I think it’s safe to say that the Ohio State Buckeyes were happy that Auburn improbably beat Alabama by returning a missed field goal 109 yards for a touchdown as time ran out. OSU linebacker filmed the reaction and posted it to his Twitter feed. It reminds you that the players are really just kids playing a game.
What a day for college football and the Buckeye Nation!
In a rivalry filled with memorable games, this year’s version of The Game has to be one of the greatest ever. Back and forth, with the game ending on a thwarted effort by Michigan to get a two-point conversion and spring a stunning upset. But Ohio State’s defense, which had been gashed repeatedly during the day, finally made a play, Tyvis Powell knocked down the pass, and the Buckeyes hung on to win.
This was the kind of game that makes the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry the greatest rivalry in college sports. Michigan ran just about every play in their playbook, their much-maligned offensive line held up, and Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner was a warrior who played a virtually flawless game. He never quit, and neither did the Wolverine coaching staff. Michigan just kept coming, and coming, and coming. They gained more than 600 yards — 600 yards! — and were clicking on all cylinders. I give great credit to the Michigan team, from the head coach on down, for developing a near-perfect game plan and showing what this rivalry is all about.
Fortunately for me and other Pepto-Bismol-guzzling members of Buckeye Nation, the Wolverines had no answer for the Ohio State offense. For the Buckeyes, the accolades must start with the offensive line. The Buckeyes front wall pushed the Michigan defensive line around like a precision lawnmowing team, and Carlos Hyde and Braxton Miller took full advantage. The Buckeyes ran for 393 yards — 393 yards! — and Carlos Hyde rumbled for the most yards ever by an OSU running back against the Wolverines. I was especially glad to see Carlos Hyde, who has been a monster, bounce back from his fumble to score the winning touchdown.
So, the Buckeyes’ winning streak continues. The pundits can talk all they want about style points, and we can worry about that porous defense next week. For tonight, Columbus and Ohio and Buckeye lovers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief and crack open a cold one. The Buckeyes won against their great rival, stay in the hunt for a BCS title game spot, and move on to the Big Ten championship game next weekend. That’s good enough for me.
Recently, when we’ve taken our morning walks around the Yantis Loop, Penny, Kasey, and I have often found unwelcome surprises at various places along the fence line. They are bags of dog poop, carefully tied off yet left on the top of the fence posts. I pick them up, carry them to the next disposal container, and toss them in. And I always wonder: who in the heck would do such a thing?
In The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes explained, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” What can we deduce from the poop bags? First, we know the culprit has a dog and is sufficiently mobile to make it to various places along the Yantis Loop track; cat lovers, the physically infirm, and agoraphobes therefore need not apply. Second, we know that the perpetrator has to be tall enough to reach the top of the three-foot-high fence posts and have the eye-hand coordination to tie off a bag of poop, which eliminates infants, toddlers, and the pooping dogs themselves. Third, the miscreant can’t be a total jerk; if they were a complete reprobate they wouldn’t bag the poop in the first place. Ergo, they must have some sense of social obligation. Finally, the poop bags are small, suggesting that the dog is a tiny, yapper dog, the kind that most men despise.
From these clues, I deduce that the wrongdoer is a repressed husband who walks his wife’s appalling pocketbook pooch at her request, bags the poop while growing increasingly annoyed at the shrill barks, and then leaves the bagged poop on the fence as a last rebellious gesture before heading home to endure the tattered remains of his miserable, pathetic life. It’s either that, or a wealthy but absent-minded New Albany philanthropist who leaves the bags to identify citizens who care enough about their community to dispose of bags of a strange dog’s poop, but then forgets to reward those decent, responsible, civic-minded folks.
What say you, Watson?
We’re less than 24 hours away from The Game. It will be a noon start tomorrow, which is the way it should be, because it’s the way it has always been.
The Game will be at the Big House in Ann Arbor. Like the Horseshoe in Columbus, Michigan Stadium is one of college football’s most fabled venues, a huge, cavernous bowl dug out of the ground. It’s where Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler prowled the sidelines during the 10-Year War. It’s where the Buckeyes tore down the “M Club” banner in the early ’70s, sending the Michigan radio announcer into a frenzy. The field is thick with memories and legends. Tomorrow the members of Buckeye Nation will try to fill a significant part of that colossal edifice, cheering on the Men of the Scarlet and Gray. Michigan fans have experienced a tough and disappointing season, and many of them have put their tickets up for sale. Ohio State fans have been very willing buyers.
