Beer and football V — week twelve

The game: Lions at Patriots
The beer: Lagunitas Imperial Red Ale
The result: Win, 34–9; 49ers win, 17–13
The commentary: The world will surely end if the 49ers and the Steelers meet in the Super Bowl. The last two weeks all I needed was for each of them to win a single game and, taking advantage of my being limited to "TheScore" app, I was pushed to levels of panic unrealized since that time I did a one-eighty on Storrow Drive during a snowstorm. On Sunday I felt like an addict trying to distract myself from what my body craved, and that was for the game to end. Just end! Win or lose, just end! I washed the dishes and didn't allow myself to check the fourth-quarter score until they were done. I prepped the chili ingredients for Monday's potluck and couldn't peek until everything was ready to go. Deep breaths as I measured out the ground cumin (greatest smell in the world). With six minutes remaining and the Redskins up by a field goal I went into my daughter's room for bedtime with the Redskins up by a field goal. I told A. "My team is close to losing" and she almost cried. In September I spent twenty bucks for what's turned into three months (so far) of a little extra NFL enjoyment—the substantial pot felt like it was slipping away but it wasn't our mortgage payment, G's savings. It wasn't even beer money. Is this what degenerate gamblers go through daily? How are these people still alive?

After my cue to exit—curse a man's milk-less body—I took my Steve mug of coffee into the living room to relax on the couch and refresh my phone once per minute. Once. By this time the Niners had scored and were up four points—of course they didn't make it easy and gave the Redskins two more chances in the remaining three minutes. I wasn't too worried with Griffin being forced to throw but still… Kaepernick and friends can't advance a single first down on that twenty-eight-second drive? Twenty-eight seconds! Had 'em all the way.

My workplace opponent, whom I'll call Bruno since this might go on awhile, had a much easier time of it as the Eagles soared (har! har!) past the very same Titans who pushed us (we've picked the same outcome five times out of twelve so far) to the limit nine days ago. Joke's on him though: I still have the Eagles and he still has the Niners. Despite the scare I'm leaning toward the Redskins losing again this weekend, this time in Indy to the Colts. If every stray dog's worst nightmare can get a quick lead I'll be all set. The Colts were an option against the Jaguars on Sunday—who isn't?—but I deliberately kept them in my pocket for the following week because Bruno wasted them in week three. (I had the now four-win Saints. Burn.) As I refer to my tidy spreadsheet I see he's in a bit of a tough spot: if I were in his shoes, with his options, the only team I'd be comfortable with is the somewhat shaky Ravens hosting the Chargers. Maybe the Chiefs hosting the Broncos? The Giants in Jacksonville? Yikes. This could be my week.

Until Sunday night (the Pats game was a primetime affair for me) I considered the Lions hosting the Bears on Thanksgiving. We'll be in Connecticut and the TV will be on—I insist—so why not make it interesting? Oh, the Lions are why not. Fuck Dominic Raiola. (The awkward conversation with my father-in-law about why I brought my own beer when he has skunky, year-old Sam Adams in the fridge will be interesting enough.) In lieu of sitting on a couch on a beautiful afternoon (welcome to New England) we found a lovely playground and adjoining field in Beverly where I broke out the easiest-to-fly kite ever invented. If there's a lick of wind you take one step and it's airborne—even a three-year-old can do it and then run around like a crazy person because she doesn't understand physics. "Honey, run that way! Don't run toward the kite. Or… yeah, you're OK." It was worth the eight bucks. I was surprised by how many fathers were also enjoying a Pats-less couple of hours, particularly the one wearing a mark-two number eight-four Deion Branch jersey. I'm surprised G. didn't fight him for it, as Branch was once her favorite player. I don't know who it is now. I'll have to ask.

After making chili and setting it to slow-cook for six hours I finally turned the game on around nine. Any minimal worry over a scrappy Lions team was quickly erased as the night wore on and the red ale transformed to yellow pee. I fell asleep in the middle of the fourth quarter, woke up in time for Blount's second touchdown (this benching might be the best thing that could have happened to Jonas Gray) and promptly fell asleep again. Finishing Monday night, I couldn't remember ever seeing a losing team kneel on the ball to end a game. That's what this season is becoming around here.

Up next: Yeah, some of you ever been up to Wisconsin, they got a lotta cheeeese. Happy Thanksgiving!

Beer and football V — week eleven

The game: Patriots at Colts
The beer: Evil Twin Ashtray Heart Smoked Imperial Stout
The result: Win, 42–20; Steelers win, 27–24
The commentary: "And then there were two." So it goes as two more knock themselves out, including the Denver Cheater, who "actually" picked Baltimore last week. Right. The other lone survivor (?) also gnawed at his fingernails over a nerve-racking Steelers win in Tennessee. We downgraded our cable package to save a few bucks and no longer have ESPN as a result (what the fuck am I going to do on draft night?) so I was following along on my phone's "TheScore" app. Why is it called "TheScore"? Don't they know it gets sorted under T instead of S in the app drawer? These are the problems Android developers create for themselves.

Vibrate! Vibrate! Vibrate! all in a row during the second and third quarters signaled field goal, touchdown, touchdown for the Titans. PFW was high on Zach Mettenberger going into this year's draft and I was afraid the game was validating them with each passing minute. Did I really make myself wait until Monday so I could put my faith in a serial rapist? After San Francisco and Kansas City, two teams I considered, had won the day before? (Buffalo, Cleveland and Washington—Buffalo, Cleveland and Washington—not so much.) I was resigned to losing. A. was pissed because I'd gone undefeated so far, whereas everyone else bought back in at least once. "It isn't fair!" Two more vibrations settled the mounting tension and I showed her the three-point differential: "Final score." I fear she has already spent the money.

