Last night I dreamt that I was going to a Halloween party, some swanky thing like in San Francisco or LA where people really dress up. And I was with two members of Duran Duran (Nick Rhodes and Andy Taylor, I think—or at least dream surrogates of those two, I'm sure the real Nick and Andy were off skulking around the dreams someone more important.)
The whole bit was they were going to wear their actual DuranDuran outfits from like the New Moon on Monday video, which they'd kept (and could still fit in!) all these years.
The joke was we were going to be Duran Duran (I guess I pitched I was going to be Simon back from the deep, an almost-drowned, zombified blue-faced version of the lead singer, referential to the yacht accident that nearly took him out in '85), but that was vetoed by the boys, so I just wore tight stretch pants and a mesh top and fishnets that were torn at the toes instead.
It went as dreams went. We caromed through this Halloween party which presently morphed into more of a Hunger Games-type situation, and Taylor was eventually outed as someone famous. As punishment, he had to hang on a pull-up bar-looking contraption for 30 minutes.
If he let go, he would plummet into a bottomless waterfall thing which the modest gym floor opened up to reveal. If he lived, he'd, I dunno, be allowed to rock once more (?)
The famed new wave guitarist hung in there for about 11 minutes, till he magically swung himself to safety, striating a big old leather-pant(ed) fight with these blue guards. In the end, I joined in the rebellion and got a few good shots in myself. Later on, I walked back to the bleachers toward my seat, helping the real Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer) dressed as a sexy devil in a red wig, back up to hers.
She turned to me and said, “Someone's been looking for you.” It was my college ex (also dressed like the devil) there to tell me my costume smelled (all costumes smell) and my fishnets were torn, and also I was annoying her during every lunch and dinner we shared, and it was time for us to break up.
Then she kissed someone else who was famous, I think. It might have been Kevin Sorbo or Grant Show, which is unfortunate but considering our actual timeline of when we dated made total sense.
I was very disappointed, and then I woke up and was pleased to learn that it was a) raining in real life and b) my COVID dreams had made their official return.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We're all traumatized and broken and weirded out ...Like most folks from March 2020 till ???
Dreams felt more real, and reality felt more dream-like. Just last week our trip to Palm Springs, where I saw bighorn sheep, and I took my son to look at modern art for the first time among a throng of tased people aged three to 93 looking within themselves as they stared at medium-quality to really, really good pieces on the walls and watched my kid do that thing, for the first time, where he realizes there's something great right there in front of him, and yet, is it? Or is it garbage? Or is it something in between, but what luck to be there in person, in the same space as art, the way it radiates and makes you feel and think about things that you didn't (or couldn't) think or feel beforehand?
And I took a couple of sneaky photos of him, and not to project too much (because that's all you do as a parent in a pandemic), but I'm not sure anymore about anything, but that seems real, and that seems OK—a pause in the action.
The Holiday Bowl and the Alamo Bowl
Like Santa tonight, Omicron is burning its way around the globe in the name of spreading something—but is especially prevalent the US, the place that got the nicest of things and can't have any of them because we let white exurban yoga moms and their death cult religious zealot friends with similar backsplashes challenge the validity of vaccines for THEIR CHILDREN in neighborhoods packed with sameness where the "schools were good" (read: white) and now we've created a monster where 30 percent of the people zombified and walking around turn to their charlatan minor influencer neighbor or friendly realtor-broker for medical advice and have turned their backs on society and gone unpunished.
So we'll continue to get sick and die from unforced errors, incompetency, and the flat-out meanness of the predominant religion which, ironically, teaches the opposite of what’s being practiced by its late-capitalism, prosperity gospel, gun-crazed throng.
As we ramp up for a 9/11 per day or more this winter we do this knowing we’ll eventually overload or burn out healthcare. The supply chain will break down, maybe for good. Not enough people will be fit to man your flight from wherever to wherever, or bring you food, or simply even drive a bus, and the whole thing that you recognized starts to go away—glad you got that kitchen remodel done already.
But before that, there's meaningless bowl games to play.
The Alamo Bowl
God bless continuing to remove fossil fuels from the earth till we all die in the name of nothing having spent all this time going nowhere.
If there's one great allegory for hosting a thing that shouldn't be happening—at all—this year, it's the Valero Alamo Bowl. Neither Oregon nor Oklahoma's teams or fanbases want to go celebrate the monstrosity of a gas company-sponsored Covid-infused, absentee-based plot in San Antonio.
Yet here we are.
It’s a genuinely depressing tilt of no head coaches: Oregon's Mario Cristobal took less money to decamp for his alma mater Miami and wunderkind flavor of the week Lincoln Riley took most of his Oklahoma recruiting class with him to Watts in attempts to bring something back to USC.
This is set to go down (maybe) on Wednesday. If anything, it's a W for burning resources we don't have and spreading a virus that doesn't really need any help in that department.
Along with their coaches gone, both schools have their NFL- or transfer-ready pieces sitting this one out.
The big-name absences are almost exclusively on the Oregon side. Ducks unanimous All-American edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux opted out of the game to begin preparing for the NFL Draft, and cornerback DJ James and defensive tackle Jayson Jones entered the transfer portal.
Interim coach Bryan McClendon on Thursday said he's waiting for other players to opt-out as well.
Oklahoma has four defensive starters who are skipping it: linebacker Brian Asamoah, linebacker/edge rusher Nik Bonitto, defensive end Isaiah Thomas, and nose guard Perrion Winfrey.
Oklahoma is 5-6 against the spread this season but manages to score more points per game (38) than the Ducks surrender (25), averaging 71 more yards per game than the Ducks allow per matchup (370).
But these numbers don't matter, really, because it's different teams than the ones that made them. Perhaps one telltale stat is when the Ducks clear 380 yards total offense, they're 5-5 against the spread but 9-1 overall.
Scratches on both sides notwithstanding, the Sooners still have some pieces that the Ducks don’t. Neither team wants to be there, but of the two Oklahoma from a regional perspective would like to save face a little more.
Take no. 16 Oklahoma -1 vs. no. 14 Oregon at the Alamo Bowl 6:15 p.m. PST Wednesday, Dec. 29 in San Antonio, Texas.
The Holiday Bowl
San Diego's Petco Park is your next conference (will conferences ever happen again?), hotel adjacent baseball field with a bunch of half-ass exurban microbrews slinging like quadruple IPAs that go down like a shot of Pine Sol in cough medicine form.
No matter. UCLA actually kept its head coach Chip Kelly who's …there. The Bruins are in a bowl game for the first time since 2017 and haven’t won one since 2013 when things were sort of normal.
UCLA has the hotter hand having rattled off three straight wins to end the season, rolling the Trojans just prior to USC's hiring of Riley.
The Bruins are also the best passing attack in the Pac-12, though NC State's secondary is among the best in the ACC (they lost just two conference games by four points total.)
NC State quarterback Devin Leary threw for four touchdown passes in four of the last six games, and the Wolfpack averaged 215 rushing yards per game this season.
But UCLA is 8-0 when rushing for 200 yards or more, which they do often. And NC State is porous on the run defensively. In the end, Chip Kelly probably ekes out a W for the program that he doesn't really like and doesn't really like him. Think of it as a half-assed gift instead of a breakup that should happen but won't till after the holidays, maybe.
Take UCLA +1.5 vs. North Carolina State 5 p.m. PST Tuesday Dec. 28, at Petco Park in San Diego