Work at home Friday, and I slept late this morning. I fell asleep in my chair last night after the Miami-Mississippi game (more on that later) and feel a little inside out this morning, but that’s okay. After I am finished with work we are going to Costco (we need a few things, but somehow always manage to spend over three hundred dollars every time) but at least this time we aren’t bringing home a massive television (which is so amazing to watch for football games). We’re supposed to have thunderstorms and the potential for flooding all day, and then the cold wave comes in after it, dropping to the thirties overnight and that will be our fate–lows in the thirties, highs in the low fifties–through next week. It’s been insanely warm here this past week, and muggy, too.
Last night after work I had drinks with a friend at the Polo Lounge at the Windsor Court Hotel–French 75’s, to be exact for those who are keeping track–which was marvelous and a much-needed break from my routine existence. That’s twice in less than a week that I went out socializing in the evening…who am I, and what have I done with Gregalicious? But both were wonderful experiences–I really do have marvelous friends, and am very lucky in that regard–and maybe, just maybe, I should make more of an effort to see people? Can an old dog learn new tricks? Can an aging leopard change his spots?
In fairness, stranger things have happened.
Anyway.
I didn’t know that the playoff game was last night until I went out to get my Lyft and there was no parking on our street, and I heard people from the bar on the corner cheering. Oh yes, I thought, that Mississippi-Miami game must be tonight–Mississippi alums and fans often gather at the Avenue Pub to watch games, and on my way there, I checked and sure enough, the game was on. When I got home and turned the game on, it was the start of the second half, and Miami was ahead 17-13, I think. I saw Mississippi’s kicker doink that field goal off an upright, but they seemed to be surging and coming back. The fourth quarter was quite exciting, with both teams playing hard on both sides of the ball, with Miami scoring the winning touchdown with eight seconds left on the clock. Well done, Mississippi, on a stellar season and a post-season run. And good on you, Miami. It’s been a hot minute since Miami has had a shot at a national title. I may or may not watch the championship game, and I probably won’t watch the other semi-final.
Ah, well. I suppose I should bring this a close and get started on my day. Somehow, despite trying to keep up with the chores this week, I have a lot of them to do again after working. So I am off to ye olde mines of spice for the day. Enjoy yours, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning…in the cold.
And now we are on day two of 2026; so far so good, at any rate. I turned my brain off yesterday and spent the day doing chores and watching football games. The best game of the day was the final one, which saw Mississippi kick a last second field goal to beat Georgia and make it to the semi-finals. The day also saw a rather dull game with Texas Tech-Oregon, before Alabama got flat our embarrassed by Indiana. The Hoosiers are the number one team in the country–whatever that means, I don’t trust rankings that much anymore–but still. I don’t remember ever seeing Alabama beaten so thoroughly and decisively. They might lose, but they are always in it. This Alabama team looked like it couldn’t beat the Alabama team that opened the season getting beat by Florida State. I think that’s the biggest change to college football since the start of this decade–the “brands” don’t mean anything any more other than to pollsters, who are no better than any at-home viewer of the games. I mean, if someone would have told me as little as five years ago that Alabama would lose to Vanderbilt one season and then to Indiana in the next, I’d still be laughing. I would imagine Kalen DeBoer’s seat is kind of hot this morning in Tuscaloosa…four losses per year isn’t going to fly there.
That, I think, is the most interesting development in college football–showing everyone how useless and bogus the polls are. They’ve revamped and rebooted everything in the sport pretty much already; would ignoring and/or mocking the polls be too much of a stretch. The NFL doesn’t have polls, they have records–perhaps that is what college football should move towards. You don’t need polls to drum up interest in college football games.
Yesterday was very nice and lovely. I wound up deciding to shut off my brain and let it recharge for the day, and that’s exactly what happened all day. I didn’t think at all, which was terrific. I didn’t even brainstorm or do much of any type of thinking. I did start reading a nonfiction history of Alabama from the nineteenth century (Pickett’s History of Alabama and Adjoining States; my dad gave me a copy, which also reminded me of how much Alabama and Appalachian research I’ve done over the last few years, looking into legends and lore of the region for my own writing projects), but didn’t get very far into it. Today I get to work at home for a while–also have a meeting–and am having dinner with a dear friend this evening. That seems lovely, doesn’t it? I also have chores and reading to do today when I am finished working, but I am primarily going to try to get the house handled before dinner. There are no games tomorrow (Saints play Atlanta on Sunday), so I have all day tomorrow to do writing and reading around here. Huzzah! I’m enjoying all this extra time off, but readjusting to a normal work week is going to be a real drag. Yay for next week! But there’s also another holiday three day-weekend this month, too. And soon enough, it will be parade season.
