The Scherschligt Dump

My latest DVD purchase was Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I’d originally seen with my kids on a snowy night during last season’s Super Bowl. (Note: I refused to watch the last Super Bowl, for reasons that are fairly evident if you (1) know anything about my complex relationship with the Minnesota Vikings and (2) remember the dark events that occurred in New Orleans on Jan 24, 2010.  So we went to this movie instead. Best choice I could have made.)

“I see two terrific lawyers, a skilled pediatrician, a wonderful chef, a savvy real estate agent, an excellent tailor, a crack accountant, a gifted musician, a pretty good minnow fisherman, and possibly the best landscape painter working on the scene today. I also see a room full of wild animals. Wild animals with true natures and pure talents. Wild animals with scientific-sounding Latin names that mean something about our DNA.” – Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion animation film from Wes Anderson that’s based on Roald Dahl’s novella of the same name (though expanded considerably).  It’s one of the most delightful films I’ve seen in years.  I mean that literally: this thing is full of delights.  You know how some corners of popular culture insist (even though it’s so lazy to do so) that intelligence must manifest itself creatively as world-weariness, as sneering cynicism? The next time someone suggests that intelligence and wit can’t live alongside sincerity, remember Fantastic Mr. Fox. This film is so very wise, and so very forthcoming.  Even its irony is presented honestly.

It’s the story of a Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney, who is perfect for the role.  (Picture Clooney as the urbane burglar Danny Ocean in the Ocean’s Eleven movies. Now picture that same character as a fox puppet. That’s basically the character).  At his wife’s insistence, Mr. Fox has given up a traditional but dangerous vulpine livelihood (stealing poultry from farms) to settle down in a safe job (a newspaper writer, which might be ironic – there are few jobs less “safe” than print journalism these days) and raise a family with his vixen (voiced by Meryl Streep.)  But Mr. Fox finds this bourgeois life stifling, so he decides to undertake — unbeknownst to Mrs. Fox — a final, elaborate, series of heists against the local farms.  This indulgence escalates into a turf war between the utterly nasty human farmers and the local wildlife, who literally go underground to escape the wrath of the humans.  But more interesting are the personal (can I used that word when I’m talking about animated critters?) relationships that are set against this conflict: the affections but frustrations between Mr. and Mrs. Fox, the rivalry between the Foxes’ son Ash and his golden boy cousin Kristofferson, the superhero and sidekick relationship between Mr. Fox and a dimwitted opossum (“I have completely different teeth than you! I’m an opossum!”).

These characters are rich and complex, none moreso than Mr. Fox. He is appealing and charismatic, but also deeply flawed: he’s a poor father, selfish and immature, and he’s something of a cad.  But then again, he’s a fox.  That’s what he does.  This is one of the film’s great themes: the noble, though possibly unwinnable, battle to become greater than how your nature defines you.  Mr. Fox may be a sharp dresser, but the fox in him needs to kill chickens.  How can he reconcile this?

The story is sprinkled with are clever running jokes and set pieces.  There’s a wonderfully unnecessary riff on the absurd sport of “whack bat,” a hilarious, continuous joke of swearing by using the word “cuss” (“what the cuss are you doing?” “are you cussing with me?”), and a great, late interaction between the woodland animals and a lone wolf.  This scene alone is loaded with more irony and beauty and complexity than a hundred episodes of Disney channel programming. Magnificent animals trying to escape from humans by driving down a country road spy a magnificent animal, and then act exactly like humans who have spied a magnificent animal while driving down a country road: how perfect.

I also much mention the soundtrack. When I heard the opening chords to The Rolling Stones’ “street-fighting man” as the war between the farmers and the animals escalated, I found myself consciously saying: there is no better musical choice to accompany this moment.  Once more: how perfect.