What will happen? The Wolverines have struggled this year, while the Buckeyes have won every game. The statistics and records will tell you that Ohio State clearly has the better team and should win the game . . . but in The Game, records and statistics often don’t matter. Fans of both teams who have watched The Game will remember surprising triumphs and devastating losses. The shocks and upsets are what have made The Game the greatest rivalry game in college football.
Casual fans can be overconfident, but I don’t know of any true member of Buckeye Nation who is expecting an easy game tomorrow. We know that it will be a tough, brutal battle, filled with bone-jarring hits and hard runs to pick up crucial first downs, and we’re starting to feel that surge of adrenalin as The Game draws nearer.
Let’s go, Bucks!
It’s rare for the ground to be snow-covered in central Ohio over Thanksgiving; typically the temperature is in the 40s or low 50s, well-suited to a turkey bowl pickup football game or a turkey trot 5K. This year, however, the snow came early and the temperatures are cold. Our icy walking path is treacherous but shimmering in the bright morning sunshine.
Should all couples hold hands? Kish’s sister Heidi believes that holding hands is crucial to a lasting romantic relationship. Kish and I respectfully disagree. We think it’s nice to see young couples with fingers intertwined and seniors doddering along with hands linked, but don’t expect us to do it.
My disaffinity for holding hands stems from biology and experience. The unfortunate reality is that my hands sweat in any hand-holding scenario. When I was in high school and tried to hold hands with a girl, I felt my hands getting damp, which made me self-conscious, which made my hands sweat all the more. When I noticed my kind-hearted date trying to surreptitiously wipe off her oily palms on napkins, coat sleeves, curtains, and at every other opportunity, I realized that holding hands probably wasn’t going to increase my chances at meaningful romance.
The experience came from a high school first date that involved a long drive to an event. My date grabbed my hand as we left and I drove left-handed, becoming increasingly uncomfortable because my right hand was locked into position. Once you’ve started holding hands, you can’t really retreat without making it seem like a kind of rebuke. So we drove along, chatting superficially, while I directed every ounce of self-awareness at my immobilized right hand. What you are supposed to do in such a long-term hand-holding scenario? Tickle the girl’s palm? Do “this is the church, this is the steeple” to keep your wrist muscles from spasming?
So, I’ve long ago sworn off hand-holding, and fortunately the love of my life isn’t a hand-holder, either. Sometimes she’ll hold my arm as we walk along, and that suits us just fine.
Many stores are open this Thanksgiving. You may hear some people feeling sorry for the people manning the cash registers, swabbing the spill on aisle 9, or otherwise working today. I can’t speak for everyone, but I worked part of one Thanksgiving Day, and it was great.
It was in the early ’70s, when I was a teenage “bag boy” at the Big Bear grocery store at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington. The store was open from 8 to noon on Thanksgiving to allow people who had forgotten something to get what they needed for their meal. Most the cashiers and workers used their seniority to take the day off, so the more junior people on the Big Bear payroll — like me — had to work. But because the older women who typically manned the cash registers were off, I got to run one of the checkout lanes. And, most importantly for a cash-strapped 16-year-old, I got paid double-time wages for working on a holiday.
The store was busy that Thanksgiving morning, but not overwhelmingly so. More importantly, every customer who stopped by for another package of stuffing or sticks of butter or a bag of potatoes was incredibly polite. They were genuinely grateful the Big Bear was open, and when I sincerely wished them a Happy Thanksgiving they responded in kind. I even got a few tips for bagging, which was unprecedented.
After the shift was over I went home to my Thanksgiving meal, with a few extra dollars in my pocket and some holiday cheer in my heart. I didn’t mind working on Thanksgiving Day one bit.
At Webner House we’ve gathered the Indian corn for the holiday, and now we wish all of our readers a festive, fun-filled, family-oriented, footballistic Thanksgiving. May your turkey be moist and succulent, your mashed potatoes be lump-free, and your cranberry sauce maintain the shape of a can for the entire feast!
No Ohio State will fan ever take The Game against Michigan for granted — at least, no Ohio State fan who lived through the ’90s. For Ohio State fans, the ’90s were the long, dark night of the soul.
