made the flight. The godforsaken airline might have lost my suitcase—my barfy suitcase—but I think I'm mixing that matter up with another trip (even that time, they eventually delivered it to my apartment). I can't say for sure but I probably slept well that night, fat on Woody's pizza (expensed), and late into the next day, which I'd already arranged to take off. Nice work by me. Better work by Dan Fouts, dredging up these memories with such detail that I could write a thousand words. I guess you're good at one thing, Dan.

Up next: We'll learn which AFC team is flying to Logan next weekend. If it's the Bengals via Kentucky then god help them. Happy new year!

Beer and football IV — week sixteen

The game: Patriots at Ravens
The beer: Rogue Chipotle Ale
The result: Win, 41–7
The commentary: With a name like "Chipotle Ale" it had to at least be interesting, right? Hmm. Assassination attempts are interesting. The weird police activity on my street last night was interesting. Owning too many (more than zero) reggae CDs is interesting. Beer, when "interesting," is usually of the "Well, it's certainly interesting" variety. I thought of Woody on Cheers when he was hypnotized to like vegetables and kept putting kale in everything. "You can really taste the kale!" I could really taste the peppers and/or the artificial pepper flavor. This one needs work.

But hey, if the worst beer of the season is going to pair with the best game of the season, who am I to judge? I still drank the thing so I was more invested than, say, T-Sizzle, who kept showing up on the sideline with those weird helmet welts on his forehead and then followed up his team's no-show with a stated desire to "just burn the tape." Very satisfying. He couldn't even blame the refs because everyone watching—Pats fans, Ravens fans, the refs' wives—blamed them for trying to kill football as a well paced sport. (As it stands now, though, there's a chance we see these guys in the playoffs. I want none of that action.)

G. was in rare form Sunday. No nap! She kept asking to watch the Patriots because I told her that's what we'd do together when she awoke but that means nothing when there's no sleep in the first place. So I flipped between the early games (Vikings–Bengals and Broncos–Texans; and no, I don't remember such a spectacle upon Brady setting an individual record either) to keep her happy while she colored on the wall, on the table, on the floor, on the pillow and even on her construction paper a little bit. Well done, dad. I captured—barely—a rare respite by luring her in with the front-facing camera. That's why it sort of looks like crap… sorry for the blur, internet. You see how ready she is with that crayon? "Yellow!" She's excelling in the fan department though: at one point I asked her to yell "Go Patriots!" and she complied with "Go Patriots! One more time, go Patriots!" That's not me interjecting there, she actually said "One more time" and then repeated "Go Patriots!" Her enthusiasm and wonderful warm hugs are all I need to get through any looming playoff disasters. Not that I'm pessimistic. Really.

I was never comfortable with the lead until Baltimore turned it over on downs with six and a half minutes to go. The good guys were up 20–7 and any comeback—with Joeflacco, Rice and Pitta out of sorts—seemed unlikely. Blount's second touchdown four minutes later sealed the deal and Harbaugh, with his loathable us-against-the-world eye rolling, officially threw in the towel by inserting the fastest man on Earth at quarterback. Only then did the wheels come off—immediately—with Harbaugh later blaming it on a league-wide conspiracy to schedule an away game six days before this one instead of seven. It's fewer than five hundred miles between Detroit and Baltimore as the cushy NFL charter plane flies. Satisfying indeed.

I couldn't bring myself to write about it on Sunday but the InterContinental VaGina made its annual appearance last week. Lots of free bourbon, hoo boy. A vicious snowstorm, a detour to the Hard Rock Café of all places and one missed train stop did not come at all close to getting me home at a reasonable hour. And then I barfed some. The following afternoon I gradually ate a huge burrito and took a half-hour nap in the company locker room. On that note, here's a short holiday playlist for you to listen to while drinking skunked beer with your wife's family. Stop shouting those animals!

1. The Reverend AW Nix – How Will You Spend Christmas Day?
"How you gonna spend your Christmas?" "My god, child, I'm not going to spend Christmas. How can I spend what I ain't got. I'm going to celebrate Christmas, and believe me I mean celebrate. Nothing worries me, glory, hallelujah." "Nice try, woman. It takes money to give presents." I love this exchange, which I've paraphrased at the end there. She thinks she's telling the reverend what he wants to hear, all "Christmas isn't about money and shopping, amen," and he comes back with "OK, maybe you're right, but you still need money." And then he hits her with this, not paraphrased: "Made in the shade and served with a spade, it was the best eggnog that ever was made." She had no chance.

