Truth Hurts

We're kinda average.

Why in god's name is Ohio State's football team currently ranked in the top 25?

Really: 13th? Why?

We've played four games. We had an average game and soundly beat a D1-AA team. We looked terrible and beat OU, an average-at-best MAC team. We were pounded on the road by the best team in the country. And then we scuffled around and beat an above-average Sun Belt team. You take "Ohio State" and "Preseason top 5 ranking" off the top of that resume and you're not left with much. Just look at the results, or--more damning--the play on the field and we're talking about a Wake Forest or Oregon State or Texas A&M or Iowa or--god forbid--TCU or Fresno type performance. Are those teams consistently ranked? No of course not cause more often than not they're jokes.

Look, I love that my team benefits from name recognition and consistently favorable preseason poll positioning, but those things are probably the top two things wrong with college football. It sorta pains me to say it, but Ohio State currently represents the worst of the NCAA football structure.

Let's roll around in my own depravity for a moment now. Have a look at Auburn, just one of more than 100 teams ranked below us right now. They're also 3-1. They didn't play any 1-AAs yet but they beat in average-ish performances two overmatched teams, then got an ugly win against a conference opponent. Their loss was to the current #5 team in the country after leading most of the game. I'm sorry but that's a better showing so far than us. Now let's try Ball State. They outclassed an 1-AA team, snuck by a 2007 bowl team, beat an average MAC school, then defeated a Big Ten school on the road. Still that's better than us. Going further, go ahead and scan the results of schools like Kansas, Maryland, UConn, hell even Duke and tell me with a straight face that they couldn't have produced the same results as us with our schedule.

I'll list those again: Kansas, Maryland, UConn, Duke. I'm talking about football, not basketball. Would anyone ever consider ranking Duke 13th in the country?

Just think about that one when watching Pryor open up our Big Ten schedule this week, and hope he helps to start bringing our performance in line with our spot in the polls.

i've got a noland bull's-eye on my phone. i'd have rothko too but the light wasn't right cause it's just a cell phone after all, and his orange turned out kinda brown. damn shame messing up orange.
i've almost weaned myself off of the wetting eye drops. 6 weeks since the surgery. that's good healin.
mother i don't think you've ever read this before thank goodness but if you are now, please hide your eyes. i was as high as i've ever been last night. maybe it was the 4.5 hours of tap budweiser that preceded it but lordy those two bowls i shared set me dizzy. dave and i were literally crying laughing walking in the cold talking about hamster wheels. don't even ask me about the show at the knitting factory. i got the paranoid jumpy jitters for a while and had trouble focusing on anyone who dared talk to me. i made an epiphanic and amorous exclamation to someone late friday night and the recipient was at the show and was adorably concerned about me. made me smile (an actual smile not just a cannabic smile). if that doesn't say all you need to know about my lot in life, i don't know what does.
i realize that van gogh is pretty famous and starry night is too but that painting had easily the largest crowd around it of anything in moma last friday. seemed odd. i was able to walk right up 6 inches from both the aforementioned rothko and noland and stand there for 3 or 4 solid minutes without bothering anyone behind me waiting for a view. warhol's soup cans were similarly dismissed. a huge pollock and a huger monet were probably the 2nd and 3rd most popular pieces in the museum. i will say that the monet--something like "clouds reflecting on a pond"--produced the finest effect of anything on me: after a couple minutes of staring from a normal distance away from the probably 30-foot wide painting, the clouds really started to seem as though they were drifting and floating across the painting. it was surreal, and positively sublime. a similar, if much more frenetic, effect was produced by a mondrian called "broadway boogie woogie."
the previously number-one-ranked football team of my alma mater was defeated tragically close to the end of the season on saturday. i'm supposed to be pretty upset by this, but i'm not. my favorite pro team very nearly lost to a rival on sunday as well but that wasn't really causing me any distress either. i think i'm getting too old to stress out about sports. i enjoy them, but throughout their duration i am fully aware that the outcome really doesn't matter much to me.
if someone were watching a videotape of my weekend he or she would be hard-pressed not to say "sheesh this guy drinks too much." it seems like i share the same feeling at the front end of many weeks. not this one though. 27 is a good age to be in new york city. 28 will be a good age too, but probably slightly less so. 29, 30, 31.........you understand the pattern. it doesn't really get better, presumably. the time of your life. is it ok to know it's the time of your life while it's happening, and not merely much after the fact. can you forsake the warmth of nostalgia by superheating the glory of the act itself? i am molten. now.
the whole point of my stated and reinforced claim to willingly leave this earth after just 60 years is that you don't need all those later years if you live yourself out before you get there. out loud out front outside out of bounds out out out out. my 81st year is living vicariously through my 27th right now, sensing and savoring and experiencing and remebering my 27th year all at once. i want to get to 60 and just be too exhausted to have any desire to continue. i want for the world to be too exhausted to let me continue. do not begrudge me.