Drink:

This hat was made from the beer consumed between 10:14 a.m. and 10:46 a.m. From an ode to Busch Light.

IF: 24 pack of Busch light: THEN: Ohio State. We’ve never seen people drink more shitty beer with greater voracity than Ohio State fans. Never. Not at LSU, not at Alabama, not at Georgia, not at Florida (where beer, liquor, and “whatever your friends from Miami had in a dropper” get thrown into a single vomitous swirl.) Nowhere is there a greater thirst for building a solid fellatio cabana from lowgrade hops and barley than in Columbus. If your happiness comes in a flimsy box with a convenient pulltab corner for machine-gun disbursal, you pull for the Buckeyes here.

IF: Bell’s Beer: THEN: Michigan.The craft beer thing was coming here and you knew it, but for posterity’s sake let’s get it right and say that like good beer snobs, Michiganders go local and pimp local brands like Bell’s Brewery.

Music

IF: Morrissey/Smiths: THEN: Michigan. That joke isn’t funny anymore, especially if it involves losing a sixth straight game to Ohio State.

IF: Nickelback: THEN: Ohio State. It’s less a specific prescription than an overall vibe. Arena rock never died, it just moved to Ohio, where it still sells like flyswatters in a refugee camp. Deny it if you like, but Nickelback will get the blood pumping, especially their live stuff. We’re especially fond of this one.

Philosophical School:

IF: Chuck Palahniuk:

“It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.”

THEN: Michigan.

IF: Red Foreman:

Well, it’s a tough world, Eric, and people don’t always get what they want. Especially you.

THEN: Ohio State.

The 1950s:

IF:“Thesis: The 1950s were a simmering cauldron of social change, an underexamined pressure cooker of cultural tension, political realignment, and economic expansion whose momentum was not merely a factor in the great upheaval of the 1960s, but a continuation of it. In this paper we will examine these changes as reflected in the music of Bob Seger, whose own compositions reflect this dichotomous sense/memory of the two decades: one held sacrosanct in the common memory for its alleged innocence (see “Night Moves” or “Down on Main Street,”), and another lauded for its freewheeling excesses and exotic leanings (see “Kathmandu.”) Through the eyes of one of America’s most neglected cultural icons, we will illustrate how music can form a tight emotional bond between a historical era and even the most inaccurate representations of its realities (and, indeed, its falsehoods.)

THEN: Michigan.

IF: “‘ ‘the fuck, dude?”

THEN: Ohio State.

The reason you have a goatee.

IF: “That’s an odd question…because it does give off a certain “don’t touch me” vibe, and because the beard isn’t growing in so well, and the goatee–prior to its appropriation by the middle classes as a sign of rebellion in the late 1980s and its subsequent slide into its current status as the mustache of the 2000s (not to be confused with the ironic mustache of the 2000s–what was I saying? Oh, my girlfriend likes it, and it gives me something to stroke when I’m thinking, that’s all. That’s the simple answer.”

THEN: Michigan.

IF: “Because it owns, pussy.”

THEN: Ohio State.

Jimbo Slice says this is how a lawya eat, and you best get over to the Alphabetical. This week’s topic include the metaphorical relationship between lobsters and USC, the Simpsons Completion Theorem, the Michigan fanbase doing it to themselves, they do, and that’s what really hurts, and kind words about the city of Athens, as close a place to actual live college heaven for all demographics as is humanly possible. Treason, you say, fellow Florida alums? Perhaps, but with Jimbo Slice on our side we fear nothing.

Adam Rittenberg of ESPN, the resident Big Ten blogger, wonders why Ohio State gets the national Cleveland Steamer treatment for their performance in big games while Oklahoma receives little of the same treatment for their even worse performance record in big games, a bias reflected in this week’s polls and their inequal treatment of both teams.

But another national powerhouse deserves the same treatment. Another big-name has been just as disappointing in big games, if not worse. And yet that team continues to escape the hate. Meet the Oklahoma Sooners. They’re apparently made out of Teflon.

