How It Ends

We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. Everyone dies and nobody’s happy. Wait-What? Are we in the right theater?

Identity Management

A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day.

-Aragorn at the Black Gate, “The Return of the King”

Moving on to Cincinnati

I don’t know if you’ve heard but we’re moving on to Cincinnati.

Waiting for Monday Night

The locals are bracing for a pigskin tsunami of humiliation on a national stage this week. Monday Night Football. It’s the game that everyone else in the NFL is watching. The game every football fan is watching. No hiding place.

It’s a huge early season test for the Patriots. The Chiefs in Kansas City in front of a crowd determined to wrest the title of loudest crowd (on the Guinness Book of World Records scale) from the Seattle faithful of “12^th Man” fame. Part-man, part-machine ballers Tamba Hali, Dontari Poe and Justin Houston will feast on the weak and cowardly New England offensive line, rending their flesh and crushing their skulls before sucking the marrow from the bones of Tom Brady’s broken body.

Figuratively, of course.

A Win is a Win

The Patriots are 2-1-0 and tied for first place in the AFC East. Cue the lamentation of the women.

Back to the Show

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly we take prosperity here in Patriots Nation. Our football team responded to a lackluster performance to open the season with a resounding victory in week 2 and all we can do is kvetch about the passing game’s lack of its usual sophistication. Maybe it’s just me but the 30-7 win over the Vikings last Sunday reminded me a lot of those 2003-04 Patriots. Dominating defense, a big play on special teams, a solid running game and an efficient Tom Brady running the show. Can New England play better?

Yes.

I think that’s the good news. And I’m taking the W.

Please, Please, Please

Please, please, please NFL. Stop making me hate you. Let me go back to loving Sundays. Please. It doesn’t seem like it’s really all that hard. Wrong is wrong. Just because our parents or grandparents did things a certain way doesn’t make it right. Follow the “good enough for my parents” argument to its conclusion and you’ll justify slavery. You’ll be cool with polygamy. You’ll be the ape with a lethal leg bone in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” My mother once “spanked” me with a shoe. We weren’t living down South when that happened so I don’t think you can write that off as a “cultural norm.” I don’t remember what childhood crime I committed that caused my mother to levy this judgment on me. I was three years old. I don’t remember all that much of my third year on the planet. I didn’t learn to swear till much later in life (thanks Uncle Ross) but maybe I was inadvertently blasphemous. Maybe I repeated something I heard my cousin David say. I thought my cousin David was the coolest when I was a kid. I would’ve repeated anything he said as gospel cool. Like the fact our Uncle Phil was a “douchebag” (whatever that was). Or maybe I spilled my juice. Whatever it was I did, when I periodically take stock of who I am today and what I’ve accomplished in my life, I have never thought, “Thank Christ Mom hit me with that shoe. Phew! Who knows where I’d be today if she hadn’t?”

Then again, complexity theory says I could blame mom for everything that happened after she hit me with that shoe.

It’s tempting.

It’s always tempting to blame someone else for our actions.