The Lions Are In First Place

The Lions are in first place.

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No, really, they are.  You can even look that shit up.  They are in first place and oh my god this is really happening, you guys, and… okay, hold it together.  Breathe.  Get rational, Neil.  Get…

Fuck all that.  The Lions are in first place!  And while I’m sure at some point the night terrors will set in again, and I will start whispering weird things to The Fear in the dark, where there is no light and only he can see into the wounded places of my soul, for now, I am dancing with the lights on and Hope is clapping in the corner while Victory plays the hell out of the jug.

But the reason why we’re all having a pig roast of the soul right now is because the Lions went into Chicago and beat the Bears in a game which spawned a thousand heart attacks, and almost caused me to jam a wire coat hanger into the electrical socket in my living room to prevent cardiac arrest.  I may have been halfway through dialing the phone to order a hit on Nick Fairley while simultaneously penning a letter of outrage to Herr Goodell for the persecution of the most noble one, The Great Willie Young, but then Big Nick stuck his giant head through the screen and said “Yo, put that fuckin’ phone down.  Now.”  And I did as he swallowed up the Earth and the Moon and the Sun and left us all staring into a New Void, one containing nothing but worlds of our own potential making.

In retrospect, that final obliteration of the Bears ill-fated two point conversion attempt was a fitting way for this to end.  It was a frustrating game by any metric.  The Lions had chance after chance to put the game away in the second half, largely due to the fact that Jay Cutler was reduced to hobbling down the field with the aid of a walker, croaking about how he slipped and fell in the shower and begging somebody, anybody, to check his medic alert bracelet.  But they couldn’t capitalize, as Matthew Stafford played maybe his worst game of the year, and the screen game suddenly disintegrated.  This would worry me, but I think it’s just a momentary blip, as these guys – Stafford and Reggie Bush – are too good and too experienced (yes, we’ve reached that point with Maverick Stafford now) for that to continue for too long. 

This meant that the game felt like a succession of missed opportunities, which felt sickeningly fitting giving that “opportunity” was the overarching theme of the game as a whole.  The Lions needed to win this, and oh lord, wouldn’t it have been fitting for them to lose the game 100 times over?  But those are sick thoughts, and let us not speak too much of them.  In the end, St. Calvin dashed around a mere mortal, plucked the ball out of the air and then it was time for Chicago to plea to false gods and bathe in the frightened sweat of the irrevocably damned. 

Of course, they were almost bailed out by a combo of Nick Fairley morphing into his evil twin at the worst possible time (well, even more evil anyway) and a ref enacting his family’s revenge for an ancient grudge feud with The Great Willie Young dating back to 1852, but then Fairley commenced with his planet swallowing and that was that.  Nick Fairley, Eater of Worlds, had arrived, and all the Bears could do was hang their heads low and know that they had just met a supernatural force.  Josh McCown went and sat down on the bench, to ponder what if, while Jay Cutler received mouth to mouth in the locker room and shat himself.

Meanwhile, Fairley did a fat man high step down the field that shook the earth, and caused frightened birds to flee from their nests in the Sears Tower and animals at the zoo to roar in panic.  The bones of the T-Rex at the History Museum shuddered and Chicagoland put aside all their cares and worries, put down the guns and prayed to the East, to the new Mecca of Fairley, and… okay, yes, I am getting carried away here and somebody probably just put a fatwa on me, but it’s worth it, friends.  It’s worth it because the Lions are in first place.  They are.  It says so in the standings, which state that the Lions are in first place, which means that they have a better record than anybody else in the division, which means they are in first place.  They are.  In first place.  In first…

Okay.  Right.  Anyway, there was a beautiful synchronicity to that game (and oh lord, you know we’re in trouble when I start gibbering about synchronicity again…)  It was one of those things that unfolded in seemingly terrible and obscene ways, but when it was all over, it was impossible to imagine it playing out any other way than it did.  It just felt right.  The Lions were plagued by all their usual demons, but instead of letting that define them, they said “shut the fuck up, demons” and then Nick Fairley ate them.  And wasn’t there something just so perfectly beautiful and synchronous about the Bears having their go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter wiped off the board because Alshon Jeffery didn’t complete the process of the catch?  I mean, this is where that heinous monster was born and then unleashed on the world by the Lizard Man Pereira.  Today, that monster turned around and ate the people who cowardly hid under its wings that fateful day, and then Nick Fairley ate it.

