The String Cheese Incident

 

I went to see String Cheese Incident, mostly by accident.  Los Lobos was opening up, so I figured I'd go see them as they are reliably outstanding/criminally underrated and check out String Cheese since I was there anyway.  I have a great many friends that are very down with the jam band scene, which you can also read as "I have a great many friends that like to get baked with like minded people in a groovy atmosphere".  I have generally felt that most jam bands except the Grateful Dead (with Jerry Garcia) are essentially party background music.  I love(d) the Dead for the combination of the band ethos, the combination of classic American music forms, and the undeniably great playing of Garcia.  However, the biggest reason the Dead appealed to me was simple.  The songs.  This is the key ingredient that eliminates the rest of the jam bands from my interest.  Off the top of your head, can you remember any jam band original song?  It's usually some obligatory cosmic verse or sparkling eye drug reference, a derivative chorus and then the meandering solo "jam" that lacks focus.  I usually lose interest in about 2 minutes.

I had a discussion recently with a jam band enthusiast friend and I asked him, "Who do you think I should check out?  What am I missing?".  His answer was String Cheese Incident as he felt their bluegrass/Americana influences would be a good match for me.  I remember giving a Phish show a chance once and the bass player played some revved up cowboy type song that was the most limp dick Americana attempt I have ever seen, so I did enter the show with some trepidation.  Still, I was into Los Lobos, so if things went South I could bail.  It was a free ticket after all...

Los Lobos was supposed to start at the mystifying start time of 6pm.  I'm into earlier shows as I spent most of the 1980s-2000s like everyone else, standing around waiting for 10pm to hit so the band would start.  I have a general rule that if the sun is too high, it's almost impossible to rock.  On top of that, it was hot AF and Los Lobos are really old dudes now.  Those guys have been a band for 53 years now.  They must be in their 70s at this point, no?  It can't be easy to bring it in 86 degree heat with 90% humidity.  I was doing a wine tasting nearby, so I figured I'd slide out of there a little early and catch Los Lobos.  Ultimately a 2018 Keplinger Carneros Syrah, a pair of cabernet franc, and a Super Tuscan derailed me on a timely exit.  I missed Los Lobos.

I have lived in NE Ohio for 35 years.  Up until last week's Wilco show, I had never been to a show at Cain Park.  This would now be my second show at Cain Park in a week.  I looked around for my buddy Dave and saw what is the standard jam band audience.  You know this crowd... college educated older dudes in their 40s-50s wearing obscure hippie band t-shirts to announce their membership in the tribe.  Women in their late 20s-40s in long flowy sundresses and blouses, their "I used to party" costumes.  There are a few cross generational family groups too.  Then there's me in my sweaty Fat Possum Records T-shirt and chucks.  I bought a giant beer and looked for Dave as the band started.

A few notes on String Cheese Incident...  The band is clearly well rehearsed and tight with the loose comfort of playing together for years.  The best instrumentalist is the keyboard guy, which is trouble for a jam band.  The key for a top tier jam band has always been having a guitar hero, a guy that plays too much because he CAN goddammit, and they don't really have that.  They have a couple guys playing guitar that can do that "noodle around" thing that stays in the same general area and is "fine", but not really attention getting.  There's also the matter of the songs.  I watched almost two full sets and I cannot hum back to you any of the basic melodies of any song on the setlist except when they covered The Police's "Walking On The Moon".  However, if you want to get baked out and let some hippie music wash over you, that's as good a place as any to do it.  I did spot a couple of women in their thirties going really hard that looked like they had a future as being "that one chick I took to Cabo that one time" protagonist in some unsuspecting guy's story years from now.  I see that as "Yeah man, she was super fun for the first day, but she got totally fucked up on tequila shots at the pool on the second day and was out of control.  The hotel told me I had to get her back to the room, but she cursed me out and grabbed a cab to some beach rave she heard about.  She never made it back to the hotel so I just said "fuck this" after breakfast and went home to Ohio early.  Jimbo told me he saw her when he was down there last year selling sculptures from scrap metals and she's with some scuba instructor named "Dragon"."

