Coop de 'Ville

:: LOUISVILLE, KY - Sept. 26, 2003 ::

A bit of background: I went to St. Xavier High School in Louisville, KY - Home of the Fighting Tigers and some of the most embarrassing moments of my life. (I am fine with this because I can always look back and blame it on puberty and acne. For all my college cringe-inducing moments, I can just blame Mad Dog. Not much consolation). Anyway, St. X is one half of the biggest H.S. football rivalry in the nation. Over 35,000 pack the Papa (Papa John's Stadium) every late September to see the St. X v. Trinity game. I was one of those 35,000. This game was to be particularly tasty. Trinity has one of the nation's top quarterbacks, if not THE top quarterback in the nation. How good is he? He was SI's cover boy in November 2002.

You might suspect this is when I set my stun guns to 'irony', but no chance. It may seem easy to mock mid-America and its traditions, but I find it lazy and pathetic. Sure, I got my ass kicked by these football players on a weekly basis in high school, but I still find it my DNA to fly back to watch the game and reminisce in the stands with all my old high school friends that don't exist. So exactly like I did in high school, I went to the game with my parents and borrowed money from my dad for Coke and hot dog.

To you these are cheerleaders, to me...well they are too. I was a good punt away from these girls when I took the photo - say 75 yds - thereby making it the closest I have ever come to a cheerleader* in my life. Please note the rival cheerleaders putting their differences aside and coming together the betterment of blondes and human pyramids everywhere. I was filled with S-P-I-R-I-T! (sorry that was gay)

Having seen enough of St. X doing its run-run-run-punt routine (you've been doing that for 16 years Coach Glazer. Get your head out of your ass!), my brother and I broke free of the parental chains and decided to spend the third quarter in the student section. Coming out of the vomitory, I turn around and saw the ghost of my past. The only thing that would have made this more spot on would have been if he'd been wearing bleached jeans. I mean, he looks 12, has body paint, his foray into cool - those shades - have failed miserably and there is nary a girl to be seen near him. YOU ARE ME!!! KEEP UP THE GOOD FIGHT...IT'S A LONG, SORRY ONE! This may seem like an out-of-focus shot, but that's just the digicam shooting through my tears.

Needing smelling salts to clear my head after seeing my own prepubescent ghost, I started to make some observations about today's youth, none of which are original or funny, but here they go: first, when I was in high school, all the girls rocked the preppy/North Face look. Today, they rock the hooker look. No girl covers her gut no matter its size. Exposed bra straps are de rigeur. All the jeans are so tight you can tell the year of the nickel in their back pocket. Everybody is yapping on their cellie. And worst of all, the student section was filled with girls! In my day, girls barely even populated the back of the student section. Now, it looks like Offrah's studio audience. Disgraceful. Is there no place sacred, besides Hooters, for dudes to be dudes?

St. X got crushed and Dad made me look for his binoculars for twenty minutes after the game. Not a good time. So on the ride home I decided to douse my anger on Louisville's drag - Bardstown Road. I called up Darran and told him to meet me at Flanagan's. To those not in the know, Darran is from Louisville, went to college with me, got a law degree, became a lawyer in Cincinnati, left his job to be a 'body man' for a KY gubernatorial candidate (essentially follow candidate around and cater to his ever whim), then watched his candidate concede the race, and is now back in Louisville looking for legal work. What is he doing in his free time? Well, Darran dropped this whooper on me: he is now an assistant football coach at a private high school that has no business fielding a football team. The obvious question was "What position do you coach?" This is were it got tricky. Darran doesn't have a 'position' per se. He's in charge of burning a 'pump-me-up' mix cd for the team's warm-up drills. Sorta like Jock Jams meets Braveheart meets Hoosiers. And he takes his job seriously...very seriously. Seriously enough for me to know it was time to go home.

On my way out, my brother and I ran into the ever elusive Pat Mann (center). The last time I saw Pat I was on a family vacation in South Carolina three years ago. We ran into Pat on his 21st birffday at some random bar. It was the usual routine: shots, followed by yelling "whooooo-hooos", more shots, more yelling, etc... We lost track of Pat, figuring he had gone to some other bar. At closing time, we leave the bar and there in parking lot, pants around ankles, hair akimbo, shirt off, one shoe missing, Pat is yelling his friends to find his belt. BELT! How about you find your pants back up to your waist and start looking for dignity!? After yelling at his friends, Pat - a University of Alabama student, on the six-year plan, mind you - starts yelling 'Roll Tide'. I can't remember if he ever found his belt, shoe or if the tide rolled, but he seemed mighty happy to see us three years later. We didn't dare bring up the incident.

Saturday night my brother and I decided to hit up a Louisville institution - Beerhalla. Kentucky's only Sip and Putt. For $3 you get a round of crappy putt-putt with a bottle of crappy beer. To add to it's already oxycontin-like allure, they play mostly Grateful Dead music. If I die, you can bury me under number 4 (dogleg right). I also picked up some sweet University of Kentucky beer cozies in the shape of a football and basketball jersey. Simply fantastic.

From one Louisville institution to another. After I dropped a respectable 45 at Beerhalla, my brother, on his way to a riverboat casino, dropped me off at Headliner's to meet up with Coach Darran to see Louisville's own and critical darlings My Morning Jacket. This was the second night of their home stand, and really their first set of concerts since they struck it big. The must have played for over two hours. Pure rock. And not a slimy CMJ-spank to be seen.

During the set break, while Coach explained me why you don't want to mix a clip from Forrest Gump into "Whoop There It Is", I decided to make a beer run and ran into VHS or Beta's lead singer. Some would have you believe their music is just gay disco with live instruments, and maybe it is, but check out the hickey on Zeke Buck. Gay disco has it's priviledges.

*- Going to an all-boy high school had its pluses and minuses. The most obvious minus was the lack of girls. But I went to college with plenty of girls and my failures are still talked about, so we'll call that a push. One of the more unlikely pluses were hot cheerleaders. All the schools would send their girls to tryout for our team. It was like the Cheerleading Wet Dream Team. I know, I know. Cheerleading ceased to be cool when Footloose finished up its run in cinemas, but in high school, I took what I could get. And what I got were unreturned phone calls and general mockery, but also some hot girls to gander at.