Tag Archives: football

Non-fiction

A Week Without a Brain

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I watched the game last night. The Atlanta Falcons played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Atlanta celebrated their former quarterback Matt Ryan and inducted him into their ring of honor. He spoke to the crowd at halftime when his old team was trailing by seven.

But the second half told a different story. Just when I thought the Buccaneers were about to jump to a commanding lead, the Falcons came back somehow. I was sort of watching the game while scrolling through my phone. Not that offense bores me, but it gets too monotonous to see no defense. In the second half, both teams kept scoring. I like a little defense to add suspense.

Anyway, with around two minutes left, the Falcons were down 30-27 when their quarterback, Kirk Cousins, threw an interception to Buccaneers linebacker Devin White to seal the game, or so I thought. All the Buccaneers had to do to leave with the victory was drain the clock and force Atlanta to call all their timeouts.

On a third down, after the Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield handed the ball off to his running back, there was a penalty against Tampa Bay that pushed them out of field goal range. With around a minute left, they had to punt on fourth down back to the Falcons, all because the referees completely missed a facemask penalty from one of the Falcons defenders that would’ve caused an automatic first down for the Buccaneers. All the Bucs would’ve had to do was kneel a few times until the clock turned to zero.

What ended up happening was Kirk Cousins received the ball again and had one more shot to tie the game, and that was exactly what he did after he marched his team to midfield. A strike to wide receiver Drake London put them in field goal range. With no timeouts, the offense rushed to the line of scrimmage and was able to spike the ball with only a second remaining.

But the kicking team wasted too much time to set up and suffered a delay of game penalty, which shoved them back five yards, making the field goal attempt harder. It was payback after getting away with the facemask penalty. Yet and still, Younghoe Koo booted the ball between the uprights and tied the game at 30. They went to overtime.

On the coin flip, Baker Mayfield called for tails, but it was heads. As you would’ve imagined, the Falcons defender elected to receive. So with all the momentum, Kirk Cousins marched his offense down the field again. Right after a big gain, receiver Drake London got hurt from a collision and had to be pulled out of the game. A backup with the last name of Hodge (I didn’t know his first name) so far had only one reception. On the very next play, Cousins, with his record-breaking five hundred-plus yards in the air, connected with Hodge down the middle. It was a simple ten-yard route. Hodge shook off his defender and jetted to the endzone. No one on that porous Buccaneers defense could catch up with him, so he scored the game-winning touchdown. The Falcons had come back and won, 36-30.

The teammates jumped all over Hodge and celebrated behind the endzone. In only the fifth week of the season, it was like they’d already won their Super Bowl. And in the locker room, they sprayed each other with what appeared to be champagne. It was like they were the Yankees after winning Game 7 of the MLB World Series. I believe it’s never a good sign for a team to celebrate this early when so much more football meeds to be played. It makes me worry about the Falcons. Will they be as competitive down the stretch? Something tells me no.

Non-fiction

Nothing.

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Nothing is more discouraging than having nothing to say, nothing to do except stare out a window at a coffee shop at listless people on a Tuesday morning. I took the week off from work, thank God, but I’m still thinking about it and what shitstorm I’ll come back to next Monday. But why worry now? Just enjoy the time off.

The coffee shop is crammed with customers. I waited twenty minutes for my coffee, and my cheese Danish was cold. It’s not really a coffee; it’s espresso with hazelnut syrup. I hate hazelnut usually, but they make it better here.

There’s nothing today except writing and walking. I’ll walk for five miles in the afternoon and listen to a podcast about football.

It’s that time of year again. I watched two games last night. One of them was a blowout from the first quarter, so I switched to the other game, which was, on the other hand, sort of competitive. The Washington Commanders upset the Cincinnati Bengals, who were a seven-point favorite in Cincinnati, mind you. The Bengals have a shitty defense, or at least no pass defense, so the rookie quarterback of the Commanders, Jayden Daniels, tossed it all over the yard on the Bengals and put up over thirty points by the end of the game. He’s playing like the rookie of the year so far, the Heisman Trophy winner who looks much better than the media darling Caleb Williams who was the first overall pick in the NFL draft this year.

