At the beginning of the football season, I wrote:
Depending on how the luck goes, these Saints look like they can win as many as 10 or as few as 5 games. Obviously it would take more than that to win a championship and free the universe from limbo but nobody said that had to happen this year. The other day, my boss pointed out to me that, according to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, the world isn't actually scheduled to end until 2012. So there's time. Maybe we'll get there but for now let's call it 9-7 with a hopeful toast to the eventual end of the world.Not to be too much of a "masturblogger" here but I find it necessary to remind everyone that, in that post, I argued that 1) A Saints Superbowl appearance is sort of like the last seal waiting to be broken before the full weight of the apocalypse can be unleashed. 2) 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished... although still an unlikely one for various reasons. Last week, when I more or less guaranteed a Saints loss to Carolina the supporting argument that never saw the light of day was partially football-related but also returned to the cosmic theme stipulated back in September.
The football stuff was pretty straightforward. The Saints had been missing a lot more tackles in recent weeks, their defensive line was banged up, the Panthers run the ball well and seemed to be coming on as of late. Plus there's a different feeling when you're 7-0 trying not to blow it from when you're 3-0 and still trying to prove yourself. This divisional game seemed a perfect time for the Saints to falter.
Meanwhile the Saints, their fans, and random observers were tempting fate in ways that had us wondering if they didn't deserve to pay a hefty karmic fine at some point. Items for your consideration:
- 3-1 to win it all? At one time, there was at least the possibility of big money to be made in "bucking the trend" and betting on this ridiculous concept. How do these odds help the local economy? They're totally counter to the established idiom.
- Ralph Malbrough had some kind of bizarre Lariam dream where he played an entire imaginary football game in his head and described it to us in detail. (Totally wrong result, by the way. I soooo would have imagined that differently)
- And then there's this:
A new mouthpiece being used by several New Orleans Saints players this season has been getting much attention since ESPN analyst Jon Gruden praised it during the “Monday Night Football” broadcast.
What? Get the fuck out of here. I know we live in an age when people (particularly athletes) will buy just about any sort of stupid snake oil you put out there, but Saints Hall of Famer Rickey Jackson didn't even need to wear thigh pads for crying out loud. Will someone please tell these little primma donas to suck it up? (It's bad enough that they dress in leotards already) Coach, isn't this your job?
The Makkar PPM (Pure Power Mouthguard), which retails at $2,000 according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, is touted by its designers as “more than just a mouthguard.”
By custom-fitting the mouthpiece to each player, the goal is to improve balance, strength, flexibility and oxygen flow by better aligning the lower jaw with the neck and the spine.But even some of those skeptics figured it was worth a try when Coach Sean Payton and General Manager Mickey Loomis agreed to let the company make a presentation to the players after researching the product earlier this year. And several players said they’ve been happy with the results.
One question. Was this presentation before or after the one where Rob Couhig and Kevin Houser sold everybody those Wayne Read film studio tax credits? Maybe they were on the same day the Amway guy dropped by.
Anyway, the point is the Saints are building up a lot of bad juju and the payments on that have got to come due at some point, right? Maybe not. Here's a thought. Maybe they've logged just enough agony credit over the years to weather the ever-expanding onslaught of their (and, I guess, our) own nuttiness. In other words, maybe the years and years the Saints have spent building up all that negative absurdity has somehow caused fate to implode upon itself. Like a great black hole of cosmic football improbability, the Saints have forced a reversal of nature. If this is true, then they really are on a path to end life as we know it. Which brings me to this. Will they be allowed to? Consider the following:
More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.
Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
If the creation of this Higgs boson particle is so catastrophically unlikely that it is capable of extra-temporally preventing its own occurrence, couldn't it at least be theoretically possible to conceive of the cosmic fallout brought about by a Saints Superbowl as a comparable phenomenon? If this is true, then we would expect that as the probability of the Saints destroying the universe increases, so does the countervailing likelihood that this event will have already taken steps to prevent itself from happening. And it was by this reasoning,that I had expected we would see the first manifestation of this paradox in a Saints loss to Carolina on Sunday.
But that was not to be. How was such an elegant theory overthrown? I think I know the answer to that now. What follows, then, in my opinion, for those who are willing to believe in such things, is a first-hand testament to the idea that even the strangest mysteries of fate can be overcome through the triumph of the human will.
Saints vs Panthers (First half highlights)
- Oh we've been here before, I know: It has recently been brought to my attention that my mother checks in on this site every now and then so there are two things I'd like to make clear right now. 1)I really don't say "fuck" nearly as often as it may seem. 2) I am not NOT IN ANY WAY a raging alcoholic. I am a functional alcoholic. NO WAIT, MOM, I'm kidding. I'm not at all. I'm way too old for that stuff anymore. However, I am at an age where, on the (increasingly rare) occasions when I do happen to have a few, the results are more and more humorous. And by that I mean disastrous the next morning.
Sunday was a particularly disastrous next morning. Those of you who have experienced these sorts of hangovers before know that there is a kind of staged art to recovery. Typically my challenge involves getting the headache to stop first which eventually helps the nausea to break. I accomplish this by taking 2 aspirin and holding it for as long as I can before throwing up again and then taking more aspirin if I think that I've expelled more than I've absorbed. On a good day, I can regain some semblance of functionality by 1:00 PM. This was not a good day.