2. Paul Revere & the Raiders – Rain, Sleet, Snow
We've got one of those postal collection boxes on the sidewalk out front and, without fail, when the Winter snow melts there are rubber bands everywhere from whoever drops off and/or picks up the mail. And my Christmas packages always end up in the snowiest, wettest spots on my porch. Benjamin Franklin must be rolling over in his giant Freemason grave.

3. Wailers – Christmas Spirit??
More Pacific Northwest action! Frustrated mailmen, disillusioned youth and countless covers of "Louie, Louie." What's in the holy water up there?

4. Michelle Beauchesne – What Child Is This?
I dream of G. growing up to play the cello. Beautiful.

5. The Fall – No Xmas for John Quays (live)
1978 Peel session. "Make sure the album this song is on is in your Christmas stocking." There's your holiday spirit. (Live at the Witch Trials reissued earlier this year.)

Up next: Oh, hi Bills! Competing interests are at play with the game being flexed to 4:30 and called by the Q-Team of Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts. Merry Christmas!

Beer and football IV — weeks thirteen, fourteen and fifteen

Week thirteen
The game: Patriots at Texans
The beer: Newburyport Pale Ale
The result: Win, 34–31
The commentary: Readers (!) wondering why I comment so infrequently on game details have by now learned the truth: even in the rare week where I post before the next one is played, usually it's like Saturday night or Sunday morning and anything that might have stuck out has stuck itself back in. Old age is a bastard. Increasingly, of course (especially compared to the first season of beer and football way back in oh-ten, when I even found time to mix in love letters to monumental works of art and questionable technological directions), it's multiple games at once or nothing at all. So here's what's left in this impotent brain of mine regarding the Houston game: running backs. Stevan Ridley, dead man walking the sideline with a football in his arm. I wonder if anyone tried to knock it out of there. Then there's James Develin with his performance of "The Season's Greatest Touchdown," featuring the 2014 Number One Draft Pick Players on defense. I love that song. And that's it—go Patriots!

I finally caught the Hendrix episode of American Masters on PBS. Much of the material had already been used in other documentaries, in particular the sit-down with Chas Chandler that was featured prominently in the Classic Albums piece on Electric Ladyland, but it was still worth watching. I enjoyed the Miami Pop Festival footage and will probably download the album, since that period of the band's live sound (Spring 1968) isn't well represented. Noel Redding comes off as bitter as ever without any regard for the fact that "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Strange" sound like they were written by the psychedelic equivalent of my two-year-old next to Hendrix's adult, progressive compositions. Lucky for him Fat Mattress went on to superstardom as the closing act at Woodstock—that cover of "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" segueing into "Petrol Pump Assistant" will live forever.

Unwelcome were the send-us-money interruptions that saddle so many PBS experiences. Local has-beens John Laurenti and Henry Santoro, former DJs at once-listenable WZLX, were reanimated to explain to us that Hendrix was an important musician (I might agree but doubt lingers as I consider the source). The "conversations" between a lazy-eyed Santoro and a disheveled Laurenti were the opposite of enlightening:

Laurenti: "What was your favorite song off the first album?"

Santoro: "Oh, I think 'Foxy Lady' was just it."

Jarrod: "Really?"

Laurenti: "Yeah, it made such a great impact. [Glances down at notes.] And the fact that he released three albums with the Experience and [refers to notes] one with Band of Gypsys and then did… twelve… posthumously is just amazing."

Wikipedia: "You're welcome."

Leave it to Laurenti to not know what he's talking about. I love the idea that "releasing" twelve albums since death is an accomplishment—just because Hendrix recorded everything doesn't mean People, Hell and Angels should have exposed itself. Anyway, I remain convinced that if Hendrix had survived the vomit, and then survived an evening with Ginger Baker (who, I learned in Beware of Mr. Baker, was looking for Hendrix the day he died), he either would have continued to create the slick, overproduced boogie music of his late period that I didn't much care for or, wistfully, ditched the whole scene and embraced blues music like he'd wanted to all along. I favor the latter.

The three of us drove to Connecticut for a nice Thanksgiving, and the night before (in order to avoid bottles of Sam Adams that have probably vacillated between warm and cold for years) I grabbed a canned six-pack of Newburyport Pale Ale to accompany my brain. The in-laws insisted I take the leftovers home. Sure! Cans are the rage, of course, as craft breweries "are seeing the benefits of canning beer," which I imagine translates to "cans are cheaper to produce" since suitcases of Bud Light don't come in bottles. No matter the vessel, a leftover pale ale this week might have been the best game-day beer of the year. And I earned that motherfucker because newfangled can carriers have evolved from simple fish-strangling strands of plastic to angry clutches of inertia.