Many experts had predicted that the Cincinnati Bengals would go to the Super Bowl because of their elite quarterback and wide receiver, but that doesn’t include their trashy defense. How will they beat anyone with that? Now they’re 0-3 with a narrow chance of making it to the playoffs. Statistics show that an NFL team has a 3-4% chance of getting there. It will take three more weeks before the Bengals make it back to five hundred even. That’s a long way away. My team, the Steelers, are 3-0 and could be 6-0 by the time the Bengals get to 3-3. I don’t like Cincinnati’s chances as of now, but you never know in this league.

There were many upsets over the weekend. I still can’t believe the Carolina Panthers, who were winless before Sunday with the Red Rifle at quarterback, who used to be a Cincinnati Bengal by the way, who got up from the couch and put on his uniform, beat the Las Vegas Raiders. He threw for over three hundred yards, 319 yards precisely, and three touchdowns. That’s damn impressive. The Raiders must not have watched any tape of the Red Rifle. He’s an old quarterback whom no one had expectations for. Not that I’m predicting that the Panthers will make the Super Bowl, let alone the playoffs, but it just proves that it has been an unpredictable season so far.

I would’ve never expected a 0-3 record for Joe Burrow and the Bengals. Maybe the so-called NFL experts should focus more on defenses and running games because those are the foundations of any football team from high school to the pros, instead of looking at teams based on how talented their quarterbacks are. But we live in the age of fantasy teams, where fantasy player points count over the actual X’s and O’s.

Anyway, the football week is over now. I’ll drag my feet through Tuesday and Wednesday before another football game on Thursday night between the Cowboys and Giants. Yawn. Both teams bore me. I’ll wait six more days before Sunday when the other games start and won’t know what I’ll do with myself until then besides getting a haircut before going back to work next week. The barbershop can’t be too crowded on a Tuesday. I’ll wait and see this afternoon after a five-mile walk in the heat.

My apartment manager invited me to a meet-n-mingle tomorrow night at the apartment complex. I don’t feel like going because I don’t socialize much, being rusty and all around people, and I get uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t like them, but I just have no words, and I end up listening to someone ramble on about themselves, and I’m only partially listening, and when they ask me a question, I don’t have an answer because my mind was somewhere else in the first place. Staying inside will be better while meet-n-mingle is going on. Maybe I’ll visit for twenty minutes before moving on. She said the corporate people will show up too, as if I’d been anxiously waiting for them. What would I want with the corporate workers of this apartment complex? It wouldn’t matter if I’d never met them.

Non-fiction

Icebreakers

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My department holds meetings every Thursday morning, and at the beginning of every meeting, my team lead asks me and the rest of the team a question for an icebreaker to ease the tension (or try to). She asked what TV show is our comfort food, and the question was difficult because I don’t watch TV. I haven’t for decades except for NFL football, and the season lasts for only about five months out of every year. I don’t watch any programming anymore other than that because it influences me negatively. So I struggled for an answer, but I heard the other team members.

One of them, a grown man, brought up an anime series. Someone should eventually grow out of anime if there’s an appropriate age for that. But now that I look back, my college roommate watched it as well. I’d never heard about anime until he entered my life when I was twenty years old. Nothing against him or my coworker (he’s a nice guy)(they’re both nice guys), but why do people enjoy that stuff? I never understood it. The animation is poor, and I don’t get what’s going on. It reminds me of those old Speed Racer cartoons, where the characters remained still while their lips moved when they were talking.

When it was my turn, I gave them a somewhat honest answer, even though I lied. I said NFL football, which was true, and felt judged because no one before me had brought up sports of any kind. But I also said that I liked to watch YouTube, which was also true, but that I watched clips from Beavis and Butthead, which was a lie. I watched it religiously as a teenager but not anymore. No one laughed after I said it. There was dead silence. I worried, with how strict my company is when it comes to ethics and conduct, that I would be written up for saying the word “butthead.” But no one complained. I had to watch an ethics and conduct training video yesterday as part of the company’s policy, and I was already behind in my work, and that video that lasted an hour only pulled me further behind.

