A FOOTBALL PARADISE

Vikings or Packers? Most other years there would not even be a choice: the Packers. Always Packers. Forever Packers. Packers über alles. Supporting any other team is not even a consideration. Unless, of course, one is also a die-hard Brett Favre fan.

Tonight’s Vikings-Packers game is the epitome of Monday Night Football. It is the stuff of epic poetry and archetypal songs: a renowned hero leads a vengeful fight against those who formed his legend and then cast him out. For this season, at least, this is football’s greatest rivalry.

However, there is still the question of loyalty. This is a quandary not easily solved. In fact, for me, there is no solution. Instead, I must conspire and find a way to support both without giving one or the other precedence. Furthermore, this choice must be reflected in my own fan regalia.

First, the game-day jersey. I decide against Favre’s Packers jersey. Although it clearly combines my love of both, that time has passed and it is still too soon in the grieving process to return to that beloved piece of clothing. The next obvious choice is Favre’s Vikings jersey. Alas, it too is an impossibility: it has been on backorder everywhere since the week he signed. I am told I will have it in time for Favre’s third Super Bowl appearance at the end of this season. Another consideration: my number four New York Jets jersey. No. Favre’s tenure in New York was simply too surreal. At the end I must resort to more neutral territory and wear my Brett Favre Pro Bowl jersey. It is a respectable compromise.

Headwear is actually more of a challenge. Originally, I thought about removing the horns from my viking helmet and attaching them to the sides of my Cheesehead. This alteration, however, looked more like a strange commentary on cattle and the dairy industry, not a gesture to my football allegiances. The second idea again involved attaching the horns to the side of the Cheesehead, except that I would retain the hornless viking helmet on top of the cheese wedge. Not good. Strangely, or perhaps, not so strangely, the hornless viking cap eerily resembles a Pickelhaube, the WWI Kaiser helmet. With these modifications, the entire ensemble seemed more like a reactionary political statement about the European cheese market. Deutsche Käse über alles, indeed. So, I have settled for a far less creative approach: a viking helmet resting gently atop the cheese wedge. Or is the cheese wedge supporting the viking helmet?

Tonight, during the game, we may see some disturbing images. Images of vengeful Vikings spearing oversized wedges of yellow-orange foam cheese on their plastic broadswords. We may also witness giant, heavy cheeserounds turned up to reveal flattened Viking effigies stuck to their bottoms. Whatever happens at the game, here, in my living room, cheese wedge and Viking co-exist in harmony, mutually supporting each other in a delicate balance of love, faith, and allegiance. I have created a world where there can be no Viking without cheese wedge and no cheese wedge without Viking. A world where the horned Pickelhaube and the quarter-round foam cheese wedge are equals and live side by side in tranquil togetherness, bonded by their hate for every other team in the NFC.

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

The wind is blowing hard. The sky is dark and it gives way to hail and rain, and then even more hail. This is a gesture to the storms which will come in November, the kind of storms Gordon Lightfoot sings about in Edmund Fitzgerald. The kind that snap freighters in half. Soon the weather will be fierce. But, for now, the winds have not yet taken away the foliage and the air is just beginning to smell like cedar and pine.

We think about the war. We think about money. We think about the election.

We think about football. We have Brett Favre’s career-high six touchdown passes and 289 yards in the Jets' 56-35 win over the Cardinals. We wait patiently for the start of the regular NBA season. We wait for Quantum of Solace to be released. We watch Law and Order marathons on TNT.

We miss summer. We miss Tigers’ baseball. And we miss soft-serve from the local Dairy-O, which stayed open as long as it could, but finally closed down for the season when the weather turned.

It is fall.

There are rows of blaze-orange sugar maples. Wild geese are flying late at night. Squirrels are going berserk. People have put up horrifying, giant, inflatable Halloween decorations: Shrek, Scooby-Doo, Frankenstein.

At a crosswalk, a small boy creeps through the intersection. Four cars wait. His green plastic webbed feet come down hard on the hail, breaking it into the concrete. He is wearing a green, amphibious-looking rubber mask, complete with terrible, large gills. His green shirt billows out behind him. He holds a crumpled paper bag in one clawed, webbed hand. The other rests on his mother’s arm. It is hard to walk with those feet. Each step must be measured carefully. At any moment he could trip. We wait for him to pass, gas idling out of our cars. He is very slow. His mother is patient next to him. We continue to wait. Now, seven cars. We are not thinking about McCain or Obama, about layoffs and foreclosures, or gas prices, stocks, and bonds. Instead we just watch as, slowly, very slowly, the Creature from the Black Lagoon makes his way across Main Street and heads towards downtown.