Christmas Music At A Redneck Bar

Big news this week from the world of sports, as Sports Illustrated named LeBron James its Sportsman of the Year. When I first heard the news, I wondered how SI could give this award to a player from a team that had just lost to the Washington Wizards. But then I realized the award is for the yearlong greatness James displayed. That yearlong greatness continued last night as the Heat got crushed at home to the NY Knicks, by the way. But I digress. James is in some fine company by winning this SI award. A few notable past winners include Pete Rose (tax cheat, terrible gambler, and banned for life from baseball), Joe Paterno (facilitated the raping of children by a buddy of his for decades, oh wait, it was all horseplay...), Tiger Woods (a relentless liar and pursuer of Ambien fueled sex romps with every skank imaginable while married to Jesper Parnevik's nanny), Mark McGwire (cheater, liar, and very poor public speaker to boot), Sammy Sosa (see McGwire, Mark), and Lance Armstrong (who not only carried out one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American public, but also left his wife for Cheryl Crow after she'd stood by him through his battle with testicular cancer - what a swell guy). Mr James is not yet in the company of these various horrible people, and may never be. Let's hope not anyway. After all, it was James who said, just days after screwing over the city of Cleveland on national television in a sham of a one hour special on ESPN, that the Heat would win "not one, not two, not three, not four, not five not six, not seven" NBA Titles. By my math he's got a ways to go on delivering that promise to the various Cubans and Jews in South Florida. Good luck, Mr James. Of some note is that at the ceremony Sports Illustrated held in New York the other night, standing right next to James, side by side, thick as thieves, was Coach K. I guess Mike Brown, Paul Silas, and Erik Spoelstra, men who coached James in the NBA, weren't good enough to stand next to James as he basked in this extremely awesome honor bestowed by a dying magazine. Coach K did win the same award last year from SI (although he had to share the honor with some demented old lady who coaches girls hoops). So maybe he was there to pass the torch to the newest Sportsman of the Year. I have no idea. What they should have done is invited Sammy Sosa's bleached skin, Peter Edward Rose's tax returns, Lance Armstrong's cancerous testicles, and Joe Paterno's rotting corpse to pose next to James. Now that's a photo I'd enjoy. I'd use it at the top of this blogpost. That's for certain.

As for my athlete of the year, I haven't decided yet. Some name will pop into my head as I write the last blog post of the year later this month. But I'll put my past 3 winners up against SI's any day. Those would be YE Yang (2009), Landon Donovan (2010), and Jimmer Fredette (2011). I've got a feeling another golfer could win it this year. Maybe a kid from Northern Ireland...

Christmas isn't officially for a few more weeks, but I've been seeing signs of it already. Did you know that "every kiss begins with Kay?" Or that you should "get a get a get a Garmin?" All that advertising is nice. I really enjoy it. But the music is even better. I was sitting at one of the worst dive bars known to man Wednesday, a joint called Darunkass in disincorporated Greensboro, with about a dozen rednecks discussing bow hunting and horse power - my kind of guys. I felt a little out of place, seeing as how I was the only guy in the place wearing a sport coat and tie. Anyway, one of the TV's to my left was tuned to CMT. And the sound was up for some reason. A man in chaps was sitting at a high top watching intently. And the station aired Christmas tunes with a country music twist for like an hour. I had a hard time masking my laughter. But I managed to, as I was a little concerned each of the dudes sitting around getting hammered at 4:30  in the afternoon might have a shotgun out in their trucks. But the country music Christmas songs were hilariously awful. My favorite was a version of I'll Be Home For Christmas by Rascal Flatts. I found it amusing because, as I've mentioned before on this blog, I went to school for a year or so with a kid in the group. A kid named Jay Demarcus. And Jay, besides being one of the worst pathological liars I ever met in my life, sings really nasally. So seeing Jay on the old CMT at this redneck dive bar was pretty interesting. I know one thing, if Jay stumbled into Darunkass some afternoon and that same crew I encountered was there, he'd need to stay quiet. Because if he started in with all these wild lies like he did back in 1986, those boys in Darunkass would shoot him dead on the spot. As for me??? I got along so well with the good old boys at Darunkass that they bought me 2 shots. Not that I needed them at 5 in the afternoon. But trust me, these were the types of guys who you don't turn down a shot from. They take that as a personal insult. And me being such a sweet kid, I didn't turn them down. As I hoisted the second shot of Jack back, I said, pretty loudly "to Jeff Davis."

Several folks have asked me about TOSU and their recently completed undefeated season in college football. I watched all their games but one (against Indiana) and I gotta say, they weren't overwhelmingly impressive most of the season. Yes, TOSU went 12 & 0. And that was great and all. But this notion being floated by the typical Buckeye fan that the Associated Press should vote them number 1 is pretty absurd. They'd be hard pressed to beat any team in the top 10 or 12. Not that it couldn't happen. It would just be unlikely. The one team I'd love to see them get a shot at is old Notre Dame. The last time TOSU played the Irish they put up 618 yards of offense and crucified them in the Corn Chip Bowl back in January of 2006. Thanks to my man, the 10. Troy Fucking Smith.

Ho, Ho, Ho