Untrue. This has nothing to do with anyone’s dislike of Tressel, or a curious anti-Buckeye slant to national coverage. As usual, this can be explained with some handy statistics and the visual scalpel wielded by truth itself on our planet, MS Paint. (Or as seen here, Mac Paintbrush. Same thing, more pompous platform.)

This is the United States. Most people live on the coasts, as indicated by the extremely scientific arrows.

There are more eyeballs toward the coasts, and thus more people to see your failures, document them, and mock you for them when they happen. Oklahoma has a far more impressive resume in the department of championship fail, and mimics OU’s pattern of winning their conference, getting to a BCS bowl, and then depositing a shovelful of ass vindaloo into their collective shorts on national television.

Why the especially harsh rhetoric towards Ohio State? Eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs, something illustrated in our handy experiment.

Step one: Assume a dick. Let us assume a total dick exists. A person who dings car doors with you sitting in the car, looks at you, and who just walks away. A person who drives 50 mph in the fast lane with eight ladders loosely secured to the roof of their car. A person who leaves fork marks in your ice cream. In other words, a total dick.

Assume absolute dickishness: their level of average dickitude does not change with geography. They will attempt to pressure you into their gasoline-selling pyramid scheme in Topeka or in Tacoma; they will put their ATM card in the machine four times and act visibly frustrated while you wait behind them, but never understand that what they are doing is both stupid and impossible. (”Why can’t I get a cash advance in Euros? FUCK THIS MACHINE!! /putsincardforfifthtime.)

For the purposes of this study, this dick will be represented by Jason Statham. Note the distance between this total dick and most people.

Place him in small community like Oklahoma, and his reputation as a dick will be lower-case at best due to the distance from the majority of those writing about college football and viewing it.

This happens with other things, too. Take a serial killer, for instance. You don’t want to be a serial killer in New York City if you really love your work. Oh, the publicity’s great, sure, and people will write OMG THE SCARIEST SERIAL KILLER EVAR, and you’ll be caught in three weeks at best. (The rent is a bitch, too.) Do it in Oklahoma or Kansas, though, and you can work for years until someone finds you because so many fewer people are paying attention. There are fewer people to hear the epic tales, and thus less of a myth.

Now, let’s place this total dick in a place closer to large groups of people and media.

Note this dick’s sudden proximity to larger groups of people, who will observe him talking about himself constantly, popping multiple collars, leaving his beer at a four-top you’re waiting on and walk away only to claim it when you swoop in saying “it’s taken,” and being his usual epic dick self. Suddenly, observe the growth in this dick’s overall community rating as a complete dick:

In our simulation, he has reached the level of EPIC DICKISHNESS simply because of the weight of public opinion, a general verdict consisting of multiplied opinions reaching a consensus. (One that may be completely erroneous.)

As our Paint experiment clearly shows, your reputation as “X” gets larger the closer you move to the coasts, which is why habitual debtor Donald Trump is considered a genius in New York while Warren Buffett quietly squats atop a platinum throne out in Fargo. (Yes, Buffett is considered a genius in New York, too, but the difference between their public presences can only be explained by attitude and proximity to large media outlets.) Ohio State has been less of a failure overall than OU in big games, but their geography is their curse in the end, not a lack of talent or gumption in big games.

This universal truth has been brought to you by Paint: helping explain the world since 1995 or thereaboutish. We would like to take this opportunity to state that Jason Statham is not a dick, and is used here as a dick strictly for entertainment purposes. Please don’t harm us.

I have been stabbed by Texas, shot by Florida, poisoned by LSU, frozen by USC, hung, electrocuted, and burned by the media…and every morning I wake up without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender… I am an immortal.

(See Chris’s post on Sweatervest at Doc Saturday. Jeremiad-y in its intensity, cold science in its accuracy.)