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Week fourteen
The game: Browns at Patriots
The beer: Rising Tide Tempest Coffee Porter
The result: Win, 27–26
The commentary: Following the Browns' first third-quarter touchdown and subsequent failed conversion I wrote "They shouldn't have gone for two." I didn't see the point (har! har!), that late in the game, of securing a two-touchdown lead. There was a lot of football left to be played (obviously, considering what went down) and this reeked of one of those seemingly aggressive but actually trepidatious moves that dooms a team. The Browns lost by one point, and even if the final might instead have been 28–27 (since the Pats would have kicked the extra point at the end instead of going for two) there was a chance to block the kick. Teams get weird when Brady and Belichick are on the opposite sideline.

I still think Ward's hit on Gronk was a cheap shot. So in order to avoid an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit the only alternative was to go for his knees? I don't buy it. And now we might be fucked. Incidentally, the way it went down I thought at first that Gronk re-broke his forearm. Flipping end over end and landing awkwardly on his left arm like that? How many times can you break the same bone before you become an accountant? Well, it wasn't his forearm. Lucky him? Some reports, including one from the ever-reliable Karen Guregian (she's clearly on the Gronkowski Family Christmas card list), indicate he could be back in time for the start of next season. We'll see about that. In the meantime, can this team win a playoff game without him?

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Week fifteen
The game: Patriots at Dolphins
The beer: Blatant India Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 24–20; Tyson, 7–1–0
The commentary: What the hell, Colette Lala? This wasn't my favorite season of Survivor either and I'm equally annoyed by repeat offenders (the dream is dead, Rupert, it's dead!). But at least the right person won… on his third try… and now we have Survivor: Nashua or whatever they're calling it to look forward to in February. Here's hoping it features twenty people I've never heard of—I can't remember the last time that happened, sure, but the show is much more enjoyable with you slapping ones and zeroes on my internet. Make 2014 your year.

More internet talk: please and thank you. More people need to know how useless Dan Shaughnessy is, how representative he is of yellow journalism, cretinism and degeneracy. Bruce at BSMW kills it from all angles—media criticism, sports or otherwise, at its finest.

Music criticism at its finest: the next big thing after the MP3 is apparently the "mastered for iTunes" M4As or 96Ts or whatever "It sounds better!" bullshit Steve Jobs's corpse invented. (Or it's Spotify, because everyone knows that bandwidth-reliant digital music is of a higher audio quality than "ridiculous-sounding" locally stored digital music. Also: mashups.) This time it's called The Complete Studio Recordings The Definitive Collection The Complete Studio Albums. Tune in by, say, November 2016 for the forty-fifth anniversary of "Stairway to Heaven" and the (x) format release of Led Zeppelin: The Redundancy. It's your own fault and probably mine too.

Up next: A surging Ravens team and a holiday playlist. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — week twelve

The game: Broncos at Patriots
The beer: Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale
The result: 34–31
The commentary: Fred Kirsch on the Patriots.com live blog put it best after Blount's fumble (the team's third) when he wrote "I'm going to vomit." (In Blount's defense he appeared to be knocked out for a second. The strip sack was a great play by Von Miller. Ridley? People are nervous. Nervous. He looked like a dreidel on his fumble, his arms flailing about as he spun to the ground. Happy Chaka Khan!) And yet… it never occurred to me to change the channel or turn the TV off altogether. Tom Brady still had three quarters left (or so I underestimated at the time). And though no games are alike I remembered two others: last month's against the Saints (win) and last season's against the Niners (loss). How can you count these guys out? No way I'm not watching.

Pro Football Talk tried to have it both ways so you know it was good: "if [Brady] comes back from this one, he'll be a legend" versus "Brady spread the ball among six different receivers, averaging a pedestrian 6.9 yards per attempt." (It's not quite "Terry Bradshaw Dead?"/"Terry Bradshaw Is Fine," but what could be? I'd provide links but Florio & Co. have taken them down. It's a good thing sports journalism isn't really journalism.)

Belichick's decision to defer in overtime—prioritizing favorable wind—confused everyone, including the captains on the field. You can see Ninkovich immediately signal that the Pats would receive until Belichick must have shouted "No, chowderheads, we're kicking!" Put the ball in Manning's hands? Are you crazy? I still don't know if it was the right decision but everything turned out alright. I know nothing about football.

