Neanderpundit

The last couple weeks every local radio station has been playing this bloody thing. Not safe for work, but then if you’re reading this at work you have other issues.

It wasn’t bad enough that it’s hooky but then they had to fill the bloody video with half naked women- actually, more like 98% naked. Started to drive me even more nuts than usual so I enlisted the aid of my dear old friend and confidant Mlle Jenny, who sent me so many shiny things as to overwhelm me. One of which was this:

And we talked about the Dan, and Mike McDonald- who, unlike others of his era, has not toasted his pipes, and real hardcore musicians like Charlie Daniels and the Allmans and of course the wizard of weird, Frank Zappa.

And it sort of came to us as we talked, that at the time, we had no idea this was the real golden age of rock music. That someday there wouldn’t be a string of incredibly talented musicians/songwriters pounding out something new every other week. Now, we get synthesized crap like Robin Thicke. Then, we had Warren Haynes and Dicky Betts playing guitar as if they shared a single mind. Even Top gear BBC, hater of all things American, had to come to the US for a theme song for their show- the British Invasion troops had nothing to compete with Jessica.

So I used PVStar+ on the way home to listen to this stuff on my phone. A great app, if you have an android phone. And I drove the bad bad stuff out of my head. thank you, Jenny. And thank the Dan and the Allmans and Charlie Daniels and Frank Zappa and people who actually sat down and wrote music, god bless them.

Some time right after I graduated high school, I was invited to play football with a local amateur group. They were mostly older, and I think they were trying to get some young blood into the organization

Now, remember, I went to a seminary whose HQ is in Turin. I knew ‘Football” as a game played with a round ball and no hands except the goalies. I sucked at it, but I thought, what the hell. I had never even SEEN ‘American style” football, because Dad, if he watched any sport, watched baseball. he would come home from work, sit in his chair, and fall asleep, while the announcer told us what Bucky Dent, Goose Gossage, Ozzy Osborn and Minnie Minoso were doing.

So when they handed me a helmet and sent me out onto the field I was a bit confused.

I think I made it five minutes into the game and then I was pulled. now, I was not yet of age, and I was surrounded by much more mature guys (Some of them were ancient- almost thirty!) so I figured they were pulling me because I was obviously- and illegally- hammered out of my skull.

Coach: “Just what in the god damned hell do you think you’re doing out there?”
me:” Playing football, coach”
Coach: You call that football? you just took that guys helmet off and punched him right in the mouth!”
me: “he ran into me full speed and knocked me right down”
Coach “That’s what he’s supposed to do!”
me “Why is it okay for him to attack me and me not defend myself?”
Coach ‘You’re supposed to be defending the QUARTERBACK. You’re supposed to block the guy from knocking HIM down!”
me: “you mean I got to get hit to protect someone else, and I can’t even defend myself? that’s ignorant!”
coach: “THOSE ARE THE RULES OF THE GAME!” by this time a big vein was standing out on his forehead and another on his neck
Me: Well, that’s just stupid. Who makes up these rules?”
coach “THEY ARE JUST THE RULES”
me: “Well they’re stupid”

later someone got hurt and they put me back in for a while, during which time a couple of the opposing players discovered I was wearing golf spikes (hey, my uncle gave them to me, and they matched my uniform!). The coach yelled at me for that and made me put on someone else’s shoes which didn’t fit too well, so I stumbled a lot, and at one point that meant tripping over and falling on our quarterback, breaking a few ribs in the process. His ribs, of course, I was fine.

At the end of the game we had won but the refs gave the game to the opposing team because of what they called “unnecessary violence”.

I could not understand why some violence was ok and others wasn’t, nor could I understand how winning a game was important but not doing whatever it took to win was not allowed, I STILL don’t understand what the big fucking deal was about punching the guy. He hit me really hard.

I also, at the time, didn’t have a clue what a ‘Stadium pal” was, I thought it was a place to hold a beverage, so I bought one and filled it with beer, figuring I could use it to stay hydrated during the game. In the locker room after, I stripped off my uniform and sat down, grabbing the tube from the stadium pal (I never could figure out why they made it so short you had to bend over to use it) and squeezed the last of the beer down my throat. Several of the other players saw this and puked on the spot, and the coach threw me out and said if he “ever saw me there again he’d..” he never could figure out what it was he was going to do. I guess he couldn’t imagine anything I would be upset by.