1. Uniforms. Columbus, Ohio is the kind of place where people, in one regard or another, still respect the notion of a uniform. This makes sense; this is where Professor Hayes wore a short sleeve white button down, a tie that appeared to be fitted for a man a full foot shorter than Hayes, geek glasses, a black hat, and pants pulled up to his navel no matter the weather, all the while wondering what particular handbasket the world had decided to go to hell in, and how he could put the hippies in it and send it to Gay Commie China or wherever the hell they wanted to take this fine, red-blooded America to in the first place.

Columbus is still the kind of place where people wear a uniform, and not just a code. In the SEC, sure, there’s a code. There are floppy-haired Alabamian fraternarians in white oxfords, ties, and slacks, accompanied by women in the sundress of the moment, the bubble dress, and wearing equally bubbly sunglasses.

(If I may have a Project Runway moment: the bubble dress is the least flattering dress we’ve ever seen adopted en masse by large groups of women. On a woman with curves, the dress bunches into the great divide, something that should be titillating for a male viewer, but is instead just calls attention to swamp ass, or worse still, the notion that your ass is devouring the dress in whole bites. On skinny women, it looks like you’ve just wrapped them in a tablecloth.)

There is a difference, though, between a code and an out and out uniform. The cops wear the uniforms featured on policemen in children’s books, a white-capped, well-ironed ensemble just beaming with civic responsibility. Contrast this with a Sun Belt city like Atlanta or Miami, where police uniforms make the Protect and Servers of this world look like HVAC repair techs with guns.

These are people who like uniforms, formality, order. Buckeye fans follow suit: nine out of every ten Buckeye fans wear a not-inexpensive Buckeye jersey, a scarlet OSU kit with a custom number. The number matters: within the uniformity of it all, the digits tell a lot about you. A “36″ implies Spielman-type tenacity and grit, while the more classically-minded don the “45″ or Archie Griffin. A woman in our group had on a Herbstreit, met with a jovial “What the fuck are you wearing that for?” by another group of Buckeye fans. To the man we saw with the Clarett “13,” well, cheers to your immense testicularity and devotion. The guy in the Art Schicter jersey salutes you in brotherhood.

2. The Wash ‘n Tan in Columbus is ready when you are, cracker. Consider the infinite loop created here: greasy and smeary from fake tanner or the residue from a fresh broasting in a tanning bed, you carry your clean clothes home and wear them, thus covering them in a thick layer of bronzer or suntan lotion. So you go back to the laundry, then decide to tan while you’re bored and soon you’ve lost your house to your unfortunate obsession with tanning and hyper-clean laundry. These people will own their own gold mines filled with charismatic dwarves soon enough.

3. Columbus is second in the nation in “number of sketchy men of questionable means orbiting the city center on bicycles.” The first is St. Petersburg, Florida. Columbus has a fair number of sketchy men period hanging out on the street, including two gentlemen we passed on the way into campus who had this conversation/piece of street theatre in front of us:

Man One: Say something smart like that I will bust your fucking lip open, motherfucker.

Man Two: [ICY GAZE]

Man One: Yeah. Bitch.

Man Two: [ICIER GAZE]

We could all assume this was genuine, or we can assume this was a stirring rendition of a scene from The Wire practiced by a plucky street improv troupe. We’ll assume the latter.

4. Buckeye fans are, on the whole, a civil militia in all senses of the word civil. Civil in their adherence to rule, to order, to their devotion to Ohio State football. It is complete and undying, as anyone who saw the red horde bellowing for four quarters against USC would attest. We couldn’t get into the game for less than a wallet-scorching sum, so we ended up trekking the two miles back to the house off King street where a complete stranger had invited us to stay. (Again: civil, see definition. He had bathrobes and meth-grade coffee ready in the morning. This was not atypical of the treatment.)

From the front porch you could hear the missed field goal by USC in the first half. Despite a subdued pregame environment, they showed up in fierce, committed, and organized numbers, even when we suspect many of them knew Jim Tressel would get a five point lead and work it like he was sitting on fifty points against Tulane. (And he did.)