As I walked back to my car, I thought about something I had forgotten to do but had noted in my phone as a task.  DING!  "Place an UNDER bet on Matt Stafford passing yards".  As I have outlined in the past, when I make season long bets, it is always an UNDER and is usually focused not on player performance but on player health or circumstance.  That DeShaun Watson under bet last year had nothing to do with his ability, but rather his complete lack of interest in playing NFL Football.  This year, the health of Matt Stafford has me leaning heavy on UNDER 3650 yards passing.  For those of you that don't pay attention to the health status of the LA Rams, and I would expect that to be most of you, Stafford has been dealing with an injured back.  A couple weeks ago he got an epidural.  As far as I know, an epidural is not a healing measure but something for extreme pain tolerance.  He then hasn't participated in ANY practice activities until yesterday where he went out and ran 26 plays in practice conditions.  He allegedly has had an "aggravated disc" in his back, and the off season has been very murky for him.  

Here's what we know.  He's 37 years old.  He has a history of back problems, but this is the most serious.  He's got three weeks until he needs to get out there versus the Houston Texans.   Last year he threw for 3762 yards, the third declining year since his 2021 triumphant Super Bowl season.  Jimmy G, the Rams second string, has not been allowed to take a snap in the preseason, a clear indication of how important the Rams view his health.  So tell me, how is a 37 year old QB with an aggravated disc in his back that needed an epidural going to perform as well as he did last year?  Seems to me the Rams will try to run the ball, favor quick release passes to limit contact, and steer the offensive philosophy to keep Stafford upright.  OK...  Maybe they feel like Stafford is tough and can play the same type of ball he always has.  Let's say when he plays he's as good as he's always been too.  Sure.  Can he do that for 17 games?  I am not optimistic on his chances.  I sure as hell don't want to get hit by a 275 pound d-lineman with a full head of steam in the best circumstances, much less when I have an aggravated disc in my back.  There are too many negatives to ignore.  Stafford UNDER 3650 passing yards. 

          

An Old Rock Memoir Finds Me

 

Since I started this damn MW program almost every book I read has been about wine.  I read a book for pleasure a couple weeks ago, "Petal Pusher", a re-print of a rock memoir from the early 1990s from a pretty obscure Minneapolis band.  Oh, don't worry, after finishing that book I started an act of penance by reading a translated Spanish book on geology and wine terroir just to keep the universe in harmony.  But... Back to "Petal Pusher"...

The book is a first person account from Laurie Lindeen on her band ZuZu's Petals.  They were about 3-4 years in front of The Cowslingers in their development, but I remember seeing them booked into some of the same venues that we played and I knew they had a record deal on Twin Tone (something to be jealous of in our van).  The book is a pretty good read about someone trying to make it in an all female band without the dogma hangups of the Riotgrrl thing that came along shortly afterwards.  There is an interesting dichotomy about the book however.  Lindeen is very self effacing about her own abilities and band's limits but at the same time seems totally blind to the fact that they were afforded all of the opportunities to be on the label and get high profile shows because they were in the same clique as the guys in Soul Asylum, Jayhawks and Replacements.  They worked together at the hipster diner, drank at the same bar, and all lived in the same social circle.  Zuzu's Petals had a record deal well before they knew how to play and got to skip the multi year phase of learning how it all worked.  I think she was also oblivious to the fact that any all female band that got on a stage immediately got a crowd that was theirs to lose due to the sheer uniqueness of it and the undeniable draw to the undersexed male 18-24 indie rock club goer.  We would have killed for those connections and advantages.

Something that struck me in the book was an emphasis on how much "the scene" appealed to Lindeen as apart from the desire to create songs.  It came off to me that they liked to party, wanted to become a bigger part of the scene and do what they had seen their friends doing.  I have always been singing hooks of songs that hit me out of the blue into recorders or writing turns of phrase that catch my ear to use later.  The songs are such an afterthought in this book.  Zuzu's Petals had ambition and drive to get on stage, but my takeaway was it was more about being a bigger part of the scene as opposed to making great records.  For example, they got the chance to do a ramshackle tour of England after putting out their first single.  Crazy opportunity.  Granted, it ended in disaster, which makes for a good read.  Yet, they all went home and cancelled dates before the "tour" finished because they were miserable.  If every punk rock band left the road when things got fucked up, no tour would have ever completed in 1988-94.  I have passed along a great number of sketchy ass stories from that time period in this blog, and never once did we say "we quit, we are going home".

