Eight seconds

Author’s note: The title of this post does not refer to the 1994 movie about rodeo legend Lane Frost. Although in my opinion that was Luke Perry’s best, and come to think of it, only decent acting performance.

Well, my weekend involved golf and football. Hmm, I think I’m beginning to notice a trend here. Not that I’m complaining. It’s much better than that Gilmore Girls phase I went thru.

Saturday I was in my happy place, as Renee refers to it, Tuscaloosa. That really is my happy place. I look forward to football season from January to August. And even during the season, I’m looking forward to watching the next game either in person or on TV.

This weekend, my beloved Crimson Tide took on their first ranked opponent of the young season, the highly touted Hogs of Arkansas. The game got off to a rousing start for those clad in Crimson, as Bama jumped out to a 21-0 lead in the 1st quarter.

But as the sun set on Tuscaloosa and the first touches of autumn coolness spread across the night, the tide turned. Thanks in part to three turnovers, a 31-10 lead quickly evaporated and then became a 38-31 deficit.

The once jubliant crowd was stunned and growing more concerned by the second as the clock ticked under 5 minutes to play. Then, the Tide turned.

A field goal cut the lead to 38-34. That was followed by a defensive stand which gave Bama the ball back with only 2:13 to play, 73 yards from the end zone, and with no timeouts remaining.

The final drive was tense, exciting, and a thing of beauty. When the final touchdown catch was secured, only eight seconds remained on the clock. And I guess the old stadium was as loud as I’ve ever heard her.

I assume the band played the fight song like they do after every score. But I couldn’t say for sure.

Final score: Alabama 41, Arkansas 38.

We stopped off at a convenience store after the game to load up on junk food for the two hour drive home. The cashier was helping an older man in front of us. As she completed the transaction she told him to have a good night.

In a friendly Southern drawl, he replied dryly and sincerely, “I’ve already had one.”

I could tell he’d been in his happy place, too.

“From Carolina down to Georgia, smell the jasmine and magnolia. Sleepy sweet home Alabama, Roll Tide Roll…”

September Saturdays

Football season starts today! In celebration–and also thanks to Labor Day–I’m in the midst of a four-day weekend. By the way, how long does a weekend have to be before it stops becoming a weekend? I mean, if I took Tuesday off as well, would that be a five-day weekend? At some point, don’t you just have to say you took a week off?

Football doesn’t signal the beginning of Fall, but serves more as a harbinger of it. Summer is slowly tiring. The weather is still hot, but the days are growing shorter. Today, we’ll be in shorts and short sleeves. But soon, we’ll be in jeans and long sleeves, the familiar autumn chill evoking thoughts and memories and feelings as only it can.

Today the population of Tuscaloosa will swell from 80,000 to 180,000 or more. People will arrive hours before kickoff. Some arrived days in advance. The streets will be buzzing with activity, the campus redolent with the smell of barbecue and burgers.

The stadium will be packed in anticipation not just of a new season, but of a new coach and a new era, hopefully one that awakens feelings and memories of an earlier time.

They’ll strike up the band and the players will run onto the field, a sea of crimson spreading across the lush green. Both occurrences will elicit cheers from the crowd while at the same time bringing chill bumps to many in attendance.

There will be sons and daughters attending their very first game, and others who haven’t missed a game in years. They’ll sit next to each other, young and young at heart, decked out in their crimson, gray, and white, donning their houndstooth caps.

But all will share the same burning hope and desire. To watch the Tide roll on a Saturday evening in Tuscaloosa.

“Well, there’s a football in the air, across a leaf blown field. Yeah, and there’s your first car on the road, and the girl you’d steal…”

Joe Namath, Mom, & Existential Questions

28 days until the first Alabama football game!

I suppose I have reached the point in my life where I have begun to ask myself certain questions. What is life? What is real? Who am I? How in the world is Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show still on the air?

While we may never know the answer to that last one, today I want to focus on the Who Am I question. Or more precisely, why am I the way I am?

