Fresh off my annual Thanksgiving piece, which was depressing as hell, I thought I’d at least try to get out the other Thursday game for Gambling With Sanity, which since it involves the disgusting Dallas Cowboys and the Washington (lol) Football Team, is also likely to be dark and depraved but with maybe a more humorous bent, we’ll just have to see. I refuse to call it the other Thanksgiving game because fuck the Cowboys and also that this is the Lions game and always will be. Accept no pretenders. Obviously, this won’t be the full Gambling With Sanity, but just a taste, and we’ll get the rest out later. But for now, we get after it following a 6-8 performance a week ago which runs my shitty streak to approximately infinity weeks and leaves poor Davy and the gang with assorted broken limbs and death threats from gangster bookies. I’ll try to do better, but fuck, it already isn’t looking good thanks to the shitty ass Lions who are currently down 9 at the half as I try to bang this fucker out. So, let’s just get on with it.
Washington (+3) at Dallas
It says more about the shitty former Redskins that they are underdogs than it does about the Cowboys being favorites given that both are utter trash. Of course that extends beyond the football field to a team and owners that are despicable and rotten exemplars of everything bad and terrible about this fucked up country, which has descended to levels of fucked upness not seen since certain Southern folk tried to storm Gettysburg and owned certain dudes and lady dudes of a particular hue.
Daniel Snyder is a grotesque figure, an incompetent fool reduced to losing his team’s name and suing his own fanbase, even the elderly old women. He has driven away even more fans, including this site’s brethren, Raven Mack and Paul Robertson, my partners in crime in many writerly endeavors. And those are old school Southern types who are stubborn in their loves and their hates, and to drive them from one side of that coin to the other takes a lot of terrible work indeed. But that’s what Daniel Snyder, the Clown Prince of Washington, and shit, that’s saying something, has managed to do amongst other stupid atrocities against man.
And yet, Danny Boy pales in contemptuous comparison to Jerry Jones, the Clown Prince of America, and again that is saying something. Sure, everyone is screaming Trump right now, and I agree, but these dudes are the sort of dudes who basically enabled the entire Trumpian era of horror and disgust. Assholes like this conditioned a certain, uh let’s say intellectually vulnerable, group of people, and my god are they a lot, to accept Trump as Presidential which lololol Jesus it still feels absurd to even think let alone write.
Anyway, Jerry Jones is obviously Trumpian in so far as Trumpian has become the descriptor du jour but really, I’d argue that Trump is Jonesian as much as anything, the mere successor to a cultural monster who has almost certainly done heinous and terrible things which I have written about in disgusting detail for a long time now. Suffice it to say, there is likely a pile of dead young Mexicans stuffed in a cupboard somewhere in Dallas.
Of course, both of these teams are wretched sideshow versions of even their normal wretchedness, which in Dallas at least makes a pretense of being a playoff contender and in Washington… well, shit, at least it usually isn’t *this* bad. But it is now, as both of these teams are deserving images of their despicable owners, who somehow will get away with it and remain uber-powerful in today’s fucked up NFL, which is itself a mirror of what’s become of our decayed and ruined society, rife with disease and children being killed by the modern day Gestapo known as police officers, who serve as the personal brute squads of dudes like Jones and Snyder.
It’s a fucked up situation that only gets more fucked up and I already wrote way too much about that earlier today in my Thanksgiving piece, so let’s not dwell on that and move on to the falseness of this whole thing, which is a second holiday game which was stolen from the Lions and the city of Detroit by the culture thieves in Dallas. It’s hard to really explain how disgusted I am with the whole ordeal, not just this season when the whole thing is a clownshow, but in every season, seasons in which the Lions are always treated as an appetizer for the main course, which is so ass backwards even given the general nightmare that is Lions football. I mean, this is our One Thing and to treat it like it doesn’t matter beyond just something to have playing in the background while you glutton yourself into a food coma is despicable to me.
I guess in this sense, I am sort of doubling up the Thanksgiving piece, but fuck it, it needs to be done because this year is so vast with the whole pathos of it all that it needs some extra caterwauling. But the point is that the city of Detroit in particular deserves better, having almost literally built America of the 20th century, which is really fucking saying something, pioneering not only the automotive boom and subsequent industrial explosion, but also pioneering the concept of a livable wage and the creation of a strong working middle class who could afford all the brand new shit being pumped out. Oh, and they also were the industrial muscle behind the World War II victory machine, so… yeah, give it up for and be thankful for Detroit’s very existence you ungrateful fucks.
