Thoughts On Writing A Slasher

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Recently, I completed the first draft of a slasher novella I’ve titled CUTTHROAT that I began in early September.

The premise is stupifyingly simple, though, like many of my works, it’s riddled with satiric malice and dark humor:

 A group of job applicants arrive at a sleek highrise for a coveted position, but find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic assessor known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.

This first draft clocked in at around 31,000 words, and it proved to be both exhausting and grossly liberating at the same time. This was one of those “cutting loose” sort of writing experiments, where I didn’t feel bound by the ordinary constraints of storytelling. Though there are two character arcs, a strong mid-point shift, a late reveal, and a twisty plot with some inventive kills. Thematically, it’s centered around the tortuous difficulties attendant with job hunting, with the whole ugly process personified in the form of a psychopathic killer known as Cutthroat, who poses as a job recruiter performing interviews, only to hack his unawares applicants apart. I really tried to go for the economic malaise zeitgeist’s jugular here that mainly desperate jobseeking Millennials and Gen-Zers are suffering through or at least might relate to. Armed with briefcases filled with all kinds of nasty weapons, Cutthroat sadisticallly plays his own twisted “assessment” games with the group of twenty-somethings, and it’s up to the protagonist to figure out a way to stop him, or at least escape with his life.

Writing a slasher is brutish work, to say the least. I’ve written my share of horrors, such as The Devil’s Throne, released a few years ago, but a slasher is another beast altogether. Slashers, obviously, are less known for their elegant exploration of human themes through a lens of supernatural or psychological chills like traditional horrors, and more about delivering a certain graphic and visceral effect on the reader/viewer.

Cutthroat is sort of “Terrifier in a business suit,” as I’ve come to refer to it as a means to sum up its ethos in a pithy “elevator pitch” manner. The slasher franchise set around Art the Clown is a real phenomenon for its cult following. Walk by any Hot Topic store in a mall and you’re bound to see Art T-shirts and other merch. He’s as big as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees were in their day. I’ve only seen the second film and the first half of the first one. That’s literally all I could stomach. From a writer’s perspective, I found them shockingly bereft of any “story,” even for a slasher series. The Terrifier films are more a bunch of gory vignettes strung together. A bloody highlight reel of makeup and special effects. Even Friday the 13th, with all its clumsy and meandering “plots” had a semblance of mythology what with Jason and his mommy issues. Not so for Terrifier, which seems content to just freak out audiences with new methods of bodily mutilation. Hellraiser seems tame by comparison, which seems not possible.

Honestly, I found writing my first slasher disappointingly mundane. How many ways can you really butcher human beings on paper? I found myself straining to somehow “make it more interesting.” I did this by interjecting a backstory for the villain in order to make him believable, and by adding humor wherever possible. At one point I gave up for a few days, put off by the whole thing. Only to return days later determined to finish the task.

Now that it’s done, like often happens when I’ve finished a writing project, I find myself wracked with a post-partum malaise. Though there is always the long and tedious editing process.

I remember reading about how John Carpenter, while struggling to write Halloween II (1981) hit some bad writer’s block. I wondered how in the hell could that happen. We’re talking Michael Myers here. Pehaps the most simplistic masked killer there ever was. Just set him loose in a school so he can stalk another group of dumb horny teenagers. How hard could it be, right? But after writing my first slasher, I can see where he was likely coming from, and how unfulfilled he probably felt trying his hand at the sequel. It’s no wonder he wound up throwing in the bogus development about Laurie Strode being Michael’s sister as a way to liven things up and add motivation. Something he later regretted adding to Michael’s “mythology” due to its inherent silliness. The whole point of Michael Myers is that he doesn’t need a “motivation.” That’s what makes him scary. But I can see how sheer boredom probably drove Carpenter to want to throw in anything, no matter how nonsensical, to make the writing process more palatable for him. At least The Thing had the intricate puzzlebox mysteries of “Who’s the Thing and who’s not?” “Who can you trust?” With Halloween, it’s more just about coming up with new ways Michael can kill people.

