Zack Follett, China Dolls, The Devil, Me And You

Can he play linebacker?

So the big news this week is that Zack Follett is catching a shitload of heat for calling Matthew Stafford a “China Doll”, which, uh, okay. Basically, this a bunch of dumb bullshit masquerading as a story, much like most sports news, but there’s nothing else going on so, hey, fuck it, guess what we’re gonna talk about? Indeed.

Let’s start with Follett. Zack Follett is beloved by Lions fans, mostly because he has mastered the art of playing Wild And Crazy Guy in front of a camera. Everyone loves the pro athlete who appears to be half insane. I’m no exception. It’s a nice antidote to the antiseptic, scrubbed vanilla bullshit we get from most athletes. Hey, the dude plays with real life lions and shops for tampons for his opponents while wearing his helmet and an outfit that makes him look like he’s going to pass out on the beach after spending the day drinking Nightrain, ogling girls in bikinis and picking through the trash bins for empty cans that he can sell for more Nightrain money. I’m not going to begrudge that dude the right to speak his mind. I mean, we should be encouraging that shit, you know? So, he might say something dumb every once in a while. Big deal. That’s part of the package. I can handle that.

However, dumb is dumb and when you say something dumb you have to be prepared for people to say “Hey yo, bro, that was pretty fuckin’ dumb.” And then that should be the end of it, we can all move on with our lives and drink Nightrain on the beach like gentlemen and lady gentlemen. But of course, because the world is ridiculous and dumb and we are all ravenous and degenerate vampire cannibals, that isn’t the end. No. Instead, everyone has to overreact and condemn Zack Follett to hell for jokingly poking at the beat down shape his quarterback is in and then, naturally, Zack Follett has to get the crazy eyes and start shouting about the devil because this is just the way things are. After all, we do live in strange and terrible times.

It’s one thing to tell Zack Follett that he’s dumb. It’s another to get all hysterical and to start braying about how this is an affront to team unity and that Matthew Stafford is probably laying in a hospital bed weeping right now because of this vile betrayal. This is the sports equivalent to the shrieking banshee wail of OH GOD WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? It is brain dead and dumb, worthless noise which is just farted into the atmosphere because people can’t deal with the quiet. There always has to be something going on and if there isn’t then they will just make some shit up or seize upon a tiny ember and fan that fucker until the world is ablaze. This is a textbook example of that.

I won’t name names because, frankly, who gives a shit? Everyone is guilty of this to some degree. Even me. When I heard about this story on twitter, I retweeted the hell out of it. Hey everybody, did you hear what Zack Follett just said??? Yeah. And now here I am writing about it, wringing the neck of this decaying corpse and riding it straight to hell along with everybody else. There is no dignity or decency in this. It is shameful as all hell and yet, here we are.

The immediate aftermath was predictable. I basically pointed and laughed at Follett and did the online version of saying “Hey yo, bro, that was pretty fuckin’ dumb”, but a lot of people were OUTRAGED(!!!) and broke out their pitchforks, which, honestly, tends to vacillate from moment to moment between being incredibly annoying and funny as fuck. Really, it all depends on my mood. Individually, these hyper-overreactions are incredibly dumb. Collectively, they create a theater of the absurd that can be hilarious if you’re in the right frame of mind. I mean, there was one dude who flipped out and tweeted Follett directly, telling him something like “Even if it’s true that your mother slept with hundreds of dudes, you don’t call her a whore.” This was hilarious because it was so fucking dumb. The thing is, is that it makes perfect sense. I understand what the dude was getting at. Just because Stafford actually is a China Doll doesn’t mean that Follett should be saying that shit publicly. But it was just such an over the top reaction, essentially said right to the dude’s face, that it was impossible to take seriously. Which, now that I think about it, doesn’t make it that different from anything that I write.

