Saturday, November 18, 2006

Saturday Sports Post #2. Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty I Am Free At Last

I will attempt in this post to describe to you the grip that college football has on most of the state of Ohio. I will fail. Unless you were born there, or someplace like Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Alabama, places so empty of culture and possibilities for a meaningful life that the whole of a persons physical and spiritual existence is manifested through a game where boys play fight over a leather air-filled sack, you don't and never will know what it is like to be born into the cult of the poisonous nut. My mother is a little old lady who can always tell you the score of last week's game. I visited my sister once in Columbus, home of the University of the poisonous nut, during the weekend of the annual game with their hated rivals, the Michigan weasel-cousins. Every time the poisonous nuts scored a point, the entire building literally shook. I had a drink knocked off her coffee table.

That building may have collapsed today. Those of you who follow sports know what I'm talking about. The poisonous nuts and the weasel cousins were the number 1 and 2 ranked teams in college football, and they met today to fight over that leather sack. I dreaded this day, for I knew that I would have to watch. Even though I long ago escaped to the coast, I knew that just as the Eagles once sang about the Hotel California, you can check out of the poisonous nut cult anytime you like, but you can never leave. A few years ago the poisonous nuts played the Miami weather disturbances for the national college football championship. I was working, so I taped the game. I am ashamed of this. I am more ashamed that I was watching the tape at 2 in the morning shouting things like TACKLE HIM! GODDAMMIT, TACKLE THAT SON OF A BITCH! Any illusions that I was a sophisticated, classy, intellectual type of guy went right out my lungs that night, and I knew that from then on, the best I could do would be to try and hide this flaw of character.

So this afternoon, as my cult masters readied to take the field to battle Emmanuel Goldstein in the three hours of hate, I pulled the curtains closed and turned on the television, resigned to my fate. What happened though, was that I saw only a bunch of straight boys who don't realize they're gay dressed in panty hose hitting each other really hard for no apparent reason. It really was a good game if you're into that kind of thing, close, hard fought....put in your favorite sports cliche here. But the only time I got emotional witnessing the spectacle was when I found a bag of the good salsa chips in the back of my cupboard.

I know most of you don't realize what this means. It means that this...thing...it wasn't in my genes, I'm not an animal....I'm......I'm.....

Free. Gloriously free....

So as the celebratory riot is certainly underway in Columbus, I stand this night born into a new world. A wonderful world where affection between men doesn't have to be limited to public play-fight rituals. You are free to love each other however you choose men of my world!

But not to love me.....I still like boobs. Just wanna be clear on that.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love you Drugmonkey. Please come back to poisonous nut and sign copies of your blog for me. I will not alter them, I swear. And I may even wear a burka. A burka with a buckeye.

DrugMonkey, Master of Pharmacy said...

My Dear Ms. Carmen, I fear wearing a burka in the land of poisonous nut might get you killed.

Unless of course you would be wearing that burka behind closed doors.....oh the irony.....

Anonymous said...

Actually, it would just be a pillow-case with an eye slot in it. I'm not very good with patterns.
P.N. state has many free thinkers. You must be thinking of southernmost poisonous nut where the accent deviats from standard northern English, as do the ideas and pasttimes. I'm pretty sure they've given up lynching by now. So I think I'd be ok.

DrugMonkey, Master of Pharmacy said...

One of the quickest ways to hurt my feelings, other than to tell me I look like a pharmacist, is to tell me you can pick up that accent in my speech. They have given up lynching in southern poisonous nut, but only because they have lost the technical knowledge necessary to pull it off as each successive generation becomes stupider.

I know it's wrong to write off an entire area of 10 million people. Yellow Springs is a wonderful town, and there are signs of life in that corner of the state dominated by the city whose baseball team is represented by a cartoon caricature of the people the land was stolen from, but by and large in my experience the free thinkers were outnumbered by the rednecks, those that care only about their McMansions, and the well intentioned but incredibly ignorant.

Don't even get me started on Cincinnati.

All in all, I'm a very happy Californian, although in the part of the state where I am they might rip off your burka in feminist solidarity in order to liberate you...

It always comes back to wearing it behind closed doors.....:)

Anonymous said...

"Unless you were born there, or someplace like Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Alabama, places so empty of culture and possibilities for a meaningful life that the whole of a persons physical and spiritual existence is manifested through a game where boys play fight over a leather air-filled sack, you don't and never will know what it is like to be born into the cult of the poisonous nut."

Being born in Alabama and a graduate of Auburn University, I can back you up 100% on this. It's sad, but true. But...I must admit, I was jumping around like an idiot in the pharmacy yesterday afternoon when my alma mater knocked off Alabama for the fifth year in a row...

Romius T. said...

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but you used an image from an NFL game rather than college football.

I find that distressing.

I was born in Texas. We care about football.

DrugMonkey, Master of Pharmacy said...

The picture ties in with my "football is for stright boys who don't know they're gay" point. Look at it closely and you'll see what I mean.

Point taken, but I couldn't find any gay college football pics.

Anonymous said...

this is in reply to your comments and the blog entry:

You look like a pharmacist, I want to hear you talk after next week, and the men will continue to love you. Trojan hops and all. I don't think you like boobs as much as you claim.