“The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day….”—Ernest Thayer
Nor for the moribund Florida Gators, either, a football team which entered the season with high hopes and now, halfway in, found themselves in a death spiral, teetering on the cusp of irrelevance with a 3-3 record and the mighty eleventh-ranked Georgia Bulldogs lining up against them. Gator fans schlumped into EverBank Field in Jacksonville with the air of condemned prisoners heading for the gallows. But a funny thing happened on the way to the mortuary.
Florida’s problems had been primarily twofold—a quarterback inadequate to compete at the big boy level and a head coach too stubborn to accept the fact. Now, with his job prospects for 2015 sinking faster than the Hindenburg, coach Will Muschamp decided to go with a talented but inexperienced freshman QB named Treon Harris. Georgia started the game as an eleven point favorite and looked the part, quickly stomping down the field for 7-0 lead. The Gator defense, however, is Florida’s strong point and the UF defensive coaches gradually began to solve the Bulldog offense. The Gators offense, meanwhile, began to show signs of life as Harris adjusted to the game. They drove the ball to the Georgia 33 yard-line, setting up their field-goal kicker for a 40-yard attempt.
Georgia barely noticed when Michael McNeely, a 5-9, 176-pound white boy came in to hold for the kicker, but the kid was having a pretty good week. A star multi-sport athlete in high school and an exceptional scholar recruited by Harvard and Dartmouth, McNeely opted instead to live out his lifelong dream to play for the Florida Gators and decided to accept walk-on status in Gainesville. He eventually earned a scholarship entering his senior year but rarely saw the field in games, relegated to a role on the scout team, which simulated the opponent in pre-game practices. McNeely also worked part time as a bag boy/cashier in a Publix market a few blocks from campus to save money for medical school. The week of the Georgia game he was notified he had been accepted into the prestigeous University of Florida medical school.
Will Muschamp stood on the sidelines, hoping the Georgia coaches had not noticed that the Gators failed to send out their usual holder, John Crofoot. If the Bulldog defenders appeared to have any suspicions of what was in store, the play was off. Fortunately for Florida, that didn’t happen. McNeely knelt to receive the ball for the hold, grabbed the snap, leapt up and headed for the hinterlands. He zipped around right end, got a couple of solid blocks and went into the endzone untouched. The Florida fans exploded into paroxysms of ecstasy. The Georgia side, dumbfounded, asked themselves what the hell just happened. And the newly-confident Gator team took over the game, running at will against its beleaguered opponent, rolling up a 31-7 lead before Georgia added a couple of harmless late touchdowns. Michael McNeely said it was “the best day of my life.” Bill Killeen said thanks for Birthday Present Number 1.
Lost In The Dreaded Fairfield Triangle
There are many wonderful advantages to living in tiny Fairfield, Fla. The air is clean, the neighbors are honest and it’s just a hop and a skip down the road to the markets, restaurants and entertainment opportunities of Gainesville and Ocala. It’s always a little warmer in Fairfield than the surrounding areas, the harsh rains are less frequent and the Jehovah’s Witnesses haven’t discovered it yet. Shari, the postmistress, takes particular care to put out the Pathogenes mail first, realizing the grave import of the little packages. Velma, the teller at the drive-thru window of the nearby Drummond Bank, will give you valuable gardening advice. What more could a body ask for except, maybe….
Fairfield is obviously caught in the middle of some communications vortex. Telephones don’t work out here and radios are iffy. After exhausting all else, we finally discovered that A.T.&T. had come up with a cell phone which could penetrate the Dead Zone hovering over the area. The radio problem, however persisted, and nowhere worse than in my bathroom, which resisted all efforts. We tried radio after radio. Siobhan kept buying newer and better antennas. Nothing worked. Finally, she brought out the big guns. She bought me an IPad Air 2 and a streamlined speaker called a Beats Pill, which actually looks more like a nifty horse suppository than a tiny pill. The vortex had no chance against this super-modern equipment. It fled, choking and gagging, into the Fairfield night. Bill said thanks for Birthday Present Number 2.
Lexington Revisited
When we put last week’s Flying Pie to bed, we were very happy with it. We always like exposing our readers to new places hitherto unexplored and to the people who help to make them interesting. Kentucky’s horse country is a unique and special place and we felt we were able to convey that in our articles, one of them highlighting a long-time habitue of the area, horse-broker Bill Mauk. Besides which, the pictures were good. As soon as the piece was published, we got calls and emails, more than usual, appreciating the effort. I thought the readership might come close to the always-popular vacation blogs, the birthday articles or one of the better elegies. Little did I know.
