Watching The Game, With Denny Carter

Here is a way to visualize how I feel about the broader state of things most days: Imagine a cooling lake of lava. A thin crust has only just formed over the molten rock below, but it is still very hot; I am going off the 1997 documentary [? remember to check that it is a documentary before publishing] Volcano for this, but I presume it would be very bad to find yourself splashing around in that stuff. Anyway, that is your scene. And then imagine me out there dribbling a basketball. That is how the days are sitting with me of late.

And yet, overall and all things considered, I would say that I am doing fine. Our political moment, the upcoming election and all the awful things happening in its shadow and around its margins, is just fucking dreadful on the merits, and yet I am not nearly as full of dread as I would have expected to be. Some of this, maybe, owes to the wild and burgeoning optimism that Drew feels about that election—an optimism so wild, in fact, that he wanted to do an Election Spectacular, complete with an appearance from sports/politics knower Denny Carter. I was more on the “let us simply not speak of it, ever” side of things, not because I don’t find this stuff compelling to talk about but because I am superstitious, and feel like too vigorous a dribble could have me going out like John Carroll Lynch in Volcano. Wonderful actor, but that is not what you want.

As it turned out, though, the election talk was pretty bracing. We talked about what to trust and what not to trust when it comes to assessing this (exhausting, miserable) campaign and moment, some ways that things might go and why, and whether and how long Trumpism will be with us. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I have a slight difference of opinion on that one from Drew.

And if that doesn’t strike your fancy, there is also a whole other half of the podcast! The first 35 minutes of the podcast are election stuff, and then, after the break, Drew and I returned to … do regular podcast stuff! Pick things up around the 38-minute mark and you would barely know how terrifying the stuff we discussed in the first 37 minutes was. We talked about Jayden Daniels’s wild Hail Mary game-winner on Sunday, the actually good Commanders, and the various ways we respond to that sort of sports stimulus. We bid what felt like but almost certainly won’t be a final, not-so-fond farewell to Aaron Rodgers after his embarrassing loss to the Patriots last week, to the point where we considered The Tyrod Taylor Option. We pivoted from there into the Funbag, where we dealt with a classic Funbag-style question about whether we believe we’ve eaten one million of our favorite treats, and whether such a thing is even possible, let alone advisable. We also considered the best possible places to be a professional athlete, and I found myself saying some things I instantly felt weird about re: playing for the Lakers, and we considered The Jason Kapono Option and, less appreciatively, The Derek Bell Option. Obviously, there are more unpleasant things to think about.

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