Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask*.

*To block the image of Michael nesting in Troy Polamalu’s hair*.

*A frequent dream of Deron’s that leaves him feeling oddly aroused.

Originally created by Michael on September 9, 2010 and scheduled to publish the morning following the Super Bowl the post looked like this:

The NFL season has ended

And was changed by Deron on September 12:

I have the strength to say it. Deron, you are the handsomest man I know.

Michael, September 13:

I have the strength to say it. Deron, came on to me and, when I turned him down, he tried to blame the entire incident on his being distraught over the end the NFL season.

Deron, September 14:

What can I say? My lust for Deron outweighs my love even for NFL linemen.

Michael, September 26:

Now that the NFL season is over, Deron might stop talking about Troy Polamalu’s beautiful locks.

Deron, October 1:

I am able to open my heart to the depth of my love for Troy Palamalu’s hair. I want to build a nest in it. A sexual nest.

Michael, October 5:

I figured it out. Troy Palamalu’s hair is less efficient than Deron’s.

Also, the NFL season is over so there’s a chance Deron might take of that helmet and wash his “lucky” jock-strap.

Deron, October 23:

I, Michael Smith, am not wearing pants.

Joel, January 5:

I’m tempted to post the revision history of this post on its own.

Michael, January 10:

Joel and Deron have put on something over their jockstraps.

Deron, February 4:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*Lies! [Deron]

Michael, February 4:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask.

Deron, February 6:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask*.

*To block the image of Michael nesting in Troy Polamalu’s hair.

Happy last day of the NFL Season to all of you!

Ben Gazzara died this afternoon, on the anniversary of the death of John Cassavetes on February 3, 1989.

When I was a little kid and we lived in South Haven, Michigan for a while, the house my family rented had one of those old electric ranges with the built-in deep fat fryer. Please remember this was back before unhealthy fried food was invented.

My mom would buy pre-made doughnut dough, the kind in a tube (like biscuits or crescent rolls). She’d pop ‘em open and separate the flat die-cut doughnut parts and fry them. The doughnut holes, fresh out and almost too hot to eat, were golden heaven. We’d sprinkle powdered sugar on them sometimes. Is there anything better than fresh, homemade doughnuts? No.

I don’t remember what we did with the doughnut parts outside the cut circles. Maybe we cooked and ate those too, never speaking about it or looking at each other.

Unload the washer and transfer all of the clothes into the dryer. Medium heat for ninety minutes. Press the start button. Take that dog-eared poly-cotton blanket and make a little nest on the floor in front of the dryer. Sit on the blanket, with your back against the dryer door. Eat your supper.

I know a guy from Ohio who worked as a long-haul trucker for a good while after high school. Then he did other things and we wound up working at a library together and after a time he became a big wheel at the MacArthur Foundation.

He claims to have met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam, and he told me that she stole his drugs, but I know he was just spoofing me.

She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.

Luc Sante on Patti Smith.

Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”

Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.

They looked so young, the four college students who sat down and ordered coffee at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., on Feb. 1, 1960.

Legal challenges and demonstrations were cracking the foundations of segregation, but a black person still couldn’t sit down and eat a hamburger or a piece of pie in a store that was all too willing to take his money for a tube of toothpaste.

Those four freshmen at North Carolina A&T College — Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond — sat until the store closed, but they still didn’t get their coffee.

But that day helped spark other sit-in protests — led by young people like themselves — that spread throughout the South in 1960, energizing the civil rights movement. And the Greensboro Woolworth desegregated its lunch counter later that year.

It wasn’t the first time that food, or the lack thereof, figured large in the movement.

Inspired by Josh’s Maurice Sendak post (and by Casey’s link to the “Fresh Air” interview with Sendak).

4. Walk with the devil

Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)

There’s a twisted thread that leads to my recalling this song, but I will not even try to unravel it, merely to recollect a boy named Danny Stevens, whom I knew when we were age seven or so, who used to sing this song as he loped down the halls of our school.

Except he only kept repeating the one line:

Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me

Danny also used to say to his classmates, “Shu-u-t up. Beat-cha brains out.”

At the end of second grade, Danny and his family moved to a state he called Organ.