A Funeral For Geese
9/21/2019 – Michigan 14, Wisconsin 35 – 2-1, 0-1 Big Ten
The End of the Tour, a movie about Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky glomming on to David Foster Wallace at the end of his Infinite Jest book tour, is immediately good. The first sensory experience the movie gives you is the ultra-deep cut instrumental from REM's Automatic For the People:
This is a song with no oboes in it that sounds like nothing but oboes. It is weird, lilting, and mournful, a funeral for geese. The opening scene of the movie is Lipsky getting a call from someone trying to confirm a rumor that Wallace has committed suicide, because Lipsky once spent a few days on the road with him.
Wallace has. Lipsky goes through his tapes.
[After THE JUMP: marshmallows!]
The rest of the movie is a flashback to those few days on the road. Two highbrow white guys talk to each other about stuff. Mostly about how they are precarious and alone, the guy with the critic-melting novel and the other guy with a novel who also writes for Rolling Stone. Sometimes they bluff. The introduction of a woman, any woman, is cause for a tiff. Jason Segel, the guy who's inserted by default as Affable Stoner in every Judd Apatow movie, plays DFW.
I know, okay? I know. It sat in our Netflix queue for months, looming, more a threat than a promise. But you watch it for a bit and questions surface. Questions like:
- How did this get made?
- How is it good?
- When will my wife stop watching it?
At press time answers were not available for any of these questions, and only the third has even the distant prospect of resolution. I played two seconds of "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1" to confirm it was indeed the song used and she popped her head out of the office. "Ooh," I project she thought.
But anyway because of your living situation this thing has been on a lot. And when you're a guy who writes about Michigan the aftermath-of-spirit-crushing defeat mine has been well and truly depleted. Do you want chipper ha-ha that was weird? Done. Talking people off the ledge? Done. Outright nihilism? Done. Columns about buying a mattress? Done.
So when it's time to write something about a game that Michigan spiritually lost 35-0 after being favored by a touchdown preseason the goose funeral music follows you around. It is my theory that I can get it to stop following me around by loosing it on you, the reader.
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In the aftermath of Wallace's demise there are two great unfortunate things. The first is the relegation of Infinite Jest into the category of intellectual bro-novel that sites like The Toast use as a stand-in for a particular sort of bearded quasi-intellectual who is the seething insecurity the End of the Tour protagonists are enduring minus any offsets like having a face-melting novel or writing for Rolling Stone.
I dunno, I wasn't a woman on a train in Brooklyn in 2013. I'm sure if I'd been subject to hordes of slavering women trying to butter me up with copies of Beloved I'd be pretty negative about Beloved. But this would not make Beloved any less of a banger, as the kids say. IJ's status is increasingly as a punchline in an unfunny joke about the patriarchy of hipster dudebros, and that sucks.
This is painful to me for many reasons. Foremost amongst them is that it says a bunch of things I think everyone should take to heart about entertaining themselves to death. The title is literal: the book weaves back and forth in time and ends abruptly, seemingly unfinished. It was only after I'd gone back to the beginning to try to piece together some plot points that I realized I was re-reading the thing. It was a loop, a literally infinite jest.
The second unfortunate thing is the Hallmark-ization of Wallace's commencement speech to Kenyon College. Titled "This Is Water," it became a minor sensation and became the kind of small book you give to someone at a juncture when they are getting all the small books. The way the thing is discussed is the opposite of ASMR. Your skin crawls backwards into the primordial ooze:
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)
David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College, is a timeless trove of wisdom — right up there with Hunter Thompson on finding your purpose and living a meaningful life.
I feel like I shouldn't have to explain this? But I have to anyway? Holy hopping death, following up "a timeless trove of wisdom" with a link to "Hunter Thompson," no S, on finding your purpose: both of these people murdered themselves and now I know why. It's you, FS dot blog. You did it. Give Thompson his S back.
