It manifests as a gathering noise — aggro drums and big dumb tubas, overlaid by the sonic palimpsest of hundreds, thousands of beery dudes bassing up their voices and intoning “The frozen tundra of Lambeau field” in a yeasty, unconvincing imitation of the late NFL Films announcer John Facenda. And then there is the muddied, muddled yowling of an eight-dude pregame show set, and then at night there is the screaming — just straight-up screaming — that comes from Chris Berman’s monstrous, booze-purpled lungs over ESPN’s highlights. Grace notes, too: the terse, impatient crypto-Rumsfeldian disinformation campaign of a coach’s press conference; the audible line-against-line grunt emanating from the field of play on every down; the impatient buzz from the crowd and the low tones of the announcers, because a player is down on the field; the glottal honk of CBS’s Tony Siragusa in a golf shirt, talking about toughness from the sidelines. It’s just noise out of more noise, to a certain extent, but these specific sounds mean something. They mean that it’s NFL season again.

Culturally, of course, it increasingly seems that it is always NFL season. Jamming and stunting, taunting and jeering, bellowing and signifying, hitting, demanding and demanding and demanding things from figures on the other side of a TV screen: these are all-season things, and obviously don’t need a Jaguars/Texans game in November to give them context. The dumb stuff all has a faint sense of the NFL around it, if you think to look. “The Real Housewives of New Jersey”? A pre-game show gone feral and angry, goosed with burnt umber tans, periodic instances of depressingly cartoonish pontoon fake breasts, and industrial-grade pill habits. Rageful, baffled protests against the Non-Ground Zero Non-Mosque? Basically just New York Jets fans getting ready for the season to start. Katy Perry’s videos? Direct-to-television broadcasts from the brain of a guy masturbating in the bathroom at Cowboys Stadium. The only difference between Fox News and Fox’s pre-game show is that “Fox and Friends” features nine fewer commentators, is half as loud, and does not (sadly) employ Jimmy Johnson. These are FACTS.

All right. They are obviously not facts. And while they are things I see, they’re not everything I see when it comes to what is, increasingly and increasingly undeniably, America’s most popular sport. Because I also really do enjoy watching NFL games, and I really do enjoy the exercise in creepy human-based commodity trading that is fantasy football. My own push-pull revulsion/attraction to the NFL is strong and undeniable, as jarring and odd as flipping the channel to find a full-volume Chris Berman highlight, that brief and disorienting pre-mute-button blast of shrieked puns coming from his tiny-eyed, upturned-prosciutto of a head.

There are only a few minutes of actual action in the course of an average three-hour football broadcast, which means that much of what you see when you watch a football game is filmcraft. I believe I’ve covered the talking head portion of it — covered it in beautiful, beautiful adjectives — and won’t do any more of that here, except by mentioning that everyone should watch this brief video of Chris Berman screaming at interns.

And the commercials that so pad the running time are pretty horrid, generally — the dullest Americana-baited truck ads, the most violently muttish beer ads, a thousand instances of salesmanship done at the pitchfork-point of they’re-all-going-to-laugh-at-you gay panic. But that’s sort of always true of commercials, and it doesn’t really take away from the game itself (although it kind of does). Few sports play better on TV than football, and I can’t think of any sport whose live-and-in-person iteration is so much less enjoyable than its televisual counterpart. Because of how artless the stuff surrounding the average game is, and because of how artful the broadcasts are, it can be easy not to notice just how entertaining and well-paced a NFL game feels on television. Or it can be easy not to notice it until you realize that you’ve just watched a full half of a game between the fucking Redskins and the double-fucking Eagles, and the score is 10–6, and Dan Marino is pretending (at least it seems like it) to yuk it up with Shannon Sharpe on the CBS halftime show about something or other, and you can’t tell what that maybe-funny thing is because everyone else on the set is just howling, tears almost in their eyes, about some other thing you also couldn’t make out. And then it’s time to get a sandwich and think about how you got there.

