As the local polls were closing last night, I sat in the American Idol Experience in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, outside of Orlando. This is of course only partly by choice. The trip I had every say in, and the Election Day Hollywood Studios visit I agreed with. The American Idol Experience? I guess I acquiesced to that. Our friend, our hook-up for Disney goodness, was working on that particular entertainment, so we stopped by to give it a look.

Election Day is one of my favorite days ever. I’m a political junkie, in the good way and the bad way. The good way is that I’m actually informed, I want to be more informed and I’m always happy to be wrong. The bad way is that I can descend into treating politics like a sport and not the very serious process by which our self-governance is determined. I root for my team, and I can be a jerk about it in the same way that Yankees fans are.

But Election Day is the one day when it all comes to a head, when the body politic makes its decision and events for the next cycle are put into motion. And elections have consequences, be they wars or tax policies or whether certain people can sit in certain sections of buses. So it’s a holiday for me, and watching the results is something that I traditionally set aside time for. And it can be a very happy night, or a colossal nightmare of a night. I’ve had euphoria that lasted months, and some bitter bitter hangovers, both real and symbolic.

But a vacation was planned, and it coincided with Election Day, and there I sat. The set was nearly identical to the set that you see in that very popular television series — an expensive array of lights and video monitors, a table for the judges to sit at (complete with cups with Coca Cola logos on them), and a spacious house for the screaming crowd, who are happy to scream. For all of the rides/experiences at Hollywood Studios we visited yesterday, the AIE’s crowd had the very least of ironic distance. They treated it as if it was the actual show. And the contestants are actual park visitors (guests, they are called) who are culled from a day’s worth of auditions, that are basically the same show we sat at, running once an hour or so, five times previous. The show we were at featured the five earlier winners, and the winner of this show would get a pass that would put them at the front of the line for an actual American Idol audition somewhere in America for the next season.

In the course of the day, the early morning flight, the nap, dodging Florida rain showers at the park, I’d managed to forget that today was Election Day. I’d stayed clear of anything resembling a computer, and any radio other than Central Florida Top 40. It wasn’t until the fourth contestant that I borrowed my wife’s iPhone to check my email that it was seven and that local polls were closing.

Last week I’d imagined that we’d get to Florida and I’d spend my day going to polls, trying to counter-intimidate the people who were trying to intimidate non-Republican looking voters from voting in the interest of preventing “Voter Fraud,” which plan of course evaporated in the frenzy of the actual vacation. The fourth contestant was a slight girl from the north of England, who was doing a very convincing little pop number. The judges, who had some actual music industry experience but were cloyingly emulating the personalities of the TV judges liked her very much, except for the Simon Cowell-judge, who said the nice thing and then the well-rehearsed mean thing. The crowd booed, because the crowd was told by the able warm-up guy that they were supposed to do so. They didn’t need to be told that; they were veterans of TV watching, and being in the fake-TV audience was a dream come true for many. I still liked the slight British teen’s chances.

The last contestant was a recent mother from the Midwest, closer to my age than the teen’s. She did not have a TV aspect. She looked actually normal. She sang “Independence Day,” a Martina McBride song also popularized by “American Idol” winner Carrie Underwood. Carrie, and other “American Idol” luminaries, including host Ryan Seacrest, had recorded videos that were played during the experience that gave the impression that they were actually there and not in some studio years before. The audience and the contestants ate it up. It was awkward, at least to me. The host, who Ryan “introduced,” missed his mark, leaving video-Seacrest staring at an empty stage, and when Carrie congratulated an actual contestant, the contestant blushed like actual-Carrie was actually-congratulating. It’s not real, I thought. And I don’t think that the audience/contestants did think that it was real, but that did not stop them from behaving as it were.

The midterm elections were a frustrating little exercise, at least the electioneering part of them. “Voters are frustrated” was a common theme, no matter the source of the news. And they have every right to be. The economy is splintering in a novel way, chugging along in one sense, and mired down in the other. And the reforms enacted by the current administration were confusing at best, and easily carved up by the parties injured by the reforms into semantic grenades. Perhaps the furthest distance traveled is that between the Lincoln/Douglas debates and what we have now, expensive television ad campaigns telling you what the American people think or want, which the American people, more often than not, confirm after the fact. If you care not just about issues but how legislation actually affects issues, and I try to, you end up wondering where that went, and then begins giving in and trying to devise counter-acting semantic bombs that push the right emotional buttons that will convince people you never met into agreeing with you without realizing it.

The fifth contestant, the recent mom, had pipes, and she took the stage like she knew what she was doing, leaning back into the high notes, holding the mike like it was part of her. The audience was into it. I still thought the British teen was better. But when recent-mom hit the lyrics:

Let freedom ring
Let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today
is a day of reckoning

The audience erupted, standing and whoo-ing, and I knew that the British teen had no chance. And the Mexican restaurant we went to after the show had televisions, but they were all showing SportsCenter.

