howard

January 20, 2021

On Missing Howard Cosell While Watching an NFL Playoff Game

Today is the inauguration, but I don’t feel like writing about that or the departing President. It is possible I will never write about him again after this post and that feels like a good thing. As for his followers, they will still remain a subject. I find them much more interesting as a topic.

Today I will write about football and I am writing this in the post-presidency concussion protocol that mysteriously many Americans don’t seem to suffer from.

So on with the kickoff…

It was early in the game and the cliches were rolling in with regularity and whenever I heard one, I longed for Howard Cosell and his use of “scintillating” to describe a pass reception. Or “moribund” to describe an offense’s production.

What I heard:

Lean on the ground game.

They’ve got to score to win the game.

Ground and pound.

He’s really good in space.

He has great pocket presence.

They’ve got to establish the running game.

Defense travels.

He’s got great football IQ.

At least the commentators didn’t say frozen tundra!

Early second quarter…as the commercials for beer, trucks and crap never seemed to end, I conceived of an existentialist play called Waiting for the Kickoff. Here’s the premise: two Trumpians sit on a couch drinking beer, eating a nacho, shooting the shit, while waiting for an NFL playoff game to begin. Endless commercials play during their conversation, which covers topics ranging from Trump (he’s a God), the existence of God (stone cold truth) and the Tooth Fairy (she’s hot and horny).

Of course, the kickoff never comes but the Trumpians don’t seem to mind or even notice. (Note to self: brush up on Sartre’s play.)

Late second quarter: I turned it off.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.