What a weird time to feel my NFL psychosis flagging. I can't tell if it's because I have a lot going on or if it's because the end is in sight, and the magic lotus-eater bubble of football, apparently infinite when observed from mid-November, is starting to display some curved edges and finite characteristics. Apparently the season's going to end; apparently it will eventually be late February, and I'll be super-excited to watch the combine. This same early letdown happened to me last year; of course last year, I was in Chicago, and the Bears were still playing, and my stance was obnoxious and passive-aggressive, designed to annoy whatever football people I ran into here and there. But considering the differences in the remaining contenders, the feeling's not that different. Last year I remember not bothering to watch the Saints vs. the Bears, but seeing Reggie Bush flip into the endzone on a tiny TV in the corner of the coffee shop I was at, feeling little or nothing. The barista looked at the play and said: "Now that guy is a hot dog." It was refreshing to be around someone who was unable to identify Mr. Kardashian.
This is all an illusion. The Packers are somehow still alive and kicking, and on top of that unexpected fact, they will be playing the NFC Championship game at Lambeau in five days, and I will be sitting in the stands, freezing my nutsack off. I will be heading down to the Patagonia store on Wednesday to purchase something over-designed and over-priced, and I will love myself for doing it. Something for my core, maybe, since I've learned in the last few years how important the core muscles can be. Too bad I haven't done more core exercises in the last few months. Although don't discount the legs, now. The legs have to stay warm, too. I'm sure I'll be able to find something for around $150, sleek and excellent. A slim pair of long undies that feel great and make me cool, even though lining my jeans with garbage bags would probably end up doing the exact same thing.
Sorry. Patagonia gets me going. Here's the big point: Who would have thought we were the existential cohort who would be in the universe where the impossible became possible?
Not me.
Not Bob Lalasz. Not Mike Cade.
Not any broadcasters.
Not God...
Oh, Jesus Christ. Enough of this pansy-ass reflecting! Fuck yes!
First things first. Not to draw quite a lot of attention to myself, but I have to say that I my pre-Seattle post went well, now that we've seen the outcome of the game. Minus the D.J. Hackett stuff. It truly was about both Ryan Grant and momentum, and I was lucky enough to be there in the flesh, taking energy readings, watching everyone's favorite Fighting Irishman lumber through the holes. 20 here. 15 there. Whatever. Fan intensity was high--so high, in fact, that I was in the minority when I slipped out of my seat 3 minutes into the game and went down to the concourse to buy two hotdogs, smoke 18 cigarettes, poop in my pants, and reflect on the unbelievable incompetence my dear team had managed to display so early in the game. Somehow I was the only person in my family who was convinced the Packers were going to lose after we saw that second Grant fumble. One of the few at Lambeau, really. It was empty down there. I didn't find anyone yelling out, "Fuck!" in the bathroom. But wasn't I being rational? I had seen the Chicago game, when two fumbles in the first quarter had a seismic impact on the next three quarters. On top of that, I was at the Atlanta playoff game, which was all darkness, and I was at the Minnesota playoff game. I knew that feeling when I felt it. The sad taste of loserdom, Sherman-style.
I'm still not exactly sure what happened in that Chicago game earlier this year, but I'll tell you one certain truth: this team ain't Mike Sherman's Packers. To wit: St. Louis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Minnesota. A pretty butt-fucked sequence of playoff entertainment, I have to say. All Sherman-determined (interesting term, no?), all similar: emotionally lethargic teams prone to error, prone to downward spiral, prone to slow starts, prone to burbling frustrations, prone to shit defensive lines and Donnatell "we rely on the turnover" defenses. What a wonderful, Cincinnati-like perspective. Those teams all sucked penis. Paper tigers, all of 'em. And I KNOW it's a few years' past, I KNOW it's easy to say this when the Packers are a game away from the Superbowl, but come on. Don't deny it. All those post-Holmgren years, Packer fans? In your heart of hearts? You knew there wasn't a chance in hell.