Yikes, indeed.
But I am also thinking today is going to be a good, productive day, and so will this entire weekend. I won’t berate myself, though, if none of that happens. Taking it easier on myself is definitely one of the goals for the year; one of the best things about being healthy again is the forgetfulness is mostly gone; it still happens, of course, but not with the degree of frequency it used to have. I also am not tired all the time anymore, which has also been heavenly. Now that I am physically healthier, I’m having to get used to being anxiety-free all over again. It’s actually lovely, to be honest. I’ve never known life without anxiety, which was the root of so many issues for me, and my entire life was built around coping mechanisms to relieve anxiety and the concurrent mood shift. Now, I can choose whether to use that coping mechanism or not; and if my choice is a wrong one, I can just shrug it off and move on. I think part of the reason I am so optimistic about the new year is because I am facing it without a lot of the issues that have always made life so challenging for me.
I did have groceries delivered yesterday, so I am good on that. I might make groceries tomorrow, and get the mail, but other than that, I should be home for the weekend, and it’s not a bad way to see in this brand new year, is it?
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get some more coffee, maybe have some toast, too. I will be back tomorrow morning, so have a great day, Constant Reader!
Getting so close to Twelfth Night and the beginning of Carnival!
Pay-the-Bills Wednesday has rolled around again somehow, and somehow it’s already December. How did that happen? Going away for nearly a week has messed with my head a little bit, hasn’t it? But this morning I feel good and rested–odd for the midweek, don’t you agree?–but I also slept well. I had to turn the heat on last night when I got home from work with the groceries, and it’s snug and cozy in here this morning. (I am starting to like the cold weather, which is wild, isn’t it? I always exaggerated how much I didn’t like cold weather, but it seriously doesn’t bother me anymore.) We were busy in the clinic yesterday, and I think I will be again this morning, too. I was a bit tired when I got off work and headed to the store to make groceries. I didn’t get as much done when I got home as I’d hoped–the apartment was very cold, and I huddled under a blanket in my chair with Sparky while catching up on the news–my, what a shit-show we as a nation have turned into–before actually taking a short nap in my easy chair before getting up to do some things before going to bed. It’s forty-one outside this morning (!!!) but I am not minding that at all. Go figure. My theory is that the snow earlier this year snapped me out of a lifelong hatred of cold weather. Stranger things have happened, after all.
The professional bull-shitters, aka ESPN’s line-up of talking heads and morons who blather on endlessly without providing any real information but like you to believe their opinions are based in something, have continued to drag Lane Kiffin for going to LSU. I hate to break it to y’all, but all you’re doing is endearing him even more to Louisiana and Tiger Nation. I watched his initial press conference on Youtube last night (I couldn’t watch it live as I was at work Monday) and I have to say, he kind of won me over. Will he bail on LSU the same way he did to Tennessee and Mississippi? Possibly, sure. But welcome to college football in the twenty-first century, and it’s not like the players can’t leave the way they used to not be able to when their coach went somewhere else. And really, the timelines on how things are set up aren’t conducive to not screwing schools and teams over in this manner. I get the bitterness and disappointment for Mississippi and their fans; I’d be pissed if that happened at LSU, and they–and the Tennessee fans still mad about him leaving in the dead of night for USC all those years ago–have every right to be bitter and angry. But getting the dragging he is getting nationally only makes LSU fans feel more dug in; they do not mind being considered the villain in the least, and neither does the new coach. Hell, they live for having a chip on their shoulder.
It’s kind of reminiscent of the Steve Spurrier days at Florida, frankly–which should be very scary for everyone else.
I did look at LSU’s schedule for next year, and they have to play Alabama, Auburn, Texas, Texas A&M, and they get to play at Mississippi and Tennessee–Coach Kiffin’s greatest hits. It shows we play at Mississippi again next year, which seems wrong; we played in Oxford this past season so should have to go there two years in a row, but okay. We also play Mississippi State, Arkansas, and Kentucky. It’s going to be weird not playing Florida every year.
I also started gathering all my notes on Chlorine last night, to organize and get started on it (again), which will entail revising the first three chapters all over again. It’s fine; it originally started with the cops coming to his front door, before I switched it over to a studio fixer. I may leave the studio fixer intact, but it will need to be somewhat changed because the plot demands it. I also have my page proofs for Hurricane Season Hustle, another editing job, and I went over the edits for a short story that an anthology is taking, which is very cool.
As for the Pete Hegseth murder/war crimes story, is anyone surprised at the lengths this administration will attempt to distract from the Epstein files? I’m not, and frankly, Hegseth belongs in front of a firing squad.
I’m also having some thoughts about the next Scotty, too, which is kind of fun.
And on that, off to the spice mines with me! Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!
