That's an oyster shooter. It's one freshly shucked bivalve at the bottom of a horrid mixture of cocktail sauce and vodka. As you can see by the clarity here, we're dealing with a high vodka-to-sauce ratio, but, believe me, when you down this thing, you are acutely aware of the horseradish.
Because ingesting these demands a certain set of athletic skills, an annual oyster shooter is an excellent metric for determining one's retention of these skills. The textural quality of the oyster combines with the pepper of the horseradish sauce to delay the subject's normal tendency to swallow the vodka quickly. Instead, one tends to hold the mixture in one's mouth for just a second longer. Long enough to make the exercise a significant challenge to one's command of one's gag reflex. But even if the challenger succeeds here, next comes the pressure to repeat that performance, once... perhaps twice, before moving on to ostensibly gentler beverages. The catch is, after the oyster shooter hurdle has been cleared, the ostensibly gentler beverages tend to come in greater numbers and at shorter intervals than they otherwise would. And so what was a test of skill becomes a matter of endurance.
The final and toughest leg of the annual oyster shooter assessment comes the next morning when we measure the competitors' recovery time. Me, well I'm in my mid-thirties, a fact that was all too much in evidence on Saturday morning.
I'll just gloss over the part where I describe my hangover to you this time. I know you've read enough of those. There was some gagging and dizziness. And, of course, there was the crushing headache that renders one barely capable of the most rudimentary interpersonal communication. Sure I could listen to people talking to me to a point. But most of my concentration would be taken up by sorely wishing they would just stop talking. Naturally, I had to work Saturday.
I've learned, over the years, how to make a go of it while functioning at less that 100 percent. Saturday, as has been noted elsewhere, was kind of cold and wet. Wet and cold everywhere went and all over everything; on your clothes, in your shoes, under your skin. When quitting time came around all I wanted to do was find someplace warm to hide until the rest of the cold wet hangover went away. But nothing is so easy.
I'm fortunate enough to live 1.6 miles from my job at present. According to Google, my commute should take about 5 minutes. I always end up stopping for coffee on the way in and groceries on the way home so I've never really verified this. I tried to Saturday afternoon but got caught up in the massive flooding. Unable to cross Louisiana Avenue at St. Charles, I turned on to Foucher Street, which I soon discovered was itself a sort peninsula dead-ending at Lake Carondelet. (No, not the Carondelet Canal) There I was. Trapped by the rising waters with only a Toyota Tercel for shelter and an increasingly hysterical Twittersphere to keep me company. Cold. Wet. Hungover. Miserable.
After a thankfully uneventful hurricane season, this has been an uncharacteristically stormy Autumn in New Orleans beginning with the very first football game of the season. About braving the monsoon in progress during that event, I wrote,
Luckily, I remembered that the Louisiana Superdome has, on occasion, been put to use as a storm shelter.
I thought about this as I sat trapped in my car by another flood and wondered if I should start swimming to the Superdome then. After all, the Saints themselves had already evacuated to Atlanta.
Saints Vs Falcons
- Sibling Rivalry The Saints and the Falcons arrived in the NFL at roughly the same time int the mid-sixties and the teams, like the Southern cities they represent, became fast rivals. Like a lot of sports rivalries, the Saints and Falcons always play each other close, tend to be in each others' way at exactly the right times, and unusual things happen when they play each other. But unlike a lot of typical rivalries, it would be inaccurate to say that the teams and their fan bases hate each other. In fact, Saints-Falcons is best described as sibling rivalry.
Historically, the South's two best known cities have often compared themselves with one another each proud of the ways in which it isn't like the other. Atlanta is more prosperous. New Orleans is more fun. But also each is a little jealous of the things its rival has that it doesn't. But where there is jealousy there isn't much hostility. Saints fans don't really hate the Falcons, they just really really want to beat them.
Furthermore, a lot of New Orleanians have family who live in Atlanta. That was true before the Federal Flood, but after that event lot of New Orleanians ended up in Atlanta. Many are still there now. This commerce between the two cities only strengthens the familial relationship. For a time during the early 2000s, the teams' respective starting quarterbacks were cousins. Most fans thought this only natural.
The two annual games between these teams typically carry the strongest numbers of fans traveling with the team to each of the cities. Saints fans and Falcons fans know each other. Visiting Falcons fans hanging out in and around the Superdome are typically good humored, and fun to tease and tailgate with. Saints fans visiting the Georgia Dome, well, they know how to put on a show too.