On the surface, writing a slasher is “stupidly easy,” sure. Kind of. We’re not writing a dense Cormac McCarthian Western here, even if Anton Chigurh is like a Mexican Michael Myers with a shotgun. But it takes a piece of your soul. There are also the tricky mechanics of coming up with a bigger than life villain. Something iconic. A Nightmare on Elm Street, to me, is the gold standard when it comes to slashers. It’s probably the most intelligent of them. Certainly it’s the best high-concept horror idea. A killer that stalks you in your dreams. The kind of idea that makes you go, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Overall, I enjoyed attempting the slasher genre, though it’s not one I’d quickly want to return to. Technically, it’s not actually my first stab at it. I handwrote a short story about a group of masked killers stalking a school way back when I was a teenager in high school. It was a story obviously ripped off of Halloween as I’d just seen that film on cable, though I added a “clever” twist by not having one, or two, but three killers. Genius, obviously. With this latest attempt decades later, I like to think I’ve grown and matured. I feel I made Cutthroat suitably gory and satisfied the demands of the genre with all the requisite tropes, while putting my own touch on things and bringing something new. If anything, it was a fun writing exercise that felt perfectly appropriate with Halloween right around the corner. 🙂

There’s Something About The Endearing 90’s-ness of ‘There’s Something About Mary’

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

For some reason, this movie popped into my head recently, and I just had to rewatch it. I don’t know why. I seem to recall seeing it in theaters while on a beach vacation in Ocean City, Maryland back in the summer of 1998. Though the film actually stayed in theaters for over a year.

Films did that back then. Now they dip in and out in like two weeks before hitting streaming oblivion.

It’s weird watching something from the ’90s, as it is basically a period piece anymore. This film is nearly thirty-freaking years old! It is as ancient to modern audiences today as something from the mid-’60s would have been during its premier.

There’s Something About Mary is a screwball romantic comedy about a guy named Ted trying to reconnect with his old high school crush–the titual Mary. Mary Jensen, that is. Following a catalysmically awful prom date that goes sideways in the film’s second most memorable sequence when Ted gets his dick and balls stuck in his zipper after arriving at Mary’s house. Poor Ted spends the next 13 years still pining (borderline obsessing) over Mary, until he gins up a scheme to sick a private detective on her to hunt down her whereabouts. Finding her in South Florida, Ted takes off to reconnect with his old flame, encounting a series of mad-cap adventures along the way. But competing with him for Mary’s heart is the greasy private detective, an old college boyfriend, a slippery pizza delivery guy, and even a famous football QB star. Will Ted, the ultimate nice guy, win Mary’s heart in the end?

Of course, the film is BEST remembered for its “Is that hair gel?” scene when Ted and Mary are preparing to go on a date. Believe me, that line was the height of bawdy comedy in my high school during that year. Between that and the many Monica Lewinsky jokes flying around (and there were many), my junior year was beset with semen-based hilarity.

In fact, I’d say there has likely never been a time ever in human history when male ejaculation centered so prominently in the cultural psyche as it did in the year 1998. That’s all thanks to Monica and Mary.

There’s Something About Mary is beset with a hideous amount of ’90s anachronisms, both technologically and cultural. Things that just wouldn’t work in today’s self-aware uber ironic entertainment landscape. The ’90s was all about being okay with looking stupid. It was the decade of Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey, and wacky attitude-y cartoons like Animaniacs. Weird toys like Gak. Very stupid and cringey TV shows. And lots of bright neon colors.

People nostalgia-gazming hard on the decade often forget how damn silly the ’90s really was. And that’s probably the best way to describe Mary. Silly with a capital ‘S.’

The entire conceit of the film falls apart in the age of Facebook and Google. Now it’s not only easy to look someone up from high school, you likely can’t even get rid of them anyway if they follow you on Insta or Facebook.

Then there’s the whole stalking angle. What Ted does is technically kind of creepy. While he does sorta pay for it when he’s forced to confess at the film’s “All is Lost” beat, and is consequentially kicked to the curb, true love conquers all of course in the end.

There’s the idea of a bunch of men fixating on Mary as a sex object in a predatory way that would be seen as “problematic” now. The film gets away with it mostly due to its unflinching cartooniness. The Farrelly brothers were at their peak. The story has heart, though its punctured by a lot of slapstick nonsense.

There’s Something About Mary really is one of those films that wouldn’t be made today. It’s an odd time capsule of a film. A relic from a very niche era of cornball humor that couldn’t be replicated. A perfect representation of what the ’90s was all about.

It does have some classical elements, too. The recurring motif of the singers reminded me of the singing muses often seen in Shakespeare plays or Greek epics. The crude sexual humor harkens back to the stylings of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. There are some borrowed elements also. The police interrogation misunderstanding feels lifted from 1992s My Cousin Vinny, for instance. But overall it’s a funny original story with a handful of memorable scenes beyond the hair gel one. The fish hook gag, as an example.

Ben Stiller stars in one of his early big roles. At the start of his early 2000s tsunami of comedy hits like Meet the Parents and Zoolander. Cameron Diaz plays the lovely and lanky Mary. And there is the adaptable Matt Dillon as the greasy private eye with the porn stache.

