Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.
I nearly drowned last week. I was at a beach off the coast of Delaware and the waves were a good 12 feet high, with nasty riptides cutting flat across the surf. There were whitecaps going all the way back to the horizon. But I had already dragged our kids and all our shit down to the beach, so I was going into the water no matter what. My wife was like O HELL NO, but I was like, “It’s fine.” This is a standard dad move. I could push my kids out of a burning airplane and still turn to my wife and say, “This is perfectly safe!” I have no problem downplaying the potential lethality of ANY situation.
So I go past the initial breakers and immediately I’m in deep shit. The waves won’t stop crashing. Every time I dive under them, they throw me back and I’m still in the middle of endless churn. And the undertow is so strong that it keeps dragging me right back into the middle of the action. I’m stuck. I can’t go forward or back. You’re supposed to swim sideways to break out of mean currents, but I’d already forgotten that bit of precious strategery. I keep diving under and getting thrown back. And now I look back to the beach and can see my wife and kid standing next to a stud lifeguard, who is holding his little red missile thingy, ready to dive in and come rescue my sorry ass.
I remember when I would play in the ocean as a kid and the whole GOAL was to have the waves bury me and toss me around until I was spitting up seawater. I remember liking it for some reason. I remember wanting to see what would happen, what new ways the ocean would kick my ass. But I am no longer young. I’m not elastic. I’m not built for this.
Now I’m getting pummeled before I have a chance to recover from the last pummeling. I only see the beach in flashes. My feet can’t touch the sand. I am going to be swept away and die like an idiot, which would be wholly appropriate given my career.
But no. Not this day. No, I summon what small amount of Dad Strength I have left and push through the undertow and finally feel my feet touch the sand again. I stagger back to the beach as the waves nail me a few times more for good measure, and my wife is shaking her head like, “You moron.”
Like any good dad, I take great pains to shrug off the entire incident. I go, “Wow, that was some brutal surf!” And the lifeguard is like, “Yeah, I was trying to call you in. We don’t want anyone going past knee deep today.” That’s my cue to activate my know-it-allism and be like, “Oh for sure! As you can see, the riptides are very strong today! I’M GLAD I COULD USE MY POSEIDON-LIKE MASTERY OF THE SEA TO TEST THESE WATERS AND SHOW THE REST OF THE BEACHGOERS THAT YOU MUST RESPECT THE WAVES.” Down the beach, there is a family with older kids, and those kids are hanging out WAY deep in the surf, on surfboards. The waves that crushed me bounce right off them. The lifeguard doesn’t seem to worry about them at all. They are good. They can handle it.
I continue playing it off for the rest of the day. But afterward, at night, I close my eyes and I can still feel the waves tossing me around and beating me senseless. I can sense that I was close—perhaps not THAT close, but close enough to make me revisit the moment over and over—to getting carried out to sea and never seeing anyone or anything I love ever again. I fall asleep and I dream about being caught in roiling water, this time with no beach of any kind in sight. I can barely breathe. When I try to swim, the ocean grabs me and does as it pleases. And I wake up remembering what it was like for that split second when I knew I was in very real trouble.
Normally, I am in command of my own body. I’m fully in charge of taking steps, and sitting down, and stuffing my face with breakfast sandwiches. Every movement is within my control. And so it’s very unnerving to experience a moment where you are forced to concede control of your body, when another entity takes over your central nervous system by proxy and you have to hope that it has mercy on you. I can recall, with great clarity, the moments when this has happened in my life. It happened out in that ocean. It happened any time I got into a car wreck. It happened any time I lost control while skiing, turned into a complete spazz, and then fell down.
And of course, it happened out on the football field.
The time between you placing your hand in the dirt and the snap is the longest. I remember practicing all week and daydreaming about finally getting into the game, where in I would CRUSH the opposition and thus be rewarded with fine foods and bountiful women. And then, when I finally got a chance to take the field in garbage time, I remember little but pure terror. OH FUCK. WHAT DO I DO? That time right before the snap is like waiting for a prison riot to break out.
