Slaying the Dragon

No, the title of this post is not a euphemism for masturbation. That would be "taming the dragon." I have no interest in slaying my dragon. That would hurt.

Prior to and following the game against the Chargers on Christmas Eve, I gibbered like a fool on peyote about new worlds and made the courageous argument that the world was, in fact, round, thus probably incurring the wrath of the Vatican, but what the hell, I have The Great Willie Young by my side and his priests drink blood and eat their own dead so I’m not afraid. Yes, dudes and lady dudes, I have a feeling that it’s going to be that kind of a post so come, swallow these weird berries with me and let’s take a fantastic voyage into the delicate corners of our souls where we nurture our wildest dreams and believe in a thing called love.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah . . . anyway, I spent way too much time blathering about new worlds which means that this is where my mind still lives and as extended metaphors go, stretching one out over the course of a full week may seem preposterous but if it does then you probably haven’t been reading for very long because brother, I can drag out a metaphor over the course of a full year, or two, or three or however fucking long I’ve been writing about the Lions for Armchair Linebacker. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been pretty direct and to the point (well, as direct and to the point as I can be and for me that means that I have kept my posts under a billion words) and that’s probably served me well in terms of keeping people’s attention but I’m in a mood, and this mood means that I am going to be rambling and strange and if you’re new, well, this is where the madness lies, brother. (No, I don’t know why I’m talking like Hulk Hogan on mescaline, but what the hell . . .)

The truth is, I think, is that I am still kind of in a dazed, dreamy state of mind following the Lions triumphant first steps on the beach of this new world, and this state of mind is conducive to outright goofiness. I would ask forgiveness, but nobody needs to ask forgiveness for how they’re feeling right now. We’re in a festive mood as a people. There are half naked freaks cavorting on the sands, pure animal lust in their eyes and wild, inhuman joy in their bursting hearts. Ernie Sims’ monkey is playing the banjo from his perch in a palm tree, dudes are open mouthed kissing one another and somewhere I think Roary is stoned in the midst of a sea of beach grass, being attended to by his own personal harem. We’re all in a celebratory mood, a blissful mood, a mood without end or care, a mood in which time seems to have stopped and the natural order of things has yet to be written, for this is the new world, not the old, and everything and anything is possible.

I am being ridiculous, but so what? Somewhere beyond this beach, we know that there are savage tribes waiting to scalp us and gnaw on our bones, but that can wait a while. For now we just want to . . . wait, what’s that? It’s time to start exploring this new world? Well, okay then. Somebody make sure Roary can walk while I try to coax Ernie Sims’ monkey out of that tree without him pelting me with coconuts and feces.

Yes, as fun as this past week has been as a Lions fan, we can’t stop here. We can’t just lounge around like shiftless monkeys, hooting and masturbating like animals. Like I said, there are people out to get us and they are vicious bastards and I, for one, haven’t come all this way just to see my scalp tied to the belt of some heathen while a bunch of his tribesmen get high on the spirits and play my skull like a fucking bongo drum. No, I intend to live in this new world for a long time and if that means I must make war, then so be it.

Besides, I can hear dragons screeching in the distance and although I will admit that may be the drugs talking, I can see them taking shape on the horizon, all decked out in ugly ass green and yellow, like a bumblebee just jizzed on Oscar the Grouch. And as I see them taking shape, I remember why we came here in the first place and suddenly my head is clear and goddammit, my dudes and lady dudes, it’s time to kill us some fucking dragons.

Indeed. It’s been 20 years since our team last beat those despicable Packers in Green Bay, on the frozen, Chris Berman semen encrusted tundra of Lambeau Field. Too goddamn long. And while some would say this game is essentially meaningless, and that only the upcoming playoffs matter, those people forget that we have spent those twenty years getting cornholed by that terrible dragon and now that we have a sword in our hand, it’s time for some fucking retribution.

I don’t care that the Packers won’t be taking this game as seriously as we probably will. I don’t care who plays. I don’t care if it’s Aaron Rodgers’ meth-head face, the same one that gives poor Raven Mack flashbacks to the fool who sullied his sister and almost destroyed her, or if it’s the sacrificial lamb named Matt Flynn playing quarterback, I want to beat these sons of bitches and I want to beat them badly. This is not about sending a message – after all, whatever message we can possibly send will be immediately dismissed as meaningless given the circumstances of the game, much like the Lions take no prisoners shitkicking of the Patriots back in August. No, this game is about slaying dragons, about our own pride, our own hearts and souls. We have come a long way, and that old world is dead and gone, but we still have our memories, and in this new world, I will not sit back and cower in the face of the dragon that is that memory.