And how do we get there? To our couches, I mean, or to wing-reeking bars or wherever it is that you watch NFL games. For me, it’s a product of forgetting just about everything that draws me to the other sports I care about. No pro sport has fewer good writers writing about it. No pro sport’s athletes are treated worse — there are no guaranteed contracts in the NFL, and Cord Jefferson, among others, has written about the league’s deplorable non-policy on the brain injury endemic in the sport; the union, run for decades by a Hall of Fame ex-lineman named Gene Upshaw, devoted untold amounts of time and money to ensuring that retired players received as little money as possible. And no sport anywhere features such unconscionably nasty ownership — imagine a cruel country club in which the billionaire members spend all their time complaining about the membership dues and insulting the staff. It’s not just that I dislike a lot about the NFL. It’s that I have a hard time, sometimes, understanding how a decent human being could like anything about the NFL. So why do I bother making myself forget all that every Sunday?

Not because I care about any one team all that much; I was raised as a Giants fan, and watch their games, and I am inexplicably drawn to the ultra-moribund Detroit Lions, probably because of that very moribunditude. I forget about all the above because I actually like watching football games — for all the steroidal, exploitative stuff, the game of football itself is intricate and it’s exciting. The players are amazing athletes and do amazing things. I like the fact that plays don’t work if every player on the field doesn’t do his job properly — there’s something socialistic and weirdly just about that, and it makes watching each play much more interesting than, say, watching a baseball game. And of course I like drinking beer and eating sandwiches on Sunday afternoons. And, despite or because of all the stuff I’ve spent this column going on about, I really do enjoy writing about football.

All that good aesthetic stuff, as well as the noxious exploitativeness, the self-enamored coaches and the players’ desperate vainglory are interesting to me, and every year that I’ve written about the NFL I’ve found a few new narratives that I enjoy following week to week — a few years ago, it was then-Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Mike Martz’s descent into Colonel Kurtz-ian madness and the balls-out weirdness of the all-offense Cleveland Browns. And before all that and most of all there was the nightmarishly bilious brilliance of the 2007 New England Patriots team that missed out on an undefeated season when they lost in the Super Bowl — to an underdog New York Giants team. So sometimes the sociocultural rubbernecking and the latent rooting interest stuff all comes together. Other times, many times, the game just seems like a big, noisy, super-dumb concussion machine and I hate it. But always, and usually against my better judgment, I am fascinated by it. We’ll see if that’s still true in Week 15, but for now — despite all the noise, despite Berman’s cornball puns, despite myself — I am indeed ready for some football.

And now, to prove it, I will make some almost certainly erroneous against-the-spread predictions on the NFL’s Week One games. In order to highlight my ineptitude at this, I will be making my picks against Al Toonie The Lucky Canadian Two-Dollar Coin, an actual Canadian toonie flipped by Garey G. Ris, my former colleague at the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix. The point spreads are courtesy of Sportsbook.com.

Thursday, Sep. 9

• Minnesota at New Orleans (-5), 8:30 pm — David Roth: Minnesota; Al Toonie The Lucky Canadian Two-Dollar Coin: Minnesota

Sunday, Sep. 12

• Denver at Jacksonville (-2.5), 1:00 pm — DR: Denver; ATTLCTDC: Jacksonville
• Miami (-3) at Buffalo, 1:00 pm — DR: Miami; ATTLCTDC: Buffalo
• Detroit at Chicago (-6.5), 1:00 pm — DR: Detroit; ATTLCTDC: Detroit
• Indianapolis (-2) at Houston, 1:00 pm — DR: Indianapolis; ATTLCTDC: Indianapolis
• Atlanta (-2) at Pittsburgh, 1:00 pm — DR: Pittsburgh; ATTLCTDC: Pittsburgh
• Oakland at Tennessee (-6), 1:00 pm — DR: Oakland; ATTLCTDC: Oakland
• Cleveland at Tampa Bay (-3), 1:00 pm — DR: I predict nosebleeds and splitting headaches for those watching this game. Also I think the Bucs probably win, so Tampa Bay. ATTLCTDC: Cleveland
• Carolina at New York Giants (-7), 1:00 pm — DR: New Jersey G; ATTLCTDC: New Jersey G
• Cincinnati at New England (-4.5), 1:00 pm — DR: Cincinnati; ATTLCTDC: New England
• San Francisco (-3) at Seattle, 4:15 pm — DR: San Francisco; ATTLCTDC: Seattle
• Green Bay (-3) at Philadelphia, 4:15 pm — DR: Green Bay; ATTLCTDC: Green Bay
• Arizona (-4) at St. Louis, 4:15 pm — DR: Arizona; ATTLCTDC: St. Louis
• Dallas (-3.5) at Washington, 8:20 pm — DR: Dallas; ATTLCTDC: Dallas