Ohio State was coached by a cordial, good-humored gentleman named John Cooper. Coop wasn’t an Ohio native, but he could recruit great athletes and get them ready for early season games. His record at Ohio State was 111-43-4. He beat Notre Dame twice, and won a Rose Bowl and a Sugar Bowl. But when it came to The Game, Coop turned into a fingernail-chewing, watery-eyed wreck. His teams were 2-10-1 against That Team Up North, and it got so bad that the Ohio State President described the tie as one of the greatest victories in Ohio State history.
During the Cooper era, Ohio State played Michigan as the favorite and as the underdog. It played the Wolverines at home and away. It played Michigan when the Buckeyes were highly ranked and when they were struggling. And all of that made no difference, because the result — inevitably — was another soul-crushing loss. Whether it was a record-setting performance by a previously unknown running back or a slip and fall by a defensive back or some other disaster, Michigan always found a way to win. Eventually, the Buckeye Nation had had enough, and Coop was gone and Jim Tressel was in.
Whenever Ohio State goes to The Game as a favorite, I think of John Cooper and his struggles with the Wolverines. It’s left me permanently scarred, and I will never forget. John Cooper taught me to never take The Game for granted.
This morning I took a cab to the Houston airport. I was intent on catching up on email as I rode, but something kept nagging at me as I read and deleted. It was lurking just below the level of conscious thought.
Then I realized what it was.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Are those Christmas carols you’re playing on the radio?”
“Yeah, mon,” the cabbie said, with a grin. “The station started playing them because it’s almost Christmas.” Then he turned up the sound, mistaking my question for a request for more volume.
And so, on the day before Thanksgiving, I was treated to Willie Nelson’s rendition of Frosty the Snowman as I rode toward Terminal A. I’m not a Willie Nelson fan, and Frosty the Snowman is right up there with Do You Hear What I Hear? as one of the worst holiday songs ever written. Now I have another reason to wish people would wait until after Thanksgiving to start with the annual Christmas bombardment.
President Obama’s website suggests that Americans talk about health insurance and the Affordable Care Act over their Thanksgiving meal. Some people object to this, arguing that the President is trying to hijack the holidays for political purposes. I disagree.
In reality, the President is trying to perform an important public service. Like everyone else who has moved from the kiddie table, he knows from painful experience that family discussions at the Thanksgiving table often can be difficult and filled with awkward pauses. He just wants to be helpful by suggesting a new topic of conversation for families in which every Thanksgiving conversation sounds the same themes.
During the early ’70s, for example, every Thanksgiving meal at the Webner household included these conversational non-starters:
Grandma W. — The turkey is a bit dry. Don’t you think the turkey is too dry?
Mom (trying to change the subject) — Would anyone like some jello salad?
Dad (to me and/or UJ) — When are you going to get a haircut?
Grandma N. — Cathy, your mother tells me you’ve been seeing a young man.
Uncle Tony — The football game is about to start.
Dad (to me and/or UJ) — When are you going to get a job?
Those meals cried out for presidential conversational guidance. And by suggesting that people talk about the Affordable Care Act, the President is doing his best to help families find common ground this Thanksgiving — because just about everyone, young and old, from any point on the political spectrum, thinks the healthcare.gov rollout has been disastrously botched. Raising that topic is bound to produce some jokes and apocryphal tales to keep the table talk going.
Thanks, Mr. President!
I would call the rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan during the week of The Game a friendly rivalry — except it really isn’t. Deep down, every Buckeyes fan wants to crush Michigan like a cockroach. We want to punish them, humiliate them, and leave them wailing forlornly to their misbegotten gods. Michigan fans share this perspective.
But, since we aren’t fighting with broadswords, we need to make do with humor. When I was a kid, and Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler were fighting the 10-Year War, the battle was waged with bumper stickers. I remember one of the Michigan bumper stickers said: “Save Fuel. Burn Woody!” And I thought — boy, Michigan fans are about as funny as, say, Jerry Lewis during the MDA telethon.
The Ohio side of the humor equation, however, isn’t appreciably better. Consider these two representative efforts:
1. “A University of Michigan fan walks into a doctor’s office and removes his hat to reveal a frog sitting on his head. The doctor asks, ‘How can I help you?’ The frog replies, ‘I was wondering if you could help me get this wart off my butt.'”
2. “Two University of Michigan grads are laughing it up on their way into a bar. The bartender asks: ‘Hey, why are you guys so happy?’ One of the Wolverines says, ‘Well, to be honest with you, we’re proud of ourselves. We just finished a puzzle in a week, and when we were done we noticed the box said 4 to 6 years.'”
In Ohio, we try to make our statements on the football field.
