I Thought It Was Madness, And Now I Begin To Fear It Is Disgrace

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.

"I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, "and now I begin to fear it is disgrace."

With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. "If anyone knows, it will be Lanyon," he had thought.

The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other, and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.

After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.

"I suppose, Lanyon," said he, "you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?"

"I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon. "But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now."

"Indeed?" said Utterson. "I thought you had a bond of common interest."

"We had," was the reply. "But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias."

This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson. "They have only differed on some point of science," he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: "It is nothing worse than that!" He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. "Did you ever come across a protege of his--one Hyde?" he asked.

"Hyde?" repeated Lanyon. "No. Never heard of him. Since my time."

That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and beseiged by questions.

Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson's dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor's; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer's mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a reason for his friend's strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.

"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."

And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.

Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. "Mr. Hyde, I think?"

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: "That is my name. What do you want?"

"I see you are going in," returned the lawyer. "I am an old friend of Dr. Jekyll's--Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street--you must have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me."

"You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home," replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, "How did you know me?" he asked.

"On your side," said Mr. Utterson "will you do me a favour?"

"With pleasure," replied the other. "What shall it be?"

"Will you let me see your face?" asked the lawyer.

Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. "Now I shall know you again," said Mr. Utterson. "It may be useful."

"Yes," returned Mr. Hyde, "It is as well we have met; and apropos, you should have my address." And he gave a number of a street in Soho.

"Good God!" thought Mr. Utterson, "can he, too, have been thinking of the will?" But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.

"And now," said the other, "how did you know me?"

"By description," was the reply.

"Whose description?"

"We have common friends," said Mr. Utterson.

"Common friends," echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. "Who are they?"

"Jekyll, for instance," said the lawyer.

"He never told you," cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger.

"I did not think you would have lied."

"Come," said Mr. Utterson, "that is not fitting language."

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.

The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. "There must be something else," said the perplexed gentleman. "There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."

Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.

"Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?" asked the lawyer.

"I will see, Mr. Utterson," said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. "Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining-room?"

"Here, thank you," said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

"I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole," he said. "Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?"

"Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir," replied the servant. "Mr Hyde has a key."

"Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole," resumed the other musingly.

"Yes, sir, he does indeed," said Poole. "We have all orders to obey him."

"I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?" asked Utterson.

"O, dear no, sir. He never dines here," replied the butler.

"Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory."

"Well, good-night, Poole."

"Good-night, Mr. Utterson."

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart.


Excerpt from "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Hunting the Right Way

Hey look, a dead Viking, or at least a nerd pretending to be a dead Viking.  Whatever.

There is no reason why the Lions can’t beat the Vikings on Sunday.  Well aside from the fact that the Metrodome has become a despicable place for the Lions, full of the dull-eyed stupidity that runs rampant in that hinterland of the soul known as Minnesota, bovine beasts lowing while the stadium pipes in false noise to match their false hearts and Jared Allen dances around like a fake methhead, abusing poor Jeff Backus who just sits there and takes it and oh the horror, the horror . . .

Right.  There’s that.  But honestly, these are two teams heading in opposite directions right now and in a league in which momentum is everything that could – and I think should – make all the difference in the world.  The Lions have won two in a row and they looked better last week then they did the week before when they looked better than the week before that and, well . . . you get the point.  Meanwhile, the Vikings have lost two in a row, first to the perpetually mediocre Buccaneers and then to the Seahawks, a week after the Lions beat them, so . . . yeah.  A month ago the Vikings were a good team, headed up and the Lions were a shitty team, mired in the sort of demon swampland that we’ve called home for the better part of the last sixty years.  But now the Vikings aren’t any good, they’re headed for the oblivion that’s become increasingly familiar for them the last few years and the Lions are looking like the team we all thought they could and should be.  The NFL, like many things in life, is capricious and strange and these things just happen.

I don’t want to spend this whole post shitting all over the Vikings though – well, actually I do want to do that but I don’t feel like I should, because here’s the thing – it doesn’t do us any good as a people to constantly denigrate our foes, to pretend that they are all shit while we’re the kings of turd town.  We do that way too much and frankly it’s kind of annoying.  Look, the NFC North is the best division in football.  It just is.  The Bears are a really good team – don’t argue with me because you’ll only reveal yourself to be a slave to your own prejudices – the Vikings aren’t nearly as shitty as we all thought they would be and the Packers are still the Packers, even if they’ve struggled a bit this season.  It’s one thing to hate your enemy and to wish a pox on his house and pray to the old gods and the new for his destruction and the shame of his family.  That is the natural way of things and it is good.  But it is quite another thing to disrespect his abilities because then you just look like a fool and you end up getting your throat slit because you refuse to acknowledge Truth and the gods, both the old and the new, have no time for that shit.