For me, though, the greatest theme of the movie is the power of invention. Like the best animated films, it continually reminds you that it is the product of the considerable talent and painstaking labor of its creators, while simultaneously removing you from the artifice and letting you enjoy the story.  This is unabashedly and completely a piece of art.  Every gesture, every prop, every stitch of scenery is carefully controlled, created.  The film starts with a poem, and I think that’s a great clue to the film.  Because, as in a poem, in Fantastic Mr. Fox there are no accidents.  There is nothing – not a frame –that is not the execution of a careful, artistic choice.   This means the film is self-conscious and artificial, but it is still honest and true. That’s a hard combination to pull off, but Wes Anderson and his team pull it off triumphantly. You can call Fantastic Mr. Fox a children’s movie or an adult movie, you can quibble about how much of it is an adaptation or an original, but I think you have no choice but to call it a remarkable piece of art.

One of history's great physicists: Randy Moss. Click for a gallery on the official VIkings site.

News that Randy Moss was on a longship headed back to Viking territory rang out across the northland like a gjallarhorn this week.  Moss has (possibly correctly) been described as petulant, cancerous, even abusive.  He has also (definitely correctly) been described as totally awesome at catching footballs, and one of the greatest Vikings ever.  Since his role in my world is almost entirely about the latter, my reaction, like most fans of the purple, was joy. My brother declared Wednesday one of the five greatest days of his life.  My wife immediately changed her facebook profile photo to a picture of afro’d Moss taken during his last victory as a Viking, the playoff moon game against the Packers.  (Her great quote, when reminded of Moss’s purported moral failings: he’s my wide receiver, not my pastor.)

I should admit: I had recently declared that I was beginning a lengthy rebuilding period of my Viking fandom. See, I overpaid for a ticket to their home opener against the Dolphins, and I spent those three hours in the upper deck of the Metrodome feeling miserable about the team. I left that game, a pathetic loss, determined to reset my priorities.   The next week, when they played (and beat) the Lions, I protested by staying away from the TV.  I mowed the lawn. I got my hair cut. I played with my kids. I enjoyed my little protest.

Then this week’s news broke. #84–hero of the ’98 glory-to-heartbreak season; the most thrilling Viking of all time– is back in Minnesota, where he belongs, and I’m declaring my fandom’s rebuilding period over prematurely. Moss is back; so is Jason.

During those seven years when Moss was here originally, he treated us to some of the most spectacular moments Minnesota sports fans have ever witnessed. He is one of very few athletes who adjusts the geometry of a playing field, whose talents are described by theoretical, not practical, physics, like he’s a quark, or Schrodinger’s cat.  Throw a ball in Moss’s direction, and straight lines are bent, rigid shapes flex, time slows down.  I recall a play against New Orleans late in Moss’s first stint here where Dante threw a deep ball that was clearly (1) way past his intended receiver, and (2) out the back of the end zone anyway.  But while that ball sailed harmlessly out of the playing area here in this universe, down on the field a different physics was at work.  Time both slowed and accelerated as #84 flattened himself across an event horizon, extended his long arms out and up while rapidly tapping his feet down and back at the same time as he propelled them up and forward. I tell you, a particle accelerator, the Hubble telescope, and some grad students with lab coats and unkempt beards could demonstrate that the back right corner of the end zone actually expanded in all dimensions –  laterally, vertically, temporally — for both an instant and an eternity, and then collapsed back to this reality when the ref raised his hands. Touchdown. Huh? Moss caught that? Show me that again. Wow. So that’s how the universe began.

If Moss were a Shakespearean character. Source: http://www.zonkey.org/htmlwk8_midsummerfinal5.html

I know that Moss has been vilified for his petulant behavior.  I’ve always thought this was overblown.  My basic framework for following professional sports is to regard them as an ongoing compelling narrative, the way some people regard the Harry Potter books or Lost.  The coaches and athletes are the characters in these narratives.  In the narrative of pro football, Moss’s antics are not the work of a villain, like Shakespeare’s Iago. They are the work of a low character, like Shakespeare’s Bottom.  Mooning the crowd.  Bumping a traffic cop.  Squirting a ref.  Walking off the stage while the scene is still playing.  These are things circus clowns do, not archenemies.  But this circus clown also makes circus catches.