I have written before about my love for Crimson Tide football. And while I know this trait largely comes directly from my mother, I’ve never known where she got it. So this week I decided to ask her. Why does she love Alabama football, and who did she get it from?

Here, to the best of my recollection, is her answer in her words:

“I don’t know. The earliest memory I have is watching them when Joe Namath was quarterback. I remember one year we lost to Tennessee and it tore me up. I was down in the floor crying and I remember Momma saying, ‘Child, you don’t need to let a football game affect you like that. Win or lose, the sun’s gonna come up tomorrow.’

Sunday morning when I woke up, it was pouring down rain. And I knew then the sun doesn’t come up when Alabama loses.”

Indeed.

Oh, I would have asked her the Jimmy Kimmel question as well, but I’m pretty sure her answer would have been, “Jimmy who?” Mom flips back and forth between Letterman and Leno, and only knows Craig Ferguson as that “crazy man who looks like a gorilla.”

Don’t ask me. I don’t analyze it, I just report it.

“From Carolina down to Georgia, smell the jasmine and magnolia. Sleepy, sweet home Alabama, Roll, Tide, Roll…”

"All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand…"

The title of this post is a quote from Steven Wright. It may seem random, and is, but I think it goes along well with the randomness of the post…

The Alabama football team’s annual A-Day game was Saturday. The game normally draws thirty to forty thousand fans. This year, with a new coach, new hope, and an unquenched thirst for a championship, they had to close the gates and stop letting people in early in the second quarter. Stadium capacity is a little over 92,000.

Even I was amazed at a crowd that large for what basically amounts to a glorified scrimmage. Still, it was a nice “tide” me over until the first game, which is now only 131 days away! Bama football fans are often called fanatical. And, well, we don’t really consider that an insult.

My Mom, sister, and I went. As we were about to enter the stadium, who do we see but my uncle, aunt, and two cousins. I mean, seriously, out of 100,000 people, what are the odds? I got my first sunburn of the year, sitting on an aluminum bleacher in the 80-degree Tuscaloosa heat for three hours.

Mom got tickled when the crowd started doing the wave. By the third time it came around, she couldn’t even stand up she was laughing so hard. It was great seeing her have fun. Even if it did lead my sister to remark to me, “We have got to get her out more.”

When I got home that evening, Pablo was swimming around. I mention this because it has become a rare sight. Although I haven’t written about it, I’ve been really worried about Pablo. He completely stopped eating two weeks ago and only comes out of his rock to get air, then goes right back in. Last Wednesday, I bought two kinds of fish medicine and some anti-fungus tablets at Wal-Mart, and started putting in his tank.

So when I saw him swimming around Saturday, I immediately tried feeding him. And he ate! For the first time in twelve days! I was as excited as I’ve been in a long time. And also hopeful that this means the medicine is working. I don’t know what’s wrong with the little fella, but I’m trying everything I can.

Saturday night, I drove over to Ben’s. Ben and I have been friends since first grade. The night my sister was born (at some absurd overnight hour), after I threw up in the ER waiting room, I wound up at Ben’s spending the night so that I could get to school the next day. These days, we don’t hang out that much or even talk too often since he got married. I think this was the first time I’d seen him since Festivus.

The house was alive with two kids, a one-year-old and a two-year-old, running crazy. His youngest was eating a banana popsicle. Part of it fell on the floor. He didn’t reach down and pick it up. Instead, he got down on all fours and ate it right off the carpet. Ben just laughed. It hit me in that moment that he was in love with his kids. What an awesome feeling that must be.

Sunday, I ran 4.5 miles, which is the farthest I’ve run since the 10K race last year. I’ve developed a new low-to-the-ground, low impact running style. It’s tougher on the thighs, but much easier on the knees. If you’re trying to visualize this at home, it may not sound like the most manly or aesthetically pleasing style, but it seems to be helping. This year’s race is May 19th. I’m hoping to better my time from last year, of course. I’m thinking of shooting for a nine minute mile pace.