Civil can also mean friendly, cordial, which the man in the picture above certainly was. Buckeye fans as a rule are either young, iron-pumping men who wear baseball caps backward and look suspiciously at men who say more than ten words at a time, or they are the older, thicker-necked, cigar-smoking men those younger men become in their middle age. This guy was the latter, and was quite nice when we asked him to take a picture with us. How nice? This was the conversation we had during the taking of this photo.

Facepaint guy: Are you an Ohio State fan?

Orson: No. I went to Florida.

Facepaint guy: Ahhh. I punched a Florida fan once.

Orson: Ah. [/desperately tries to remember anything he might have learned from getting ass kicked by an MMA guy, discovers jackshit on hardrive under this tab.]

Facepaint guy: Don’t worry. I’m not gonna punch you.

See? Perfectly civil people in every respect of the word. They didn’t even punch a Florida fan. (The t-shirt also came courtesy of Peter, who insisted we wear it. It got rave reviews, though we questioned the approving looks, which either meant “Yeah, Wahoo is a racist mascot!” or “Yeah, white people!” It came from here, if you’re interested.)

5. An immense, Bowling Green-orange H2 sat gorging premium gasoline from a pump at a gas station near campus. On the way out from purchasing hideous amounts of low-grade American beer in cans, we peeked into the cab and noticed this:

I was about to ask him what he was doing with a bottle of premium vodka and champagne sitting in the front seat. (After all, the champagne goes in the glove compartment in a bag of ice.) This question died in my mouth before I could really ask it, but the owner beat me to it, pointed at them, and said “That’s what cupholders are for.”

6. The aforementioned hideous amounts of beer in cans consumed in a single weekend at Ohio State.

Wisconsin fans probably consume more alcohol in a single weekend per capita, but that’s because they are from Wisconsin, and thus drinking industrial grade solvents stolen from local businesses after they run out of beer. Ohio State fans have to lead the nation in canned domestic beer, something Michigan fans will mock by asking you when you tell them you’re bound for Columbus “You gonna get a suitcase of Bud Light?” This is because Michigan fans are obviously the commies Professor Hayes shook his fist at from his fiefdom in Columbus, consuming fancy microbrews from bottles expensively purchased at the rate of six at a time.

Ohio State fans buy beer in bulk, and lug 12 and 24 packs to the tailgate like Tokyo salarymen checking into the office for the day. They also drink it like marathoners chugging electrolyte solution, albeit in red cups, because for some reason the police insist on playing wink-wink, nod-nod by enforcing open container on cans, but not on “the mysterious red solo cup of plausible deniability.” This creates twice the trash for no reason whatsoever, but remember: order is the theme here, until it’s not, of course, which is why Buckeye fans sometimes get pepper-sprayed by police, and why Germans (otherwise staid, orderly people) make the worst soccer hooligans.

7. USC fans have expensive eyewear. In fact, take the photo above to be an illustrated guide to the younger USC fan, albeit in a strange, foreign ecosystem where they get called “fag” a bit for that carefully chosen expensive eyewear.

(Ohio State fans lag behind the kings of homosexual taunting, Miami Hurricanes fans. If you were in a duel with a Canes fan and got the draw on him–which you would, because they would be toting a gun far too large to pull quickly, and most likely tucking it in the band of some shiny gym shorts–his last words clutching his mortal wound would be, quietly and with his last breath, a hissed “…fag…” before expiring. No one calls you a homosexual with greater frequency or intensity than a Miami fan, a special delight since they come from a city where they are surrounded by flamboyant and unapologetic homosexuals.)

