Jack Burton: What does that say? Wang Chi: Hell of Boiling Oil. Jack Burton: You're kidding. Wang Chi: Yeah, I am. It says, Keep Out. from Big Trouble in Little China
I have ventured to the frorest depths of hell, where split gravity tears you at the gut. I have seen the dread circle Dante never grasped. It is in downtown Memphis. And it is called traffic court.
I'm not going to delve into the details or relate the frightful sociological conclusions from a day in the bowels of the Memphis courthouse. (Let's just repeat there's a definite inequality between the races in American society.) As I waited in an interminable line, a tiny black woman with a single giant tooth and a big bouffant—she looked like Dionne Warwick—pushed a pamphlet cart and entreated us to get with jobs and school in a street-corner sing-song worthy of the finest evangelists. I silently wended through and watched the accused (syllabic stress on -ed) hordes mass in a darkened bowels of a municipal building unrivaled in concrete monolithic ugliness. One man had half of his face literally falling of his head. Some kind of nerve damage I assume. Others swayed, still strung-out, as they waited for their particular unkind door to open and the judge to deliver them. I listened to two attorneys discuss a case that involved a crackhead mother, an abused daughter, and a child molester boyfriend—and then in the next breath, lunch, drinks, and Ole Miss football.
My spirit might have been irreparably wilted had I not been, to a degree, relieved to be there. I had driven the previously day from Atlanta to make this very court appearance. I had gotten detoured and "lost" on my morning drive from Olive Branch, Mississippi. I had already been panhandled on separate sides of the city. I had already been kicked out of Memphis' handsome federal courthouse. Late and confused, it seems I had run into the wrong building only to be detained and sent out on account of a weapon on my person.
Said weapon. About five cheez-its long.
I had simply hopped in the car and driven to Memphis. No accoutrements. No change of clothes except underwear and socks. All miscellany still in my pockets, even a miniature pocket knife. Realizing we were on the verge of discord, I played up my bumpkin in the city-ignorance act until the security guards suffered my departure. Sure, I can run a trotline. In retrospect, thank goodness it occurred in the wrong building.
As for my legal troubles, the case was summarily dismissed in light of the insane pedestrian on I-40. After waiting three hours to speak with someone, a pleasant sub-adjudicator dealt with me in seconds. Perhaps the law really comes down to patience and money, or the money to be patient.
"the spiritual post-sepulchral life even on earth of the individual, through the thoughts he transmits to his fellows"--Giuseppe Mazzini, "Byron and Goethe"
And off I went, gouging through the enchanted vacancy of northern Mississippi. Serendipity always arrives on a trip. John Steinbeck said a trip takes you. After trawling for quaintness and Southern home-cooking in Corinth, I found my way to the coon dog cemetery before you come to Tuscumbia, Alabama. I simply followed a sign until I was a ways off the main road and then the secondary one and then into the primeval (assuming, of course, the primeval includes off-roading and deer hunters). The windy country road took me into a vast wood, sparkling serenely on a crisp and cold day, and somehow as soft and inviting as clouds. And then to a miraculous little spot, with granite monuments, outhouses, a picnic pavilion, a fresh water spring, and a couple hundred graves devoted to beloved coon dogs.
Besides the care and effort spent upon the gravestones, some carved in wood by hand, my favorite thing was their ornamentation. They could be like Catholic shrines to the Virgin Mary. But protestant sobriety kept all inclinations toward the rococo in check. The one indulgence was commemorating the foe. Coon hunters are exceptional because of their respect for the intelligence of their quarry. It takes a damn good dog to be a coon dog. The raccoons engraved on this stone or sitting atop that one were a kind of obeisance and also signified that Old Blue and Dr. Doom and Loud would always be doing what they loved, treeing that great raccoon in the sky.
This raccoon seems a little too happy with himself.
Mental Floss actually covers the cemetery in their current Spinning the Globe section (topic: Appalachia). But it's rather cursory, has no pictures of the actual site, and is casually irreverent.
It's celebrate-your-cousin week here in Chestnut Mountain, and I'm making up for lost pronouncements during Thanksgiving.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that one word of truth shall outweigh the whole word. Well, I've got a word of irrepressible, incontrovertible, ineffable truth: My cousin Erica makes the best damn desserts in the whole world.