But to hell with all that. It encapsulated this whole tragically dumb story. It was hilarious and it was absurd and it was over the top and it was unnecessary and there was an element of truth to it and it was spectacularly dumb. One minute, Zack Follett is making an off the cuff remark about his quarterback while talking about Jay Cutler – and by the way, the China Doll remark came in the midst of Follett praising Stafford – and the next minute, he’s being lectured about when it’s appropriate to call your mother a whore.

Of course, because Zack Follett is, let’s face it, kind of an idiot, albeit a loveable idiot, he then flipped out and grabbed his own flamethrower. I mean, why not? Let’s all just tumble down into hell while the devil laughs until he cries and stomps his feet and watches us burn each other to death with our own dumb stupidity. And hey, speaking of the devil , Zack Follett has a few words about that shit too:

“Last night, he’s been attacking me through lust,” Follett said. “Trying to bring girls, he knows that that is every guy’s weakness. And I prayed to God and with the power of Jesus Christ, I do no longer have that temptation through a trial God put me through. I went to bed last night not even tripping, you know what I mean, off a lust thought. Praise Jesus. Well now, Satan is like, ‘How else can I get this dude, Z? OK, work through the media.’”

Oh my Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddddddddddddddddddddd.

I feel like standing up and applauding because that is so batshit crazy. For starters, I am very – very – interested to know what prompted the first part of that story. What the fuck happened? I am having a hard time not letting my brain run wild envisioning Zack Follett fighting off hordes of painted harlots coming at him in waves while the devil marches behind them, whipping them into a frenzy of lust. And what the hell kind of trial did God put Follett through so that he is not troubled by the mere thought of a lady? Did he come to him Burning Bush style and convince Zack to turn himself into a Eunuch? I mean, what the hell happened? This is driving me insane and I am almost overloaded by the possibilities here. You damn well know that I could keep going with this and turn this into a thing, but that’s not the point of this post and so, regrettably, I have to pull myself away and get to the point of that pile of gibberish doubling as a quote, and that is that, yes, Zack Follett went nuclear and compared the media to Satan.

Now, I know I run the risk of being compared to the devil just by virtue of writing about this topic. Zack Follett has made that perfectly clear. But, hey, that’s cool. It wouldn’t be the first time that somebody called me the devil. But still, it makes me both laugh and shake my head in exasperation to stand here at the top of Idiot Mountain and to look down where I can make out the teeny tiny shape that is the China Doll comment and realize that somehow, someway, we have climbed this mountain of shit from that humble beginning and now we’re standing here gibbering about Satan and people’s mothers being whores and all manner of crazy shit. I mean, I have even seen people break down the China Doll comment and point out that “China Doll” also means an Asian prostitute. So, now we have Satan, motherly whores and Asian call-girls, and hey, maybe that was the trial that Zack Follett was talking about. Who knows? Maybe God sent him a parade of China Doll hookers from Bangkok, and after working his way through dozens and dozens of them, poor Zack was left literally drained and was able to drift off into a sexless sleep. I don’t know. I guess that’s some kind of trial. Poor Zack. The poor dude just wanted a good night’s sleep, but how can a man sleep when God and Satan are sword fighting at the foot of your bed while a gaggle of Asian whores frolic like rabid mutant spider monkeys in your bedroom? The man has bigger things to worry about than the state of Matthew Stafford’s shoulder.

This has gotten completely out of control, but fuck it, that makes it the perfect exclamation point to this whole stupid, out of control story. The point was lost long ago and now we are all just spouting dumb noise that isn’t related to anything other than our own feral desire to yell and scream and bang our idiot heads against the wall. The only thing that needed to be said here was that Zack Follett said something dumb and hey, that’s it. Instead, here we are talking about Asian hookers and whether or not I’m Satan and Zack Follett’s ability to get a good night’s sleep free of rivers of semen and God’s role in all of this nonsense and if God is reading this, then He’s probably shaking his head and moaning “For the love of Me, leave me out of this bullshit. Please, I beg you.” I hear you, dude. I hear you.

