Thursday, February 24, 2011

I Love Football But Sometimes I Kinda Hate The NFL




Damn, February is a brutal month for writing about football. I suppose I could just throw up another Willie Young tale, but the last one was so ridiculous that I think I need some time to recuperate. The good news is that I have been writing about football. A lot. You just haven’t seen it yet. You see, my colleague, the esteemed Raven Mack, and I have been working on an Armchair Linebacker All-Pro team, and so I’ve been writing a ton of wild shit for that. It will see the light of day sometime this century, but at this point it’s sort of like Axl Rose’s Chinese Democracy. There’s no release date and speculating about that shit is a fool’s errand. It’s a labor of insanity and love and it’ll be out when it’s out. Raven said elsewhere that it will be 40,000 words of insanity and he’s right. This shit is out of hand. Both of us like to, uh, let the words flow freely and so when you combine our powers you end up with something monstrous and beautiful, terrible and fierce. This is an epic on par with The Iliad, only with more dudes getting speared in the balls and slightly less homoeroticism. Or, as Raven put it, “it’s like football prospectus on angel dust.” Indeed.

Anyway, look for that at some point. I won’t tell you how far along we are exactly, but we are at a point of no return now. This thing is happening. We are so far inside the belly of the beast that the only way out is for us to hack our way through with machetes until we escape out of the beast’s ass, bloody and covered in shit. It won’t be pretty but it will be glorious and it’s just something we have to do because we are men of honor and we don’t want to die in the colon of some terrible shitbeast.

But in between crawling through the beast’s intestines, I suppose I should take the time to take a look at the world of the Detroit Lions, and . . . nothing much is happening.

Okay, I guess I could talk about the Lions getting busted for tampering by the NFL due to their pursuit of Chiefs safety Jarrod Page last year but really that is just a bunch of dumb noise about nothing. The Lions were robbed of a 7th round pick – and shit, those actually tend to mean something to Martin Mayhew since it was a stray 7th rounder that nabbed us Shaun Hill in a trade – and were forced to swap their 5th round pick with the Chiefs all because Gunther Cunningham is an old man and old men do whatever the fuck they want to do. Sometimes that means they whip it out in public or take a shit in the town fountain, but sometimes that means they just talk to old friends even when they’re not supposed to. That’s what happened in this case.

You see, Gun used to be the head coach and the defensive coordinator for the Chiefs and so he still sees a lot of their defensive players as his dudes. That’s how Turk McBride ended up in Detroit. Well, last year Jarrod Page seemed like he might be available and so Gun came out and was all fuck yeah, we’re interested, but since the NFL is a league run by uptight Nazis, the Gestapo swooped in and tossed Gun on a train to Poland.

That is all one wildly offensive way of saying that the Lions just got busted for . . . what? Who fucking knows? The Chiefs whined and bitched and moaned because they apparently thought Gun was throwing wild hooker parties for their players or something. Shit, maybe they thought that he had turned his basement into an opium den and after Jarrod Page showed up for practice all glassy eyed and stinking of sex, sweat on his brow, unable to work out because of all the cramping thanks to massive dehydration, they freaked the fuck out and told the league that Gun was in cahoots with the devil. I don’t know. It’s just a guess. Tampering. What the fuck? It’s football. Quit making it sound like Watergate, like the Lions sent a team of accountants to break into the Chiefs’ records and steal classified information about the size of Hank Stram’s prostate or the lurid details of Derrick Thomas’ autopsy. Oh no! The Kansas City Chiefs state secrets are in jeopardy!

Dudes talk. I’d rather they do that than creepy shit like showing up at midnight with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses on the first day of free agency. Sure, Jim Schwartz was forced to do that shit to get Kyle Vanden Bosch but I don’t blame him, I blame the stupid rules that make it a felony NFL offense to call up your boy on the phone and shoot the shit. Gun’s a grown ass man, an old man, and he doesn’t need to ask your permission Sheriff Goodell to talk to his friends. What’s next, are you going to start fining people for not cutting their hair? Maybe you should start tying guys to posts and whipping the shit out of them instead. After all, as a society there’s nothing we’re more comfortable with than the site of an arrogant rich white dude whipping a young black man for not doing as he’s told.

Shit, this kind of took a wild and unexpected turn, didn’t it? Jesus. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when that starting gun goes off there’s no telling in which direction I’m going to run. There’s no saddle on my back and I haven’t been tamed and so I’m just going to run wherever the mood takes me. Yes, I just compared myself to a wild horse. Let’s just move on.

The point is that it’s become clear over the last season that the NFL is completely power mad. Actually, it’s been clear for a long, long time but the events of this past season have made it so blindingly obvious that even the dullards who jack off to the myth of the all-powerful NFL machine, pawing themselves to a soundtrack of Chris Berman braying while the music from those old NFL Films plays in their heads, have had no choice but to notice that shit has gotten out of hand.

If the NFL had its way, it would just be importing players straight off the boat from Africa. That’s right, I said it. They’d have Goodell standing at market waiting to inspect them while his lizard Pereira would stand by with a whip, ready for any “trouble”. The NFL doesn’t give a fuck about the players. I think that’s made clear by them trying to push an 18 game schedule on the players even while rummaging through their pockets for spare change every time somebody gets hit too hard. The NFL is all about the illusion of player safety and welfare. The ingenious thing about it, which is also the insidious thing, is that they convince the average Joe Dipshit that they care by attacking the players. They don’t try to find ways to improve equipment or look for ways to minimize the long term effects of an inherently violent game. No, instead they fine the players $100,000 dollars for smacking a guy in the head in a game that moves a million miles per hour, or $15,000 dollars for reaching out and grabbing a guy’s pad and, uh, tackling him because it looked a little too violent. Instead of dealing with reality, which is that football is an inherently violent and dangerous sport, they try to change the perception of reality and show people that football is a safe sport with no consequences and that the players are just idiot renegades who need to be tamed and broken via a steady stream of fines and debasement.