I like your basic Mexican restaurant. I like the never-ending basket of chips and salsa, which I could eat until I explode. I like the Mexican beer. I like figuring out the combo plates, choosing between the various forms of tacos and enchiladas and burritos, always with refried beans (yum!) and Spanish rice (yuck!).
So, when I came to Houston and was invited to dinner at a place described as offering high-end Mexican fare, I was intrigued. And after I finished my astonishingly fine meal at Hugo’s, I realized that my Midwestern understanding of Mexican cuisine was completely, horribly, grotesquely stunted.
The menu was extensive, and not a combo plate was in sight. We began our feast with an excellent, reasonably priced bottle of wine and three dishes to share: lechon, with pulled meat of suckling pig, tortillas, and habanero salsa; pulpo al carbon, grilled octopus with onions, peppers, and chipotle tomatillo sauce and tortillas; and carnitas de pato, duck tacos with tomatillo sauce. All were excellent, but the duck tacos, with their killer sauce, were my favorite.
For my entree I took the recommendation of our waiter and tried the callo de hacha — pan-seared scallops over sweet corn bread — and suddenly I was extremely glad that we stopped sharing after the appetizer course. The scallops were plump, tender, and perfectly prepared, with a nice crust; the cornbread and rajas con crema sauce were the perfect complement. It was one of those meals where it was almost impossible to fight off the urge to start drooling and groaning like Homer Simpson after being presented with a platter of Lard Lad donuts. It was just an incredible meal.
There’s lots to learn about the scope and extent of Mexican cooking. I plan on continuing my education at Hugo’s the next time I’m in Houston.
It was Thanksgiving week at Rankin Elementary School, and there was great excitement among the second-graders. Our teacher had been telling us for weeks that we would put on a Thanksgiving pageant, and preparations were underway.
Construction paper, crayons, and blunt scissors with rounded edges were put on every table. Pots of paste and Elmer’s glue left a distinct tang in the air. Pilgrims hats and bonnets and Indian headdresses needed to be made for the boys and girls. We worked hard to cut out yellow buckles for the hats and colored feathers for the Indians. It was tough to make a hat that fit and didn’t rip when you tried it on.
Most of the boys wanted to be Indians. The members of our tribe had brought in empty Quaker Oats containers, which made perfect tom-toms when decorated with paper and crayons and even sounded like a drum when you tapped the top with your hand.
Our worried teacher had written the script and done the staging. A few students had a line or two, but most of us would just don our Pilgrim or Indian garb and stand there while Squanto and the Pilgrim fathers gave stiff speeches about friendship and Plymouth Rock and being thankful for the harvest. Eventually one of the girls wearing a white Pilgrim bonnet would bring in a turkey made of Play-Doh and the show would end. When the big day came, the show went off without a hitch.
Of course, there was no pretense of historical accuracy or political correctness. We didn’t know whether Squanto wore feathers and carried a tom-tom, or what the Pilgrim fathers said on that first Thanksgiving, or even whether they ate a turkey for their meal. But it was fun to make things with my classmates after long weeks of spelling and arithmetic, we got to work together as a class to put on our little pageant, and we learned something about Thanksgiving, and each other, and the tensile strength of construction paper and the edible properties of paste in the process.
Do they put on Thanksgiving pageants in schools anymore?
On Saturday, Ohio State will play Michigan in the annual renewal of the greatest rivalry in sports. Each year, Michigan Week is a much-anticipated time, when every member of Buckeye Nation focuses anew on The Game.
But here at Webner House, we are also about education. And today, we’re interested in learning about Michigan’s mascot, the Wolverine. It looks like a deranged skunk, and it’s a member of the weasel family. So far, it seems like an appropriate mascot for Michigan, all right. But what about other attributes of the animal? Specifically, does a Wolverine have any kind of special odor?
Imagine our surprise when we learned that, according to environmentalgraffiti.com, the wolverine is one of the seven smelliest creatures in the world — right there between the bombardier beetle, which shoots a stinky combination of liquid and gas from its rear end, and the musk ox, which has exceptionally smelly urine. The website explains about wolverines: “They’re seldom seen by humans, but they’re frequently smelled. Like most members of the weasel family, the wolverine has glands that it secretes fluid from to mark its territory. The musky scent is supposed to be very unpleasant, and has given the wolverine the colourful nicknames of ‘skunk bear’ and ‘nasty cat’.”
It’s official — even environmentalists think the Wolverines stink!
Webner House 