Monday morning and back to the spice mines with me this morning.
Well, the office, at any rate.
It’s very chilly in the Lost Apartment on this first day of December, which also means it’s the start of my Noirmas Season project. Huzzah!1 I also slept deeply and well yesterday, after a day of rest and not really doing a lot. I was very low-energy yesterday, which didn’t surprise me. I’ve always been tired the day after driving home from Kentucky, which is why I always have given myself a free day before I have to go back to the office. So being low-energy wasn’t a “still not well completely” reaction, but rather a normal one, which was an enormous relief. Sparky was also very needy all day yesterday, sleeping in my lap or insisting I go sit in my chair to provide a lap for him–he’s so sweet. He was kind of distant at first when I got home, too, but eventually forgave me and starting showering me with attention. But yes, I spent most of yesterday in my easy chair too tired to read, and watching news videos and getting caught up on everything I’d missed while on that Internet sabbatical I took. I had to clean out an unbelievable amount of emails, and I also have a lot to read and respond to at some point this week.
The coaching carousel finally stopped spinning yesterday, with Tulane’s coach going to Florida and a directional Florida university’s coach going to Auburn, with the big story of the day being Lane Kiffin deciding to leave Mississippi in the lurch and come to LSU. (Mississippi elevated their defensive coordinator to head coach–not interim, but head coach.) There was a lot of negativity about this, as there should have been. He is leaving his team with a 11-1 record and a play-off birth, so their fans are pretty bitter and angry2. Mississippi hasn’t had a shot at contending for a national title since at least 2003, and they made the 12 team play-offs before LSU, which no one would have thought possible as recently as five years ago. I’m ambivalent about the whole situation, to be honest. Mississippi fans have a right to be angry and they also have a right to hate him; he left them in the lurch before the play-offs to go to an archenemy. LSU-Mississippi is a trophy game every year, and they hate us and have for decades. The difference between this hire and the Brian Kelly hire back in 2021 is that Louisiana seems to have instantly embraced Kiffin, whereas Kelly was never completely accepted, and even after winning the division in his first season–a good start–LSU never saw that level of success again. I’m willing to give Kiffin a chance, just as I was willing to give Kelly (someone I didn’t like or respect) a chance. He did a great job at Mississippi–not an easy task–and three consecutive ten win seasons there is nothing to sneeze at. LSU is a brand (more on that later) much more so than Mississippi, with no disrespect intended; it’s just a fact. An undefeated LSU team, for example, will always be ranked higher than an undefeated Mississippi team–which is completely unfair–but that’s how this all seems to work these days. (Miami and Notre Dame, for example, have the same record but Notre Dame is ranked higher–and Miami beat Notre Dame. Your guess is as good as mine.)
Yesterday morning I finished listening to Fever Beach, and have lots of thoughts about it. It reminded just how important it actually is for funny writers to use their talents to skewer and satirize politicians and the state of the country. I have wondered myself about how much of the current world situation I should put into my Scotty books, and if so, how to handle it. My readers, of course, probably are more left than right; I cannot imagine how anyone could read that series and believe Scotty and his family are conservatives. I don’t remember if Fever Beach was considered controversial when it was published, and once it got started I wasn’t sure how I felt about it and the approach he was taking, but once I started laughing out loud (which happened quite a few times while listening) and got into the spirit of the thing. Mocking them is really the best way to handle them–and really, we should have never stopped calling them weird last summer.
We also finished watching the John Wayne Gacy series, Devil in Disguise, which was incredibly well done. I appreciated the focus on the families and loved ones on the victims, along with the trial stuff and backstory. This, Ryan Murphy, is how you do a serial killer mini-series. You don’t glamourize the killer. We then watched a documentary called The Carman Family Murders, which was interesting, sad, and horrifying all at the same time. (I think we’re going to make Sundays our “true crime documentary” nights.)
Tonight after work I need to make some groceries and order some to be delivered (or maybe I can order them all for delivery? Hmmm). I need to put the dishes away and finish the load of laundry I started last night (fluff and fold is all that’s left to do). I need to clean out my inbox and start thinking more about working on Chlorine. I also got the edits for new Scotty I have to get done, and I have another chore to do as well.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow!
Note to self: find my copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice tonight. ↩︎
Again, who can blame them? There are people in Louisiana who’ve never forgiven Nick Saban for returning to college football at Alabama. ↩︎
Thursday morning and heading out on the highway to Alabama this afternoon, after I put in some hours at the office. I can also get on the highway not far from the office, which will save me a little time–not much, an insignificant amount to be sure–but it’s going to be smooth sailing….I hope. I slept pretty well last night; I ran errands on my way home and managed to get my chores done once I got home, and packed. I feel a bit tired this morning, though, so I hope that means I am going to be able to sleep tonight when I get there. I also just realized I forgot to pack some things, so I’ll have to go home and get them before I head out–but at least I remembered. It would have sucked to get up there and realize oh no, I forgot this stuff, which has happened before. It’s never pleasant–I’ve gone on trips where I’ve forgotten my sleeping meds and thus didn’t sleep the entire trip (most unpleasant) and been miserable.
