Visions of damnation

I'm not a big believer in the concept of hell, for reasons I won't go into here for fear of alienating any of my thousands of readers. However, I was raised Catholic (got confirmed, even!), so I've spent some time thinking about eternal punishment. And I realized the other day that I know what it is.

If there is a hell, it's me, alone in a movie theater, forced to watch every embarrassing, stupid, boorish moment of my life as narrated by Dan Dierdorf.

I reached this conclusion while watching my beloved Broncos go down in flames against one of the worst teams in the NFL the other week as Dan Dierdorf howled with pleasure. Around about the fifth time he started a sentence with, "If you don't think the Kansas City Chiefs aren't fired up for this game..." I muted the volume and barely resisted the urge to fling the remote at the dog. I appreciate that Dierdorf is there to inject a little drama into the proceedings, but there's no need to turn an early-season contest between a mediocre-but-lucky Denver team and a hapless Kansas City squad into the second coming of the Miracle on Ice. Every play, no matter how mundane, turned into the epic struggle of plucky underdogs against overwhelming odds. Every tackle by a Kansas City player was a scream of defiance into the cold dark void of an uncaring universe. After I while I stopped thinking of ways the Broncos could get back into the game and started imagining scenarios involving me presenting Dierdorf with some kind of Crappy Sports Announcing Lifetime Achievement award, then removing his larynx with a plastic spoon.

I'm sure none of this had anything to do with my team losing. Anyway, that's my hell:

"If you don't think that the pretty girl didn't just throw up in her mouth when she realized the geeky boy was asking her out, and that he geniunely believed he had a shot..."

"Oh, ho, ho! Let me tell you, that was one AWKWARD, mumbling answer that guy just gave there when the popular kids asked him how he was doing. If you don't think they're not looking at him like he's some kind of MUTANT from another PLANET right now..."

On a completely different topic, this week's quote of the century:

"Really, if you are a competitor in any field of human endeavor, you haven't lived until you've been called 'be-atch' by one of your opponents."

That comes from the late, great Ralph Wiley. I was re-reading some of his old ESPN columns the other day and stumbled, once again, upon this gem. Of course, when reading Wiley, it feels like I spend most of my time stumbling over gems. I just spent twenty minutes trying to describe what I love about his writing, and I failed miserably. Which, I guess, is the difference between me and him; he made something I can't even achieve look effortless. The best way I can put it is that he's one of two people (Mike Royko is the other) who make me want to be a writer.

Why the sudden nostalgia for a dead sports columnist? No idea. Probably just an excuse to put that quote up there. Enjoy.