Their band trajectory went like this:  They put out a record on Twin Town in 1992.  The book mentions a few tours they quit in the middle because they wanted to go home.  In 1995 they have to put out a follow up record because Twin Tone had been gobbled up by the large conglomerate Roadrunner and it was time.  The problem is that in the three years since that first record came out, they didn't write any songs.  I have no idea how that is possible.  They then wrote the next record in the studio (always an awful idea) and not surprisingly the record wasn't very good.  Lindeen seems to think they should have had more tour support, which seems odd as even she knew the record wasn't very good and wouldn't sell.  Why would the label put their limited resources there?  "Hey, we have a crappy record that comes three years after our last modest record, we quit every tour we go out on, and we cancelled our European dates because one of the band members wanted to go home.  Where's our tour support?".  Seriously, she had no idea of the breaks that they were given or the experiences they were gifted and pissed away.  Ultimately the book is about a band that thought being a touring band looked cool and never liked the reality of it.

There are a bunch of stories that go "We showed up at the club, and the people that worked there were kind of dicks, and then there were only 20 people at the show."  Well, yeah...  It's not like people are thinking "When am I going to get the chance to see some strange women I don't know play unfamiliar songs somewhat poorly for $10 at the club?".  It looks easy when you are hanging out at the packed club with your talented buddies in Soul Asylum and The Jayhawks that worked their ass off and wrote a bunch of songs to find 10 good ones for their latest LP.  You have to do the work, but more importantly, you have to WANT to do the work.  If you don't love the whole of it, life on the road as an indie rock musician is no place to be, especially in 1993 (even if in 1993 people would think "Hey, they're on Twin Tone so we should check it out").

I started to feet like I was being snotty when I read the book as club after club that we have played showed up in the text.  "What are you whining about?".  I did get a sense she was being a little too self effacing and took a lot of labor to distance herself from cashing in on the relationship with her boyfriend (later husband/ex-husband) Paul Westerberg of The Replacements in both the band and in the book.  It very easily could have turned into a "I Married Paul" tell-all book as a cash in, but to her credit she clearly wanted to avoid any sense of that.  I was curious to see if she played music now or if she just wrote (which is much easier but much less of an adrenalin shot than playing in a rock band).  I then felt REALLY badly when I saw she had died suddenly a number of years ago.  This then make me re-think the memoir and re-focus on her very real health struggles that now seem like foreshadowing and ask if the author might have been too hard on herself for the band's "failure".  There was a chapter late in the book where she touches on how she was speaking with another musician about the band after it was over, and the disappointment she felt.  It was pointed out to her that they had sold 30,000 records, toured the country, and had the opportunity to have the experience of the band lifestyle that had always been the goal in the first place.  It seemed to me like she was trying to convince herself even more than the reader that she had in fact done something noteworthy in those passages.  As I thought about it, it hit me that she really had been a success.  It had never been about writing a #1 song.  It had been about getting up there and doing it.  

As we have been playing these Cowslinger shows this month, we have had the inevitable walks down memory lane.  That book had found me at sort of a perfect time, allowing me to put perspective on what we had been doing in 1993, one of the various vans traveling the Midwest playing shitty rock clubs just because we liked it.  Unlike the members of Zuzu's Petals, I still like it, but I think that's because I like almost all of it.  It stopped being about "the scene" a long time ago and instead has been about the more elusive pursuit of writing and playing good songs that connect with our people.  As we climb back in the van, the same guys as 1993, it was illuminating to see what it was like in another one of those vans driving around on I-90 hoping some people would be at the gig.  We would have looked at them as super successful, which ultimately I guess they were.    

Of Course

 

The kid at the grocery store rang up my purchase.  He had these big bangs like I used to have in 1983.  He doesn't know yet that this look is something he will try to distance himself from in the future.  It's tough to know in the moment what haircut or pair of pants will age poorly and haunt you in adulthood.  You are feeling like you're badass in 2025, then 12 years later your fiance is squinting at a family photo asking your mother why she let you look like Dee Dee Ramone.  This shit moves fast.

