Saturday, January 1, 2011, 11:54 pm
Here’s to turning it around.
1. Read more books
2. Play more basketball
3. Work on tennis serve and ground strokes
4. Buy more shoes
5. Blog more
6. Get a tattoo
7. Write better
8. Go interesting places
“Hard times are coming through, but if you’re hard they won’t get to you. They’re gonna try to drive you into the ground. But never surrender, never go down!”
Tuesday, December 7, 2010, 6:06 pm
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — I dropped my wallet on a street here today and came back out and saw a crackhead looking through it. He took the cash and dropped it back on the pavement. When I told him it was my wallet, he said he only took $1 and handed the bill back to me. There was more than that in there (obviously; I ball), but he categorically denied taking more money. When told the police were called (they weren’t), he said he didn’t care. All he had in his hoodie, he said, was a Borders card. I asked him what he reads. He didn’t answer.
Merry Christmas.
Friday, November 26, 2010, 3:35 pm
A rare bright spot. Celebrating a thrashing in Nashville, Tenn.
Early on in the South Carolina game, before things got out of hand, I texted a Christian friend of mine, asking him to pray for the Gators — and me. “I refuse to believe the Lord manipulates sporting events,” he wrote back. “But I’ll pray that you don’t burst any vessels in your eyes.” At least that one was answered.
I’m in Tallahassee ahead of Saturday’s game to close out this bizarre season marked by three straight home losses, three quarterbacks and, hopefully, three wins over the core rivals — Tennessee, Georgia and Florida State. If the latter comes to fruition, I would be at peace, the pain from leaving Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on three specific autumn nights — the words “only Gators get out alive” replaying in my head to a background of cowbells, in the case of the Mississippi State game, and Southern hollers after the Louisiana State and South Carolina debacles — eased.
But this rivalry has always had its own bizarre moments, particularly in Tallahassee. Take the “Choke at Doak” in 1994, the first game I attended at Florida State. Or the 2006 game, after which a lame-duck Ron Zook was carried off a field that had been named earlier in the day for Bobby Bowden.
So who the hell knows what will happen tomorrow? Only God, and for some reason he apparently isn’t much interested in helping Florida’s offense.
Friday, November 5, 2010, 2:00 am
Circa 1995 to Nov. 3, 2010. Great dog. True pal.
Hold on to your friends.
Monday, October 25, 2010, 8:46 pm
For the second straight week, I looked over to the band playing the fight song to — no one in particular. The players and coaches had either run off to the locker room or, for the masochists, stayed on the field to watch their opponents celebrating on their field, mocking their gator chomp, ringing their stupid fucking cowbells. But they weren’t anywhere near the band.
For a while afterward, we sat there, stunned. Two weeks in a row, the scoreboards were wiped blank within minutes — as if it didn’t happen. The crying fans I saw in photographs later said it much more clearly anyway: God, we suck.
OK. Alabama is a very good football team. And Bryant-Denny is a tough place to play. A few questionable play calls and some shoddy execution in the first half, and it looked doomed from the get-go. That’s fine. But losing to Louisiana State at home was much more suspect. Some 90,000 fans knew Les Miles, the most badass coach I’ve ever seen, was going to fake that field goal. And guess what, Urban Meyer? He didn’t give a shit. And oh my god did it get worse. What happened the next week was just about the most inexcusable thing I’ve seen out of the football program — on the field anyway — in my two decades of fandom. An incredibly inept offense, a weak defense with no innovation and atrocious clock management. Jesus, we suck. Forget Tim Tebow or Cam Newton — can we get Dan Mullen back?
And, after all of this, the Gators still have a chance to get to Atlanta. This week, in the lead-up to the Georgia game, I am trying to talk myself into my team going on a three-game winning streak, beating its archrival at the cocktail party, winning on the road in Nashville and beating Spurrier’s ranked Gamecocks. Like the Chain of Strength song, I — I wanna believe. But I won’t until the players are gathered before the band on Saturday night in Jacksonville, singing that “we’ll fight our way for Flor-i-da” after they actually did.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 2:46 am
Like dangling a shoelace in front of a flustered kitten, I reached over the tunnel wall and jangled my keys.
Clink clink clink. Here, kitty kitty.
The kitten, in this case a sizable Kentucky fan, was not the least bit amused. He gave me the finger and a snarl and jumped to grab the keys. I yanked them away and laughed with my brother. Mr. Kentucky disappeared under the stands. Good riddance.
Alone, this sounds childish, petty and, to stay the least, unsportsmanlike. But this dude had been annoying fans for much of the game, holding Gator head fans (the sort folks would wave in church before air conditioning) upside down like it was some sort of effigy. And in football, even in the stands, I believe in an eye for an eye. There was the asshole at the 2006 national championship game who, after Ohio State’s Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kickoff for a score, turned around and did the “O-H-I-O” chant in our faces. Naturally, the Gators ended up steamrolling the Buckeyes — and I steamrolled him the rest of the game. A Florida fan nearby tried to tell me not to mock the poor bastard. Nope. Get lost.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 1:28 am
Note: Last season, I decided to blog about my experiences and hopes and fears following my alma mater’s football team. I had every intention of doing that again but have gotten off to a late start. Alas, here we go (Gators).
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — As a kid faithfully wearing a No. 7 jersey, as a student ushering in the Urban era and now as an alumnus, nothing makes me angrier than when someone mocks the Gator chomp. In 2007, I nearly had an aneurysm right there in Section 34 of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium as I watched Wes Byrum run around looking toward the east stands flapping his arms together. (I also nearly cried.)
So when some asshole a few rows below us at Neyland Stadium here on Saturday turned around to do it, I got pissed off. Things were said. Gestures were made. And all of a sudden, I understood the primal rage and the bloodlust for anarchy described in “Among the Thugs,” a book about English soccer hooligans I read earlier this year.