There is nothing substantive about this preview. There are too many moving parts, too many variables, too many questions about who is or isn’t going to play, to be able to forecast this game with any sort of accuracy or intelligence. Instead, there is only the beating of my heart and the thunder of my soul, the flapping of dragon’s wings and the sword in my hand. This game is a reckoning, without meaning other than as a facing down of wounded memories, of days when we sobbed in dark corners and made love to shame. It’s not even about killing the beast, although that would be nice, so much as it's about just standing there and fighting, teeth bared, covered with blood, laughing at the sheer thunderous glory of battle under the sun of this new world, where nothing is written and everything is ahead of us, soaring into a horizon that never ends.

I’m hungry for this, for victory, for the obliteration of a dragon which has deviled our souls for far too long. Once again, this isn’t about the past, but about the here and the now, about standing up for ourselves in a new world so that it doesn’t become the old world. This is not a statement to the rest of the world, or even to the dragon, but a statement made to our own hearts, to a place where only we can hear, only we can understand and only we can cherish.

I actually anticipated that this post would be longer, a rambling, shambling mess devoid of a point, filled with nonsensical gibberish and to an extent, I suppose that is has been at that, but in another sense, I think that I surprise even myself because I now see the world laid out before me and I am eager to march into these savage jungles and I am eager to war with dragons and feast on their black hearts so that mine may live and at the heart of all this dumb gibberish is a certain direct sharpness, a definitive belief in this journey we are on and for as much as I promised digression and madness, it is a calm sort of madness, digression with purpose, and in that I feel as if I am mirroring my beloved Lions. It no longer takes a million weary words or a million broken plays and broken hearts to try to explain where we’ve been and where we’re going. There is only this, the celebration of the here, the now. It is not confused nor is it afraid. It is a lion, hunting in the jungle, chasing down dragons and ripping out their throats. It is the fevered hunt of the new world, the explosive release of the soul’s most long cherished and hidden dreams, and in this hunt, in this release, details don’t matter and these are all just words and inside of them lives this one fundamental truth: anything and everything is possible and in this world, even dragons can die, and lions can rule the earth and, as a fan, that’s all I ever wanted.

Lions win.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 28, Packers 24

We Made It

I was going to put this off until Monday because it’s Christmas Eve and all that, and so I posted that little thing below as a shitty little placeholder until then, but . . . I lied. I’m just too happy to not write about this. I’m hanging around twitter and answering e-mails and talking about the game a bit anyway, so I figured hey, why not? After all, I think we need to keep our priorities in perspective here. A Lions victory to clinch a playoff spot and their first ten win season since before the birth of Jesus (the non-Stafford Jesus that is) takes precedence over the celebration of the birth of some kid in an outhouse any day, right? (Ducks thunderbolts)

Right. And so . . . here we are. Take a deep breath and just luxuriate in it. Feel this moment. Savor it. We are survivors, every one of us and by God, we have earned this, this new world of the spirit, this haven for our souls.

It’s impossible to overstate how fucking crazy it is that only three years ago we were lamenting 0-16 and now here we are, at 10-5, ready for the playoffs to start, knowing that we belong. We didn’t back into this thing. We didn’t fall backwards into this new world. No. We grabbed it by the fucking throat, looked it right in the eyes, smiled and said “Here we are and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The Chargers wobbled into our path, into our final steps, and they were blown into dust and now here we are. Here we are.

The way the whole thing played out was enough to make a man believe in Fate – or at least something like it. I have gibbered on about Fate so many times here that it is almost a running joke. But goddammit, this was just so . . . perfect. This was the biggest game for the Lions since the Pontius Pilate administration, the biggest moment for us as fans maybe ever. Given what we’ve been through and where we are right now, I don’t think that’s all that hyperbolic a statement. On the brink of that new world I ranted and raved about in the preview piece, on the brink of something we’d only dared to whisper about in our own hearts for so long, the Lions not only rose to the occasion, they owned it. This was their best game of the season, top to bottom, start to finish, back to front, head to toe, ass to mouth, soup to nuts . . . whatever ridiculous way you want to put it. In the one moment where we needed this team to step up, they exploded like a supernova, obliterating that old flat world and shining down on that brave new round world of our dreams. This is serendipity. This is salvation. This is, most importantly of all, reality.