There is something heinous and dishonest about that, right? “Oh, no, we don’t have any problems at all. Football is perfectly safe. It’s just these asshole players who do it to themselves. They’ll be fine if they just play the game the right way. If they are retarded by the time they’re 50, well then that’s their own damn fault. Come, Pereira, let us steal some bread from some orphans and then twist our handlebar mustaches, ha ha ha!” It’s ridiculous. If the NFL gave a shit, they would funnel some of their many billions of dollars into long term health care for these players. They would do everything they possibly could to minimize the long term impacts that come from getting the shit beaten out of you for several years in order to make a living. They would do whatever it took to make sure that the players were financially secure and that there were people there to help them when they found themselves needing an hour to get out of bed every morning before they hit 40. Football is a violent game, brutal and fierce and we all must make our peace with that. We do every player a disservice when we try to pretend that it’s not and that there is some magical way we can change its very nature. It’s sickening to me that the NFL’s preferred way of attacking this issue is to attack the very players affected by it.

This post has gotten completely out of hand and has wandered far, far away from the original point. I didn’t mean to talk about this, but the opening was there and I took it. It’s something that I feel pretty strongly about and it’s been on my mind with all this labor strife and all that bullshit. I guess it’s pretty obvious that I’m firmly on the players’ side. I know the general consensus is that it is just a bunch of rich dudes arguing and that everyone involved is a millionaire, but not really. That’s just simple and wrongheaded. The reality is that a lot of these dudes only play for a few years, get the shit beaten out of them and then have to spend the money they made on a ton of horrible medical bills because the NFL doesn’t give a fuck about them and Jerry Jones has to have eight bidets in his private luxury box inside of his very own Taj Mahal of a stadium.

I know a lot of you won’t agree with any of this and there will be people who call me irresponsible for going wild with slavery references and Nazi talk, but fuck all that, I’m not the one burying my head in the sand and pretending like these dudes are going to be driving Ferarris on some tropical beach snorting diamond dust and eating bald eagles when they are 70. I’m a fan of football, but goddamn, sometimes I really hate the NFL.

And those are just the issues involving the players. I won’t even get into all the absurd bullshit about the NFL conning people into paying for Super Bowl tickets that they knew they wouldn’t be able to honor. Greedy bastards. Again, I love football. It’s the national pastime because it best embodies who we are as a people. It’s violent, it’s angry and there are moments of sublime beauty and glory that manage to make us forget about all that. It’s passionate and every moment matters and it feels like it’s always moving forward. There are no languid lazy Sundays. There is just a death race to the finish line and that is exciting as all hell. It is uniquely American and it always will be. But people can’t pretend that it’s something that it’s not either. We have to accept the ugly side of it and try to come to terms with that. We have to do right by the people who get their brains kicked in by it. In that way I feel like it’s also representative of who we are as a people – or who we should be anyway.

Look, this could spin in yet another direction here, with me gibbering about football and America and all that shit and while I think there is something interesting to say about all that, it’s just too damn much right now and I have said too damn much about this issue already. I don’t really like talking about it. I just want to talk about the Lions and what happens on the field and what it’s like to be a fan. In that way, I suspect that I’m a lot like all of you. But something is out of whack here and I would feel shitty about myself if I didn’t at least acknowledge it. I love football. I also love the dudes who play it. I just wish the NFL felt the same way. I think that it did, once. Now, I think it is run by a collection of greedheads more interested in power and money (really, I suppose they’re kind of the same thing) than they are with the health of both the game and the people who play it. In the end it’s about money. It’s always about money. It’s just that one side is trying to get more money so that they can have a better quality of life while the other is trying to hoard money because it makes them feel like their dick is bigger. And really, that’s what it all comes down to.

What that has to do with Gunther Cunningham and the Lions getting busted for tampering is anyone’s guess. Like I said, I have wandered far and wide here, but I suppose the tampering thing kind of opened the door for me to talk about a subject I’ve been loath to talk about because I knew that when I did, I would end up unloading all of my guns. As it is, I feel like I actually held back a little believe it or not. I like to keep things good natured here and this is not a good natured subject, you know? It sucks that it’s out there and that I felt like I had to talk about it, but that’s on the NFL, which is just one reason that even though I love football, sometimes I kinda hate the NFL.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Adventures Of The Great Willie Young: The China Dolls

You would not believe the amount of depraved shit I had to wade through just to find a picture for this post. Jesus, I think I need a shower.


(As always, if you haven't followed the strange and sordid tales of The Great Willie Young, feel free to catch up by clicking on the tag at the bottom of this post titled, appropriately enough "Willie Young". And may God have mercy on your soul.)


Today’s tale actually comes down to us from the future. You may ask me how this is possible, but it’s all very, very complicated so I’ll just say it involves a DeLorean, an army of Terminators, mescaline, a hobo with a shotgun, Doc Brown crawling naked through the streets late at night moaning “Maaaarty” over and over and over again and a carnival seer with a giant crystal ball and an addiction to menthol cigarettes, bourbon, meth and sex. You don’t want to know what I had to do to get this story. You just don’t. My hands are still shaking even as I write this and I don’t know why it burns when I pee, but fuck it, that’s not important. What is important is that, here, for the first time, I can bring to all of you – and to the year 2011 – the tale of The Great Willie Young and the China Dolls.