Despite this, the Kenyon college speech is also good. Its key passage is Wallace envisioning a dreary trip to a mausoleum of a supermarket as part of another routinely long day. There are traffic and lines. This doesn't resonate with my personal experience of shopping, in which I take DRC to Busch's and people there recognize us and he attempts to push the cart at supersonic velocities while cleaning the place out of marshmallows. There one specific domain, however, in which the mental state he describes does apply:
… the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
I can't tell you I'm any good at shaping my attention in this regard. Offseason projects to walk more and drink less have been drilled between the eyes just three games in. But if there is a way out it's probably through that door.
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[Patrick Barron]
The nice thing about a game like Saturday's is that you blaze through the Kubler-Ross stages in a half and are left at acceptance. (Maybe you're still in depression.) This is probably it for the foreseeable future. It's not what we hoped for when Michigan hired Jim Harbaugh and his astonishing track record.
Instead: this. Michigan's SP+ rankings under Harbaugh: 10, 6, 13, 10. Michigan's currently 26 and sinking like a brick. Prior to this year that's remarkably consistent in the face of some difficulties like not having any quarterbacks. It's not what it needs to be for Michigan to be a consistent challenger to Ohio State. It's good enough to make the idea of trying to hire someone else absurd. OSU just hired a short-term coordinator with no head coaching experience; all coach hires except Urban Meyer are crapshoots.
So this is it: pretty good, sabotaged by an instability inherent in the head coach. It is not Infinite Jest's Entertainment, so appealing as to be lethal. Maybe at some point we'll turn a game on and it'll be a nice time. If it's not, oh well. It's time to adapt to the temperature of the water.
BRIC-A-BRAC
is cancelled this week; UFR will address the actual game parts. To be perfectly frank I wasn't paying the usual level of attention.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:12 PM ^
The debate about IJ is similar to what works like "the Wasteland" and Ulysses went through, not to mention On the Road or Catcher in the Rye. (In my estimation it by far exceeds the latter two.) Harold Bloom didn't like it but he's a Romanticist. Other critics who don't like it have their own axes to grind.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:44 PM ^
haven't read IJ or On the Road, but my remembered experience reading Catcher for the first and only time during my early twenties went thusly:
1a) HOLY SHIT, I completely relate to all this!!
1b) Holy shit, I completely relate to all this. :( :( :(
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:13 PM ^
Disappointed that the title to this post wasn't "THROW THE FUCKING BALL TO NICO COLLINS!"
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:15 PM ^
The book from which "The End of the Tour" was adapted was titled "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself." Might have been a good title for Brian's column.
We can change regimes, swap out coordinators on either side of the ball, modernize, go MANBALL paleo, innovate, copy, all the things that programs do to inch upwards into that rarefied air of the Great Dark Empires in Tuscaloosa, Columbus, and "Death Valley."
Of course, we end up becoming ourselves. Usually good, but not THAT good. Sometimes, by misfortune or poor choices, not good at all. That's Michigan.
By the way, I loved that movie. It's not for everyone. But the ending, real or imagined, was beautiful.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:15 PM ^
Yeah this seems about right
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:17 PM ^
From the "This is water" speech:
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
For myself perhaps I should add, "Worship your team's success, and they will always disappoint you."
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:20 PM ^
Not only does nothing about that game make sense, I feel like nothing about the program does either, right now. This is Bizarro Michigan. Who knows when Harbaugh got replaced with Bizarro Harbaugh, because an M looks the same backwards. I think it happened after his first offseason.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:24 PM ^
I empathize with Brian. I've written game columns on Michigan football since 2007. I do it solely for fun, as a hobby. I owe nothing to no one in terms of deadlines or commitments. This week, I barely got 400 words out and it was mostly me repeating "I've got nothing." I never felt that way during the Rodriguez years, nor during the Hoke years. It was like there was a strange nobility in sticking it out during the fallow period knowing that you'd be rewarded when the world returned to its previous form.
When you hit acceptance, you cannot force others to join you there. It's a strange world, one which you don't want to be there, but you just sort of arrive there. But you cannot speed anyone else's process along, especially if they don't want to join you.