We drilled our movements down for hours. The o-line was always relegated to the hinterlands of the practice field, and there we would duck walk until our quads were ready to burst. We would face each other in a column of twos and get in proper pass block position and take turns jabbing and stepping and grabbing at the front of the d-lineman’s shoulder pads (this is why smart d-lineman wear tight jerseys and slick them with Vaseline). We would break down when the coach shouted BREAKDOWN! We did all that. The goal of any football practice is to prepare your men for everything that can happen during the course of the game, and it’s easy to delude yourself into thinking a good practice week can accomplish that. I remember I’d be like, “Wow, we had a great week of practice! This’ll go well!”
And then the game would start. The few times I got in there, I’d hear the whistle blow and then find myself in the center of the churn. Everything I had practiced seemed useless in the center of that chaos. The mass of bodies did what it wanted, with me nearly helpless to influence it. One time, I was playing defense and broke through the o-line, only to realize that I had been set up for a pull block. And I can still remember that dude coming right at me, head lowered. I can still remember thinking, “Oh shit,” right before he plowed into me and I gave my body away. That would not be the only time football turned me into a rag doll.
Of course, part of this was because I sucked. Other players could handle it. Other players could wade into the melee like giant cave trolls and retain full command of their facilities. They could go where they wanted to go. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering how some players do it. To this day, I don’t really know how the fuck Aaron Rodgers can do what he does. It seems well beyond the capacity of both body and mind to ignore 11 world class athletes trying to murder you and then locating a spot on the field with satellite precision and instinctively knowing the exact speed and trajectory you need to put on the ball to get it to that exact spot at that exact time. I don’t know how the mass doesn’t swallow him whole every play.
Fewer people are watching the NFL now. Whether it’s because of cord-cutting, or disgust with head injuries, or political reasons, or endlessly drawn-out replays and suspension hearings, or just general dissatisfaction with the televised product, they are tuning out. This means nothing data-wise, but I really do have friends who have stopped watching the NFL out of disinterest, and they have no plans to return. I don’t really want my kids play the sport, and they haven’t asked to.
People will probably keep tuning out in greater numbers, until viewership of pro football settles in at some still-insane number that would be perfectly viable to you or I, but will be catastrophic in the eyes of league owners and the network executives who line their pockets, executives depend on football viewership as a marketing vehicle for every other broadcast property they possess. When those losses mount, owners will deftly try to pass them on to literally anyone else—players, fans, vendors—and distaste for the NFL will only grow.
And yet, I remain.
Being an NFL fan, at this point, is an exhausting experience. I mean, it’s only September and I already feel like this league has aged me by a decade with all its horseshit. I used to sneer derisively at people who wrung their hands over headshots, but they were right to be horrified and I was wrong. It is a cruel fact that football does more damage to you the better you are at it. Thus, I have definitely sat around during a standard Week 6 penalty-flag fest and wondered why the fuck I’m bothering to watch this shit…why I’m gonna end up as one of last holdout fans to loyally consume a flawed, corrupt, violent, and shrinking sport (just as boxing fans do now).
Now, there are a few obvious answers, the standout being money. I make part of my living off the football economy, and you will pry my DraftKings account from my cold, drowned hands. There’s also the fact that I’ve put 30 years into rooting for my team and I’ll be goddamned if I tune out when they haven’t given me a title yet. I am the eternally in the bar of a Cheesecake Factory, waiting for my little buzzer to go off to tell me table is ready. I’ve been here so long, I can’t bring myself to go, no matter how angry I get. That “Football Is Family” slogan? That’s true in ways the NFL certainly did NOT intend. Family can mean a group of weirdoes you’re stuck with for your existence, whom you visit with great reluctance. Watching the Vikings feels like that most weeks.
But then…there is another thing. There is the sport itself, which can still occasionally resemble real football no matter how many different ways the refs and the Competition Committee conspire to fuck it up. There is still the churn. There is still the sight of very large men getting themselves in deep trouble, putting themselves in positions they should NOT be putting themselves in, and then crushing that trouble anyway. It’s easy to forget how insane it is that football players can do what they do, even Blake Bortles.