Dallas, on the other hand, has always been the city that exploits the Detroits of the world, its chief contribution being an ugly merging of Big Oil culture and the financial parasites who fed off its almost literal poisoning of America and the world, for which we currently stand at a deep precipice of ecological and cultural ruin. Thanks, assholes. Fuck Dallas, and fuck their thievery, and fuck them getting to play on Thanksgiving every year.
Washington, of course, remains almost incidental except for the fact that they have all often served as the Cowboys partner in crime even while ostensibly serving as their rival. It is in tandem that this entire False idea of a glamorous NFC East, a Primetime NFC East, has been created. America’s Team and “America’s” Team are both so hideously dysfunctional and filled with a history of cokeheads and whoremongers that… well, shit, I guess they really are America’s Teams.
So, I suppose there is something apropos about them playing on Thanksgiving, but it is something wrong and perverse, much like so much else about America these days. And everyone will watch, more out of habit than anything, which is also the story of the NFL, especially in this fucked up fanless season with its piped in noise and paper cutouts in the stands. It is all so appropriate in a wacked way, but again, welcome to 2020 and the Thanksgiving it deserves.
Pick: Dallas
Las Vegas (-3) at Atlanta
The Raiders hung with the Chiefs even if they couldn’t beat them in the spiritual outhouse that is their lives. There are no fans in Vegas, either the pandemic denied or the Who Actually Lives in Vegas kind, which I’m sure is a robust coterie of servicers of the food/gaming/sex/drug/beverage/elvis/wedding/ass eating industries, which employs a veritable Byzantium of people, so I guess there probably are a lot of people living in the Vegas desert, I mean it’s not like they make the circus live in fucking tents anymore, they just build subdivisions. But still, all of that revolves around the premise that there will be people to be served and in the COVID madness of 2020 I have no idea how they are holding out there.
Which means the Raiders and Las Vegas haven’t even really fucked yet, have they? No, they’ve been introduced to each other, they’ve said some vows, but until they fuck they haven’t fucked. Maybe Mark Davis jacked off in the Bellagio atrium, but that’s all that’s happened. The Raiders are famously turning heel on everything that the Raiders used to stand for, which was best summed up in Kenny Stabler’s autobiography which I read every summer through my teen years. But now they have no new cultural identity other than a franchised football team that is better than most people thought, which is kind of like having a premature baby, and not one of those loser 2 pounders who couldn’t hang in the womb, but a nice strapping butterball who fights his way out early and pisses in the doctor’s face because the doctor was just staring at his mom’s cooch and there are premature babies born like this right? No? Sorry. For everything.
But the point is that the Raiders may have arrived a season too early, and nobody’s sure what to do with them. The NFL, of course, has got to be loving the idea of breaking Vegas with a winning team while they pretend to wag a finger at the dread specter of gambling in sport. I can’t wait until someone slips up and we get a Pete Rose situation or if you lend an ear towards wild conspiracy theories Michael Jordan “retiring” for two years in his prime in between winning the title every fucking year. And also ALLLEGEGEDLY getting his dad clipped in the mess. Like I said, wild conspiracy theories.
Anyway, it’s just a matter of time before someone gets to one of these Vegas Raiders, those dudes living there and getting into trouble all the fucking time, which is why Vegas has always mostly been a STAY AWAY city for pro sports teams. Can you imagine an NBA team based in Las Vegas? You’d be getting the 12th man shot out over an open desert grave regularly, like they’d have to add a Vegas category to the inactives list.
And that’s a small NBA team. An NFL team has a fucking rock n roll tour bus entourage worth of players and trainers and coaches and exoticos all needing to be fed and watered. Vegas will be fighting itself not to cannibalize its own football team and someone will slip up, even if it’s not a direct deal, leverage will be a key word in Vegas in their sporting years. You can count on that.
