The History of Daddy Claxton

In order of occurrence this past weekend:

Auburn: Wow.  We beat Arkansas.  That’s historically been a hard game to get out of without excruciating pain.  I didn’t watch it.  I got my Score Center App updates on iPhone and took my three girls to Pappa’s BBQ in Dallas. My watching would only have raised my blood pressure.   Would have detracted from my time with my daughters, who need Daddy time, and if they had lost, I would have been wondering why I’d given up three hours with my kids to watch it.

Call me a bad fan if you want to, but I call it putting up a healthy boundary so that I can do what’s important, but also keep a close eye on a sporting event situation.

And because Auburn now is 7-0, (4-0 in the SEC) and ranked 4th in the BCS, well, I’ll stop calling our former Iowa State Coach Gene Chizik “Coach Shitzik.”  Maybe there’s some talent there after all.    I sure hope so.  This weekend is LSU.  Bama is just a month away.  We’ll see.

The Cowboys: I repeat here and now, I’ve been a Cowboy’s fan since I was 8 or 9.  But I have never been a fan of Jerry Jones, ambivalent toward Wade Phillips, and have long been tired of the excuses excusing the poor performance of Tony Romo.  God, I hope and pray I never see his name up there with Roger Staubach, Danny White or Troy Aikman.  That would be a travesty of major proportions.  Though he’s technically in the same league as they were, he’s not and never will be.

I could not help but notice that I didn’t see FOX showing pics of Jerry in his box watching the game or wanting to jump over the ledge.  I didn’t see him down on the sideline before the game ended either.

Let’s see. The Dallas area used to could blame Tony for a crap performance because of his youth and inexperience.  Then Dallas fans said Jessica Simpson was his Achilles’ heal.  Then the trip to Mexico with Jess and her fam.  Then it was because Terrell Owens couldn’t catch the ball.  Am I the only person who remembers that besides the 1 game Dallas has won in regular season play this year, that the only one in pre-season play was when Dallas played Miami and Romo didn’t dress?

And that lateral business at the end. Aikman said the only thing that was missing was the Standford band, except when that worked, they didn’t have the quarterback (Romo) screw it all up with a forward pass. (Perhaps we should blame that on a flashback to Jessica, or one about throwing the ball to TO. )

Rubicon: AMC has kept me engaged all 13-weeks of the past TV season with the new show Rubicon with James Badge Dale, (that name just trips me up every time).  AMC, DO NOT CANCEL THIS SHOW. I read something last week about how viewership wasn’t as high as had been hoped.  But darn it, there are too many unresolved questions from last night to leave me walking around the rest of my life feeling like a guy could bump into me in the middle of Central Park, inject me instantly with some chemical that would render me dead in the next 30-60 seconds.

And Will’s GF being at the safe house mentioned by Katherine Rhumor’s (Miranda Richardson) late husband, saying she’s going to protect her and then letting her be poked by the bad guys and left to die, raised more questions than I care to continue walking around with.  Maybe I have to wait to July 2011, (I’m sure I do at the earliest) but in the words of the bank robber in Dirty Harry, “I gots ta know.”

I guessed early on Truxton Spangler (Michael Christofer) was going to draw a green four-leaf clover, and I think he did, too, but I didn’t see him offing himself before the clock struck the top of the hour last night in time for Mad Men, and I wasn’t surprised.

And what happened to Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard) in the midst of when Will needed him the most last night?  Sure the Will/Spangler thing had to play itself out, but for someone who has called himself “Will’s guardian angel” for the past 10-11 weeks, I expected more.

I was surprised they killed off Mrs. Rhumor.  Did Will get the DVD she was trying to hand him before she fell out?  Did Andy, (Will’s GF who I have suspected all along was involved somehow–I mean really, how lucky can one be to have a hottie, single brunette painting in her studio window at eye level from your breakfast table making eye flirts at you and she not be either watching to protect you or watching to hunt you down?) [Remember she came over to Will’s after the failed David Bloom framing and murder and after Ingram had wiped the place almost clean?  Was she doing that the verify the viability of the target after Bloom had gone missing or was it just a coincidence?

The point of all this, once again, to AMC, DO NOT CANCEL RUBICON.

Mad Men: Season Four has been about Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) change away from who he was when he was married to Betty to dealing with his new found freedom, his blooming alcoholism, and then his slow ascent once again after basically hitting rock bottom.  It’s been a good 13-weeks and having been thru some of the same things Don dealt with this season, (When Sally cut her hair and he yelled at the errant sitter, “Do you realize the river of shit I’m going to get from her mother?”) to what happens when the bottom falls out at work and you need to find your core and build from there.

When Stephanie, the niece of Anna, gave Don her wedding band, you all but knew Don was going to hurry to find someone to put it on just like a kid with a crisp $5 bill needs to spend it before it burned a hole in his/her pocket.   As he was sitting there contemplating his life back up in the room in California, I tweeted something to the effect of “Don, contrast Megan’s behavior with your kids v. Dr. Faye’s.”   Gosh, it looks like he might actually have been doing something close to that, which if I now can read Draper that well, hm, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. 

Having an ex-wife who is as crazy as Bat Guano, I can relate to seeing how Betty Draper Francis (January Jones) acts and the bark that came from Henry Francis to the effect that “every one always has a problem with you.”  I’ve seen such stupid activities similar to firing Carla, needing her own child shrink, to even what Creepy Glen, (Show creator Matt Weiner’s son) who said to the effect of, “Just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean everyone else is.”  Boy, do they ever have the writing for Betty down pat.

Peggy and Ken found new confidence in being able to go out and sign new business and handle the process soup to nuts.  And Peggy once again showed her dismay in not getting the recognition she deserved.  Joan’s line of “Whatever could be on your mind?” when Peggy came walking in after hearing about the Draper/Megan nuptial was almost as classic as Roger not knowing Megan’s last name when Don said they were getting married.

Wrap Up

Essentially, three seasons came to a close yesterday; The Cowboy’s with their $100 Million payroll, Rubicon and Mad Men.  And Auburn gears up for a battle against LSU.  Time has it, save from the Tommy Tubberville 13-0 season, that whenever Auburn gets ranked real high, it just can’t help itself.  God, do I hope that doesn’t happen this coming weekend.

AMC, DO NOT CANCEL RUBICON.

And after all that drama Saturday and Sunday, once again, I know how Don Draper felt when he was trying to go to sleep.  So much to process, so little time–only he had hot, hot Megan in bed with him.  To borrow a line from “My Name is Nobody,” — “Lucky skunk!”