Look, there will probably be a lot of time to quaver in fear and wear sandwich boards around town proclaiming the end is nigh, and I’m sure at some point soon I will compare Nick Fairley to Lenny Small and his locker will be searched for the corpses of dead bunny rabbits, but for now, I just want to bask in the perfect beauty of this day.  For today, Jay Cutler is being airlifted to the Mayo clinic while Aaron Rodgers’ spends his time with his arm in a sling, sadly browsing local shops for a mustache comb, pondering the meaninglessness of a wasted year, and the Lions are celebrating into the night and Nick Fairley is high-stepping down Lake Michigan Avenue like Godzilla while the locals flee and the National Guard offers their unconditional surrender because the Lions are in first place.  The Lions are in first place.

This Is It

Aaron Rodgers was visited by the Ghost of Charles Rogers (no relation, because, well… obviously.  I mean, one of them has a “d” in his last name.  Wait… what did you think I meant?), and after Chuck’s ghost rummaged around Rodgers’ place looking for shit he could steal to sell, he remembered why he was there and shattered his collarbone with a tap of his magic bong wand.  This effectively knocks the Packers out of the race (hopefully, I mean I know I am putting the cart waaaaay before the horse here, especially since the Packers have famously overcome major injury issues in the past, but Rodgers was always the one constant, the dude holding everything together with perfect passes and general Aaron Rodgersness, but then again, we all remember the Matt Flynnapalooza, which… I’m just going to stop this line of thinking before I have a panic attack, but anyway, yeah, the Packers’ hopes took a major hit when Rodgers’ collarbone said fuck it and hung the gone fishin’ sign.  Incidentally, the Ghost of Charles Rogers also took a major hit, but an entirely different kind.)

This sets up this week’s game against the hated Bears, with both the Lions and the Bears sitting at 5-3.  The Bears themselves have a wounded quarterback, and there were some who said the team was better off once he was gone.  I don’t necessarily agree, but there does seem to be some smoke that their coach, Marc Trestman, and Jay Cutler aren’t on the same page to support that particular fire, and so, hey… maybe.  The point is that for all the Bears’ stubborn refusal to go away (and isn’t that usually how they end up grinding out these weird 12-4 seasons every few years?) they still seem to have some internal issues, and once a quarterback and a coach get on different pages, the whole book tends to fall apart and becomes a weird choose your own adventure in which one of them gets trapped in a dungeon and eaten by a dragon.  They are there, and they are always a pain in the ass, but they are significantly less scary than the Packers, and given that the Vikings rowed their sad little boat full of holes out to the middle of the sea and set fire to it really before the season even started, this means that it’s just the Lions and the Bears left standing.  And here’s the thing – the Lions have already beaten the Bears once this season, and if they win this game, they’ll be a game up in the standings, they’ll own the tiebreaker, and they’ll be facing down a pretty manageable schedule the rest of the way (Just look at it.  12-4 is not out of the question.)  This is really happening, y’all.  Win this week, and there’s a very, very good chance the Lions are winning this fucking thing.

Naturally, Lions fans are completely terrified.

Look, I don’t have to explain why.  You all know it, and yet another recitation of this Shakespearean tragedy known as our collective history isn’t what anybody needs right now.  It’s right there, screaming at us from inside our own brains with a goddamn megaphone made of Fear and cold, naked Terror. 

But the reason The Fear is currently squatting in our souls like a shiftless hobo, pooping in the corner and making a fort out of old newspapers, is because this game carries a weight to it that’s impossible to ignore.  This is it.  For better or worse, this feels like the moment when we’ll Know.  If the Lions win, then goddammit, we just might do this, and it could very well signal a turning-point for this insipid franchise.  If they lose, well… they will have blown their best shot at really changing things, and while that might not mean they won’t eventually somehow pull it together, this is the NFL, and these are the sorts of shots that don’t come along often.  There’s a sudden vacuum, and you’re either the team that fills it, or you’re the team that spends the late winter months fretting about draft position.

That’s perhaps overly stark and simplistic, but such is the weight of this game on our psyches.  It is pivotal in a way that truly defines the word.  It is a pivot point, for better or for worse, and we don’t get many of those.  And when we do, let’s face it, we know which way it usually goes.