I don’t say this to justify him, but to say that Randy Moss is probably more complex than we realize, and perhaps less to blame for his teams’ failures than we make him out to be.  Moss walking off the field late in a game against Washington is widely regarded like it’s tantamount to murder, but no one ever points out the fact that Mike Tice managed the clock in that game like it was a sundial made from a stick and he was Survivorman: imprecisely.

And Moss’s infamous “I play when I want to play” quote demands some context and some reflection, doesn’t it?  Has anyone heard this quote, first hand?  I’ve only seen it in print or heard it repeated by pundits.  What was Moss’s tone?  What was the nature of the question he was answering?  How do we know exactly what he meant? The media always gives it a defiant, belligerent reading, as if it says “I am uncoachable; I don’t care about my team; no one can tell me what to do.”  But couldn’t a skilled actor read that line as Moss’s reflective description of his internal will?  Try this translation instead: “I play when I want to play” equals “my motivation to play comes from deep within me.”  What’s wrong with that?  Heck, read differently, “I play when I want to play” becomes a thoughtful riff on Ecclesiastes or the Byrds. There is a season for everything: a time to sow, a time to reap, a time for playing football.

I’m not naïve about professional athletes; he may very well be a jerk.  And I’m not saying that reacquiring Moss is without risk.  I actually fully expect this to end badly – after all, for the Vikes, it always does. But Randall Gene Moss (the man) playing the complicated and rich part of Randy Moss, 84, Superfreak, the Viking wide receiver, is like Brando playing Stanley Kowalski or Olivier playing Hamlet: the perfect man for a perfect role. I can’t wait to watch it again.

Note 1: This is the pork chili that won last weekend’s 2010 Magnolia Lane neighborhood chili cookoff. One of the requirements was that the winning cook share his or her recipe. Hence this post.

Note 2: I’m not even calling this a recipe, which is a document tells you what you should do to prepare a certain dish. Think of it more like technical documentation that explains what I did in the event that it needs to be reproduced.  My neighbors and I thought this was good prepared this way, but you could modify it in any of a thousand ways. I mean, this is chili. It’s about creativity, not exactitude.

Note 3: I made this dish with ingredients I happened to have on hand. If pork loin hadn’t been on sale at the grocery store earlier in the week, I would have made a different dish altogether.  Again I say: making chili is an act of creativity.

What you need

• Bacon (6-8 strips)
• A hunk of pork. I used probably one-and-a-half to two pounds of pork loin, but you could use some pork shoulder or something, too.  Cut it into nice chunky chunks.  Chubby one-inch cubes are nice.
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 jalepeno pepper, finely chopped.  (Wash your hands thoroughly after chopping hot peppers. And don’t rub your eyes. Really. I know this from experience.)
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 small can of diced green chiles (I actually didn’t use these in the winning recipe,  but I would have if I had them, so I’ll pretend I did.)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes.  I like diced tomatoes way better than stewed tomatoes (though my mom uses stewed tomatoes in chili, and her chili is tasty.)  When we were kids, my brother and I called the stewed tomatoes in my mom’s chili “chickens.”  I have no idea why.
• Some sort of chipotle spice (I used Penzey’s chipotle spice)
• Your favorite chili powder (I used Penzey’s chili powder)
• Cumin (I don’t know what brand I used)
• 6-8 cups of good chicken broth. (This was the thing I skimped on at the cook-off.  I didn’t have any broth on hand, so I just made some up with some cheap Swanson’s bullion, which I thought was way too salty, actually.  The chili would have been better with better broth.)
• 2-3 cans of red beans, rinsed and drained. I think you should always rinse beans thoroughly in a colander before cooking with them. It’s fun to watch the gas bubbles appear as you do this. Sometimes it almost looks like a lather of soap. If you don’t rinse the beans well, these gasses all go in your belly. Cooks who don’t rinse beans are actually kind of mean.
• A splash of lime juice
• A pinch of sugar (I have big hands, and therefore big pinches)
• A cup of coffee (Yes, I dumped the last of the morning’s coffee in the chili pot.)
• Some vinegar
• A dollop of molasses
• Some chopped cilantro

What you do

(Or, rather, what I did.  You can do what you want.  Have I mentioned that making chili is an act of creativity?)

