Long Live Whimsy: American Sunrise

As it did 10 years ago, the sun rose today on America. The sun also rose on small people with small minds consumed with nothing but hate, destruction and disillusion that a society like the U.S. could not only persist, but prosper. It's been the same since the first day of an American sunrise and will carry on as long as American sunrises continue. Though the dialects, rhetoric and geography changes, the fact remains-- haters gonna hate. 

They hate because they don't understand that filling yourself with destruction leaves no room for whimsy and absurdity-- a heart's space to beat and soul's space to breathe-- space that is absolutely necessary for creation. Because at our best, we're a people consumed with elegant creation-- moving forward and doing better. Destruction, at its core, is clumsy and backwards. Once destruction becomes your primary motive, you've already lost. 

Today is a day to remember what's been lost and celebrate everything that carries on. And that includes the absurdity of sports fandom. The goofy, gloves-on hatred of Big 10 football. The one-foot-on-the-floor passion of fantasy teams. The insanity of the Hat and the ineptness of the Reverend. It's important precisely because it doesn't really matter. It's the essence of a heart's space to beat. 

And a decade from now, we'll once again take a moment to enjoy another American sunrise and dismiss those who spend their entire futile existence trying to shout down the dawn. 

Long live whimsy. Long live sports. Long live all of us. Hallelujah in the present tense.

Glossary song "The Flood" from their upcoming record Long Live All of Us. from This Is American Music on Vimeo.

Life In Central Time, And Other Moments Of Joy In a Lost Season

Central Time is God's time. Just spending time in the comfortable daylight where early isn't so bad and dark loses just a touch of its edge makes me feel like a more balanced soul. It's proof that the Lord resides somewhere in the strip of America between Chicago and New Orleans, riding his circuit in an '86 Fleetwood Fiesta with blue Astroturf flooring and a peeling "Eat a Peach" decal from the previous owner. Doin' deeds and eating gas station breakfast biscuits.

It gets a little white knuckle in the Fiesta on the Pig Trail, but I have no doubt he wheels it into Fayetteville on occasion. Once you peel back the ever-growing layers of four-laned strip mall build-up, you've got a core that is one of America's under-rated college towns. Aside from Ole Miss bringing along our Golden Flake early morning kick-off curse, this is the kind of weekend you should use to experience a gameday road environment for the first time. There's not an awful lot on the line, so nobody's chewing glass in anticipation. But, it's still an SEC West game, which  brings with it a certain level of intrigue and an enjoyable level of excitement. Energy without spilling over into meltdown.

Ole Miss/Arkansas games have a weird rhythm to them. It's a series that has a hard time finding its beat. Before the Houston Nutt shotgun rivalry was born, it was more like being set-up on a date with a girl who's lived across the street from you your entire life. We've got sort of parallel history, and it seems like there should be some kind of spark between us. It just never seems to catch. Even the Houston Nutt fire has started to dampen, and we've fallen back into our routine of nodding politely on the walk out to grab the morning paper.

Arkansas is a team with deflated aspirations of making the jump (they got double-bounced by Auburn, it appears) and is coming to terms with non-BCS success. Ole Miss is a team trying to find a foundation for whatever's coming next in moral victories and pride. What happens when they get together? A five hour teenage grope fest with Crimson and Clover playing in the background. The threat of electricity hanging in the air without a lighting strike ever actually finding the ground.

Other programs have rings of honor where they remember the greats from their championship teams. Ole Miss is quickly developing quite a ring of martyrdom. Great players who played their asses off stuck on bad teams. Upon induction, they will receive a pastel Vineyard Vines hairshirt and have their names engraved on the train tracks outside of campus. Jerrell Powe is earning his place in this illustrious grouping with his play this year, trying to pull whatever he can out of an underachieving defensive unit that was supposed to carry the team. However, being in the backfield on every down only means so much when there's no containment on any other part of the field. I don't know that Jeremiah Masioli will qualify with only one season. But as Rick Cleveland points out,  running for his life behind an offensive line of walk-ons while watching his former team compete for a championship is the steepest punishment for petty theft this side of Saudi Arabia.

But like I said, this was a day for small victories, including good timing to avoid the rain and the generosity of friends with shelter, whiskey and televisions. And a good Saturday night college town band with no cover charge at Grub's playing Gillian Welch's "Miss Ohio" featuring a male singer and a 3/4 time pace. And $2.50 beers and greasy late night food. And feeling amused superiority at the young novice drinkers puking doubled over trashcans with exposed undergarments...only to end up in the same position yourself later in the night.