I’m just saying, it does us no good to pretend that everyone else is awful and that we should never, ever lose because then when we do beat them, so what?  There is no honor in abusing a cripple.  And if we lose, we descend into either apocalyptic death spirals or we start making absurd excuses and slandering the fans of teams that are actually good.  Frankly, it’s kind of embarrassing and I wish it would just stop.

I say all this because I want you all to understand that there is a very real chance that the Lions could lose to the Vikings.  It would be absolutely insane and hubristic to the point of nauseating dementia to try to insist otherwise.  Yes, the Viking appear to be falling apart and their 5-4 record doesn’t exactly paint them as a powerhouse but shit, the Lions are 4-4 and have already lost to the Vikings once at home so . . . yeah.

Look, I know that contradicts everything I wrote only a few paragraphs ago but that’s only because I want everyone to understand that we need to live in reality, and not in some wizard’s fantasy because that way is the path to madness.  I think the Lions can and should win but the idea that they will definitely win is just dumb, okay? 

Like I said, the Metrodome has been a hell house for the Lions and the Vikings defensive line has spent the better part of the Schwartz era hideously abusing the Lions offensive line in a way that would make the most degenerate Catholic priest blush.  This will not be easy.

To make matters worse, the Lions aren’t exactly the picture of pristine health.  Louis Delmas was apparently the inspiration for Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable, St. Calvin is dealing with fucking nerve damage, and the defensive backfield continues to be a revolving door of madness and despair.  This is not a perfect team marching in lockstep with blessed destiny.  It is a team trying to fight its way through a jungle of poisoned vines and broken limbs and goddammit, we need to understand that and start paying that its proper respect.  Again, pretending isn’t gonna help anyone.

Every time I think about this game I picture Jared Allen flying by Jeff Backus, who’s flat on his ass, while Matthew Stafford turtles and some Nordic looking motherfucker blows a horn and fat ladies cling to their husbands who all look like Dauber from Coach and scream and it’s terrible and disgusting and then I have to lie down for a while.  But fuck that and fuck the Vikings.  Really, that’s what it comes down to.  Fuck the Vikings.  Fuck ‘em.  This is a game the Lions need to win because the Vikings are our enemy and they’re in our way and sometimes it is as simple as that.

Again, it doesn’t mean that we should piss all over their name and pretend they are the joke of all jokes, for that is the way of the fool.  We should respect them, fear them even, because the wise warrior understands that fear is good, fear is healthy, and fear properly channeled turns into victory and the death of your enemy.  There are many different types of fear.  I am not talking about fear of oneself or its master The Fear, both of which are paralyzing monolithic monstrosities that enslave us with chains made of our own pathetic nightmares and insecurities.  I am talking about the wary sort of fear that the good hunter carries with him, the fear of the beast.  The Fear is a hunter and when we run from it we become little more than mindless beasts.  But the good hunter harnesses fear and uses it to remain ever vigilant, ever wary, even as he stalks, and then when he finally corners his prey he can do so knowing that he triumphed because he faced reality with bravery and an open heart.  The hunter who just staggers noisily through the forest, like a besotted fool, drunk on his own bravado and stupid hubris will alert his prey and then his prey will turn on him, corner him and eat his heart.  We must hunt the Vikings with wary intent, careful, patient, measuring them, stalking them, until they are at the edge of a cliff and then we destroy them.  That is the way of the wise hunter, and that is the way to glory.

I have descended into utter gibberish again but that is what happens when you sit down to write with no plan.  Okay, give me a second and I will get back on track. 

Alright . . . so yeah, the Lions can beat the Vikings and we should understand this and cherish this, but we should also understand that the Lions might lose this game.  We must find balance in our own hearts and our own souls so we can stop crashing through the forest like drunken idiots, celebrating like fools whenever we manage to skewer a starving squirrel and collapsing in a heap of shameful tears every time our prey eludes us.  We must look to the example set by our own blessed football team, the balance with which they destroyed the hapless Jaguars last week.  That is the pathway to righteous enlightenment and we must embrace it and become acolytes of its Truth.