Monday, Sep. 13

• Baltimore at New York Jets (-2.5), 7:00 pm — DR: New Jersey J; ATTLCTDC: Baltimore
• San Diego (-4.5) at Kansas City, 10:15 pm — DR: San Diego; ATTLCTDC: San Diego

David Roth is a writer from New Jersey who lives in New York. He 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. His favorite Van Halen song is “Hot For Teacher.”

Photo by storyvillegirl, from Flickr.

I have terrible news for those of you concerned about the state of British socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s nose: the Sun is reporting that it “appears to have caved in again.” There is no word yet as to whether or not there are any survivors, but we’ll keep you posted.

Say what you want but you would have been pissed if I hadn’t passed this one along. I mean, come on, it has a baby monkey. There’s like a legal requirement to post this. [Via]

Oh come on, Patrick Gavin! Your list of Rahm Emanuel for Chicago mayor URLs leaves one wanting. RahmItHome.com? RahmRahmIsraelforGettin’-Bizreal.com? RahmHogButcherOfTheWorld.com? TheCityThatWorksForRahmAlone.com? CityofBigFuckingShoulders2012.com? TheSecondMotherfuckingCity.com?

There is apparently a “Saturday Night Live” boardgame and it is also apparently a new product? (On the plus side of this odd news, since 1. ‘SNL’ movies always bomb and/but 2. Only board games can become movies now, so this is a totally valid business model for the franchise to evolve and achieve success in the theaters!)

“Documents were scattered all over the room, and Love shared dozens of these documents with the reporters-property records, financial statements showing money being transferred from Love’s account to other people’s accounts, payment receipts, signatures she said were forged. The reporters huddled around Love’s laptop and viewed a private website that served as a database for all of these documents, which she’d been collecting as evidence. Love would show them a document on paper or online and then say something like: ‘Isn’t it weird that [So and So’s] signature is on that?’ She did a lot of Googling, too, mostly of names and property addresses listed in the documents. This went on for about three hours.”
–Following Courtney Love down the rabbithole.

The headline pretty much says it all: “Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Park51: Yes to tolerance, no to mosque”

I’m a little obsessed/afraid of Willow Smith! Yes, she is 9, and she has a hot single and it’s… sort of appealing? She did Ryan Seacrest’s show this morning and it was kind of awesome? This feels weird because I don’t like rich progeny and the easy jump-off and Will Smith, I’ve never been a fan-but listen we just have to accept this and roll with it. (Also she is very smart and for a 9-year-old, incredibly well-spoken. And NO, I actually did not just call her “articulate.”) Listen. YOU CANNOT FIGHT THE FUTURE. Just let Willow be Willow. Points of view: “Lyrically, there’s mention of getting one’s ‘swag on’ and ‘just tryin’ have fun so keep the party jumpin’.’ We’re assuming that’s jumping up and down on a bouncy castle with all your other nine-year-old friends buzzing off too much Dr Pepper, right?” Yes, sure. Other points of view: “I love it. I love whipping my dog’s ears back and forth to the beat. I love the 34-year-old session singer who’s playing the part of ‘Willow Smith.’”

Excellent news about a movie we’re dying to see: “Alamo Drafthouse CEO and Founder Tim League announced today that he is expanding the renowned Alamo Drafthouse brand into film distribution under the banner Drafthouse Films (www.drafthousefilms.com). The first film to release under the new label will be Chris Morris’s astonishing new comedy Four Lions.”

Recently I went to visit an acquaintance who was trashing out his own condo. There were hinges to be pried out of doorways and appliances to take for eBay. The house had become inert, a non-house: trapped somewhere between the building’s association who wanted the fees owed to pay for the building’s roof and walls and the like, the people who wanted the property taxes to pay for things like schools and street lights and roads and the people who were in charge of collecting (or more likely not collecting) the mortgage for whomever actually owned the mortgage debt (at the end of that chain, quite possibly you and me). These various claimants made the house largely worthless-more worthless than the latest assessment, which was… well, a comparable apartment nearby had recently sold for $120,000. It had been listed at $325,000 in May, 2009. That $120,000 sale price was not much higher than that apartment’s last sale-twenty years ago.