It all started when The Great Willie Young was vacationing in Thailand following yet another successful season with the Lions. He had spent several weeks touring the jungles of Southeast Asia in an attempt to come to terms with his role in the Vietnam War, a war which saw him barbarically slaughter whole villages using the might of only his bare hands. He was remorseful, mostly because he now knew that the whole thing had been just one giant misunderstanding. As has been told before, The Great Willie Young has spent much of his life attempting to avenge the heinous deaths of his parents, his Greek Sea Siren mother and his father, the Cheetah God. He avenged his mother at the glorious Battle of Lepanto but he could never quite come to terms with his father’s death at the hands of the vile British redcoats. Sure, sure, the pompous Lord who had actually killed his father had long been disposed of, but The Great Willie Young still felt like he had to do more and so he declared war upon the color red, terrorizing all those who claimed it as their own, whether for political reasons or whether it was because they just liked how it looked on them. This led to some glorious moments, such as The Great Willie Young’s role in the defeat of the British during the American Revolutionary War or the time he disemboweled Carrot Top. But occasionally it was also at the heart of events which later caused The Great Willie Young great heartache and sorrow. There was the time he was arrested for attempting to burn down a California Redwood forest. There was also the time when he drove Lindsay Lohan to drugs by shaving her red hair and then setting it on fire. But nothing hurt his heart like his actions during Vietnam, when he brutally savaged the people of that fair country because his superiors told him that they were all Reds. The Great Willie Young made it his personal mission to wipe them from the face of the earth, but as he did he was struck by a profound sadness. After all, these people were not red at all. In fact, they seemed to be a shade of yellow that reminded him of his long departed beloved wife, the beautiful Yi Xian Shu Guang, the daughter of his old friend Wu Pei. What was he doing in that jungle? The only red he saw in those days came from looking at his own blood stained hands.

After he left Vietnam he wandered aimlessly for a number of years. He spent some time in San Francisco, where he was involved in a bizarre zoo incident that saw multiple hippy deaths, which was recounted here, but that was the closest he came to settling down. Listless, remorseful and confused, The Great Willie Young drifted through time. Occasionally, he would bury himself in some noble goal – the defense of a monastery from an army of crazed heathen Vikings or the freeing of Jewish slaves from a roided up Pharaoh – but he still could not find salvation or peace of mind. It was while watching the hit film First Blood - which was loosely based upon The Great Willie Young’s own experiences following his time in Vietnam – that he was struck by an epiphany. He could either spend his life haunted by the past, by the color red and by all that it had driven him to do or he could embrace it, face it head on and finally come to terms with it. He started by enrolling at North Carolina State University, whose primary color is red. There, he found that he had a talent for playing football. This talent took him in a new direction and allowed him to have the kind of life that he felt he could be proud of.

But still, despite all the gridiron glory and despite the fact that he had become an icon to the people of Detroit, The Great Willie Young could never quite escape the memories of what went on in those terrible jungles of Southeast Asia. And so, following yet another glorious season, filled with championship honor and trophies, The Great Willie Young finally revisited the place which gave birth to his darkest dreams. Also, he was pretty sure he had some bastard kids running around there and he wanted to make sure they were growing up right.

And so The Great Willie Young made peace with the people of Vietnam. He could never truly explain to them why he did what he did, but they were so overwhelmed by the magnificence of his being that it hardly mattered. Wherever he went, throngs of poor rice farmers and black pajama clad stereotypes threw themselves at him. They offered everything they had – their meager homes, their livestock, even their wives and daughters – in a futile attempt to get him to stay and lead them towards a glorious future, for there was a light in his eyes that they could not resist. He was the North Star of the human race, the guiding light that would lead them all to the Promised Land. They knew this deep in their hearts and so they wept whenever he would move on to another village.

After weeks of this missionary work (insert joke about The Great Willie Young, Vietnamese peasant women and the missionary position here) The Great Willie Young’s heart was finally at ease, and so he decided to travel to Bangkok for a little, uh, let’s call it R and R, shall we? And this is where our tale finally truly begins. (Yeah, 1,100 words into the damn thing. Jesus. But still, I am a storyteller and this is what needed to happen. You could argue with me but you’d only be making yourself look like a fool and I don’t want you to look like a fool. After all, I love you and I need someone to carry my litter when I bestride this . . . this Earth, this puny planet you mortals call home, like a Colossus. Wait . . . I have said too much.)

While in Bangkok, The Great Willie Young would spend his days training and meditating in a Buddhist monastery and his nights, uh, training and let’s call it meditating because this is a family site (I’ll say it again, I know you all sit there as a family and read this, probably while a giant fire roars in the fire place and Dad tries to imitate what he imagines is my voice, perhaps Frank Booth on helium, and all the kids laugh and beg for more stories about coked up werewolves and escaped vampire apes and Mom bites her lip to keep from crying out in passionate ecstasy and [redacted for gross indecency] and then her and Dad share a cigarette and then he starts talking in his regular voice and she sighs and rolls out of bed, gets dressed and tries to forget that her life is a living hell and she should have just driven the minivan into the ravine the other day because at least that would have shut the damn kids up and . . . wait, what is going on? Where am I?) at various brothels. It was during one of these nights, while he was with two prostitutes named Mei Lin (not her real name) and Julia Juggs (oddly enough, her real name) who took turns “meditating” with him, that The Great Willie Young heard a commotion in the hall. He could hear muffled voices, panicked and desperate and he knew, immediately, that he was needed.