And one guy in a studded black leather jacket, a portable amp and a worn guitar on the street banging out Ronnie James Dio solos, non-ironic mullet flowing in the wind, while drunken frat boys cheer and toss dollars in his case.

It doesn't matter if nobody's listening. Or if the people who are listening don't get it. It's all about keeping the faith. And that's easier to do in a good, Christian time zone.

Ole Miss/Vandy: Another Chapter In The South's Greatest Football Rivalry (Brought To You By Eddie Money)

Early morning start? Check. Low rent broadcast coverage? Oh yeah. The dulcet tones of at least one dude named Dave? Present. A stadium half-filled with red-eyed, overheated fans? Done.

When they all come together, it can only mean one thing-- the South's greatest football rivalry has come around once again to amaze and astound us with feats of self-destruction, apathy and mediocrity. It'd be like if Steve-O from Jackass joined Nickelback on a tour of Topeka and then it was broadcast by the local high school A/V club.

It was an exciting time when we heard about the new, record-breaking ESPN/SEC TV deal. Every game on some branch of ESPN! While we had grown to have a colloquial affection for the Trip-Daves formation and Golden Flake glory of Jefferson Pilot (eloquently expressed by Dr. Saturday here), it was time for us to shine the shoes, cut the hair, wash the ass and go for the bright lights of the Worldwide Leader.

While we were correct that the days of the 11:30 CST starts and Three Dave coverage were over, what we didn't know was that they would be replaced by kickoffs that were actually 30 minutes EARLIER, equally regional television exposure with 2/3rds fewer over-hyped Daves, replaced by the stunning ambivalence of college football's third-most unjustified Heisman winner-- all still under the global empire of Golden Flake snack products (and, at least where I watched it, Eddie Money's 2010 World Tour...good seats only $10. Like the best of Dean Martin last year, I'm buying).



So what went wrong for the Rebels in the 2010 incarnation of this classic match-up? I will defer to the words of John Lee Pettimore, who was one of the brave, sweaty, over-caffeinated crew standing on the line Saturday morning in Oxford:

John Lee Pettimore:  There are few words. Crowd sucked. Team sucked. Grove still kicks ass. Team sucked. Our O-line couldn't block me and three trolls.: 
Atticus: Trolls can be ferocious. I'd take a troll or two on our line these days

John Lee: At least they wouldn't stand straight up and try to lesbian titty rub the opposing D-line. I bitched and moaned about O-line recruiting for the past three years in order to avoid having to watch this. I will continue to bitch and moan.

So where do we go from here? Set new goals and redefine what it means to have "success." What are those new goals you ask? I'm still considering that, but I'd imagine they will include not throwing up on my shoes, avoiding actual rape on the field and beating Arkansas in Fayetteville. 'Till then, I'm riding with Eddie. Take me home, boys.

Ole Miss/Jacksonville State.

I would like to talk about what happened yesterday, but I don't know. I fell asleep after the first half. And if any of the coaches or players were honest, they'd admit the exact same thing.

Like Houston, I was awoken by a flurry of text messages with varying forms of "What the fuck?" I pulled the game back up at the beginning of the first overtime. It was then that Lefty Testudo sent me this:

Lefty: This is awful. What will Bama do to us. There will be no virgins left.

Atticus: Any virginity we've got left isn't worth protecting.

With baited breath, I anxiously await the input of Basil and the rest of the Arkansas nation. That's fine. It's certainly their right. They ate their cupcake without pulling a Mama Cass. The Ole Miss message boards are already thick with calls of "Fire Houston." And then, one voice of unintentional wisdom rings out from the commentariat abyss:

"Let's not overreact. I'm not going to jump ship like the rest of the Titanic survivors."

"I didn't see it, but it sure sounded beautiful."

So says Jevan Snead about the Golden Tips of Dexter McCluster taking a slip screen to the house while Snead was face down in the turf. Jevan found his talent, and Houston Nutt has rediscovered his magical play-calling silver platter buried under the stack of autographed Sports Illustrated preview issues on his desk. After cursing Houston for leaving it collecting dust for almost an entire year, the Silver Platter of the Sacred Grove screamed "GET THE BALL TO THAT LITTLE BASTARD WITH THE GOLDEN TIPS!"