Brent Cox is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

Four Women Celebrate the Joys of Cussing Someone Out. It’s like Metropolitan Diary but for real people.

Mazda, Foursquare and some great websites, including this one, are still giving away a car. It is still very easy to participate and win a brand new Mazda Zoom 2!

How easy? All you have to do is follow Mazda on Foursquare. Check into a few of the places they have listed, get the Mazda badges, and just like that, you’re entered into to win a brand new automobile. Can you believe it? That’s it!

Here’s a few of the recommended check-in places for New York: the Gramercy Theatre, Brooklyn Bowl, Barcade, Top Shop, and plenty more here. I mean, you’re going to these places already, right? So just follow Mazda, check-in, and win a car! It seems crazy to me that you’re not doing this (unless you are, in which case you are very sane)!

Jerry Bock, who wrote the music for Fiddler on the Roof, has died. If you’re Jewish you saw the movie at least seven times growing up and still have days where the melody to “If I Were a Rich Man” or “Tradition” or “Matchmaker” or “Sunrise, Sunset” is inexplicably lodged in your head. Bock was 81.

As your correspondent on things that are Important in New England, I’d be negligent in my duties if I didn’t take the time to speak with you about the cranberry. Cranberries! Such New England-y little bitches! All tart and pucker-y! And this New England-y little bitch loves them. (This New England-y little bitch also knows several hundred things to do with them, but we don’t have much time here so we’ll keep it to one pretty easy and terribly impressive thing to do with them for the sake of this exercise.) And so it is with love and only the slightest bit of judgment about the fact that you’ve spent decades serving that jellied insult to the fine bogsmen of coastal Massachusetts that I share my recipe for Outré Cranberry Sauce.

This is really very simple, and if you’re a person who doesn’t cook you should feel okay about signing on to be in charge of the cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving because generally cranberry sauce is so easy to make. (Do you need a super basic recipe because you can’t manage a recipe with more than 3 ingredients? Sure, I’ve got one of those!)

Put two cups of cranberries in a large saucepan and stir until they begin to burst. This will probably take 3 to 5 minutes, and if you’re anything like me and you startle easily, you may want to take a Xanax beforehand. Hell, take one anyway — the entire family is coming over, you’ll need it for when your aunt asks loudly over the antipast’ when you’re planning to find a nice boyfriend and settle down. “I think your mother wants grandchildren!” We recommend: “Well Auntie Bianca, Mommy should have thought of that before she decided to have only one child, now shouldn’t she have?”

I’m just not sure that I need to be saddled with a lifetime of cleaning up someone else’s boogies because my mother failed to hedge her bets and have that second kid back in the late 70s.

Once the cranberries have joined you in coming apart at the seams, add 2 cups of red wine — surprise! There’s wine in the cranberry sauce! — and ½ a cup of brown sugar and boil that up until it reduces to about 2 ½ cups. About 15 minutes? Drink the rest of the wine while this is happening! Hey, is it hot in here? It’s hot in here. Could you be a love and bring me an ice cube?

To the reduced cranberry wine potion, you’ll add a ¼ cup of crystallized ginger that you’ve minced up nicely, a ½ teaspoon of curry powder, a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and a ¼ teaspoon of black pepper. I know! Is crazy! I told you it was outré! But also delicious and kind of pretentious and these are both qualities I can get behind. I may not have children, Auntie Bianca, but I have a life that calls for putting wine and crystallized ginger in my cranberry sauce whereas you drive a PT Cruiser. And it’s purple.

As this is the season for giving thanks, and because at heart I’m a sentimental old sap, these are just a few of the many, many things I’m Thankfawl for this year:

• The calming effect of ‘In the Weeds’
• The ‘DOODY’ tag
• Editable comments!
• Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaary
• Balk’s imaginary friend, Science
• Miles Klee and his deli slicer fantasies
• Alt text
• The Incredible Hulk’s author page
• The many, many things for which Dave Bry is sorry
• A lady home to call my own
• 4:20 posts
• Screen Name
• “Some Level of Online Success”
• Harry William Cyphers IV
• Motherfucking Negroni season

Jolie Kerr is also thankful for wine. And ice.

Do you have an eccentric, unusual or just highly specific family Thanksgiving recipe? Let us know. If you eat something, repeat something!

You know what I’m hungry for today? Some Science pegged to the return of the McRib. Serve it up, Science!

Three physicians want you to know egg yolks are bad for your health. They’re spreading their message by comparing the amount of cholesterol in a single egg yolk to popular fast food creations. One egg yolk contains 215–275 mg of cholesterol, depending on size, more than the Double Down’s 150 mg and the Thickburger’s 210 mg. The resurgent McRib has 70 mg of cholesterol.

The trio is also warning about the amount of propaganda and pro-egg disinformation Big Unfertilized Chicken Embryo is putting out there. But as it turns out, some of the very researchers behind this dire dairy news “disclosed speaker’s fees and support from pharmaceutical companies that manufacture lipid-lowering drugs.” Who should you believe? Me. Let me tell you what the deal is.