This is not overstated. Red devil cakes, Dutch chocolate cakes, lemon cakes—all so delicious your teeth feel like icy cotton. She should be doing this full time.
Pecan pie the way you were meant to eat it: on an aluminum plate in a cardboard box upon firewood and an axe over a red concrete floor. This tree farm is getting to me.
Hooray for Erica. My pop says she ain't bad to look at neither. Cough. An academic bonus, I think.
Levon Helm as promised, and in honor of New Orleans, the Sugar Bowl, the SEC, and Atlantic tropical storms versus sissy-pants, gimmicky Pacific ones:
"The commonly held perception of The Band is that they were muso types uninterested in rock & roll debauchery. This is a quarter-truth, at best. Says Ronnie Hawkins: 'Levon's got an extra chromosone or something. Samson couldn't have screwed that many girls in one day.' Helm slyly grins: 'We were always ready to make love and not war.'"
"The movie, Helm believes, is a showcase for the guitarist, not The Band. 'It's not what The Band is or was,' Helm spits. 'We had a lead singer named Richard Manuel. And, if you believe The Last Waltz, he's the drunk that shows up about halfway through for about two minutes.'"
Listen to tracks from Dirt Farmer and Helm's interview on Fresh Air here.
I read somewhere that his daughter's favorite member of The Band was Rick Danko. As a little girl, she thought it was Danko's band, and he was the lead singer. I'll admit then that Danko is almost as equally stupendous. Elvis Costello claimed that his vocal style was a big influence.
And we are all very, very proud. From the M.I.A. show in Atlanta on Halloween.
(I don't care how cool he thinks he is. We're still going to kick his tail in the intra-family, no-holds-barred Christmas football match. The trophy stays with us, mophead!)
Days after the flood, as someone with allegiance to the University of Arkansas, I find myelf between a rock and a hard place. I can't sit here sober and tell you that Houston Nutt was the answer or that Arkansas isn't truly better off without him. At the same time, I can't endorse his replacement either.
Insert salty caption here.
In so many words, Arthur Blank called Bobby Petrino a quitter and a liar. What did the Falcon players have to say?
Well, it was much more caustic, believe or not. Safety Lawyer Milloy went so far as to cross out Petrino's signature on his impersonal farewell letter to the players and replace it with COWARD.
Falcons rookie defensive end Jamaal Anderson, the team's first-round draft pick from the University of Arkansas, has gotten non-stop calls from players, friends and associates with the Razorbacks football program. They all want to know what type of guy their new coach, Bobby Petrino, is.
"Disloyal," said Anderson, Petrino's first pick as an NFL coach. "If he can leave players here, what makes you think he won't leave the players he's going to coach? I'm just afraid to see what happens if he does bad at Arkansas. Is he going to leave those kids?"
...
Veteran safety Lawyer Milloy taped the "insensitive" farewell letter Petrino sent to players to his locker. Petrino's copied signature was crossed out in red ink.
"Coward!" was put in its place.
"Everything he preached over the past eight months was a lie," Milloy said. "Everything he said he stood for was a lie. He came in and messed with a lot of people's lives — he wasted a year of my life. It was a cowardly act. A selfish act.
"One thing I'm really [mad] at was while he was having a half-hearted approach to games, he was putting us all at risk. His mind wasn't in it. That explains why he threw a challenge flag a play after he was allowed to. Why we went for it on fourth-and-9 and punted on fourth-and-1. Maybe he was on the phone at Arkansas to the AD at that point.
"The cancer was diagnosed. Never would you want it to be your head coach, your general, to be that cancer, but in our case, it was."
...
From Warwick Dunn, whom no one can accuse of being classless: "He sold us a dream. He put this organization last in his life. He's selfish. He's definitely a liar. One of the things we have hanging in our meeting room is [a sign] 'Finish.' If he wanted to leave, you can at least finish three more games. It's 18 days. You can finish it and say, 'You know what, this wasn't for me.' You can respect that. But to let it go yesterday the way that he did and the disrespectful way that he did it, to me he has no heart."