Clearly, I have become trapped in some sort of strange gibberish labyrinth and any moment now I expect to be set on by a Minotaur, and I have probably confused you all with my dueling sensibilities, in one paragraph defaming the Vikings and promising a noble and glorious victory and then in the next gibbering about respect and fear and hunting squirrels or some such shit and warning against overconfidence and I would apologize but that would make me look weak, weak like Jared Allen’s sense of dignity, and I won’t have that.  No sir.  So, instead, I will embrace the notion of simplicity and I will say, in unambiguous terms for a change, that I think that the Lions will beat the Vikings.  Because, really all it comes down to is that the Lions have to win this game.  They just do.  And if they are any kind of team at all, a team worthy of our love and a team worthy of their and our playoff dreams, then goddammit, they will win this game.  So I’ll say it again . . .

Lions win.

Satisfaction

THERE.  There, there, there, there . . . THERE.  That’s what I wanted to see.  That’s what I’ve been waiting to see.   The Lions demolished the Jaguars and while I am not prepared to start gibbering about the playoffs again quite yet, I can see the sun peeking back over the horizon and maybe, just maybe, this whole damn thing can still work out after all.

You see, it wasn’t just that the Lions beat the Jaguars, it wasn’t even that they crushed them, it was the cold methodical way in which they beat them down.  In the past, we’ve seen this team whip up on shitbird teams with fire in their hearts, rambunctious and hyper-talented young warriors who burned the village, took the villagers prisoner and then pissed in the well at the center of town while laughing and drinking straight from the bottle, real swaggery pirate type shit, and I liked that.  I did.  To a point.  You see, the problem with pirates is that they are also transient fuckups and they will end up eventually sinking their own ship after getting drunk and shooting a hole in the hull.  But these Lions, the ones I saw today, finally acted like grown men.  They rode into the village with a job to do, calmly did it, butchered their enemies and then calmly rode back out of town.  They didn’t act like it was their Super Bowl or like this was the game of their lives, like they had something to prove to us, to the world and most importantly to themselves – which is how they’ve had to play to win in the past, but they played like a team that expected to win simply because they were better, because they were the men and the Jaguars were the wasted youth.  And that right there is what I have been waiting to see for a loooooong time.

My disappointment this season wasn’t a product of the 3-4 record – although that certainly didn’t help – but of the fact that this team didn’t look like it was progressing in any way.  In fact, it looked like they were regressing and I’ll admit that I lost faith that they would ever evolve from a Wild West team that reveled in gunfights and an early, pointless death into the sort of team that we saw today.  It just wasn’t happening.  It seemed to me like the DNA of the team was fully formed, that all that maddening bullshit was simply who they were.  I just wanted them to prove me wrong.  Just once.  It’s just that they never did.  Until today.

I know that seems like just another chapter in the Bipolar Madness of the Book of Neil and hey, what can I say, you’re not wrong.  I place no faith in what I am supposed to feel and instead pay homage to what I actually do feel.  The result probably seems inconsistent and highly changeable, but it really isn’t.  I like to think it’s more of a willingness to not allow myself to become tethered to an ideological sort of parody.  Most people decide how they want to feel and then bend everything that follows to that ideological stance.  The result is one-dimensional gibberish, the empty parroting of cheap clichés and worn-out talking points, preaching to a vast echo-chamber of like-minded fools, all vicious and stupid parodies of both themselves and each other.  I try to constantly reexamine things and if I decide that I’m wrong, then what the hell, I’m wrong.  Actually, “wrong” isn’t the best way to look at it.  It’s more that what’s “right” is more an evolution of perspective.  In other words, things change, facts are not always stable things, and when they do only a blind fool refuses to accommodate those shifting variables and let them help reshape his worldview.  The world changes every day, every hour, every minute, and the moment we stop changing with it - the moment we solidify a world view and adhere to it dogmatically no matter what - is the moment that both we and that dogmatic worldview become irrelevant and we then become clownish parodies of ourselves, empty and useless, dumb noise machines that occasionally eat, shit, fuck and sleep.  Truth is subtle and often elusive and it has a way of tricking us and doubling back on our own convictions.  Each moment is an island unto itself, with its own set of facts and its own meanings and to blithely try to throw one big ass blanket over everything rarely works and usually only serves to befoul the situation even more than it already was.  We all have our convictions, and that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the shallow need to create a dichotomous belief structure in which everything either fits on one side or the other without regard for the subtle details that are always present.  You can still have a belief in absolutes – only a coward refuses to take a stance – and I am not advocating some shapeless, gormless shades of grey juvenile worldview.  I’m just saying that the world is delicate, and each moment should be judged on its own merits, and that judgment should be augmented by our truths, by our worldview, by what we already believe, but not necessarily defined by those same things.  I apologize, though, because I’m getting weird and way, way too carried away with this and to be honest I’m not even talking about football anymore and so I’ll stop.