Eventually things calmed down, and by the beginning of the fourth quarter, when said asshole and his friends left, they didn’t so much as look in our general direction. Why? The scoreboard.
Sunday, September 19, 2010, 11:24 pm
For the past few weeks, much of my time at the newspaper has been spent chronicling one small church’s plan to hold a Quran burning on its front lawn. On Sept. 7, members of the news media from across the state and country started showing up at the church’s property, in a quiet corner of town, and a photographer and I went to check it out. We were told that since we were with The Gainesville Sun we had to leave. The footage of the weird exchange between us and church “officials” (posted above) ended up on The New York Times’ Lede blog.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 11:38 pm
In 1994, when I was too young to really appreciate it, my dad took me to World Cup group games in Orlando, where I got to see counties like Morocco and the Netherlands on the pitch. Even though I don’t remember much about the actual matches, I clearly remember the masses of painted and screaming fans thousands of miles from their home countries. And I remember my dad getting my brother a yellow vuvuzela from a street vendor. That’s a noise you never forget. You’ll see if you haven’t already.
I have been to a lot of sporting events — two Final Fours, a number of national football championship games, a handful of Daytona 500s, Olympic events in 1996. I have been to Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium, and I’ve witnessed a Premier League match. I saw Mike play the Magic and was there when Earnhardt was killed. And the Cup in ’94 is still among the highlights. More than the Olympics, it creates this sense of national anxiety, that it all rests on the lads on the pitch. In the Olympiad, one country might be a traditional power on the track while another is a force in gymnastics. But in the Cup, it’s all equal. Not to mention the sport is universal. Likely no one in Mozambique gives a shit about the uneven parallel bars, but you can be sure the whole country will be watching to see whether the continent’s best player, Didier Drogba, is in the lineup for Ivory Coast.
More than in 2006, when the United States limped back home with one point after the group stage, I am anxious about this tournament. Part of that is my trepidation about how well the U.S. will fare after watching some shaky performances in qualifying and after a number of injuries. Another part is my torn allegiance.
Given my love for Morrissey and my fondness for the British in general, I have been described more than once as an Anglophile. Just about everything English appeals to me — the cars, the accent, the Tube, The Guardian and, of course, the footy. Because of my keen interest in Manchester, I naturally adopted United as my club. (I chose the Red Devils over the Blues because of my hero’s tribute to the club and because of Old Trafford’s proximity to his hometown of Stretford.) I love how Wayne Rooney plays, and I love the history of 1966 and Bobby Charlton.
Then again, there was that tea tax and the massacre in Boston.
In the end Saturday, I would love to see us — the U.S., that is — win 2-1 on a Dempsey goal in the 88th minute. Then, after we have flamed out in the quarterfinals, I want to see Rooney wearing a grin on his weird, ruddy face as he hoists the trophy for the Three Lions.
Nevertheless, despite my English envy, I’m glad that Revolution didn’t turn out that way.
Sunday, March 14, 2010, 2:34 am
People are assholes, and given the chance, they rarely fail to prove the rule.
Last night, my friends Beth and Adam and I were standing in the middle of the crowd to watch The Mountain Goats at Harvest of Hope Fest in St. Augustine. Keep in mind, The Mountain Goats is a dude with an acoustic guitar. Despite this, a group in our general area — who paid and packed into a crowd supposedly to see said acoustic guitarist — continuously did the following:
a. Talked. (As Beth said, “Each word more useless than the last.”)
b. Checked their phones.
c. Smoked.
d. Passed around a bowl, looking far more interested in the weed than said guitarist.
e. Checked makeup.
f. At least one girl stood, back to the stage, looking at her boyfriend. The whole time.
g. Yelled stupid shit. (For example, when the singer explained one of his songs was about the mental health care system for juveniles, one stoner yelled, “George Bush.” Right.)
When Beth asked this one chick (with that obnoxious mullet thing that hipsters are into), the girl said, “It’s a concert. It’s not a library.”
The sole reason I went, aside from seeing my friends, was Billy Bragg. The legendary Englishman (who went on to make fun of American football in his charming way) played after The Mountain Goats and put on a phenomenal performance (though he was cut off, I presume, before playing “A New England”).
During the set, I was up front near the barricade. A girl who stood front and center was singing along with most songs, a total fan girl (that’s not a slight since we’re dealing with Billy Bragg; quite the contrary, it’s an attractive quality). Nevertheless, her tool of a boyfriend, about halfway through the set, got a phone call that just couldn’t wait I guess. He answered and proceeded to yell that he was at the show and hung up.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my generation.
Bragg talked a lot, which I loved. He talked about meeting legendary activist Stetson Kennedy for breakfast that morning at the Casa Monica. He played a Woody Guthrie song dedicated to Kennedy. It was an endearing moment. Bragg said Kennedy asked him that morning that if the young people going to the concert were doing so to support the cause of the fest (aid for migrant farmworkers) or otherwise gave a shit about political affairs. Bragg assured him that they did. It’s a nice thought, but I don’t know if he’s right. Not that assholes can’t be politically inclined. We know that’s not true. But, from where I’m sitting, very few care about anything. At least the people we were around Saturday night were more concerned about getting high and looking cool in their knock-off Ray-Bans (posers).
Beth, Adam I sound like the proverbial (and literal, given the rain the night before) stick in the mud. But a like-minded girl earlier in the evening, during Kimya Dawson’s set, asked this loud-as-hell dude to shut up. I’m pretty sure he called her a bitch and went on blabbing. Until Dawson played a song he liked. Then he got into it and started singing along.
What an asshole.
As Bragg sang in his opening song: “Help save the youth of America. Help save them from themselves.”