I paid for the groceries and the kid handed me my receipt.  I thanked him.  "Of course" was his response.  There has been an odd language move amongst the 18-30 age demographic where they refuse to say "you're welcome" and now exclusively use "of course".  I don't know what's going on there.  It seems like some sort of minor language turf war that is an attempt to gain the high ground where "of course" suggests less subservience than "thank you", though I will admit it might just be some Tik Tok influencer I don't know or care about busted out an "of course" and people just picked up on it.  I drove to get gas.  I walked inside and bought an unsweetened iced tea, the most rare of all gas station drinks, at the local "Get-Go" mart.  The very tall androgynous clerk said "of course" after I made the purchase and thanked them, which led me to shift my thinking from "Why would an androgynous 20 year old get a death defying job at a hillbilly Get-Go?" to "Why the fuck is everyone that age now saying "of course"?.  I don't know. 

When I was seven years old, David Bowie was out in front of that "I think we're all gay!" scare that rippled through suburban America with glam.  Out of touch parents didn't understand that it was just a shock tactic, to be mirrored by the Satanic Metal scare of the 1980s and the truly terrifying suburban teens trend of glomming onto hip hop culture in the 1990s.  That was a weird moment when all the rappers wanted to be rich and all their suburban fanbase wanted to be a poor inner city gang member.  Kids in developmental phases are eager to stake out positions that will get a reaction, and my gut is that there will be quite a few androgynous folks seeking to put a spin on their 2025 appearance in about 12 years.  I don't really care one way or the other as I don't have the skin in the game of a parent with a 17 year old girl hoping to win the Sectional volleyball title this year, and as well all know NOTHING is as important as suburban high school sports.  

The summer marches on and I look forward to when I look at the calendar this week and say out loud, "I can't believe it's almost August!" as if this summer has gone more quickly than any of the others before it.  When you live in the Great Lakes Region, the calendar works like this:  Winter goes from January 1-April 30th. Most of May is Spring.  Summer is Memorial Day weekend with a hard stop at Labor Day weekend.  September to mid-November is Fall.  Then you enter the 30 week winter season.  The only good news is football is almost back.  

I am starting to look at more of these season long win totals bets.  These are tough, as the NFL's team margins are so razor thin.  I take great caution at ever betting an OVER as each team is essentially one devastating QB injury away from doom.  For example, you can be very bullish on the Cincinnati Bengals to win over 9.5 games this year, but what happens if injury plagued Joe Burrow goes down in Week 3?  You want to get on Jake Browning to lead the Bengals to 10 wins?  Be my guest.  As a result, I tend to lean on the unders as more bad things can happen to teams than good things during the course of the year.  There are a couple I am kicking around right now...

The Chicago Bears at 8.5 wins is fraught with danger.  They won 5 games last year.  Between us, I'm not sold on Caleb Williams being "the answer" as a franchise QB as the Bears have a long history of choosing the wrong guy to be their savior at QB.  Jay Cutler turned out to be Jay Cutler.  They missed on MVP Mitch.  Their best modern QB is who?  Jim McMahon?  And he only gave them three good years.  I have a hard time seeing how Chicago can win 9 in what is expected to be the toughest division in the NFL.  I'm leaning under there.

The Hype Train is on the Patriots.  Drake Maye is already been ordained by the New England area media as The Shit.  Getting Mike Vrabel as head coach, who they should have hired in the first place, is being expected to turn them into instant playoff contenders.  That over/under number is sitting at 8.5 wins.  Let's pump the brakes here.  Vrabel made the playoffs 3 times in 6 years at Tennessee, and he had a generational running back in Travis Henry.  The Patriots had a massive point differential last year, it's not like they lose heartbreakers at the end of games.  They won four games last year.  They sucked.  Why are they going to more than double their win total?  Let's stay in our shoes here.  If they go 7-10 and stay competitive all year, that's a strong foot forward for the organization.  It's also an under.  

Let's keep an eye on these training camp injuries and enjoy the rest of the summer.  It will be time to spring into action in no time and allow ourselves to make a windfall of cash.  When we do, I don't expect you to say "thank you".  But if you do, I will certainly give you a heartfelt response of "of course".            

  

Has It All Been Done?