So, Zack Follett, dropping the name “China Doll” into your thoughts on Matthew Stafford was kind of dumb. That’s it. Now, can we please all shut the fuck up and talk about things that matter, like The Great Willie Young and his adventures with the China Dolls or Ernie Sims’ monkey? Thank you, and I’ll see you all next week.

Well, Here We Go

I don't know what the fuck this is - I think it might be an ad for Converse - but I found it in my wanderings and I knew that I had to share it with all of you. I'm sorry?

Well, I’m back. Yes, two weeks have gone by, I have gotten refreshed or recharged or whatever the fuck you want to call it, my creative juices are flowing (ironically, using the phrase “creative juices” probably reveals that to be a complete lie, but what the hell . . .), and I have taken to writing weird screeds on Twitter about Regis Philbin murdering Kathy Lee Gifford and Edgar Allan Poe fucking Snooki, so it’s probably best that I start channeling some of that weird energy back in this direction. Of course, it would probably help if I had something – anything – worthwhile to talk about here.

And therein lies the problem. I could do a series of season reviews, which would be fairly easy content, but I exhausted the hell out of last season. I sucked every last bit of life out of it, mixed it with my own weird brand of bullshit and then vomited it all back up. I told the shit out of that story and there’s just nothing left. It’s all in the archives, day after day after day, and you can go back and read those if you want to relive the insanity. I cleansed myself of the mountain of pain that is Detroit Lions football. I left it all on paper, or on the screen, or whatever the fuck this is.

I know that comes dangerously close to sounding like “I quit,” but the beauty of something like football – of all sports really – is that is always evolving. The story keeps changing and so as long as you keep looking forward, there will always be something to say. If I kept wallowing in the whole “Same Ol’ Lions, woe is me” routine, the whole thing would become stale and inauthentic and corrupt in a way, and although those are ridiculous things to say about a simple blog, they are important to me because I am a stubborn fool and, although it may sound ridiculously corny and trite to say, without authenticity, this shit is just a collection of dumb dick jokes and half assed analysis. What makes the engine go is that this is a genuine reflection of how I feel as a fan of the Detroit Lions, and so as times change, so must I.

I guess that makes my struggle to come up with something to write about appropriate. Because, really, as Lions fans we are caught up in between two eras, in between two worlds, in between the darkness which has oppressed us in blind terror for so, so long and the light, which is almost scary and disorienting if only because it is so unfamiliar. The story of Detroit Lions football in our lifetime has come to an end. Or at least the chapter of it that was 20, 30, 50 years long. The pain, the constant losing, the ridiculous jokes, the constant ass kickings by Fate are the hallmarks of that story, and the best thing we can do as Lions fans is close that book, set it on fire and then shoot it into the sun. Fuck it. Fuck it hard.

But that means that it’s time to start a new story, a new chapter in our Lions fandom. Most fans of other less hate fucked by Fate teams are able to do this every few years. Things change and they change with it. We don’t know how to do this because we’ve never had to. It’s just been one loooooong and terrible neverending story of chaos and despair. But, like I said, all that shit is over now, and, well . . . now what?

I don’t know. That’s the only thing I can say. I don’t know. None of us do. This is all brand new and weird and how do you start a new story? It doesn’t make sense to look back at the old story, even if that story just ended. So that rules out all the reviews and “Hey, here’s what happened” bullshit that I could be writing. But there’s nothing new to write about either. The new story hasn’t really started yet. Well, it has, but nothing has actually happened. Right now, we’re kind of on that first page of a brand new book. You know, the one that is just a plain, blank white page? Yeah, that one. We’re excited as hell for the story to start because we read the back cover and all the reviews and there is a lot of buzz surrounding it, and goddamn, this seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun, but that’s really all we have right now: anticipation.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take months for us to turn the page and so all we have is that anticipation and that blank white page. This is a dumb metaphor but what the hell, I am confused and disoriented and it’s going to take some time to work all this shit out, you know? I am aware that I am being far too simplistic here. I mean, of course what happened this past season is going to influence things going forward. The blank page metaphor is flawed and so is the whole stupid old/new story thing I’ve had going on for a while. We can never truly escape what has happened in the past. It will always be with us, but I just don’t want to wallow in it anymore and honestly, as Lions fans, we can’t afford to. We have to take a deep breath, survey our surroundings, add up all the available data and either choose to believe and then swim for new shores or wallow in old, stale misery and then sink below the waters of rank failure and drown.