Well, didn’t finish that this morning, did I? I am now in west/central Alabama, checked into my hotel and a little tired. I hate driving these back country state roads after dark, seriously. The last hour or so of the drive was nerve-wracking; it’s so pitch dark at night here, there are no lights anywhere, and it was a little foggy. I don’t know the roads enough to anticipate hills and dips and hollows and stop signs and curves, and of course there’s always some inbred in a raised hundred-thousand dollar pick up truck (but bitches about the price of eggs) tailgating you for miles before they can pass. (I think I wrote about this in Bury Me in Shadows; how spooky and scary it is to drive up here after dark.) I am now here and very tired. I may lay down in a moment and see what happens. If I fall asleep, so be it.
After I got off 59N/20E in Tuscaloosa (Lurleen Wallace 1Boulevard, to be exact) and as I drove through, I couldn’t help but think you know, Tuscaloosa is a pretty little city…and then I saw an enormous billboard reading THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP NO PRESIDENT HAS DONE MORE FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE and remembered that beneath the beauty is the same moral decay and rot that’s been here since statehood in 1819. It’s really a shame. There’s an entire essay (or nonfiction personal memoir of being a gay Southern white man) I could write about the South’s pathetic longing for a past when everything was better2 because everything is so “awful” down here now. I mean, Black people can use the same bathrooms and water fountains now! Perish the thought!
That billboard, by the way, was sponsored by a church. Imagine how many hungry children that colossal waste of money could have fed. Glad to know there are no hungry children in Alabama–or Tuscaloosa, either, so that a church could waste parishioners’ tithes in a manner worthy of a Medici pope during the Renaissance. Cannot imagine why people are turning away from Christianity–and the Christian Nationalist fascist government that is currently being installed is only going to drive more and more of the faithful away. Evangelicals deny Christ every day with their words and actions, rather than bearing witness by doing good works. Faith without works is dead, after all–which means showing up twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday isn’t going to get you into heaven when your piety is only for when you’re inside the actual church building.
Someday I am going to explore my relationship with religion in a long-form essay because that will be just fascinating, won’t it?
And on that note, I think I’m going to go lay down now. Have a lovely night, COnstant Reader, and who knows if I’ll be here tomorrow? I certainly don’t!
Screenshot
Lurleen Wallace was the first woman elected governor of Alabama. It wasn’t as big of a deal as it should have been because she was also George Wallace’s first wife, and back then a governor of Alabama couldn’t succeed himself. She ran in his place and won. It was all for naught, though, as she died of cancer one year into her term as “governor.” But tell us about the corruption in blue states again? ↩︎
NARRATOR VOICE: It was, in fact, not based in reality. ↩︎
Monday morning has rolled around and rather than regretting not getting more done this weekend I am simply going to be grateful for the rest, spending time with Paul and Sparky, and somehow managing to remain sane during these last days of the republic. Yes, yes, I know I am being overdramatic and am overreacting and need to calm down; how many times have I been told that (incorrectly every time, I would like to point out) over the course of my life by someone in an incredibly condescending way because it wouldn’t affect them so they didn’t have to care? It really does get old, you know. There was more stupidity this weekend, no doubt, but it’s nice to get away from every now and then.
I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, nor did I care too much, but when I checked the score last night with less than two minutes left in the game and the Eagles were up 40-14, I felt some satisfaction. I lived in Kansas and the Chiefs have been terrible for so long it’s nice to see them have success (like the Saints, Bengals, and Commanders), but…Patrick Mahomes’ trashy family; the Hunts (who own the team) are also garbage, the team name is offensive, so is the tomahawk chop (see also Florida State, Atlanta Braves), and they also have Harrison Butker, that horrible piece of shit kicker who hates everyone who’s not a straight white man. The Eagles? I love the city, I love Jalen Hurts (and what a great story for him, you know?), and one of my oldest and dearest friends lives there and is an Eagles fan–and she’s been ill; I know this will have made her very happy. Also: FOTUS was also clearly wanting the Chiefs to win…and everything he touches dies. 40-14? That wasn’t a loss, it was a humiliation. Remember when he showed up for the LSU at Alabama game in 2019? Alabama lost at home for the first time in like five or six years–and never once had the lead.
I’d definitely not want him rooting for my team, that’s for sure.
