All That and a Bag of Mail Returns In Time For College Football
Thursday, September 3, 2009
About fourteen months ago I left CBS for Deadspin. Obviously I've done my best to keep All That and a Bag of Mail rolling, but I haven't been great at it. That all changes beginning today. Because All That and a Bag of Mail is debuting at FanHouse. Dive in and keep the emails coming.
In the distant mists of Internet history there was a time when all was just, when the world was free and open and a squirrel could hop from one tree to another all the way from Maine to Key West. It was a time when pink dolphins lay down with beaver pelts, beards were good, and All That and a Bag of Mail came every Friday on CBSSports.com. Well, the past is prologue ladies and gentlemen. On college football eve, the ClayNation mailbag is back. We'll be here every Wednesday to ponder life's mysteries, answer your questions, and award the elusive beaver pelt trader of the week award. Come closer now tiny dancer and enter the mailbag.
As always, the questions are entirely your own. The goal is to be fun, entertaining, and non-cliche. To begin this week, I'd like to take the time to extend the first FanHouse beaver pelt trader of the week award to reader Clint B. whose rename the BCS nominee "antimatter" won the contest. (The beaver pelt trader of the week is given out each week to someone who has done something remarkable as judged by me, or as voted by y'all. The phrase is my attempted substitute for the outdated cliche of calling someone a "riverboat gambler" if they take a risk in a football game.) On to the mailbag.
Rob B. writes:
Claytravious-
I moved to New York City after graduating from our beloved University of Tennessee. For almost three years, I feel that I, and my other southern friends that live here, have done a fairly remarkable job of letting folks know how important SEC sports are (not just to us, but to world history). Apparently I was wrong. One of my best friends in the city decided to get engaged last week, and he has asked me to be in his wedding in New Jersey on September 19, 2009. I can't imagine anything much worse than being in a Yankee wedding - formal dinner, more dreadful toasts, less alcohol-encouraged debauchery than the southern version (I'm sure you've been through this hell enough to know what I'm talking about) - in New Jersey on this date. This predicament seems to happen to you on a regular basis; do you have any insight or tips on manipulating wedding dates? It may not be set in stone yet.
Wishing I still lived in a manly city.
Every year we get e-mails like this and they break my heart anew. If you're a man or woman, a Southern person might be required to come to your wedding, and you've ever considered getting married during the fall, don't. There is a reason why those dates are open -- because people who aren't already pregnant have planned ahead and taken the other months. Why? Because they aren't ungrateful wenches who pray on the good nature of their friends and family to schedule weddings during the fall.
Sigh.
Somebody should write a thesis comparing divorce rates in the South when a wedding takes place in the fall with other months. I'm convinced that while we lead the nation in divorce anyway, the rates are even higher for fall weddings.
But a Yankee wedding really takes the proverbial cake. That's awful. The girls are uglier, there's less alcohol, people are talking about the Yankees and the Red Sox, and meanwhile one of the 12 or 13 greatest Saturdays of the year is unspooling away outside your purview. All the while you have to talk about Long Island traffic and the Arctic ice caps melting.
Just shoot yourself.
And you can't even go dark and pretend that the game isn't happening by turning off all media devices. Why? Some gel-haired tool with a tan that's taken him 14 months to perfect will come up to you on the dance floor, give you a high five -- which you'll want to redirect at his overly tanned face -- and say, "Bro, you're from Tennessee. They got killed today. What happened? It was 48-10."
So, I really don't have any great advice. Other than root for the wedding to fall apart. Maybe tape the bachelor party and discreetly email a file to the bride-to-be.
Read the rest here. Labels: all that and a bag of mail fanhouse
Posted by Clay Travis at 11:48 AM
 
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