I wouldn't say that I failed to appreciate my time away from work, although I once again struggled somewhat with the "away from work" part. I walked around outside and spent time with family and friends and ate a startlingly great meal in a strip mall in South Portland, Maine with my wife, and that's pretty much all that I look for in a vacation, give or take 10 hours of sleep per night. At any rate, I appreciated the vacation a lot more when I returned to my home and its television, the first week of the NFL season, and the final matches of the U.S. Open.
It was not even one day before all that peace and quiet was swept out to sea. In its place were some thoughts about Brian Daboll, and some feelings of uneasy awe regarding Carlos Alcaraz; later came the opportunity to consider Brett Favre's role in Mississippi's sprawling and infuriating campaign of fraud against its neediest citizens, and the vile personal behavior of nightmare desert creature Robert Sarver. A lot to talk about, especially when you put it up there against, for example, "peaceful time spent in the woods." We were back.
Thankfully, we were not alone. Drew and I were joined this week by returning champion and ESPN's ace conversationalist Pablo Torre. Over the course of what is a fairly wide-ranging episode, the three of us addressed Brett Favre's possible pivot to grievance-farming after being re-busted for his role in the aforementioned MIssissippi fraud, the terrifying future over which Carlos Alcaraz will surely preside, and did our best to assess whether there is such a thing as being Too Disgusting To Own A NBA Team in the year 2022. Also we addressed the time during his previous appearance when Pablo upbraided me for not being sufficiently respectful of Richaun Holmes, which remains and I imagine will continue to remain the most bracing scolding I have ever received on this or any other podcast.
That was before we got to the stupid stuff, which in this case involved a consideration of the hyphenated-last-name NFL receiver and the special place of the Jacksonville Jaguars in the field of minting flawed-and-spicy NFL Guys. We addressed some treasured mispronunciations, and while some listeners will doubtless be disappointed at my choice, there, I was happy to tell the story of how my duffed pronunciation of a NFL fullback's (very common) last name inspired my dad to laugh in my damn face when I was a child, and scandalized by the idiosyncratic way in which Drew's dad chooses to pronounce the (very short) word "Lego." It was all highly enjoyable, in large part because Pablo is a fun person to talk to. But it was also fun for me because, by this point in my life, I am honestly just about as happy to talk about this stuff as I am to scramble around on rocks in Acadia National Park. That's my problem. The books and quiet time will be there when I need them. For now, for better or worse, football is on.
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