This column is usually read by about 350 people on a decent week. Last week, after a good first day, 180 read it the second, 143 the third and another 106 the fourth. The total went over 600 by Tuesday and settled just under 700. Gee. Who knew Lexington would be a subject of rapt interest? Bill Mauk, of course, was not even a little surprised. His appraisal was typically Maukian:
“See what happens when you write good shit.”
I’m thinking of using that as my new motto. Meanwhile, Bill says thanks for Birthday Present Number 3.
Bill Mauk Down On The Farm
Bill Mauk, After He’d Seen Paree
I’ll Just Take The Cake, Thank You
Birthday celebrations in the United States are pretty tame when you consider what people do elsewhere. Oh, we did have Michael Douglas’ brother in The Game, who bought his stodgy sibling an interesting present, signing him up with an “entertainment company” which proceeded to entangle poor Michael in a multilayered, life-and-death live action adventure. In the final scene, Douglas inadvertently shoots his brother and jumps to his intended death, only to finally discover the whole episode was really just a game meant to shake him out of his lethargy. That’s what we like—a little imagination.
Now, most of us probably think the people who live in Switzerland might be a little boring. I mean, it is a well-known fact that everybody over there works in banks and their idea of a good time is to go yodeling in the Alps. But hold on—listen to this! On birthdays, parents in Lucerne, a perfectly civilized city, seem to have a penchant for hiring an EVIL CLOWN to stalk, harass and eventually smash a PIE in the face of their dear little birthday boys and girls. WOW! Is that GREAT or what? This sounds like MUCH more fun than blowing out a few candles, in addition to being a boon to pie-makers everywhere.
In Canada, somebody came up with the bright idea that birthday children should be ambushed and their noses greased with butter. That way, the kid would be too slippery for Bad Luck to catch hold of. Now, this idea makes no sense to me. Don’t these Canadians realize that Bad Luck is perfectly aware of EARS? You gotta wonder.
Those supposedly straight-laced Germans have some goofy notions, themselves. On their thirteenth birthdays, single men are supposed to grab a broom and sweep the steps of City Hall, if they have one, or, barring that, the nearest church. This is supposed to showcase their apparently overlooked housekeeping skills. They are relieved of the duty only when they receive a kiss from a sympathetic female. Single women, on the other hand, are supposed to polish the doorknob. We’re afraid to ask about this one. it sounds like it has sexual innuendos to us.
And speaking of sexual innuendos, we have to deviate from the birthday celebrations for a moment to make you aware of the Festival of Kanamara Matsui in Japan. This thing dates back to the seventeenth century, so somebody must really like it. For this event, revelers dress up as penises—that’s right—and eat penis-shaped sweets while creating gigantic iron penises to carry through the streets of Kawasaki. The festival is supposed to honor the legend of a woman with a demonic toothed vagina which ate men’s penises (you’d think the word would get out about old Kimoko). The gnarly vagina remained undefeated until a clever metalworker built himself a metal penis which broke the demon’s teeth. Which is all well and good. Still, we’re not sure Kimoko’s reputation ever recovered.
They Walk Among Us
As we all know, the world is chock full of wacky Conspiracy Theorists. They’re everywhere, dredging up images of the Illuminati or mysterious Men In Black or—get this—ALIENS who have cleverly secreted themselves into polite society, lurking, waiting for the signal to strike. Ho ho, that’s rich! Or is it? I, for one, am prepared to announce that they might be right this time. How else to explain Florida Governor Rick Scott, he of the polished dome and forked tongue, the man who has yet to learn how Earth people smile? He’s a creepy guy, Rick Scott. Are we supposed to believe that a native of this planet can reach the age of 61 and never BLINK? I don’t think so. And now he’s a second-term governor, secure for four more years, well-placed for a run at the presidency. OH-OH! The science fiction writers warned us this might happen.
This presents an interesting question. How did Rick Scott, the Reptilian Vaudevillian, actually get to this point, who helped to put him there? Look no further than that nest of alien activity called The Villages, a fast-growing hive of deadly invaders which has risen up in the midst of Central Florida, swallowing up more and more land by the day, perhaps developing a secret heliport where their space ships can land undetected in the dead of night. Scott can often be found in this area, stirring up his fellow travelers, making sure all is in readiness for the eventual takeover, for the second coming. What’s that? The second coming of who? Come on, folks. You didn’t think that Richard Nixon was really dead, did you?
That’s all, folks….