This isn’t going to be an easy week for one Gregalicious. I am behind on everything, am going to be super-busy at the office during the week, and am leaving early on Thursday to head up for Alabama. I will no doubt be exhausted when I get home on Saturday, but that’s okay. We then gear up for Carnival and jury duty, and finally can relax by the following weekend. I was very pleased to finish reading my book She Was Was No More (link to my substack review of it) this weekend, and now I think I will watch Les Diaboliques, and maybe rewatch Reflections of Murder (but not the Sharon Stone version from the late 1990s; which is a shame; she would be awesome as the mistress but the previews looked terrible). I worked on my short story for a bit yesterday, and hope to work on it some more this week as well as the book. I gave up on the short story I was writing, and pulled out another unfinished one that I think will work better.
We also watched more of Arrested Development last night, which we are loving. How did they not give Jessica Walter the Emmy for supporting actress for every season of this show? I’ve been a fan of hers since I was a kid and saw her in Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (the original Fatal Attraction), and of course loved her voice work on Archer.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow, okay?
It’s very cold in New Orleans this morning–in the low forties–and I am slowly waking up from a very deep and restful sleep due to going to the gym yesterday for the first time in months. I also realized something yesterday as I went through my physical therapy exercises and added a few to get the rest of my body involved; I’ve always been a bit afraid of a re-injury, and my workouts would always taper off and end whenever I would reach the point of getting to a full body, normal workout. I realized it yesterday as I was doing one of my exercises and could feel the old charley-horse thing that meant the repaired muscle was getting fatigued. You can’t overcome a fear without admitting that you have one, you know. My legs feel fatigued this morning, but overall I feel pretty good. I think the real muscle soreness generally kicks in on the second day after the workout, but it’s been a while so I could be very wrong on that score.
Yesterday was very weird. How do you deal with the aftermath of a terrorist attack on your home city? I resisted the urge to lift my embargo on legacy media yesterday (hey, we were attacked!) and doom watch them report on rumors, conjecture, and cover it non-stop with endless talk and nothing substantial. I thought it wiser to wait out the day and then consult nola.com today, once more information has been released. It’s infuriating, of course; how could someone do this to New Orleans, of all places? New Orleans, the most hospitable and welcoming place in the country? But New Orleans makes a good target specifically for that very reason; it’s very welcoming, without question and there are always crowds somewhere to target. I dread the thought of what this is going to mean for the Super Bowl and Carnival, but I imagine it will be very similar to the 2002 Super Bowl, when the military was here in force. I also was remembering what it was like when I came back home from Katrina and there was no police, only the National Guard, and it was surreal seeing a military camouflaged all-terrain truck with machine guns mounted on the hood patrolling the neighborhood. I touched on this very briefly in Murder in the Rue Chartres all those years ago, but then got into the heart of the story and forgot about the Guard being here.
I spent most of yesterday scrolling through social media1 while watching football games on television. The Texas-Arizona State was the best game of the post-season so far; maybe this next round will have better games. I don’t feel vested in it, other than just being idly curious. The Sugar Bowl was postponed for a day–and I imagine that when it does air, alot of the coverage will be about the attack. What a way to start the new year, right? New Orleans has been through a lot over the last five years or so; the Hard Rock Hotel construction site collapsed in January of 2020, and since then we’ve been hit by a major hurricane, and other buildings have collapsed. I was also thinking last night that the last few Super Bowls here have been a bit jinxed; the last one was when there was a power outage in the Superdome after Beyonce performed for about a half an hour, and the one before that was the post 9/11 one. I don’t think there had been one here between 2002 and the Beyonce bowl–Katrina had a lot to do with that–but it’s why the entire city seems to have been under construction this past year. Claiborne Avenue uptown has been torn up for at least two or three years at this point; I never use it anymore to go downtown and it used to be my go-to to get downtown from uptown…but it’s not nearly as bad as the years Rampart was torn up. Yikes, that was miserable.
New Orleans always endures, though, this improbable city that literally makes no sense. No matter how much the Right and MAGA hates Orleans Parish (84% of the vote for Harris/Walz), no matter how much they hate having to rebuild and/or protect the city–letting New Orleans sink or abandoning it–would have an enormous economic impact on the country, as boy-rapist Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert finally had to admit and sign off on the reconstruction after Katrina. The port here has always been–and always will be–vitally important to the economy. New Orleans was so vital that when Jefferson offered to buy it, Napoleon threw in the rest of the Louisiana Territory as lagniappe because all that land had no value without New Orleans...which MAGA Louisiana really hates knowing. So all you mouth-breathers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and so forth–keep New Orleans negativity out of your fucking mouths. Sorry you’re stupid and didn’t pay attention in your underfunded schools, but that’s the reality. The economy could take the hit of losing one of your states–but not the loss of New Orleans.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Keep New Orleans in your thoughts, whenever you can spare one, and I may be back later. You never know, and it’s a whole spanking brand new year, after all.
