The Barrister


I'm attempting to remain upbeat by not thinking about our shitty hockey team and shitty local hockey media and how Mike Harrington needs a punch in the gunt and how Jesus Christ what if everything except Lindy was the problem and we're rebuilding with the wrong blueprint and this is all going to turn into a quintessential #becauseitsbuffalo fuckup that my son will have to live with through a lifetime of sport sadness steadily replicating the life I've led to date and the feeling of emptiness in my heart left by a missed field goal and foot in the crease and it'll just be passed on to a kid who doesn't know better and will surely love these teams too because he inexplicably thinks his dad is the tits and makes infallible decisions?

I just can't. Fuck. Dammit. Balls in the mouth.

So instead, I'm revisiting the bloggasuperfranchise that is my Intermittent Footy Roundup. See! It's been a long time! INTERMITTENT!!!! Ha. Words. 

The Barrister

Almost ten years ago, I spent about five months abroad - mostly in Bath, England - studying and attending a program for American students. The program, which was primarily based in the humanities, was atypically small that year. With the enrollment period falling within months of 9/11, the applicant pool was essentially halved by an apparent and understandable aversion to foreign travel. The result was a necessarily tight-knit and somewhat insulated group of students who struggled to embrace their new and brief lives in a foreign but not so foreign country.  With the unavoidable and tedious group bonding, I was frequently annoyed with some of my peers and ultimately resistant to hanging out with more than 3 Americans at once.  My chosen alternatve was to seek out local culture to immerse myself in. Which, since I was in England and was just 20, was obviously going to be watching English football at the saltiest pub I could find.