There's a tendency discard players' complaints as the rambling of spoiled primadonnas, whose exorbitant salaries prohibit them from being unhappy about anything. However, if I'm a football player, committed to a violent game in which every snap puts at risk my health and my career, I'm entitled to expect my coaches to be as focused as I am.
Whatever Arthur Blank said at his press conference, this is what he meant: Ben Folds Five's "Song for the Dumped" from Whatever and Ever Amen.
This is what it looks like to have no soul. Harsh.
Alas, my dream of Arkansas and Clemson swapping coaches, or a version thereof, evaporated when Tommy Bowden decided to remain in the South Carolina upcountry. Now Arkansas has hired Bobby Petrino, and I'd prefer to sum up the Arkansas/Atlanta Falcons/Bobby Petrino imbroglio as swiftly and cleanly as possible. I'm afraid that's not going to happen. For all the swiftness of the event, there was nothing clean about it. Petrino's yellow opportunist reek is overpowering everything else. I'm hardly going to touch Houston Nutt's foibles, Arthur Blank's naive mollycoddling, or the ineptitude among the higher-ups in Fayetteville (the word on the street is that new Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long never asked permission to talk to any of his candidates save for Jim Grobe). Plainly, I don't trust any situation in which Jerry Jones is the intermediary, and I don't trust any academic institution that has a Pravda man like Rick Schaeffer on retainer to disseminate the official story.
For Arkansas, there are two simple ways to break this down: Petrino is a good hire because...Arkansas needed to save face after a coaching search that up to this point had seemed both far-fetched and disastrous. Lane Kiffin from the Oakland Raiders to the Razorbacks? Come on. He wasn't going to run to Fayetteville just because his father, Monte, the current Tampa Bay defensive coordinator, was an assistant there in the mid-'70s. Three of the four major candidates linked to the job--Butch Davis, Tommy Bowden, and Tommy Tuberville--had leveraged Arkansas' interest to engineer better deals at home. Wake Forest head coach Jim Grobe eventually turned down the Razorbacks after concluding the insanity and personal intrusions that had surrounded previous UA head coach Houston Nutt were not worth a more lucrative contract. It's rumored that Butch Davis cautioned fellow Arkansas alum Jimmy Johnson that the rewards of the jobs did not offset its headaches. In fine, there was a growing sense that, with their ruthless invigilation of Houston Nutt, untethered Razorback fans had made their bed and now were destined to lie in it. The Arkansas football program would be condemned to a level just above competitive mediocrity.
Mediocrity is the crucial word here. Despite two SEC Championship appearances in the past six years, Arkansas fans felt mired in perpetually also-ran status. They perceived that Houston Nutt had not the intelligence, activity, or moral fiber to lead them to the Promised Land. They prosecuted a witch hunt for Nutt's professional distractions and indiscretions and eclipsed the normal apathy and absenteeism of a disenchanted fanbase by becoming wild and fractious tormentors (see the acquisition of Nutt's cell phone records, sartorial protests to the direction of the program, sarcastic airplane banners flying over the stadium).
A picture of Lenny Kravitz would also have sufficed.
