College Football In Charm City: Baltimore Blitz

We swung south Saturday to see the Baltimore Ravens slaughter the crumbling Cleveland Browns.

She went shopping I went bar hopping and football watching. Catching glimpses of good games and bad teams going bad football became a bit of a haze with team after team bouncing by.

It began at a bar called The Nest. It began with a burp in our faces, welcome to Charm City, by an employee seating us but it got better. 

The crab dip and a crisp Clipper City were both good. Miami in the muck wasn't so good. Virginia Tech was loving the home rain, a rain that was slowly heading our way.

It was early on and the Big East was looking good.

Pitt was pounding NC State. Maybe this is the year Dave Wannstedt bring back the glory days that Foge Fazio flushed away. Wannie though always seems jinxed but maybe this was his year.

Look at South Florida! Physically pounding on Bobby Bowden's boys.

Times have changed in Tallahassee. Bowden looks as old as Andy Jackson and that fedora fits a bit funny.

South Florida seems faster, stronger, and better coached.

Bowden looks tired. Tired of Saturdays spent in the rain when he could be golfing with his AARP ilk.

Time, Warren Zevon once sang, makes fools of us all.

Maryland and Rutgers are battling but even in a bar in Maryland no one seems to care about the Terps. The Fridge has lost his magic mojo at Maryland. The next step may be a step too far for Maryland.

A Michigan couple in full Wolverine gear drink, smirk, and cheer as the Wolverines roll back and forth with the upstart Hoosiers. Rich Rodriguez has got Michigan's mojo back.

And speaking of rolls look at those Cincinnati Bearcats. Is that the next coach at Notre Dame on the Bearcat sideline?

Marching to the next watering hole, The ESPN Zone, was a mistake but at least a mistake with a lot of televised football games.

The Blue Moon draft cost nine bucks and one cent. Does Chris Berman need a salary bump? The bartenders should have bandit masks and six shooters for this stick up.

And why the hell do they add extra one cent? Some smart ass come up with that one to be cute?

The Zone gift shops clerks need bandit masks also as the Made in China rather, cheesy sweatshirts are seventy plus bucks.

Its rainy and I'm cold but I ain't dropping eighty bucks on an ESPN sweatshirt.

The small bar seems dominated by Ohio State fans. If I was a Browns fan I wear Buckeye red too.

The Buckeyes are boringly dominating the zap less Zooks of Illinois. The Juice, Zookies quarterback, is being squeezed as is the offense.

Zook is going to leave the land of Lincoln soon. But the Buckeye bar fans look bored. A pair of big boys in Buckeye red look almost blue. One large one, pounding beer and wings, looks like Chris Farley his pal has the Samwise the hobbit thing going.

The Ohio State hobbit looks exhausted or drunk, or both.

Maybe its the red sweat vest of Tressell that hypnotizes fans maybe its his offense or maybe its the beer.

Tressel's teams it seems play like hypnotists, You are getting sleepy, sleepy, sleepy...Sam the Hobbit looks like he might drop face first into his nine buck and one cent beer.

Maryland is being routed. No one cares.

And there goes North Carolina.

Not quite the break out year for Butch yet. No Butch looks Carolina blue. The ACC is a wicked mixed up stew this year and Frank Beamer might still be the best chef..

Miami goes down for good against Tech, and desperate Oklahoma looms.

Is that Wannie yanking on his hair? Holy Hugh Green Pitt's defense isn't going to utterly collapse against the Wolfpack? Are they?

Wannies a defensive guy. Sleazy Jimmy Johnson's defensive guy to be exact. But when he pulls his hair it usually spells doom for whatever animal, be it Bears, Fish, or Panthers he happens to be coaching.

And somehow down goes Pitt.

Wannie somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Again. Ugh. Why Wannie? Why always Ugh?

Its a bad day for Jimmy Johnson's boys. Butch and Wannie got shot down like Butch and Sundance robbing banks in Bolivia.

The multiple televisions make my head spin. LSU is making a valiant stand. Hanging on and hanging in the National title hunt.

Roll Tide roll Alabama has too much for Arkansas. Alabama might have too much for everyone this year.