Breaking the chains that bound him (not a metaphor, he was actually chained to the bed), The Great Willie Young brushed aside his whores and bounded into the hall, naked, with a monstrous erection. Several prostitutes scattered in fear, as if they were running from Godzilla himself (Perhaps I am mixing up my Asian stereotypes but to hell with all that, it’s about time that our stereotypes were all mixed together so that we could all move forward as one, in peace and harmony, joking about slant eyed white people and chicken loving Eskimos and little dicked Nigerians and . . . let us all join hands and sing of togetherness.) But after they had scattered, The Great Willie Young found himself alone. In the deep distance, existing as only an echo, he could hear the muffled screams and desperate voices of the tormented. He took a deep breath and tried to tell himself that he had imagined it but it was no good. The honor in his own noble heart would not allow him to rest until he had rescued the damsel in distress who called out to him from the narrow halls of that whorehouse.

The Great Willie Young scanned the hall for clues and it was then that he saw it: a hot pink flier on the ground. He picked it up and saw a crudely drawn picture of an Asian prostitute with cartoon breasts and [redacted for gross indecency.] Underneath the picture was written, in English, the words HEY BIG AMERICAN MAN YOU WANT CHINA DOLL? BIG LOVE PRETTY GIRL OKAY? (Don’t ask me, I am just a translator here.) Underneath those words was a phone number. The Great Willie Young shook his head, sighed and stuffed the flier into his back pocket (Hey, wait, I thought he was naked? Me too, but what the hell are you gonna do? Like I said, I am just a translator here.) both so that he could follow up on this new lead and for, uh, other purposes.

The next morning, The Great Willie Young showed the flier around the monastery he was staying in. One by one, the old monks would just shake their heads and refuse to say anything. He wasn’t sure but he thought he detected a hint of great fear in their otherwise placid faces. He would have just called the number but he had lost his cell phone during a freak “meditating” accident with a Thai prostitute who specialized in shooting golf balls out of her [redacted for gross indecency]. The less said about this episode the better, but you can use your imagination, you sick bastard. Needless to say, even if the phone had survived, he probably wouldn’t have wanted it back.

Anyway, The Great Willie Young continued to show the flier around but the monks continued to avert their eyes. Finally, The Great Willie Young decided to take the flier to the leader of the monastery, a mysterious man cloaked in mystery and intrigue. No one ever saw him, not even The Great Willie Young, and no one knew what went on behind the giant green double doors which separated him from the rest of the monastery. There were whispers that he was a great mystic who knew and saw all, and there were others who claimed that he was just a disembodied head who had discovered the key to immortal life and spent his days being fed grapes by specially bred eunuchs. Still others claimed that behind the doors lay the gates of hell itself and that the man who lived within was the devil and he and the monks were forced to coexist at the monastery because that is the way of life, two opposites creating harmony. The Great Willie Young figured this was all probably so much bullshit and he expected to find a decrepit old man in a diaper but he was desperate and he figured that if he didn’t at least see if there was some hidden repository of wisdom behind those doors, he would hate himself forever.

And so, late that night, while all the other monks were sleeping, The Great Willie Young passed up his nightly vigil with the whores of Bangkok to pay a little visit to the monastery’s hidden patron. He crept towards the doors and then with a mighty shove, he pushed the doors inward. They opened with a great creaking yawn and The Great Willie Young stepped through. Immediately, he was met by armed guards, giant Mongols with huge pikes who poked and prodded him, but The Great Willie Young managed to conquer them with little effort, tearing the pikes from their hands and then sodomizing their captain with his own weapon. The rest quivered and then dropped to their knees, begging mercy, speaking in their Mongoloid tongue. The Great Willie Young ignored them and pressed on.

It was dark, the great chamber only lit by small, nearly burned to the nub candles on the walls high above his head, but The Great Willie Young knew he was in the right place. The room stank of sex and he could hear a wizened old cackle coming from just ahead. The Mongoloid guards moaned in misery and pain behind him, but the The Great Willie Young tuned them out and tried to focus on the laughter. There was something familiar about it, something . . . suddenly, a great light flipped on overhead and The Great Willie Young was astounded as a speaker system began to blare techno music and an army of scantily clad dancers, both male and female emerged from the darkness, carrying glow sticks, kissing and rubbing on one another, a veritable orgy of the flesh. The Great Willie Young, though, had seen some shit in his time and so he kept his head about him. He made out with a raver who appeared to be a college student on vacation from England and then he discarded her and punched out a jackass in a Dr. Seuss hat who tried to grind on him. He then pushed his way forward, towards another doors, this one smaller than the ones before.

He reached the door and was immediately confronted by a black pajama clad bodyguard who looked like, hell, I don’t know, Bruce Lee. He immediately bowed up, ready for battle, but The Great Willie Young thought about all the black pajama led Vietcong he had butchered so many years before (although, to him, it felt like it had only happened yesterday) and he bowed his head and said “My battle is not with you, my friend. I seek to speak with your master.” The bodyguard sneered and then flicked a punch at The Great Willie Young’s head, but our hero was too quick for that weak assed shit and just sighed and ripped the bodyguard’s throat out. Hey, The Great Willie Young tried to be diplomatic, what more do you want from him?

Stepping over the bleeding corpse of the bodyguard, The Great Willie Young opened the door, unsure what to expect. It was dimly lit and for a moment he just stared, letting his eyes adjust to the scene in front of him. When he saw what was going on, he just sighed and then shook his head.

“Willie!” Wu Pei’s voice reached The Great Willie Young just as he realized the identity of the monastery’s patron. He ignored Wu Pei for the moment and looked around the room. It was a small, but luxurious office built deep in the bowels of the monastery, and its luxurious leather furniture was crawling with naked flesh and the tables were covered in mountains of cocaine. He should have known.

The two old friends greeted each other warmly with a hug. Wu Pei just shrugged as The Great Willie Young raised a quizzical eyebrow and then said “I know, I know, a monastery? But shit, Willie, you would not believe what a great tax write off it is. Besides it keeps the army from fucking with my club here.”

