Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

I saw this in The Advocate (the Baton Rouge daily, not the national gay newspaper) this morning, and I thought about posting it if only for the enjoyment of myself and TCL, who is the only other known LSU fan who”s a regular Wisdom reader.

But now that most of south Louisiana is reading the Wisdom (thanks, TCL!), I figure more folks might enjoy this. If you don”t understand, that”s ok. You have to be special to be an LSU fan.

Maybe you”ve heard countless tales about LSU”s national championship football season of 1958 as long as you can remember, and you wondered if anything like that could happen in your lifetime.

Maybe, during LSU”s struggles in the 1990s, you took solace in how Skip Bertman built a baseball program that won five national titles, and you thought of the possibilities if a football coach with a vision and a plan of that caliber would awaken the sleeping giant across Nicholson Drive.

Maybe you stayed until the bitter end of the 58-3 loss to Florida in 1993, because that”s what true fans do. Maybe you booed at the end of the first half of the loss to Ole Miss in 2001, because you believe you purchased that right when you bought your season ticket.

Maybe you wanted to Help Mac Pack. Maybe you cried when Paul Dietzel left.

Maybe the Golden Band from Tigerland”s pregame fanfare always gives you goose bumps. Maybe you own the CD. And the cassette.

Maybe you swelled with pride when a national announcer acknowledged the existence of a player from your hometown. Maybe you cringed every time ABC”s Chris Schenkel pronounced Opelousas as if it were a breed of horse.

Maybe you once thought the magic was back, but the trick was on you.

Maybe you miss Cholly Mac and wish you could tell him.

Maybe you”ll have two friends videotaping the Sugar Bowl for you, as backups, just to be sure. Maybe you beat the odds and struck gold in the ticket lottery, but your best friend didn”t, and you wish there were something you could do.

Maybe you inherited your season tickets from your parents, and you choke up when you imagine how excited they would be Sunday. Maybe you will go to church that day for the first time in years, maybe near the Superdome.

Maybe New Orleans was an annual vacation spot for your family, and you watched the Dome mushroom out of the ground from nowhere and thought it was so cool to think about football indoors, which your mom never allowed.

Maybe you”re old enough to remember the first play in Saints history, John Gilliam”s 94-yard kickoff return, and you remember thinking, “This is going to be so great!”

Maybe you”ve often said New Orleans would implode if the Saints ever played a Super Bowl in the Dome. Maybe you”re thinking that would pale in comparison to the improbable: LSU playing there for a national championship.

Maybe you stop and nearly pinch yourself each time you hear someone — maybe you — saying “LSU” and “national championship” in the same sentence, one that doesn”t use the past tense.

Maybe you can”t seem to stop humming the Michigan fight song.

Maybe you knew Jeff Boss. Maybe you wish you did.

Maybe your breakfast of champions on work days is a Little Debbie oatmeal pie and day-old coffee reheated in the microwave, because if it”s good enough for Nick Saban …

Maybe you can”t wait for Sunday to get here. Maybe you want time to slow down so the moment can last forever. Maybe you know you might never pass this way again.

Maybe your boss already suspects you”ll call in sick Monday. Maybe she will, too.

Maybe you bought your daughter a Matt Mauck jersey for Christmas. Maybe she”s twice his age. Maybe you hope LSU changes the campus speed limit to 18 mph, in honor of Mauck”s jersey number, as Ole Miss did for Archie Manning.

Maybe your children will tell their children stories about Mauck and Justin Vincent the way your parents told you about Warren Rabb, Billy Cannon and Dietzel.

Maybe you”re a street musician who is unaffected by it all, except to say you”re puzzled by the influx of people in purple and gold asking if you can play “Hold That Tiger” or “Hey, Nick Saban” on your accordion.

Maybe your story is as original as a snowflake. Maybe you”re a walking clich??. Maybe you wouldn”t know a red zone from a blue-light special, but you heard this is the biggest LSU football game in 45 years, and you don”t want to miss it.

Maybe you still can”t wrap your mind around it all. Maybe it”s big because it”s the next game.

If you”ve read this far, it”s a given you”ve waited a long time for this. Win or lose, enjoy your slice of it. Don”t sweat the small stuff. Worry about the things you can control. Play within yourself. Focus on the details. Stay in the moment. Take advantage of your opportunities. Find a designated driver.

