TNL Countdown to Football, Part 3

FYI, Issue 2 has apparently been lost forever; I do have a vague memory of it being very contrived in a lax attempt to match the revolutionary direction of the pilot issue.

A few comments on Issue 3, below:

1. Remember when Chuck was still The Chest rather than The Clown and Football Jesus reigned superior?
2. I always figured Elizaben jokes would get old once those two were betrothed…but I was wrong.
3. Statefans Jacob.  Jacobfans.  Ah, those were the days.  Hey Jacob, which game are they blowing up the scoreboard again?  (Although I will admit me commenting on Jacob’s drinking…people who live in glass houses, I know).
4. Does anyone remember who Gary was?  
5. Lauren’s B-day…you just had to be there I guess.
6. The tent.  At least a hundred emails went back and forth about that tent. 

Volume 1, Issue 3
Biloxi or Gastonia
August 2003 

I think the biggest thing that hurt the program was when they lost Chuck Amato, when he went to NC State.  He was a big part of disciplining the players and helping reign the team in. When you saw Chuck coming, everybody would jump. Now they don’t have anybody like that over there.
~Sam Cowart

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor
So here we are, each of us, in our own way, enduring the final Dog Days of Summer – the last days until January where we’ll wonder “What the heck are we gonna do this weekend?”.  Because by this point, it’s so painfully obvious that if you have to ask, you’ll never know.  We’re gonna be doing our civic duty as good, moral, God-fearing, hard-working, Momma and Uncle Sam-respecting, apple-pie loving Americans: Watching college football dagummit!  Someone pass me a beer!

BOOM! – Here Come the Boys from the South
Alas, you can smell it: autumn.  Screw the calendar, fall officially begins this Saturday about noon when, minus Ben, we all gather next to Wade Avenue (literally) and Jacob performs the ceremonial “popping the top” of the 2003 season’s first Cold Adult Beverage.  I’d have to imagine this is our own little version of running through the tunnel, although I reckon we could all line up and run through the tent that Worm better have.

Western Carolina Preview
State and Western have met four times; State has won all four.  The Catamounts, 5-6 in 2002, are also winless versus all current ACC teams…ah heck, I can’t even justify spending the time previewing the Cullowhee Cats.  We should score on at least – AT LEAST – five of our first six possessions.  In fact, I’m gonna start complaining if we let them score before the fourth quarter.  By the third quarter, we should be getting a good look at Davis or Stone and by around 8 o’clock we should be in the mood to head on back and watch Florida State waxing Carolina.

Western is close to being a team Ben’s “high school team could beat.”  So let’s go out and drink some beer and have some fun and take care of business on the first leg of our road to New Orleans. 

Weather Forecast 
Tailgating: 91 degrees, 80% humidity, Isolated Thunderstorms
Gametime: 70 degrees, 90% humidity, Mostly Clear

Ben Joke of the Week
“Word, I’m not missing anymore games just so I don’t get left out of the daily emails.  It’s like being left alone on an island.  This sucks.”

I’ll Believe It When I See It
Jacob helped Lucas move this weekend.  Thanks man, really appreciate it.  Luke drove to Pineville to pick him up so he could drive the U-Haul back for him.  On the drive to Spartanburg, Jake told him, with as straight a face as you could ever imagine: “I only plan on having a couple [beers] at each game this year.  I really just want to have a few and relax and enjoy the games.”

Do huh?

I have only one response to that: When pigs stinking fly.  When Raleigh freezes over in August.  When Lizzy gives Ben his cojones back. 
 
For those of you wondering, Jacob only has a “couple” with his morning Corn Flakes.  A “couple” to Jacob means a couple six-packs.  This just won’t cut it.  As my papaw used to say: “Ahhh me, ‘at just don’t make no nevermind!”

A sober Jacob on game day would force Anheuser-Busch to completely rethink its marketing strategy.  We’re talking plummeting stock, here.  And how in the hell is anyone supposed to have fun without, at some point, Jacob saying or doing something completely stupid to Easy-E and spending the rest of the evening groveling and trying to get out of the doghouse?

“Statefans Jacob” would never be sober on game day.  I don’t even know who you are anymore.

Random Memorable Memory to be Remembered by Many
South Carolina game; 1999; Hurricane Dennis; in the old student lot.  Best known as the “tator throwing incident.”

Jacob and Gary and Shawn and I are standing in the bed of my truck, in the pouring rain, drunk (which is essentially a gimmie at almost any point between 1997 and 2000).  Suddenly, a good-sized potato comes hurling towards us, smashing into my truck.  Jacob grabs it and returns fire; he hurls it a solid eighty yards, on a perfect trajectory, hitting some dude standing on top of a U-haul square in the chest so hard he knocked that cat clean off the U-haul!