The Great Willie Young just nodded. He knew Wu Pei. He understood him and who was he to judge? But he had sought out this mystery man for a reason, and it wasn’t to indulge in coke and whores. Not this time anyway. And he knew that if anyone would have the answers he was looking for, it would be his old friend and father-in-law, Wu Pei.

He flashed the flier at Wu Pei and immediately, Wu Pei trembled with what was either fear or anger. The Great Willie Young couldn’t tell which. Perhaps both? Wu Pei then motioned The Great Willie Young towards another smaller back room, which turned out to be Wu Pei’s private bathroom. The Great Willie Young began asking Wu Pei about the flier in a whisper, but Wu Pei just laughed and shook his head.

“Why are you whispering?” he asked.

“Because, man, I thought we needed privacy. That’s why you brought me back here, right?” Willie replied.

Wu Pei just laughed again and clapped The Great Willie Young on the shoulder. “Nah, man,” he said. “I just needed to take a coke shit.” He laughed again, undid his pants and sat down on the toilet while The Great Willie Young just groaned and shook his head.

There, on the shitter, Wu Pei explained that the flier was printed up by a new player in town, a ruthless American who was intent on cornering the market on the Thai whore trade, which I don’t have to tell you is lucrative as hell. He then explained to The Great Willie Young that with the whore trade came the opium trade and with the opium trade came the gun trade and with all of that came a ridiculous amount of money, money which, Wu Pei said, it was rumored that the American was planning to funnel back into his enterprise back home, an enterprise which was near and dear to The Great Willie Young’s own heart.

The Great Willie Young urged Wu Pei to say more but Wu Pei just shook his head. It was clear he was at least a little afraid of this American pimp and that alone was enough to tell The Great Willie Young that he must be the real deal. Wu Pei then shuddered. He was covered with sweat and a trickle of blood spilled from his nose. The Great Willie Young told him he should go easy on the coke, but Wu Pei just laughed, told him to mind his fucking business and then let loose with a stream of shit which nearly destroyed the toilet and which sent The Great Willie Young running from the room. He had faced some hellish demons in his time, but not even The Great Willie Young could stand up to the power and the stink of one of Wu Pei’s monstrous coke shits.

Leaving Wu Pei to wallow in his own rancid feces, The Great Willie Young pondered his next move. A coked up hooker that he was pretty sure was a transvestite came onto him, but he just brushed him aside and made a mental note to make fun of Wu Pei for boning a tranny later and then noticed a phone laying on one of the tables. The Great Willie Young picked up the phone and placed it to his ear. Even the damn phone smelled like sex. He just shook his head and dialed the number on the flier. After no less than seven rings, a reptilian voice answered. “Yesssss?” it hissed

The Great Willie Young then explained that he was in the market for some China Dolls. The reptile on the other end of the line just laughed, a sinister laugh, and there was something ugly and awful and familiar about the voice but before The Great Willie Young could place it, the voice told him to come to an out of the way whorehouse and to come alone and to bring lots of cash. The Great Willie Young knew the place – he knew them all – and said that he would be there. The lizard on the other end of the line then hung up and without another word or thought, The Great Willie Young stalked out of the club, through a backdoor and into the teeming Bangkok streets.

Come alone? No problem. The Great Willie Young had never needed anyone’s help. This American pimp didn’t know what he was in for. The only stop The Great Willie Young made was at an ATM. He figured it might help if he could at least flash some cash and besides, after he had finished taking care of the American, he figured he might stick around and maybe get to know some of the American’s ladies a little bit. He grinned. It never hurt to be prepared.

When he reached the whorehouse, The Great Willie Young tried to once again place that voice on the other end of the phone. He knew he had heard it before somewhere, but he just couldn’t remember. It was on the verge of driving him insane when the door to the whorehouse opened and a hunchbacked little creature in a black hooded cloak appeared. The Great Willie Young had been to this particular establishment – all in the name of meditation of course – many times and he had never seen this creature before. It seemed to hiss at him from behind the hooded cloak and try as he might, The Great Willie Young just couldn’t see through to the lizard’s face.

It laughed, a sinister laugh, just like the one on the phone and it extended a bony finger, a finger which almost resembled a lizard’s talon, beckoning The Great Willie Young to follow him down a narrow, dimly lit hall. The Great Willie Young considered just reaching out and throttling the lizard man right then and there but something told him that he needed to follow this beast if he wanted to get to the true heart of the matter. After all, this lizard didn’t seem like the enterprising type. At best, he seemed like a henchman.

And so The Great Willie Young followed the lizard man, who hissed and limped down the hall. Occasionally, he would wheeze or cackle and again, there was something so familiar . . . but before he could place it, the lizard man stopped and swung open a door at the end of the hall. He took one lurching step forward before stopping, doing a half turn and hissing “You bring the cash?”

The Great Willie Young sighed and produced a fat wad of bills. The lizard man cackled once more and again with a wave of his bony hand he beckoned The Great Willie Young forward. They entered a dimly lit room that looked more like a cellar than anything else. As The Great Willie Young’s eyes adjusted, he could make out row after row of impeccably groomed Asian prostitutes, each looking like an inanimate China Doll. It was creepy as hell, but shit, who was he to judge? But even while his eyes adjusted, The Great Willie Young was distracted by a low moaning coming from somewhere in the room. It was the same voice that he heard coming from the hallway of the whorehouse the night before. The Great Willie Young strained his eyes in the dim light and then he saw it – a poor, beaten and broken creature hanging in chains from the far wall. The Great Willie Young almost began weeping immediately when he saw it, for nothing he had experienced could prepare him for what hung before him.