Everything that doesn’t taste like crap is full of stuff that is in some way or another bad for you. You are going to die no matter what. Eat whatever you want. The oft-repeated Keynesian maxim that “in the long run we are all dead” is well and good, but it ignores that fact that for a long time we are all alive. For, like, AGES. Think about how long today has been, and it’s not even five yet! Yes, life is a beautiful valuable thing and there are so many joys along the way and etc., but let’s admit that 90% of it is suffering, misery, pain, standing in line behind some idiot who can’t figure out that he doesn’t have enough money in his balance to withdraw the amount of cash he keeps asking for from the ATM, heartbreak, defeat and “Seinfeld” reruns. A couple of eggs, or a McRib, or excellent Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey sipped outdoors on a crisp day while you smoke a cigarette: if these things are going to shave a few years off the time you would otherwise spend drumming your fingers on the counter as you wait for the laggard at the Duane Reade to ring up your single-item purchase, so be it. You’re actually getting the better end of the deal.

by Jeff Hart

Even gently cradled in the contoured backseat of Wayne Maker’s town car, my back howled in protest. Boxed in by tinted windows, an architect of self improvement beside me, I felt vulnerable. Paul Fennel, my former client, had opened up too many cracks, and now I rubbed shoulders with a man who had built an empire out of probing fissures of the spirit with benevolent tentacles.

Maker was silent and, his patient smile fixed upon me, I felt like a Chinese squid broken on the city sidewalk, like a rat with the ceiling pulled out from under it. Maker’s features had seemed synthetic when frozen on glossy book jackets, but in person they came together in beautiful, calculated purpose. Maker let the silence hang, expectant. He smelled wonderful, like freshly cut grass from a lawn of newly minted money. He seemed like a good listener.

I wanted a hug.

I wasn’t used to being the mark. I needed to recover myself. Maker was an unfamiliar opponent, but luckily, I recognized his driver. Here was someone I could manipulate.

I’d never noticed the scar on the back of Bo Harkins’ head before. It ran from his crown to the base of his skull, like a zipper stitched into his buzz-cut. I imagined peeling it open to find the pulsing battery of rage that fueled the former cop turned enforcer of self help, plucking free Harkins’ power source, and watching him slump uselessly across the wheel of the Lincoln. Yesterday, the brute had punched me in the stomach when he caught me nosing around the headquarters of The Unfettered Souls. Today, he steered a luxury car on an aimless route through the LES, his eyes straight ahead, maintaining the practiced aloofness of a lackey experienced in chauffeuring the powerful.

I leaned forward and poked the scar. Harkins flinched, his hands tightening on the wheel, but he maintained his professional silence.

“What’s that from, Bo?” I asked. “A lobotomy one of the job requirements?”

Harkins didn’t reply. I decided to push it. I leaned forward further, putting myself inches from Harkins’ ear.

“Maybe I’ll put in a good word for you with your boss,” I whispered. “Bo Harkins, loyal as a dog, hits like a bitch.”

With a sigh, Maker pressed a button that raised a privacy screen between front and backseat. I could still make out the muffled thud of Harkins punching the steering wheel.

I felt restored.

“Seeing Red,” said Maker.

I turned my head to lock eyes with the guru. His indulgent smile lingered, his face a tranquil ocean of botulin.

“What’s that, Wayne?”

“One of my books,” he clarified. “On managing anger.”

“I’m not angry. Just confused.”

“That’s chapter one, friend.”

I glanced out the window.

“Where are we going?”

“Ah, the question all men must ask themselves before the first step of every great journey.”

“Some advice? It’s a bad time in this city to sound like a fortune cookie.”

Maker laughed, an easy, honest laugh made all the more patronizing by its practiced ring of sincerity.

“I may borrow that joke,” he said, patting me on the knee. “I want you to know that this is a safe place. We don’t mean you any harm. I know Bo had to get physical with you yesterday. I wanted to apologize for that.”

“You deliver in-person apologies to everybody your goon roughs up?”

“Hardly,” replied Maker. “Bo mentioned you were asking after one of my girls and I was intrigued.”

“Mr. Maker,” I gasped. “You sound like a pimp. How much does a soul-job go for, anyway?”

I shouldn’t have expected to needle any human reaction out of Maker. He wouldn’t give away anything, and yet, he’d come looking for me. I hadn’t needed to sneak into his den of hand-holding and sob circles. He welcomed the interrogation. The plastic man with the inscrutable smile wanted to spill his guts.

“I assure you, all of our rituals are perfectly legal, including The Joining.”

“What an enlightened perspective you have on the law.”

“You should understand, I am running a business,” replied Maker. “My fiercest competitor promises super powers to their top clientele. I don’t try to compete with that. Wouldn’t be rational.”