I have looked at what the Lions have built – at the promise of Matthew Stafford, at the beastly dominance of Ndamukong Suh, at the incomparable majesty of Calvin Johnson, at the explosiveness of Jahvid Best, at the collection of smart, focused people running the team, at the improbable run of excellence to close out the season, at the beautifully symmetrical way those last four victories played out – and I have taken that deep breath and I have decided to swim for new shores. I apologize for introducing yet another dumb metaphor into the mix here, but fuck it, that is just the way my mind works.

But that new shore is a long way off and right now, the sea is just cold and gray and boring and it’s going to take a while before any of us can make out what’s waiting for us on this new shore, in this promised land of milk and honey and candy and blowjobs, of sunshine and rainbows, of Matthew Stafford to Calvin Johnson touchdown bombs and Ndamukong Suh sack dances and a sky that is Honolulu Blue, stretching over a vast wilderness that extends farther than any of us can see, a new land where the promise of our wildest dreams can run forever and our hopes have no end.

We’ll get there but we’re not there yet. Right now, we’re just sort of dog paddling, anxious to get moving, and waiting for time to catch up with our desires. There will be things to write about before we truly get moving. I’m not really worried about that. I’ll have something up here at least once a week, twice on some weeks, maybe more if the spirit moves me.

I’m sure that next week I’ll probably end up having to write about whichever one of our dudes got all Kobe Roethlisberger on some poor lady. Goddamn. That is one story I just don’t want to have to deal with, you know? That shit is just unsavory. It’s terrible to say, but I will say it anyway because that is my role in this fucked up tribe of ours, but right now most Lions fans are just saying little prayers to their own dark hearts and hoping that it isn’t someone like Stafford or The House of Spears that is implicated in this ugly business. It is selfish as hell to say, but that would be a crippling blow to our fandom that would be tough to recover from, wouldn’t it? This is an awful thing to speculate about. It is ghoulish and ugly and fucked up. I mean, a lady was possibly raped, you know? Who gives a fuck about football? But still, we can’t help ourselves, can we? If it turns out to be some third string practice squad shithead, most of us will shake our heads sternly and then inwardly sigh with relief. It’s sick but it’s true. If it does end up being one of our heroes, well . . . shit, let’s just wait until this thing plays out before getting too far into this. Oh, if it ends up being Willie Young, I fucking quit.

Okay. So, right now we’re kind of in a weird place. It’s not a bad place. Far from it. There is more hope right now than just about any other time in my lifetime as a Lions fan. There just aren’t a lot of concrete things to say about it right now. The roster still has to take shape over the next few months and I will be here to shout hooray or to throw rocks and handfuls of my own poop at each move, so, uh . . . yeah, you have that to look forward to. This is something that is evolving. It’s on the move and it’s up to me to keep up with it. I’m excited. It should be a hell of a lot of fun and I just hope that you good dudes and lady dudes are as excited as I am. Well, here we go.

State Of The Blog

I got this, motherfuckers

I originally planned to stick to the normal schedule for this week before throttling things down here, but when I sat down to write my breakdown of my predictions for the Vikings game, I just couldn’t do it. The season is over and that fucking thing has turned into an eleven billion word monster every week and, well . . . I am burned right the fuck out. So, sorry for the lack of posts so far this week. Hopefully, you understand. If not, well, goddamn, I don’t know what to tell you. I figure I’ve written, like, two or three novels worth of gibberish this season. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s been insane. I could be putting that time towards a different purpose, like writing an actual novel, or breeding genetically engineered mutant super goats for a goat fighting ring or fighting my demons with flamethrowers and fire water or engineering mutant super goats to fight my demons for me. Preferably with flame throwers. Anyway, it’s not like I’m finished or anything. I just need some time to get, uh, un-fried. Un-fried? Jesus. You see how fried I am? Un-fried. Good Lord.