I just don't feel that way now. There actually is a chance, isn't there? Not only to get there, but to somehow pull off the unthinkable against Mr. Stinky and his posse of totally weird buddies? The game against the Giants isn't much different than the game against the Seahawks; the Packers are favored (by 7 as of today), they're supposed to win, but it's hard not to be afraid, either because you still have those Sherman-determined low self-esteem fears in you, or you recognize the Giants as possibly problematic for reasons A, B, and C, or, like me, you've been given enough time and relief from NFL news and highlights this week to zoom out and take the macro-view of NFL 2007, and you can't shake the sense that it's fundamentally absurd, maybe even some unlikely clerical error, cosmic or really like some fucking mistake some guy at the NFL offices made, that the Packers are where they are right now, and are poised to do what they have not been able to do for a decade. This feeling of disorientation isn't coming from a belief that the team's not good. They're good. They're good, they're dynamic, they're well-coached, they're deep, and they're talented. (I realized they were even very good when they atomic-bombed Minnesota, Carolina, Detroit and Oakland precisely when they were supposed to atomic-bomb them. It's been a long time since they've dominated when they needed to dominate.) No Chicago losses could convince me otherwise. No 0-9 in Dallas could convince me otherwise. But at the beginning of the season? Fuck it. At the beginning of the season, it looked like the Packers might score three touchdowns over the course of 16 games. That's what I thought, anyway, and I was counting on someone from the Minnesota Vikings picking up a fumble and accidentally running the wrong direction. There is a precedent.
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back....aw man, I don't know. I'm just gonna buy my new socks and maybe my long undies, drive my ass up there, squeeze the car onto someone's front yard, pay ten bucks, watch out for the screaming drunk motherfucker running the wrong way, like maybe he's trying to run all the way back to Cormier because he forgot his ticket, and hoof it one last time down that straight, straight little neighborhood road to close out the Season of the Unlikely. Lambeau out there about a half-mile away, but you can already hear the chattering of the super-community mixed in with Jartz's special-thanks to Johnsonville Brats announcements, Dad beside me, making his way pretty good on the ice, even though he's busted out the big boots, even though he's maybe not as nimble as he used to be, just like the Old Man Quarterback said of his improvisational play last week, me sucking down an icicle cigarette with the flaps of my gloves open, wondering, per usual, why the fuck I smoke, especially in conditions like this. Grandpa's gone now, but I think he was there for the last one, when Carolina came. I remember him sitting straight upright and not ever standing when everyone else stood up for a big play, which seemed sad at the time, as I was worried he just couldn't get up, but really it was probably just his way of saying Fuck You All, You Scrubs, I Built This Motherfucker. Did You? And man, it's gonna be wicked-cold, bitches. Frozen hellscape, as I once heard Munson say, describing that Nordic and wolf-ridden post-apocalyptic January Wisconsin feeling that I hate and am a little, little proud of, like at the very least, it's a part of me, and at the craziest and happiest, we somehow together made it this cold by concentrating real hard because we like it this way. I'm not walking into a place named after a bank and dumped on a sunny, perfect plot of land. That's fuckin' Ridge Road right there! Maybe the nose-hairs will even be freezing up; I still have to check the weather, as that's a below-five-degree phenomenon. And you know what will occur to me when we're waiting in that huge pack of people, half of them sipping on Miller Lites, a few now and again crunching up their cans and throwing them in the general direction of the dumpster? I could give two shits who wins this game.
Last night I couldn't fall asleep for about a half hour because I kept envisioning alternate endings to that final OT drive (a 6 yard pass, say, to Lee, then, a 5 yard slant pass to Jennings for the first first down, followed by a 15? 20? yard pass to Jones along the right sideline, or no, maybe, finally, a 15 yard cutback run by Grant, followed by a screen pass, just to keep the momentu--). I was still blaming Favre, exclusively. Why couldn't he have just told himself before this drive to play it safe? To Remember Hasselback? To Remember Philly? Why couldn't he have just not thrown that pass? I mean, when will our guy ever learn? Fuucking FAAAAAVRE!!! And then I mentally pounded a sofa and mentally went out to have a cigarette.
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