Maybe nobody needs to tell you what this game means to LSU fans in the big picture. Maybe, just maybe, we”ve helped you with some of the details.

This piece was only ruined by the headline “Sunday an exciting day for fans”. Damn sports desk. I came up with better headlines when I worked as a State-Times intern.

The article

After a season of weekly SEC football picks, I”d be remiss if I didn”t turn in predictions for the seven bowl games featuring SEC teams.

All seven bowls take place from Dec. 31 - Jan. 4 (hmm, six of the seven SEC teams in bowl games are playing in New Year”s Day bowls or better. Funny how USC is the only Pac-10 team playing on or after New Year”s. But I digress …), so it”s a super-concentrated five days of SEC football.

On with the show …

Music City Bowl: Auburn vs. Wisconsin - I”ve said many times I have no respect for Big 10 teams outside of Michigan and Ohio State. Other than those two, the Big 10 struggles to compete with the speed and power of the SEC. Tigers, 24 - 13

Independence Bowl: Arkansas vs. Missouri - It was a seriously up-and-down year for the Hogs. But they finished strong, up until the met the Tiger buzzsaw the day after Thanksgiving. Mizzou is a pretty decent team, but I still like the Hogs. Arkansas, 20 - 17

Outback Bowl: Florida vs. Iowa - Iowa = Big 10; Florida = Chris Leak and only team to beat LSU. Crocs, 41 - 24

Capital One Bowl: Georgia vs. Purdue - Purdue = Big 10; Georgia = SEC Champions if not for LSU. Dawgs, 31 - 20

Cotton Bowl: Ole Miss vs. Oklahoma State - I like this matchup. The traditional rivals of the two Sugar Bowl teams, both coming off 9-3 seasons. It”s Eli”s last game at his daddy”s school, and I don”t think he wants the last play people remember him for to be the 4th-and-tripped play to close the LSU game. Rebels, 27 - 24

Peach Bowl: Tennessee vs. Clemson - Who let the Peach Bowl move to Jan. 2? The “status” of the post-New-Year”s date can”t make 10-2 Tennessee any happier to be in Atlanta playing an 8-4 team rather than a real New Year”s bowl. Vols, 38 - 10

Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. Oklahoma - Oklahoma no longer has its aura of invincibility, and Kansas State provided an excellent roadmap to beating the Sooners. And that strategy - heavy and relentless defensive pressure - happens to be what LSU does best. Heisman Boy Jason White isn”t as mobile as Eli, David Greene or Matt Jones, and the Sooners haven”t seen anything like the speed of LSU. I don”t look for LSU to put up 35 on Oklahoma, but you never know. Most likely it”s a defensive struggle, and I like LSU”s chances there. Tigers, 17 - 14

BONUS PICK - Rose Bowl: USC vs. Michigan - Even if I believed the USC hype, I couldn”t pick them here. But I think Michigan has shown itself to be by far the best of the two-loss teams. A four-point loss to Oregon and/or a three-point loss to Iowa is all the kept the Wolverines from mucking up the BCS even more. Michigan, 24 - 20

Buried in the stack of mail that had piled up during our Christmas travels was an envelope from Hyundai Motor America with “IMPORTANT: SAFETY RECALL NOTICE” splashed across the front.

When the wife and I bought her Hyundai Santa Fe almost a year ago now, the fact that the truck was made in Korea by a company with a less-than-stellar reputation was, to say the least, a concern. It seemed like a great deal, what with a loaded-up, top-of-the-line Fe costing less than a base model Pathfinder, but I never quite lost my fear that the truck would turn out to be … well … a Hyundai.

And so the recall notice arrived. Maybe, I thought, they forgot to bolt the cylinder heads to the engine. Perhaps the feds discovered our “leather” seats were really made from the hides of Chinese children.

I opened the envelope and began to read the letter …

Hyundai has decided that 2001, 2002, 2003 and some 2004 model year Santa Fe vehicles, produced beginning March 31, 2000 through September 29, 2003, fail to conform to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 120, Tire Selection and Rims for Motor Vehicles Other Than Passenger Cars.

Well, shit. The freakin” Koreans are putting recycled Firestones on my truck or something?

The letter continued …

The tire inflation pressure label affixed to the driver”s door sill incorrectly does not list the 16 x 6 1/2 J rim size that was installed on the Santa Fe when it was manufactured.