And of course, there are the moments when those very large men DO lose control, and go flying up in the air like shrapnel from an exploded grenade. Football is a thing that should not be, and of course that’s part of its morbid appeal. Even when the games are ugly, I can’t look away, because I’m still trying to figure out more players don’t drown out there. And every game brings me back to those moments right before the snap, when I was flush with terror…right before the game would take hold of my body and send me where it pleased. I never managed to keep my cool out there. I had neither the skills nor the temperament. And so I watch the games on TV, still marveling at how these fuckers keep control, and how they manage get it back after they lose it. You don’t play football so much as you escape it.
I have given up on searching for any kind of moral defense of football. There is none. Football is organized disaster. Watching the sport has warped my brain in a far less damaging manner than it has its own players, but it’s warped it all the same. Nothing will stop me from liking football for liking’s sake. I accept that I am here for the spectacle. I accept that I’m watching mainly because I don’t how the fuck people can do this. Also, I got $10 worth of lineups going out there on Sunday. I can’t help but get pulled back in.
I’ll still go back to that ocean next summer, you know. I should probably take a nice long break from ocean swimming, but fuck that. I gotta go. Like any other instinctive drive—food, sex, air—I gotta go back and see that ocean and step in and see what it has planned for me. Sometimes I want to be lost and in peril and I don’t know why. I’ll still be there, ready to be a sucker, ready to have the water teach me the same lessons all over again.
So, with that said…are you ready? I do believe it’s time. HIT THE GODDAMN MUSIC:
I spent all summer preparing my poor liver for this. It’s your Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. Let’s begin.
2017 NFL Predictions
I do this every year, and last year was the first preseason I actually got the Super Bowl winner right. (I also changed my mind right before the Super Bowl and said Atlanta would win 56-0…I have some regrets.) Either way, you don’t get any credit for picking the Super Bowl winner when it’s New England. You get anti-credit. Picking the Patriots is safe and boring, so let’s go ahead and do that again right now.
NFC North
Green Bay 11-5
Minnesota 9-7
Detroit 7-9
Chicago 5-11
NFC South
Atlanta 11-5
Tampa Bay 10-6*
Carolina 8-8
New Orleans 6-10
NFC East
Philadelphia 9-7
NY Giants 9-7
Washington 8-8
Dallas 7-9
NFC West
Seattle 13-3
LA Rams 10-6*
Arizona 7-9
San Francisco 5-11
WILD CARD
Tampa over Philly
Atlanta over LA Rams
DIVISIONAL
Seattle over Tampa
Green Bay over Atlanta
NFC CHAMP
Green Bay over Seattle
AFC North
Pittsburgh 12-4
Cincinnati 8-8
Baltimore 7-9
Cleveland 4-12
AFC South
Tennessee 12-4
Houston 8-8
Indianapolis 6-10
Jacksonville 3-13
AFC East
New England 15-1
Miami 7-9
Buffalo 5-11
NY Jets 0-16
AFC West
Oakland 10-6
Kansas City 10-6*
LA Chargers 9-7*
Denver 6-10
WILD CARD
Oakland over KC
Pittsburgh over LA Chargers
DIVISIONAL
New England over Oakland
Tennessee over Pittsburgh
AFC CHAMP
New England over Tennessee
SUPER BOWL
New England over Green Bay
Parity, my ass. As you know, Super Bowl LII (leeeeeeeeeeeeee) is in my childhood state of Minnesota. Therefore, the above Super Bowl is the only Super Bowl that can happen. I should really just pick Green Bay to pull the upset and resign myself to God’s unending cruelty.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Seahawks at Packers: As with every year, you’re gonna see a few changes when you tune in on your first Sunday of the NFL season. Supposedly, the dreaded sequence of ads-kickoff-ads has been eliminated. Now, if that’s true, my opinion of Roger Goodell has risen a solid .002 percent. Why, he’s almost kinda not Satan in my eyes because of this. Thank you, Roger. Thank you for flooding my world with shitty Coors Light ads and then making me grateful because you removed a handful of them. I am the luckiest boy in the world.