Arkansas has looked these past few years like a nation of incurable lunatics. Sure, Nutt played politics with the Springdale crew, but he had to under pressure from a mob of wealthy and meddlesome local boosters. That one nearby high school could create so much turmoil inside a college--much less SEC--athletic department was patently ridiculous. Frank Broyles should never have admitted the Springdale parents into his office or brooked a single complaint from the no-nothing, juvenile cadre. As for the charge that Nutt never gave Gus Malzahn a fair chance to run his "HurryUpNoHuddle" offense, it might be true: Nutt is at his core a jealous huckster, and his instinct for self-preservation is second only to Phil Fulmer's. Nonetheless, there was no reason to reinvent the wheel with the best tailback tandem in the country. Or with Darren McFadden alone--recent victim of the ESPN Heisman farce. From the outsider's viewpoint, Arkansas overachieved last year thanks to a sympathetic schedule (USC notwithstanding) and the best college football player perhaps in two decades. To expect more was and is foolish. The overall talent pool inside the Natural State is vastly inferior to the likes of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and certainly Florida. In their more traditional recruiting grounds in Texas, the Razorbacks are competing for whatever scraps fall from Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, and A&M. Simply put, Arkansas will never have the athletes, unless they become a national recruiting dynamo of Tennessee's caliber. Thus, four years ago the Hogs welcomed cornerback/safety Michael Grant when UGA denied him admission for improper sexual conduct with another minor (obviously, there are more unseemly, if not illegal, specifics here). And, thus, they yearly scour the JUCO ranks for impact players, always a dicey proposition since those student-athletes end up at junior college for good reason. From the outsider's viewpoint, Arkansas will never outclass the ability of its SEC rivals in quantity and quality. It's only hope of championships depends upon an immaculate brew of luck, good health, strategy, and execution. Consequently, the folks in Arkansas should have been happy with Nutt's winning record and appreciated his knack for cobbling together a dominating offensive line from second-tier oafs. If he had one glaring deficiency as a coach, it was his failure to recruit or develop an outstanding quarterback. (Matt Jones was a fleet giant. Mitch Mustain was a year or two away. I watched him practice his bounce pass against Wisconsin in the bowl game last year. Surprisingly, he found the SEC a little stiffer that his high school league).
So the rest of the SEC has long considered Arkansas fans provincial demoniacs, terminally fixated on the only communal property of the state. In the Deep South and inside Cavalier social sets in places like Atlanta and Nashville, there has been a tendency to attribute the Razorbacks' very literal fanaticism to the lack of culture's tempering influence. Northwest Arkansas is a place of parvenus and the nouveau riche, without the taste to mitigate excessiveness in entertainment, capitalism, and evangelical Christianity. There, it is only progress, no skepticism or sense of the absurd.
Did someone say absurd? Click on it.
If the Razorbacks feel like the red-headed stepchildren since joining the SEC, it's not without justification. A poster on an Arkansas website claimed the other day that he could no longer stomach disrespect from the media in the Southeast, that they never demean Georgia, Florida, or Alabama in the same way. That's not necessarily true, but it's undeniable that the ancien regime of the SEC has no memory of the halcyon days Arkansas fans desperately wish to return to. They were a million years and a million miles away, when Arkansas' face pointed towards Dallas and its butt towards Atlanta. In the SEC there is no precedent and historical imperative for Arkansas to be excellent.
The hiring of Bobby Petrino from the Atlanta Falcons, especially after weeks of administrative folly by the school, gives the Razorbacks the kind of certification they have been starving for. Yes, an NFL coach has left precious Atlanta to become the new head coach at the University of Arkansas. At once it signalizes to the fans that Arkansas is back: a major player, one of the big boys, top flight, etc., etc. (exactly what South Carolina and Alabama had felt). Despite the embarrassing hiccups, look at how sweet a job this was after all. Look at the power the Razorbacks command, pulling an NFL coach before the season ends. The sizzle factor of Petrino is undeniable. No doubt a wave of exhilaration rippled through the Natural State when his name was announced, bated by the fear of another reversal. Petrino is also a good coach who knows offense and, unlike Houston Nutt, thoroughly believes in a vertical passing attack. He will make the Razorbacks multiple and balanced. He took Louisville from relative obscurity to national relevance. Major kudos go to Chancellor White and AD Jeff Long for not pulling a stub (Skip Holtz) out of the bottom of the bag.
Survival this way. Giggity.
Petrino is a bad hire because...I promise I'll keep this shorter. Frankly, it's less complicated.
This is not an improvement over Nutt in character. Petrino is mercenary, mendacious, and impatient. He's looked for a new job every year in the past five. He conspired in a covert plot to dethrone his former boss Tuberville at Auburn (see Bobby Lowder and Plane-gate). He lied about his commitment to the Falcons and then ran out the next day. He lied that he had never had contact with Arkansas before signing a contract with them. Strictly factual perhaps, but his agent has been a busy man. You can't trust him. It's worse than Sabanic; it's Petrinoesque. Oh yeah, and he is a LIAR. L-I-A-R. He never once mentioned Arkansas to any of the top brass at the Falcons when questioned directly about his future. Despite last night's televised Hog Call, he does not really care about the Razorbacks.