 

I am beginning to have great concerns that culturally everything I see now is a repeat.  Like you, I have almost unlimited options for music and film.  Every new movie release trailer I see I immediately think "I know what that is and I've seen that."  A big summer blockbuster movie like F1 comes out and within two seconds you know the older driver finds redemption, a love interest is the confrontational journalist, and a friendship is formed painfully with the young hotshot other driver after some dust ups.  Gee... I wonder if Brad Pitt has to make a sacrifice at the end of the film to allow the young kid to win "The Big Race" while finding that real satisfaction is helping others achieve their dreams instead of selfishly pursuing his own?  The other options are movies somehow banged out from video games or C Level superheroes.  You ever wonder why the General Population isn't outraged at handing an autocracy to The New Christian Nazi Grift Boyz, just remember that they're all lining up to see The Minecraft Movie.  They're too busy to worry about their grandma's healthcare.  Fucking A.  

I keep sniffing around trying to find exciting new music, but we are in this weird time where if you're in your 20s, you think the coolest shit that ever happened was the late 1970s California light rock sound with just a touch of indie dissonance.  Why does every band playing Mahall's and The Grog Shop look like Seals and Crofts if they shopped at Urban Outfitters?  I get it when I'm not into whatever pop garbage is on top of the charts.  I have never been into that, so that's par for the course.  Dua Lipa is the same old bullshit recycled from 1976.  Lots of people prefer junk food, and that's what pop is, the Taco Bell of music.  Still, this alleged "indie scene" really feels like a fallow time at the moment.  Or... did I just get to the end of all my options?  The big ideas are done and now I need to go backwards to see what I missed?  

The problem is there is just so much shit out there, all of it screaming for your attention at the same time, it's easy to miss something you'd be jacked up about because you were trying to avoid some ad to go see 80 year old AC/DC come to town to scrape all the Gen X money into their pockets before heading to the Euro Open Air Festivals.  It's just so exhausting to try and find it.  Is it just me, or was it actually better when you bought a few records and then digested them to see if you liked them?  I don't think anyone's attention span is long enough to make it through sampling a full song anymore.  That was the joy of radio.  You had to grit your teeth through hearing Toto's "Africa" because maybe, just maybe, they'd play a Zeppelin song next.  As a result of everyone's quick trigger finger now, unless you capture their attention in the first 5 seconds, they are looking for the cozy familiar sound of a Nirvana hook just to allow their synapses to relax for a second.  

I've been watching a great deal of baseball.  Some days I feel great satisfaction watching "my" Brewers continue to exceed expectations.  Yet on others my focus is on the Colorado Rockies laser intensity on destroying my "White Sox worst record" bet.  I might have to white knuckle this "Guardians Over 79" bet, but I hedged that with a SF Giants over.  Yes, on any given night I receive conflicting good/bad news from the perpetual baseball season.  It's a summer of conflicting emotions.  White Sox lost to the Guardians... Brewers beat Cubs... Guardians losing to the As... Giants are beating Colorado... Let me sort this out.  Is this good or bad for me?  Hmmmm.  

My only recourse now is to check out "bands other musician dudes like but I didn't get" while I watch baseball with the sound off, generally betting against the Rockies whenever they play a team with a winning record and a healthy starter.  I'm in luck today as the Brewers play the Rockies this afternoon.  I also decided to see my particular version of an AC/DC show, watching the Chameleons UK play a set.  I last saw them in 1987 I think at Peabody's in the Flats.  Now I'll be at a casino, sort of like seeing The Turtles if this was 1992.  I need to remind myself to say, "I saw them in 89" to as many disinterested people as possible while the band probably (hopefully) plays songs they wrote in the intervening 36 years.  It's a little grim.  I better wander out of the house more often to go see some one syllable named band at a squat.  Do they still have those?  Squats?  I'm out of it. 

 

Let's Talk About New Orleans

I read about a recent Siena College/NY Times poll that showed about 42% of the population approve of the job our leader is doing right now.  To me though the really interesting thing is that about half of that 42% hadn't heard anything about such headline grabbing stories as that dude that got tossed into the El Salvador Concentration Camp, were unaware of stock market fluctuations, and didn't know about the DOGE impact within the govt.  The one thing that was common to them was they all get most of their information on social media.  Yowza.  I remember this dopey woman I worked with that bragged about how she got all her news from TikTok as if this was aspirational behavior.  There is something brilliant about being proudly uninformed yet feeling like you were the only one dialed into what's going on because you knew some new dance.  As opposed to looking at this trend as The Inevitable Decline of Democracy (which it is), let's instead ask ourselves, "How can I personally benefit?".  I'll tell you how.  NFL futures.