By the time 2:30 rolled around, I began to wrestle against a new source of discomfort; panic. It was starting to look like we might miss kickoff. It was bad enough that I'd already missed one home game due to injury this season. If I was going to be out for a second game, let alone a game with a late afternoon start, I don't think that's something I'd ever be able to make right.
It was time to suck it up. I forced myself out of bed and into the shower. An NFL player making a game-time decision to play hurt would likely have a selection of pain killers to choose from. People like me usually have "hair of the dog". But I was still too ill to even consider more liquor. I tried to eat a slice of bread but couldn't finish more than three quarters of it. Aside from whatever aspirin still remained in my system, I was going to have to do this on my own. It was after 3 and the game had already started but I figured we could make it to the Dome by the end of the first quarter. And so we bravely shoved ourselves out the door and stumbled out after the streetcar.
MEANWHILE: As we struggled with our own meekness, the Saints D wasn't looking much better. I seem to recall the faint sound of Jim Henderson's voice keeping me vaguely aware of this.
DeAngelo Williams glides softly across the Superdome floor so as not to wake the sleeping Saints - State of Emergency: I lost my portable radio so, while at the streetcar stop, we had to follow the game via the Tweeter Tube. Interpreting a football game through sms message is an inexact activity. In between the T-P's Jeff Duncan's intermittent descriptions of the action, most of what you get is an emotional sense of what might be happening based on the clustering of curses hurled across the airwaves. Apparently it's not enough to simply scream, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING?" anymore. Sure you still do that, but now you also are required to stop, pull out your phone and type, "WTF R THEY DOIN #whodat #saints" And this is how technology saves us labor.. or something. In any event, given the high volume of "WTF"s tweeting about, things were not going well. And then I read,
WWLTV Gov. Jindal declares a state of emergency as a result of the forecasted conditions of Ida, now a Category-2 storm.
Maybe I should have just stayed in bed.
MEANWHILE: Still not good. More Twitter cursing. Something about a fumble. People going on and on about "Breesus" falling from grace. It's all very muddled.
Maybe I should have just stayed in bed - By the way, where is that freakin' streetcar? A lot of time passes and there's nothing coming down the track. My headache is gone but I'm still more than a little woozy. According to the chirping, the Saints must be down at least two touchdowns. I and many others had been expecting this to be a let down game all week. Maybe I really should have stayed in bed. We're a block away from the house. It would have made perfect sense to just go back, lay on the couch, and let the dreary day unfold. But then I had the classic alcoholic's moment of clarity. I thought, obviously what's going on here is they need us. We had to get to the Superdome before it was too late. "Let's start walking" I groaned still unable to speak clearly. And we started moving downtown on foot.
It's not a terribly long walk. Usually it takes about 45 minutes to get to the Dome from our place on foot but our weakened condition made the going rougher than it needed to be. As the body exercises, the increased blood flow reawakens the poison still within. You feel at turns euphoric, and then nauseous, and then there's a bit of a chill before you level out. The physical difficulty combined with the persistent absence of any streetcars on the line, I took as evidence that something (the Higgs boson itself, perhaps?) was working against me in this. I wasn't giving up. We were going to make it to this damn game.
We'd struggled as far as Euterpe Street. when suddenly not one but FIVE FREAKING STREETCARS IN A ROW came rumbling toward us. I knew they had bunched up like that specifically to taunt us but there wasn't any time to waste. We boarded the first of the five that had any free space with the hope that there was still time to make a difference.
MEANWHILE: More cries of distress coming from the Tweeter Tube. People are losing their shit from the sound of it. Brees throws a pick inside the Carolina 10 killing the Saints first real threat of the game.
That's 5 Ints in 3 games fro Brees, BTW - The Fool on The Hill As we ascended the eerily quiet Superdome ramp up from Poydras Street we passed an angry-looking older couple on their way back down. "17-3 Hope you have fun," the man grunted at me. But I had already made up my mind about things. "It's okay, we're gonna get 'em" Maybe I was still drunk or something but I was quite confident by this point. The Saints had to come back. It's the only way I'd be able to justify the journey.
Up, we went, almost at a run now, toward the gate when, at the top of the incline, we spotted r standing in front of Gate C looking strangely pleased with herself. In her left hand she held a plastic water bottle which she had filled with (and by this point nearly emptied of) her customary vodka, cranberry and whatever concoction. Apparently security had been a bit more on-the-ball today. "The guy told me, 'You gotta get rid of that liquor, baby' So I've been getting rid of it... into my belly" I couldn't believe it. The whole time I had been struggling against the deteriorating weather, my own physical decrepitude, and the freakin' RTA convinced I was on a mission to rescue my fading Saints, there she was just sitting outside drinking vodka.
"Dude, we gotta get in there. I think they need us."
"Eh I'm not worried."
We watched her down the rest of her drink and headed inside to put things right. - Here we come to save the day! The results were immediate. We reached our seats with less than two minutes to play in the half. No sooner than had I put my umbrella down Brees hit Colston down the right sideline for 45 yards. 3 plays later, John Carney made it an 11 point game at the half. I told all the people on the Tweeter Tube to settle the fuck down. The hard part was over. We had done our job.
I am told it's a bit of a faux-pas to write too far past the bottom of the sidebar
Which is why we're breaking this post into two parts. Second half observations will be up tomorrow.
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