I can’t remember what other TV shows people brought up for the icebreaker. I didn’t know about a lot of them. One of the women brought up Law and Order. People still watch that show surprisingly enough. It appeals to me as much as anime, and I understand the appeal just as little. Whereas only kids should watch anime, only old people who stay in the house all day and play crossword puzzles out of the newspaper to keep their minds busy should watch Law and Order. The woman looked young, maybe late twenties. Then again, I don’t know what shows are popular now. The majority watches streaming services, not network TV, because network TV is lame. It has always been lame, nowadays especially. But how would I know if I don’t watch television exccpt for when football is on. The networks show ads for their programming, so I get to see what the next episode of Survivor will be. I can’t believe that shit is still on (the same with The Bachelor). People must be viewing it.

I stopped watching television a few years after college, so about 2003, with the promise to stop watching it like a diabetic who needed to stop eating sugar. It was only toxic to me. I used to catch myself sitting on the couch for too long, and I would feel like a bag of powdered donuts. When I would look in the mirror afterward, I would see a bag of donuts as well.

Hopefully the next time my team lead gives us an icebreaker, it’s a question I can feel comfortable answering. Most of them don’t. I don’t feel any better afterward.

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

A Bear Playing a Keytar

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I’ve waited several months for this day, and I can’t believe it’s finally here. Football season has begun. Goodbye to the summer. I wish it well, and may it never come back again. I hate it. There’s nothing to look forward to anymore. I feel that way, and I’ll keep feeling that way from here on out. Let the fall take over and winter to follow. I can’t wait for the cold to arrive.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, softly gazing out a window at parked cars and other cars drifting down Adams Street in La Quinta. I want to sit here for days, even when the table is wobbly. I hate wobbly tables and chairs. They drive me nuts. It’s like a squeaky wheel on a shopping cart. It won’t stop, and it’s broken. Minor disturbances in my life, like ringing in my ears.

I’m going to sit all day and watch football with my parents before I drive back home and prepare for work tomorrow. I wish I didn’t have to work, but I’m taking a week off at the end of September, which I look forward to at least. Whatever I do doesn’t matter as long as I’m away from work and the nightmares that come with it since it has taken over my life.

I went shopping yesterday at Nordstrom Rack and bought two T-shirts and two pairs of shorts. The shorts were two colors: blue and gray, while the shirts were blue and yellow. The yellow one has a drawing of a bear with sunglasses on as he plays a keytar. The keytar was popular in the eighties when rock band players used them. I believe bands like Cheap Trick. I’m not positive, but they’re the first band that comes to mind. Either way, the shirt made me smile, which was the reason I chose it. I’m wearing it right now. I was anxious to wear it today as soon as I woke up.

After shopping, I went with my parents to a restaurant named Pacifica, where I ate a cheeseburger. The place is known for its seafood, but I don’t like it very much. It doesn’t get me excited. Don’t get me wrong. I like lobster and some crab when it’s cooked right, along with shrimp and maybe scallops if I’m in the right mood, but I’ve never been hankering for a plate of fish. It just doesn’t excite me too much. But my parents chose it after we couldn’t get a table at Tommy Bahama’s for another half hour. I knew it would happen because at that restaurant it’s always the case. We didn’t want to wait that long.

Pacifica was booked, too, so they made us sit in the bar, where the tables were slim. We could barely fit our napkins and utensils. We also sat next to a couple of old drunk ladies cackling between dialogues. One of them ate the biggest plate of steak and mashed potatoes I’d seen in a while. They shared the hugest strawberry shortcake while we waited for our orders.

Our waitress had nothing of a personality. I had a hard time choosing something to eat, not because the menu was crappy but because I was torn between the Wagyu burger and the fish and chips. I’m a burger connoisseur, so my policy is to go with the burger if I have to decide. The soda was flat while I waited. They’re always that way at a restaurant with a bar. For some reason, the sodas are always flat from the nozzle as opposed to fast food joints, where the sodas always fizz, and I never complain. The Wagyu burger made it to my top ten list of burgers of all time. The Wagyu was cooked just perfectly with gruyere cheese on top. Chefs across the world should include gruyere on burgers more often. I never thought it would be such a delectable combination.

