Best.
Comic Strip. Ever.
Santa gets his point across. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) 
More
Human Than Human--Falcons 34, Panthers 31
Went
to the Falcons-Panthers
game last night--a birthday present from my wife, and a damn good
one--the Falcons pulled off a dramatic overtime win. Now, it didn't need
to be that dramatic--Atlanta managed to turn a two-touchdown lead into a
seven-point deficit in the second half, and that lack of 60-minute intensity is
going to bite 'em in the ass if they can't get it resolved by January. Still,
it led to one of the most astonishing plays I've ever seen. Ninety seconds
left, Atlanta down a touchdown, facing fourth-and-12 at the Carolina twelve.
Score a touchdown or go home. Michael Vick takes the snap, looks left, looks
right, then breaks right up the middle toward the end zone. He gets hit about
three yards shy of the goal line and starts to fall. He's almost parallel to
the ground, and realizes his left knee will hit before the ball crosses the
plane of the goal, and so he lifts his left knee in mid-air as he's falling
so that the ball breaks the plane an instant before his knee hits. This is
astonishing instinctual play and genius-level physical gifts--like Jordan
switching hands in midair on that dunk against the Lakers. Boy, am I glad
Vick's on our team--it's finally a good time to be a football fan in Atlanta.
Oh, and one other note--no matter what this idiot may say,
Atlanta does have some damn good sports fans--as long as the team is winning.
The noise last night at the Dome for, let's face it, a small-change game in
this championship season was brain-rattling. Are we front-runners? Sure, but
Atlanta's sports teams--save the Braves--haven't yet earned undying loyalty
from their fans. A couple more winning seasons like this, though, and the
Falcons will be right there.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Mag
Review: Esquire, 1/05
The January 2005 Esquire is the annual “Meaning of Life” issue, in which
various celebs and individuals of note expound their various philosophies. The
list skews heavily toward the Hollywood, and the vapidity of the answers
shows—virtually every interviewee offers some variation of the following: “My
eccentric father/uncle/grandfather always taught me to be myself,” “I don’t
regret a damn thing I’ve ever done,” and “Nothing satisfies like a fine (insert
ironically simple pleasure here—hot dog/twinkie/smell of cut grass/et cetera).”
That’s not to say nobody’s worth listening to. Some interviewees, like Jimmy
Carter, can sum up an administration—an entire worldview—in a single sentence:
“I was able to go through my entire term in office without firing a bullet,
dropping a bomb, or launching a missile.” And some, like the Denver Nuggets’
second-year guard Carmelo Anthony, are surprisingly poetic: “Sometimes it can
seem like I have green pigment to everyone else. There are times when me and
LeBron are green human beings. I’m not light-skinned, I’m green.” But it’s
cartoonist Chris Ware who lands the most devastatingly effective emotional
wallops of the entire magazine: “Nobody will likely love you as much as your
own mother…which you won’t really appreciate until your life is almost half
over.” Maudlin? Sure. But you should be calling your mother right now, and you
know it.
The rest of the issue is the usual Esquire mixed bag, from the inane—an
“Extreme Makeover” garage that features SIX plasma TVs and a coffee table and
seating area right next to the parked car—to the fascinating, like the tale of
Jumana Hanna, the Iraqi prisoner whose horrifying tales of rape and torture in
Iraq’s Loose Dogs prison helped sway public opinion in favor of the Iraqi
invasion in 2003. Trouble is, she made every single bit of it up.
Also interesting is a story in which a surgeon and a chef switch
occupations—writer Cal Fussman does a fine job of demonstrating the precision
and pressure of a five-star kitchen while never losing sight of the fact that
it’s nowhere near as important as an operating table. But the best story of the
month is Chuck Klosterman’s “Culture Got You Down?”, in which he lays down a
simple law: like it or not, popular culture is never wrong—maybe tasteless or
misinformed, but no more “wrong” than ray-ee-ain on your wedding day. “Don’t
get pissed off because people didn’t vote the way you voted,” Klosterman
writes. “You knew that the country was polarized, and you knew that half of
America is more upset by gay people getting married than it is about starting a
war under false pretenses…You knew this was a democracy when you agreed to
participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. So don’t get
pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn’t some kind of
universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And
it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it.”
Preach on, brotha.
October
No. 14
Amazing
news on the baseball front, as the Braves have dealt
for All-Star pitcher Tim Hudson and, just like that, pretty much
guaranteed themselves another berth in the postseason. So what if it could be
another short stay in October? You gotta be in it to win it...In other baseball
news, the Yankees may or may not land freakishly talented mullethead Randy
Johnson...and I couldn't really care either way. Matter of fact, I hope they do
get him--it'll make their inevitable postseason flameout that much more
satisfying. (More satisfying than the uber-choke of 2004? Nah, but still, any
Yankee loss is a good loss.) Sure, the Yankees will certainly make the
playoffs, and probably win the AL East, but they won't win it all. Why? 'Cause
fantasy teams of multiple stars ALWAYS fall apart. The 2004 Lakers, the Dan
Snyder Redskins, the Damn Yankees (not just the team, the '80s-arena-rock
all-stars: The Nuge! That guy from Styx! That guy from Night Ranger!)--big-game
failures, all of 'em. Every championship team needs its grunt crew--its Robert
Horrys, its Bill Muellers, its Duff McKagans*. And once the
Jeter-Torre-Bernie-Posada nucleus bails out, the Yanks are done for quite
awhile--their farm teams have less talent than Ashlee Simpson, most
high-profile free agents won't want to play with a supporting cast of scrubs,
and no other manager on earth will put up with Steinbrenner's absurd demands
the way Joe Torre has. Seventy-win seasons--they're closer than you think,
Boss.
*-Guns n' Roses bassist and single drunkest musician ever to survive his band's
heyday. You could catch a good buzz just from looking at photos of ol' Duff.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Recommended
Reading: Rammer Jammer
When I
told folks I was reading a book called Rammer Jammer Yellow
Hammer, most raised an eyebrow and slowly backed away, figuring it
was the kind of thing that could get everybody within a mile fined by the FCC.
It's actually a hellaciously good book by Warren St. John about the nomadic
lives of RV owners who follow the University of Alabama football team across
the Southeast. (The title refers to a 'Bama cheer.) St. John's a writer for the
New York Times, but he ain't one of them East Coast liberal elite types. Born
and bred in Alabama, he's not clouded by the kind of condescension that turns
feature stories about Southerners into anthropological studies. St. John dives
deep into the nature of fandom here, citing history (tailgating dates back to
ancient Greece) and psychology to arrive at a comprehensive--and yet
compassionate--portrait of the modern sports fan. He also fills the book with
dead-on Southernisms--for instance, there's the guy who's promised his boss
tickets to the Auburn-Alabama game without actually having the tickets; a
scalper laughs that "this is a case of someone's alligator mouth
overloading his hummingbird a-hole." And I plan to whip up a jar full of
Bama Bombs--cherries soaked in grain alcohol for an entire offseason--for next
year's Steeplechase.
In an age where postmodern, ironic detachment is the hallmark of the hip
aesthetic, it's damn refreshing to see somebody proudly write what amounts to a
soul-baring love letter to a football team. For any sports fan who's ever
exulted beyond reason when their team wins, or had their heart (and almost, in
my case, a hand) broken when their boys lose, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer
is essential reading.
Curtains
Up
Does
this thing work? Yes? Cool. Let's groove.