Welker being at fault (and most think he was) on the punt does not in any way validate Belichick replacing him with Amendola. That was and is a mistake, and it's trendy around here, in a contrarian way, to say that Amendola isn't "injury prone" just because he's always injured. I am not making this up. It's hard to say the Pats would have won more than eight of eleven games so far if Welker had still been here because that's asking a lot, but on a loss-by-loss basis it's possible that he would have made enough of a difference in any or all of them. Is he not worth six points against the Bengals? Three against the Jets (and not even that had the bullshit been avoided)? Four against the Panthers? Unless you're an editor at PFT then it's hard to bet against one more win. Or more.

Regardless, there's a good chance the Pats win out. Texans tomorrow (blowout), Browns at home (blowout), a visit to Miami for the AFC Championship, a prime-time (for now) slobberknocker against the Ravens (the biggest challenge) and a light-contact practice session against whatever shitstorm is blowing in from Buffalo. Eleven wins is a disappointing finish. Twelve is likely. Thirteen is within reason. It's good to root for the Pats, so long as the other team isn't facing third and twenty-five.

Quick media notes: Collinsworth couldn't stop talking about how he had never witnessed a team run this successfully against the Pats, which means he hadn't seen them play in four years. It must be hard to watch the all-twenty-two from way up on that Sports Emmy high horse. And Zolak. The Showpony hadn't yet removed his Burberry scarf after standing in the postgame press room for a good twenty minutes. Do cross-eyed people think plaid is a solid color?

Up next: No matter the result in Houston, here's hoping the headlines don't begin with "Field conditions mar." Cheers!

Beer and football IV — weeks nine, ten and eleven

Week nine
The game: Steelers at Patriots
The beer: Berkley Harvest Ale
The result: Win, 55–31
The commentary: Wow. Look at her! Wow… wow. Just when I think the world is too far gone a moment like this is captured. Everything, somehow, will be OK.

Fifty-five points! Despite two no-calls on back-to-back first-quarter touchdowns by Gronkowski and Bolden—Roethlisberger must have threatened to ask the ref's daughter out on a date. And just when I think the defense might finally be coming around (I'm the lone fan to have never bought into their quality early this season, even before Wilfork and Mayo went down) they let the Steelers crawl back into the game in the third, once again forcing Brady to carry the team. Luckily they were still the second-worst defense on the field tonight as the once-admired Dick LeBeau chose to implement the "Leave Gronk Alone" scheme. What in the worldwide fuck?

A. and I had a great date night the Friday before the game. G's caregiver generously offered to watch her through the evening so we stayed in the city for a wonderful meal in South Boston. On the way there we ducked into one of those hipster package stores, whatever they're called now, with the weekly wine tastings and the fridge full of craft beer. We liked most of what we sampled (South American reds) and agreed to pop back in after eating. Another bottle of red with dinner, some "Shrimp with the heat" (actual menu entrée) and an uninterrupted adult conversation later we were back among the hipsters, among the snippets of "release" and "finish" and other sexually charged sommelier terms and picked out our favorite. I then drifted over to the beer fridge toward which, tasting wine samples earlier, I'd been positioned to stare at for fifteen minutes. Needless to say (for why else would I be telling the story?) I walked out with the Berkley and a second bomber I'll save for a cold day later this season. Removed from the context of the evening, the ale wasn't as good as the memory of buying it. Glad it worked out this way and not the other.

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Week ten (bye)
The beer: Samuel Adams Cream Stout
The commentary: There's nothing like a bye week to make one feel like a lousy father and husband. "The Pats aren't playing today so let's do something as a family." What a selfish asshole I am. So Saturday we met friends for lunch in the city and Sunday we ran errands all over the North Shore. Or maybe it was the other way around? These weekends, man, they just run right together and spin you around a few times. It was fun I think?

No football. (Beer? Of course.) No raking. Barely made a dent in The Dead Zone. But G. did her best Jeff Ament impression and used her blue guitar to set fire to the place. It was awesome.

And that's the bye week.

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Week eleven
The game: Patriots at Panthers
The beer: Atlantic MacFoochie's Scottish Ale
The result: Loss, 24–20
The commentary: Twice now, G. and I have been in the car when an Animals song came on the radio. The other day it was "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and I said "G., it's the Animals." "No, it's not Animals." "But honey, it is! It's a band called 'the Animals.'" "NO!" Maybe she thought it was the Cheese again?