“M . . . Matty?” Willie managed to stammer and the creature hanging from the wall looked up, miserable and beaten. Sure enough, hanging before him was the body of his quarterback, Matthew Stafford. The China Doll. Suddenly, the whole thing made a sick and twisted sort of sense, and in between his tears, The Great Willie Young managed to remember the long forgotten words of his friend and teammate, the noble Zack Follett, who had suffered much and endured the slings and arrows of the Satan infested press in the wake of his comments comparing Stafford to a China Doll. They had managed to put the ordeal behind them but it seemed as though someone, somewhere, had not, and now The Great Willie Young understood all too well what was happening. An All-Pro, Super Bowl winning quarterback like Matthew Stafford would fetch millions – perhaps hundreds of millions – from some rich hedonist eager to make such a thoroughbred his own personal sex slave. Such a deal would provide the American pimp with all the money he needed to dominate whatever fucked up enterprise he was mixed up in.

But The Great Willie Young would never let that happen. He quickly moved to free his friend, his quarterback, The Great Matthew Stafford. For the moment, he forgot all about the lizard man as he yanked on the titanium chains which held Stafford to the wall. Matthew cried out in pain as The Great Willie Young realized that he could not break the chains without breaking his quarterback’s fragile shoulder. And so The Great Willie Young pounded the wall in anger and misery and the two old friends wept together in the dank cellar while the rows upon rows of China Doll porcelain doll whores just stood obediently, quietly, like little robots awaiting their orders to seduce and destroy.

“Just . . . just let me go,” Stafford managed in between great sobs. “Save yourself, Willie.”

The Great Willie Young shook his head and willed away his own tears. “Fuck that,” he said. “You my quarterback, baby, and I ain’t about to let some lizard motherfucker sell your ass to some Russian oil billionaire with a Rasputin dick and a predilection for sweet, white quarterback ass.”

At this, Stafford began to weep anew and The Great Willie Young realized it was probably better if he didn’t talk about his friend getting buttfucked by a well-hung Slavic billionaire. Instead, he began to methodically pound at the titanium chains, pounding and pounding until his hands bled. He pounded for so long that he failed to notice that Stafford had gone deathly quiet and that a sinister laugh had begun to fill the room. When the evil cackle finally reached his brain, The Great Willie Young stopped and snarled. He realized that it was different than the lizard man’s voice. This one was haughtier, more refined, but if anything it was even crueler.

The Great Willie Young slowly turned, his hands dripping with his own blood and he peered through the darkness at a face half shrouded in a cloud of mystery and black hatred. The laughter continued and then the man stepped forward, and suddenly everything fell into place.

“You!” cried The Great Willie Young.

“Yes, me,” came the taunting reply of the man who he and all of his football playing brethren had learned to hate, the man who called himself the sheriff, the man who lorded over the NFL like some evil tyrant from some half-forgotten dark age, his tin badge on his vest and his evil little lizard henchman at his side, the man known the world over as Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The Great Willie Young sprang forward, using all of his mighty athleticism to close the gap between he and his nemesis just like he had done to countless quarterbacks over the years, but he was stopped by the site of the Commissioner brandishing a gun like some sort of vile Bond villain. But the gun was not pointed at him. Oh no. That would never be enough to stop a being of pure light like The Great Willie Young. Instead, it was leveled at the head of Matthew Stafford, who, great as he was, was still a mortal.

The Commissioner laughed as The Great Willie Young backed down. “Mr. Young,” he clucked. “You may be an All-Pro, a Super Bowl champion, a sure fire Hall of Famer, a Nobel Prize winner for both peace and physics, and a legendary lover, but I’m The Commissioner! You work for me! Did you really think I was going to just sit back and allow you to save your precious China Doll? That boy is going to make me richer than God and that will let me buy out my partners, that hick Jerry Jones and that bastard Snyder and then I can finally – FINALLY – get what I want. You see, all they care about is lining their own pockets, so they can build new stadiums or buy the love they never got from their mothers. But I don’t care about any of that! I sold my mother for $500 and a used Camaro when I was only 17. I just want to watch men like you, Mr. Young, beg and grovel for my favor. I want to see you beat each other, like the gladiators of old, year round and I want to reach into your pockets and remind you that I can take everything you have on a mere whim. You see, Mr. Young, you and your brethren are all my China Dolls. You are all my whores and I am your master!”

The Commissioner cackled maniacally while The Great Willie Young snarled with rage. “Pereira!” The Commissioner shouted. “Chain Mr. Young!” The lizard man henchman stepped forward, titanium chains in his gnarled, evil hands and The Great Willie Young knew him immediately as the man once known as Mike Pereira, cowardly snake and toady to The Commissioner. In recent years, however, he had become less of a man and more of a reptilian creature. It was rumored that he spoke with forked tongue and that he had recently sprouted a tail which he kept hidden. He was said to dine on insects and to fornicate with salamanders late at night before sucking the life out of the eggs of his own unborn children before the sun came up and he slithered back to his master. These were all just wild rumors but The Great Willie Young didn’t doubt that they were all true.

Pereira lurched forward, hissing as he went and he slithered with the great chains in his hands towards The Great Willie Young, who stood, seething, afraid to make a move because The Commissioner still had his gun trained on the head of his friend, Matthew Stafford. “You dirty motherfucker,” The Great Willie Young shouted. “You’ll never get away with this. You hear me?”

But The Commissioner just laughed, long and hard, evil and mean, while Pereira attached the chains to The Great Willie Young and then to the wall. Willie recoiled at Pereira’s touch, which was cold and slimy. There was evil in that creature’s hands and The Great Willie Young told himself that he would need to bathe in acid if he escaped this peril.