Tyrone Nix called a masterful mix of blitz packages that kept the happy feet of the 8 Mile stepping and the balls sailing. And as if that weren't enough, Nix snuck into Greg Hardy's dorm room the night before, stole Hardy's Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds DVD and then blamed it on Mallett, because as has been pointed out, he looks like a guy who might do such a thing. It adds a whole other level of fear and confusion when the 275 lb future first round draft pick is screaming "GIVE ME BACK MILEY!" as he comes barreling after you (referencing Hardy's quote earlier this week about renting a Miley Cyrus movie...link to come, hopefully).

Next week, Auburn. And what Basil and the rest of the Arkansas fan base will say (when they finally regain their faculties from yesterday), is that this is the classic recipe for a Houston Nutt letdown game. Coming off a great win and thoughtful coaching, the Nutt teams lose focus against lesser opponents and have a hard time maintaining success. I don't know if I'm buying that. Last year, when Jevan's light finally come on, he kept it going for most of the rest of the season. There's no reason to believe our defense has shown any sign of let-up and could actually get better if our offense can start to put up early leads and force opposing teams into more obvious passing situations. Not saying I'm not a little worried about a dropped game next week, Auburn's still an SEC team playing at home. I still have some belief that Gus Malzahn is competent and perhaps genius offensive mind (though he's working with somebody else's parts at the moment). It could very well all come crashing down, but right now, all is right with the world and we're on our way to a mildly satisfying 10-win season. On that note, I give you a beautiful woman singing a badass song. There is probably more football from yesterday to discuss, but the radiance of the Golden Tips prevents me from acknowledging any of it at the moment.

Throw Some Sawdust On It, Worry About It Later

There was a guy I went to college with who was affectionately known as The Custodian, because he would pick up what others left behind. There was no reason for it. He could stand on his own and hold his weight on the normal market when he was so inclined, but always slipped back into the slop. After a while, he almost preferred it in a weird way.

How did he get there? I'm sure at one point he had a crisis of confidence and resorted to what has now commonly come to be known as a slumpbuster. You justify the step down as a temporary fix in a hard stretch, and then you'll return to your normal standards once times get flush again. But it doesn't always work the same for everybody and every time you go back down the ladder, it gets harder to build up the will to crawl back up. Kind of how Hawaiians developed a taste for SPAM out of necessity, but then kept on eating it. Decades after the shortages of war have ended, they're still confusing it for a delicacy. Now they're standing in an Oahu supermarket with a ribeye in one hand and a tin can of processed meat in the other with a legitimate crisis of indecision. After a while, they quit even picking up the steak and head straight for the comfort and ease of the scrub.


In the case of the Custodian, mix in a natural tendency toward the thickness, and he was screwed with the first hit. So it is with Ole Miss and UAB. We came down a step and took care of business for business's sake. The important thing is not to get to the point where you start to confuse a stopgap for an actual solution. If you're not careful, your whole life can slip into one long slumpbusting session. What happened last night against UAB was fine. We slapped it to watch it roll, and that's all well and good. Just don't start to think it was an actual conquest, and let's jump back up the ladder next week. Speaking of next week:

Let's put one last stamp on the theme started on Friday of war songs for the Arkansas/Florida game...

"I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean. Oh Basil Shabazz, was it slow and obscene?"

Oh sure, pick on the kicker with the funny name. Or the refs. Or The Divine Tebow. Here's the cold truth for the Hog Nation-- Your defense laid down a valiant performance to keep it close and then you were foiled by poor quarterback play in the clutch and bad special teams...sound familiar? And there wasn't a Dick or Nutt in sight. Last season, Houston took his underdog team into the Swamp under impossible odds, played them close...and came away with a win. Just saying.

Ryan 8 Mile Mallet is a good quarterback, but he got the happy feet once again under pressure and air mailed what should have been touchdowns on at least two occasions. But that's cool, let's pound on the kicker. Though an Arkansas fan did sum up their new quarterback pretty well when he said, "Ryan Mallet looks like a guy who would break into your house and steal your DVDs." Yep. It's going to be a good week on the blog.

Other thoughts:

Auburn/Kentucky- This is really inconvenient from a blogging standpoint. Last week, I developed this whole idea of Gus Malzahn as the wronged genius of Captain Nemo about to go on a tour of a unexpected revenge on the world that did him wrong...then they lose to Arkansas in a game where the offense was average at best (though it might be time to re-examine how we feel about a Hog defense that looks much improved since the Georgia game). Then, this week, they only put up 14 points at home in a loss to Kentucky. It was going to be a great running joke for the season and now, just ruined. The Nautilus had to turn back shortly after leaving port because of an overflowing toilet- it's always the small details that get you. Such a shame. There was so much good blogging that could've been done here, up to and including rewriting the Kirk Douglas "Whale of a Tale" song from the perspective of Houston Nutt.



