I wrote it a while ago, but it’s still worth reading! Check out Unlucky 7 … my review of Buffy’s final season, and why I wasn’t sorry to see the Slayer go.

Thursday, Nov 27 2003 Turkey Day, early

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm working today; I have to go in at eleven a.m., in a little less than an hour, and work until close (4 p.m. today) and since I work for the restaurant business, one of the peculiarities of American labor law is about to bite me on the ass... the one that declares me to be one of that sad, embittered minority who can be required to work major holidays and who does not need to be compensated for this with holiday pay.

I'm filled with hatred, loathing, scorn, contempt, and disregard for the American legal system in general and my corporate employers in specific at this moment, but, well, that's actually quite normal for me.

Sometime overnight the site's hit counter quietly rolled over the 10,000 milestone. All those lurkers out there (YOU know who you are) and still I'm only getting three, four comments from different people per post. Do I need to reiterate how much lurkers SUCK? Do I need to post one more time that if you're coming here and enjoying my work and not giving me anything back, either through the comment threads or my Pay Pal link, you're a worthless parasite and should be sent to a gulag somewhere? No, I probably don't. Just bear in mind, all you quiet multitudes reading what I'm saying without having the backbone (or the simple common decency) to provide me with a little bit of attention back... one of these days you'll come here for the fourth or fifth time in a week and wonder 'why isn't Darren updating this page any more' and it will be because I'm off to an entirely new URL, one that only those who have posted COMMENTS got an invitation to.

And don't think I'm bluffing; I've done it before.

And while I'm sounding truculent, let me do this:

I frankly admit it: I am a bandwagon Bux fan.

Yes, I'm that worst of all things, that thing most sports fans will struggle endlessly to deny being: I'm a fair weather fan. When the Bucs are winning, I'm right in there screaming, watching their games avidly, talking it up at work, reading the sports pages, checking out websites on the team. When they lose, I bail. And I bail fast.

I used to try to justify this. I'd point out to people (I've done it on past blogs) that while I only became a Bux fan at the beginning of last season (at the end of which the Bux won the Super Bowl) it wasn't that I was a fair weather fan, I simply hadn't liked Tony Dungy. (And I did not.) When they traded in Dungy for a coach I found more charismatic, I finally allowed myself to invest some hope in the franchise, and I hung in there all through the first half of last season, because, well, the Bucs WON. They won ugly, they looked really bad and inept and terrible winning, nobody thought they could go the distance because their offense was mostly prostrate and the defense was doing all the scoring, but still... they won. You could get to the end of a Bux game and not feel as if you'd been run through an emotional mangle, because, well, for all the ups and downs and for all the sheer frustrating lack of anything remotely like a break out offensive performance the Bux put on, nonetheless, they WON.

This season, the Bux sauntered into every game apparently feeling that at any moment they could simply push some mystic button that said 'championship level play' on it and instantly whip any team, at any point in any game... and until it became necessary to push that button, why, they could play as if on coffee break for most of the match up. Halfway through the season, that attitude worked half the time. The other half of the time, however, I, as a Bux fan, was getting the living shit beaten out of me. I was forced to sit there and watch, not once, not twice, but THREE FUCKING TIMES, as the Bux languished in the offensive doldrums for three quarters, managed a stunning fourth quarter come back that left me gasping... and then completely melted down again in the last four minutes of each game, when that lead, in the hands of any reasonably competent defense (much less the defense of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) should have been as safe as money in the bank.

Unfortunately, this season, apparently the Buccaneers' bank has been being run by Neil Bush.

I admit it, I couldn't and can't take that shit. That's way too much drama for me, and way too much anguish, and so, when the Bucs had their spectacular last minute meltdown (AGAIN) against the Panthers a few games ago, you may remember me declaring that the Bux were dead to me from that point on... unless they started winning again, in which case, I would cheerfully climb right back on the bandwagon.

Now, there are a lot of fanatical Bux fans out there, who have stuck with the franchise through thick and thin, who are there every week regardless of whether the team is winning or not, who gamely wore their Bucs jerseys out in public even when the Bux were the joke of the NFL, and they have nothing but contempt and odium for me at this moment. And to them, I can say only this:

Suckers.

Chumps.