A few minutes later, this group of guys comes up, rolling eight deep.  By now, it’s just me and Gary (Jake and Shawn were off in the woods, I’m pretty sure, and Chip and Ben were both flirting with Melissa).  “Either of ya’ll see anyone throwing potatoes?  We’re gonna beat their ass when we find them; they knocked one of our friends off the U-haul!”

Eight on two: now I don’t know how many of them it would have taken to beat our asses, but I sure as heck knew how many they were planning to use.  And that’s some good information to have. 

I look at Gary, and as smooth as only pre-whipped, old-school G-Funk could be: “I don’t know who did it but they hit us, too!  We’ll help you find ‘em.  We want a piece, too.”

So we go strolling off behind these cats, looking for the culprits.  These are the things you tell your grandson about.  

TNL Page2
We celebrated Lauren’s birthday Saturday night.  Started with a nice surprise dinner at Amedeos; ended with, to my best estimate, around a $400 bar tab at Rum Runners.  We shut that place down.  Once outside (a bit of a struggle, mind you), Shawn asked me and Daniel if we were sure we had settled with the guy.  “Are you sure?” 

Yeah, Shawn, I’ve got a Visa receipt that says I’m pretty damn certain.  (Wanna see a look that is unmatched?  Ask Shawn about the cash he dropped in that place.)

Anyway, I wish words could describe just how much fun we had…and just how trashed we all were.  And I don’t just mean the usual suspects; I’m talking Lauren taking Wolfpack shooters with us and getting just plum rowdy. 

And Shawn…that cat was in rare form; I’m talking 1998 B.C. (Before Chic).  I hadn’t seen him that drunk since the bachelor party.  Freaking hilarious. 

I still don’t know how we got home, but I do remember the ride.  I remember laying in the back seat across Lauren, Kerie, and Shawn, while Shawn held my head down because “there’s a cop!”  But the best part might have been when he tried to get me to be quiet because he was hurting me and I thought I was gonna puke: instead of just covering my mouth, he decided it would be funnier to cover my mouth and pinch my nose closed and put his elbow into my jugular.  You know how difficult it gets to breathe when you suppress the air supply on a drunk dude?

And then it just got silly.  Shawn was running his mouth about something, so Lauren (getting ill, buzz and all), told him to “SHUT UP!”  The exchange went a little something like this:

Lucas: “Sh…awn…I…can’t…breath…”
Shawn: “Be quiet, there’s a cop!”
Lauren: “Shawn, be quiet!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”
Lauren: “Shawn: BE QUIET!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”
Lauren: “SHAWN – MY HUSBAND: BE QUIET!”
Lucas: “You’re choking me, man!”
Lauren: “Lucas, shut up!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”
Lauren: “SHAWN!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”

Anyway, you get the point.  This went on the entire ride.

And then we got home.  Shawn, trying to regain the Title, collapses into the chair and stuffs his mouth full of Wheat Thins but decides he doesn’t really have the energy to chew them, so they just kind of rest there on the edge of his mouth and all over his stomach.

But then he decides he needs to puke.

Shawn: “Lucas, go open the back door for me.”
Lucas: “I’ll get right on that” (not moving).
Shawn: “I gotta puke.  Lucas, go open the back door for me.”
[Lauren enters from the back]: “Shawn, why do you want the back door open?”
Shawn [laughing uncontrollably]: “Lucas needs to puke.”
Lauren [very ill]: “Lucas, if you’re gonna puke go to the bathroom!”
Lucas: “I don’t NEED to puke.”
Shawn [Motions to me with his head]: “Yes you do.”
[Lauren looks down at me]
Lucas [sarcastic]: “Ok, it’s me; I’m the one that needs to puke.”
Shawn: “Lucas, open the back door so you can go puke.”
Lauren: “Shawn, go out the front!”
[Shawn tries his hardest to bypass removing the Charlie Bar and open the sliding door anyway].
Lauren: “SHAWN!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”
Lauren: “SHAWN!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”
Lauren: “SHAWN!”
Shawn: “LUCAS!”

Again, you get the point.  Everyone else (Erin, Kerie, Daniel, and Kendal) is laughing uncontrollably, excluding Lauren (who did eventually laugh about it…the next morning).  The story ends – at least the official version anyway; see me for the unedited version – with Shawn comatose on the back steps, Lauren locking the door on us, and then Shawn collapsing in the guest bed because that was “his” bed.

We tried to be 19 again and we semi-succeeded, yet somehow failed miserably.  And I have to say, this has been the one of the roughest weeks of my life, as I am now in Day 4 of my hangover.  I am officially back on the wagon.  At least until Saturday anyway.

Time to Close the Flap
Matt: “I thought you already have a tent?”

Calm down, ya’ll.  Worm has a big red tent.  He erected that S.O.B. in his parking lot in a “celebration of his greatness.”

Worm, just don’t forget it.  That wouldn’t be prudent.

See ya’ll Saturday.

R.L.