1. Start with bacon.  This is rarely a bad way to start any dish, except maybe fruit smoothies. Everyone (OK, other than vegetarians or adherents to several major world religions) enjoys bacon. You know those people who say they don’t like bacon? Well, they actually do like bacon. I fried up about 6-8 strips of thick bacon in the bottom of a big heavy pot.  My favorite bacon is “No Name” brand bacon.  When you fry bacon, I think it’s best to keep the heat pretty low and don’t get it totally crunchy.  I prefer thick meaty bacon with a little “chew” to it to really crispy, dry baco-bit-style bacon. By the way, a lot of people like cooking soups and stews and such in crockpots, but I don’t.  I like using a heavy pot over heat that I can control. This way I can sear meat over high heat, then cook veggies in the fats from the meat, then lower the temperature to simmer everything together.  I have a Calphalon soup pot that is pretty much awesome.
2. Once the bacon is done, take it out of the pot and put it aside.  After it cools a little, you’ll chop it into little quarter inch chunks.
3. Drain some but not all of the bacon fat out of the pot.  Hang on to that drained bacon grease, in case you need it for any reason, like additional fat for the recipe or bear bait or hair gel.
4. Fry  up the pork hunks in the bacon fat.  This takes patience.  Do not throw all of them in the pot at once.  Do not overstir them.  Do not be afraid to let them cook.  Just put a handful in the bottom of the pot, nicely spaced out, and let them cook over medium-high heat in the bacon grease so that they get a nice sear on them.  Treat them like children: care for them – deeply – but don’t be overprotective. Only after they’ve browned on one side should you disturb them by lifting them gently with some tongs and flipping them to another side, like you’d flip over your pillow in the middle of a hot night.  Then let them cook on that other side.  Repeat until you’ve got nicely seared pork hunks.  Then take them out, put them on a plate, and repeat with the next batch.  You might have to do this in 3-4 separate batches.  Also, keep the plate out of reach of the dog, who by this time will be wandering around looking for anything to drop.
5. Once the pork hunks are cooked and set aside, put the chopped onion, garlic, and jalapeno in the pot.  Cook them over med-low heat in the yummy bacon and pork grease that has now accumulated on the bottom of your pot.  Add more grease or maybe butter or oil if you need to.  As this stuff softens, add the chili powder, chipotle spice, and cumin.  How much?  Up to you, man. As much as you like.
6. Throw in a splash of wine.  If no one is looking, take a swig straight from the bottle. Throw in another splash.  Splash in some lime juice (maybe 2-3 tablespoons.)  Let this all soften.
7. After about a minute, add the red bell pepper chunks.  I really like sweet red bell peppers in chili.  I didn’t discover this until a few years ago.  Stir them up a bit, let them cook a little for another minute or so, but don’t let the peppers get too soft. Mushy bell peppers make me gag, but crisp bell peppers are awesome. Maybe turn up the heat and fry the peppers a little in the oily grease directly on the bottom of the pot for 30 seconds or so, just to bring out their flavor.
8. Dump in the can of diced tomatoes. Turn the heat down again to medium low.
9. Add the pork chunks, which you’ve already seared.  Add the bacon, which you’ve already cooked and chopped.  Give it all a good stir and a shimmy.