So when you have to write something that explains this new, oddly configured space in which you occupy, you sort of try to explain what the place is like to people who aren't there. The people who are there get it.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:26 PM ^
Surely you can't be serious, Frank.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:27 PM ^
So we bury our heads in the sand?
What an absolute loser approach. But Harbaugh brought us to "National Relevance", so I shouldn't expect much else.
What a joke.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:28 PM ^
Of the assumed minority that think this article is right and good. Sometimes you have to hide behind the fact that it's a good school we root for and we're all smart. And it's dumb to be sad over football.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:29 PM ^
Good thing we have the message board to get our astute analysis.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:38 PM ^
aw and i was looking forward to Will Hart getting the top slot in the player of the game for this week
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:39 PM ^
If they're turning in performances like this against Wisconsin, the idea of firing Harbaugh isn't absurd. Especially after the way last year ended.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:42 PM ^
While listening on the radio this past Saturday, I noticed my mood deteriorating while my favorite team was being eviscerated. I'm sure many here can relate.
I've since determined that allowing my emotional well-being to be tied to something completely out of my own control is foolish and not something I'm interested in continuing. I suppose that puts me in something like stage 5B: Acceptance with a side of emotional divestment.
I still consider myself a fan and will enjoy the highs, but I'm not interested in wallowing in the lows.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:43 PM ^
Infinite Jest is a great, but very challenging read. I recommend it to everyone. What I would do is maybe get in a book club to force yourself to read 100 pages a week, or at somehow do this. Otherwise you can get disrupted and give it up totally.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:52 PM ^
Bummer. I always look forward to the Monday post to get Brian’s take. I don’t read through the whole UFR and skip to the bottom. Disappointing. Guess I’ll head back to the MB and try to dodge ads while searching for my posts to see if anyone replied.
September 23rd, 2019 at 2:57 PM ^
Lovely erudite writing. Seriously I mean that.
But I'm not entirely down with the "we're too good to analyze our losses" philosophy.
No reason Jake Long's critique should have to extend to the blogosphere, but I'd say it does.
(see: https://twitter.com/i/status/1175575015196176384)
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:06 PM ^
I share your sentiments. No need to talk about it.
If it’s sunny, I’ll be playing golf on Saturdays.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:07 PM ^
“You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. ... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:29 PM ^
"This is probably it for the foreseeable future."
Undoubtedly the most depressing line in the post and the most revealing. Right now, Michigan is in the midst of the best 4 season record it has had since the 2003-2006 campaigns. 5 years ago this would have been cause for celebration after 4yrs and 20 losses under Brady Hoke. But, Michigan Football has been locked in purgatory since the 2007 season and the adverse impact that has had on this fan base is permanent. While I don't agree with them, I don't blame folks for the vitriol and for calling for JH's job. There hasn't been any Big Ten Championships, CFP appearances, National Titles or wins over Ohio State.
In the past, here is where I would ask for some perspective. That it could always be worse. Remember Brady, remember RR?! I won't do that today. Instead, I'll say that it could and should be better.
I don't know where you go from here. It's only the 3rd game of the season and, statistically speaking, there is time for this team to salvage every one of the goals they had 4 weeks ago. Unfortunately, history tells us that a turnaround won't happen and that it will more than likely get worse before it gets better this season. It's a weird time to be a Michigan fan, and I think Brian hit it on the head. That is probably it for the foreseeable future.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:43 PM ^
This is the best post on this blog in a month. Very well said and definitely better than writing a article ignoring the game your site covers.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:30 PM ^
If S&P thinks that our 2017 team was Top 15 or even Top 20 then that algorithm is complete trash. That team lost five games, sucked ass, and didn't even pile up stats against shitty teams that should make us more attractive to computers.