But for now, the Raiders don’t have to worry about any of that, they just have to worry about beating the shit out of the Falcons, who can’t beat anyone and this is kind of a mean one, lose to the Saints, get the Raiders and then next week get the Saints again. But Atlanta’s season is shit and no one suspected Jon Gruden was already weaponized.
Pick: Raiders
Arizona (-2) at New England
In writing this, I am hit with news that Fat Matt and Bob Quinn have been séanced out of the goddamn house. And the Patriot Way is left to be just what this Bill Parcells grunt who had a Magic Man and now he don’t, and Bill Belichick is reminded that he was only Big Bill’s defensive coordinator after all, Big Bill and Little Bill. There are a lot of Little Bills out there. Belichick is chief amongst them, but anytime the Patriot Way or playing football coached by a Romeo Crennel or the newest dudes named Josh or Jeff, Mark or Matt, coordinating from Bill’s golden goodness which is rusting, it’s actually fucking rusting, and shit maybe that’s not gold but last night’s piss, Little Bill has to answer the door, and there are a lot of people counting on Little Bill to prove it was his show all along, but Little Bill has made a lot of money and reputation, and shit, he was able to hold it together to beat Baltimore, so maybe Little Bill can get out of this without being shamed and made to dance naked, but you know what? Kyler Murray is what Little Bill needs, but Little Bill only has a brokebacked Cam Newton, and it just isn’t enough.
Pick: Arizona
NY Giants (-6) at Cincinnati
Well shit, you pull yourself from your Ohio roots to that Xanadu of Baton Rouge, where all you have to do is throw the ball to skinny black kids on Saturdays and on Sunday you go to church and you fuck everything paraded in front of you on the altar of our lord, goat gods make an appearance and soon you get the Big Dick Ticket to the extravaganza of carnal delights, and you’re doing good even if the other dudes can’t do their share of the fucking or the Marv Lewis nightmares keep dogging the squad, but you’re fucking on fire and gonna fu… oh shit, there goes your knee and yeah, it’s all the cls and it’s gonna be chasing them nurses only they are deluged with COVID and so you just jack off like everyone else. It’s a sad tale, but the sex dungeons will just have to make due with what they have, there’s probably a Pillman dick floating out there, and until then, you just run around and grab at dicks and such, pointless, yet a reminder that those memories were real.
Pick: Giants
Cleveland (-7) at Jacksonville
Pick: Browns
Carolina (+3) at Minnesota
Kirk Cousins doesn’t exactly inspire, well... anything, and he has now stolen a lot of money from Minnesotans who are Nice in almost off-putting ways, at least on the surface and then beneath it is a hockey fight, and those people might start digging into that if Cousins doesn’t get his shit together. The fucking Andersons out here do know how to work a weak appendage. Nobody can stop Dalvin Cook though, and the Panthers are down a McCaffrey which leaves them with a gif of a man scratching his neck or whatever the fuck.
Pick: Minnesota
Tennessee (+3) at Indianapolis
The fight for the AFC South, and this could really go one of two ways. One, the Titans win. Two, the Colts win.
Pick: Colts
Miami (-7) at NY Jets
Man, right when Miami had just fooled everyone, they fucking lost to the Broncos. They should still beat the damn Jets but they aren’t gonna look pretty or make anyone quake in fear. Then again, a tiny girl with a daisy in her wee hands could make the Jets quake in fear. Which is about all the insight we have time and money for folks, as Neil tried to stay awake for like four days straight and just awoke from a near literal coma so we’ll bang out these last few games and call it a week. You basically got two Thanksgiving posts plus this addendum of gibberish instead of one long Dr. Duke like screed as he tangled with his lawyer and sent dispatches to the home office when he could which is what usually happens. Okay? Okay.
Pick: Miami
New Orleans (-15.5) at Denver
lol so in this crazy pandemic year, the Broncos literally have no quarterback this week. In a longer, more composed piece, I could probably turn this into a pretty easy metaphor for their entire season, but the gods have denied me a clean mind and clean hand in these harrowing few minutes before kickoff and I am still coming online as my internal computer searches for WiFi, so let’s just assume that at least once this week Elway considered playing QB himself, which would have at least been interesting and funny as fuck, but this is the NFL so instead it will just be some practice squad goober who once threw a football during a beach football game before getting tackled into the ocean by a hypercompetitive Johnny Utah trying to impress Swayze in Point Break. And meanwhile, the Saints still have a functional QB who admittedly would just advocate drowning all the surfers in order to catch the bank robbers because torture works and is super useful and also fun especially when it is the only way to make you understand if only for a moment how some men feel feelings, or at least that is what Drew Brees tells himself as he fondles his baby dick while reading the latest dispatches on Parler.