The gambling lines are impacted by the volume and size of bets being placed into the market.  These bets are being made by the 92% of people that wager on sports via parlays (the least likely way to win at sports) with the type of information in their heads that enabled them to not be aware of the stock market or an international human rights violation that has been discussed globally for weeks.  When you walk into any mainstream area, look around.  1 out of 4 of those people you see are as smart as a largemouth bass.  That's who you are competing with in these futures markets.  The same people that walk around with devices that they pay a monthly fee to own that contains all of the information in the world in their hand don't know anything.  This is because they aren't smart enough to look at it.  This is who we are competing with in our everyday lives.       

The NFL season win totals are available and the schedule has been released.  Normally my favorite part of the schedule release is to listen to delusional Browns fans click off wins under the assumption that America's Worst Sports Franchise had systematically addressed their problems.  "OK, we'll beat Pittsburgh at home.  They're trash.  They've got no QB.  Minnesota at home.  Win.  On the road to Vegas.  Win.  Road game at Baltimore?  That's 50/50.  Maybe a loss.  OK, we are 3-1 at that point."  Meanwhile anyone with any sense whatsoever looks at the Vegas win line with the Browns having the lowest total at 5.5 and thinks "Damn... where do these guys find a win?".  That's the beauty of the NFL off season.  Fans magically turn optimistic.  "Hey!  We signed a safety the Seahawks just cut loose.  He's going to be amazing here!"  (He's not.)

While the Browns are a natural "under" pick for the simple reason that locals have convinced themselves that the team signing four backup QBs will somehow equate to them finding one starter out of that group, I would like to turn our attention instead to the New Orleans Saints.  The Saints went 5-5 with Derek Carr last year.  Derek Carr was one of those QBs that fell into the "he's better than I thought" guys when you drilled down into his results.  He was never going to be the guy to single handedly win you a Super Bowl, but there's three of those people on the planet.  He was more along the lines of "he ain't bad" guys.  This is backed up by the fact that the team went 0-7 with Carr injured and 5-5 when he started.  

Carr retired with a shoulder injury that was so bad that as soon as he got it word traveled amongst the sports gambling underworld "Carr ain't coming back, bet against New Orleans".  I knew that and I'm just a guy in Ohio.  Why didn't the Saints know that?  Maybe they did and decided to grab a lottery ticket on future bust Tyler Shough from Louisville.  Shough spent seven years in college, something I wish I had done, and got injured in three of those years.  When he played, he was... OK.  If you think a guy that moved around so he could start and played decent football at Oregon, Texas Tech and Louisville is going to step in a win a bunch of NFL games on a team with a C level roster, I'm concerned about your ability to reason.  TikTok dances might be for you!  

One of my associates has become focused with a raw burning rage at backup QBs in the NFL.  His theory, which I admit has some traction, is that if you've never been awarded "Conference QB of the year", how can you be expected to be a good player at the very top level of the sport?  Tyler Shough's biggest award appears to be "Comeback Player Of The Year" because he keeps breaking bones.  If you look around the NFL there's all kinds of backup QBs that you know will always be incapable of winning in the NFL, but there they are making $2M a year wearing a visor and tossing the ball around at practice.  Great gig as long as you don't have to get out on the field and play.  I'm talking to you Cooper Rush, Nick Mullens, Bailey Zappe, and Kyle Allen.  Unfortunately, I'm also talking about New Orleans Saints QBs Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener. 

Yes, the New Orleans Saints, who went 0-7 with Rattler/Haener are about to roll into the 2025 season with those guys AND Tyler Shough.  I am not optimistic about their chances.  Let's toss another few items into the mix.  Due to the unbalanced schedule of a 17 game season, this year the Saints get 8 home games and 9 away games.  They have one of the best home fields in the NFL, so that doesn't help.  Oh, and due to a quirk in the scheduling, the Saints get to play an NFL leading 3 games this year against a team that is coming off a bye week.  Well... that's rather concerning.  Let's discuss another organizational angle though...