So here’s how things are going to look. I’m going to finish writing this post, which is sort of a half assed random thoughts deal, and then I’m going to say fuck it and avoid writing anything about the Lions for a week. And then when I return, I’ll do something once or twice a week. There is a lot of Season in Review sort of shit for me to do and that will be schizophrenic as all hell, so, uh . . . yeah, look for that. It should be fun. Like I said, I originally wanted to do a prediction breakdown post, but that just isn’t going to happen. The season is over and by the time I got to it, it would be irrelevant and stupid and would make me hate everything and then I would throw a giant hissy fit – not unlike this post – and then you’d turn on the TV and see something about me jogging through the streets, pantsless, screaming gibberish at old people and small dogs, crying and bellowing the name Willie Young until some dudes with butterfly nets and giant batons showed up to beat me senseless and drag me away to the nut house or hell or Narnia or who the fuck knows where and you don’t want that, do you? No, and so fuck that post. I also planned on doing an uber-melodramatic post tying the whole season together, sort of an epic version of my post-game posts, but I kinda feel like I just spent the last month doing just that, you know? The story is over and it would just be a pointless exercise in piledriving a dead horse to continue gibbering on about it, you know? That’s not to say I won’t talk about this past season at all. Like I said, there is a lot of Season in Review sort of shit to do and in the end, all that should end up comprehensively covering the whole damn thing. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do but, well . . . yeah. As you can see, I am having trouble even finishing sentences. I feel listless and completely uncreative and when creativity and energy are what I kinda build this whole thing around, uh, that’s a problem, you know?

This is a vomitous post, completely self-indulgent and whiney, but fuck it, that’s what blogs were created for, right? Then again, you don’t care about any of this shit and so I apologize and I’ll just move on in a minute. But first, a bit more on what to expect: Like I said, I plan on not doing anything Lions related for a week, and then when I come back, hopefully I’ll be recharged and then I can knock out the Season in Review stuff in a way that isn’t rushed and awful and lazy as hell. After that, well, there is always something happening and whenever the spirit moves me, I’ll write something so check back here at least a couple of times every week throughout the off-season. Things will ramp-up around late-March/early-April when everyone starts gibbering about the Draft and, well, that always leads to a lot of fresh posting. It’s an oasis in the desert of the offseason and every year, even those who were burnt to a crisp by the previous season seem to get their energy back for a month or two. It’s always a good time, full of a twitchy, junky like energy and filled with fresh Hope, and then when that all slows to a crawl, I will breakdown all the draft picks – remember, this is where the birth of The Great Willie Young thing happened last year, so you never know what in the fuck I am going to come with – and then when that’s all over, summer should be upon us and free agents and camp and holdouts – oh Jesus, let’s not forget me diving headfirst into the Ndamukong Suh riots last summer – and then the season will be here and, well, fuck, there we’ll be.

So . . . yeah. There will be some good and worthwhile stuff to read from me throughout the offseason. It just won’t come every day. Of course, the other glorious dudes who write for Armchair Linebacker will likely have stuff of their own up from time to time and if you haven’t been reading their shit, you should be because it is awesome. It was a fun season here. A lot of you reading this found the site this season and, hey, thanks for sticking with it. I loved that the comments section sprang to life and that we developed our own little community of doomed souls here and I hope that it will be even better next year. For the small handful of you that have been here from the beginning, well . . . goddamn, this shit’s been crazy, hasn’t it? I can’t even fathom the amount of shit, whether it’s been weird or dumb or sublime, that I’ve written about the Lions over the last few years. It’s both stupid and ridiculous and proves that if nothing else, I am a damn fool and that there is something seriously wrong with me. But I also like to think that from time to time, I manage to write something that no one else can write or make you laugh really hard or, hell, on rare occasions even make you think, and when I do, it feels like I imagine it feels for a musician to hit a perfect note. It’s a jolt of energy, a genuine rush and it makes me want to keep on doing this. That is a ridiculous thing to say about a football blog, but fuck it, I don’t care. Anyway, you are all my dudes and lady dudes and we will inherit the earth before it is all over – or at least what’s left of it anyway.