The USC fans above display what happens when Los Angeles meets college football.

a.) Designer eyewear. Straight men unapologetically wearing designer eyewear. There’s Dolce and Gabbana on them there noggins, something Ohio State fans would, when not being totally polite 90% of the time and saying things like “Welcome to Ohio!”, point and note by suggesting they were gay for wearing. The Buckeye fan next to these guys held up his own knockoff Oakleys, took the cigar out of his mouth, and proudly announced “Fiftten dollars at a gas station!” That’s how men buy sunglasses, dammit.

b.) Campy but fashionable individualized wear. The older Trojan fans stuck to what older guys wear to games–golf shirts, windbreakers, or branded hats–but younger SC fans had to carve out their own brahsomeness with custom gear: a USC scarf worn out of the back pocket of hundred dollar jeans, customized t-shirts, a spendy fitted worn Soulja Boy style. If Ohio State fans dress for service in the Buckeye militia, USC fans think of the game as an opportunity to accessorize.

c.) Hurr, did. USC guys have exactly as much metrosexual hairdo on their skulls as you would expect from Los Angelenos. By contrast, Ohio State fans seemed to depend on a hairdo we would call “a baseball cap.” This consists of mashing a baseball cap over your bedhead, cracking a can of beer, and pronouncing yourself armed for the day’s action.

d.) A deserved amount of noblesse oblige. They really do approach the game as a kind of polo match between betters and inferiors, cruising along with a brahsome cool garnered from years of watching Pete Carroll teams roll into exotic locales, get on their horses, and decimate the competition. To their credit, they are no more or less gloaty before or after the game; the USC fans we saw congratulated Ohio State fans and vice versa, though in USC’s case it came in the manner of a British general taking a surrender while sipping a glass of sherry. “Oh, nice show. Now if you would, please…your full surrender, sir.

8. God looked down and said, “O-H, I-am going to keep you on the Job track, fortune-wise.” Usually following a loss, a college town is filled with an ambient sullen rage. Columbus after the game seemed resigned to fate, however; around Short North, OSU and USC fans drank and ate contentedly. Down toward campus, no tear gas, no hooligan anger, no riot police wandering suspiciously, no incidents of dumpsters bearing the brunt of raging fans after the game. The result was clearly not offensive, if not satisfactory, to Ohio State fans, who took the whole thing in stride.

The following morning, scrambling to make the last flight out, I threw myself into a yellow Chevy Aveo and sped toward the airport. On the steps of a slightly dingy apartment house, an OSU student stood in his underwear with a fellow student in a Buckeye t-shirt. He’d just gotten something out of his car, but for a moment he stood like Woody Hayes did from time to time in the locker room after a loss, naked to the world and just daring you to ask him something.

I was clearly the interloper here, like a reporter pestering the pantsless Woody after a loss. There are things as an outsider I clearly didn’t understand about Ohio State. That there are rules to be respected, a way for thing to be done, iso runs to call up the middle, sweatervests and ties to be worn. That in an army, nothing changes but the names. That’s how you keep the troops marching, no matter the weather or outcome. Ohio State fans march on in straight rows, no matter the weather, because that is precisely how the Professor would have wanted it.

[/loudsobbing, sound of swishing liquor in bottle.]

Ahem. To help you get in touch with your emotions leading up to the season, we thought we would help by offering the Jim Tressel Mood Chart. You may find yourself trapped in an awkward conversation where someone asks you about your feelings. This will be with a “woman,” probably a “wife,” “girlfriend,” or “prison psychiatrist.” They will all want answers, and because they may have sex with you in the future, you have to give them answers. Since your answers will be terrible, just point to something on this chart as a response.

The chart should yield multiple dividends. First, skirts take flight for the winter and and never return under the steely gaze of Jim Tressel: it’s foreplay and distraction in one efficient move. In addition to this, your wife/girlfriend/prison psych will assume you’re actually trying, and will likely call this “progress.” Finally, you can engage in this activity while spending mere seconds away from watching sweet, precious football. It combines emotional fraud and sex, and if the two of those things aren’t more arousing as a cocktail than as single, separate, shots, we don’t know what kind of emotional bar you’re frequenting.

(Product also applicable to women who, as outliers of their species, would rather be watching the game in between sexual encounters and meals, and are trapped with men who want to discuss these “emotions.” God bless each and every one of you and your golden haunches.)

