sl.blog

The Irish getting their teeth kicked in two days after Thanksgiving in Los Angeles is becoming a bit of a holiday season tradition. At least in the even-numbered years. And in spite of the heartbreaking loss in South Bend in ‘05—where NBC showed Matt Leinart praying on the sideline and said very little about all the Trojan luck that went into winning 34-31 with a second to go—Notre Dame seemed toothless in their quest for revenge in 2006. 

I’ll resist the urge to Google the various outcomes because my imperfections are part and parcel of this charming blog. Just ask any of my six readers. But I suppose I could mark my life’s course by the annual Notre Dame – USC event. Just like an old-timer they used to trot out in the stands who had attended games going back to the beginning. But he’s probably dead now, so you’ll have to deal with me. 

I recall vague images of a touchdown-dancing Anthony Davis in an early 1970s affair. Notre Dame had a big first-half lead, but in the second Davis ran like the devil himself (as if cast out of Heaven by a cannon) and the Irish were crushed something like 55-24. And was it fact or fiction that Ara, that much-loved coach weary of being circled by the God damn Roman centurion on the horse after all the scores, queried about having him shot? And don’t think he was talking about the horse. Around the Bicentennial it seems like a controversial fumble took the ball from ND’s Joe Montana and gave the game to the Trojans. I may have been at one or two of the games in South Bend where the student body lefts and rights from the likes of Charles White and Marcus Allen wore blasphemous 100-yard paths beneath Touchdown Jesus. 

I can’t remember much of the 1980s. Like my friend Kevin says, “It was the ’80s and we were changing the world.” Sniffing glue in our parachute pants, glued to the television for a few moments with the “Solid Gold” dancers while our trousered teenage lust parachuted toward God and our chins, and stealing beer from suburban garages, we were changing the world all right. One self-service garage at a time. There was the suffrage associated with Gerry Faust, but perhaps the Trojans fell into NCAA hardship or penalty, so the rivalry may have petered out. 

With our speech-impeded savior in Lou Holtz, it seems like the Irish handled their western foe for a while. Lou still talks about Notre Dame going out to LA and playing well, but I guess he was referring to last century. It seems like he sent Ricky Watters home from LA, and the Irish still won big once. I remember a Thanksgiving sometime in the mid-1990s. My girlfriend and I flew to Florida to stay with a friend of hers who was dying young. He was also trying to spend all of his inheritance before the grave got him. I left one restaurant and drove one of his two convertible Mercedes back to his house so I could see the game. That may have been a 10-10 tie for Christ’s sake. That night I awoke with cotton mouth something awful. I snuck into the heavily decorated kitchen and was drinking eggnog right from its container. The dying man emerged from the garage and asked, “Thirsty?” I jumped out of my sunburned skin.

Fast forward to the 21^st century and my memory serves me better. Though the losses are consecutive and mounting, I remember watching them with my father and another old guy in a Florida bar (2002), witnessing the beating in person with my brother (2003), keeping one eye on it in a strip joint (2004), and watching on bended, praying knee at home last year. Tyrone Willingham, even after such hype for that return-to-glory business, may have proved that nice guys finish last. Or exactly 21 points behind the Trojans in three straight years. And what can you say but “Sorry, Charlie,” when USC hangs a familiar 40-something on the Weis man this year?

Maybe you say you get them next year, or in two years back in Hollyweird with some recruited speed. When the Irish went west this year, I sped east on a touchy clutch. I watched the game with some friends like family in Richmond, Virginia. We deep fried a turkey, heaped damage upon my liver, and laughed like weirdos for three nights straight. And for that I’m thankful. I could have done without the loss, but as I get older, it’s pretty much expected. I’ve said it before: each year I’m losing time, hair from my crown, and inches off my vertical jump.

And time don’t wait for no blowhard bloggers. So I’m out of the game for a while. It makes me feel too much like Helen Keller out in the woods with an axe. It’s hard to see the trees through the virtual forest, and I can’t hear a damn thing when I’m chopping them down. Truth is my God’s honest tomfoolery may not be suitable for online consumption. I’ve got about one month to compile these piles of blog onto a proper page. After that, I’m selling vacuum cleaners. Those suckers make some noise, and I need not expel anymore wind here. So long for now. Happy Christmas to all, and enjoy the good fight.                                                                                           

In less than a month’s time, Notre Dame laid waste to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and have tried to schedule the Marines for next year. That soft November, complete with a helping of Carolina Tar Heels thrown in for good measure, could prove to be like the feast of the fattening bird that will lose his neck come Thanksgiving. In short, I’m fearful of how these boys will withstand the Trojans of California.

I spent the Army game testing my own manhood. Not really. I inhaled beer (a doobie-free weekend) and sipped whiskey while my brother and a handful of his brothers-in-law hunted deer in Michigan. My only sights and sounds of the ND-Army game were a late first half scoring drive that would affectively put the game out of reach and beyond worry in my mind. So while the men squatted with rifles in pup tents and atop various tree stands, I stoked the fire, smoked cheap cigars, and sampled bear meat (it’s like summer sausage with bullets).

These hunters, these brothers mad for the blood of deer, have made a history of such journeys. Forty years ago, two brothers who begot sons and even more daughters who got husbands, turned their attention to thinning out herds in the north. I’d heard many tales of these campfire adventures, but this was the first of which I partook. An opportunity, thought I, for another fish-out-of-water perspective. But I was granted neither pistol nor shotgun. My lone contribution may have been keeping several of the sons awake with my monster-like snoring on Saturday morning. I’m just glad they didn’t sleep with firearms.

A buck and a doe hung bleeding in the barn with care by the time of our arrival. But no more were had thereafter. At least not by our party. My brother shot five or six times at one fleeing fawn, but he ain’t never got no deer. I was satiated by the fire, tickled by the camaraderie of friends and family, and not yet troubled by a Trojan horse running circles around a chubby leprechaun, realizing too late that he’s untested in battle.

* I figure my pompous Roman calendar reference could use a footnote. We all know (or should) Shakespeare’s warning about the Ides of March. The ides is the 15^th day of March, May, July, or October, but it’s the 13^th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar. Google it, bitches.