Jesus. This post has been incredibly self-indulgent and I apologize. I didn’t really mean for this to get so far out of hand. I really didn’t. I just wanted to write a quick little State of the Blog preamble before talking about a few random stories from the world of the Detroit Lions, but shit, I should know better than that by now, shouldn’t I? Then again, so should you. We both know that when I get moving in a particular direction it is hard for me to slam on the brakes. I am a runaway train from hell, painted with all the colors of the rainbow, on fire and playing heavy metal at a billion decibels as I race through the countryside, scaring farm animals, small children and the elderly. It’s highly likely that I will just go off the rails and run straight through a barn at some point or crash into the sea, but goddamn, behind me I will leave a trail of dazed shell-shocked destruction, with trees burning and people gaping wide eyed on their knees, bleeding from their ears and their brains.

Right. Fuck all that weird noise. Anyway, like Gen. MacArthur or Gov. Terminator or Jesus, I will be back. Keep checking the blog for updates because I promise you that I will have some good shit up. Just give me a week to get recharged and then we can all adjust to the new pace together and we’ll have a shitload of fun and maybe we can even trick . . . er, I mean convince, more brave souls to join us on our crazy train. Deal? Alright. I’ll see you in a week. (Well, a week and a half . . . and, you know what? Let’s say closer to two weeks. Okay, and I’m out.)

The Return Of The King

Once again, and without further gibberish, I bring you the wise words of my liege, the noble king, courtesy of brave Sir Matthew S.:



I TAKE MY VICTORIES LIKE I TAKE MY BOSTON-CREAMED DOUGH-NUTS

FOUR OF THEM, SERVED CONSECUTIVELY!

PAY HEED, my humble minions! For it is not every day that your King speaks so plainly, or with breath so shallow. I have taken leave of my royal banquet to caress your ear-holes with tales of what is, and of what is yet to be.

Gather 'round.

As Mother Sun rose this ‘morn and gave succor to the dawn, the ice-clad fields of De-Troit gazed upon her bosom with eyes anew, and sweat-pants a-tented. Her golden rays bathed the ground in warmth, and gave form to the lifeless, shadowy husks that littered the earth. And as she robed these dark blobs in her warming glow, it was revealed once again that on this day, the corpses belonged to the King’s vanquished enemies. And to those who would feign surprise at this outcome most inevitable, I would say but four words:

Get used to it.

I might then, by royal decree, submit an addendum of still two more words:

Get fucked.

There exists today NO WALL that can halt the King’s armies! NO SHIELD that can give pause to his arrows! NO PLATE of fried potato sticks, no matter how smothered by cheese, that can repel his royal gravy! We are today a juggernaut, a many-pistoned engine of death that shall thrust itself wherever the King pleases. He need only point his royal scepter at a target, and it shall be thusly obliterated.

And yet, the King’s royal scepter remains sheathed in the knit caddy that hangs over the arm of his throne. For you see—if, indeed, you CAN see over the small mountain range of corpses that litters these lands—there is simply no one left to vanquish. Indeed, the King’s armies have earned their respite from the grounds of battle. Today, we feast. Tomorrow, we rest, and prepare for the next harvest of souls, and chips of corn. My charges shall have at least eight-and-ten fortnights of revelry before they are again called to rend flesh from bone.

HARK! TRUMPETEERS! I would have fanfare for my bravest warriors!

BLOW THY HORN for the young squire STAF-FORD, who has toiled endlessly behind the scenes and between the sheets to restock the King’s never-ending supply of cannon fodder. Is there a flaxen-haired service wench in the whole kingdom who does not find herself with child by this virile knight of the King’s table? In one-and-twenty years, the borders of De-Troit will pulse and swell with endless hordes of tow-headed, cannon-armed bastards, ready to rain tightly-spiraled death upon all who oppose the King! HUZZAH!