Pictures of Columbus riverbanks as shot from helicopter–

TITLE–

Starring: his black friend with a helicopter and a sketchy guy with all the connections. It’s really impossible to describe how much we love this picture of Jim Tressel. It’s as if someone has taken our friendly local librarian and unveiled his secret identity as a CIA strongman running bales of blow and small arms out of a Surinamese warehouse on the side. It also may be so contagiously sexy it blows out a few pixels on your screen. Apologies if it does; please send all damage claims to the Ohio State Athletic Department, and they’ll tell you it’s not their fault if their coach makes ladies’ garters snap from fifty feet.

(HT: Eleven Warriors.)

Track guy: Here, Coach. Hold the starter’s pistol for the photo, okay? You ready to go?

Jim Tressel: Oh, I’m past ready. I’ve passed the point of no return. Do you know what that is? That’s the point in a journey where it’s longer to go back to the beginning. It’s like when those astronauts got in trouble. I don’t know, somebody messed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. They were on the other side of the moon and were out of contact for like hours. Everybody waited to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, that’s me. I’m on the other side of the moon now and everybody is going to have to wait until I pop out.

Track guy: Um, that’s just a starter’s pistol, Coach. It can’t kill anyone.

[/pause]

Tressel: Oh, um…very well. Great work you’re doing here. Have a great day. (whistles, walks away.)

(HT: Jeff via this.)

Jim Tressel: We’ve got a lot of people to replace on this team. Can you imagine how you guys would feel if you lost a third of the people in your company?

Tressel: Yeah, except we can replace our guys.

Reporters: [silence]

Tressel: Wait, there really are fewer of you. I just thought you were all out filling out law school applications, getting gastric bypass surgery, but good great googly moogly–it looks like someone served plague for dinner last week in here.

Reporter1: It’s been hard.

Tressel: (Laughs.) I’m sure! (Laughs again.) Yes, I’m sure it has. Hey, what happened to your little dictaphones?

Reporter2: We’re taking notes by hand now. More cost-effective.

Tressel: That looks like one of those pencils you write down a golf score with, Tim.

Reporter1: [holds up the pencil. It reads "Franklin County Municipal Golf Course."]

Tressel: Yeesh. Not even the good ones. So no photos either? So if I did something really quickly–

Reporter1: Nope. Didn’t get it on our cell cameras, either.

Tressel: How about if I talk really fast and put on a cheerleader’s outfit real quick? Like this?

CRAIGKRENZELWASTHEBESTPROSPECTIEVERHADATQBMAYOROFCOLONOSCOPISTANIMANIAC!

Too fast? Need me to say it again?

Reporter2: That would be nice, coach, if you could, and keep the cheerleader’s outfit on…

Tressel then slides into a one-piece sweatervest and slacks jumpsuit in seconds.

Tressel: Ha, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bob. Didn’t hear a thing! Hey…will you guys do things for money now? You have to be poorer than I can ever remember being now that all this has happened.

Reporter3: I’m insulted by this, Coach. This is–

Reporter2: Shut the fuck up, Ed. What kind of money are we talking about?

Tressel: Attaboy, Tim. What I’m going to do is make you dress up in my burro costume. Then together we will ride. Like a loyal, sweet burro! That’s what you’ll be. And the rest of you are going to sketch it on your stolen La Quinta stationery and put it in the paper tomorrow.

Reporter2: I’ll do it for $1,000.

Tressel: Twenty bucks.

Reporter2: Fifty.

Tressel: And you’ll wear this saddle?

Reporter2: A hundred and I’ll sing in Spanish.

Tressel: 75 and you’ll take orders in American, son.

Reporter2: [sighs and grieves for all he once thought he would be] Deal.

Tressel: Giddyup! To old Mexico, my little grey friend!

Reporter1: Come on, xanax. Work, dammit. Now.

Reporter3: [Wishes self out of existence with an audible 'POP']

(HT: The good doctor.)

From your offseason “Has Jim Tressel Lost His Ability To Swing It Like A New Jack” article of the year, please see this intriguing detail from his contract:

Tressel, 56, continually swats aside questions about how long he�ll coach. Yet his new contract�which goes through the 2012 season�has an interesting addition: If he decides to retire, the university can keep him on as a professor for up to five years.

