Which way the scales?

Looking for an escape.  Making one, on occasion, but always looking.  On that occasion, those escapes can last years. But over the 15 years of the Gold, as I think about life and what's been shared, that concept kept coming into my mind.  It could be read as "why can't you be happy with what you have?"  Well, there is enough of that already, no?  Isn't that day to day life?  

"Let's Do a Jacuzzi!"

The very people who used this setting as one for business deals, not deals of another sort, were still very much in charge at the beginning of this blog.  Their stories were simply endless gold deliveries, and most...MOST told them sheepishly.  Well, would you be proud of the fact that you were an hour late to get your wife at LAX because you just got some daffy dust and you wanted that gone before you got her?  And then when you got there she could tell you were "full of ideas" and there, in front of a soon to be completed Tom Bradley Terminal she calls you out and your high vanishes and you say it has to end, right then and there.  

That's a sad ending, but it's an ending that means that person could talk to you, in that hallway, in 2005.  Tread carefully, because you don't want to oversell and leave them wondering why life isn't the same.  In many ways, they survived.  Hell, they're still there, and in the end, decades later, you want to be that person telling the youth of America about shit that went down in your youth that you regret, sure, but the story is so nutty that it's an easy go-to for entertainment of "the old days."

But...there are others that vanished and now, 15 years later, even more are gone.  What seemed as relatively recent history then is even more far gone now...if it seemed like another world 15 years ago, what is it now?  Can you blame anyone if, reading it now, it starts to read like fiction?  Whoever is left will readily assure you it was all very real.  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer are around to do so. 

No, it was a comeback

It's not all depression around here...well, I mean, there ARE the weekends where some sort of facsimile of college football is still presented.  And you KNOW it warmed my heart completely to see CBS, carrying coast to coast, the afternoon football game of Appalachian State against Marshall.  This is how it could be: these schools mixed in with their usual SEC games.  I wanted the nation to know this.  Accept this, then embrace it.  Well, the results are in and needless to say that was not the case.  Look, you can't help people who don't want help, and I'm sure there are some overfed yokels out there who took one look at that game, thought it was Canadian football, and put in a tape of an old fishing show.  

Earlier in the day, however, Navy made quite the comeback: against Tulane, down 24-0 at halftime, they stormed back and won on the last play of the game.  Announcer Mark Jones yelped that it was the largest comeback in school history.  The Midshipmen were euphoric.  And then Mark decided to quote a lyric from LL Cool J from 30 years ago (to show he's hip to the youth of today).  It was the first lyric to "Mama Said Knock You Out" and even if you'd never heard the song in your life, you'd realize he was 100% wrong because what just occurred was exactly that: a comeback.  The same one that, seconds before, he was shouting about.  It appears the lesson will be learned, again, that announcers have shelf lives, some longer than others, and his appears to be done.  It was a good run.

The fall of Fall

I mentioned in my first Two Decades post back in January that the evolution of the "New Fall Season" has gradually tumbled in importance.  Year after year it was so...a decline that I thought last year's breathless advertising was quaint.  Like a long ignored chain store that was once popular: customers walk by, seeing big banners for sales of new products, and turn to one another and talk about their last visit.  "Wow, how long has it been?  Man, we used to go in there all the time.  Remember that?"

Well, now there isn't one, and the very topic which was first brought up 20 years ago, that "there is no season anymore" - a topic that started with Survivor and pushed beyond with all other viewing sources, now here we are.  There are shows, you watch them now, or later, or a while after that.  There's more than ever...and that's just the first layer.

It's hard to say that it will ever return, or at least not to what it was, say 5-10 years ago, because weeks become months and months are years.  It seems that way now; fuck if I know why.  To that point, when I looked for my first post on Pacific Gold, the title was "A Hope For Tomorrow during Maddening Frustration."  I can pinpoint just what it was I was referring to, but while the problem seemed large at the time, what did I know?  If I look at this time of year over the last 15 years, roughly 1/3rd of the time I'd consider what I was going though the same thing - I was in maddening frustration, but there was hope for tomorrow in some way.  Was it really not that big a deal, or was it and I didn't let it get to me?  Maybe I was too much of a blithe spirit to realize my surroundings.  Maybe...

Nobody said that life would be easy, nor would it be easy finding a shorter rope.  Now, as then, we press on like Farmer John ham.   

 

The Hottest

 (static is heard, a monotone voice drones through the ether)

"The lever is long, and time is short"

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I knew we were Bound For Greatness when I got a text that jarred me out of bed at 2:45am about how it was safe to bet the KHL in Kazhakstan again.  Traktor was giving 1.5 goals, and you'd be a damn fool to let that pass.  I knew then, like I know now, like I always knew, that things were Turning Around.  Summer was around the corner, and spring had sprung.

Of course, it always gets hot before it boils.

Now we sit in the wash and pretend that "distractions" are any different from the waking somnambulance which constitutes our "lives".  Reanimated corpses come to life, indeed.  A 40 game season where they have to play a tripleheader just to make up for time lost to myocardial infarctions, and at the end you hoist a trophy in front of?  Your dad?  Who got the flu-mist?

I may have arrived too late to comment on these things, and lord knows I've heard much more music through the needle in the last 6 months than I have through the wireless.  I haven't had a drink in a year and this last 3 months felt like skiing uphill.  I worked, I quit, then I got hired, you know how it goes.  Strikes and gutters, and the gauze that covers my vision is comforting at long last.