Anyway, it was somewhat likely that, after the investment of some work on this apartment that was being trashed out, such as providing it with new door hinges and appliances, the association would find a renter unafraid of a possibly surprising ending to his rental agreement term in exchange for a below-market rent. That would be a best outcome.

The others would most likely find no purchase for their attempts to collect (the owner was protected by bankruptcy), and certainly the bank had little incentive to collect the mortgage, although their claims on the title would likely make finding a purchaser difficult.

One of the few chairs remaining in the near-vacant condo was occupied by someone on the other side, as it were. Someone not in bankruptcy, for one thing. This person had recently made a $200,000 offer on two-bedroom apartment in a nice part of town. (Needless to say, this town was not New York City.)

But when he had gone to get a mortgage, the bank had balked, because that apartment now assessed at half that value, and so now his current offer for the two-bedroom was at something like $78,000, having come up from something like $65,000 or $72,000. That offer number was jiggling and that title too was somewhat not entirely not cloudy, because that condo association was trying to get a bit of the sale money for past unpaid maintenance under the old owner, which seems, if logical, a bit short-sighted of the association’s best interests. They ran the risk of receiving zero dollars instead of some dollars, by dragging the potential new owner into someone else’s debt.

But then, we’re pretty much all subject to someone else’s debt these days, even those of us who rent. Renters are shielded from what is happening with a property, except when they receive a stray envelope addressed to their landlords, or the records pop up online-and the record-keeping systems, when I look up mortgages and sales online, seem to me to be bogged down and very tardy. I imagine the one or two municipal employees in each town in America with the responsibility of making these things public crouched in some little cave, with a stack of depressing white and red and yellow paper towering over their little desks. (Really, it’s probably all done by computers. With near- or off-shored labor-somewhere in Utah or Israel.)

In any event, there it was: the magical $78,000 two-bedroom apartment. The steal of a lifetime. The great American get-ahead.

I bring this up in part because this Sunday, at the Brooklyn Book Festival, there is a panel at noon which includes Naomi Klein and Kurt Andersen and Jordan Flaherty and also Paul Reyes. His new book, Exiles in Eden-some of which is in the August issue of Harper’s-is an account of going to work for his father, who has for some time now been a trasher-outer of abandoned and foreclosed homes. In the book, Reyes follows the trail of breadcrumbs of the people who’ve abandoned or been evicted from their houses to the foreclosure auctions, and along the way meets people like the housing advocates who’ve installed squatters in vacant properties.

(The panel is slotted against “Me… In The World,” which stars Sam Lipsyte, and a panel called “Pop Life: Music, Memory, and America’s Coming of Age,” with Ta-Nehisi Coates, which may be more appealing and relaxing and better-attended, but then we all have to make difficult choices in these times.)

Reyes did the first reading from his book the other week and something odd happened. He did not get author-friendly questions about the precious process of writing his book. Instead, a long discussion ensued among the audience members about the financial system and the housing market. In the audience were brokers and bankers and homeowners and renters. A mass of anecdotage and experience and theory was shared. It was something like an impromptu consciousness-raising session, very thorough, and when the audience left, everyone had had time to sift through his and her experiences with the state of our financial system and to incorporate some fresh input.

“The audience reaction was exactly what I’d hoped for,” Reyes wrote to me the other day. “I’m certainly happy to stand up there and blather for twenty minutes, but I’d much rather have an intense discussion about this issue and hear what people have been through and what their ideas are.”

Although he’ll be taking this conversation to the Times’ Opinionator blog’s Living Rooms section soon, he does not have at this time many in-person readings scheduled; author reading tours are not booked by publishers much these days.

“I’m trying to work the promotion of the book into a split personality tour of sorts — between the narrative journalist and housing wonk,” Reyes wrote. “If all goes well, I’ll drop in on university classes in the daytime, then hit the bookstores at night. I’ll wear a different pair of glasses for each role, of course.”

Next week, on the 14th, Reyes will be reading as well at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. Perhaps you’d like him to visit your fine local bookstore, classroom or community center. His email address is on his website.