“This place gets an A,” I told my parents. My only beef (pardon the pun) with the burger was there was too much lettuce, which was no big deal because all I had to do was pull some of it out. And the tomato was mushy. I like my tomatoes tender but just hard enough to eliminate the mushiness.

After dinner, we capped the night off with ice cream at Handel’s in Indio. My parents ordered a pint of ice cream each. Mom chose mint chip, while Dad, along with me, chose the peanut butter chocolate brownie. Except I drank a milkshake. It was going to be peanut butter ice cream alone for me, but Handel’s had decided to discontinue it, maybe because it wasn’t ordered enough.

“Most people order the basic chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla,” my father said.

And maybe he was right. People are bland and don’t take enough chances. Ice cream could be a perfect example. Kids love ice cream, but they’re never daring enough to eat a flavor like peanut butter, and I love peanut butter anything. If peanut butter were a soda flavor, I would go with that over Coca-Cola. I’m sure it would be nice.

Non-fiction

Sober Life

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I watched the football game last night, the first one of the season between the Chiefs and the Ravens. In between plays, I was reading comments on social media. Some of them were disturbingly humorous. Others were downright shocking. Some of the posts were actual stories–objective news if one can believe.

One of them was about a Ugandan woman who ran in the Olympics whose boyfriend set her on fire. She eventually died. I don’t know how soon but what an awful way to die. Not that I wonder as much as what kind of sick individual would murder another human being in the manner he did? It makes me want to crawl into bed and not go outside. And some of the comments were about as disgusting as the act itself.

I read other threads, mostly about the game when it was on. I switched between the football game and the women’s semifinal of the US Open, where sixth seed Jessica Pegula played the unseeded Karolina Muchova. It enthralled me more than the football game. I’ve heard other people say football players are the most athletic people in professional sports, but I don’t know. I’ve watched enough tennis for the past two weeks to convince myself these players might be better conditioned. Maybe it’s my eyes. Anyway, Jessica Pegula won the match in three sets to advance to the finals after being down 6-1 in the first set. Quite a comeback!

Then I switched to the football game. The Chiefs were leading 27-17 at one point, and the Ravens closed the gap to 27-20 with under two minutes left. Lamar Jackson is nimble on his feet but still can’t chuck the ball accurately. I won’t rank him as one of the elite quarterbacks. He ended up losing the game for the Ravens after overthrowing his tight end in the back of the endzone. The tight end couldn’t keep his feet in bounds.

I read a post about sobriety. The person who wrote it said he’d been sober for a year, and in that time, no changes in health, no lost weight, and less joy in life. As discouraging as it sounded, he was honest. I’ve been sober for six years, and I can’t say my health has dramatically improved, nor have I lost much weight if any weight at all. As for joy, yes, drinking once brought me the luxury of meeting people and having fun with them at bars or at parties. But now those times have left, and they’re missed. Nothing has really changed for the better except the absence of hangovers. Of course those I don’t miss. But that’s the one benefit. It’s depressing to admit.

Oh, and I’ve saved money, a lot. I used to live paycheck to paycheck, but I still would live paycheck to paycheck if not for my benefactor. My job pays me below the level of poverty. It’s criminal given the inundation of work they’ve dumped onto me. Besides the point, I can’t say my life has improved at all. The only difference is I’ve lost one of my joys and a life of being somewhat social. Other people in the thread agreed: life is boring without alcohol. Others counterpointed with the subject of spirituality. I’ve felt nothing spiritual during my departure. Everyone is different. No one can force their higher power onto me. It begins inside.

So what shall I do? Go back to drinking? Maybe in moderation if I can control myself–the kicker. My doctor would get upset, so would my family. They’re the police. I have to take a mountain of medication each day, and alcohol doesn’t mix with the pills. I’m stuck with useless prescriptions. Who the hell said Adderall even works? I still can’t focus on even the lightest task. Maybe someday my brain will finally heal, maybe in four years when a decade has passed.

I do applaud the ones who’ve found a more joyful life in sobriety. They know the secret, the rest of us don’t. I do also encourage alcoholics and addicts to attend AA meetings. Even if twelve-step doesn’t work for them, at least they’re going out and meeting people.