Kids are running rampant through out the ESPN Zone. Some seem like sugar charged Visigoths and Vandals razing Rome.

Oliver Reed would say this isn't a bloody bar its a damn daycare.

A couple is soul kissing and toasting each other with Jameson whiskey over their shouting seven year old's head. The wicked Irish whiskey hits them like an Alabama linebacker. Both of their faces suddenly contort and go sour.

For a moment it seems junior is gonna get funked by Mommy and Daddy's shots but they tough it out like LSU at the goalline.

The Ohio state pair, the hobbit and the Farley fan, are communing with other folks in red. Some curses are cast on Michigan for winning but there is no talk of the Browns.

And really who wants to talk Browns football?

The Browns fans fans ought to play Garry Owen, doomed General Custers's old jaunty tune, as they walk to the Ravens game tomorrow.

Beside the Brown fans an older couple are bitching about the Boston Red Sox battling their beloved New York Yankees. They are drinking bright blue giant drinks that look like something savage Klingon's drink on Star Trek.

Speaking of Trek, chubby Captain Kirk constantly keeps beaming onto television screens screaming about Priceline.

No wonder Spock wants him dead. But, at least, the Captain has gotten so chunky no righteous green or blue alien chick will bed his big butt anymore.

That, at least, should make Spock sleep better.

Here comes Kentucky football and boy are they excited in Kentucky.

And there goes Kentucky football and boy are they quiet in Kentucky.

The Wildcats are getting mowed like the British at the Somme. Oh what a slaughter bloody wildcat pelts everywhere.

Only thing the Gators didn't do is grab Ashley Judd and take her south as a prize of war.

They can't seem to tackle Tim Tebow. Or maybe they do not want to. I mean if Tebow, who has some type of strange flu that required a separate plane, hacks on them they might catch something like the Andromeda Strain or something that turns them into zombies.

Kentucky doesn't pay its players good enough to chance that calamity, though LSU, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia might

And what is Rich Brooks screaming about? The old Duck looks about as mad as Qaddafi at the UN but, thank Zeus, the screens are muted.

Brooks looks like a mute mad man.

Up with Texas! TCU puts away Clemson. How about them Horned Frogs!

The Texas Longhorns are treating UTEP like Colonel Randal Mackenzie treated the Comanche pony herd. That is it is just a sheer slaughter.

Mackenzie, in the end, went mad if Mack Brown keeps grumbling about Wyoming evergreens he might be next.

There's Nate Newton talking about his boy the undersized running back. Russ Grimm's son was playing safety for Virginia Tech earlier.

They ought to call the pair the incredible shrinking sons.

Either the generations shrank are their old men did not share the grub at the dinner table. Or maybe they had mini Moms.

Newton looks happy. Lets hope he doesn't have a half million bucks of weed in his van in the stadium parking lot.

Rich Brooks is still screaming and the somber Kentucky fans are in blue and very blue.

Where's Bill Monroe at when his state needs a sad song about being Gator bait?

Why is Kentucky in the SEC anyway I mean they were in the Union in the Civil War?

Time to move.

Time to march to Falls Point for the Penn State Iowa game. Not march actually, because its pouring rain and since i do desire to meet any of those lads from The Wire, we cab over with a genial South African cab driver who says that the rain is a blessing, baby the rain must fall.

Say wasn't that a Steve McQueen movie? Is this The Cash Cab?

That Don't Worry be Happy cabbie ought to talk to Rich Brooks.

Fells Point is where Edgar Allan Poe went on his final bender. Legend says he was drinking in The Horse You Rode in on mad with whiskey, laudanum, lost loves, and mental illness.

Poe went to Virginia but he wasn't exactly a cavailer.

What would Poe do about Al Groh?

Brick him behind a wall with a black cat, a beating heart, and a pendulum?

Poor Groh must fill like the doomed man in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, just trapped, watching waiting for the cutting coach firing blade to get closer.

And closer.

Virgina was Thomas Jefferson's university too. Would the old wise red head fire Al Groh? Likely not directly TJ was a bit of a sneak that way.

Maybe he have Meriweather Lewis do the dirty work for him.