“Now,” The Commissioner said, “my plans are finally ready to ripen. With the money I make from the China Doll there, and with the cash I make selling you to the highest bidder – and believe me, Mr. Young, there are many, many, out there who are very interested in getting their hands on you, the world will finally be mine. All mine!” The Commissioner cackled once again and his lizard, Pereira, hissed along with him.

The Great Willie Young bit his lip so hard that he drew his own blood. He then spat it at The Commissioner who just laughed again while Pereira dropped to the ground and began to lap it up. The Great Willie Young recoiled in disgust and wondered, with a desperation that he had seldom felt over the course of his long and glorious life, what to do. He looked all around him and seeing no way out he began to lose hope when suddenly, a mysterious figure, bathed in a heavenly glow, burst through the door.

“You vile motherfucker!” the figure shouted. He kicked the gun out of The Commissioner’s hands and then with his own giant hands he began to throttle the lizard Pereira. “Believe me, motherfucker,” the mysterious figure shouted “I’m gonna complete the process of whoopin’ your ass!”

“St. Calvin!” The Great Willie Young was overjoyed to see his old friend, St. Calvin, All-Pro wide receiver who had recently surpassed Jerry Rice in all the record books, better known to most of the world as Calvin Johnson.

Seeing the gun lying on floor, The Great Willie Young immediately broke his chains and then blitzed The Commissioner, who fell to his knees in fear and immediately began begging for his life.

“You ain’t even worth it, motherfucker,” The Great Willie Young spat. The Commissioner curled up into a ball, but not before pissing himself with fear. The Great Willie Young then put his own broken chains on The Commissioner while St. Calvin busied himself with throttling Pereira, who hissed and then shit himself. “Hold up, dog, we’ll sell this asshole to the zoo,” The Great Willie Young said and then he and St. Calvin laughed.

Hours later, the duo had managed to free their friend, The Great Matthew Stafford, and then The Great Willie Young laid his hands on him like Miyagi did with the Karate Kid or some weird, vaguely creepy and homoerotic shit like that and healed him of his injuries. The Great Willie Young then asked how St. Calvin found them.

St. Calvin just shook his head and said “It was weird, man. Got a call from somebody, sounded like some old coked up Chinaman. Buncha whores were gigglin’ in the background. He said, yo, you need to get over here and help our boy. I was all ‘Our boy?’ and that motherfucker was all ‘Fuck yeah, son. The Great Willie Young.’ I got my shit together and, well, here I am.”

Wu Pei, The Great Willie Young thought with a smile. Good ol’ Wu Pei.

The Great Willie Young then decided to give Wu Pei a call, and Wu Pei soon arrived with an army of lawyers and accountants. They scooped up the simpering Commissioner, stripped him of his tin badge and dragged him away. The Great Willie Young asked Wu Pei where they were taking him, but Wu Pei just laughed and told him that he had gotten a call from the Rozelle family, who said they were in need of a good houseboy. Wu Pei said he figured that The Commissioner fit the bill well enough. As for Pereira, he was taken by animal control. Afterwards, rumors flew that he had been put down like some common street dog. Still others said that he had been sold to Michael Vick, who, uh, knows how to deal with such things. Still others said that he escaped and later slithered into the Mekong River where he haunts the villagers and mutilates their cattle late at night. But, like I said, these are all rumors and cannot be confirmed, especially since, you know, they happen in the future. These things are complicated.

After all that nasty business was sorted out, the trio of Lions, all famous heroes throughout the world, along with Wu Pei, “meditated” late into the night with the liberated China Doll whores, who were said to be very – very – grateful.

And with that, yet another chapter in the saga of The Great Willie Young has come to an end. Good night and Vaya con dios, my friends. Vaya con dios.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Searching For Answers With A Big Baby, Nazi References And A Whole Lot Of Swearing

Shaun was later accused of assaulting the one on the left and eating the one on the right. Oh, and there are some women in this picture too. Hiyooooooooooo!



I meant to write something yesterday, but then I got caught up in a project that Raven Mack and I are doing for the site and, well, shit got out of hand – which you might expect given that it involves the two of us - and I decided fuck it, I’d just wait until today, so . . . here I am. Of course, I am faced with the same dilemma that everyone else is faced with this time of year – what the fuck am I supposed to write about? Indeed. There is not one damn thing that is remotely interesting going on in Lions land right now. In retrospect, maybe I should have just done an installment in the Adventures of Willie Young, and hell, I’m sure that’s what I’ll have to do in the coming weeks. So . . . yeah. But I didn’t really feel like doing one this week. I don’t know why. It’s been a while, but I suppose I feel like I’m somehow cheating you if that’s all I start doing and since I’m only really writing anything here one day a week, that’s what it would quickly degenerate into. I want to use these weekly posts to check in with what’s going on so that we can all stay tethered to the world of the Lions. That will be tougher to do if all I’m doing is flying off on ridiculous flights of fancy involving a backup rookie defensive end fighting Chinamen and berserk Nazis. Sure, that shit is fun and some would say necessary to the advancement of the human spirit in these dark and terrible times, but I fear I would quickly lose the narrative thread that so tenuously holds everything that I do here together. I don’t want to look up 2 or 3 months from now and realize I have no fucking idea what I’m even talking about anymore. (Too late?)