Still, the Lions physically beat on the Bears the first time they played, and so there is every reason to believe they can pull this one out.  They are the better team.  Or at least they can be.  But let’s face it, the reason I immediately hedged there is because we have seen this team completely shit itself before, especially against these Bears and especially in Chicago.  Weird and terrible shit happens at Soldier Field, from our dudes becoming allergic to the football to Devin Hester or Hester Prynne or whoever the fuck dancing down the field at ludicrous speed while our dudes flail uselessly behind them to Matthew Stafford being taken apart like the black knight in the Holy Grail to Mike Pereira popping up to explain that there is something called The Process of the Catch.  Those are the sorts of things that happen in Chicago and Oh Lord…

Okay, get a grip.  Here’s the thing: I don’t think the Bears are that good.  Here’s the other thing, though: I don’t think the Lions are that good.  But, the Lions are coming off of that galvanizing win over the Cowboys in which Matthew Stafford and St. Calvin became the Maverick and Goose of our hearts once and for all, and… you know what?  That’s a bad reference.  I mean, Goose gets fucking killed in that movie, and now Calvin will end up hitting his head and breaking his neck on the goalpost after going up for a jump-ball, and… Jesus, you see?  I can’t hold it together.  This game is fucking with my head, and I know I’m not alone.

This is The Fear in all its naked and terrible glory, thrashing about because it knows that we’re standing at the edge of something.  And sure, that something might be more about what’s going on with other teams than the Lions at the moment, and yeah, I’d rather have the Lions just show up in Green Bay and beat an Aaron Rodgers led Packers team one of these days, and some would say this opportunity is more a technicality than a true potential passing of the torch, but fuck you, after what we’ve been through, I don’t care if the Lions win this division because every other QB slips and falls in the shower like an old woman, I’ll take it, and then I’ll jam that fucking torch up your ass.

Even if it is an unusual and unlooked for opportunity, it’s still an opportunity.  And there’s no telling what can happen once you find yourself sitting on that throne, what kind of confidence that can give you, what kind of subtle yet all too important changes in perception that can create.  Sure, if the Lions do pull this out, and do ride it to a division title, we know damn well that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers will be coming back next year for that throne, but fuck them, if they want it, they’ll have to come and take it.  That’s what being on the throne means.  It doesn’t really matter how you get there, it just matters that it’s sitting underneath your ass and not someone else’s.

But I am getting hilariously ahead of myself and taunting the football gods with my hubris, which is always a spectacularly stupid idea, especially given that I’m a fan of the team championed by Hades while Zeus just sits in the sky and hurls lightning bolts at us, laughing while we perpetually dive for cover in piles of pig shit.  There is still this goddamn game against the Bears to get through, and even if we make it through that, we have to somehow put aside what seems to be encoded in our very DNA and still finish the season strong, but all that is really just noise, thunder on the horizon.  Today, we’re staring face to face with that rare beast, opportunity, and there is nothing standing between it and us for the first time in ages.  It’s ours if we can just take it.

That’s a thought that almost makes you want to hyperventilate, doesn’t it?  Both for good reasons and for bad, but such is the yin and yang of Lions fandom, that perpetual push and pull between Hope and Fear.  But today, Hope doesn’t seem like such a crazy thing.  That’s what makes it so scary.  It’s real, and so are the Lions chances, both against the Bears this week and for the rest of the season.  There is a very good chance this is a playoff team, and somehow, unfathomably, if the Lions win today, there is a very good chance that it’s a division winner.  And if it’s a division winner, no matter the reason, whether it’s because the Lions are truly the best team or just because Aaron Rodgers’ died on his way to his home planet aka a commercial set, it means that it’s a successful team, and if it’s a successful team it means… well, you fill in the blank with whatever your heart wants to.  That’s what's on the line right now, and that’s why today’s game is both deliriously exciting and completely and utterly terrifying.  And if that’s the new normal, then I think I can live with that.  Because that will mean that the Lions win today, and you know what?  I think they will.

The Great Willie Young Vs. The Noid

(The following was recovered from the journal of a 19^th century correspondent sent to investigate claims of supernatural phenomena in the Louisiana Bayou.  Only fragments of his journals were recovered, and he was never seen nor heard from again, although local lore holds that he was transformed into what they refer to as a “witness” of a figure known as The Great Willie Young, and has been granted immortality so that he may travel through the cosmos, documenting the trials and travails of Mr. Young.  No one knows his identity in the present, but it has been said that he enjoys long walks on the beach, Patrick Swayze movies, huffing ether and, of course, his benefactor and dread lord, The Great Willie Young.)