On to Fells Point and Joe Paterno's White Out in the rain. I tell a blond at the bar that Paterno, in the spirit of the white out, let his hair go wild and white this week.

She believes me.

The bar is Koopers which used to allow canines and cigars. Not anymore, the no fun police stopped that.

Bars were better with dogs and cigars.

No one cares much about the sad Orioles this night but they do still throw an O up in the National Anthem. The Star Spangled banner was penned right out in the harbor as the British shelled Baltimore. 

Then the stirring words were set to the sounds of bad British bar ballad.

Nothing much came of the War of 1812. Not even a decent Hollywood movie.

The British beat us like Texas beat UTEP.

And they did not even use their varsity. Their varsity were busy fighting the French, yes the same French the freedom fries folks are giggle at.

Who wants to film the 1812 President, Speedy Jimmy Monroe, dashing from the burning White House so fast that he left his old lady behind trying to beg the Brits for keepsakes?

Try to fit that image into a Toby Keith song, Bubba.

At least we got the British bar ballad national anthem and Johnny Horton's wonderful Battle Of New New Orleans ballad.

Actually we ought to consider using Horton's song before sporting events.

It has more snap.

In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in a town in New Orleans

We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they begin to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
(One-two-three, with a-one-two-three)

Tell me Johnny Horton wouldn't charge the home town fans up?

I order a National Bohemian and toast Old Joe with a Nattie Bo.

Joe looks liked an ancient drowned rat. Those big Uncle Junior from the Sopranos glasses need wipers. 

Why isn't he in the warm booth? There is a fine line between foolishness and bravery and at eighty something it no longer pays to act like Captain Blood anymore.

The blond says that Joe's hair doesn't look too white. Give it time, I say, by halftime he will look like Uncle Sam gone to seed.

Mentioning that another famous coach George Allen caught his death after being dunked with ice water at a game, killed, indirectly, by the Tuna Parcells, I find no one here seems to know who George Allen was.

Somewhere the over the hill football gods shed a tear.

I wonder if anyone remembers the old Virginia coach William Henry Harrison who went the same way, almost, as George Allen.

I have a Blue Moon and toast Brent Musburger being on mute.

How did Musburger hail from Montana the land of Sheriff Seth Bullock and the adopted land Bill Carpenter?

Scores scroll on screen as Tom Petty sings about American Girls.

Wild Tommy West of Memphis town went down.

Again.

Eddie Money is singing about two tickets to pardise I'd bet Tommy West would take those tickets now.

Poe's other school, Army, was defeated in Iowa.

I toast old Poe, its his 200 birthday after all, and his lovely Annabel Lee in her tomb by the sea.

More scores flash. Vanderbilt had some Rice. How good is Cincinnati? Look at those Houston Cougars go.

Did the Temple Owls actually win?

There go the Joes. Penn State looks great. A quick seven and Beaver stadium roars in the rain.

It looks like an easy night for the Nits.

But, the old soldiers say, if the attack is going too easy its likely an ambush.

A wet angry looking man who looks just like Hunter Thompson steps in the bar, looks, around, grunts and leaves.

Was it a ghost? Or is this Baltimore bat country?

The bar keep offers a beer list. I consider the Blithering Idiot, a 11 percent alcohol beer, but fear a werewolf like Poe switch in me and decline.

And I miss seeing the South Bend Sydney Greenstreet and his Fighting Irish because this bar only has the Hawkeyes and Lions on.

Slaintes, the Irish bar is packed, the Cat Eye looks dark and empty. We move to Max's which has many televisions and much darkness.

Instead we find a cover charge and a line at Maxs. I make few moral stand in life but two are I refuse to wait in lines to go in bars or a pay cover charge for band-less bars.

The Green Turtle offers refuge and many televisions. And a pack of screaming, frothing, obnoxiously drunk frat boy types in the pack room.

Where is a stun gun at when you really need one?

Or how about that nifty cattle gun that cranky killer carried in No Country For Old Men?

The front bar is far better. Iowa snags a safety. Penn State can't open it up and put the Hawkeyes away early.

Charlie Weis looks pained and uncomfortable on the sidelines. The broken leg didn't help but the big man has become a behemoth. Weis looks like he could literally drop over dead as John Candy on the sidelines.

