Football, football everywhere, and nary a game to watch...

I know, I know, that's terrible, but imagine how I felt on Thanksgiving. There were two dreadful football games during the day, and one that evening that I had to watch. Broncos-Chiefs, man, perhaps the key game in Kansas City's season. And it was on the NFL Network, which pretty much doesn't exist in the greater Elizabeth City, N.C., metro area. At least, my father-in-law didn't have it, and the only bar in town open on Thanksgiving didn't, either.

That bar, Coasters, happens to have a really nice beer list, too. I could've been sipping a Paulaner hefe draft or three while watching the Chiefs bruise the Broncos defense for more than 200 years rushing but...they didn't have the game. The NFL sucks.

The other game I wanted to watch was Missouri-Kansas on Saturday, and I knew I wouldn't see that one. I mean, come on. Two unranked teams slogging it out for the right to play in the Insight Bowl...yee-ha. At least the Tigers spanked KU. So I was happy about that, if only in retrospect.

Did anyone else notice (or care) that John Fogerty played "Fortunate Son" at halftime of the Detroit game? I had thought this might have been something of an ad-lib (it is a screed against wealthy politicians who send other people's sons off to war, the sort of thing that wouldn't have been tolerated, say, last year), but in scanning the web I saw one reference to John "Fortunate Son" Fogerty, which tells me that the song has been getting some play on classic rock stations in the last year or so, and perhaps the NFL actually wanted him to play his most "current" hit. Amazing what one election can change, eh?

Then there's the fact that the penguin musical Happy Feet scored more buckage than the new Bond. I don't really care about this sort of thing--the last movie I saw in theaters was...I dunno. It was last year sometime. Two young kids will do that to you, I guess. I have been Netflixing the shit out of things, though. Just watched The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, though, and that kicked ass.

Thought you should know that.

Read the new Carl Hiassen--bought it at Costco, a first for me--not his best, but one of his most freewheeling books. The most upstanding character (in all senses of the word) is a former drug-runner. Everyone else has serious issues. And, of course, there's gunfire and mismatched desire. The plot is much more scant than usual, but there's lots of action. Something for everyone, in other words.

Barbara spent the better part of the last three weeks (before Thanksgiving) on the road, which means I get up earlier than usual and generally end up crankier than usual. I did get some sleep over Thanksgiving, but not so much as you might think. No matter how many times you tell a four-year-old to go downstairs and wake up Grandaddy instead of coming into your room and waking up the almost-two-year-old in the process, the four-year-old almost always comes to your room first. And wakes up the sleeping almost-two-year-old. Which means everyone gets up, with three out of four in a sour mood.

The point of all this is that I'm tired and we're just ramping up for the Christmas season. In less than two weeks we're all winging it out to Manhattan, Kansas, for the weekend--Grandma turns 90--and then, thankfully, we'll be home again. For a long while. Maybe then I can catch up on important things. Like the K-Fed album, or whether TomKat is married in the eyes of the law, L. Ron Hubbard, both or neither. Or maybe not. Because when I have sleep, I have the strength to avoid such nonsense and head straight into puzzling out how much the Prez might have learned last summer when he supposedly read The Stranger.

The inanity never ceases.

Jon Worley did read an issue of Southern Living during his N.C. T-day sojourn, and he discovered that Wilmington, Del., and Cincinnati are both "southern" cities.