The other day, my girlfriend asked me as I was leaving the room: "Hey...what ever happened to that blog you were going to write? What's it called?"
After a moment of guilt-riddled realization (damnit...I had meant to get that started last week) I replied: "Oh. Shit. You know...I never finished any of the entries. I guess I just ran out of time."
This is about as close to a categorical lie as you come without saying something inane like: "If the president does it, it can't be illegal.", or some other Nixon-rooted half-witted musing. No...it certainly wasn't that I hadn't had the time. Instead, it probably had a great deal to do with good ol' preoccupation and a healthy dose of proscrastination, which are still, after all these years, my favourite intoxicants.
But I'm behind all that now, and with any luck, I'll consult the bits of paper, napkins and scattered .pages documents, gather the observations together, and give this project the proverbial 'honest college try'. I'll attempt coherence, but given that I tend to look at the world through my own sometimes goofy, often skewed prism, there's a good chance that whatever I end up cranking out with just be hardcore gibberish. Then again, I didn't start this thing with any aspirations of being honoured for literary achievement, or revolutionary activism. It's an outlet. And it's my outlet. So if you disagree with the statements made here, you're welcome to leave comments, which can be as abusive as you care to be at the time. I won't delete any of them, and I'll use them as a kind of spiritual kindling on those cold Mexico City nights everybody around here keeps telling me are 'just around the corner".
The title of the Blog, and its underlying meaning will be more or less self evident to anyone with even an inkling of an interest in American football. It's fourth down, and you have inches to go to get to a new set of downs...the coveted 'first' that is so statistically important. You can roll the dice and 'go for it', handing the ball off to your bull-headed running back to grind through the line, attempt a short check-down pass, heave a hail-mary to the end zone in a poor-percentage last ditch effort, or you can check your balls at the door, throw in your cards and send out your punter. One decision requires a mixture of grit, dumb luck and blind faith...the other, nothing more than caution and a willingness to live for another play.
Anyone, however, who has ever watched the NFL for more than a handful of games will be able to tell you that both decisions can lead to horrific consequences in the blink of an eye, just as they can both convey upon head coach a god-like status if the call of the day works in his favour. Win, and you will drink chilled champagne from the perky nipples of nubile, creamy, tanned virgins. Lose, and angry, drunken mobs will chase your fear-crazed wife across the parking lot, to the traffic-snarled entry ramps and onto the highway, where they'll spend the next fifty miles screaming obscenities, hurling empty beer bottles, and occasionally breaking into honky-tonk song, all the while dutifully running her down going no more than 20 mph, until she hurls herself into the path of an oncoming vehicle in an ill-fated attempt at relief, or the concrete rubs her legs down to the stumps...whichever comes first.
These are ugly images, to be sure, and anytime I see the Saints facing 'fourth and inches' I can't help but wonder what must be going through Sean Payton's mind, but I think, over the course of the past little while, that I've managed to get a pretty good idea. It's a good deal of fun, after all, to stare a gang of faithless hacks in the face, take the catcalls and prophecies of doom in stride, and then walk away from the whole thing with a skip and a chuckle, having busted the line. It gives you a whole new perspective on risk-management, which is, generally, to just go ahead and spit at it. Warm up your hands and hurl it down the sideline for a 30 yard gain, then give a hard look at the opposing sideline, and beam a toothy grin at their cheerleaders.
I won't always win, which is why whatever this little endeavour of mine ends up being, it will have to contain what is likely to be a great deal of griping and conjecture. Musings...pontification...mental masturbation. You can't really have honest contribution without a whole range of emotions. It's what lends credence to the whole affair, and it's what ends up sketching the human element of any creation.
In the end, this is about the fun I'll have, the world that will confuse me, the issues that will set me off, and the short-yardage situations I'll face. I pray that I have the balls to 'go for it' more often than not, and my hope is that, should I flub it, lose yardage, and fall defeated, that the mobs forgot to gas up that morning.
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