BLOW THY HORN for the noble HOUSE OF SPEARS! But don’t blow too hard, lest your incessant blaring drown out the sound of his approach. You do not want to be the latest stain on the ground that proud NDAMUKONG leaves in his wake. For the next ten harvests, he shall be the bloody point of the King’s arrow, the grand penetrator, the thickly-veined, rage-fueled thunder-shaft that shall aerate the sternum of any and all who would stand in the King’s way. It is upon his broad shoulders that mine legend shall be built, and before his grim visage that mine enemies shall soil themselves. HUZZAH!

BLOW THY HORN for Sergeant Slaughter himself, my general and yours, the dread pirate SCHWARTZ! The King cannot always be there to lead his armies to victory. In fact, it has become increasingly rare that His Royal Highness makes it to the front lines. You see, the royal knees are not what they used to be, and the King’s palace is separated from the battlefield by a good-many hundred stairs. It is thusly made necessary to anoint a Leader of Men that can fill mine boots, and SCHWARTZ is his name! Let it ring throughout the halls! SCHWARTZ! SCHWARTZ! SCHWARTZ! HUZZAH!

Is it really almost five hours past noon? My word, time flies much like a pass from the arm of Squire Stanton—wobbly, and with little purpose. Alas, I must retire to mine chambers royal for a scheduled sponge-down. By my watch, my hardiest wenches are now working the bellows ‘neath my bath, no less strenuously than they shall soon be working mine own hairy bellows.

But FEAR NOT mine loyal subjects! Tho’ the time for campaigning has passed, there are still battles to be fought! Even now, General Tso is launching a full-scale land invasion of mine lower intestine! Though he fights with fiery purpose, I aim to take that squirrelly yellow bastard to the porcelain graveyard! Alas, just as soon as I finish these barbecued spare ribs. I will let you know how it goes. And remember, my bless-ed vassals…













All hail the King.

Manifest Destiny

That's right, this post was passed by the National Board of Review, which means this is officially a blog fit for the whole family. I may have had to bribe the judges, but fuck it, these are strange and terrible times and who is to say what is decent these days?

I wrote myself into a corner over the last few weeks and the potential was there for me to get destroyed and embarrassed, but fuck all that noise, I am a man without shame and I refused to shy away from the bright lights of my grandest dreams and I stared into the sun and laughed as they came true. Of course, it is absurd to talk about the fulfillment of dreams when the Lions final record ended up at 6-10 (Actually 7-9, but, well . . . fuck you, Mike Pereira.), but this isn’t so much about this season but about the last month, and about the perfect resolution to a 20 year old story of chaos and pain, tragedy and bitter disappointment.

I have yammered on over and over and over again the last several weeks about this story and I laid out the perfect ending and I dared to believe in it even while I knew that as a Lions fan, perfect endings just don’t happen for me. But those are the sort of fears that we just left behind, the sort of wallowing and depressed expectation of failure that belong to that story that was just resolved so perfectly. I said for weeks that this is how it had to happen, that this was the beautiful symmetry of Fate, that same Fate which has seemed so long to be our enemy, and I believed in it even while I questioned it. I wondered if my mind had cracked and if I was just searching for some desperate reason to believe, for some reason to keep going, to keep moving forward even though I could see nothing on the horizon but the same hell desert we had been wandering in for so long.

A man will tell himself ridiculous things, will lie to himself and will convince his own idiot brain of delusional fantasies if it means living for one more day. I feared that this was what I was doing to myself with all my blathering about the Symmetry of Fate and I suppose in one small distant corner of my mind I was preparing myself for it all to be blown apart and for my own naked foolishness to be exposed in a cavalcade of failure and sports pain but I refused to listen to it and I kept gibbering on like a damn fool, concocting wild epics and insisting that at the end it would all make sense and that we would be happy and that whatever the hell the last couple of decades have been would finally be over and we could move on.