Most people accross the country don't know it but Saints-Falcons is one of the NFL's best rivalries. Not because of the win-loss records of the mostly mediocre teams involved, but because the fans know how to make it fun. Simply put, Saints and Falcons fans do things right. Don't get me wrong, though. We always want to beat those people. But we don't hate them like we do, say, Bucs fans. And Atlanta, for all its faults, still isn't Dallas (more on that in a bit). - Saints: So very tired It's difficult to pick out in the fog of war so I'm not sure if the burden of going undefeated is getting to them or the Saints are just reeling from their numerous injuries after 13 games. Either way, they've looked increasingly tired and beat up over past few weeks. I know that this happens to every team but the Saints had 19 people on the injured list last week, fer Chrissakes. It's nice that they've clinched a bye because they'll need it but I'm starting to agree with the commentators urging them to rest people in the closing weeks should they clinch homefield. Going undefeated is kind of gay anyway. Do you really want to wake up in 20 years to see Jeremey Shockey and Reggie Bush popping the champagne in a room with the ashes of Mercury Morris sitting on the bar? Didn't think so.
Even Coach Soupy has developed a bad case of headphone-neck at this point. The punchline is, the NFL is seriously considering expanding the regular season in the future. - Out of gas and out of ideas too It could be a function of how tired and beat up they are, or it could be the overcaution of playing an opponent for the second time, but the Saints seemed out of ideas on offense. Unwilling, or unable, to run the ball as effectively as they had earlier, the Saints' offense has become badly unbalanced toward the pass. Against Atlanta the Saints attempted 40 passes vs on 26 runs. Of those 26 runs, one was a reverse and two were scrambles by the quarterback. Of those 40 passes, something like fifty million were screen passes. The Saints looked like a cut boxer just trying to duck and jab his way to the end of the round.
It's like the playing the whole game on your back foot - Atlanta out of ideas too While the Saints displayed a lack of confidence in their regular offense through over reliance on the screen pass, the Falcons were arguably even worse having to resort to bullshit high school plays. In the first quarter, they send Eric Weems on an end around play for 31 yards. The Saints' defense should be ashamed of themselves for giving up such a big play on high school bullshit this late in the season. But the Falcons should be even more ashamed for trying more high school bullshit late in the game. When Weems was stuffed for -12 yards on a "Wildcat" play in the fourth quarter, the game was very nearly clinched for New Orleans.
Mike Smith is pissed! The dude could have used an oyster shooter - Goddammit Couhig Garrett Hartley missed a crucial extra point attempt. As we explained last week, we blame Mayoral candidate Rob Couhig for this. Related note: Menckles has assigned Hartley the nickname, "Scooter." I'm not sure why. But I like it anyway.
- Hold on to your grandmas So Coach Soupy Les-ed out on us for a minute there in the 4th quarter. We know he's prone to to doing this. Sean Payton has hurt the Saints in the past with his bizarre affinity for unnecessary trick plays in clutch situations where simplicity would suffice. Most famously, Payton "tried to kill (one fan's) grandma!" by running an ill-advised reverse late in a pivotal game against Tampa in 2007 (see here for full story). On Sunday, Payton was out for granny blood again. The Saints lined up for a very makeable field goal which would have extended their 3 point lead to 6 with only a few minutes left to play. Instead Payton went for the fake. Mark Brunell rolled out and threw an incomplete pass giving the Falcons one more chance at life. We have no idea what could have been going through Soupy's head at the time, although we imagine it's something very like what Wang has illustrated for us here. Go click that link now. Really, you'll like it. I'll wait.
Here's the thing, though. I should be pissed about that but, I just... it doesn't seem important. At some point this year (I think is was during the Dolphins game) I just stopped worrying. I know I wasn't worried when the Saints were down to Carolina at halftime. The Washington game, I thought was probably lost at one point but so did everybody and I still don't think I can say it worried me. This season has just been too ridiculous to get upset about anymore. Maybe the Saints can go undefeated, maybe they'll win the Superbowl. Maybe they'll get blown out by Minnesota in the playoffs. That last scenario has historical precedent and would certainly make the most sense. But regardless, we'll all remember this fondly no matter how it works out. So I'm not worried. But that doesn't mean I don't care. There's plenty reason to stay fired up which I'll try to explain in the next item. - This week's media complaint: Okay this actually comes to us from Oyster who is uncomfortable with aspects of that Wright Thompson ESPN piece we linked to a few days ago. You should read the YRHT post because 1) Oyster is a better writer than I am and 2) It's partially about me which is nice. But, in the meantime, allow me to summarize and respond to his points.
Oyster, quite rightly, points out that Thompson spends the bulk of his time on this assignment seeing New Orleans through the eyes of its social and economic elite. Thompson follows Rita Leblanc around as she attends parties at the homes of Uptown swells, introduces him to John Besh and James Carville, and hands him the owner's perspective on things. In fact, outside of a trip to Besh's restaurant and to Galatoire's, Thompson doesn't appear to get out of Uptown until he stops in Manchac on the way out of town. (There is a visit to Carver High School which looks more like a gratuitous prop given the context of the article.) In a comment below Oyster's post, Mominem says, "It sounded to me like he had a date with Rita LeBlanc" and that's the impression that I had as well. I assumed that Thompson's assignment was to follow Rita around town and soak up the atmosphere from her side. Given this, it's unsurprising that the article would reflect this.