Yesterday is just a word. The past belongs to someone else, to haunted people who don’t live here anymore. The future is limitless and the present is standing on a sandy beach, looking out over a new world filled with promise and possibility. There are no guarantees but that doesn’t matter. We made it. We fucking made it, and here, in this new world, is where we’ll live or die. We are not beholden to the rules of that old world, to its restraints, its vile chains tethering us to a past we never wanted. Not anymore. We’re free. And that’s all that matters.

Matthew Stafford took yet another leap today. He was magnificent, and it’s tempting for me to go completely crazy here and start talking about the symbolism of our savior rising to glory on Christmas Eve but that would get unseemly in a hurry. Then again, I guess I kinda just did, didn’t I? Oh well, that’s okay because today is a day to get wild, to get hyperbolic and stupid, drunk on the sheer wondrous joy of this moment. I am, of course, getting ridiculous, but so what? I’ve earned it. We’ve all earned it.

There is moment after moment I could point to from this game, but that would quickly degenerate into a series of “Hey, did you see that? How about that???” Then again, maybe that’s okay. Like I said, we deserve to luxuriate in this, in the beautiful little details that made this new world possible. I think my favorite moment actually came on a play that didn’t work, when Stafford spun away from a Charger pass rusher, and heaved it deep into the endzone where St. Calvin soared like a beautiful angel, to a place only he can go, and he grabbed an impossible pass and then came down with it only for one of the zillion Chargers draped over him to knock it away at the last second. It didn’t work, but goddammit, it was beautiful. It literally took my breath away. That may sound ridiculous, but . . . Jesus, what a throw and what an inhuman effort of sublime beauty by St. Calvin. Even though it ended up a mere incompletion, I knew that Stafford had risen to another level and that everything would be okay.

The crowd was alive and electric from start to finish, a great and unstoppable current ripping through them, voicing the collective will of millions of Lions fans watching all over the world. This felt like something inexorable, something unstoppable, a wave that has built and built and built and which was going to carry us to the new world no matter what happened. This was our time – this is our time – and everything else was – and is – irrelevant.

There is nothing to complain about today. Nothing. There is just joy and happiness and for once I don’t feel like a crusty bastard, an acid tongued dragon from hell, breathing fire. I just feel like a dumb, happy kid on Christmas and the Lions did that. The Lions!

This is the new world and my eyes are wide and right now everything is just . . . beautiful. And this is how the story starts and how the old one fades into oblivion. We made it. We fucking made it.

Welcome To The New World

More on Monday. For now, feel free to celebrate in the comments.

The World Is Round

I have consciously never used images from the Lion King because let's face it, that shit is corny as hell, but I don't care. I've been saving this one for just the perfect time and I'll never do it again.

On Saturday, Christmas Eve, the Lions have a chance to not only clinch a playoff spot for the first time this century, but they also have a chance to win 10 games for the first time since people thought the world was flat. Naturally, this is an exciting time. These Lions are an imperfect team, but at this point I don’t really care. They are a fun team, led by a 23 year old wunderkind fighter pilot who spends his offseasons hunting T-Rex’s and crushing ass and his onseasons (That’s right, I’m making up a word. If “offseason” is a valid word then logically “onseason” should also be a word. Don’t argue with me, I’m a very cunning linguist.) leading epic comebacks and throwing laser beams to an angel from heaven by the name of St. Calvin. The team is young, dumb and full of cum, a goddamn wild bunch that has spent as much time running from the law this season as they have spent running for touchdowns. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me at this point if a game ended in a goddamn Wild West shootout. And I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that literally, with Ndamukong Suh charging down the field with a fucking shotgun and Jim Schwartz galloping down the sidelines on a horse, firing an old six shooter at the other team’s coach. This is not a smart, disciplined team. But so what? Ain’t it fun?

Indeed. And the difference between that and the wastelands of 0-16 cannot be overstated. It is a chasm so vast, so absurd, that it can’t even be properly comprehended by the human mind. Instead, all we can do is sit here, dumb smiles on our faces, while we watch the sun rise on a new world, a world in which the Lions are not only a playoff team but a team with double digit wins, a world which is no longer flat but round and beautiful, which seems to stretch forever and in which the possibilities are endless.

Of course, we’re still standing on the edge of that brave new world, our arms and hearts and minds and souls stretching towards an infinity of the spirit, a dream world made real, and in order to truly get there, to be able to not only reach for it but to hold it on our arms once and for all, we need to watch our Lions take out the San Diego Chargers. And this makes the San Diego Chargers our enemies. And our enemies deserve to rot in hell.