Another reason I was able to avoid legacy media–I was getting my fill of rumors, lies, and horrible MAGA reactions to what happened so I didn’t need to give them eyes or clicks. As always, another two middle fingers raised to the complicit legacy media, may they decline into financial bankruptcy to join with their moral one. ↩︎
Well, yesterday was a fun day for college football. LSU won at Arkansas 34-10, which was an enormous relief. While LSU has now won eight of the last nine against the Razorbacks, it’s a rivalry game (The Battle for the Golden Boot) and Arkansas always, somehow, manages to play LSU tough (there have been some real shockers and close calls over the years), and the game was pretty much in doubt until an amazing fumble recovery caused and recovered by the amazing Whit Weeks (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite LSU players of all time) allowed the Tigers to finally pull away and beat them. Alabama lost to Tennessee, and this is the first time since 2007 (the last time they had a new coach) they have multiple losses going into November. Georgia trounced Texas in Austin last night, too; if someone would have told me after the USC game this year that LSU would be tied for first in the SEC with Texas A&M at this point in the season and ranked in the Top Ten, I probably would have laughed pretty hard. And of course, next week LSU plays at Texas A&M, which will give the winner a pretty big boost to making it to the conference championship, as only one team will come out of the game undefeated in conference play (A&M and LSU’s only loss have come out of conference; there are no undefeated SEC teams left). We also watched some of Skate America yesterday, and will probably watch more today. I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I would have liked, but that’s simply the nature of the beast and it’s fine. I slept a little late this morning, too, but feel good. The kitchen is again a mess, and I am going to make white bean chicken chili today, which will make even more of a mess; sad that I have to clean it only to mess it up yet again…and Vanderbilt now has the same record as Alabama. When did we diverge off the main timeline again? And of course, South Carolina embarrassed Oklahoma (welcome to the SEC!). Even Mississippi State put a scare into A&M, too.
Seriously, what a crazy–and unpredictable and fun–season this has turned out to be for us fans.
I don’t have to leave the house today, either, which is another delightful occurrence. I made groceries yesterday, and after getting home from that expedition I chose to settle in for a day of football. Sparky was still calmed from his vet visit on Friday–Paul thinks he’s sulking because his nails were trimmed, but he hasn’t attacked me or tried to climb me since we got home. He also spends a lot more time cuddling and sleeping with me in the chair. He’s such a sweet little baby. We also have a lot of shows to get caught up on, too. I am definitely going to Kentucky next weekend, too, which will be very nice. I can drive up on Sunday and come back on Friday, which will be a very nice long visit and then I can get back home to watch the Alabama game (they haven’t been the same since they beat Georgia, which is weird). I can spend a lot of time sleeping and resting and relaxing and reading, which is always a lovely thing to have going on, and then I can start focusing on getting writing done and keeping up with the house. It’ll definitely be weird once football season is over, too. The play-offs are going to be strange, too; a gauntlet to determine the national champion. My suspicion is no one is going to make it through the season undefeated.
And then it’s Carnival again. Where oh where did this year go?
But today, I need to read and I need to write. Once I finish this, I’ll go read for a bit and then clean the kitchen, and start making the chicken chili, which is mostly for lunches this week. I also have to make Swedish meatballs, which I bought at Costco to see if it would be any good. That can also be lunches (and dinners) for the week around here. Payday is Wednesday, so I’ll be able to get groceries for Paul before I leave, so he can survive the week. It’ll also be kind of cool just reading horror while I am at Dad’s; Shadowland to listen to in the car and then finish reading once in Kentucky; Tananarive Due and Scott Carson and Nick Cutter to take with to read up there; and then it’ll be November when I drive home so I can go back to listening to something non-horror for the ride home. Possibly a Carol Goodman, or a Lisa Unger, perhaps. I really have a plethora of riches in my TBR stacks. I know I should read more broadly, and I should expand my horizons out of crime and horror–would it kill me to read science fiction or fantasy or romance or (gasp) literary fiction? Probably not, and I do have some really great books in all those categories in the stacks, too. I think I want to read something by Valerie Martin, Jami Attenburg, or Celeste Ng by the end of the year. (I also have some Ann Hood novels on hand; she’s fantastic.)
And on that note, none of this is getting done while I sit here and swill coffee and scroll unnecessarily online, will it? So perhaps it’s best to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. I may be back later, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, Constant Reader, so have a lovely Sunday, okay?