In other news, I took my car to the mechanic today. It started hesitating and sounding like it was missing dying last weekend. At first, I thought (and hoped) I had just gotten some bad gas. But two cans of gas treatment and one can of fuel injector cleaner didn’t seem help. Nor did clutching the steering wheel, looking up at the stars, and saying, “Please, please, please start working.” Then I thought maybe some mobsters had mistaken me for the real Jason Morgan and filled my tank with sugar. But the mechanic said the catalytic converter is stopped up. That doesn’t sound too bad, although I haven’t gotten an estimate yet.

Finally, one of my favorite comedians, Steven Wright, is coming to Nashville!! He’s also supposed to be on Letterman tonight. Someone please remind me. (About Letterman, not the concert.)

“From Carolina down to Georgia, smell the jasmine and magnolia. Sleepy, sweet home Alabama, Roll Tide Roll…”

A hat for all seasons

AI played with the colors on my template tonight. The white text on black background was sometimes hard on my eyes. I think this is easier to read. Let me know what you think.

After escorting my aunt to the Loretta Lynn concert last weekend, it was time to return to the pseudo bachelor paradise that is my life this weekend. Which pretty much wholly consisted of Axl and I heading to Tuscaloosa Saturday for the Alabama basketball game.

Upon arriving, I found a parking spot and got out of the car. Axl opened the back door and was getting something out of the back seat. Then he did it.

He replaced the completely normal Crimson Bama cap he had been wearing with a black cowboy hat. This turn of events prompted the following exchange:

“What are you doing?”

“I think I might wear a cowboy hat.”

“Uhh, why?”

I don’t remember his response. And it doesn’t really matter, as no possible valid reason even exists.

Now some of you may be thinking, well it is Alabama, this is probably normal. Let me assure you, no, it is not. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing a cowboy hat at any of the of seventy or so university sporting events I’ve attended over the years. We wear Bama caps and houndstooth hats.

Besides that, I’ve never seen Axl wear a cowboy hat in the twenty-plus years I’ve known him. Not to mention, I don’t want to be seen walking into the game with and sitting beside a guy wearing a cowboy hat. But, that’s what happened.

After watching our beloved Tide lose the game, Buffalo Bill and I began the trek back to the car. It had begun to rain. Just as we got outside the coliseum (I was walking several yards ahead of him, for obvious reasons), he called to me from behind:

“Hey, Bone. After all that has happened to me today…”

Did I mention he got a speeding ticket on the way to meet me? Well, he did. I stopped to see what he was talking about. He was holding something in his hand. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what it was: the heel from one of his boots.

I couldn’t help but laugh. And I also couldn’t resist a couple of sly witticisms. Slapping him on the back, I held out my hand and said, “Here, have a Mentos.”

That was followed a few seconds later by, “Dude, you’re supposed to just break the heel off the other shoe when that happens. Come on, be a woman!”

There’s nothing quite like strolling across a college campus in the rain, with your guy friend in tow, who happens to be donning a cowboy hat and limping along on a boot with no heel. These are the memories that last.

The drive home was rather uneventful. Axl wasn’t talking much. It’s amazing how losing a heel can ruin a guy’s whole day. When we got back to where we’d met, I let him out at his car–well, his girlfriend’s car actually, but that’s another story. I turned around as he opened the back door to get his things.

I had noticed he threw several things in the back seat when he got in the car that morning. What I hadn’t noticed was, included among those things were no less than four hats–two Alabama caps and two cowboy hats.

What?

I struggled to grasp this and tried to think of some possible explanation. But there was none. I mean, why? What guy takes four hats to a ballgame? Who brings four hats anywhere? Finally, I managed to speak.

“You brought four hats?”

“Yeah,” he replied as if this was completely normal human behavior and as if it were odd that I would even ask such a thing.

“Why would you bring four hats?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna wear.”

It was then, just before he closed the door, that I formed and unleashed my last witticism of the day:

“Too bad you didn’t pack an extra pair of shoes.”

Sometimes the blog entries write themselves.

“Stealing a young girl’s heart, just like Gene and Roy. Singing those campfire songs. Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy…”