Elsewhere, overtime is now 10 minutes instead of 15, because everyone bitches about overtime and the NFL always feels compelled to do at least one weird thing to it to get those people to shut up (they won’t). And group celebrations are now permitted, although with some restrictions…
[hands you a 45-page dossier with more rules than a permission form for a college dorm party keg]
Giants at Cowboys: This is, by my unofficial count, the fifth straight year in which the NFL has voluntarily set its dick on fire before the season even started. It’s as if they deliberately time their fuckups precisely so that America is talking about everything BUT the actual sport of football just before opening kickoff. For real, how much grief would the NFL save both us and itself if they simply worked WITH players to figure out how to suspend and fine certain offenses? But I guess it’s shrewder to spend millions on lawyers and engage in a byzantine process of appeals and injunctions and restraining orders so that any truly ugly, messy affair remains in the public consciousness for as long as possible. Shocking so many of these genius billionaires inherited their money, really.
By the way, I hope you’re as excited as I am for Al and Cris to uncomfortably discuss Zeke Elliott’s “situation” for 90 seconds on Sunday Night, followed by Cris exhaling out loud and saying, “I’m just glad we’ve got some REAL FOOTBALL here to talk about!”
Raiders at Titans: This game marks the official debut of Tony Romo in the booth. That’s right. No more PHEEEEL SEEMS for you folks tuning into the CBS national game anymore. He’s been Dierdorfed. I already feel bad for fans of any shitty team that will now experience the additional tonsil-kick of having Phil Simms presiding over the play-by-play. Gonna be a long year.
Four Throwgasms
Eagles at Skins: I drafted my token shitty fantasy team by phone this year, which is a fantastic luxury if, like me, you don’t want to have to get up from one chair and move to another kind of chair. Anyway, while I was drafting, the connection fizzled and I was kicked out of the draft room for a second, and that is always a moment of SHEER TERROR. It’s like someone blindfolded me and threw me into a pit. Where am I? What has happened? PLEASE TELL ME I DIDN’T DRAFT ANDY DALTON. I was panicked for a good 12 seconds. Much worse than my near-drowning. Why, I nearly had to stand up just to refresh the WiFi signal, and that would have been tragic.
Chiefs at Patriots: Patrick Mahomes looked like a GOD during the preseason. Hey, maybe there’s a chance he’ll get an accelerated timetable and take the starting gig early so that Chiefs fans can be spared yet another year of milquetoast adequacy! Maybe he could even take the field against the hated Patriots!
Christ. This is just like when Todd Haley openly refused to give Jamaal Charles carries. MEMORIES. In other news, Tom Brady gave his MOST REVEALING INTERVIEW EVER:
What an incredible load of shit. “Hey kids, stretch a lot and you too can survive a head-on collision with a Mack truck!”
Ravens at Bengals: We have to do something about standup special intros. Every standup special in the world begins with either a terrible sketch or grainy black-and-white photo of some asshole comedian, like, on a shrink’s couch. From now on, I want you people to just start with the lights going up and get right to the goddamn jokes. The only good standup special intro is Eddie Murphy Raw and that guy doesn’t even do standup anymore. No need to get cute with this shit.
Three Throwgasms
Saints at Vikings: This is the early Monday night game, which dovetails nicely with my Dad Hours. I can watch the Vikings shit the bed AND get my beauty rest. Everyone wins. Except the Vikings. Elsewhere, Adrian Peterson has already promised to “stick it” to Minnesota in this game. And while I believe he’s a broken down fumble automator at his point, would it shock anyone if he ran for 200 yards in this game and exacted “revenge” upon a team that drafted him, paid him, and kept him around even after he beat the piss out of his kids? Of course not. He’ll get up for this one and then dislocate both knees in Week 2.
By the way, Hank Williams is BACK this season on MNF. Thank God. I can think no more welcome voice in these troubled times than the man who wrote this:
Falcons at Bears: Mike Glennon is starting this game and I’m pretty fired up about it!