It's good to see Sergio Brown hasn't changed from his time in New England. For two seasons I progressively referred to him as a disappointment who celebrated accidental success, made Patrick Chung look like a superstar and teamed up with Brandon Meriweather to form an ongoing nightmare. I'll take Gronk's fifteen yards all day. And oh yeah: Jonas Gray. Four touchdowns, two hundred yards, countless "Fifty Shades of Gray" headlines and the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Sports Illustrated is still around? I will forever treasure its 1990 caption of Steffi Graf "aiming her décolletage lensward." Lensward!) Nowhere to go but up for him, right? Belichick might want to keep LeGarrette Blount's number handy.

On Saturday evening we drove up to the Anchorage by the Sea in Ogunquit after buying a Groupon voucher… for the Anchorage Inn in York. Whoops. Luckily it wasn't Bar Harbor. We made the most of our eight-mile assumptive error (A. and I have stayed at Ogunquit's Anchorage a number of times—including one weekend a few years ago when G. was likely conceived (!)—and when we saw a deal for "the Anchorage" in "Maine" we never considered there might be another. Drag. After a demoralizing conversation with the front desk we decided to continue a little farther out of our way north toward Federal Jack's again for dinner while A. looked up nearby alternatives that might satisfy a cranky three-year-old. She hit on Féile Restaurant and Pub in Wells: good reviews, impressive beer selection and a decent children's menu? Six miles closer (so, twelve) to where we were actually staying? Let's try it. Oh good, G. soaked through her pull-up.

Once that was squared away we chose the happening pub space over the lifeless proper dining room and it was the right choice. For example, did you know that Féile is Irish for "country/western theme night"? We settled into a roomy booth next to a lovely older couple who heroically tolerated/encouraged G's post-nap craziness, A. ordered a glass of wine and I got the above-mentioned stout, which was delicious despite what I suspect was a dirty tap line. My fried haddock was alright once I got through all the fried—I had to wash it down with more beer, so I ordered a Green Flash Cedar Plank Pale Ale. Another triumph! I love a beer menu that lists a bunch of stuff I've never heard of and then groups Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, etc. under the heading "The Usual Suspects." Two dudes strolled in just before we left and weren't having it when the waitress suggested Harp, a lager I've always favored. "Bud Light bottle." "Me too." Is it Friday already?

Up next: The Lions pack themselves into a 98 Olds for a pre-holiday road trip to Foxborough. Please keep Ndamukong Suh away from Brady's and Gronkowski's knees. Cheers!

Beer and football V — week ten (bye)

The beer: Samuel Smith Organic Chocolate Stout
The result: Seahawks win, 38–17
The commentary: "What can happen?" So I asked as I considered the Samuel Smith on the shelf. The stout and a six-pack of Founders Porter accompanied me to the car when it hit me that Rob Gronkowski was on the professional athlete version of Spring break and, yes, anything could happen. Would the Samuel Smith Curse (broken—temporarily?—last September) cripple the midseason MVP? Later, when I cracked it open during the Seahawks–Giants game—my Seahawks–Giants game—I realized "Oh no."

The first half did nothing to ease my anxiety but that passed once Marshawn Lynch started pulverizing the Giants' spirit in the second. I don't think they can back into the playoffs, finally turn it on and give me sleepless nights wondering "What if…" again this February. There is hope.

Controversy! It looks like someone in my knockout pool chose Denver for a second time. No. Am I the only one who maintains a detailed spreadsheet to keep track of what I pick, what everyone picks, week after week? Attention to detail, folks: my greatest contribution to mankind. Excluding this cheater/dead head (whether on purpose or not, Denver is about the least likely team to scheme "No one will notice" or assume "Probably haven't picked them yet") there are three of us remaining. Not that I have great options this weekend: Buffalo or Miami? Ugh. Cleveland? Washington? Cleveland? Washington?? Not-Chicago? Pittsburgh after last week? "I'm scared to death to pick against the Jets until they win again." Maybe I do know something about football after all. Ask me Tuesday morning.

Up next: Shit, maybe I'll just pick the Pats again. Cheers!

Beer and football V — week nine

The game: Broncos at Patriots
The beer: Port Board Meeting Brown Ale
The result: Win, 43–21; Bengals win, 33–23
The commentary: In my inaugural beer-and-football diary I brought up Peyton Manning's penchant for not removing his helmet during post-loss handshakes. I have come to admire Manning over the years and I find this to be his one evident character flaw—as a fan of a team whose coach once ran off the field during the Super Bowl before time had expired I know what a sore loser looks like. Once again, there he is out in the middle of Gillette Stadium shaking hands with Malcolm Butler while doing his best sad-LaDainian-Tomlinson impression. Can one of his dozen handlers please point this out to him sometime?

Anyone who says he saw a twenty-two-point victory coming is lying—the Broncos were favored and they should have been, even in Foxborough. But those people calling PFW in Progress afterward saying "I knew it, I told you!" without explaining how or why (as my man Paul Perillo criticized) can eat a bowl of dick up. Back in 2001, while slumming in the college publishing world, I attended a sales meeting in San Francisco before the football season started. The Pats were coming off five wins the year before (ex-Browns coach Bill Belichick's first, after Pete Carroll wasted a talented core of Patriots for three years), Drew Bledsoe was slipping into iffy territory and the local media were apoplectic that Richard Seymour was the team's first-round pick. Fan morale was low, expectations were nil and Carl Everett was probably hogging all the headlines. I was chatting with a Massachusetts colleague one morning and, as every year, he proclaimed "You watch, the Pay-tree-itz are winning the Super Bowl." Sure, man. How? The question wasn't asked because the notion was ridiculous and I probably rolled my eyes, wondering if there was a toaster around.