“Of course not.”

“Instead, my Virtues provide unique spiritual experiences of somewhat heightened intensity.”

“Like a girl that could burn a hole in a man’s chest.”

“For instance,” agreed Maker. “Or perhaps a boy capable of predicting the future.”

“Perhaps.”

Maker slapped me on the shoulder, delighted.

“I love this!” He scrunched up his brow at me, putting on a face of phony consternation. “It’s like poker. Nobody wants to give away too much. Such a blast.”

To piggyback on his metaphor, I decided to lay my cards on the table.

“You holding your Virtues prisoner?” I asked.

Maker scoffed.

“You’re kidding. They’re incredible assets to my business. I suppose you could say they’re prisoners to their handsome compensation and luxurious living arrangements, but then you’d be the one sounding Chinese.”

“Is that what the girl I’m looking for would say?”

“You can ask her yourself, if you like. Come by tonight. I’ll arrange a session with Darlene, on the house.”

“Darlene? That’s what you call her?”

“It’s her name.”

“I expected something more exotic from a guy named Wayne Maker. You should work on your branding.”

“Darlene handles that on her own.”

Maker laughed at his joke. Our entire conversation was a welcome diversion to him. He was exhausting. If I reached across the backseat to strangle him, Maker would probably chortle and quote a chapter from one of his books on what specific assault techniques said about a man’s subconscious.

“All I ask in return,” said Maker, clearing his throat, “is that you tell Paul Fennel I’d like to see him. There’s a generous finder’s fee in it for you.”

“See him? I thought you banished him from your little cult.”

“Is that what he told you?”

Maker shook his head, dismayed at my ignorance.

“Paul is one of my most valuable attractions. Whatever spooked him, tell him we can work it out.”

Maker knocked on the divider. Immediately, Harkins swung the car to the curb.

“You can go now.”

Normally, I bristled at being dismissed by men in expensive suits, but I welcomed the chance to escape from Maker’s suffocating aura of pleasantry. I lurched toward the door.

“Wait,” said Maker, and pressed a book into my hands. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you seem like an aimless man, Royce. A man without purpose is no man at all. I hope this will help you.”

“Yeah? How much does that shitty advice usually go for?”

“More than you can afford,” said Maker, winking. “I hope to see a return on my investment.”

I thumbed through Maker’s book on a corner only a few blocks from where he first scooped me up. My hardcover copy of Hope For The Best, Plan For The Better, 3rd edition, ran a list price of $29.95 and contained five crisp hundred dollar bills. I pocketed the money and tossed his book on the curb with the rest of the garbage. Paul had been right when he said I wouldn’t be able to quit the case. And Maker was right about one thing too.

I needed a plan.

Jeff Hart lives in Brooklyn. His other writing can be found over at Culture Blues.

Laura Miller takes issue with National Novel Writing Month: her concern is that this is a symptom of the Culture of Narcissism™ and that it means none of these would-be writers reads, or at least, none of them will have time to read throughout the month of November. (Her argument is actually fairly complex, so it’s worth reading for yourself; it’s also vigorously rebutted elsewhere.) Apparently the world is plenty full of people who write but do not read? This has not been my experience but I have not met everyone, so I won’t judge. She has further complaints: “I am not the first person to point out that ‘writing a lot of crap’ doesn’t sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November.” Oh, is it now. (Look, this is me, avoiding a stupid and obvious joke!) But seriously, how about a whole year of crap, cuz lemme tell you about that. Anyway: yeah, we probably should be rewarding book readers in some way! When I was a kid, the youngster who checked out the most books in a month got a little award. Hmm. Though I guess I don’t really check out books from the library any more? But I sure do have a craving for awards. Maybe the Culture of Narcissism™ got me too.

by Jeff Johnson and David Roth

Jeff: Do you think if Carl Paladino had been elected governor one of his first executive acts would have been to force the Buffalo Bills to invade Scotland? “To save New York, we must squash Scotland like a cheap vase underneath the wheels of a 1983 Ford Econoline van. Get on this pontoon boat, boys. We’re going to steal their rum. As long as men in skirts are still putting their lips to pipes, we’re going for it. I’ve drawn it all up on parchment papers and burned the edges. It’s go time, ladies.” It’s a real shame that being an extreme asshole didn’t pay off for him, since it seemed to work in the rest of the country, yesterday and throughout history.

David: I boycotted the TV coverage because I don’t have the time to actually go catatonic with dread for a few days. I saw a few minutes of CNN, and it was just Wolf Blitzer toggling between holograms of Fergie and the werewolf kid from Twilight. They were talking about the death tax.

Jeff: Now Paladino can go focus on further alienating his own family. “I bought you some hamsters, Little Judy. Then I killed them on the way home. You may play with their corpses for an hour.”

Jeff: Speaking of the Bills, I heard James Lofton doing the Westwood One radio broadcast of the Steelers vs. the Saints the other night.