I watched the Redskins game over at r's place in Faubourg St. John. My parents are renting an apartment on Cambronne street in North Carrollton. After the Saints won that game, we could hear people shouting all up and down Maurepas street. Dad called and told me that where they were, the whole neighborhood came out onto their porches and broke into spontaneous Who Datting. Thompson could have spent time in any of the city's more working class neighborhoods and come away with the same sense of the "Soul of the City" that he writes about. But he didn't. He hung around with Rita LeBlanc and her friends. That can't be helped.
I would suggest that Oyster's strongest beef with the piece is in fact more with Rita than it is with Thompson who merely transmits her perspective. It must be said, then, that Rita gets two things horribly wrong here.
Rita's worst offense is her unsurprisingly sunny characterization of her grandfather's attempt to move the team out of New Orleans both before and during the crisis event. Oyster rips Rita's lie to shreds below.Fact check: it wasn't just in the "confusing months after Katrina" that people were loathing Benson. They "felt that he wanted to move the team" for most of 2005, and with good reason. In 2004, Benson was talking about some sort of far-flung (and immensely generous) "permanent solution" between the team and the state. Then, over the next year, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (rightfully) played hardball with him as he enjoyed "perhaps the sweetest lease deal in all of football".
To gain leverage for his profitable team during these negotiations, Tom Benson broke off talks with the state during the spring of 2005. That summer Saints chatter was dominated by speculation about whether (or when) the Saints would move to another city.
The main point is that Saints fans were disgusted with Benson's conduct throughout the year prior to the storm/ff, not just during the "confusing" months after it. He has always viewed this team from a business perspective. It was an asset he owned that accrued value because of loyal Saints fans, subsidies from the state of Louisiana, and growth in the NFL brand, among other things. Then, after the storm, Benson's assholery intensified.
I snipped some of Oyster's corroborating quotations from that. You'll want to read his whole post anyway.
Rita's next error is in attributing the deep bond which exists between the Saints and the city to the Federal Flood experience. Here's Oyster:Not saying that the past few years haven't been special, but do longtime Saints fans agree with the claim that the team wasn't woven into the "fabric of the town" until Benson "decided" (read: was pressured by the NFL) to stay? Really? Pity that Buddy D wasn't around when the Saints finally "transcended" into something larger than just a popular home sports team.
Earlier this season, I called out the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan for a similar attribution of Saints fans' excitement to the fact that the Patriots were in town. It's difficult for the rest of the country to relate to the way Saints football is one with the culture in New Orleans. Attributing the phenomenon to the flood does nothing to demystify it for them.
Oyster also make some minor but nonetheless valid points about Thompson's decision to highlight newcommers like Reggie Bush, Sean Payton, and Carville as exemplars of the rebuilding "soul of the city" and the further pimping of Chris Rose's embarrassing work. But I think the real damning bit about the article comes from Rita LeBlanc's lies.
Still, despite all of the above, I think this article does more good than harm and I'll tell you why. Next week, I'm going to Baltimore to visit the in-laws for Christmas. I expect to be asked about the Saints while I'm there and if I can point to Wright Thompson's article to help explain how much this stuff means to us then I'm going to do it.
I know that Thompson is telling his story through the eyes of the elites but the folks I'm going to be visiting with don't know that. Besides, if Americans can't understand our football, who are they to understand our politics anyway? We know who these Uptown assholes are. We know where they live. We'll deal with that later. We've got a whole Mayoral election coming up with which to fight that shit out. We'll do that ourselves. Sinn Fein, you know.
Of course, I don't really expect the in-laws to "get it" the way we get it. All I need them to understand is that New Orleans' relationship with its football team is unique. That we have something they don't have and can't have. That we are New Orleans and that most other places are Dallas. And I think that Thompson communicates this better than any nationally based writer has so far.I think about all I've seen -- in the past week, in the years before -- and about the next game in the Dome. The Cowboys are coming to town. Some marketing guy decided in the '70s that they should be America's Team. It stuck, because they were good and because Dallas represented everything America thought about itself: big, consuming, flashy, bragging, unbeatable.
When I drive into Dallas, I see a place sprawling and bland, loops and rings of interstate and, somewhere over the horizon, a stadium representing a just-gone era of bloat and decay … scoreboard so big it interferes with the game … $60 pizzas. It looks new but is dead inside. In contrast, there is the drive out of New Orleans, through a city still battered, past the exits for the Vieux Carre and Uptown, past the Huey Long, which runs narrow and high out to the leaning oyster and chicken shack. All told, this is a city with the opposite calculus of Dallas: It is decayed on the outside, but inside there is life. Here is a citizenry that believes in the power of the underdog. New Orleanians fell first and see something the rest of America is blind to right now: a way back into the light.