10. Check out what’s going on with your nose and your eyes and your taste buds. If the characters in your pot don’t seem to be getting along well, maybe sprinkle in a little more chili powder and chipotle spice as a conversation starter.  But if everyone in the pot is getting to know each other and the party is humming along nicely, then don’t be the crude host who decides to launch a game of charades even though the party is doing really well without it.  Just let it cook.
11. Add some finely chopped cilantro.  Let this all cook on low for 10 minutes or so.
12. About now is time to add some liquid and let it simmer.  So put in most of the chicken broth.  Turn the heat down to a simmer. Give everything one more nice gentle stir and a goodbye kiss.
13. Now just walk away.
14. Yes, I said walk away. Don’t even look back.
15. Seriously, go do something else for a while.  Walk the dog.  Read a book.  Play with your kids.  This is kind of embarrassing, but I actually started to teach myself Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” on the guitar while this chili cooked. You think I’m kidding? I’m not. I’m a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride.
16. I can’t believe I just admitted that Bon Jovi thing.  But the song had been in my head all day.
17. OK, after about 45 minutes, put down the guitar and go back and check on the chili.  Taste it.  Think about what it needs.  Does it need more substance?  Then add something “dark.”  It was about this time that I poured in the last of the morning’s coffee, which was still in the pot on the counter.  I really think this helped.  Does it need more brightness?  Add some more lime juice.
18. Oh, if you haven’t yet stirred in a pinch of sugar, do so. Recipes with tomatoes (tomato soups, chilis, tomato sauces) always need sugar, IMO.  Seriously: taste the recipe just before adding the sugar, and then again after adding the sugar.  I think you can almost immediately taste the improvement.  It doesn’t make it sweet, but it gives it what I would call a more “complete,” balanced flavor. I even added a little molasses.  I don’t know why this is, but I have found that using sugars in recipes like this keeps everything working together better.  I’m no chemist, though, and this may be a load of hoohaw.
19. Also add a splash of vinegar, to cut any sweetness from the sugar.
20. Let it simmer a while more.  Go out and mow the lawn.  Throw a football to your kid.  Wave at the neighbors, who don’t realize how much they are about to enjoy your tasty chili at the upcoming cook-off.
21. Wander through the kitchen and make sure it’s all simmering nicely.  Add some more broth to keep your brew nice and liquid.
22. Find the “Wanted Dead or Alive” video on YouTube. Chuckle at it. Man, the 80s were awesome.
23. After another hour or so, add the beans.  Notice that I add the beans later in the process.  I like the beans to stay a little chewier, so I don’t cook them too early.  I just want them to heat and soak up flavor, not get mushy. Add any remaining broth.
24. Stir in a big handful of coarsely chopped cilantro.  This gives it flavor and color.
25. Wait: have I even mentioned Tabasco sauce?  No?  I love that stuff.  Throw in a few drops at various points along the way.
26. Transfer it to a crockpot for keeping it warm at the chili cookoff.
27. Serve in bowls.  Eat with spoons.  Enjoy with others.