David:I don’t get much exposure to NFL radio. I have no idea who’s doing football games on the radio. I’m imagining Mancow and a woozy Mike Tomczak doing Bears games.

Jeff: It was a mess. It was like Lofton had consumed a nail polish remover and Rumple Minze smoothie minutes before entering the booth. He referred to Reggie Bush as Michael Bush and said that Rashard Mendenhall gets 90 yards per carry.

Jeff: So, is Donovan McNabb so bad that you have to bring in JaMarcus Russell? I’ve never known Shanahan to be the kind of coach where he starts mentally torturing his players.

David: But I think he’s that kind of person. They also brought in JP Losman to audition! Everyone in the DC area gets a shot. Jack Abramoff and Ian Svenonius and Jeff George are all coming in for workouts today. I don’t get lifting McNabb for Rex Grossman at all though. Or lifting anyone for Rex Grossman. McNabb is better at everything than Grossman, including talking to Grossman’s parents on the phone and entering Grossman’s email passwords. He’s also better than any quarterback they’ve had since… I don’t know, either Mark Rypien or Sonny Jurgensen, depending on your point of view.

Jeff: Was Mark Rypien part Native American? Was that his deal? I guess I shouldn’t refer to him like he is dead, even though his face is on many of our common coins nowadays. But he was crazy. He could throw the ball 400 yards and also kill an owl just by staring at it. They have no receivers, do they? ZERO running backs?

David: They have a bunch of those unlicensed videogame names. Receiver 85 is playing well. Joey Galloway saw a commercial on TV for The Scooter Store and now plays in a maroon-and-gold Rascal with a little orange flag on the back. He also shops for groceries with it. It’s really given him back his independence.

Jeff: They should be psyched that they are 4–4. Did they even win 4 games last year? Speaking of great receivers, Tate in New England is a monster.

David: Yeah, he’s really good. Really fast and really good. They should resign Moss just to make sure that Tate doesn’t get TOO good. Other than security staff trying to ruin your son’s Halloween, do you have any observations from your time in Foxboro?

Jeff: I did get to see Brady take his helmet off on the sideline and fix his hair, they put it on the Jumbotron at the stadium.

David: To peals of piercing shrieks and waves of fainting people in oversized Bruschi jerseys?

Jeff: Some. The Pats fans I saw were the kind of people who chain smoke and eat a fistful of buttered hashbrowns while talking about how Bruschi bravely came back from a stroke. “I should know, ’cause I’m having one right now. A little mini one.” We sat behind a guy with little hair but a lot of hair gel.

David: Gel-scalp. Always a good look.

Jeff: He thought the Patriots should kick a field goal to go up 24–18 with 2:00 left. Because nothing is safer than a 6 point lead in football.

David: Was he really adamant? I have never heard anyone screaming for a field goal. “Get Gostkowski in there OH MY GOD, COME ON! Make them have to convert an extra point after a tying touchdown! Do any of you even FOLLOW FOOTBALL?”

Jeff: I had a skinny little teen drunk in a woodsy patterned North Face coat come up the stairs of my section at least 47 times. Once in the third quarter he stopped at my row and looked at me and my kid and was like, “We have these four seats. You’re going to have to leave.” I said, “Just let me see your ticket.” It was for one section over. He’d walked up the wrong stairs every time he went for another beer. Just no clue. If my kid wasn’t with me, I would have gotten up and let him sit there. Just to see how long it would take him to realize his friends were never coming to those seats. It may never have happened. It reminded me of the fan at a Jets game who threatened to get another guy pregnant.

David: What you missed by not watching the Jets/Packers game, by the way, was 1) the most compelling argument for suicide ever televised, and 2) a couple of dudes dressed as Rex Ryan for Halloween. Two buddies, matching white mock turtlenecks under black sweater vests. I had to write about it for work, and I am seriously mulling a comp claim.

Jeff: That Jets/Packers game just seems like a 1978 game somehow. There were a lot of guys dressed up like Robert Kraft at the Patriots game It was weird because when I go out to watch football in New York, all the Pats fans are like little needy learned lawyer types who have PASSION for Grogan and Bledsoe and Tony Eason, even.

David: That’s my image of Pats fans, too. Brunch aficionados with a Dedication To Excellence. Are those dudes actually there?

Jeff: The needy smart lawyers were not at the game. They were busy using their cellphones to over-emo their girlfriends into Xanax prescriptions.

David: Because I imagine the game just being a bunch of aggro Mass guys with goatees and Tully Banta-Cain jerseys. Maybe in the expensive seats there’s some dude with a Tufts degree and a stadium blanket.

Jeff: It’s all Staind fans. One guy who laid marble at Vince Wilfork’s mansion, for whom Vince Wilfork’s wife ordered a pizza. I overheard that.

David: What kind of music gets played at a Pats game?

Jeff: Bon Jovi. And Nu Metal.

David: Right. The shit that gets your heavy drinkers mo’ hype.

