The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s
Saturday Sports Column
“Leave me alone, I’m depressed.”
“You have to.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But that’s only seventeen words so far. Well, actually this is gonna make it forty-five. Your target’s 750 and you’re usually good for a thousand. Five hundred minimum.”
Grumble.
“What does it feel like? Why don’t you try that?”
“It feels like Get Smart. You remember Get Smart?”
“The old spy sitcom from the 1960s? Or the movie remake from a couple of years 
ago with Steve Carell and that woman with huge teeth? I don’t’ think she’s an Osmond though.”
“The one with Don Adams, Barbara Feldon as 99, and Ed Platt as the Chief.”
“The original.”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t Mel Brooks involved with that?”
“Him and Buck Henry both.”
“How does it feel like that?”
“Well for starters, it’s a huge goddamn disappointment. I mean, you expect better from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry than some shitty sitcom with a bad laugh track and some crappy tag lines.”
“Missed it by THAT much.”
“Yeah, garbage like that.”
“How else is it like Get Smart?”
“Remember the Cone of Silence?”
“What was that, that plastic bubble thing?”
“Yeah, a big plastic bubble would descend from the ceiling in the Chief’s office and encase him and Maxwell Smart whenever they had something top secret to discuss. It’s like that. I wish the world were just a big Cone of Silence.”
“I see.”
“Except it’s not, just like on the show. The thing never worked they way they wanted it too, another one of the lame running jokes. I have a broken cone of silence, my front door. But I can’t keep out all the hoopla about the Packers.”
“You can keep out a lot of it.”
“Yeah, but not all of it. And I just don’t wanna hear anything at all. Even turned off the TV before the clock ran down to zero.”
“But you can’t keep it all out.”
“Right. Sucks. Just wanna bury myself under the covers for a couple of weeks, keep the world at bay.”
“But you gotta finish this column. Every Saturday. It’s the Sporting Life. You gotta make it to the finish line.”
“Hell with it. I’m done.”
“But That was only about 375 words.”
“Screw it. Class dismissed. Show them an old Get Smart repeat or something.”
“All we have is this dubbed copy. It’s in Spanish or Portuguese or something.”
“I don’t care, I’m calling in sick. Blue Monday. Or Saturday. Whatever. Roll with it.”
“Alright then, if you say so.”
You can also find me every Saturday at Meet the Matts.