The sports world is abuzz about the blown call at first base that denied a perfect game by Detroit pitcher Armando Gallaraga the other night.

It’s a fascinating little situation – a microcosm of human failure (ironically, within the context of something we call perfection), an exercise in forgiveness, and a couple fine examples of human dignity in the face of our predilection for failure.

One angle that I find surprising: the wide cry for making the situation “right” by “awarding” Galarraga a perfect game or by “officially” saying that the runner was out.  Mike Greenberg on ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning was arguing for this pretty vehemently. Keith Olberman suggested the commissioner should step in immediately and “give” Galaragga a perfect game.  Let’s reverse the call!  The commissioner should declare that the runner was out!  Let’s give the guy a perfect game!  He was robbed!  We have “negated his place in baseball history”!

But here’s what I wonder: while the call was wrong, how would retroactively changing the call or “awarding” the guy a perfect game now do anything to change what happened?  Because here’s the thing: the stuff that happened has already happened. Umpire Jim Joyce already made a mistake; calling the runner out now won’t change the fact that he did.  He’s owned up to it, he’s made amends with Galarraga, and he should be forgiven.  Great!

And Galaraga already pitched well enough and his defense played well enough that if the umpire had made a proper call, he would have record a perfect game.  That’s been pretty clearly established.  Changing the official record won’t make it more or less true.

So what is it that we want changed?  Do we just want to say that the guy threw a perfect game?  Fine: every one of us can go ahead and say it.  We all know what happened.  Calling it an “official” perfect game will do absolutely nothing to change what happened or how we remember what happened.

As for memories, as for a place in history: I’d say this game is now actually more memorable, more historically significant than most other “ordinary” perfect games, because of these circumstances. It’s like the Harvey Haddix game: a game that baseball history will remember well, no matter what we call it.  Because at this point, anything MLB would do is mere clerical work, which will neither affect what actually happened, nor affect the future of anyone involved.

No, I think we should stop worrying about trying to somehow make it a perfect game, retroactively.  Instead, let’s worry about telling the story properly.  When we describe the history of perfect games in baseball, there’s no reason we can’t say “And on June 2, 2010, less than a month after Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay pitched perfect games of their own, Armando Galarraga pitched a game in which the only runner who reached base did so with 2 outs in the ninth inning on a blown call by the first base umpire.  Galarraga promptly retired the following batter– in effect pitching a 28-out perfect game.”

Isn’t that reasonable?  Isn’t that easy?    Didn’t I in fact just do that, in two quick sentences?

Rationally, I know a professional football game doesn’t actually matter. Rationally, I know that my wonderful wife, my happy kids, my satisfying career, and the abundance of love and opportunity that fill my days mean I don’t know real misery from a Mr. Misty.  The long list of sorrows in this world features Haitian babies left parentless, not the results of professional football games. Yeah, rationally, I get this. And so I spend 95% of my life gliding along in thankfulness, optimism, and patience. I’m a blessed guy, I know it, and (usually) I act like it.

But rationality is the last thing on my mind on Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter, when the Minnesota Vikings take the field.  Those hours are the full-moon, funhouse 5% of my time, when my brain careens toward the irrational, when I turn impatient and childish, and when my priorities reset themselves in ways even I don’t expect.  The swings of emotion I feel during these games are uncomfortably broad, like I’m a toddler or a dog.  A great play shoots me to the ceiling; a turnover crumbles me in my chair.  The Vikes beating Dallas last week mattered to me, in a way it rationally shouldn’t.  And the Vikes losing to New Orleans on Sunday mattered to me, in a way it rationally shouldn’t.

The first Vikings game I remember watching was the Super Bowl against the Raiders in January of 1977.  I was 6 years old.  They lost; I cried.  With that loss, I was initiated into a tradition of trying but not quite succeeding, of striving but not quite reaching. Of failure. I’ve cared about so many players since then. Some are superstars; some aren’t. None have celebrated a championship for the Vikings.  I remember getting an autograph from Rickey Young at a mall in the late 1970s: he briefly became my favorite player.  I have cheered for Matt Blair and Matt Birk. For both McDaniels, Ed and Randall. For Leo and Greg Lewis, for Anthony and Cris (and even Tyrone) Carter, and for speedy receivers like Terry LeCount, Hassan Jones, Qadry Ismail, and Matthew Hatchette (though never for Troy Williamson).  I’ve watched Scott Studwell beget Jack Del Rio beget Ed McDaniel beget EJ Henderson.  Other favorites: Tommy Kramer. Sammy White. Chris Doleman. John Randle. Randy Moss. Gulp: Korey Stringer. These people have mattered to me, even though they are people to whom I do not matter.

In recent years, since suffering the deep puncture wound of the 1998 season and the 41-donut game of the 2000 season, I have taken to saying, proudly, “the Vikings have run out of ways to break my heart.”  I thought maturity had inoculated me against their pointless pain; I thought I had outfoxed them by outgrowing them.  I’ve still watched every game and followed every offseason move, of course, but for the last several years I had let the burdens and pleasures of my mature life put some distance between the Vikings and my heart.