Jeff: Then it morphs into hip hop that has even the players dancing during warm-ups. They kind of looked like panda bears executing all these moves with wonky pads on. 1998 Nu Metal, by the way. The whiny, quasi-romantic stuff that’s really just aggro against women, and then this gem. My kid doesn’t need to hear that.

David: I’m thinking Sevendust has an exclusive deal with the Chargers or something.

Jeff: Sevendust may have a deal with the Falcons. Google it.

David: Oh man. I don’t want to Google this, but hold on. Confirmed. By this poor jelly donut of a guy. And I quote: “No word yet on how the song will be used, but I’m going to get on the phone with some of the guys from the band next week to find out.” The song is used by the training staff as a powerful emetic.

Jeff: Despite the complaining, it was a lot of fun. We saw real drama unfold on the field, from our seats, which were only a little more than a quarter of a mile from the action. If Brady got sacked on that play where he scrambled, the Vikings would have won, I think.

David: I assume you saw it afterwards, but Favre getting carted off the field was actually kind of jarring. He looked really old and out of it.

Jeff: He got shelled on that play. He was on the Jumbotron, getting jeered and looking a lot like the grandma from the Beverly Hillbillies in the process, after she’d gotten into some adult cider. He actually had a decent game. They made a couple of bad decisions along the way. Trying to give Peterson a goal line run on 4th down without Moss or Harvin on the field.

David: I don’t sense that Childress is a very good coach. He looks like a less-respected high school principal.

Jeff: No one is happy with him right now.

David: Always really exasperated trying to get people to stop talking at assemblies. “Okay, gang, they’ll be plenty of time to shoot the breeze later.”

Jeff: The Moss thing is kind of freaky. He was a jerk but he made it real easy to get Harvin the ball.

David: It is. I’m going to write about it in my column, but I don’t know what I’m going to write yet. He really does seem like a jerk, but my sympathies are with him because at least he has it in him to be weird. And not totally TO grandiose weird. He’s actually a very strange man with a lot going on in his head. Until he sits down at a press conference and burps it all up.

Jeff: Sounds like the Dallas Cowboys have themselves a new WR.

David: There’s a great oh-shit moment in his let’s-get-fired press conference when, after he announces that he’ll be conducting all interviews with himself going forward and expresses a sort of generalized displeasure with something, he says something like “let me break it on down right now” or something. And you just know that what’s going to come next is going to be some weird spoken-word tone poem of aggrievement and bad decisions and weirdly precise diction.

Jeff: How are the Jacksonville Jaguars 4–4?

David:The poor Jags. A living argument for contraction. And not just them. The whole city of Jacksonville should probably be put in time out for a few years while it figures out what’s next.

Jeff: Gambling is to Vegas what _______ is to Jacksonville?

David: Toothaches. Foreclosure. The best restaurant in Jacksonville is a Cheesecake Factory that closed in 2006. The worst is a Bob Evans that only serves room-temperature club sandwiches. They’re a team that I could very easily get through the season without seeing. I assume they’re using Maurice Jones-Drew a lot? Are they still coached by Jack Del Rio?

Jeff: Yes on both counts, and their back-up QB is or was an old Buffalo guy right now. There are a lot of teams just wobbling towards mediocrity right now.

David: The Seahawks are another team that are impossible to figure out. They were horrible against Oakland. You know it must kill Pete Carroll to lose to a ham hock like Tom Cable. Carroll has effectively mastered PowerPoint and runs smoke lodge retreats for tech industry execs and sails his own yacht to Cozumel every February. Cable has a “Beaver Hunter” bumper sticker on the Camaro he painted to look like a can of Busch is undoubtedly on whatever the strip club equivalent of the no-fly list is. But, still, 33–3.

Jeff: And the Raiders could easily be 6–2.

David: Can’t argue with that. They’re actually good. It’s just hard to acknowledge that. So, for my own amusement, what was the most out-of-date jersey you saw at the Pats game? I have a feeling Pats fans will rock a mustard-stained Ben Coates “throwback” without hesitation.

Jeff: I saw a guy in a spotless John Hannah throwback jersey. To me he seems like one of the original patriots. As in father-of-the-country patriot. Doing surgery on a sickly cow then writing the bylaws of New England. Then there were Bruschi-jersey wearing girls.

David: Same frosty haircut as Bruschi, I hope. Go into the hairdresser and are like, “Give me the Sean Hannity,” because they don’t want to admit to getting the Bruschi-do.

Jeff: Yes, and several career drinkers, shaped and colored like ostrich jerky. I saw zero Seau jerseys.

David: For awhile I was kind of into trying to get outdated jerseys on eBay. I wore them while cooking. I still have a bunch, but at some point — like when your girlfriend moves in and discovers your drawer full of, like, Rashaan Salaam and Tamarick Vanover jerseys — the investment starts to look questionable. So much more embarrassing than a drawer full of pornography. Her holding up a Charlie Batch Lions jersey and being like, “You wear this?”