It should have been a sign. "Pass interference… not pass interference." "That is fucking brutal!" "So long, everyone." Of course I would never drop an F-bomb on my daughter the way Brady did to Clete Blakeman (Clete? Blakeman?) after the… drama. However, I assure you it was the fucking Animals.

I was never a fan of Mike Tirico and his philandering ways but lately I appreciate that he does a decent job compared to most. Live, I didn't notice how he and Jonny This-Guy handled the non-call—which absolutely was pass interference, and my certainty stems from the fact that if the teams were reversed I would have been thankful to get away with it—but Awful Announcing's recap and assessment is fascinating. "[Tirico] explained everything succinctly and made sure to bring in all available parties for comment and analysis. Most importantly, he knew to shut up when the cameras were tracking Brady and Blakeman as they jogged off the field." I agree wholeheartedly with that first part and it was a refreshing bit of thorough analysis from the play-by-play guy under suspect conditions. (The second part though? Who knows, maybe he was sipping his own MacFoochie's—"dark as night and sweet as love" and the best beer of the season by a mile—or a stacked ESPN intern walked by. Let's not automatically give him credit for not talking.) It was handled well, especially well when heard in hindsight and not in a blacked-out state as I was at the time. Compare it to the Greg Gumbel/Dan Dierdorf exchange, described later in the post, from earlier this season with the field goal(s) to end Patriots–Jets II. (Dierdorf, who I think is pretty good for a dry ex-player, actually comes out clean when lesser color guys would have taken the ref's incorrect explanation for gospel—I can practically hear Collinsworth ranting on some bullshit about the game not being played the right way). Announcers are there to improve the game experience and they rarely succeed, so nice job, Mike. You creepy piece of shit.

On the subject of television, here are a few things I've been meaning to write about. I'll keep it short:

The 30 for 30 on Jimmy Connors's 1991 run at the US Open was enjoyable. I was right in the tennis sweet spot (har! har!) then, beginning my senior year of high school when I was on the verge of abandoning the game because asshole coach Chip Hill, Chip Hill with the really bad teeth, only played his team favorites and I wasn't one of them. So my game regressed and I lost interest. Anyway, as a kid I sort of liked Jimmy Connors. He was funny and successful, which is a good combination in a sport of mild personalities, right? Everybody was rooting for this guy and his ridiculous racquet in '91. However… what a douchebag he was! McEnroe had his thing: he hated the umpires and linesmen and wanted them to know it. But Connors? He hated the umpires and linesmen and wanted the crowd to know it. I get the sense that tennis wasn't too important to Connors (nor was compassion, with the Aaron Krickstein fallout). It was the spectacle of competition (and not the competition itself) that kept him playing. Gamesmanship instead of athleticism, as that extended nonsense with the racquets and towels during the Krickstein match was a dead ringer for Carolina's milking of the clock, slowing the tempo down to such a crawl that I thought Daisuke Matsuzaka was playing quarterback. I never did get McEnroe for some reason, but looking back he was the player I should have liked had I been a little older: cerebral, talented and anti-authoritarian. Right on. Connors was just a gifted prick. Excellent hour of television.

Project Runway double dose! Season twelve ended as it should have with Dom the winner. No one else had a chance—the ones who embrace bold prints (and actually know what to do with them) will always win in the end. And only in the end, in Mondo's case, because the producers at Lifetime (the Network for Women and Jarrod) don't like people with the HIV. In retrospect my sleeper pick of Ken was way off the mark: that motherfucker is nuts. I won't apologize for thinking Bradon would win the whole thing though. He's obviously talented but I couldn't have known he'd wait until fashion week to unveil a color-blind-old-lady mess (the "know what to do with them" ingredient, noted above, went missing). His proposal earlier in the season annoyed me too. Was it any better than some goofball in a backwards hat doing it on the big screen at Fenway? Likely worse. Also worse: what the hell got into the usually lovely Tim Gunn during the reunion show? That was a despicable display normally reserved for Zanna Roberts Rassi. The affair was bitter and ugly all around. Excellent hour of television.

