Poetry at Guernica

Here's some poetry brought to you by guernicamag.com. While you're there, check out the blog section.

Every Year

Every year around this time it begins. As children shop the aisles for their mechanical pencils, Five-Star notebooks, and, now, Apple laptops, as leaves start turning brown, orange, and yellow, and folks drive to remote locations of their states to see masses of trees do this in unison, as college freshmen meet new dorm roommates and drink themselves into oblivion in the few days between their high-school selves and their, obviously, more mature selves, another season-changing indication continuously crosses my path.

And I wish it would stop already.

This obnoxious marker of the end of summer will go unnoticed to those of you who do not also mark the beginning of fall as the beginning of football season. For this you should feel fortunate. For the rest of us, those of us in three fantasy football leagues--don't judge me--or just those who enjoy a Sunday afternoon game, one person has become synonymous with this time. When you turn on Sportcenter to get caught up on the day's football goings-on, there he is in his suit that looks like it could be from any year of the montage of clips from the 80s to the present they undoubtedly will play before actually showing him.

It's Chris Berman.

Am I the only one that is sick of his nicknames and the way he re-caps highlights, which, as far as I can tell haven't changed in a decade (I know it's not football, but "Back, back, back, back..." anyone?)? I mean, c'mon, doesn't the same ol' shtick get a little boring? The Josh Mc "go milk the" Cown, the Trent Green "with envy," the "Who shot J.R. on" Dallas Clark, the Robbie "Good as" Gould, the Drew "Cool as a summer's" Brees...I mean, is it just me, or are others kind of sick of this bit already?

I think it's time for the Swami to get some new material. It was cute for a long time. Now it's just lame. But, come to think of it, the same could probably be said for a lot of the sportscasters on Sportcenter.

Some Writing Online

So, I entered this writing competition that was looking for short nonfiction pieces about people's experiences with the Great Lakes. Click here to read the story, and check out the site for ways to take action in protecting the Great Lakes.

(Oh, and look at that, after all my talk/complaining of The Hold Steady being called a Brooklyn band, they go and put "David of Brooklyn." I swear I put both Brooklyn and St. Paul.)