David: There was some band I remember buying a Lake Dawson jersey from, some band from Champaign, IL that seemed like they were selling jerseys to fund a regional tour? I got outbid on a Lawrence Phillips jersey they were selling. I don’t look anymore, but I’d love an Amos Zeroue or Samkon Gado jersey.

Jeff: Samkon Gado. I love him.

David: He had my favorite body type in running backs: weird rectangle. Shaped like the cursor on an old Tandy computer, minus the blinking. An oblong, awkward imperfect rectangle.

Jeff: He might still be on the Titans roster.

David: So, this isn’t necessarily connected to anything, but the unfortunate presence of Shanahan’s orange, mean-puppet face on my TV has reminded me how much I miss Herm Edwards. I would watch a Herman Edwards reality show, if anyone from the NFL network is reading this. A weight loss show in which he makes Tina Yothers hit a tackling sled to learn things about self-esteem.

Jeff: I get the sense that Edwards is manorexic. You’d need to watch his show with the sound off. But you could still understand what he was saying by his facial tics. “We may not win the game, but we WILL out-facial gesture you…”

David: I think a muted TV with Herm Edwards playing on it would still somehow make some sort of sound. A high-pitched, nasal sound. A very determined sound. Talk about crisp diction, though. Every time he says a word that ends in –er, it should make that “Top Chef” ‘shinnng’ knife sound.

Jeff: Here’s a good autumn song, to get that off of your brainpan. Still no apology from the Patriots for me. I am hiring Tony Dungy to mediate.

David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix, contributes to the sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and has his own little website. And he tweets!

Jeff Johnson tweets here. He is also responsible for doing weird things with old sportscards here and here.

Photo by cnewtoncom, from Flickr.

Previously: The Flavor of Tom Coughlin’s Gum

by Abe Sauer

The miles of Highway 41 in Wisconsin north of Fond du Lac feature a lot of billboards. Somewhere just before the town known as “Sawdust City,” a succession of billboards advertise both the Supreme adult gift and lingerie store and “All Life Is Precious” anti-choice abortion messages. This juxtaposition of open sin and Christian values has historic president in Oshkosh. The raging alcoholic for whom the city is named died in a drunken brawl in 1858, years before the Menominee chief could see Oshkosh become the annual home to the Christian music event, LifeFest.

Soon, the night will be summed up by John Boehner crying over my radio while hoots of “USA! USA! USA!” rise behind him. But first, I’m pulling into the parking lot at 3000 Poberezny Road, just off a section of Highway 41 that is heavy with construction cones, possibly part of the $3.5 million the city of Oshkosh received in federal recovery funding.

The EAA AirVenture Museum lot is nearly full just after 7 p.m. and an army of grizzly old men direct cars with those mini-light sabers. SUV. SUV. Cadillac. Conversion van. SUV. SUV. F-150.

So this is what the triumph of ignorance over knowledge looks like. It’s unremarkable.

Nowhere are the apocalyptic tribes of slobbering half-wits armed with pitchforks and dressed in hides, howling at the moon like rabid beasts. Where are the illiterate savages? The Morlocks? Everyone appears to be a well rounded human, in that many of them are, well, round.

Throughout the night, I eavesdrop on conversation after conversation, desperate to find some exchange that will redeem my home state. I do not want to write that, almost without exception, these people are terrible. Overconfident. Insistent. Ignorant and proud of it. I do not want to write that America, as a whole, would be better off without any of them.

The event is open bar, and not garbage either. Johnson has sprung for microbrew tap beer served frosty and delicious in sturdy mugs featuring the candidate’s own mug and a quote about freedom topped with his own autograph. The perks of being in plastics manufacture, I suppose. A young Republican named Shane pounds a few beers and hangs with a big-bosomed young woman. Shane wants to bang. But not before Fox calls the race. And not before they chow on some of the bacon-wrapped water chestnuts on offer from the hors d’oeuvres trays winding their ways around the room, carried aloft.

Shane and his unfortunate prey are indeed special amongst the crowd. Not in that they are likely to have had sex in the last three months, but for their youth. Looking around the room, those lamenting Johnson’s victory over Feingold can take solace in the fact that some of these supporters will not live out the newly minted Senator’s term. For many, the end will come from natural causes; for others, the end will be a distinct combination of chest tightening and left arm pain. This crowd is old. Old and white. Old and white and male.

The 2000 census notes that Oshkosh is 92.73 percent white, which means the city is a multicultural wonderland compared to Johnson’s event. I do finally spot one black person, and photograph him speaking with a guy wearing a “Do You Miss Me Yet” George W. Bush shirt. Though I never confirm if he works at the facility or if he is part of the party. The black guy I mean.