OK.

Included in the letter was a new tire inflation pressure label, and of course my curiosity got the better of me. The new label says the tires should be inflated to 30 PSI or - more precisely - 210kPa (which I have since learned is the metric KiloPascal spec). So then I went out and checked the dangerously mislabeled vehicle. Its label reads 30 PSI or 207kPa but if loaded with four passengers the tires should be at 32 PSI or 221kPa.

And to think my wife has been riding on these ever-so-slightly overinflated (when she has been alone or with just one passenger) or even more dramatically slightly underinflated (when she”s carried two passengers or more) tires for almost a full year!

But no more. Armed with my handy instructions and visual guide - “Please apply the new label to the driver”s door sill over the original label as shown on the attached tire pressure label replacement procedure” - I will make damn sure to properly label the tire pressure specifications before I leave for the Sugar Bowl Saturday.

Of course, if I don”t get around to it, Hyundai will help out …

Should you have or anticipate any trouble installing the new label, or if you would rather have your Hyundai Dealer assist you, please call your Hyundai Dealer to make an appointment with them to have the label installed. When you go to your Hyundai Dealer, take the new label with you for them to install at no charge to you.

You know, I”m almost tempted to take them up on that offer.

Politics ain”t my thing here at the Wisdom - and neither is religion (in the sense of “religion is good”), but the stories coming about about asshat Howard Dean”s plan to talk up Jesus in the South compells me to mock.

Dean, of course, is a politician. And politicians, of course, will say and do whatever they think they need to to get elected. Dean needs the South; the South loves Jesus … so Howie will praise Jesus - but only in the South.

But here”s the rub: Dean”s not exactly Another Boy for Jesus. Both his wife and his daughter are Jewish. He claims to be a “Congregationalist” which - as near as I can tell - is some New England sect rooted in old colonialist traditions.

And, best of all, he used to be an Episcopalian (a Catholic who doesn”t like to work hard at the whole religion thing), but left the church back in the 1980s over a dispute about a bike path he wanted to build in Vermont.

Yes, a bike path. He wanted a bike path, the church didn”t … so he left the church.

A bike path.

I guess if President Dean wanted to build a base in Norway and NATO opposed it, the U.S. would just quit NATO.

But I digress …

So his family is Jewish, he used to be Episcopalian but quit over a bike path, and now he”s a Congregationalist. That”ll go over well down at Ebenezer Baptist.

P.S. The super-cool “Jimmy Dean for America” button appearing in my right rail (a Cap”n Ken original) was conceived and built before this whole Rev. Dean thing came out. It”s just a coincidence that they were both published this weekend.

Editor”s Note: Cap”n Ken is nobody you know, especially if you came to this story from an E-Mail the fire victim sent you. In fact, Cap”n Ken”s name isn”t even “Ken”, much less “Kenny”. His real name is “Fred”. And you don”t know him. Promise.

One of the first things I do when the wife and I get home from a trip is fire up the DishPVR 721 and weed out some of the crap (Comedy Central weekend stuff that runs instead of The Daily Show, the five airings of each South Park episode I somehow end up with, etc.) that was sucked out of the sky while we were gone.

And so, upon returning from our NashVegas Christmas this evening, I began the PVR cleansing. I almost erased yesterday”s Fox 5 Atlanta 6 p.m. news (I grab it daily in case any actual news ever happens locally), but then I decided to run the first few minutes just to see if anything big has been doing on down here.

The lead story was the return to the ice of Dany Heatley, the Thrashers star who killed a teammate in his Ferrari a few months back. Then a story about some robbery/murder in Cherokee County, followed by a piece on an Atlanta guy who got shot and killed in an I-10 drive-by near a Mississippi casino.

Nothing too exciting so far …

The next piece was about an apartment fire. For those of you not familiar with Atlanta news, our TV stations live for fucking apartment fires. A (big) blaze in Roswell last week got 45 minutes of live coverage during Fox 5 news.

So I”m thinking “yeah, yeah … apartment fire” and I hit the 30-second advance button on the remote. The next image to pop in to the frame was, in fact, my best friend sitting outside said burning apartment.

I backed the story up and discover that, yes, this was his apartment. The story was that with his help, the fire department was able to rescue his dog and three other dogs (and a parrot) from another apartment. And there he was, on my TV, talking about the fire, the dogs, etc.

