12) Saturday, January 25th – “Forty One to Six!”
As a few of the
media gave sympathetic chuckles and many, many more clamored for attention,
Mark Tenison turned away from the display of the
huge, cardboard Romanian Dominators arrayed at the center of a circle of
lesser… but expensive… screens stacked up before a wall of televisions reaching
nearly to the ceiling of the gigantic store, snapping at his gawking employees…
“See! See!
Achievement… that’s what
counts!” declared the Manager, pointing at his display. “The Commissioner says so…”
“The interim
Commissioner…” Craig mumbled, toting another analog-digital converter box past
Total Skinner in the tech booth and a forlorn-looking European student named Blick whose hopeless job was to try and sell a
thirty-thousand dollar personal robot named Henry to any blithering idiot not
seduced by the Dom…
“Synch!” Tenison
bellowed, “…you have anything better to do than talk football with my tech
staff… no? Then go back and bring out a
few more cartons of those hard drives… Honey, do you see that couple wandering
the downloading aisle, go sell them something…”
Honey Keissler - blonde, early 20-something and terminally bored
with her job, her life and her business courses at the community college,
tossed her hair, popped her gum as Blick pushed a
button on a remote to make the robot bow stiffly, raise
on arm and intone: “Good afternoon. I am
Henry, your cybernetic personal assistant.
How may I help you?”
“I’m going, alright?”
“Someday,
someday…” Tenison promised, “I’ll be able to replace all you with robots…”
“Like voicemail,”
Skinner muttered to Thunder McHale’s weekend replacement, a part-timer and
occasional musician who’d changed his name… legally, as he avowed… to Billy
Obvious. (It was left to others to
insert two more letters after the first syllable… Billy was quite intelligent,
after his own fashion, but often distracted.)
Satisfied that order had been restored to his domain, Mark permitted
himself the privilege of turning to a ziggurat of bargain conventional HDTV
sets… cheap twenty-eights from Paraguay or the former Burma or whatever they
called it now, wherever crap came from… honing in on another reporter who’d
caught the attention of the televised Commissioner.
“Sir! Sir?” shouted
the unidentified pest. “Is there any
chance that the Conference Playoff site can be moved to... well, not
Washington, but to some place neutral?
Some place warm? Or if the blizzard in Green
Bay forces the NFC Playoff to take place Sunday, next, uh… will the Superbowl take place on the 16th, as now planned
following the national mourning day delay, or…”
“Commissioner
Prater was a firm believer in tradition and the integrity of the game,” Radulovich stepped in, “and I am, too. The Packers, by virtue of their superior
record, have an unassailable right to host the Conference playoffs, and Superbowl Fifty Six in New Orleans will take place February
23rd, affording the Washington - Green Bay conference winner the
customary two weeks of rest and recuperation, so that both teams will be at
their best…
“But doesn’t that
mean the winner of today’s AFC… Vegas, no doubt… will have three weeks between games?” the pest persisted before Radulovich corrected his mangled timetable with an embarrassed grimace…
In Tom’s house in
Dempstertown, where the Raiders’ dismantling of the
high and mighty Patriots had been cause for grudging admiration, the boys
chortled at the interim Commissioner’s dilemma… Lenny, Stretch and Nat… and Nat
exclaimed…
“Retard!”
“Aww, give him a
break…” said the host, magnanimously, “guy’s new on the job…”
“Yeah,” Larry
said, “but that’s… that’s the day after Washington’s Birthday, day before the real one. Since we all get Monday off, I got vacation…”
“Good!” Stretch
nodded. “You could start drinkin’ soon as you get off the shift, Friday night, and
then stay bombed all week except for… wait a sec... the Presidents’ Day holiday
is still on the seventeeth, meaning...” and without
intention or even knowledge of the ubiquity of the words, “we’re screwed,
dude!”
“Naah…” Larry waved him off, “Penny’s making me take her and
the kids up to her folks’ place in Albany.
Break my ass on gas! Fuck!”
“They’re deliverin’ that set on Tuesday?” Stretch insinuated…
“Yeah… I, ahh… I get to see the playoff,” Larry assured the boys,
“but Super Sunday…”
“They have TV up
in Albany, don’t they?” Tom broke in, which was not the kernel of the problem,
not at all…
Lenny Witcher nodded while, on Tom’s fuzzy screen, Garoppolo, the replacement quarterback who came in after
Patriots’ signal-caller had been crunched by convicted armed-robber and
murderer (second degree) Popeye Brewster was sacked. On second down, he was sacked again and fumbled.
“Yeah but, like…”
he mumbled out of the side of his mouth, “this means our Super Sunday party’s
fucked… it’s gonna be Sober Sunday
unless that snow stops...”
The boys’ mouths
sagged in unison as Kaepernick completed a pass to
the Patriot twenty-one with a late-hit penalty tacked on and then, with three
minutes and change remaining, was replaced by backup Matt McGloin…
less an act of mercy than an understanding that things were about to get very,
very ugly in Foxboro.
“McGroin time! Hey… next Sunday, my place, we can watch the
playoffs,” Lenny volunteered. “I mean,
the Skins… uh, our team whose name cannot be uttered… have been lucky, but what
chance do they honestly have against the Pack in Green Bay?”
“Yeah,” Nat said,
though with a visible, and audible, lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah, the playoffs on Lenny’s Mommumalator Hi-Def…”
“Cool!” Stretch
agreed - though it plainly was not that – and three of the four couch potatoes sat,
steaming, while a rookie running back in silver and black plowed into the line
for a hard yard or two.
“Fourth and
four…,” Rafe Munson informed the peanut gallery, “New
England still has a timeout, but why bother.
Janikowski’s on for a gimme,
it’s up… good…”
“Forty-one to
six,” his partner winced. “And it
could’ve been worse… a lot worse… but for the Raiders’ record hundred
thirty-two yards in penalties…”
“Record for the playoffs, that is… remember, they racked up one fifty-eight
in the regular season finale against Denver…” quoth
the authoritative Munson…
“Didn’t hurt
‘em…” Samms replied.
“Offsetting flags on that sequence… celebration for the Raiders,
personal foul against New England… someone might wanna
check the combined penalty yards for
a Divisional…
“So it’s Vegas against…” Rafe hesitated, “have to tune in tomorrow won’t we… think
positive guys, and...”
He was silenced by a well
aimed tortilla chip thrown by Tom, who leaned forward, pointing to his head…
“Think positive, my
man? Think positive!”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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