Oh, Zanna Roberts Rassi. As much as I didn't like Tim Gunn on the reunion he's picture-perfect on the show itself (though I think he and the AIDS-victim-hating producers coddled crazy Ken too much by giving him his own room and not kicking him off the show) and, as a teacher, is a genuine mentor. But Rassi on the new season of Also-Rans? She must be trying out for an off-Broadway Heathers revival. "Just show me the sketch, jerk." How I love to hate that woman. I'll keep rooting for Jeffrey even though he doesn't seem long for the show. After him I'll probably fall to Seth-Aaron, whose designs I adore (or used to, at least) even as he annoys the shit out of me—these "Look at me, I'm so outrageous!" types always do. Maybe he'll slice open Viktor the Fop on camera so we no longer have to deal with that little fan of his. That would make for an excellent hour of television.

Lastly, if you attend a Monday Night Football game and try to get on camera by spelling out its acronym, I suggest sticking to initial letters. That's why they're called initials. MOST NASTY DEFENSE most certainly does not qualify, you lazy goddaMN motherFucker. Good defense, though. I'll give you that.

Up next: It is on. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — week eight

The game: Dolphins at Patriots
The beer: Wolaver's Pumpkin Ale
The result: Win, 27–17
The commentary: Several weeks ago, the local Whole Foods teamed up with a neighboring liquor store to hold a Fall beer- and wine-tasting event in the parking lot. Needless to say the liquor store, who cleverly (admirably) provided attendees with checklists to keep track of what they liked (and competitive prices to encourage them to shop), were the clear winners, while Whole Foods's minimalist participation—I showed up about forty-five minutes before closing and sampled all of one kind of cheese—was plain embarrassing. Especially since they seemed to do all the heavy lifting in terms of promotion! Oh well, I was half drunk when I left so who cares. I enjoyed a lot of good beer but the main takeaway was a confirmation of what I already suspected: the Wolaver's Pumpkin Ale I bought a week earlier was the discovery of the season. I like a pumpkin beer to not taste like a pumpkin doughnut or a pumpkin latte—I want a nice, tight ale (or stout) with a mild pumpkin influence. Cambridge's Great Pumpkin was (and probably still is, especially on tap at the Cambridge Common) my favorite pumpkin beer. But Wolaver's came out of nowhere with that farmer and that pitchfork and—shit!—how it satisfied the September yearning. Even the Long Trail guy at the Whole Foods parking lot event had to admit that Wolaver's was the winner, and not just because Long Trail's version tastes like manure.

Also on the agenda: one New York-based wine rep who, when a woman asked him to recommend a red, responded "I don't recommend anything. I grew up in New York so we drank French wine. California wine is too fruity. Fruity!" And then he punched her, he punched her right in the mouth, and as she picked her teeth up off the pavement he opened his emasculating little backpack, those weird drawstring ones you see the kids wearing these days, and he just started chucking grapes and apples at the poor woman. "Here's your fucking fruit! Choke on it ya trash! I'm from Noo Yawk! Fraaaance!" Seconds later I looked at the handy liquore store flier and said "I'll try the fifty-dollar wine." "Well it's not wine," he said, "it's (x)," that being whatever you call an expensive version of Jägermeister. "Do you know Jägermeister?" Here I am, a man obviously (barely!) in his thirties, and I have sideburns—sideburns!—big, American sideburns, and he's asking if I know what Jägermeister is. If you're picturing him with a shaved head, black-framed glasses and about one hundred twenty pounds of near-man then, by golly, you've nailed it. Oh, and that stuff tasted like manure.

The afternoon was a bit of a bust, except for the part where I drank a bunch of free beer and wine. Our original plan had been for the three of us to meet another family of three at the event, because who doesn't want to have their underage daughter toddling around a liquor store parking lot? Unfortunately G's failure to nap—note the common theme to this football season?—meant one of us (A.) had to stay home, and by the time I got my shit together our friends were long gone. Oh well. More time to focus on tweaking uptight eggheads.

Fast forward to Halloween, when we went trick-or-treating with that same family. Their little girl (only eight days older than G.) was seriously the cutest cowgirl there ever was. The boots? The boots! They live up the street so we stuck close to home. I'd have included pictures of her if it weren't so weird to ask her parents "Hey, do you mind if I put a picture of your daughter on the internet? I write a series of blog posts about the Patriots, except I don't write much about the Patriots, it's mostly about how people should be lining up to buy my amazing—amazing!—music collection. I also compare the logo for the InterContinental Hotel to a vagina on an annual basis. Wanna buy some Hawkwind?" That arrest warrant writes itself.