He won't tolerate the shenanigans that have plagued Arkansas the past few years. This is a good thing, but it also means he will not suffer the particular Hog brand of crazy. For a man with a wandering professional eye, a breath of wind may cause him to jump ship again. What about a bacon-flavored acid bath?
When the going gets tough, the tough bail. How many people had made commitments to the Falcons and Atlanta based on Petrino's being there? I cannot repeat enough that he didn't even finish a full season in his contract. Look, Vick was an out and out fiasco. But as Falcons owner Arthur Blank said today, you don't leave the golf course just because the first two holes didn't go well.
Arkansas does not have the personnel for a multiple offense. If McFadden and Felix Jones both leave, the talent will be immeasurably degraded. With this team and Texas, Florida, and the usual foes on next year's slate, instant success is not at hand. Arkansas fans did not just get an "offense genius" from the pros so they could wait a few more years.
As an Arkansas fan in Atlanta said on the radio, Petrino shouldn't have any trouble transitioning back to college since he's been running a college offense with the Falcons all year.
Louisville was solid before he arrived. The school accepts student-athletes liberally. Is Petrino that good? How will he fare with tighter academic restrictions (ahem) and against more robust opposition? How will he deal with all those fat, wealthy hands (Jim Lindsey, the Walton clique and claque, et al.)?
The consensus among Falcon fans and football gurus is that Petrino is pouty, petulant, and inflexible and did a piss-poor job of coaching his first NFL season (see Steve Spurrier).
Joey Harrington discovered he would not start the next game, after leading the team to two consecutive victories, from reporters at a press conference.
He might have even stuck around had he not let his relationship with his players erode. Team members thought him a smug, condescending jerk. Among players and fans, the word "cancer" was thrown around.
Petrino is an abysmal communicator with players and the media. Joey Harrington discovered he would not start the next game, after leading the team to two consecutive victories, from reporters at a press conference.
Petrino can't utilize his NFL cache in recruiting because he washed out before completing a year.
Petrino is not a long-term solution. His professional philandering prevents that.
And the conclusion is...this is a good, albeit precipitous, hire in terms of PR and restoring faith in the university's administration. However, the negatives outweigh the benefits in image. Petrino right now is a mirage. His NFL resume is specious. His merits as a coach are questionable in light of Louisville's featherweight schedule and utter defensive collapse this year. There is growing suspicion that the latter owes more to Petrino's inadvertence to the defensive side of things than the absence of his coaching majesty. And he may leave as soon as another program comes calling. Then what?
I would have preferred to see Auburn's defensive coordinator Will Muschamp get the job. He is young but he too has NFL experience. He's also served as DC for LSU's 2003 National Championship team.
I like Muschamp because of his youth, his energy, and his enthusiasm. He seems to be a straight arrow. He would devote himself to Arkansas and do it the right way, sustaining a program for years to come. The next two seasons could be lean, but Muschamp would still be lighting up living rooms across the Heartland and Deep South (he's from Georgia, Petrino from Montana) with his infectiousness and promise to young men that they would grow and win together.
At least we no longer have to witness Petrino's forlorn visage on the Atlanta sideline. The Falcons "now have one less quitter to worry about." Muschamp will get his shot somewhere. Everyone can be happy for the time being. Selah.
Said weapon. About five cheez-its long.
And off I went, gouging through the enchanted vacancy of northern Mississippi. Serendipity always arrives on a trip. John Steinbeck said a trip takes you. After trawling for quaintness and Southern home-cooking in Corinth, I found my way to the coon dog cemetery before you come to Tuscumbia, Alabama. I simply followed a sign until I was a ways off the main road and then the secondary one and then into the primeval (assuming, of course, the primeval includes off-roading and deer hunters). The windy country road took me into a vast wood, sparkling serenely on a crisp and cold day, and somehow as soft and inviting as clouds. And then to a miraculous little spot, with granite monuments, outhouses, a picnic pavilion, a fresh water spring, and a couple hundred graves devoted to beloved coon dogs.
This raccoon seems a little too happy with himself. 