The 2024 draft was considered to be weak at QB.  There's a reason teams that desperately need QBs like the Browns, Giants and Saints all waited until the 3rd round to take a flier on a QB this year.  Essentially, if you aren't drafted in the first round, you're not going to be an NFL starter.  Sure, there's exceptions, but it's rare that all 32 teams misjudge a college player's potential to be a starter in the league.  If a team drafts a QB in round 3 they are hoping he can be a cheap serviceable backup that they can pay 25% of what they's have to pay somebody like Mitch Trubisky.  The belief in the NFL is that the 2025 draft has some legit QB prospects that can become franchise starters, one with the last name of Manning.  So if you're the Saints, on the wrong side of the salary cap, do you use 2025 to see if your later round lottery ticket comes in and maybe lose your way right into Arch Manning?  Oh, I don't know... Maybe bringing the namesake of one of your all-time legendary players into the franchise might be good for the bottom line.  What if you suck, but not as bad as the Browns?  Well, then you'd have to take the #2 prospect, that Garrett Nussmeier fella from LSU.  It can't be bad to take an LSU starting QB when you're the New Orleans Saints, right?  The fans would love that.  What does Garrett Nussmeirer's father do for a living?  Oh, he's the offensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints.  Hmmmm.  I think the Saints are a disaster but no one working there will care.  The same Saints team that won 5 games last year is now going to lose their veteran QB and roll out with two proven ineffective QBs and a lowly regarded rookie to win 7?  How did this line even get out there?  Treat yourself.

New Orleans Saints Under 6.5 wins.             

A Stranger Remembers

 

The older woman sat next to me on the flight from Madrid.  She was very courteous and respectful of our confined community space.  On my flight to Portugal a week earlier I had sat between a large couple, "upgraded" to the middle seat in "Economy Plus Premium" from my preferred aisle seat in "Economy Plus".  They were both so big that I couldn't extend my arms away from my sides during the flight, trapping all my body heat inside my armpits and making turning the pages in my book an odd "wrists only" exercise.  It had been a long, long eight hours.

On this flight the woman quietly read her book and we maintained a shared non-imperialism of the arm rest, a good show of border respect.  About 45 minutes away from landing, after lengthy (and now expected) United Airlines delays, we spoke about our likely missed connections.  It was then I made a mistake and asked her if she was returning home, or visiting the States.  I then got a monotone response that was a run on sentence that triumphed over all run on sentences I've ever heard.  It reminded me of when this mentally ill woman that Leo had been dating would start talking and allow the contents of her mind to spill out onto the floor in front of you.

She spoke in a manner without any inflection which suggested enthusiasm or emotion of any kind.  "My parents had moved from the Plattsburg area at that point and my mother had begun to volunteer at St. Joseph's which had just added the senior center after Father McAuley had become pastor after Father Rollins had retired shortly after the parts plant had shut down which was about the same time my niece had become sick which they first thought was a virus but later turned out to be a cyst which they tried to remove surgically but required chemo afterwards about the same time her son David had all that trouble with his Uncle Michael who had quite a temper which had led to all the trouble from court that Spring."

I had no idea where any of this was going.  It seemed like she had just went into her mind and started flipping the pages of her personal history and dictated to me what she saw as she went.  During this pause I said, "Uh huh" to be polite, but that was unnecessary as she had momentum and wasn't really talking to me at the point.  She stared at the headrest in front of her and kept going.

"David had just come back from back East after all the trouble he had with Maria and had moved back in with my sister which was fine as he was able to help around the house especially after that Spring storm which had done all the damage which was when they added onto St. Joseph's after the fund raising drive where we had a series of potlucks every Thursday night which had me cooking late into the night on Wednesdays which had always been my book club night which got moved to Tuesday but only during that time before the Fall of that year which was unusually cold and wet like it had been in 1973 when my father had bought our house on second street next to the grocery store which had been sold to the Berras after they left their village when their father died."