Guess who dressed as a cupcake? Ever seen one balance on a stack of books? OK, so it's not completely unexpected. At least we got her a costume this year. Check out the home-grown photography in the background: of the three framed pictures, A. took the middle (the Alcatraz water tower's spiral staircase); I took the one you can't see (some beautiful trees on St. Lucia, where we honeymooned… and honestly my favorite print of the three); and neither one of us will take credit for the unfinished Bermuda church at left. We're each convinced the other snapped it. Anyway, that's our display. Bidding queue forms to the left.

The preciousness will drive you mad. Accessorize.

I promise we're not standing in the middle of the road here, it's just the end of a driveway. Anyway, if one of us was going to be hit by this passing white car it would have been me, alright? So put the phone down and stop trying to involve the authorities all the damn time.

Up next: It's always a competitive game against the Steelers, except when it's not. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — weeks six and seven

Week six
The game: Saints at Patriots
The beer: Cambridge Sgt. Pepper Saison
The result: Win, 30–27
The commentary: G. was on fire today. First we went to A&J King where she hammed it up in mom's sunglasses. Outstanding. Later, when she wouldn't nap, I took her out to run a few errands. She rode the cart at Target—the only way to control her while shopping these days, just don't tell mom—and as we rolled by the electronics section she saw gridiron covering every single big-screen TV. "It's football!" You're damn right it is! On the way home to catch the late-afternoon contest against New Orleans we heard "All My Loving" by the Beatles. "Hey monkey, it's the Beatles." "No." "No, honey, the music is the Beatles." "It's not the Beatles, it's the Cheese." What do I know about music anyway?

It was clear once we got home and settled in that she still wasn't going to nap, so I accepted that she'd be watching with me. I honestly missed that this year anyway. Flipping around before the game, I activated the channel guide and the early game (whatever it was) shrunk to picture-in-picture size. She wasn't having it: "I wanna watch football!" OK, OK. I guess that brief Target sighting really pumped her up. I settled on the Fox pregame show for some reason, with all the laughing ex-players and ex-coaches whose job it is to sit at a long desk and kill time, and she exclaimed "It's Jeopardy!" That's her go-to when she wants to watch something and thinks she can trick us into choosing a show we're interested in. "I wanna watch Jepp-ah-dee." Honestly, we don't let her watch too much television. Right? Anyway, she totally nailed it: football pregame sets look exactly like the wide shots of all three Jeopardy contestants. Only there are so, so many more than three.

Oh hey: this was a pretty great game. Probably the best of the season so far, and not just because of the ending (bullshit). Aside from Thom Brennaman calling Hoomanawanui "the Hoe-man" (the nickname is actually pronounced "Hoo-man," Thom, but I do like the idea of a pimp breaking tackles down the sideline), the Pats coming back from the dead twice and G. saying "Don't say 'yay'" when I kept saying just that were the natural highlights. It was really something else and a good sign of life, not just for a struggling young receiver to step up but also for Brady to make a Brady play. (What no one talked about after was that even if Thompkins had dropped it—and it was a genuinely fantastic catch—they still would have had time to run one more play.)

The beer was a gift from my aunt to me on G's second birthday. OK? Based on the earlier father/daughter conversation it was the natural choice on this day. Saisons aren't my favorite, in fact I'm not sure I really care for any other than Notch's, but this one did alright. High expectations for a Cambridge (the brewer, not the Republic) beer that didn't quite get met, just like the album it's named after. Even in mono. Of course the beer and A's interest in "It's All Too Much" reminded me to extol the progressive genius of a three-year-old Beatles post during our drive to work the next morning. I consider it one of the best things I've written. I am my biggest fan.

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Week seven
The game: Patriots at Jets
The beer: Ipswich Five Mile Equinox Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 30–27
The commentary: What's with two stinkers against the Jets this season? At least they scored more points than last time (though some of them were on defense). Everyone around here is up in arms over the overtime penalty and I suppose I am too. The rules are the rules, sure, but you pick now to call it for the first time ever? Anyway, enough's been written. I'll be glad when the Jets are eliminated from the playoff picture. Who the hell knows when that will be.

This morning we returned to Connors Farm for a another child's birthday party. Apple cider, orange cupcakes and the roughest hayride off all time made it a great day for everything except my ass. G. posed for several pictures, picked out the most perfect little G-sized pumpkin and managed to make a cloudless day even brighter, though a near-favorite moment was when an obviously overwhelmed teenage farm employee pointed to G. and asked "Is this yours?" The context does not matter.

Up next: The Dolphins are one win away from clinching the AFC East, or so I hear. Cheers!