Cardinals at Lions: I warmed up for Sunday by watching the first weekend of college football and I swear they’ve found a way to make college games even longer. Virtually every game was four hours. That’s completely fucking unreasonable. I know there were some fantastic games (the UCLA game, the Maryland game, the Tennessee game), but any four-hour football game should result in mass firings. By the end of every game, only the student section is awake. They gotta ditch replay and shorten halftime to somewhere south of 47 minutes. Stop this lunacy. I shouldn’t be holding up NFL games as a paragon of brevity here. However…
Chargers at Broncos: Some of the college games this year DID feature an electronic down marker…
My God, it like I’m looking directly into the FUTURE! Think of all the other crazy numbers you could impute into that marker. Sixth down? EIGHTH down? This could usher in a whole new age of football innovation.
Two Throwgasms
Jaguars at Texans: Sending Blake Bortles to Houston is yet one more gracious act of charity to help benefit the city. Kudos to whoever donated him in this hour of need.
Colts at Rams: I know it’s already been noted, but the number of truly bad starting QBs going into Week 1 seems uncommon this year. Normally, the NFL waits at least until October to give you Moses Moreno and other lifeless bodies. I’m extremely concerned. If this is what September brings, who the fuck is gonna be playing when dudes REALLY start to get hurt? Given that the Colts suffer from Munchausen Syndrome and are actively trying to kill Andrew Luck, I predict they’ll start a very large dog at QB by December, and then try to kill that dog as well.
By the way, I picked the Rams to make the playoff strictly as a vote of confidence for Wade. WE LOVE WADE.
Panthers at Niners: I watched the Niners starters beat the piss out of the Vikings starters in the third preseason game and thought to myself, “Hey! They look pretty solid! Maybe they’ll surprise people this year!” I pray that you are not as innately stupid as I am. With that kind of gut football analysis, it’s a wonder I don’t eat a bucket of paste before going to sleep every night.
Also, should I be concerned about Cam’s shoulder? He is now throwing with what appears to be a space corset:
Whenever teams insist a player is healthy, that usually means he’s near death. Good thing he has VALUED RESOURCE Derek Anderson backing him up.
One Throwgasm
Jets at Bills: I was really hoping Nathan Peterman would start this game so that we could officially call it the worst opening game in NFL history, and I could make Tuel Time 2: The Toolening jokes. Alas. I really don’t know how the Jets will manage to score a touchdown all year.
Steelers at Browns: If you are new here, this is your annual reminder that I don’t necessarily write up every game every week. Like this one. What more do you need to know about Pittsburgh walking into Cleveland and kicking the Browns in the chest?
Pregame Song That Makes Me Want To Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
“Battery,” by Metallica. It’s the little opening acoustic interlude that really makes it. I love it when any thrash band starts off with some dainty, acoustic, Renaissance Faire tinkling. And you just KNOW they’re gonna come in with the big guitars and ruin your shit, and then they DO. It’s a bulletproof formula. Every acoustic ballad ever recorded should be remixed and have Slayer come in at the :45 mark. INSTANT IMPROVEMENT.
Gregg Easterbrook Memorial Haughty Dipshit Of The Week
Last year, Greggggg Easterbrook’s esteemed Tuesday Morning QB column had no home. Presumably, he spent the time away drinking of good books and attending faith ceremonies of any denomination. Thusly the world was temporarily spared from his takes about BIG BUCKS GLORY BOY schools and continuity errors he found among old episodes of Airwolf. But because the world has proven a cruel, cruel place, I regret to inform you that Gregggggg is BACK. And no only that, but guess where he ended up:
Gregg Easterbrook’s Football for the Smart Set Comes to The Weekly Standard
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It’s perfect, isn’t it? In all honesty, I cannot think of a more perfect home for TMQ than a magazine run by William Kristol, who is proudly and sneeringly wrong about literally every-fucking-thing. Verily, the Take Gods wept with pleasure. Christ, that “smart set” line. I just wanna kill myself 90 times. Somewhere out there, there’s a Dartmouth grad in a cable knit sweater smoking a pipe, opening TMQ on Flipboard, and saying JOLLY GOOD to himself. And much chortling then ensued.