The 2023 football season is very different from every season that has come before it.
College football has gone through a reboot of sorts, in which the old pretenses of amateur athletics in exchange for an education have finally been stripped away to turn the game into a semi-pro NFL feeder system with payers getting paid ridiculous amounts of money, by the college and by booster collectives and being able to cash in on their name-likeness-image (NIL) by doing advertising for businesses.
College football is very different from the era I grew up watching, and so I’ve seen the changes first hand. Back in the early 1900’s, when college football truly began, college was for rich kids or poor kids who were super-smart and worked hard and put themselves through with scholarships, financial aid, and jobs. College was only for the elites; working class people and most middle class kids couldn’t afford it and it was out of the question: you needed family money or a lot of intelligence or athletic ability. The rags-to-riches story of kids from farms or very poor families who got to go to college and change their lives became a cliché in film and books and sports columns; Americans always love an underdog in their entertainment (while never examining in their own lives and behaviors how they treat underdogs–which is usually with the same condescending contempt that the elites show to underdogs in college sports movies and novels). In some cases it was true, especially during the Depression. (Watching the ESPN documentary Saturdays Down South, about the rise and history of the Southeastern Conference, you hear that same story over and over again with the older guys, or the phantoms from the past.)
When I was a kid, there was no national championship in college football’s highest level. Originally, the Rose Bowl was kind of seen as a “national championship” game as the only postseason game, but eventually other bowls began popping up for those excellent teams passed over by the Rose Bowl, which led to the creation of the Cotton, Sugar, and Orange bowls, which were the original big four bowl games. The national championship was decided by polls that didn’t always agree, so almost every year there was no consensus champion, and often more than one. Most lists of college football national champions only counts one or two polls, usually the AP (sports writers) and UPI (coaches poll). Needless to say, this didn’t solve anything and led to a lot of controversy and bad feeling. The writers and the coaches were frequently biased, which led to a situation where a “brand” name school–your Oklahomas, Ohio States, Notre Dames, Alabamas, and USC’s, among others–were always taken more seriously than non-brand name schools; it wasn’t easy for any team who wasn’t one of those (or Michigan, or Texas) to be picked over a name brand school; and it was always obvious that an undefeated Notre Dame would always win the polls over any other undefeated team. The bowls gradually tied themselves to conferences, which made the national championship race even more tangles. The Southwest champion always went to the Cotton Bowl, SEC has the Sugar, the Big Eight had the Orange, and the Rose was the Big Ten champion against the Pac-9 champion. The money also wasn’t there; ABC had an exclusive contract to televise NCAA games, and so every weekend there was usually a game of national import to watch as well as something local. We were from the South but lived in the Midwest when I was a kid, which meant we rarely got to see any SEC games unless Alabama was doing really well.
The break-up of that monopoly held by NCAA over television rights for college football fell in the early 1980s, ESPN launched, and suddenly the landscape of college football had changed forever. The need for a consensus champion led to several attempts to solve the problem, but the question of the top two teams to play for it every year became controversial as inevitably, someone was left out. The debacle of the 2003 season, which saw LSU win on the field and USC win in a poll, led to some more tweaking of the system. But…when they expanded the field to four I said “there will be controversy when you have six teams with the same record so two are left out (which happened last year, with Georgia and Florida State) and now this year…there’s a twelve team playoff so the season doesn’t matter quite as much; there will be teams left out again, the players are getting paid, and the conference realignments all went into effect this year, changing everything. I’m not used to seeing Texas and Oklahoma being SEC teams, or USC and Washington being in the Big Ten.
It’s fucking weird.
It always surprises people that I love college football. Gay men aren’t, apparently, supposed to care about sports and especially not “sportsball”1; but for many of my straight guy friends, football is something we can talk about outside of writing or reading or anything publishing related; it also helps me feel more comfortable talking to straight men as many of them are football fans. There’s no better icebreaker than talking about football. I also am not one of those fans who mock and taunt fans of a team I don’t care for. And I know a lot about college football from decades of watching it; I have relatives who’ve played at the Division I level, and whenever my family gathers for any kind of event in the fall on a Saturday, we usually gather around the television to watch whatever games are airing.
I generally try not to read a lot of books about college football. My reading time is too consumed with reading fiction and history that I generally can’t spare a lot of time for reading about something I just enjoy, and it can never count in my fevered brain as research, as I most likely will not ever write anything about college football, although I suppose I could write about being a fan, and what that is like, and how fun it is to follow LSU (and the Saints) as a fan here in Louisiana. But with the pandemic and all the insane daily news of the last four (or ten) years, I didn’t follow the behind-the-scenes machinations of how everything was coming together for the realignments and the play-offs–and what all went on in the boardrooms; why some conferences grew and became super conferences, how some others rebuilt, and others died on the vine. The Southwest Conference died in the early 1990’s, so it’s not like conferences haven’t died before, but seeing the events of the last few years was kind of crazy.