The point as it relates to the Lions is this: sometimes I’m going to say “Yo, this sucks and here’s why . . .” and sometimes I’m going to seem to go completely overboard and say “Yo, this was fucking awesome,” and often these two incongruous statements will occur within a day or two of one another.  One is not a repudiation of the other, only an acknowledgement that, well, the facts changed.  I still believe what I’ve been writing but I also believe what I am writing today, even if they seem sort of contradictory, and what I’m saying today is yo, this was fucking awesome.  The key, of course, is to find a way to keep both the OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING and the OH YES LOOK AT THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BLUE SKY in perspective.  Even when my sense of hope was rapidly diminishing, I still kept the door open to my heart.  I never completely bailed out.  I simply said that I wasn’t sure anymore.  Similarly, I’m not about to declare that this is now a team headed to a Super Bowl and the Promised Land of sunshine, blowjobs, candy and monkey butlers and monkey butlers eating candy and giving blowjobs while the sun shines.  The Lions victory over the Jaguars – and more importantly HOW they got that victory – is exactly what I wanted to see.  Now I want to see them do it again.

But for now, for today, I am content to bask in the beautiful glow of evolution, of this team finally walking upright and learning to speak in something other than guttural grunts and savage hoots.  I think what’s most impressive is that they did all this – they both physically and for the first time mentally (and how sweet is that?) dominated the Jaguars, imposed their will on them, broke their backs and made them humble - even without Louis Delmas, quite possibly the team’s most important defensive player and emotional leader, without DeAndre Levy, an important cog in that same defense, with a banged up secondary, with a certain besainted megastar wide receiver running around on one leg and with the knowledge that if they didn’t win then the season would descend into the realm of the Chaos Demons hanging over their heads.  The ingredients for this sort of triumph didn’t really seem to be there and yet the caked got baked and goddamn it’s delicious.

Of course, people will say that it was “only” the Jaguars and hey, they’re right.  I’m saying that too.  But here’s the thing – this is exactly – EXACTLY – how you beat a team like the Jaguars if you want to be a real, grown-up football team.  They dispatched the Jaguars coldly, professionally, physically breaking them not through some animal effort but through sheer force of will, through sheer personality.  They beat a shitty team because they were just better, because they were the team they always could be if they just grew up and took care of all the little things.  This, right here, was a goddamn playoff team.  Maybe they won’t make the actual playoffs, but the team that took the field today was a team that could not only make the playoffs, but actually WIN a game in the playoffs.  This was not some frantic roller-coaster ride or a gambler playing Russian Roulette while someone tried to shoot an apple off his head with an arrow.  This was a complete football team, in every sense of the word, a team that could throw on you, run on you, stop you cold on defense and not shoot itself in the foot with the cursed Failure Gun.  Sure, they gave up two garbage time touchdowns and allowed the Jaguars to move the football in the fourth quarter, after the game was already out of hand, but even with all that they still outgained Jacksonville 434-279 and held the ball for ten more minutes.  That’s called dominance, kids.  That isn’t luck, that isn’t a hyper-adrenalized comeback, that isn’t OH GOD MARTHA HIDE THE KIDS AND THE DOG AND FETCH ME MY NITRATES AND A BOTTLE OF ETHER, the sort of wild coked up donkey show we’ve come to expect, win or lose.  No.  It was simply cold, methodical dominance.  My heart-rate barely moved during that game.  I never paced my living room, never had to plead with the gods, old or new, never had to make up all new swear words because the ones we all know simply weren’t powerful enough, never drove my neighbors from their homes in fear.  As I said on Twitter after the game, quoting a wise man (I think it was Moses) - today was a good day, I didn’t even have to use my AK.  Indeed.  Instead, I just sat on my couch and calmly watched my football team, the Detroit Lions, just as calmly destroy the Jacksonville Jaguars.  And it’s about damn time.

Burning Ships, Sturdy Houses and Other Nonsense

It will make sense once you finish reading. Hopefully. Aw hell, just read the damn thing.

