Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 9/18/23
High School Football Ate my Baby Edition
The first False Fall of the year has arrived, driving temperatures down into the seventies and eighties, and giving every living soul in Texas this faint glimmer of hope before the blast doors to the Infernal Regions slam open once more and the temperature climbs up to and hovers around 99 degrees until December 24th, when it will drop down to 95. It’s a Christmas miracle, y’all.
The whole Administration staff and most of Bunker Ops took advantage of the weather, and did some leisurely outdoor activities, such as going outside, walking the Bunker Mascot for more than two minutes, and taking deep breaths of oxygen without ample filtration. We feel so decadent, like Parisian aristocrats.
That lounging around, looking like expatriates on the Champs Élysées, extends to the theater, as this is the time of year when Texas stops doing everything in order to observe the most holy of sacred seasons, football, most especially high school and college football, where the sport is more pure of heart and hasn’t been corrupted by filthy lucre.
As noble as such sentiments are, it plays merry hell with my income. If you blessed with some form of ankle-biter, or if you’re child-adjacent, there’s just too much going on from September to Thanksgiving. Or so they say. I’ve had movies, like the It remake, and The Help, that brought in droves of people during football season. Oh, True Grit packed the house. I feel like Killers of the Flower Moon will do that for us, considering the events of the film actually happened in this geographical area.
I’ve stopped fighting it, to be honest. I’ve heard every single reason why someone can’t come to the movies over the years. My favorite one, still, to this day, is “Thursday? Oh, no! We can’t make it! That’s when Gray’s Anatomy is on!” That comment was said out loud to my wife around 2009 or 2010, when VHS recorders were still a thing (in Vernon, anyway) and DVR technology was widely available with every cable provider and satellite provider. I can only assume that this person was married to Patrick Dempsey and they watched the show together, in real time, so he could receive her notes on his performance.
The only thing that still gets under my skin is when, after it’s become abundantly clear that “the boys” are not going to go “all the way to state,” and in fact their season still has two games to go and no hope of catching up, someone comes strolling in the week before Thanksgiving and says to me, “How’s business?”
I’ve been eating beans and rice for six weeks; how do you think business is?
“Well,” they’ll say, “everyone’s watching football, so...”
Everyone. 11,000 people in Vernon, and they are all watching high school football? Are they stacked up five to a seat, like cordwood? Are they watching it on the Jumbo-Tron in the parking lot?
No, it’s just this: men can’t multi-task. And in the Fall, men all over Texas drop what they are doing and focus solely on attempting to impose their will on their favorite team, the coach that makes stupid plays whenever it’s fourth and one, the opposing team’s kicker, and anything else they can influence, in a complicated ritual of hedonistic, elemental magick.
It’s a mystery cult, the old school kind, only instead of being run by women, they are led by some guy name Bob in flip-flops, a clown wig, and a “lucky shirt” that they’ve had for nigh onto thirty years. It fits him like a sausage casing now, but that’s beside the point.
He leads the cabal of adepts, teaching them all of their hermetic mysteries. They paint themselves up, as if for battle, dance around in an orgy of cheese and foam fingers, eat and drink a suitcase worth of the golden elixir, designed to alter their consciousness and their liver. They chant and sing and call in to the Jim Rome show to call the last person who asked a question or voiced an opinion a total idiot, thus renaming them and taking away their power.
It's grim sorcery, and I’ll have none of it. My interest in pro football gave up the ghost in the late nineties. College ball lasted a bit longer, but by 2008, I was done. I can’t do it anymore. My interest in the game was merely to acquaint myself with the arcane patois that the council of warlocks would use when they convened at the coffee shop on Monday. The last college team I rooted earnestly for was the UT Longhorns. Upon moving to North Texas, I discovered a lot of people here are OU fans. Oklahoma. UT’s hated rival. Texans rooting for OU. Mostly because they hate UT, and so anyone playing UT, even Oklahoma, is followed and encouraged. The relationships between the various cabals of wizards in Texas are positively Byzantine. Wizard Schools…Hey…wait a sec…
The Season of the Witch tends to wind down locally just before Thanksgiving, but the collegiate conjurers stay at it until New Year’s Day. I’m not sure which witches are still mooshing mana around to make the National teams do anything. Money has long since taken the place of passion, alacrity, ethics, scruples, and sportsmanship at that level. They are borrowing on unearned glories of the past. Oh, snap! They’re the necromancers in this analogy! It makes sense, as money has no heart, no blood, and no soul. Using it to fuel any endeavor of passion is bound to stove your soul up, so to speak.
But hey, if you love it, um...then, How ‘Bout Them Cowboys?
Review News and More
The Boys in the Division of Media Review would like to remind you once again that the reason for their absence is the driving need to get ahead and stay ahead of the aggressive October posting schedule they’ve set for themselves. I’m not allowed to say just what they have planned, but I took a look at their set-up down there the other day, and I gotta say, it’s very impressive. They have a television going non-stop, watching and reviewing and cross-checking the various entries in previously-written Top 5 Horror Movie Lists, and are furiously making and updating things on what can only be called a media murder board, with string and movie posters and notes and...I’ve probably said too much.
I think it’ll be worth the wait. Oh, and they have asked, yet again, for stickers. We’re finally in the process of a sticker order, so Top 5 List logo stickers are coming, just in time for your Trapper Keepers and MacBook Sleeves on campus.
Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
My Halloween Fez showed up. I’ve got a fez guy. He does good work. This fetching chapeau is coming Straight Outta Carcosa (oh, that’s a sticker!) and all but guarantees there will be a rewatch of the first season of True Detective in the house before long.
Great fez! Just don’t start singing “Cassilda’s Song” or intoning gravely “I wear no mask.”
So, I think I mentioned it before, but my youngest just started high school, and decided that would be a great time to start playing football... And let me tell you, I AM A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.
I don't know any of these kids, don't know their parents, and don't speak the language- which is wild 'cause this isn't that big of town.
(Big sigh)
One a brighter note, the fez rules. We could use more of those in 2023.