Like Woody Hayes before him, he would be “Professor Tressel.” Oh, the possibilities.

–”Michigan Real Estate: Owning It And How To Keep It for Half-Decades At A Time.”

–”Menswear for Caucasians: Theory and Practice.”

–”Don’t Call It A Quagmire: American Victories In Vietnam”

–”Coach Tress’s Gymnastics for Late Bloomers.”

–”Handling Radioactive Materials Safely and Easily With Everyday Objects Found In Your Home and Office.”

–”Paradise Lost: Herbert Hoover’s America.”

–”Special Seminar on Pyongyang: Come for the Women, Stay for the Women”

In quasi-related news, Professor Tressel is doing swimmingly on the recruiting trail, and may bring in the number one recruiting class if Ramgod dictates that Rueben Randle goes somewhere else other than LSU. Ohio State has 16 four star recruits, with an emphasis on getting game-breakers at the edge like Duron Carter, who has speed to burn according to Scout.com!

He’s not a burner, though, and won’t make many guys miss.

Or not! To be fair, James Jackson is in there, too, though, a 4.31 guy as clocked by the obligatorily generous stopwatch guy who inhabits all recruiting boards slashing tenths off seconds. Also, Carter is a legacy, as he is the son of Cris Carter, who will now stalk the Ohio State sidelines berating Jim Tressel on-camera anytime his son is not on the field for any reason. BUT HE’S WORKING ON THE SPEED THING, CITIZENS OF UZBUCKISTAN. And that is your lesson for the day.

THE UNITED STATES/MEXICAN BORDER. 9:12 a.m. MEXICAN SIDE

A crowd of migrant workers headed north mills around on a desolate patch of yellow earth covered in scrub. Three sad strings of rusty barbed wire mark the border. There is a sudden stir in the crowd. The men focus on a single hooded figure walking through the crowd carrying a jug of water.

Mexican one: Mira, mira! (points) Es El Escarlata!

Mexican one: El Escarlata! El Escarlata! Usted es una leyenda!

Mexican two: El Escarlata! Impregnar mi esposa! Por favor!

Mexican three: Pis en mi dedos de los pies! Ser�a una bendici�n, El Escarlata!

Mexican three! Por favor, d�ganos las verdades esenciales del universo El Escarlata!

A silence falls. El Escarlata pauses, and then intones these words.

El Escarlata: Ha sido 1889 d�as desde Michigan derrotados del Universidad de Estado de Ohio. Now out of my way. There’s a hot lassie with gorilla fever in Columbus, Ohio. She needs a banana, and I’ve got one to give her.

In unison: VIVA EL ESCARLATA!!! VIVA EL ESCARLATA!!!! VIVA EL ESCARLATA!!!

Front:

Back:

Dearest–

Thank you for understanding my yearly walkabout, and for your patience and devotion. Mogadishu is lovely this time of year, as it always is. It’s good to see good friends again, even if many of them have lost limbs and eyes since the last time I saw them.

I will be home after an expedition with my old friends on the Horn of Africa. I have enclosed a picture of the unique collateral I brought with me this time to fund our yearly adventures.

The picture:

We-Are! Being-Held-For-Ransom!

LOL,

Jimmy

ps. “Lost” my passport in Afghanistan please file for a new one love again ly jim

pps. I am going to spank you like a Somali shepard whips a camel when I get home, but only in the loving, consenting way we always do. XOXOXOXO –J.

Woman: Hello?

Man’s voice on bad, third-world connection: Hey, honey. It’s Jim.

Woman: Jim…just tell me you’ll be home soon.

Man’s voice: Oh, sure sweetie. But you know I have to do this every year, and I have to do it alone.

Woman: I know…I just worry.

Man’s voice: Don’t worry about me, sweetie. Say hello to the poodles for me.

Woman: I love you, Jim.

Man’s voice: Oh, pooky, I love you too. See you in ten days.

[he hangs up. The wind howls indifferently outside.]