Beer and football IV — week five

The game: Patriots at Bengals
The beer: Martha's Exchange Olde London Stout
The result: Loss, 13–6
The commentary: Bob Socci must be stopped. The new radio voice of the Patriots lied to me four times in an hour during a rainy second-half drive to Nashua: an interception (not an interception), two receptions (two drops) and Julian Edelman's amazing "touchdown catch." The world's smallest violin.

Why the hell was I wasting time in the car during a playoff-implication game against a tough Bengals team? Because my old friend Ivan and I ventured north on Route 3 to witness the Misfits declare war on Nashua, New Hampshire. The last time we saw them was one of the greatest nights ever, so who was I to refuse? (No pantsings this time, but they did play "TV Casualty.")

The evening (afternoon, actually) started at Martha's Exchange in downtown Nausea. I was frantically flipping between the FM band and the Bluetooth receiver to hear the driving directions and drove right by the place, of course, just as the Pats' chances were dwindling. I parked and Ivan pulled up right next to me. He had gone ahead to the concert venue (improbably called Bernie's) to get tickets and asked me to guess how many opening bands there were. "Six," I responded in jest. "How did you know??" Uh-oh, I wasn't going to home before nine liked I'd hoped, and the "No nap" text I got from A. halfway through my first beer didn't make me feel any better. We got inside Martha's (which was attached to a gourmet chocolate shop because why not, so of course I grabbed an enormous peanut butter cup for A. before leaving—she had earned it) as the hurricane hit the fifty yard line and there was just a feeling of malaise about the game. Bob Socci and a mediocre stout will do that to a man. The inevitable loss couldn't get us too down though—we had a long night ahead.

Next stop was Boston Billiards across town. That's the thing about New England, you can stick "Boston" in front of anything unless you're in Vermont. I think it used to be a bowling alley and it was enormous—there weren't many people there and it felt like even fewer. The waitress was practically waiting for us at our pool table, and when I picked up the modest beer menu to ask "Is this what's on tap?" she answered "These are our craft beers." I stared blankly at her for several seconds, wondering what kind of world she lived in where craft beer cannot be found on tap, and she stared back at me with equal puzzlement, wondering if I could sneak her into Bernie's. I broke the silence by settling on a "Sam Adams, please," settling because their selection of "craft beers" didn't move me. Nice safety beer though.

Ivan and I are pretty evenly matched so we traded wins and losses, much as the Broncos and Cowboys did touchdowns on the eight thousands TVs about the place. Did you see that game? Far out. Speaking of far out, we'd better motor if we're going to catch the last three opening bands.

We arrive at Bernie's and it's exactly what I expected, in that it was Good Times North. Bad highway weed was everywhere. And the Misfits fans? The Misfits fans! And the Sunday Night Football! The… Sunday Night Football? I was thankful for the Niners and the Texans as some local shitstorm belted out its nonsense onstage.

The place was the place. We got a couple of beers (slumming with Captain Budweiser & His Magic Trots) and went upstairs, which provided the best view of the game and the din. Mohawks, cleavage… you could smell the damage. Bring on the Misfits already.

Our timing was perfect because Local Shitstorm closed amateur hour (amateur two-and-a-half hours). We made the educated guess and returned to the lower level, got some refills and moved to within fifteen feet of Jerry Only's eventual microphone. Not three minutes later he entered from the parking lot via the general admission entrance (somewhere Glenn Danzig chuckled as he searched his couch cushions for autopsy photographs). Jerry and Dez and not-Robo were full-on and they opened with "We Are 138," if I remember right, and I probably don't. And look! Jerry's wearing a MISFITS shirt. Just like everyone else in here!

Vest-less! What do you call a combination receding-hairline devil-lock? That poster makes him look a little fuller on top, don't you think? We ended up in a perfect little spot, right between the pit and a wall. Maybe not everyone's idea of perfect? It was like old times except I'm pushing forty. I impressed myself by not overreacting to some knucklehead spilling my own beer on me. It should have been water anyway. Finding that Dunkins on the way home was a bit of a life-saver.

Text message, 12:02 AM: "Wow, just leaving Nashua now. Mistake, but still fun. XO." I survived a shirtless Jerry Only (not documented here), I survived that skank in the wheelchair, I survived nine-ball, I survived Geno Atkins and, thanks to G. crashing hard to sleep at some point in the evening, I survived the wrath of an exhausted wife and mother. Part two in a series of great nights with the Misfits.

Up next: Did you hear Dr. John's comeback album last year? It's pretty good. Cheers!