I listened to my heart because it wanted to believe. I trusted it and today I watched the Lions beat the Minnesota Vikings to win their fourth game in a row, and I watched the career of Brett Favre come to a banal, pointless end and those two stories, divergent for so long, that I have carried on about the last couple of weeks finally came to an end, together, in the city of Detroit, and somehow, they ended in a way that justified my own foolish and stupid hopes and dumb fantasies.

It didn’t happen exactly as I prophesized (And really, although that sounds grandiose, I feel that my wild eyed ranting the past few weeks has turned damn near Biblical, so I don’t know what else to call it, you know?) Brett Favre didn’t play and therefore he did not get destroyed by The House of Spears, but the way it happened actually ended up being better. Favre was reduced to an impotent spectator, a ceremonial old Indian warrior like Sitting Bull touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the end of his life, trotted out there by the white man’s circus to holler at a coin toss and then to stand worthless and ruined on the sidelines while his culture and team were violently driven into irrelevance by the rise of the new and the relentless. The tide of the Lions cannot be stopped. It is inexorable and it is our Manifest Destiny to conquer the entirety of the NFC North and if the old warrior Favre had to be destroyed and humiliated in order for that to happen, well . . .

I won’t gibber on about Favre too much. I know everyone is sick of him. I have been sick of him since 1992. The announcers spent the entire 4^th quarter blowing him to the point that I was worried that John Lynch was reading a prepared statement in the booth forced upon him by a desperate and broken John Madden, a gun pointed at Lynch’s head while Madden uselessly mashed his withered old penis with his one free hand and wept tears of bitter longing and sadness for his beloved Ol’ Gunslinger. I told the little men on the TV to shut the fuck up several times and I would have muted the end of the game but fuck them, this was not about Favre, this was about the end of an era of pain and humiliation and about the beginning of something new and beautiful. His presence was merely symbolic, a necessary old Indian relic trotted out, defanged and neutered, to reinforce the new truth, which was that the old world was extinct and that the new world belonged to us.

I have struggled with writing this. You wouldn’t think so since it is the culmination of a grandiose vision I had laid out several weeks ago, but now that it is over, I’m not sure what there is left to say. I said it all in the last few weeks. In a sense, I wrote about this game and what it meant long before it even happened. There was a certain hubris in that, a certain idiot’s arrogance, and in any other season over the past twenty years I would have expected to get cruelly and hilariously smacked down by Fate. But not now. I trusted in the Symmetry of Fate and I left my nuts hanging exposed for everyone to see and swat at with flaming baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, and I refused to waiver. And now it’s over, I still have my nuts and for once my faith was justified and I don’t really know what to do. I really don’t. I don’t know what to say or even what to feel.

And maybe that is the whole point. It’s a whole new world, a whole new story, and anything and everything is possible. Perhaps I am struggling so much to write about this because the story is over and the new story has yet to begin. After all, I said in the preview that I like to look at everything I write here as being connected. Each post is just another small piece of the story, and I like to think that it is connected in some way with the larger story of the Detroit Lions. This is about one fan’s journey – and by extension, if I can be incredibly arrogant for a moment, the journey of all Lions fans – and now that journey is over and right now all I can do is rest and wait for the new journey to begin. The road out of hell has been long and brutal and terrible and at times it seemed like it would never end, but today it did. There are no roses or parades or candy or blowjobs at the end of that road. There is no reward. I mean, the Lions just finished 6-10, you know? But what we can do is finally stop, take a deep breath and close our eyes and smile and feel satisfied that we made it out and that we are still here. No matter what tomorrow brings, no matter where the next journey will take us or what will be written in the next story, we made it and no one can ever take that away from us. I’m a fan of the Detroit Lions and today that means something different than it did yesterday. It means I’m a survivor and it means that I have passed through the fires of hell and I’m still here, motherfuckers. I’m still here and I am made of iron and Hope, my heart is made of thunder and my soul is still mine and the world is laid out before me and anything is possible.