September 23rd, 2019 at 6:34 PM ^
Yeah I think Brian just misremembered that one. We finished 27th that year I'm pretty sure (a much more fair ranking for a 5 loss team that was only blown out once)
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:30 PM ^
We're all Brian
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:35 PM ^
Awesome, this blog still acts like talking about replacing Harbaugh is bad. Enjoy living in mediocrity. I'm sure in next years preseason book it will hype up Michigan and talk about "this year they might actually beat osu!!" I'll take the crapshoot and hire a different coach over this. Enjoy!
September 24th, 2019 at 9:16 AM ^
I’m sure they got that Kickstarter already on deck.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:44 PM ^
Everyone has their own coping mechanisms. I was dreading this game a little, so brought home work from the office - boring stuff I didn't want to do during the week - and had my assignments done before the game was over. Vacuumed the first floor of the house and did two loads of laundry before the third quarter started. For some reason, it lesses the sting and pain of the loss if I feel like at least the day was productive. This season may result in a lack of procrastination raking leaves and doing fall yard cleanup during the away games.
For the home games... I will be there. Coaches have to do what they have to do. The team still needs to see fans there.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:48 PM ^
On another note, I used to listen to "Automatic for the People" alot, even though I was nowhere as "into" REM as others. It was what you listened to in college back then.
Ignoreland is still one of my favorites. It reminds me not to become a ranting fool about politics on the internet.
great quote though "I know this is vitriol, no solution spleen venting. But I feel better having screamed don't you?"
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:48 PM ^
What the fuck are you even talking about
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:49 PM ^
I have no fucking idea what I just read. Reminds me of the time I started Infinite Jest.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:49 PM ^
Automatic for the People is not only one of the great albums of the 90's, it's one of the best of all time. That song is, sadly, the perfect theme for what happened. Peter Buck's mournful guitar (played with an ebow) would have sufficed as the play-by-play. In conclusion, that game was very sad, and R.E.M. is great.
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:51 PM ^
I didn't come here to read song lyrics, I want actual content. This post was a giant copout
September 23rd, 2019 at 3:59 PM ^
Nice work Brian. What else can be said at this point? He already invented BPONE for us. Anyway, maybe content like this will get rid of someone of the shit-tards on here.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:06 PM ^
I admire Brian's gifts as a writer, but aside from Michigan sports, we probably don't share many interests.
So posts like these don't do anything for me. But then again, beating Rutgers won't do anything for me either.
I just wish I had a feel for what's happening in practices. Why can't the OL ever deal with stunts? And if they're repping these same plays in practice, why does Shea always look so flustered?
Anyway, Iowa should be a humdinger homecoming!
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:16 PM ^
Well. At least we still have intelligence. No Sparty could have read and understood all that. Kudos.
for the record, I’m still in depression. Not sure I can move on to acceptance
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:18 PM ^
Infinite Jest and Ornyx and Crake in the same week??? Geez.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:21 PM ^
Michael Caine quote from The Weatherman:
Robert Spritzel (Caine): "Nothing that has meaning is easy. "Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life."
September 23rd, 2019 at 8:37 PM ^
Well done. Very underrated movie IMHO.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:23 PM ^
I haven't watched the Ohio State game live in years. For several years, I have DVR'd games I figured we'd have trouble with and either checked the score first before starting to watch or fast forwarded through some stuff to see what was up before digging in. It's better for my psyche that way. A psyche forged in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Sure we lost some games in stupid ways, and we didn't fare particularly well in bowls against dynamic teams, but we won Big Ten titles, handled MSU and Penn State, and beat Ohio State a fair bit of the time. That's my expectation. We had the national title in 1997, but I don't expect Alabama / Clemson success. OSU being elite for so many years grates.
This was the first week since the Hoke years that I haven't watched. I knew the sunshine-blowers were full of shit - this was A Big Game On The Road (tm), we were Coming Out of A Bye Week (tm), our offense had looked disjointed for most of two games, and we have a defense that's not top-10 this year, and weak up the middle to boot. Also, apparently Wisconsin had a QB who could throw functionally. So this one was a no-go for me. I did the lawns, I weeded, it was a nice day outside. I felt 10,000x better than I would have if I had watched even one half.
So I get it, Brian, I really do.