Given the opportunity to respond? What might a keen, informed fan have answered? "Well, Drew Bledsoe threw fifty-eight interceptions over the last three years, and if he starts slowly then Tom Brady might take over in a matter of weeks. He's a better quarterback, on paper, for Charlie Weis's system anyway." To which I, and everyone around, would have said "Who the hell is Tom Brady?" No one—media, fans, blowhards—said "Bledsoe is the only thing keeping this team from winning it all." When he went down in week two, no one said "Now's the time!" No one predicted that Brady would do well "filling in" and then Bledsoe wouldn't regain his job. No one knew the Patriots would be champions. Just like no one knew the Broncos would get blown out Sunday night. (Until halftime, at least.) The ones pretending they did are either blind homers or cynical radio personalities setting up a gleeful postmortem should the team fail to win it all for the tenth straight season.

Another top beer, another knockout-pool victory. Survive and advance. You bet your ass I was afraid to pick the Bengals but almost everyone else (four of the remaining five) did too. Five days later they let Brian Hoyer and friends do the opposite of everything the Browns have accomplished since 2010. Thank god I can't touch this team anymore.

I don't feel great about my Seahawks pick tomorrow. Historically, the Giants are one of those teams (Dolphins, Steelers, Niners, et al) that looks like it could win anywhere between six and twelve games in a season. What pushed me over the edge—beside the fact that the Eagles (hosting the Panthers: I'm too impatient to wait until Monday) and the Steelers (in Jersey against the Jets: I'm scared to death to pick against the Jets until they win again) were my only other realistic options remaining—is that the Seahawks must feel the need to prove themselves after a disappointing first half of the season. Right? Brother Eli probably feels he has to prove something too and that means hucking the ball downfield every other down—against this secondary, in Seattle, I favor the home team. It's unfortunate that I know nothing about football.

Happy Halloween! Like nine out of ten girls her age, G. went as a princess this year.

Her scepter lights up whenever it's struck against a hard surface like the couch or my skull. We trick-or-treated for a good ninety minutes and that meant the five bags of candy A. bought in a moment of lunacy went undented. My waistline and complexion will make the ultimate sacrifice. G. is pretty psyched though, especially once you pile on the bounty she took home.

After watching a retarded (inferred) pedestrian wear all black, walk out in the middle of the road and get hit by a car moving ten miles per hour, we detoured into a charming, tucked-away little neighborhood. All the residents were sitting on their front porches, greeting kids with smiles and endearing questions (one older woman couldn't get over G's curls), beaming with pride over their themed holiday displays (pictured). Polar opposite of the darkened porch at our house. By the time we got back with a half hour of official Halloween remaining we received all of two children—five pieces each, and you know they'll be back next year. Bring your friends!

Lastly, here's our rainy-day princess frolicking around some furniture at the mall. A. and I were snapping pictures as she protested "Stop looking through my window!" This was during our wait for the family bathroom to become vacant so G. could use the potty. The lone middle-aged man who eventually showed himself (after several flushes) had dropped a giant, stinking shit bomb on the entire zip code. Happy Halloween, you monster you. Let's find another bathroom.

Up next: The bye weekend marks the end of my love affair with The Wire, six years late, as I watch the closing episodes of its fifth and final season. Shiiit. Cheers!

Beer and football V — weeks five, six, seven and eight

Week five
The game: Bengals at Patriots
The beer: Left Hand Oktoberfest Märzen Lager
The result: Win, 43–17; Packers win, 42–10
The commentary: Football season aligns a little too well with birthday season. The only defense is hoping a majority of preschooler parents are devoted fans. As in, I would never schedule a non-emergency event if it were opposite a Patriots game. Queue up "Cat's in the Cradle" if you'd like but there are so many hours in a week—thousands, if my math is right—that it's easy enough to avoid a single three-hour window. I'm not alone: two Sunday children's birthday parties so far, zero conflicts. September 29? Pats were on Monday Night Football. October 5? Sunday Night Football. It's important for a parent to maintain his identity. Hers too. Right.

Here we were, likely the last beautiful weekend day of the year, eating in a park and watching a bunch of three- and four-year-olds beat the shit out of a Spider-Man piñata. All except for my angel, who literally handed me the bat and gave Spidey a hug instead. She is beautiful. That night, the Cincinnati Bengals paid dearly for trying to ruin a Misfits concert last year. Plus that whole Bears thing. Following the unpleasantness in Kansas City it was good to have the 2007 Patriots back. We do not live in Jacksonville. We do not live in Oakland. Football is fun again. (For at least a week.)

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Week six
The game: Patriots at Bills
The beer: Pretty Things Meadowlark India Pale Ale
The result: Win, 37–22; Cardinals win, 30–20
The commentary: Over the weekend we visited a farm in Amesbury to buy cider doughnuts, find a pumpkin for the front porch and make a bee line to the exit with a screaming three-year-old in my arms. We accomplished one of these. In there somewhere, G. played on a pretty cool wooden train that A. eventually noticed had a giant rusty nail sticking out of it. Our exit was so sudden that we didn't have time to tell anyone about it, so A. called from the car. The proprietors, apparently, could not have been less interested. Score one for tetanus.

I'm all set with Pretty Things. Not the Biffy^®-winning band—"city liiife was too heh-vehhh"—but rather the local brewer. St. Botolph's Ale? Absolutely, and keep them coming. Hedgerow Bitter? If I want to mix it up. Jack d'Or Saison? Meadowlark IPA? Keep walking. The labels are beautiful, I'll give them that. Otherwise they're a little too precious for me, a little too Somerville-twenty-something. A good friend of mine is an acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Things so I'll leave it to him to recommend anything new going forward. For now I'll throw my support to Berkshire, Newburyport and Notch.