Are the Maine Black Bears going to devour the daring Duke pilot of the Syracuse Orange? It looks close.

Ouch! Down goes Tebow! Down goes Tebow!

LSU looms and Tebow looks like Hearns after Hagler caught him with that hook.

Somewhere in Louisiana tigers smile.

Tebow is only a touchdown or two away from breaking Herschel Walker's all time SEC scoring record.

One of Walker's many personalities is currently training to enter MMA.

Walker, at 47, will likely soon be walking like Tebow after his sack in Kentucky.

And if he's not careful Walker will be leaving in an the ambulance also.

Paterno looks wet, angry, and old. Soon its time to scream at his red headed assistant coach, his favorite sideline whipping boy, again.

The bar keep is firing delicious vodka drinks made with an entire half a grapefruit. Ah fight the scurvy.

Look at the Hawkeyes! They are hanging tough, holding on hard.

Penn State has suddenly gone from sharp to sloppy in the slop.

We move to a new bar as the frat boys are overwhelming and no one offers me a stun gun.

And the bartender told me I looked like the fat firefighter from Rescue Me a few more vodka drinks and I'll look like Charles Durning in Rescue Me.

The Fat Firefighter in Rescue Me?

The last time a bartender was that insulting Gus McCrae banged his head off the bar in Lonesome Dove.

We Look in Berthas,  the mussels and onions in Bertha's are excellent, but no game. No television on at all as the guitar man sets up.

Leadbetters lures us in.

The old tavern has a pair of great girl singers singing soulful songs.

And the Warren Zevon looking bartender happily switches the Hawkeyes and Lions on and the Orioles off.

Joe looks wet and tired.

The old Gator Galen Hall looks like he could use a double bourbon and a few of his old Gator offensive players.

Maybe Joe could use a bourbon too because the play of his quarterback is confounding. The Iowa defense seems to be getting stronger.

Turnovers are twisting Paterno's stomach. That blocked punt has to really twirl the coaches tummy. Then his best back puts the pigskin down.

Somewhere the shade of George Paterno is loudly complaining about his brothers conservative play calling saying "Joe You got to put 'em away when ya had em down! Come on Joe!"

Iowa ball.

The Penn State quarterback looks like he is in a state of pocket panic. The acoustic ladies are singing a rocking version of Sitting on The Dock of the Bay.

Galen Hall looks like he needs a boat, a bay dock, and a big drink.

Jumping Jack Ham the Penn State players can't seem to tackle. The batting Iowa back and his blockers won't go down.

Is Iowa really gonna beat Joe seven ought of eight times?

Say it ain't so Joe.

It's so Joe.

The faces at the white out are blue.

Zevon, the bartender slings me a Circus Boy beer, shrugs then swings the dial with a so its goes sad smile.

The television spits images.

The leprechauns of luck smiled on Charlie Weis again.

Weis could easy be 1-3 toast. But beware Charlie leprechauns, like the fates, are fickle beasts.

USC wins. How did they lose to Washington?

The ambulance chasers at ESPN hound Tebow as he goes to the hospital. Cut to yet another Superman vomiting shot.

As Don Henley sang we love that dirty laundry, don't we?.

A big Russian is fighting a fat Mexican guy who likes an out of shape biker bar bouncer.

Then Joe's back on the screen, looking tired, wet, old and on mute. No National title run this year, and how many years left?

Does even Joe know?

Time, the SEC fan Charles Portis wrote in True Grit, gets away from everyone in the end.

The girl bar band break into an old ballad by the doomed Del Shannon as Joe turns and walks towards the tunnel. The girls sing it well. 

  I'm a-walkin' in the rain,
Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain,

Del Shannon, shortly before his death, was said to be about to join the aging rock super star band The Traveling Wilburys.

Del Shannon was going to replace Roy Orbison.

Maybe Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden can fill in the Wilbury's roster spots.

Hit it boys.

Well its all right, even if youre old and grey
Well its all right, you still got something to say

Well its all right, riding around in the breeze
Well its all right, if you live the life you please
Well its all right, even if the sun dont shine
Well its all right, were going to the end of the line