You can tell fall is just around the corner, folks! The little punks America's future has migrated from terrorizing shopping malls to school halls surely to learn about sexuality, self-confidence, and overall feel-goodery (plus if there's time, reading and math…but there won't be time), high temperatures are in the low 90s, the leaves are beginning to change from green to more of a green-ish and our favorite TV shows return for a new season of brain-numbing, family-avoiding, couch-fusing, gut-growing fun (break out the stretchy-pants).
But nothing quite triggers our collective autumn boner quicker than the sport, the passion, the religion, of football. The centerpiece of the table of manhood, the primal, yet cerebral combination of brutal force meets orchestral beauty, a bone-jarring chess match of live gridiron gladiators that triggers emotion in the stands ranging from drunken euphoria to drunken rage and the smoking gun concrete evidence that there is, in fact, a God.
And nothing primes the pregame pump of football nation better than the ceremonial tradition of the tailgate party. The grilling, the cold beverages of an adult nature, the port-o-lets slow marinating under the 100+ degree heat creating an aromatic experience of smack-in-the-face awesomeness, and "football friends" whom you inexplicably never seem to see anywhere else in your off-season life. Good times.
But there's one thing I detest to an insane degree that can be counted on every Sunday as reliably as cotton-mouth Monday morning. And that, my friends, are solicitors.
This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2011.