How white is the party? So white that the most intelligent conversation I overhear all night is with a man named, no kidding, Kevin White. White says he is from Chicago and involved in politics there. He’s speaking with a British guy for some reason. Responding to the Brit’s question, White chuckles about Johnson’s attack on the number of lawyers in the Senate. “Yeah, but can a manufacturer write a bill?” White asks.

“I’ll tell you this, if he goes to the Senate his staff will be packed with lawyers,” he sys. I’m not a gambling man, but for the rest of the night I work off the assumption that Mr. White is a lawyer.

Standing at a table, a young man named Paul Durkee mocks John McCain’s Presidential run. Giggling along with him are a short man named Chad Schroeder and a tall Laura Dern doppelganger named Mimi that shares his same surname. These are not Tea Partiers; they are Coulter Republicans, Anne obviously a style icon of Mimi’s. Mimi is owner of Schroeder Photography in Oshkosh and it’s unclear if she’s here because she worked for Johnson. Regardless, in a city of 63,000-odd people, it’s probably a good small-business decision to support the local multimillionaire who suddenly decides to use his considerable wealth to play Senator.

Chad gets interviewed on camera and comes back and all three do whirligigs about how on message he was.

Taking a kebab of mozzarella and sun dried tomato off the platter, I ask my server if she voted today. She says she did not have time.

Mark Sonnabend, a tall lanky kid wearing a blazer over an artificially vintage GOP pachyderm ringer t-shirt, is droning on about the Catholic church and the history of politics. His dad just stares ahead. Mark’s forceful confidence combined with his youth is insufferable. He will someday make some lucky lady completely miserable.

When Johnson finally takes the stage a little after 11 p.m., he’s flanked on three sides by women. This is certainly a conscious decision, meant to soften the image of man who is on record testifying against the rights of sexual assault victims. And while there are women to be found at the event (like Mimi), it is predominantly male. A real sausage fest. The ultimate evidence of this is at the restrooms. Where women breeze in and out, men wait in line to piss, all making jokes about this odd switch of roles.

But then, our nation’s sporting championships are largely attended by men. And what was last night but a sort of annual championship? The Green Bay Packer gear liberally displayed by the attendees spoke to this crowd’s predisposition for team orientation. This is especially true even at this so-called “Tea Party” candidate’s event. Not unlike Sunday, the crowd all watches the widescreen, cheering Fox News updates on races where Republicans are leading. They cheer when Palin shows up. They boo when a losing race is highlighted. The biggest boo of the night comes when Fox announces that Barney Frank will keep his seat. You know what they’re thinking: that fat fag.

Tea Party types mistakenly believe reasonable and progressive Americans disrespect them for their anti-government rhetoric. That’s untrue. Despite its use in attack ads, there is no such thing as an “anti-jobs” candidate. Everyone wants less spending, reduced deficits and decreased government control of everyday life. Russ Feingold has wanted that for 18 years and has been rewarded, by the very people who should most champion him, with unemployment, ironically putting Feingold, once again, more in touch with the average American than any other pol. So it’s not that many of us don’t want what the Tea Party wants; it’s that we don’t believe the Tea Party genuinely wants those things.

How do I know the people before me tonight are hypocrites and counterfeits? Math. So far, the Republicans have notched gains since the last election nearly across the board. With women, GOP candidates recorded six point gains. With men, eight points. White people are voting nine points higher for Republicans than they did previously. Yet, when asked how they feel about the GOP, 53 percent answer that the are “dissatisfied” with the party. Bullshit.

But more than that, I know they are phonies because they openly champion this greatest phony. This is a man who claims to worship the values of Atlas Shrugged’s objectivism, with its stress on personal responsibility and freedom from government regulation of the individual. Yet he is for government restrictions against homosexuals. In his victory speech, Johnson praised his hometown of Oshkosh, yet he would not grant that very same hometown’s newspaper an interview (maybe because of how the interview went with the nearby Green Bay Press Gazette). He has been named the “Tea Party” candidate. Yet, his opponent Feingold was endorsed by none other than Bob Barr. He has criticized the bank bailout even while accepting political donations from those same bailed out banks. He lambastes the stimulus and champions tax cuts even though a huge portion of the stimulus was tax cuts. He calls climate change fictive, blaming temperature changes on sun spots. He is anti-government subsidies — yet his business has directly benefited from them. They are him and he is them. And they will all abandon him in six years when he hasn’t delivered these people from their disappointment and personal joylessness. A feat which, of course, nobody is capable because they are fundamentally joyless people.

Johnson’s election night party was held in the Eagle Hangar at Oshkosh’s EAA AirVenture Museum. The rhetoric about smaller government and federal spending cuts washed over the meticulously-preserved aircraft, all a historic record of man’s faith in science and his desire to do more than to just say “no.” It’s a wonderful facility that, in fact, has received significant federal subsidies. Johnson and his smiling and laughing guests, who grabbed rickshaw rides back to their parked cars, probably don’t know this, nor would they likely care.

Abe Sauer has a favorite picture.