In honor of the BIGGEST FUCKING GAME OF THE YEAR®, USC at Notre Dame, we decided to liveblog the daily activities of the MOST IMPORTANT FUCKING PLAYER® of our time, Matt Leinart, subject of endless puff pieces and other media ball-washings who also happens to a be a great quarterback and normal guy. Who dated Alyssa Milano. And may or may not have Nick Lachey as a roommate. And has his own security detail. That's all...enjoy our own pastry-light ESPN Mag-style livejournal covering the daily rounds of one Trojan qb.
10:24 a.m. Matt Leinart doesn't live on your time, homeslice. He lives on West Coast time, which you East Coasters sometimes call "Left Coast Time." But ever since he suited up as an unheralded sophomore starter for the Trojans, time's been a little fuzzy for Leinart, as fuzzy as the adorable shaggy half-fro imitated by countless admiring fans, a hairdo known these days simply as: The Leinart.
We might stop calling it West Coast time at all; for now, it is truly Leinart Standard Time in L.A., and we are all wearing a shaggy afro of admiration for the man/boy/god who walks among us in size 22XXXXXLLL shoes.
He's Matt Leinart, and you're not.
Leinart sleeps now--oh, how he sleeps! In fact, as we write this, Leinart won't be awake for another three, perhaps four hours depending on his whimsy and the demands of his powerful, needy body. But the sleep he sleeps isn't that of mortal men. No; Leinart's sleep is the slumber of a champion. Your sleep offers your brain a chance to process raw information in cheap, tawdry metaphors: falling, sex fantasies, the cheap exchanges of meager minds. Leinart departs the golden chariot of his body in sleep to achieve things, pick apart the most arcane defenses, and perhaps even rule alternate worlds with a strong but benevolent hand before returning to complete his work here on Earth.
And yet...he sleeps, sometimes rumbling from one side of the four-postered mahogany canopy bed to another like a great, hairy bulldozer, sometimes laying still like a great piece of prime rib smothered in a gravy of nubile starlets sharing the bed with him. The cell phone rings with the demands of society's luminaries calling him for advice, counsel, and solace: Condi Rice seeking advice on balancing the need for West African oil reserves with the need to improve human rights conditions in Nigeria; George Soros, wondering if Leinart feels Chinese fiscal policy won't scuttle the wobbly dollar after all; Fred Durst, asking if he borrow Leinart's copy of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
But out here, we live not on your time, but on Leinart Standard Time, so the cell phone will have to wait. For now, Leinart sleeps, steeling himself for the eventual day ahead. Sleep on, sweet Trojan. Sleep on.
(To be continued...)
1:10 p.m. Leinart's voice booms off the Italian marble walls of his bedchamber.
"Safety glasses on, Angels."
Safety glasses are everywhere in the Leinart bedchamber these days, and with good reason: the revolving door on his bedroom brings with it the ever-increasing burden of his darkest, most tragic secret, a burden that shows not only through the deep brown sadness of his eyes, but also in the forty-foot prize winning mobiles built from recycled car bumpers he constructs for children's charity auctions. Matt Leinart, demigod of Troy, has in fact blinded hapless bystanders with the beauty of his perfect naked body.
(Teammates, well aware of the hazard, wear fogproof safety goggles in the shower. There have been incidents; while not blinded, a glance at bare buttocks sent former Trojan DT Manuel Wright into a delirium resulting in a breakdown on the field in Miami earlier this year. Leinart called Wright shortly their after, and the mere sound of his voice not only healed Wright, but caused the wilted vase of roses next to Wright to spontaneously break into full bloom.)
The ladies of the chamber slap their cobalt-glass safety glasses on with a giggle but nevertheless stare in awe as Leinart bounds in a single leap from his nest of 1200 count sheets and into the five-headed shower, where attendants clean every crevice of his Olympian physique with loofas and natural sponges. Micha Barton, actress, applies a special $900 dollar conditioner made from ape-placenta to Leinart's Leinartesque hair.
"It's not that his hair gets flaky. It's perfect, actually. It's just that..." She chokes up. "Nothing can be perfect enough for Matt. Nothing..."
Barton weeps but finds quick solace in Matt Leinart's arms. Jealous but still subservient, the seven other showermaidens plead desperately for equal time. He then makes fierce love to each of them in rapid succession while studying film on a waterproof flatscreen television, breaking down Notre Dame's secondary with the concentration of a neurologist staring at a freshly exposed brain waiting for his healing hands to make what's wrong right again.
Leinart should know that feeling well, since he's been in that exact situation countless times; for he is a brain surgeon, and in fact has performed over 700 successful surgeries, including the first aneurysm repair job ever performed on the South Pole.
"Some people are blessed," he says, stepping from the shower over the exhausted, naked figures of his showermaidens. "I just got lucky," he says, toweling off, slipping on a pair of USC shorts and t-shirt, and padding his way into the living room to answer a few emails from the President.
(Coming next: Matt Leinart invents a new food.)
3:18 p.m. Hunger. Matt Leinart is hungry and looking for something to fill him up. He walks down the street and his wake becomes quickly apparent: women swoon, tug at his pants, and attempt to catch his sweat in bottles which they clutch with the fervor of religious icons. Men doff their ballcaps in respect, or present him with gifts of fruit or jewelry taken from around their own necks. Babies coo when they catch his scent on the wind.
"Oh, yeah. I'm really hungry, dude," he says. But how can one man still be hungry after catching more than his share of life's sweet bounty in the past two years? After a Nobel? And a Pritzker Prize? And his daytime Emmy for Best Dramatic Actor for his work on The Bold And The Beautiful? And two national championships in football and a Heisman?
"I dunno man, I'm just fiending for something man. Something between breakfast and lunch. You know when you're in the mood for something in between? You know, something like lunchfast. Or maybe you could call it br...brunch." He looks bemusedly at this correspondent, who honestly has never heard such off-the-cuff brilliance. "Like that? Brunch...let's see if this place has something like that."
He walks in the restaurants and the lights brighten by a few candles. A meadowlark flies from nowhere and lands on his shoulder, and Leinart chirps to it in a perfect mimicry of its call, feeding it sunflower seeds which he pulls from behind his ear. The owner looks up from his cutting board, tears up, and attempts to hand Leinart a piece of paper. He shows it to me, and it is the deed to the restaurant and a picture of his own 19-year old daughter naked on a freshly mown lawn.
"Gracias, Salvador," he says, pocketing the deed and engaging in a rapid conversation in Spanish. At times, Salvador seems barely able to keep up with Leinart, whose ideas and passion carry him into a near-ecstatic frenzy. Salvador follows his directions, taking a burrito, placing scrambled eggs, cheese, beans, salsa, and guacamole all into a single dish! It seems crazy...crazy enough to work. Leinart takes the pair of burritos and hands one to me; his aura warms mine as a mahatma's would, the touch of his skin to mine like a planet feeling the touch of the sun's rays for the first time. I bite down into the concoction, and my head is filled with butterflies and fairy dust.
"This is truly the best thing I have ever eaten, Leinart. When I die, before I go, I will think of this...this...what do you even start to call it, Leinart?"
"I dunno. It's like a burrito, but with breakfast stuff in it. How about a breakfast burrito?"
Eating this strange, wonderful dish called a "breakfast burrito" at a strange, wonderful meal called "brunch," I think to myself. Matt Leinart doesn't just make touchdowns; he makes whole new realities.