The Chargers are a weird team, a team that always seems like it should be better than they are. Hell, last year they had the number one ranked offense and the number one ranked defense in the entire NFL and they somehow managed to miss the playoffs. That is fucking absurd. And yet, that is an anecdote that will forever sum up the San Diego Chargers under head coach Norv Turner. I won’t even wonder how in the hell something like that could happen because honestly, I already answered it. Norv Turner. He is a hysterically awful coach, a complete boob who parlayed his proximity to Emmitt Smith and a Dallas offensive line that could block out not only the sun but the entire Milky Way (somewhere, Nate Newton’s head snapped around like an animal when he heard the phrase “Milky Way”. Relax, dude, I’m talking about the universe, not the candy bar.) into various head coaching jobs which have all ended the same way – in tears and regret, with livid fans threatening to burn down his house and with Norv standing, slackjawed and ridiculous, his shit all in a box, wondering where it all went wrong again.

This is the enemy. Both for us this week and for the Chargers, well, every week. They are like an army that should be good but is plagued by an incompetent general. Norv Turner is basically George McClellan (History, what up?) only there’s no Lincoln around in San Diego with the balls to fire him and replace him with a freewheeling drunk like U.S. Grant. (Who would be our U.S. Grant in this scenario? Les Miles? Barry Switzer’s corpse?) This means that when things are most tense, which they assuredly will be this week, ol’ Norv gets the sweats and then pisses himself while his soldiers shake their heads in disgust and prepare for their inevitable deaths.

To make matters worse for the Chargers, Norv’s Captain, the one who relays all of his orders to the rank and file, the one who coordinates the actual attack on the battlefield, is a goddamn frat boy stereotype named Philip Rivers, who’s basically a bad guy from Animal House brought to life. Well, you’ve all seen Animal House, right? The Wild Bunch Delta house ends up humiliating and destroying the uptight Philip Rivers types and then I’m assuming they went on to win the school’s intramural Super Bowl. (A deleted scene, I’m sure.)

The point is this: the Chargers are a team hilariously devoid of leadership that always – always – cracks under pressure. They’ve done it for years now. That’s why I’m not too worried about all the rumblings about the Chargers playing their best ball of the year the past couple of weeks. If anything, that means that they are just primed for another epic fuckup. People talk about the Lions being the “Lions” and all that bullshit has meant over the years, but the Chargers are the “Chargers” and if any of their fans are reading this, then they know what that means, and they know, deep down, that I am right and that their team is forever doomed to wander a flat, lifeless world while we embrace a world that is round. That is the price you pay for not having big, swinging Abe Lincoln balls.

Am I worried about this game? Of course I am, but that has less to do with the Chargers and more to do with the precipice we find ourselves leaning over, eyes wide, awed as we stare down the dawn of a new world. I’m nervous, but it’s more of an excited kind of nervous if that makes any sense. Everything’s all set and now we just need to finish the damn journey.

There is a part of me that is screaming GO BACK YOU FOOL YOU’RE ONLY GOING TO FALL OFF THE EDGE OF THIS FLAT WORLD AND THEN YOU’LL BE DEAD AND WHO WILL WRITE NONSENSICAL GIBBERISH ABOUT THE LIONS THEN? But this is where I tell that part of me to shut the hell up because Fear is just a word and even if I did die, my spirit is powerful enough that it would continue to write nonsensical gibberish long after my body went up in white hot flames. But I don’t think that I’ll die. Not this time.

This team is not perfect and this new world isn’t perfect either. But so what? It’s a real world, round and beautiful and even its flaws are better than the best parts of that stale, flat world we’re about to leave behind. The losses somehow hurt more now. They hurt like hell. But that’s okay because they actually mean something. But the wins . . . oh God, the wins. They are so much sweeter in the new world because, like the losses, they actually mean something now. This world is round and it seems like it’s endless. It goes on forever and forever and in this world anything and everything feels possible. I’m sure that we might lose some good people along the way, intrepid explorers who won’t be able to survive the hurts of the new world, but there is freedom in that, the freedom to live and to die in a world filled with meaning, the freedom to run to the ends of the earth and then to keep running because it never ends. It never ends.

I am getting philosophical and weird now, which shouldn’t surprise you, but I won’t apologize because we are on the edge of something miraculous, on the edge of a world that seemed like little more than a fantasy only a few short years ago. We have come far – so goddamn far – and we’ve been bruised and bloodied along the way, but finally here we are, staring at a world that is alive with the promise of possibility. And really, that’s all we’ve ever asked – that we get the chance to live as free men, in that world of possibility. It does not promise salvation, only the opportunity to create a world of our own salvation, and for our souls, wounded and beleaguered as they’ve been, perhaps that is the most poignant and meaningful kind of salvation there is: a salvation that is uniquely our own, one that we have created and fashioned and shaped, and which lives in our hearts and which no one can take away from us.