This season has become one of constant reexamination, yet another battleground in the seemingly endless war between Hope and The Fear, and on some days we (or at least I but I am an egotist so I assume everyone is just like meeeeeee, or at least should be) dance under a pale moon, laughing, naked, before engaging in an orgy of the soul before smiling gods, while on other days we bark at the moon, brawl with our friends, still naked but only because we tore off our pants in a tantrum, and curse those now frowning gods who play lightning bolt target practice with our souls and the world turns oh how it turns and I am still writing only because I want to see how long I can drag out this run-on sentence and . . .

Okay.  The nerd math has become a bit of a live-preserver for Lions fans, and frankly I don’t blame anyone who clings to that shit because, well, we must take what we can get.  I don’t have the numbers right in front of me – I could look them up but I don’t want to, so there – but you can find them elsewhere and if you are a Lions fan I’m sure you’ve had them rammed down your feedhole at some point in the last week.  Anyway, they tend to show a team that is on the right side of the great line of mediocrity that separates football heaven from football hell, both offensively and defensively and so hey guys, there’s totally hope and everything is gonna be alright ‘cuz math don’t lie yo.

And you’re right – to a point.  Math doesn’t lie, and math says that things are better than they seem.  That’s good.  That’s very good.  What that tells me is that the framework is still there for this to be a good football team, a football team that can finally punch through the misery of the past to the grand dreams of a half-forgotten future. 

But the math also says that the Lions as a whole – taking into account special teams fuck-ups, assorted tomfoolery and all that jazz – are barely hanging onto even the barest hint of mediocrity and that also doesn’t lie, and therein lies the point – for as much as that framework is still intact, for as much as the house still stands, the timber is good and the wiring sound, inside of that house lives a gang of vicious street trash who will inevitably burn that goddamn thing to the ground.

That is what my heart tells me and I want to tell my heart that it is a filthy, filthy liar but alas I cannot.  There is an argument to be made that the Lions could be 5-2 in some perfect world where Dom Raiola doesn’t fuck up a snap and the team brings a defibrillator with them to the Vikings game or doesn’t succumb to the madness of buttered demon fingers which plagued them in Soldier Field and I can see people building the ramparts around this alternate reality and guarding their hearts behind it and, hey, I don’t really blame them.  But there is an even better argument to be made that this team could be 0-7 right now.  They haven’t led at the half in a single game this season, and they’ve trailed late in the fourth quarter of every game – every single fucking game. 

Obviously that argument is pessimistic and awful and only a masochist would allow his heart to be trapped by such an awful thing but that brings into sharp focus just how absurd the notion that the Lions should be 5-2 is as well.  The most practical approach is to split the difference and that approach says that we should be, well, 3-4.

Right.  The question, I suppose, is how is a team that is statistically a top ten team both offensively and defensively stuck at 3-4 and on the brink of being a 0-7 team?  That just seems absurd, doesn’t it?  But that’s the whole point.  That’s the essence of what I’ve been gibbering about for weeks now.  For as good as this team can be – for as good as it shows it is sometimes – in the end, it is swallowed up by the gods of mediocrity because of all the little things, which then become the big things, which then becomes everything.  I’ve said it a few times this season already – when it’s always something, that’s everything.  And with this team, it’s always something.  It’s always a special teams fuck-up.  It’s always a dropped pass, a terrible penalty, a missed tackle, a botched snap, a . . . you get the point.  It’s always something and that’s everything. 

In the middle of writing this, I was struck by something.  There was a team a couple of years ago that finished either first or second – I can’t quite remember and again I am too lazy to look it up – in both total offense and total defense and ended up missing the playoffs.  That team was Norv Turner’s San Diego Chargers.  If a cold and awful shiver just went up your spine and a hideous banshee wail just tore through your soul then I don’t blame you.  That is not the team you want to be compared to – a gang of perpetual underachievers with an impotent (in probably more ways than one) coach, blithering on year after year, never changing anything because hey, look at those offensive and defensive numbers it’s totally working you guys!  Only it isn’t and everyone knows it and the result is a sort of zombie death march through the streets of San Diego until everyone is eventually massacred by Tijuana street gangs.  If that’s what you want for the Lions then, hey, bang that fuckin’ drum all goddamn day.  But as for me, I want something better.