I have been in the camp of the one the locals call “Guillaume le Magnifique” for several weeks now, and it is only recently that the Great and Mysterious master of the bayou has taken me into his confidence.  I suspect that he feels he can make use of me in his dealings with the outside world, critical at this juncture since he finds himself warring with the local magistrates, a collective of plantation owners and cruel slave traders who have seem to have taken his destruction as their primary goal.

However, it seems that recently something has occurred to disrupt their obsession.  Citizens of New Orleans have been seen streaming into the bayou for the better part of a week, frightened, carrying little but the clothes on their own backs, weeping and quaking with fear, as if they had witnessed the Holy Ghost itself.  The Great One has in his infinite kindness taken each and every frightened and downtrodden soul into his care, and behind closed doors he visits with each of them, where his men claim that he peers into their souls and renders Final Judgment.  There is some evidence to support this as at least one newcomer was strung up by his own entrails and hung from a tree just outside of the encampment.  The smell was something fierce, but just last night there was a strange glow.  I dismissed this glow as swamp gas, but the next morning the body was gone and the people spoke in open awe of the Glory of the Great One.  More than one of the frightened refugees muttered darkly that he had consumed the body, and that they had seen him howling at the moon and fornicating with strange beasts, but this smacks of dumb superstition born of fear of the unknown, and I take no heed of it.

The Great One tells me himself that the locals have been frightened by some new demon, a strange beast that shapeshifts from a human form into a strange figure who murders his victims with an odd confection of spiced bread and cheese, either suffocating them or slowly clogging their arteries in a most diabolical fashion.  This morning, an envoy from the city’s leaders even arrived, putting aside their war with The Great One to ask his help in dealing with this new menace.  The audacity itself speaks to the state of their savage desperation, and they met all morning with The Great One behind closed doors.  I was allowed to sit quietly and observe and record the proceedings.

A man named Henri LaSalle explained that a rich industrialist had recently moved to the outskirts of the city to look after his shipping interests, and almost immediately bodies began to be found, slain in the cruel fashion previously mentioned.  The city’s leaders at first assumed that it was the work of mere vampyres, common in the area, but soon they were forced to admit that it was something far more grievous – it would seem that they claim to have discovered that this unnamed industrialist can change himself into something hideous and terrible, a fell beast by the name of The Noid. 

Monsieur LaSalle explained this situation to The Great Willie Young and beseeched him to put aside their vast differences for a time so that they could work together to defeat this hideous new monstrosity.  But The Great One dismissed Monsier LaSalle with the following: “No Noid ever called me a nigga.”  The man, left dumbstruck, was then led out of the room by The Great One’s men, and his screams echoed through the remainder of the morning into the afternoon.  I must say, his wails soured lunch considerably, but they died away soon after and The Great One seems pleased with his decision.

(Several pages of the journal are unfortunately missing, but the account picks up several days later with the following.)

More have gone missing in the last day, and only hours ago one of The Great One’s lieutenants, a man by the name of Burleson, was found wandering aimlessly in the marsh, his arms mangled and destroyed.  It would seem that The Noid lured him into the marsh late at night, with ambiguous promises of delightful cheeses and fine bread, topped with savory meats, only to viciously attack him and leave him for dead.  It is only with some luck that a new arrival to camp, a Haitian bounty hunter by the name of Delmas, who claims he has devoted much of his life to hunting The Noid, found Burleson with the help of his pet alligator, who he keeps on a chain and walks like a bloodhound dog. 

This incident enraged The Great One to the point of action, as he has gathered together hunting parties to deal with The Noid.  The two chief parties are to be led by the Haitian Delmas and The Great One himself, respectively.  I have been asked to accompany The Great One, which I take as a great honor, and…

(Again, several pages of the account have gone missing.  We pick up the story here…)

The wails in the bayou are terrible, the sound of men dying of heart disease and indigestion mingled with the terrible laughter of The Noid.  Burleson has accompanied us from his sickbed, a cot which is carried around by recent arrivals from New Orleans, who have vowed to work for The Great One as penance for their prior misdeeds, although I suspect that they will turn on him the moment he defeats the scourge of The Noid.  I further suspect that he knows this himself and I will likely bear witness to a terrible bloodletting when this has reached its inevitable end.  I once asked The Great One why he had a problem with the people of New Orleans and he said to me “First of all, they some racist motherfuckers.  I don’t truck with no cocksuckers who think it’s okay to keep slaves.  Shit, my daddy taught me that, before he was killed by some redcoat coward while he was a cheetah.  Second, they follow some heathen named Brees, a white boy with a mark on his face that clearly indicates that he is of the devil.  Now, I been accused of being the devil once or twice in my time – which is all the time, incidentally – but let me tell you, motherfuckers don’t know what they’re talking about.  I tangled with the real devil once, looked a lot like every other white boy I know, only he had that same mark on his face, but that’s a story for another time…”