Pick: New Orleans
San Francisco (+6.5) at LA Rams
The Rams remain sneaky good this year while the 49ers wonder who they pissed off to get the gods to strike down half the team with Wile E. Coyote injuries. Also, those cartoons are pretty dark when you realize that every episode is about the coyote and the Road Runner trying to murder one another, or at least one trying to murder the other, who escapes in sociopathic glee as he turns the would-be murderer in the path of his own gruesome plans in order to get off because he can only feel things through a thick lens of irony and death.
Pick: Rams
Kansas City (-3.5) at Tampa Bay
The Young King comes at the Old King one more time and will almost assuredly keep expanding his new kingdom as the Old King retires ever further into the warm beaches of the little seaside kingdom he carved out for himself where there are no laws other than his and naked natives dance for him and he picks out one to fuck and one to eat while his Queen uses the native children to make new boots for her from the skins of all those who the Old King slaughtered in his blood-soaked reign over the wider realm. There is thunder and warfare inland, and the Old King’s soldiers can’t quite hold back the storm of young warriors who keep coming down from the grasslands in an effort to one day claim the beach, but for now, the Old King still has his beach and yes, men are dying and the families coming to hm from the fringes are all losing their jobs and might have to sell their children to the Queen just to have one last Christmas, but the Old King looks out over the ocean and silently vows to claim even that far off horizon expanding into the nothingness of oblivion because even Death must have a master.
Pick: Chiefs
Chicago (+9.5) at Green Bay
There is always a chance that the Bears trip up The Devil because that is what the Bears do, caring not for heaven nor hell but for the sheer chance to just be blindly irritating to whichever passes by their cave. But The Devil has passed by this cave before and he knows the bear is gonna come out and try to eat him even though he is The Devil, so maybe he’ll try to trick the bear somehow, maybe send out a Fake Devil for the bear to devour before slipping away in the carnage that ensues and I wish I had a Fake Devil (maybe the running game?) to make this a better and actually thought out analogy instead of a succession of random words that I type as they come to me, but anyway, sometimes The Devil gets bit, sometimes, he figures out how to get past the cave. Maybe he plants an IED at the cave entrance? I don’t know, he does something.
Pick: Packers
Seattle (-6) at Philadelphia
Russell Wilson emerged last week with his Big Dick still confirmed to be the biggest out west, which is how he must have landed Ciara because even though he is rich, so are a lot of people in that stratosphere of the world they travel in. Also, sure, you see this happen occasionally, Russell with Ciara, Tom with Gisele, Aaron Rodgers with whoever his publicist tells him will play along with the act while he fucks the ball boys or whatever, but you would think QB’s would almost as a rule have rich, celebrity wives, trophies for each other, but usually they either have to carry a bottle of penicillin on the road with them as they travel with Dick, or they marry their high school sweetheart because she was the only one who loved him before he got all that money, or he’s just a fucking sociopath who is willing to be brain damaged in his early 50s because he just wants to make more money and also play Madden in his head at all hours of the day because it is better than talking to and trying to pretend to love actual human people. Which sometimes probably coincides with the celebrity couples. Anyway, isn’t love grand?
Pick: Seattle
Baltimore (+9.5) at Pittsburgh
I don’t even know how this game still has a line given that half the Ravens team are being quarantined in zombie hell, getting their brains eaten while the rest of the team furiously looks for bite marks. Even if these two teams play, it will be pretty much a fiasco, which is the perfect way to run out the clock here on this insane holiday edition of Gambling With Insanity, in which half the world are zombies and the other half are wondering how they can still virtually sustain their consumerist addictions and for how long as things get weird and one day grandma is playing cards with you, the next she’s in an oxygen tent surrounded by men with rifles and you’re afraid to even touch your own dick because a pathogen particle of piss forgot to wear a mask but at least you get to watch some goddamn football. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?????????????????????
Pick: Steelers
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