Down goes Mayo! Down goes Mayo! Oh hi, new Bills owner Terry Pegula. One of the cogs of our defense has twenty-five members of the team's medical staff standing around him looking sad but let's keep talking to Pegula about what an "exclusive privilege" it is to be rich enough to own a professional football team. I'm not as bothered as Chad Finn (literally the only Globe columnist worth reading, and occasionally at that) by Fox squeezing commercials in wherever they fit. It's the nature of the beast, and the alternative is to pay the NFL as games become "premium content." Like the Globe online! Just get yourself another beer, Chad. However, I'd like to know which one of the dozens of people behind the broadcast had the veto power to proclaim "No! Keep Terry in the booth! This is my ticket to the BBC." It was a perfect combination of strange, awkward and stultifying. Kudos to Chad for the personal attack of "wearing a No. 1 Bills jersey roughly 3½ sizes too large" as well. See you on the unemployment line, Chad, when the Globe goes under. Anachronism is not an exclusive privilege.

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Week seven
The game: Jets at Patriots
The beer: Stone Rick and Robbie's Spröcketbier Black Rye Kölsch-Style Ale
The result: Win, 27–25; Ravens win, 29–7
The commentary: I present the longest beer name of the season. I struggle with how to list the beers I drink, dropping "Brewery," "Brewing Company," etc. from the name, so "Berkshire Brewing Company Coffehouse Porter" becomes "Berkshire Coffehouse Porter." Clean, right? Tidy. I hope I'm not going too fast for you.

But what to do with the Stone Spotlight Series offering "Rick and Robbie's Spröcketbier Black Rye Kölsch-Style Ale"? Mouthful City! Should it instead read "Stone Spotlight Series: Rick and Robbie's Spröcketbier Black Rye Kölsch-Style Ale"? "Rick and Robbie's Spröcketbier Black Rye Kölsch-Style Ale (Stone Spotlight Series)"? Is there a series number to add? Is Stone distancing themselves from the product and should I remove their name altogether? Do "Rick and Robbie" make other beers, with or without Stone's branding? These are the problems I create for myself. After all this the beer was just OK. Drag.

Here are the results of Pats–Jets during Rex Ryan's tenure, which is sure to end before January even though he's a good (defensive) coach saddled with a horrible general manager: 9–16, 31–14, 14–28, 45–3, 21–28, 30–21, 37–16, 29–26, 49–19, 13–10, 27–30, 27–25. Eight wins for the good guys and four for the bad, with a season's first meeting leaning toward a nail-biter or a straight-up loss and the second toward a blowout win. This year the Jets are a one-win team and Geno Turnover is leading the offense while Tom Brady and the offense are finally showing signs of life. Put me down for a two-touchdown win that's not as close as it looks. But wait! It never, ever plays out the way it's supposed to against the fucking Jets. Look at those scores: plus seventeen, minus fourteen, plus forty-two, minus seven… through to plus two this week—see you a few days before Christmas for more furious madness. Holy shit.

We spent a lot of the day Saturday at the Rockport Harborfest eating hot dogs, climbing trees and getting Hello Kitty painted on our arms. The weather was iffy and a brief shower produced a double rainbow that stuck around for a half hour or so. T-Wharf featured a decent Beatles cover band and a delicious seafood chowder alongside food trucks and a booth serving Pretty Things beer. The offerings? Meadowlark and Jack d'Or, of course. What in the worldwide fuck. On the way back to the car we couldn't pull G. away from a pink-bow-wearing lobster and her pals Gumby and Pokey. She just kept hugging and dancing with the lot of them. Ten minutes later she was passed out in her car seat. Exactly as planned.

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Week eight
The game: Bears at Patriots
The beer: Brooklyn Post Road Pumpkin Ale
The result: Win, 51–23; Broncos win, 35–21; Sean, 4–0–0-0
The commentary: The first four weeks of the season I was blogging like it's 2005. Nine posts that August? Eight in September? All that before the whole beer-and-football thing, before marriage, before fatherhood… and before I'd erased a bunch of crappy quick sizzle that would have inflated those figures. (My first playlist—since designated Volume 0 on yonder sidebar—is cute though.) October 2014? We've returned to the land of last season and thirteen total posts across nineteen weeks of football. Blogging is a dead medium but it's my dead medium and I am accountable. In retrospect, the Pink Floyd playlist took a lot out of me—that temple of light is actually pretty dark.

Something I have been better at is watching complete games. I'm no longer fast-forwarding between plays and it takes me the full three hours to get through it all, even if I don't start watching until it's long over, as I've done for four of eight games so far (including this). How else to absorb all of Trent Green's, Jon Gruden's and Phil Simms's precious insights? You score-watchers don't know what you're missing! Once again the Bears are a disappointment (where were you assholes last year?) and once again a Brooklyn beer doesn't live up to the hype. Odd how hidden that logo is though. Until now I never even knew the Post Road was theirs.

Kiwi Sean sort of came out of nowhere to win Project Runway XIII. He underwhelmed until episode five with the blue fringe dress that defined his efforts the rest of the season. It was fantastic and photographed even better, though I remember liking someone else's better (Sandhya's, I think). He went on to win three out of four (sounds familiar!) before two of the subsequent three found him in the bottom. He wowed in the rain challenge but I thought the dress itself was pretty plain, except where it wasn't (that frill!). The watercolor effect was super clever and the most creative idea to come out of the show since Mondo was robbed all those years ago but I think surprise and risk won it for him rather than design and execution. Imagine if it hadn't worked—snooze. Instead, smear your daughter's crayons on an old parchment-colored shower curtain and make Nina Garcia blush. Create real art like Kini did from a predictable umbrella inspiration and take the silver.

All season long I was convinced Kini would win and I blame the editors. He was so goddamn confident throughout and worked crazy fast, how could he not get to choose between thirty looks for Fashion Week? I forgot that efficiency doesn't equate quality, as many sleepless nights and subpar results from my Mass Art days had demonstrated. Five weeks proved more challenging than five hours (he won three challenges, was in the top for three more and in the bottom only once, compared to four bottoms—har! har!—for Sean) and he couldn't even finish in the top two. Maybe he choked. I'm just glad Edie Brickell didn't win.