SCENE: The high plains on the Bamiyan Plateau, Afghanistan. Desolation. An encampment of tents surrounds a single well on the blighted landscape. SHEIKH MASOOD reads from the Chinese menu in his hand.

MASOOD: There’s no way they will deliver us our food out here.

Enter Masood’s second-in-command, AHMAD PASHTO.

PASHTO: But they promised delivery, no matter our location?

MASOOD: We shall wait another three days, and then cancel our credit cards.

A loud uproar goes up behind them. They turn to see the dogfighting pit, surrounded by Afghan men in half-turbans and baggy pants. Each bristles with weaponry and facial hair. Dust rises from an unseen fracas in the middle of the ring. The noise of man and dog fighting can be heard clearly even from a distance.

MASOOD: Has the Scarlet one joined us again?

PASHTO: Yes. For the eleventh year running, he has joined us, Sheikh Masood.

MASOOD: He brought his customary entry fee?

PASHTO: Yes, his passport. He said he has no need for it where he travels.

MASOOD: Was he in his customary state?

PASHTO: Yes, Sheikh Massod. Ragged. Covered in dust and blood. Arrived on horseback at 2 in the morning last night and lay in his tent all night screaming for women and opium. He went into the ring at 8 this morning, and has not emerged since.

MASOOD: He has demanded nothing…unusual?

PASHTO: No. He has only asked for more dogs to fight to feed that which never sleeps within him.

MASOOD: Allah help that man. I see angels in that man’s demoning, I do.

PASHTO: Yes, Sheikh Masood. I do, as well.

MASOOD: He brought only his dog and African this time?

PASHTO: Yes…this…”Steve-ah,” I believe.

MASOOD: And?

PASHTO: Together, the Scarlet One and his dog have killed all they have fought. I have made much money from their fighting today.

MASOOD: As have I, Allah be praised. Come, let us watch their rage.

PASHTO: Yes, Sheikh Masood.

They approach the ring. In it, a man and dog are fighting a man and dog.

JIM TRESSEL: YEAH!!! KICK HIS FUCKING ASS MAUAJI!!! RIP HIS FUCKING THROAT OUT!!! KIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLL!!!

MASOOD: He lives only for blood and mayhem and the singing it puts in the blood. To see this…it chills the blood. Allah never saw a more pure killing machine, Pashto.

PASHTO: No, Sheikh Masood. Allah help us if we do, though.

MASOOD: Indeed.

To be continued…

Las Vegas. 10:17 a.m., yesterday.

Cooler: You, uh…need me to go over there, boss?

Pitboss: I dunno. I kind of want to see if he can keep going at this pace. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Cooler: He’s a machine. Barkley passed out an hour ago.

Pitboss: Yeah. We woke him up with a cognac enema. That always perks him up.

Cooler: I’ll head over there if you want–

Pitboss: Nah. You don’t stand in the way of a storm like this.

Stunning Floozy 1: Daddy, you want me to blow on the dice?

Tressel: Oh, yeah baby. Whore germs got me this pile of chips, and they’ll make it bigger.

Stunning Floozy 1: You’re mean!

Tressel: Roll them bones, baby, and we’ll see what else gets bigger.

She rolls the dice.

Dealer: Another seven! I’ve never seen anything like this!

Waitress: Need something from the bar, sir?

Tressel: Another Panty-dropper, please.

Waitress; But that’s your 38th, sir.

Tressel: Do you see my panties on the floor?

Waitress: No.

Tressel: Then keep bringing ‘em. Then we’ll see what we can do about yours.

To be continued.

“I’m not looking to have the biggest package in the world,” Tressel said. “I’m looking to have the most effective one. Give enough so you apply pressure to the preparation of the defense, but do it well enough so that you’re really applying pressure.”

An assassin like me only needs a dagger, baby.

Remember: winning the Tressel Way means using the most effective package, not the biggest, meaning he never really thought Santonio Holmes was that essential to the offense, and that he’s talking about football…but could be talking about his penis at the same time.