My Seventh Grade Teacher Called Me Captain

He also called a not very bright kid with a big mouth an "Emin." The Emins were a Nashua street family that were poor, mentally ill, handicapped and mentally retarded. The Emins were local legend, and had the kid any sense or parental guidance, the insult would have probably gotten my seventh grade English teacher fired. But he wasn't. He pressed on paying with his junior high teacher's salary his barely disguised alcoholism.

It's Friday, the glasses of liquored cola are once again mugging the borders and I want only to finish this post up and watch the Blazers. Oh what oh what should we talk about? Oh what oh what should I fill this space so as to assuage my bosses?

This Sunday, Seattle plays in the desert in a game that will go a long ways to deciding the NFC West, and we haven't hardly talked about it. I think it was Sam Kinison that pointed out how epically stupid it is to live in the desert, possibly while working the Las Vegas Sands, and he's right, right? Of course not. The desert is beautiful and dry heat is wonderful and though it's an ecological boondoggle, it's probably pretty damn nice to step into a sunny, 80 degree day in mid-January. Sorry if that violates the new tribal paradigm, but I doubt most Cardinals fans are that different from most Seahawks fans or most Raiders fans. When the Raiders game was blacked out because of a lack of attendance, I didn't think, what terrible fans, but instead, what a terrible fate for the true Silver and Black fans that never stopped watching after years of failure but lack the funds to, I don't know, buy up every unclaimed seat in the Oakland Coliseum.

Yes, Seattle travels to hot and ugly Glendale to pick on someone their own size. In 1960, Glendale was barely a city and if it's anything like my own Washington home, Vancouver, it still isn't. I attended a party a few weeks back and a group of party goers were having a rousing conversation about Vancouver pride and the abhorrence of Portland. It was enough to make me want to scoop out my own eyeballs, top off a shot glass with hydrofluoric acid and pound the melting glassware into my prone eye sockets until it didn't hurt anymore.

Seattle travels to sprawling Glendale where mammalian life is invasive and chocolate festivals are held in winter for practical reasons. And if the Seahawks win, we'll all get to say we're on top for a little while and that will be good and resplendent and feel like something sensational and passing like a really great drunk.

Speaking of which, here's my suggested layout for the party we all should host in honor of this five star matchup of rice paper tigers:

Lots of food, your choice: You and your guest should gorge on fatty foods prior to and during the game. That will force everyone into a satisfied stupor and allow this Rope-a-dopa in Maricopa to seem like an opium dream. It will be all patterns and colors and strange sounds. It will not be bad football played by two JV teams grandfathered into the varsity league.

Lots of alcohol, hard: Drinking can be all rise and descent and sleep, but that's not what a game like Sunday's demands. This isn't a sprint towards shitfaced. It's a southern porch and bourbon crawl. Better to guild your tolerance right away and adjust to your liver shriveling intake before morning's out. By the game, you want to be in that plateau where drunken revelry cedes to stoic, measured calm. The compensation period of a long drunk. If you could see straight you'd swear you're sober. Ride that into the game and when cruel sobriety peaks through in the first, pack it down with some more devil liquor.

Once you're fooded up and drunk enough to feel right, you can suspend disbelief and lose yourself in the game and buy into it being surely and truly significant and overcome doubts and perspective and dread and, as drink and football and desert living are all about, live for the now and not care where this train is headed.