Shook, I let the matter drop.  But as I mentioned previously, Burleson was with us, and from his cot he grimly told us all he knew about The Noid, which unfortunately wasn’t much since the attack occurred late at night and there are those that say that Burleson was actually drunk when it occurred, but those are terrible rumors, spread by mean spirited cowards who have never come face to face with true evil or late night munchies themselves.  Still, The Great One seems to have learned something about The Noid from Burleson, as the beast’s cries and laughter seem to be drawing nearer with each passing moment.  Burleson, meanwhile, just lies on his cot and weeps, lapping soup from a bowl like a dog, flapping around what is left of his ruined limbs, moaning about how he cannot even pleasure himself anymore.  It is a terrible way to live.

(Yet again, several pages have gone missing, but we continue the story nonetheless.)

It is terrible.  It has been three days since we found Delmas’ pet alligator with its snout stuffed with cheese.  The poor beast died of asphyxiation and an exploded stomach, and The Noid left behind a trail of viscous goo, although it is possible that this was merely the unfortunate product of one of Burleson’s terrible nocturnal emissions, which have become all too commonplace since he became incapable of self-pleasure.  The Great One briefly mentioned the possibility that someone “take care of” Burleson, but he didn’t specify what that meant and none of the party seemed eager to find out, and so he let the matter drop.

Just yesterday, we found Delmas clinging to a giant log in the middle of a swamp.  It would seem that he had come up lame following one on one battle with The Noid.  Through tears, he explained that he challenged The Noid to a duel following the death of his beloved gator, but during the battle he was attacked by a rival of his, a fellow bounty hunter by the name of Sims, a colorful figure who traveled in a wagon that doubled as a veritable zoo.  The fiend let loose his menagerie on Delmas, who did his best to fight off various lizards and even a giant bird who flew off with his pants, before being bested by a monkey he claims was possessed of “retard strength.”  He says that both Sims and the monkey ran off into the bayou, in hot pursuit of The Noid, leaving Delmas lying limp with what he calls a “pulled hammy,” which he assures us is a common – and incredibly frustrating – malady.

(More pages missing.  Story continues…)

The Noid has been cornered!  We followed a trail of cheese after discovering the dead bodies of both Sims and his poor monkey.  It would seem that the duo managed to wound The Noid in their struggle before succumbing to his terrible evils.  The beast sits now in a tree, and has taken – perhaps unsurprisingly – to cowardice, taking its human form to beg for its pathetic life.  It has offered The Great One gold, land and titles, and when The Great One asked its name, the fiend merely replied “I used to be king, before the Caesar won the hearts of the people.  He seemed a meager foe, a… Little Caesar if you will, but he was old and crafty, and had deep pockets, and soon his wares were common in all the land, from quaint homes to the arenas of combat, while I was forced to consort with The Devil himself, that marked bastard, in order to survive.  It was he who did this to me, who changed me into this… this… thing known as The Noid.  I… I… was once a man.  Remember me for who I was, for founding strict Catholic universities and for hyper-conservatism.  Damn you, Ilitch!” 

Even as I write, The Great One has fixed an arrow on the pathetic creature, and… lo!  He has let the arrow fly with the splendor reflective of His majesty!  

The Noid has been shot from his tree, and now lies dying at The Great One’s feet.  It is a hideous creature, trapped somewhere between its human form and the monster it was forced to become.  Oh, but it looks as if the beast would speak!

“Remember me… as… a… man.  I was… once… great.  I… was… once…”

And with that, the beast has perished.  The Great One now stands above his fallen enemy, shaking his head.  “It don’t matter what you once was, bro, ‘cause you dead now, Homie.”

(Sadly, the remainder of the journal was badly worn, and was largely illegible save for scattered sentences referring to Burleson’s ejaculate, and a brief paragraph detailing a visit from an ancient and mysterious friend of The Great Willie Young known only as Wu Pei.  And so ends yet another tale of The Great Willie Young.)