I have talked a lot lately about overcoming the past, or at least its hold on us, and the only way we’ll finally be able to honestly do that is if we can take that final step, that last, miraculous step from this dull, flat world into that new, exciting round world that is alive with possibility. The San Diego Chargers are the only thing, the last thing, standing in our way, and they have a poisoned core, fatally weak and if we honestly deserve to take that final step, then we need to drive our righteous swords deep into that core and then watch the Chargers bleed out, just like they always do, as we take that final step. And when we do, there will be nothing in our way, only a world without end, a round world open to our hearts, our mind and our souls, waiting for us to run wild and free, and in that world, we can run forever and nothing can stop us except ourselves.

Lions win.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 28, Chargers 24

There is Thunder in our Hearts

Okay . . . okay, there is a good chance that this will not be coherent or even readable. If I were writing this down with pen and paper, it wouldn’t even be legible. There just would a bunch of scribbled nonsense, a bunch of exclamation points and a horrible drawing of me proposing to Calvin Johnson. I’m writing this now even though my fingers are still shaking from the adrenaline and this is probably a mistake since there is no possible way that I can organize my thoughts in any sort of constructive manner but HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS DID YOU FUCKING SEE THAT???

I have people like my boy Nick tweeting me right now telling me that he would have kissed me on the mouth if I would have been in his living room. I’m pretty sure Charles aka AdamantiumAC is going to end up in jail tonight after the police catch up with him naked, prancing through the streets and Big Al probably had to stick a knife in his toaster in order to jump start his heart. I’ve been ranting and raving about feeling like Jason Statham in Crank and about gnawing on the adrenal gland of cheetahs and The Great Willie Young’s name has been flying around and there is thunder in our fucking hearts, and . . . and . . .

Okay. I’m going to try my best to calm down. It’s probably not happening, but I’ll try. For most of this game I had a whole narrative shaped and as pissed off and whipped as I felt, it would have been easy to write because there was no ambiguity involved. But then things changed and now I don’t know what to write other than wild, raving gibberish. Actually to say that things changed is a ridiculous understatement, a phrase that is essentially devoid of meaning when placed up against the totality of what actually happened. How do you put something like what went down in perspective? Well, you don’t. Instead you just cheer like a goddamn lunatic and you point like a deranged ape and gibber things like “Hey, did you see that???” My eyes look like a cokehead’s right now.

My good pal UpHere summed things up about as well as anybody could right now, I think, when he said “The OLD Lions would have lost on a record setting field goal.” And he’s right. They would have. But these Lions didn’t. Ndamukong Suh – and how appropriate is that – rose from the earth and swallowed up the Raiders last desperate prayer and before that the Lions did what no other team has done in NFL history, scrambling back from two touchdowns down for the fourth time this season to win the game. The old Lions are dead, and the past can go fuck itself.

Are there things to complain about, to worry about going forward? Of course. But only a monstrous ogre would discuss such things right now. I’m still glowing like a goddamn nuclear firework and any negativity I felt during that game has been utterly obliterated.

I am a man who trades in symbolism, as you all well know, and so the way that game ended felt extra special to me. I am beyond being able to explain it right now, and while that may disappoint some of you, I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. I mean, I could try, but I’d quickly degenerate into hoots and grunts as my brain tried in vain to save itself from climbing out of my head and soaring into the sun playing the air guitar and laughing like a damn fool.

Beyond all explanation, here’s all that matters: the Lions are now 9-5, we are mere inches away from a world we’d only dared to whisper about for so, so long, and the world feels like one big Broadway musical, insane and filled with bright colors and I’m pretty sure I just saw someone fly by on a giant guide wire, although that may have just been St. Calvin soaring through on his way back to his house in heaven.

I’m incapable of making sense, of penetrating beneath this perfect surface, and you know what? That’s alright. Sometimes the deeper story is the surface story. And I think this is one of those times. I spent all week gibbering on about letting go of the pathos of the past and now here I am, incapable of doing anything other than basking in the pure primal joy of the present. And that’s just beautiful, you know? Just . . . beautiful.

This is shorter than what I normally write, and I hope you don’t mind, but my heart is a supernova, burning bright and traveling through the universe at the speed of light and in the truth of that, everything else falls by the wayside and words are meaningless and forgettable and the only thing that matters is that right now I feel like I could fly and that, for a single precious, wonderful moment the world feels . . . perfect.