Good podcast talk a few weeks ago. That's Kreative with a K, Kontrol with a K. This week on Jekyll & Hyde (actually from March of last year) was an interview with Justin Trosper of Unwound, one of my favorite bands from 1994 to the present. (It's the most recent episode available so I suppose they've gone kaput. Drag.) The format was interesting in that they interspersed full songs from Unwound (and Survival Knife) throughout the interview, so when discussing the early days of the band they would cut away (in postproduction) to, like, "You Bite My Tongue." It was a little choppy and I wish they'd kept the flow of the discussion intact—the interview itself was maybe fifteen minutes long—but it did provide a good opportunity for the host (Jekyll? Hyde?) to admit that Challenge for a Civilized Society is his favorite Unwound album before shifting to its five-minute instrumental "Sonata for Loudspeakers." I like the song but it's not exactly an "I must hear more of this band!" chartbuster, especially when you follow it with five more Civilized minutes of "Lifetime Achievement Award." The answer, though I favored New Plastic Ideas and "Usual Dosage" for a long time, is Repetition's "Go to Dallas and Take a Left" and then "For Your Entertainment." That bass!

That bass player! The one segment of the interview where I could have used some Vish Khanna muckraking was when Justin was asked, in light of contemporaries reuniting, if Unwound would ever get back together. His response? "The fact of the matter is we just can't [reunite] because… um… Vern, the bass player, is… really just not functional to play in a band with. You know, we're good friends and we're in touch and stuff, but until some life changes happen, it won't be happening." Um… Jekyll? Hyde? Follow up that shit! Hyde?? Nothing! Here's "Lucky Acid." Remember the disastrous Middle East show? We're all standing there like assholes waiting for order to be restored. Standing there, drinking fucking Bass Ale or some shit, for a long time. Finally they square it away, having found which plug some hipster kicked out of the wall, and the band is ready, the crowd is ready, the equipment is ready (so we thought). Justin is ready! Sara is ready! Vern is rea–

Hold on. Vern remembers the Nirvana episode of Unplugged, with Kurt Cobain wearing that green cardigan, Kurt Cobain overtaken by Stardom, Kurt Cobain so deliberately scratching his chin with the side of his finger while singing the last lines of "All Apologies." Christ, I even remember it without having to go to YouTube. Soak it in, Kurt Cobain. America is watching. You are the show. Hey Vern: Cambridge is watching. Cambridge is watching you. You're not just going to launch into "Kantina," are you? Cambridge is watching. Soak it in. You are the show. Stardom. Stardom craves. Stardom craves… a cigarette. Cambridge will wait for you to light a cigarette. Do this for ten seconds. Milk the moment. Cambridge is watching and it is waiting. Cambridge is waiting all night and will continue to do so. Cambridge does not wish it stayed home to watch Friends. Cambridge would not rather be at the Bow and Arrow. Cambridge is waiting for you, Vern. Will you play? It is all for you, Vern. Play.

Here we are. I took my daughter trick-or-treating a few hours ago. Vern trolls Vegas in need of "life changes." Good podcast talk.

Up next: Brady–Manning XVI. Happy Halloween!

Beer and football V — week four

The game: Patriots at Chiefs
The beer: Clown Shoes Pecan Pie Porter
The result: Loss, 41–14; Chargers win, 33–14
The commentary: "No pictures of my little girl will accompany losses, especially losses as ugly and perplexing as this." Almost. Here's an outtake from week one, basically summing up the game.

The porter was delicious and might prove to be the best beer of the season. I sampled it at a recent Clown Shoes tasting up the road and meant to ask the sales rep if the company had run out of ethnic stereotypes to exploit. They've now moved on to fantasy origin stories about "Genghis Pecan" repelling violent turkey revolts because nothing counterbalances overt race-baiting like heavy-beer mania.

Speaking of furious madness, now's as good a time as any—since I'm not emotionally prepared to write about the state of my football team—to present a homemade compilation of a few Pink Floyd bootlegs recordings of indeterminate origin I've… acquired… in our digital era. All are live cuts and span the meaty post-Syd/pre-stardom era from September 1969 through September 1971. The transitions aren't graceful—are Dobson and Thompkins seriously inactive simply because they can't cover kicks?—but I favor the pacing, like James Earl Jones reading "The Night Before Christmas" while tumbling down the stairs: "The prancing and pawing of each little oof!" Clown Shoes's gleeful prejudice and I present: Pass the Tequila, Manuel.

1. Astronomy Domine
2. Fat Old Sun
3. Atom Heart Mother
"Good morning." The first three tracks are lifted as-is from Smoking Blues, recorded in Montreux, Switzerland in November 1970. Surely the best version of "Astronomy Domine" I've heard. "Fat Old Sun" is striking and lovely as heartthrob David Gilmour giggles halfway through—if "Money" is Pink Floyd's "Brown Sugar" then "Fat Old Sun" is their "Sway." "Atom Heart Mother" is stripped down from its overindulgent studio source (with "brass and chorus") and vastly improved as a result.

4. Grantchester Meadows (a.k.a. "Daybreak")
Roger Waters's solo piece from Ummagumma is retitled "Daybreak" to open The Man and the Journey, a two-part conceptual touring suite featuring four grown men drinking tea onstage. This version, along with tracks 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14, were recorded in Amsterdam, Netherlands in September 1969. Is it "Netherlands" or "the Netherlands"? Is a "the" derogatory like with Ukraine? These are the problems I create for myself.

5. Green Is the Colour
Electric Factory 1970. Great name for a Philadelphia club. "We'll head to the Electric Factory after Hextall gets ejected." "The fucking Mummers mean we gotta detour past the Electric Factory." "I can't believe those Electric Factory pricks cut the power in the middle of Bardo Pond's third encore."

6. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
All back to Montreux! Recorded almost a year after the Smoking Blues set. This was retitled "Beset by Creatures of the Deep" when played as part of The Journey. I wish more things were titled "Beset by Creatures of the Deep." "Helen Hunt and Sidney Poitier are… Beset by Creatures of the Deep."

7. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
"The second stall in the Electric Factory's ladies' room is out of toilet paper."

8. The Grand Vizier's Garden Party (a.k.a. "Doing It")
9. Cymbaline (a.k.a. "Nightmare")
Skipping over "Work," "Teatime" and "Afternoon"/"Biding My Time," we observe our Man taking his lady friend to bed, having some efficient four-minute English sex and (bypassing "Sleep"/"Quicksilver") suffering from night terrors about special teamer Matthew Slater being the Patriots' MVP for the second week in a row. The alarm clock bleeds beautifully into…

10. Echoes
"Ping!" Get comfortable for the next twenty-four minutes. This Meddle standout comes from the '71 Montreux show and it's the most poorly recorded one of the bunch. Drag. If I could travel back in time, save Jim Morrison's beard and follow Pink Floyd around Europe to hear one song it would definitely "Echoes." "Quiet, Jim Morrison's beard. I love this middle section."

11. Interstellar Overdrive
A subdued, experimental and nearly nineteen-minute "Overdrive" was all they could talk about for years at the Electric Factory. "Pink Floyd were super trippy at the Electric Factory." "The Electric Factory hand stamp gave me the HIV."

12. Pow R. Toc H. (a.k.a. "The Pink Jungle")
13. The Labyrinths of Auximenes
14. Behold the Temple of Light
"The Pink Jungle" is a good interpretation of the first album's filler track (I like the song but it's as filler as they come), though not as good as the thirty-second segment recorded in 1967 for BBC Look of the Week and featured during the band's Behind the Music as it cuts to commercial. I love that thirty seconds—if you think Peter Jackson wasn't taking an occasional break from C Average to listen to Roger Waters's proto-Nazgûl screeching then I still don't know what to tell you. Wikipedia says "The Labyrinths of Auximenes" incorporates parts of "Let There Be More Light" and "A Saucerful of Secrets" but I don't hear it. "Behold the Temple of Light" seems to be otherwise unreleased. This Amsterdam threesome (Amsterdam Threesome now playing in back-alley theaters across the country) is followed by "The End of the Beginning," which is actually the "Celestial Voices" portion of "A Saucerful of Secrets" and formally closes The Journey. But…

15. A Saucerful of Secrets
This Electric Factory version ("Seriously, the HIV!") is superior to The Journey's and includes all four parts: "Something Else," "Syncopated Pandemonium," "Storm Signal"and "Celestial Voices." It's as strong a performance as the one recorded in '69 and released on Ummagumma's live disc. A never-realized fifth section was entitled "Thrice Against the Vikings" and I hope to hear it tomorrow night.

16. More Blues
"Ze Pank Floyt!" We close with nine minutes of "More Blues," returning us to Smoking Blues and ending three hours of curious excess. Much better, truly, than the three hours of entropy witnessed in Kansas City the other night. I am here to help.

Up next: The Misfits are not walking through that door. Cheers!

Beer and football V — week three

The game: Raiders at Patriots
The beer: Belhaven Scottish Stout
The result: Win, 16–9; Saints win, 20–9
The commentary: Our first home game of the season is also the first primetime game of the season. What's that you say? It did not begin after How I Big Banged Your Theory? Well, it did at our house, after G. went to bed (and from bed) several times over. The challenge remains throughout the day to not skim or overhear the outcome but I've managed for three weeks now. Besides, it's nice to maintain a pleasant Sunday afternoon blowing bubbles, riding bikes and flying a kite in Nahant while the Patriots go three and out after a series of incomplete/ineffective passes against the league's worst run defense.

Also on delay: listening to all four of April's "The Jesus Lizard Week" interviews on the Kreative Kontrol podcast. That's Kreative with a K, Kontrol with a K. I mentioned the podcast on my playlist write-up earlier this year (see track thirty-three) (!) and referred to host Vish Khanna as a muckraker—he did not let me down this time either. My favorite part (and my own validation) came during the Duane Denison segment when, after being asked several questions about the band's sour relationship with Steve Albini, Denison made a great point about Albini's criticism of the band for signing with Capitol Records: "Why is it that he gets to take major-label money [as an 'engineer'] and we don't? Why does he get the moral high-ground?" He goes on to explain that the topic still makes him angry twenty years later and so is sick of talking about it, to which Vish replies "I appreciate that you're tired of addressing it, but…" and wonders if Down instigated the aforementioned tension. Denison admits no one was particularly happy with how that album turned out (in particular, the poor vocal mix… as if lyrics had been distinct up through Liar?). It certainly provides context to David Wm. Sims pretending to rip my Rapeman CD sleeve in half when I offered it during the band's autograph session at Tower Records on a 1994 promotional junket. (The goddamn full-sized Down poster signed by all four members has joined the realms of the nonexistent.)

And then? And then! "Yeah, I have to– Man, I do have things I gotta do. Um… how– I'm sorry, how much longer do we need to talk?" "How much longer do we need to talk?" Reading it back makes Denison sound like an asshole. I'm impressed he held his cool for so long. Vish fits in one more question about what David Yow referred to as 1996's "reenactment tour" and Denison, after a few seconds of processing what he'd just heard, interrupts with "Did you say 'reenactment'?" Without a doubt the highlight of all three MP3 hours. As a result, the new-ish Book is on my Christmas wish list, as is the Live document. It was filmed at the old Venus de Milo across from Fenway Park in 1994. I was at that fucking show.

Up next: An assassin's quick stopover in Memphis ensures that Bernard Pollard will be nowhere near Kansas City on Monday night. Also, Gamblor instructs me to take the Chargers over the Jaguars. Cheers!