Needless to say, this was a shock. I tried to get him on his cellphone, but got voicemail. I figured it was our typical Sprint-to-Sprint experience of the phone never actually ringing before getting to voicemail, but I also thought there was a good chance his PCS phone was now little more than a hunk of charcoal.

I finally got to talk to him after leaving messages for his girlfriend. Fortunately, the actual flames were across the hall, but his apartment got a lot of smoke and a good bit of water.

And, as it turns out, the “heroic firefighters rescue dogs” story went more like “dog owner screams at asshat firefighters until they let him go in and get his dog.”

But only in the age of the PVR could I leave a voicemail saying “Hey man, I just got home and saw yesterday”s news …”

The first thing he said when he called me back was “Why the fuck do you TiVo the news?”

Not looking like such a stupid idea today, is it buddy?

Considering the wife and I spent a total of just 41 hours in Louisiana this weekend for Cap”n Ken”s Bizarre Family Pre-Christmas Christmas celebration, it was an eventful time. The highlights:

• The adoptive mother of my niece - who my middle sister gave up for adoption 21 years ago and rediscovered a couple of years back - came to dinner. Now I know why my niece always figured she was adopted. “Mom” is a troll, and clearly shares no genes with my niece, who is a really beautiful girl (if you look past the heavy Baton Rouge makeup and trashy style).

• My oldest nephew (second child of the middle sister) was working Saturday, so he came by Friday night with his girlfriend. This - understandably in Louisiana - caused some angst for my sister, as the nephew”s girlfriend is black. Not only does “black girlfriend” hardly qualify as a scandal in my family, but I hail from the big city, sis. Tell me he”s a transvestite and his girlfriend is a one-legged bi-racial underage boy and maybe you shock me.

• My next-oldest nephew (first child of my oldest sister) brought his girlfriend along as well. They are both 18, neither finished high school, both work fast-food jobs and they live together not far from my oldest sister in Texas. I”d not met the girlfriend before, and was quite prepared to disapprove. Would you believe I came away liking and respecting her? She”s pushing the nephew back toward school and seems to give him the structure his life had lacked for a long time.

• The third-oldest nephew (second child of my oldest sister) is working on a hip-hop career, sports a new bottom-lip piercing and chain smokes with the approval of his mom. He”s 16. But he”s “off the dope” as my sister says, is making good grades and wants to be a landscape architect. The bright hope of the family.

• My youngest nephew (the third child of my middle sister) is going into 6th grade next year and just got accepted at Jimmy Swaggart”s Christian school. And this is seen as a good thing … Public eduction in Louisiana is so bad, you see, that kids are better off with a Swaggart education than an East Baton Rouge Parish Schools one.

• I found out Saturday morning that my stepfather had invited his 30-year-old adopted son (my adopted step-brother, I suppose) down from North Louisiana for our Pre-Christmas Christmas dinner. He had no where else to go, I was told, because his younger brother (biological and also adopted by my stepfather) doesn”t want him around because the older brother has recently gotten married to his (the older brother”s) first wife”s cousin. The younger brother is still friends with that first wife, and thus does not want his older brother - or the wife”s cousin, I suppose - around at Christmas. The beat-down Oldsmobuick carrying my adopted step-brother, his cousin-in-law-turned-second-wife and four little redneck kids of varying heritage pulled up right as we were walking in the house Saturday. Taking in the Redneck spectacle on a security-camera monitor (a leftover from the Baton Rouge serial killer days) - my long-lost niece asked “Does the little kid have a mullet??”

• My parents were talking about finding the Paris Hilton sex video on the Internet … but the video they described was not the Paris Hilton video. I was scared to learn more about what they were actually watching, and why.

• My crazy aunt (the wife of my mother”s oldest brother) showed up right as we were leaving Saturday night. Actually, her car appeared on the security monitor as we were beginning to leave, which greatly hastened our exit. This is the woman, you see, who two years ago crashed our close-family gift exchange and was so horrified to not have presents to give us that she excused herself (”I need to run out to the car”), snuck off to Walgreen”s, bought a few sets of cheap Christmas dinnerware and two hours later came back with makeshift gifts for all of us. No, none of us had presents for her.

• Somehow in all the excitement, I came down with Pink Eye.

I blame the kid with the mullet.