The good news, like I said, is that the framework is still in place.  The bad news is just that I am not confident that this team will put together all those little things that make that framework worth anything.  They’ve had more than enough time to do it and then they never do.  Even last week, which was the team’s best game of the year, they had to come from behind in the closing minutes to pull it out.  Something is wrong here and anyone denying that is just being willfully oblivious to reality, clinging to some absurd alternate reality because it’s just easier, because, like me, they simply can’t take the idea that this might not work.  The only difference between us is that I stand on that rock like Prometheus and let the eagle eat my liver because I don’t know any other way while they guard themselves in a safe little house of their own making, throwing rocks at any liver-eating bird that gets close.

Look, every time I sit down to write one of these things I do so with the intention of being more positive but then The Truth takes over and I end up gibbering for paragraph after paragraph like some terrible doomsayer.  I don’t like it either but I can’t help it.  The thing you have to recognize, though, is that this is not a black or white situation.  I hate it when people try to carry on like it has to be either one way or the other.  It’s not all good but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not all bad either.  Like I’ve said a few times in this idiot’s screed already, the framework is still there, the house still stands and now all we have to do is hope the dudes living inside find civilization, or at least something like it.

Obviously, that is the challenge – and like I said, I have my doubts, extreme doubts, that it will ever happen – but as long as that’s the status quo there is still at least room for Hope to survive, if not flourish.  What will help will be stringing together a bunch of wins.  I’ve already said that the idea of the playoffs is highly improbable at this point but hell, it’s not impossible and, well, we’ve gotta start somewhere, right?  Right.  The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single cliché or some such nonsense and so I guess all we can do is look to the next game and start trying to lurch forward with this damn thing.

And that brings me to the really good news, the thing that is fueling the hopeful side of me more than anything else right now, and that’s that the Lions play the Jacksonville Jaguars this week, and, well, the Jaguars are the new reigning kings of shit mountain.  The Lions will beat the Jaguars because the alternative is simply unfathomable.  The Jaguars are a team in absolute free-fall, a Millenesque organization devoid of talent or hope, a living symbol of despair.   We should crack their heads open and suck their brains out, lick the inside of their skulls clean and then polish those fuckers to use as beer steins.  Their quarterback sucks, their one good player, Maurice Jones-Drew, didn’t even play last week because of injury and that came only after he finally wandered into camp following a prolonged and bitter hold-out, which presumably alienated him from his teammates, his coaches and the Jags nine remaining fans, and there is a necrotic sense of Oh God This Is The End And We’re All Moving To Los Angeles So Let’s Just Try Not To Hurt Ourselves Before That Happens circling of the drain going on here.  They are a dead team, a lifeless  ship floating aimlessly in the sea because the crew all contracted smallpox or were set upon by cannibal pirates or something and all that’s left for us to do is calmly loot whatever’s left and then set the ship on fire.

Of course, it was only a month ago or so that I sat right here and said the same thing about the game against the Titans and we all saw how that went.  Right.  And that’s why this season has largely been a butt.  Because, in the end, we simply don’t know.  All we can do is hope that good things happen because we’re good people and we deserve it, but we just don’t know and every week is a goddamn game of spiritual Russian Roulette and goddammit here I go again with the bitching and the moaning and I apologize.

The Lions have to win this game.  They have to.  And not just because they need it to keep their mildly delusional playoff dreams alive but because if they don’t then, well . . . we will experience a collective apocalypse of the soul.  I’ve said it too many times to go back on it now – the Lions can beat any team they play and they can lose to every team that they play, but goddammit, there is no reason the Lions should ever lose to this shitbird team.  None.  They have to win.  They have to because I can’t even write about the alternative and goddammit I won’t.  If the Lions lose this game that’s pretty much it for me in terms of coherence.  It’s not that I’ll refuse to write about the Lions if they lose this game it’s that I won’t even be able to because the part of me that I have to keep open in order to do so with any sort of meaning will close itself down just so I don’t completely lose my mind.

But that is a dark and ugly thing, not worthy of any more exploration, and I won’t go down that horrible road for it is the path to madness and I prefer to look to the light, and the light says that the Lions should win this game and they should win it easily for a change.  If they win 27-24 in the dying minutes, I will mutter dark words but I will still be able to go on, to find Hope somewhere in the wilderness of my soul.  I can at least accept that.  But for one goddamn weak at least, I don’t want to have to compromise with myself, to hunt for Hope in that wilderness.  I want the Lions to leave a goddamn Jaguar shaped stain on the field.  I want them to burn that ship and then calmly sail away, their clothes scented with the Jaguars smoky remains.  And given the way that Snake Stafford played against the Seahawks, I am going to embrace the fullness of the light for the first time in a while and I will say that, yes, yes they will.

Lions win.