And so it proceeded until this season, when the Vikes enacted a genius ploy: they convinced an archenemy, Brett Favre, to become their hero.  Brilliant!  Subversive!  Favre had been to two superbowls and won one as our rival.  He was a player Minnesotans all privately admired and publicly loathed.  And now we would make him ours?  What a phenomenal idea!  He was untainted by our losses, was beyond our purple stink, had years of experience being the unViking.  Again: How brilliant!  Favre, a gunslinger from titletown, might have the silver bullet which could break our curse.  And when Favre led our purple to victory over his old Packers twice, I found myself again wearing my lucky, dirty Vikes hat, and I consciously plunged in for the rest of this season: if this was the year they finally slew the beast, I wanted to be fully a part of it.

Then came Sunday’s championship game against the Saints, four hours of bayou madness. This game unfolded as a tempting smile, followed by a ruthless punch to the gut, followed by a traitor’s kiss, ending with a knockout club to the brain and a 40-yard stake through the heart. I don’t know if it was worse than the Atlanta game 11 years ago, but it was definitely less rational.   It felt like chaos, in the old, Greek sense of an ancient time and place devoid of order.  Nothing made sense. Moving the ball down the field resulted in turnovers rather than touchdowns.  Recovering a muffed punt near the goal line preceded heartbreak, not glory.  The pretty stat line of our superman (Peterson had three touchdowns and 120 yards: isn’t that exactly what we wanted?) only made his fumbles seem a more potent kryptonite. And the final drive towards the game winning field goal was negated by the dumbest penalty imaginable followed by the hero’s dumbest throw imaginable.  As for the overtime: screw effort and talent; we’ll let a coin toss, some uncertain video replays, and the leg of a slacker kicker decide our fate.  If that all sounds senseless, it’s because it all was senseless.

The kids just before Sunday's heartbreak.

I watched the game at my sister’s house, with 13 other members of my family, while keeping in touch with other friends and family via phone, text message, twitter, and facebook.  Any outsider would laugh at the way our purple-clad band really tried to participate in the outcome, through a combination of celebration, a delicious nacho bar, social networking, and voodoo.  My brother coordinated the seating positions of his nieces to ensure the best luck. My 13-year old daughter entwined her own blond hair with the yellow yarn of her Helga horns.  Another daughter turned her jersey turned inside out in rally jersey mode.  At one point I got this text message from my brother in Chicago: “I’m about to pass out; my vision is starting to get blurry.”  The Scherschligts are a family of faith and reason, Lutherans to the core, with enough diplomas to wallpaper the Superdome, and yet we turned to witchcraft and hexes in order to influence the outcome of a game taking place 1200 miles down the river.  None of this magic worked; of course it didn’t.

This championship game dealt a blow to the funhouse brain, proving what the rational brain knows at any time but on Sunday afternoons: that none of this actually matters, and the pleasure and the pain of professional sports are ephemeral.  Purple is not only the color of royalty and the Vikings, it’s the color of a bruise, spreading and diseased, like the one I imagine is now covering Favre’s ankle. (Seriously: how was that high-low hit on him legal?  Isn’t diving at the QB’s lower legs exactly what the new Tom Brady rule was supposed to outlaw?)  It’s tempting to talk about a curse, but that’s the opposite of the truth.  There isn’t a curse.  Rally jerseys don’t work.  Wearing the same socks from one week to another does nothing but entertain the kids.  Tails and heads are random outcomes.  Heck, I wish there were a curse — curses can be broken by the right counter-spell.  This has no counter-spell.  This was just another small failure in a large universe that doesn’t care about football.

My own son – who loves the Vikings — is almost 6, about the same age I was when the Vikes last appeared in a Super Bowl, that first game I can remember watching. He watched this week’s game while wearing his Adrian Peterson t-shirt and playing with his cousins.  He was sad that they lost, but certainly not crushed.

I hope that means this won’t become the first game he remembers.  I hope he forgets this one.

I wish I could.