Anyway, despite Gregggg’s return from his leather-bound crypt, I am sticking to a promise I made to myself to NEVER ever again subject myself to the entirety his column, especially now that the Standard has lifted word count limits off him and his take valve has been fully opened and spilled out onto the screen. I mean, look at this shit. LOOK AT IT:
Free speech safeguards the airing of political, artistic, and scientific opinions, but does not shield anyone from consequences that may follow speech. Imprisonment for free speech is proscribed, but loss of popularity or income is not. Kaepernick, Marshawn Lynch, Michael Bennett, and other NFL figures who would not stand during the National Anthem should be credited for expressing their conscience, but have no basis to complain about the aftereffects. Donald Trump spoke warmly of white racists, then became furious when his stature was damaged by his own speech: That’s wanting it both ways.
Fits right in, doesn’t he? Finally, my man has found a place where he can rail against Evil Hollywood Jews and find a sympathetic audience. Anyway, that snippet represents roughly 1/1000th of the rest of the column, so I’m not going anywhere near that shit. You can’t make me. It’s too much take for one man. This week, I’m just gonna goof on Mike Lombardi instead.
How many times do you think he jacked off to that graphic they made for him? Probably roped one onto his framed Belichick photo looking at it.
Rex Ryan’s Lock Of The Week: Lions +1.5
“Oh, men. MEN. Men, today I took a shit that you could have used as a cane! Other men will build campfires just to tell stories about it. Now, damnedest thing about this Oklahoma Haybale: I take my usual selfie with it, and then I go to flush the toilet. And KABOOM! That turd exploded into diarrhea the second the water began to swirl! One minute it’s solid. The next? BLACK GOLD. I had NO idea that smoked venison could do that to your insides. The whole house smelled like Mrs. Ryan had given it a once-over in cider vinegar!
“Now men… I want you to listen to me carefully. Come Sunday, I want you to BE that turd. I want you to prowl around the stadium, with everyone thinking you’re just some run-of-the-mill bearpie floating in the bowl. And then, when the whistle blows, I want you to EXPLODE up into your man! Be everywhere! SWARM THE BOWL! I want you to SICKEN your opponent. I want you to leave the stench of DEATH upon him, and upon his family, and friends, and his friends’ families too! I want you to contaminate them with poisonous vengeance! THEN WE’LL WIPE OUR ASSES WITH THEM AND GO EAT A DONUT! That’s what I want you to do. Goddammit, now I have to shit again. Got me all worked up.”
Ryan 2017 record: 0-0
Fantasy Player Who Deserves To Die A Slow, Painful Death
The gutless NFL execs who moved the Bucs/Dolphins game so that Miami could keep one more game’s worth of home revenue after Irma has hit Florida. These men clearly don’t care about player safety, nor do they care about the fact that I had a PERECTLY curated lineup for the week that included DeSean Jackson. Now the whole balance of my lineup is ruined. I gotta drop two other guys just to get the combinations right. DID NO ONE THINK OF ME DURING THIS PROCESS? So damn rude.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your potential 2017 chopping block:
Chuck Pagano*
Hue Jackson
Marvin Lewis
Sean Payton
Mike Mularkey
John Fox*
Mike McCarthy
Jim Caldwell
Jay Gruden
Todd Bowles*
(*-potential midseason firing)
Along with virtually everyone else, I think the Titans will improve this season. That means that if they start out 1-3, Mularkey will be IMMEDIATELY flushed down a drain pipe. Exciting!
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Andrew chimes in with a story I’ll call AIR POOPMERICA:
I was about eleven and playing hide-and-seek with some friends after a swim at our neighborhood pool. We had gone back to my house, dropped off our towels in the garage, and immediately began playing. No time was wasted putting on shirts or shoes.
The first few rounds went fine, but about half an hour in I felt a disturbance in my stomach. I assumed it was from the nachos I had before we left the pool, and I considered running inside to relieve myself, but I figured I could hold it in for one more round. The period I spent debating whether or not to take a shit wasted precious hiding time. So I ran behind the house to find the best spot I could: squatting behind the air conditioning unit.