Anyway, this is all so much rambling horseshit and I don’t blame you if you’re tempted to just shake your head and then hit the back button on your browser. I’m tempted too and I’m writing this damn thing. But this is what happens in February. I mean, really, what is there to talk about? Let’s see here . . . oh right, the Lions had a “major” announcement, the rumor of which had the Lions universe buzzing for about 1.8 seconds until everyone realized that it was just the announcement that the Lions were moving their preseason games to another local television network. As announcements go, sure that’s probably fractionally bigger than Roosevelt’s address explaining that we were at war with Germany and Japan but major? What’s next? Are they going to hold a press conference to announce that they installed new urinal cakes in the men’s room? I can see Tom Lewand with charts and graphs and mockups of fake plastic computer people pissing into new state of the art troughs. Jesus. I guess, in a way, it’s the perfect “major” announcement for this time of year. It just sums the whole damn thing up. Speaking of Tom Lewand, maybe he could do me a favor and get busted for shitfaced driving again. I need material, Tom! Damn it, just wander into the local bar and let nature take its course.

So . . . uh, what else? Shaun Rogers just got cut by the Browns which means he’s back on the market and predictably this has led people to wonder whether the Lions should bring him back into the fold. I say no for a couple of different reasons. Number one, the Lions are already stocked at defensive tackle and while, yeah, you want depth, you need to have the right kind of players with the right kind of personality to provide that depth. It’s the same problem I had with the idea of going after Albert Haynesworth. Yeah, on paper, that shit might work out, but in reality Albert or Big Baby would just be a pain in the ass. Those are dudes who are legendary for being lazy shitheads. They constantly take plays off – hell, sometimes whole games off – and that’s not the sort of shit we need right now. I mean, do you honestly think that either one of those dudes would just gladly accept a role as a backup defensive tackle who rotates in and out of games like some blue collar cog? Fuck that. Those guys would behave like 3 year olds. They are horrible assholes when they are the number one guy. How in the fuck do you think they are going to handle being number three or four? Shit. Jim Schwartz would call for Albert Haynesworth to get into the game only to find that he’d wandered off to get a hotdog or pooped his pants or emptied out his toybox and then sat down in the middle of all the mess with his arms folded and a petulant scowl on his face. Sure, there’s this fantasy that Jim Schwartz is somehow “The Albert Whisperer” and would soothe the savage beast, but that is not really a chance I want to take, you know?

It’s the same with Shaun Rogers. This is a man who can’t focus when he standing on the field, ready to hit or be hit by an opposing guard or center. Do your really think he’ll be able to bring any sort of intensity when he’s standing on the sideline scanning the crowd for the next stripper he’s going to assault? Hell, Jim Schwartz would call for Shaun to go into the game, and it’d probably look a little something like this:


Schwartz: Shaun? SHAUN! I’ve been calling your name for the last 15 seconds. What the hell is wrong with you? Get in the game, you lazy shit!

Shaun Rogers: Titties. Ham. Baby Got Back. Back bacon.

Schwartz: What the . . .?

Gunther Cunningham: Oh God, he’s trying to make me give him a lapdance! What do I do Jim? Jiiiiimmmmmmmmmmm!!!

[Gunther’s withered old balls dance on Big Baby’s massive chest while Gun cries out in horror and confusion. End scene.]


That Oscar worthy dialogue is not even a ridiculous fantasy. That shit would happen. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise.

Even if you assume that Schwartz and Gun would get Big Baby to behave himself – and man, if you believe that shit, it’s probably time for your friends and loved ones to start the ol’ intervention – it still doesn’t erase the fact that Shaun Rogers is covered with the terrible stink of Lions Disease. He is tainted by it and he always will be. I don’t want him back simply because I don’t want anyone back from the terrible, terrible past. Sure, it really wasn’t his fault, but it’s the same reason why two parents almost always split up after their kid dies. You just don’t want anything around that reminds you of that horrible shit. (And by “horrible shit”, I mean the situation, not the dead child himself. I may be an asshole, but I want you to know that I’m not trying to call your dead child a horrible little shit. I’m glad I could clear this up.)

The stink is on him and it smells like shit. No thanks. And do you want Shaun fucking Rogers hanging around with Ndamukong Suh? I just shuddered a little bit just thinking of that. And even if you believe that Suh is impervious to Shaun’s wicked ways, what about someone like Corey Williams? Can’t you just see him being found passed out in the dumpster behind the nearest strip joint, covered in what could either be smeared lipstick or smeared blood, stripper smell and bruises from the fists of angry bouncers, only weeks after being “mentored” by Big Baby? Horrible, just horrible.

Other than that, nothing is going on that I can even stretch into being semi-interesting without being ashamed of myself. I mean, yeah, I could talk about Eric King being released, but I don’t even want to think about the weird and wild shit I would have to concoct in order to make that story interesting. I would end up horrifying myself and no one wants that, do they? It would probably start off with Nazis and then end with me gibbering to myself in an all-white padded room, tied down with a straightjacket so I wouldn’t hurt myself. I mean, I’m willing to explore the darker regions of my mind and my soul for you, but have some goddamn compassion. There’s no way I could make a story about Eric King interesting without hurting myself.

So . . . anything else? I suppose I could talk about the looming labor issues that seem to be dominating the NFL news and I’ll be honest, I considered throwing my voice into the mournful howl of a billion voices crying out in pain and confusion over the issue, but really, what’s the point? Losing football would suck and we would all be depressed, and shit, someone should prevent that from happening. If I tried to say any more than that, I would probably just end up calling Roger Goodell a cocksucker and then ranting and raving about Mike Pereira slithering around like a Nazi lizard man for ten paragraphs and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, now would it? Shit, I think I’m getting an idea for a new Willie Young installment.

Well, hell. On that note, let’s just get the hell out of here. Hopefully next week Tom Lewand will get caught pissing in the closet of a 90 year old lady or something and I will have something I can really dig my teeth into. But probably not. Instead, I’ll probably end up writing about Jason Hanson’s goiter or why Nate Burleson’s piss smells like asparagus or about Dominic Raiola’s collection of antique dildos. Oh, the horror, the horror . . .