But that's not what you are here for.  That's not what any of us are here for.

I suppose if you pull anything out of What It Means this year, it's got to be that the truth fucking CUTS, man.  I once mused that they might well just play these games on a sound stage in Burbank, and NOW THEY DO EXACTLY THAT.  Baseball became wrestling, football a game of sandlot two-hand touch, basketball reduced to a play in the round.  So what do we do?  You watch it, you sort of cheer, and you, what?  Eat?

If you're laying out hot sauce, like we all should, it's got to be offense forever.  If Stern were alive, he'd have these games ending in the 300s.  Why would a defender throw himself in front of a chugging running back and risk any type of injury or even discomfort?  What the hell does any of it matter anyway?  Keep the score up, keep the eyeballs, keep the money.  It's happening without witnesses, so, fine.  It's easier to control the dull roar of the fake fans inside the Viking Stadium than the real ones.  Shit, were there real ones?

They didn't blow the horn because 4 cops killed a guy.

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The meaning is gone, and there was never any meaning.  We told ourselves stories of rectitude and order.  In reality, it was always the spinning stars and the rising sun.  It was always the golden waves, and the green and blue drifts.  It was always only a stack of moments, nothing more.  So we still charge into that surf - and we still See What Happens when we step off the curb.

The Gold stays.  Happy 15.

It began with the 1991 Backyard Brawl

Vacations way up in the north country during my youth were enforced that it was to relax, to be in nature, and that TV was not needed.  Even at that age I knew that to be false for a myriad of reasons.  I was impressionable enough to realize Duluth TV stations cleared all network programming, which meant game shows the Donahues consumed in the Twin Farms.   But what else was out there?  Anybody get any Canadian stations?

My requests were met with the usual parental dismissing that all starts to feel the same.  Whatever quaint feeling there might have been was always nudged a bit when we'd go through a brief walk in the woods and come to the next cabin to the southwest.  There, at the edge of the rocks on Superior, stood an earth station.  Oh, to know what wonder existed.  Even on my usual visits, the TV wasn't on, I was told to not ask about it; just be a good kid and not talk at all.

Over Labor Day weekend '91, however, a drive up there was supported by the radio call of the old "Kickoff Classic" game, figuring this was the last we'd know of sports until return.  Our arrival was met with more than the usual multi-hour cocktail party vibe: said neighboring cabin had visitors from western PA.  This could mean good or bad news, not sure.

On that Saturday, with boredom setting in, I wandered over.  There it was: the remote in hand, the box all lit up.  "Hey, we're trying to find the Backyard Brawl!"  I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll tell you what I'm seeing: a football game on something called the Sunshine Network.  Channels changed, and the dish moved.  Wait, that...is that a station in Oklahoma?  Don't change the channel.  Slow down here, that TBS ad said "Superstation 17."  

Eventually, ESPN was found, and there was the game.  To me, the outcome was of no consequence.  The important thing was what I had suspected: there are games out there.  Games I can't reach, but if I only had a conduit to the sky.

At halftime I raced back to our cabin (read: house).  I unleashed a stream of knowledge to my father of these wonders in the atmosphere, signals from across the land that brought football goodness and that we were just scratching the surface.  He looked at me with his usual combination of "What the fuck are you talking about" and "I don't care."  I simply moved on, hurrying to return for the 2nd half.

Fast forward a little over a decade later and with dish / earth station technology improved, here I am again, finding a few things.  Hmmm...that gives me an idea.  This idea was met.  It was then perfected.  By the mid-late 00s, I could brave getting up earlier on a Saturday morning in the fall.  I'd start the 9AM window with 13 games simultaneously.  The volume would ebb and flow, and depending on if Hawaii was at home, it could go all night.  Sure, it was the viewing, and gambling, and just the ability.  But I wanted weirdo finds.  Someone in LA shouldn't be able to watch Houston Baptist home games, let alone do so from the comfort of a TV set.  Open that Madria Sangria and don't stop and wonder why the Colorado School of Mines game is on Live TV.  So there are maybe, players included, 1000 people there.  In November, look at it snowing for Hofstra's breakfast game as you plan your day.  Marvel at the SD perfection of Las Cruses' "AggieVision."

But time marched on.  More and more conferences started their own networks, making the reach easier and a little less fun.  Then, one year, out of fiscal responsibility, I didn't order extra channels.  And I was OK with it.  And then I'd read of more and more games online, so I'd have those going on in the background.  It made sense by going online...it made for an even cheaper look, but it also took less people to do, which in turn meant more games (even if they looked like a high school game from, well, back in 1991).

And here we are now, without a real season, more of a controlled experiment.  I lamented this when I was buying my traditional sangria for said viewing, and though the mask I did my best to enunciate that I usually bought this for college football.  Now...oh well.  "Don't worry, dude.  No, there will be college football."  The cashier seemed near adamant.  He knew why.  It was the same reason they were getting paid more during the Spring - though it was hazard pay.  It's the almighty dollar, one that will separate the haves from the have-nots in the future of college football.  

My love came from the volume of games at the blend of said 2.  It was the blend that will return one day.  Big schools, small schools, the dollars flowing.  I'll be there, watching somehow, feeling like an old buddy has returned to town and it's like he never left.  Until then, we drink and reflect on how much has changed.  Better?  Worse?  Maybe...both?