So I bought a copy of The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos, and left it on the coffee table next to my easy chair. The lovely thing about the book is each chapter is written like a stand-alone in-depth piece of journalism, and provides a lot of background on all the politics and backstabbing and money involved in rebooting all of college football for a new era, and how much the big money involved drove almost everything. It’s also a terrific in-depth look at the 2023 season, from the pre-season media days all the way to the championship game with Michigan once again ascending the throne of college football.
As for me, it’s an adjustment to the new world of college football, but at the same time, the only thing constant in anything is change. Is it better or worse than it was before? I am not going to stand on my lawn shouting at clouds about it, and am willing to give it a wait-and-see attitude; you can get used to almost anything, and I imagine at some point we’ll get so used to the new system we’ll look back at the old worlds (as we have already done) and wonder, “why did we do it like that when it doesn’t make much sense?”
Que sera, sera.
And if you do enjoy college football, this is a terrific read.
For the record, gay men who call it that aren’t clever or amusing, but incredibly offensive. I actually cringe a little bit for them. Not being a part of something that’s enjoyed by the vast majority of people doesn’t make you any edgier or cooler. It’s actually infantile and makes me think less of you. “oooh, is today the sportsball?” You can also not say any-fucking-thing. And remember that the next time someone mocks you for, I don’t know, liking show tunes and red carpets. ↩︎
Sunday morning the Gregalicious slept late, and I feel good this morning. I stayed up late to watch Saturday Night Live return, and wasn’t terribly impressed. Our Internet also kept going in and out all day, which was annoying, especially during football games. The three games I primarily watched–Kentucky-Mississippi, Auburn-Oklahoma, and Georgia-Alabama, were all excellent games–and I also switched over to LSU-South Alabama periodically, but it was also a blow out so didn’t need to watch much. Still unsure how this season is going to shake out for everyone, which makes it interesting. I think there’s a lot more parity in the conference now, once you get past the clearly best teams this year (right now, I am going out on a limb and saying it’s Alabama and Texas, both teams LSU has to play in Baton Rouge this year) I think everyone is pretty equal for the most part, with the usual suspects (Mississippi State, Vanderbilt) in the basement. Kentucky almost beat Georgia last week and did beat Mississippi yesterday; Georgia almost beat Alabama, and that Auburn-Oklahoma game came down to the wire. The Saints play at noon today, which is cool, playing the Dirty Birds in Atlanta.
I did manage to get some things done during the games; I cleaned the downstairs bathroom thoroughly, I ran some errands in the morning (mail, Fresh Market, car wash) and then came home to start watching football. I also read, while in my chair, both We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (more on both later), so hope to start the new Gabino Iglesias at some time today, most likely during the Saints game. Jackson and Levin are excellent writers whom I deeply admire, with completely different styles but evoking the same feelings when you read them. I also managed to get most of the dishes finished yesterday, with whatever I used yesterday as the only dirty dishes left in the sink–and that will take about two minutes, tops. I had thought about delaying my trip to make groceries until tomorrow, but now that I am up I think I’ll go ahead and do that this morning and get it out of the way.
I also want to work on the kitchen a bit today, and I also want to get the floors worked on again. Sparky tears up the rugs all the time when he’s running around like a demon to burn off some of his Big Energy, and the longer they are messed up the worse they get messed up. I also have some other posts I need to get done this morning before I leave to make groceries; and the longer I let them sit there unfinished, the more likely it is they’ll continue unfinished. I have a particularly spicy one about transphobia that I’d love to get done at some point so I can Substack it (and attract more of the bigots and Nazis there), and of course, there are any number of others unfinished as well. Heavy heaving sigh. I also have three book reviews/reports to write–I’ve now finished The Price by Armen Keteyian and John Talty; an arc of We Are Watching by Alison Gaylin, and Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper, and I need to get those done sooner rather than later as well. I also have some emails I need to answer as well as some to generate.
Sounds like a to-do list to me, doesn’t it? I also need to clean up the mess around my desk. But the key is not to get overwhelmed by the length of the to-do list, and just start marking things off. I also need to work on the Scotty Bible today, but I can also see that I am starting to think in the old bad anxiety/stress markers by overwhelming myself with so much to do already. Next weekend I have an eye appointment, so I can order new glasses, and my doctor’s appointment is coming up. I am probably going to meet Dad in Alabama weekend after next, and will probably go up to Kentucky later this month. How exciting!
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and hope everyone in North Carolina and Tennessee are okay.
Queer and Loathing in America 