Beer and football V — week two

The game: Patriots at Vikings
The beer: Shipyard Summer Ale
The result: Win, 30–7
The commentary: Hector, Ivan and I are all forty this year. In April we traveled to Portland, Maine to celebrate Ivan's turn. (Mine was at the New England Brewfest in New Hampshire. Hector's will be at the Chili's across from the Burlington Mall.) Before the trip I compiled a list of twenty or so restaurants, seven breweries/distilleries and a few tourist traps like the International Cryptozoology Museum, all for an overnight stay. Yeah. We did well on the booze front, starting at Allagash on the way into town (a cool spot offering better beer than I was expecting, given their Belgian tendencies) and peaking at the wonderful Rising Tide (please and thank you). In between was old mainstay Shipyard with the informative video, the fun gift shop (complete with children's books for some reason) and the wonderful free samples. I don't know what it is about Shipyard—everything I sample at the brewery is amazing. Amazing! Then I try a new bomber, whether it's the Prelude Special Ale or the Smashed Pumpkin Ale, and I'm unimpressed. (Exceptions are the Double Old Thumper Ale—a.k.a. Matt Light—and the Blue Fin Stout, which I already knew I liked.) The Summer Ale falls in the same category. Maybe it's the thrill of having machinery pointed out to you during the brewery tour that makes it all taste better there. It's also free. I guess we'll have to go back.

I'm starting to think A&J King puts cocaine in their pastries. Queue the chorus: No nap for G./My daughter never sleeps/I guess we'll watch the game/I'll never take the blame. She joined me before halftime and almost became a Vikings fan. "Purple!" "Dad, where's the purple guys?" "Purple!" "These ones are purple and these are white." "The purple guys fell down." "Purple!" It only took a minute of insisting she's a Patriots fan for it to take.

The hometown victory means I survive another week in the knockout pool. Three people are out after picking the Buccaneers against the lowly Rams. I like the application of my Texans–Redskins philosophy but they forgot that the previous sentence should have read "…the lowly Buccaneers against the lowly Rams." I'm glad the rules prevent you from taking the same team to win more than once instead of lose because I'm… leaving?… the Vikings again this weekend. No way the Saints drop three straight to start the season.

The internet is crowding me out as media left and right criticize a league that enables domestic abusers. Blowhards, as we know, make the best parents. Very brave, too, of Anheuser-Busch to loudly proclaim their dissatisfaction "with the league's handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code" and then quietly hope it all goes away. I see through your Shock Top bullshit and I see through this.

Up next: The Raiders purchase the flashiest jetliner to fly across the country but get bogged down along the way when the pilot struggles to understand basic flight patterns. Cheers!

Beer and football V: I chewed my fuckin’ arm off and made an escape

Week one
The game: Patriots at Dolphins
The beer: Notch Mule Corn Lager
The result: Loss, 33–20; Texans win, 17–6
The commentary: Pictured is the exact moment in time when the scales tipped in Miami's favor. (Well, about two hours after the fact—I was watching on a delay. Again. But still.) I did not pause when Mike Wallace caught the (essentially) game-tying touchdown with Revis all over him. I did not say "OK, G., let me rewind and pause it right… here! Since you're not napping why don't you put on your tutu and stare at the screen so I can take a picture. And do something ballet-ish."

Regular-season losses don't affect me like they used to. A game ends and then G. and I go back to tucking in all her stuffed animal friends with silk scarves and/or giggling while bonking them over their heads with her inflated butterfly. Even during the game, as it got uglier and uglier, depression wasn't an option. It took a minute to remind her that she actually enjoys football when she exclaimed "I don't like football, I like soccerball!" Then we settled in on the couch and I reminded her again of who her favorite players are. "They keep falling! Why are they falling?" Excellent question.

What I've come to dread the most following a loss is the backlash by media, "fans" and more media. The shouting ranges from "Belichick the coach is better than Belichick the GM!" (rational and accurate) to "Mankins wouldn't have let us get out-physicaled!" (maybe, but it's happened with him before; also, "out-physicaled" is accepted compound nonsense) to "James Develin should get the ball more!" (classic New England racism) to "Trade Brady and put in Garoppolo now!" (ludicrous from all angles, regardless of Brady's standing as an elite quarterback). It would be and has been an insufferable week to root for a team with such a rich history of losing. Oh wait!

Houston Texans: I am alive. It was hard to resist checking that score on my phone but I didn't want to risk seeing the home team's outcome. The goddamn crawl… individual statistics and fantasy breakdowns? Who gives a shit? (Though seeing RG3's thirteen completions for fifty-nine yards in the second quarter was encouraging and amusing. Four and a half yards per completion? Even Ryan Fitzpatrick had to feel bad for him.)

I also had my eye on Bills–Bears. Nine of nineteen people were knocked out of the pool and five of them have the godforsaken Bears to thank. Where were you assholes last year? Only one guy took New England—I hoped that, if nothing else, Jordan Devey brought more down with him. Rats. Another person picked the fucking Super Bowl-winning Seahawks against a Packers team that, on paper, had a chance to win. Congratulations, you no longer have the best team in the league to fall back on. After this week, I'll be unable to fall back on a team that made it to the last three AFC Championships—I trust that Belichick & Co. will make enough adjustments to keep from losing two in a row to start the season.

The Mule is the real deal. Likely the lightest colored beer I've had in years but as flavorful a lager as you'd expect from Notch. It was a pleasant surprise to find it in bomber form at Pamplemousse in Salem in a moment of needless panic following lunch—turns out I'd already been chilling a "week one" beer for a month or so. By six o'clock Sunday it will find a home in the plumbing under my house.

Up next: Smooth Jimmy Apollo ensures me the Patriots are his Lock of the Week against the Vikings. When you're right fifty-two percent of the time, you're wrong forty-eight percent of the time. Cheers!