The plane banked slowly left.  Pressure in my ear confirmed our drop in altitude.  She kept going on like that as the tiny specks of houses gradually grew larger and larger as we got lower and lower towards the runway.  "Prepare yourselves for landing" came over the loudspeaker.  She stopped talking and never changed expression.  Three bumps in the cabin and engine back blast announced out arrival.  The woman sat expressionlessly to my left staring straight ahead at nothing as we taxied to our gate.  

A Glass of Gran Reserva

 

The woman was curled up in the modern style furniture like a teenager, one leg folded underneath her on the chair.  Jet black hair at first obscured the fact that she was older than she first appeared.  Her legs were skinny.  Too skinny.  One platform soled designer athletic shoe pistoned up and down on the carpet with manic energy.  She looked at me from the corner of her eyes, pretending to be absorbed in the paperback book she was manhandling.  The spine of the book strained as she folded back the cover.  The waiter brought me a glass of Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva and artfully presented little dishes of olives and vegetable chips.  I asked if they had grown the olives on the property.  "No sir, but they are local.  Many of the area farmers grow olives in places where they do not grow grapes."  I had just come over from Portugal where the leading port producers had diversified into premium olive oils with luxury packaging and prices to match.  The woman paused until the waiter left and popped her head up.  "They have wonderful olives here.  They don't make the olive oil.  They don't."  

It is important to note that this was the vinotec of the Marques de Riscal luxury hotel.  I had walked onto the property and checked in at the gift shop to see if I could taste the wines.  The woman at the counter had told me that all tours were fully booked.  It would be impossible to have a look around.  I noticed a sign pointing to the hotel, a luxury hotel designed by Frank Gehry, a modernist architect with a flair for the dramatic.  I just wanted to see the building.  I walked out "authorized personnel only" door.  The woman at the counter yelled out at me.  "Sir!"  I waved and said, "It's OK.  I'm staying at the hotel."  

I wasn't.  

"Sir!"  I gave her a wave as the door shut behind me.  I could have been staying there.  There was a room available for $845.  I checked the rate online out of curiosity.  It should also be noted that I was wearing a cowboy shirt with a snake handler design, jeans and a pair of beaten up boots.  In theory I could have been one of those Cali tech bros, and I think that's the reason the woman at the desk decided not to pursue me as I walked onto the grounds.  I mean, if you're working there and you see some upper middle aged guy in a fucking cowboy shirt confidently walking though a security door like he owns the place, do you want to risk upsetting him if he actually is a guest?  Who needs that hassle?  I walked up the hill to see if there was a bar to try the wines.  As you see how things developed, there was, and I was treated quite nicely by the employees who assumed I belonged there.

So, I'm sitting there with my Gran Reserva, biting into an olive, and the woman was looking at me very intensely after giving me the lay of the land on the olive situation.  She had an untouched glass of white Rioja.  Her brows were furrowed by her nose, the crease lines suggesting a lifetime spent in mild disapproval.  I assessed the olives.  "Yes, these are quite nice."  She gave me a little snort.  I asked her, "Are you staying here at the hotel?".  I knew goddamn well she was staying there.  I also knew that just by me suggesting that she wasn't staying there would ruffle her.  She was American.  I didn't know from where exactly, but there was a solid LA vibe. "Yes... I am."  I said, "It seems very nice."  She looked down at the predominantly burnt red carpet as she pursed her lips.  "It's quite... red.  I mean, I understand the reasoning but...  It's quite red."  

She looked at me for a moment and then lowered her eyebrows again into a disapproving look.  It was just the two of us in the lounge.  It was completely silent.  I had specifically chosen one of the seats a comfortable distance from her so as to not freak her out.  There was so much energetic suspicion coming off of her, I didn't want any misunderstanding.  She was in the best seat by the huge windows overlooking the small village.  I took the small table two back as a buffer, but due to the arrangement of the chairs, we inhabited the same basic space.  She went back to manhandling her book pretending to read it.  She was about my age but had that SoCal dress code and dye job going that made her look like she was in her twenties at a passing glance.  Her foot nervously twitched again, clearly concerned I was going to ask her to go up to her room and perform depraved sex acts on her malnourished body.  I had engaged with her initial conversation after all.  I could see her chastising herself for putting down her armor.  Her foot kept bobbing.  I sat looking out at the village, slowly drinking my Rioja, eating olives.