Look, you mooks... a sports franchise is not your friend. Let me say that again. Your local sports team is not your buddy, your brother, your parent, or your spouse. It does not reflect well on you when you are loyal to them for better and for worse, through sickness and in health. Why? Because they are not loyal to you, similarly.

Don't believe me? Ask Keyshawn Johnson, if you can find him. Walk up to Warren Sapp at some point and ask him for an autograph, if you dare. These people are not your friends. Many of them don't even call Tampa (or wherever it is you, the avid sports fan, live) home most of the year.

A sports franchise is owned by someone who is running it for a profit. He, and everyone involved with the franchise, wants your money. To the end of getting your money, they deliberately foster this notion that the local team is your pal and there is something deeply wrong with you as a human being, something horribly flawed about your essential character, if you are letting your buddy down by only supporting him when he is on top.

Well, I'm here to tell you, that's specious and stupid. The actual deal is very simple: when the team wins, I support them. When they lose, I do not. Why? Because watching these idiots bungle away lead after lead in the last four minutes of every game, against teams who clearly aren't good enough to beat them (the Indianapolis Colts needed the collusion of an entire refereeing corps to do what they did) is agonizing, and I don't need that shit. My life has enough frustration in it right now, and so does yours.

I am not married to the Bucs, I am not dating the Bucs, and as far as I know, no one on the Bucs or involved with the Bucs is interested in having any relationship like that with me (although if any of the Buccaneers cheerleaders likes science fiction and has enough character to want to date a genuinely nice guy who isn't built like a football player, she should drop me an email). I don't owe them any loyalty; as far as I know, none of them are willing to lend me money or help me move. So they get my support when they make me feel good, and they make me feel good when they win games.

Now, if you want to give your loyal, avid, partisan support to a bunch of mercenaries who don't even live in town most of the year and who only play in Tampa because Tampa pays them the most money, and who will pack their shit and git in a heartbeat the instant their agent negotiates them a better deal from some other franchise somewhere else (ask Lawyer Malloy if you don't believe me), well, that's on you.

But I'm a bandwagon Bux fan. I'm a fair weather friend to the team. When they win, I'm right there screaming with the best of y'all. When they lose, I'm nowhere to be found, or, yes, that's me, over in the corner, sneering about our lousy defense that has decided, this season, that after winning a Super Bowl, they deserve to take a coffee break the last five minutes of each game.

You, on the other hand, the dedicated devotee to your local sports franchise who is there no matter what, day in and day out, spending your money, wearing your merchandise, diligently changing the names on your home made fan banners to match up with whatever the latest business dictated roster shifts may be... you, mon frere, are one of those folks P.T. Barnum once pointed out that there was one born of, every minute.

Me, I don't have the time for it, I don't have the patience for it, and I don't have the stomach lining for it. Being a Bucs fan this season has, for a majority of Sundays, been torture, and I get enough of that these days in the dish pit at the Village Inn.

And, no, I am not greatly heartened by the fact that the Bucs, on Monday Night Football, managed to bungle their way to a very nearly utterly inept victory over what may well be the only team in the League more error ridden than they are, at the moment.

It would be heartening to reflect on the fact that the the Bucs are now going to be playing, up until they get to the Titans, a string of teams who haven't done much so far this season, but, well, I'm confident the Bucs can lose against the Jaguars, I know damn well they can lose against the Saints, and I'm even pretty sure they can lose against the Texans, if they put their hearts and minds into it, which I have a lot of faith they are perfectly capable of doing.

Beyond that, if they win, so what? The Bucs have now put themselves in a place where, even if they win every game for the rest of the season, and the Panthers contrive to skid badly enough to let the Bucs into the play offs somehow, every sports commenter in the world is going to be sneering at the Bucs right up until they get into the Super Bowl again... if they do... and if the Bucs fall out of the play offs, well, it will be 'yeah, they could only beat bad teams this season, we all knew the first time they ran into a serious contender they were going down'.

And if the Bucs win two Super Bowls in a row?

Well, with the kind of poisoned pill this season is turning into, all I can say is, the Bucs had better play and beat the Kansas City Chiefs if they want any kind of respect. Otherwise, commentators are going to throw up their hands and call the 2003-2004 season the biggest fluke ever, and Tampa Bay's back to back Super Bowl wins (something that is pretty goddam hypothetical right now) will forever have an asterisk after them in the record books.

However, as it turns out, I'm working Sundays, so it hardly matters to me.

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RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

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THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

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