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

The beer: Samuel Adams Summer Ale/Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
The commentary: G. and I relived last year's agenda and visited Foxborough the first Saturday of training camp, bringing along my father this time. It was more of the same: minimal football viewing, excessive scampering, one diaper change and a lot of fun. She even wore the same dress—sign us up for next year! We went to the Olive Garden for lunch afterward. I don't know why. The garlic bread was greasy but the Sam Summer did a good job washing it down. Traffic wasn't bad going home and she fell asleep on the 93 onramp. 2013 all over again—see you at the AFC Championship.

I remember nothing of the all-important third preseason game. I drank a ubiquitous Sierra Nevada because Deadspin recently called it "one of the finest pale ales in all the land." And lo! It's as safe and insulting a pick as Harpoon sending its IPA and UFO to this Summer's New England Brewfest (which I'm happy to say I attended as part of my fortieth birthday celebration). Because you can't get Harpoon IPA or UFO anywhere? I'll take a Dale's over their entire output.

Old age is a bastard so I found myself sitting on a park bench at lunch on Friday, skimming headlines before returning to work. For hopefully the last time in my life, as I become more aware of swearing out loud now that my daughter is old enough, I proclaimed "Holy shit!" upon reading that Logan Mankins had been traded. More shocking than Richard Seymour a few years ago but probably not as big a hit—I love the guy, but he's a guard. An "early second-rounder" guard. Ask me again after Olivier Vernon decapitates Brady on Sunday. (Jesus Christ, look at her!)

My baby is three years old. I fibbed to Boston Harbor Cruises and said she was two to save fifteen dollars because what kind of monster charges that much for a child? It was a magical holiday weekend of beaches (a personal sacrifice), a carousel, Tangled and the Burlington Mall. I also finished season two of The Wire. G. agrees that you don't want to mess with Omar.

Here we go with the knockout pool again, lifting twenty bucks from my wallet instead of ten. I'm leaning heavily toward the Texans over the Redskins because I would still take last year's Bengals over last year's Bears. All day. Give me that game opening weekend right now and I'll pick it again, fax that twenty over to the guy running things, get busted for counterfeiting and use my one phone call to make sure he still had me on the Bengals. My thought process last year was that the Bengals probably wouldn't amount to much (whoops) but the Bears really wouldn't amount to much, and you don't want to blow your week-one load on a team heavily favored to go far into the postseason—or, conversely, against a team expected to go nowhere. Half the people in the league picked the Bucs over the Jets because they bought the hype that the Jets would lose and keep losing, forgetting that the lowly Bucs were on the other sideline. At the end of the season (only then, says my man Fred Kirsch, can one fairly judge each team) the Jets won eight and the Bucs won four. In September I figured the Bengals could win nine (they won eleven) and the Bears could win seven (eight), and even if my long view was proven right I was wrong that day. A one-game difference based on an educated guess should have forced me to look elsewhere… but goddammit, I remain convinced the Bengals would have taken four of five contests last season!

This year, the Texans are set to be the rebound team of the year (right?) and might even earn a wild card in a weak division. They won two last year and I think they're good for eight or nine this year. The Redskins? "The Washington Football Squad"? Can they improve from three to… six? Five? Herein lies the genius of my imperfect plan: start with a sleeper instead of the Seahawks, Broncos or Pats so you have those teams to chose from later on. Herein lies the flaw: a sleeper is a sleeper.

Project Runway is back! And so is: Amanda? Whose idea was it to let viewers choose from her, Alexander and Krazy Ken? Just make Nina Garcia design something if you're looking for a gimmick. I sort of hate this cast. Char was cool but didn't shoot out of the gate the way I thought she would and I was sorry to see her go last week. Korina is a genuine no-talent asshole, even if she was right about Amanda being a fraud (though it was odd that we never actually heard her say it to Amanda's face on camera the way it was portrayed—such is the life of the reality show editor). Kini is pretty talented, works super fast at creating the same silhouette every week and, at thirty (!), is a walking advertisement for the perils of sun exposure. He should have won last week. Samantha has made as much of an impression with me as those Patriots fan-oriented mailbags that Mike Reiss posts and I ignore every week. Alexander goes to the same hair salon as the bully kid from King of the Hill. Angela flamed out like no other after demonstrating (during the casting special) that she "works quickly," which on Lifetimethenetworkforwomen translates to "single lapel" or "FRANTIC" depending on the usage. I'm rooting for Sandhya since everyone has it out for her for using colors that aren't black or gray.

I thirst! Last Spring, in anticipation of its forthcoming television adaptation, I read all four thousand pages of Stephen King's Under the Dome. It moved quickly and was a lot of fun, even if the ending was a little clumsy and rushed. (King's payoffs usually are—it's all about the journey with him, particularly in The Dark Tower when the final confrontation consisted of maybe two hundred words.) I liked it. The small-screen version? The small-screen version! Season one made some odd editorial choices like applying familiar names to different characters. Sure, don't use the crystal meth subplot so soon after Breaking Bad, but was Phil Bushey the only available name for a local disc jockey/sheriff/quick-healing gunshot victim? I continued to watch because it was supposed to be a single-season mini-series and I was curious about the reportedly rewritten ending. But then CBS picked it up for another season because they realized, I suppose, that there wasn't much actual dome talk for a show about a dome. (Also, it's a literal dome here, unlike in the book. Way to make people forget about The Simpsons Movie.) I swore off season two but, hey, King himself wrote the teleplay for the first episode. Give it another chance (equally bad). But then: The Onion. The satirical non-satirical AV Club's weekly reviews are enough to keep me watching. Here are the episode grades so far: B-, C-, C+, D, D, D, B-, C-, B, D-. Middle three again: D, D, D. One reader comment supports every viewer's excuse to keep watching: "It occurred to me today how I spend all of Monday looking forward to watching a show I despise." I'm better off re-reading the excerpt from the never-published/never-finished The Cannibals. I'll settle for The Green Mile. Someday, Trout Mask Replica. Someday.

Up next: The only thing worse than having to play in Miami the first week of September is having to play there eight times a year as a member of the Dolphins. Cheers!