OU/Texas- At Gameday, several proud Oklahomans displayed a sign saying "Keep Norman Normal." During one night in Austin, I almost broke my leg after falling out of a homemade bunk while making out with a girl dressed (or half dressed) as Maverick from Top Gun. This was in April. This pretty much sums up why I have to support the Horns in this game. In my mind, the state of Oklahoma represents all that is wrong with the disturbing American glorification of mediocrity that seems to have only gained momentum in the past decade. In Austin, you might stumble into weird gender-bending role playing with a classic 80s cinema character before ejecting from a hastily-crafted temporary sleeping surface. And yeah, shit might get weird and you might get hurt, but at least you won't be in Norman hoping the biscuits are fresh at the Shoney's breakfast buffet.

What Did We Learn?

There are two scenes that might depict how Mark Richt could have handled the results of the UGA/LSU game and both of them are found in the last three minutes of Burn After Reading (admittedly, a disappointingly mediocre film, but the final scene is brilliant).

Richt is a superior coaching mind who makes the most of his resources with well-designed gameplans, motivational tactics and by all accounts, is a genuinely decent human being in a profession that almost demands asshole bravado and OCD personality usually found in top-level chefs and cavalry officers. So, coming off a series of seasons ending up inches short of real glory, Richt has taken a comparatively weak talent pool and made them into a surprisingly competent force by putting what resources he has in the optimal position to produce. So it came to pass that Joe Cox lobbed a jump ball to AJ Green on what should have been the finishing touch on a masterfully planned and executed strategy against an athletically superior, highly ranked opponent. Then, a more than questionable celebration penalty gives LSU field position to set them up for an abbreviated comeback march.



Despite past talented teams built after taking over a proud program in a rut and said good nature and diligent planning, Richt has not managed to get over the hump for a national championship. Whereas Les Miles, the brash doofus with the high hat, falls balls first into a ready-made program at its peak and, despite calling plays like a whiskey-drunk frat boy playing a South Koren pre-teen on Xbox Live at 3 in the morning, manages a national championship in a season where he didn’t even win his own division.

The Hatchet Option
Mark Richt: I know you. You're the guy from the gym.
Les Miles: I'm not here representing HardBodies.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. I know very well what you represent.
[pause]
Mark Richt: You represent the idiocy of today.
Les Miles: No, I don't represent that either.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. You see, you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. My whole fucking life. But guess what... Today, I win.

No one could blame Richt, and in the Les Miles death pool, the odds of “Maniacal Hatchet Attack” are probably better than anybody since Custer. More likely, though, he’d opt for the defeatist sit down and search for meaning.

The Search For Meaning Option
Richt: What did we learn, Mike?
Bobo: I don't know, sir.
Richt: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
Bobo: Yes, sir.
Richt: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
Bobo: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
Richt: Jesus Fucking Christ.

Les Miles has a lucky horseshoe implanted in his colon. There’s really no other explanation for it. LSU fans are enjoying it, as well they should. It’s the college football fandom equivalent of having a drunken, dancing bear in your living room tethered to a coffee table with a piece of twine.

Eventually, Miles is going to pass that horseshoe in a scene so horrific that it will turn Skip Bertman Catholic. Because afterward, he will have no choice but to admit that Satan is very real.



Speaking of Catholic, the Washington Huskies WR targeted on the last play of the game was the victim of one of the sickest hits on a football field not to end in a compound fracture and a Lawrence Taylor cocaine-fueled war cry. Jake Locker envies him, because Locker will actually remember watching Jimmy Clausen doing a celebratory song in a gentle sway while a man slips into a Days Of Our Lives coma on the 2-yard line.

Tennessee fans are now learning the lesson the CIA Officer at the end of Burn After Reading didn’t grasp—the wide-eyed delusional generally ends up getting capped between the eyes in a closet. This may well be the fate of the Lane Kiffin era.



As Basil recounts, the Razorbacks took care of Texas A&M in the Jerry Dome in satisfactory fashion. However, the Big 12 is home to a collection of impotent formerly-proud powers not seen outside of the Mediterranean, and I don’t think it gets talked about nearly enough. It’s an elephant graveyard and Oklahoma and Texas get credit for kicking around bones in the dust.