I decided it best to let out a fart to discharge some pressure. Only it wasn’t a fart. I could feel the tiny ping-pong ball-sized piece of poop in the liner of my swim trunks. I reached my hand in and pulled out the remarkably smooth turd. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I couldn’t leave it on the ground; whoever found me would see it. And I couldn’t risk throwing it because I had nothing to wipe my hands on if it fell apart in my hand. So I came up with the most resourceful idea my young mind had imagined up until that point in time. I was going to drop it into the air conditioning unit.
I inspected the slits above the fan and made sure they were wide enough for my shit to fit through. They were. Time was of the essence. I think it’s important to note at this time that the unit was running at full speed. I dropped my brown matter into the unit and instantly smelled my mistake. But I couldn’t see it. The fecal matter had been basically vaporized and sent flying in every direction – one of those directions was directly onto my face. So I came up with another plan. I took off my swimsuit, wiped my face off, and ran naked into my house, going straight to my room. The swimsuit went in the laundry hamper, and I threw on another one and went back to my hiding spot.
I later had to tell my mom that I pooped my pants. I should have thrown that shit as far as I could.
GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Gametime Snack Of The Week
Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls! Diners never serve these. They take 10 minutes to bake and I could eat a whole sleeve of them in 10 seconds flat. If I ever own a diner—I would name it Bobby Evans and situate it directly across the street from Bob Evans—I would put these on the menu at a 5,000 percent markup, open my door to every drunk in town, and watch the money roll in.
I make these for the 5-year-old and he just stares at the oven while they cook. I’m right there with him. They may cook in just 10 minutes, but it’s a LONG 10 minutes.
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
BUCANERO! Oh my goodness gracious. Look. At. That. Reader Jamie sends in this commie pirate brew:
This swashbuckling brew comes to you from Cuba, where I managed to take a vacation right before Trump comes in and puts the Clampdown on the cheap-rum-and-cigar party because he is a feculent sea-hag. The AirBnB house we stayed in had a fridge stocked with these and 3 other kinds of beer, and the staff would replace them every day and charge us for what we drank to the tune of $1-$2 per beer. Considering that, this stuff was eminently drinkable. The pirate really lets you know you’re in for some bold adventures.
Bonus Cuba note - I wandered down to the Havana waterfront one morning to take some pictures, only to realize that this old coral beach had become a destination for Santeria-induced poultry sacrifices (see attached photo). Nothing says vacation like having salmonella waves lapping at your shoes before lunch. In what I’m sure is a totally unrelated event, me and one other member of our group had a debilitating food poisoning/norovirus vomit/poop situation arise the last two days we were there. Still a fun trip and the Cuban people are legitimately great.
I would CRUSH those beers and then SLAY that victimized chicken by roasting it on a spit. That can… it calls to me. The FUERTE lets you know it’ll fuck you up good. DEBO TENERLO.
Jim Tomsula’s Lifehack Of The Week!
“Nothing makes me angrier than when people burn the flag. You could roast a dozen squirrel kebabs with just one flag. But do people ever take advantage? No. Total waste, okay? Next time you wanna burn a flag, you call Jim Tomsula, all right, and he’ll be there with those kebabs AND his fabled dumpster salad. Secret recipe.”
Sunday Afternoon Movie Of The Week For Browns Fans
Get Out. I watched Get Out alone (bad idea), and while the first hour of that movie is creepy and disturbing as shit, my EXTREMELY WOKE take is that the end of the movie lets you off the hook. I figured it would end with Chris locked out of his own body forever, like a Twilight Zone episode. Instead…(SPOILERS!) he gets free and goes full Rambo on the whole house. And yes, it’s immensely satisfying to watch (a friend told me I fucked up badly by not watching this movie in a packed theater with everyone cheering), but they could have fucked with your head even more if they had wanted to. Once Chris escapes, so do you. Actually, maybe I should be grateful they didn’t go for a darker ending. I do enjoy sleeping without night terrors.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
“I’m looking for something in an after-dinner burrito.”
Enjoy the games, everyone. Football is BACK.