But I was hoping for your analysis, not to make everything better, but to try and get some more insight from a voice of experience as to what. the. hell. is. up.
Nah, I get it.....M football, especially after beatdowns, is no fun at all.
I just hope you don't pack it in. I would miss all of this. Even the esoteric pieces.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:33 PM ^
I've always loved that little instrumental by REM. Beautiful stuff. And, yes, melancholy and moody AF. But an absolute gem. Thanks for posting.
At least Harbaugh wasn't in denial. That was a very bad performance.
September 23rd, 2019 at 4:37 PM ^
two Thomas Harden Church quotes from "Lucky Them":
Charlie (THC) "It's much better to confront the demons of your past in the harsh, unforgiving light of early dawn."
Charlie: "Look on the bright side, at least you didn't give a dead animal to somebody on their wedding day."
...parallels, applicable ironies, words to live by??? your call... talk amongst yourselves
September 23rd, 2019 at 5:06 PM ^
Why was College Football canceled on Saturday? I was expecting some football viewing, but instead was digging and placing a access pipe under a sidewalk. You see, I want to be able to pull electric lines, or a smaller quarter inch pbc water pipe to and fro with out having to constantly dig another hole under the sidewalk. I was going to put off until the December football void, but since there was no football on Saturday, I started digging the access pipe. If it ever stops raining in Houston, I will be able to put the 45s in and complete the project. I hope we don't cancel the footballing this Saturday.
September 23rd, 2019 at 5:10 PM ^
what?!
September 23rd, 2019 at 6:27 PM ^
APATHY
What this article shows and the comment section shows is fan apathy beginning.
We saw it start earlier in RR and Hoke eras, but here it is.
Apathy turns into less merch. and ticket sales, if it carries on too long, the result is free tickets with coke purchase.
He is not on the hot seat, but the seat has been brought out of back storage and is getting a light dusting.
September 23rd, 2019 at 8:35 PM ^
So yeah... this is where I am too. Well addressed, and it spoke to me on a personal level. I’m too tired for yelling and outrage. I’m too old to go on social media rants. It’s time for me to grow up, and if it means this whole business meaning a little less to me, well that’s ok, too.
September 23rd, 2019 at 9:06 PM ^
Defense: Great coach, massive recruiting failures. How many three star kids do you think will Kovacs? Hint: Never enough.
Offense: NO MORE FUCKING BAMA CAST-OFF OC-wannabes. NONE. Ever. Gattis has very good players and is making them look like eleven of the Three Stooges.
Jim's fire seems to be out. Not sure what's going on there. Dude seems legitimately depressed. Must suck trying to honestly recruit kids who can go to Clemson and make more per year illegally than 99% of Americans ever will.
September 23rd, 2019 at 10:16 PM ^
You've basically said everything I've been saying since Saturday so good job my friend. Plus 1-incitefull
I think Beilein leaving and the reasons Beilein left might've lit a fuse under Jim. I think we're witnessing his "fuck it-I don't need this shit" coaching moment
September 24th, 2019 at 1:26 AM ^
Oh well, I know we will be lucky to win 6 or 7 games this season but I think we should stick with Gattis and get this pass rpo, speed in space working. May be it will start clicking with either Shea or Dylan by mid season. I just purchased a ticket to see Michigan play IU ( my only free weekend). It will probably be a close high scoring affair. I would also like to see Harbaugh play our young DT, they will be better than what I saw playing vs WI. I hope Harbaugh stays but I got a feeling he is now unhappy here, recruiting has not went as well as he had planned and the team may never get over that elite hump. But if Harbaugh stays, I think he will overcome this downer season and we will be back to winning 10 games per year once again. I'm still going to root for the team and watch the games. I did during the dreadful RR and Hoke seasons. I'm an alum but have been a big Michigan fan since I was 7 years old in 1970, so I will always root for the team, support the players and coaches and watch the games.
September 24th, 2019 at 6:32 AM ^
"If it's not, oh well. It's time to adapt to the temperature of the water."
What's water?
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