Need some ’90s flavor in your life? Who doesn’t, right? Check out There’s Something About Mary.

Links To My Recent Articles, A Quick Comment About Medium, and Other Updates

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-vintage-typewriter-163084/

Here are links to a bunch of articles I’ve written on Medium but just haven’t cross-posted here on my personal site. In order of recency:

Women Are Willing To Sell Their Bodies To Pay Off Student Loans

“You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride”

Some Very Disturbing (And Gross) Stats About STDs, Especially When It Comes To Black Women

River Is A Solid Bitcoin-Only Exchange

Three Cold Hard As Fuck Truths For Why You’re Single

They Sang Along To Ye’s “Heil Hitler,” Now They’re Getting Doxxed, Harassed, And Threatened

She Calls A 5-Year-Old ‘N-gger,’ Now May Cash Out With A Million Dollars In Online Donations

Medium

Medium continues to be a massive disappointment this year. Due to either an algorithm change or some kind of shift in how it distributes traffic, I barely get the engagement in years prior, and substantially smaller payouts and fewer followers, consequently. Though some of my articles caught on in Google’s rankings, I see zero money for non-Medium members who read my stuff. That’s really frustrating, as some of my “stories” (as Medium likes to call them) have caught tens of thousands of views.

It’s not that I soullessly write for money. It’s just that I would like to see commensurate compensation for when I do write something that lands.

Still, I’ve kept plugging away. Either foolishly or just out of stubborn persistence and the desire to maintain stasis. Medium is a solid platform, for sure. But it has a low ceiling. Whereas a platform like YouTube will (assuming you are monetized) at least pay you for ALL the views you get, not just Medium members. As such, YT has basically uncapped potential, though it too has its issues.

YouTube

As much as I love YouTube and the idea of being a YouTuber, I don’t know that it’s the right venue for me, either. Nor do I care to contort myself into the tortuous content creation pretzel shape that YT demands if you want to have a shot at gaining traction. YT seems to favor TikTok-style shorts anymore, and such snappy, soundbite quippings are not in my wheelhouse. The few videos I’ve posted this year are long, thoughtful, and reflective, which is not really conducive to YT’s dazzling discothèque guppy-attention-span content that seems to predominate on there.

I’m a writer at the end of the day. A fiction writer, specifically. I try to be. While I like dropping spicy op-eds from time to time, Medium and this whole “content game” thing often just proves a procrastinative distraction and a futilely unfulfilling endeavor. I get so little satisfaction out of writing even a “banger” article that gets a good traffic spike it’s not funny.

Whereas, a good fiction writing session puts me on cloud nine.

I don’t care to just crank out a bunch of noise, trying to surf the trend waves. I’d rather spend the time on my books. I have a lot of them in various states of editing, and I have a lot of ideas for more.

My latest will be out soon.

Conundrum

Which brings me to the conundrum. To be a successful fiction writer, you need a platform to help market your work. But to get a platform, you have to play the mind numbing algo/traffic/pretzel twist game I just talked about. A successful writer is a successful salesman, not just a good tapper of keystrokes. Like many writers, this rustles my introvert jimmies. I hate “putting myself out there,” though I’m not a wallflower by any means.

I see many other writers, especially self-published ones, market themselves via YouTube and social media, either by book or movie reviews, or by being (usually godawful) cultural critics and posting daily ragebait commentary on whatever headline caught their ire that morning. I don’t care to waste the time being a “culture warrior.” That’s very cringy to me. And there are frankly certain audiences I just don’t care to attract.

I will never be a fucking “writing coach.” I will never sell a fucking course or some bullshit consulting like so many of those hustlers out there do. No. Just no. I will never make “writing about writing” my thing. Never going to happen. I don’t care to waste the time, and I sure as hell don’t need to do it for the money.

I could see doing long form book or movie reviews, however.

And even though some of my finance-themed articles have actually performed the best, I think I’m done with that niche. Save and invest your money. Stay out of debt. Control your spending. Slow and steady (i.e. boring) compound gains will make you wealthy, not get-rich-quick crypto/stock/real estate/side hustle schemes. Stop listening to stupid influencers and their bullshit products. There, what the hell else needs to really be said?

Conclusion

As a compromise, I’ll keep posting non-fiction stuff, but likely just focusing on books, movies, and shows. Since Medium has proven near pointless to continue with, I may just go old school and post stuff on here exclusively instead. I blogged a lot way back in the day, and I see that era of the internet returning. Content has become far too siloed on digital slave farms like Facebook and other social media. It’s time for it to decentralize like it used to be. A.I. slop has ruined a lot of content sites also. In fact, I think A.I. is part of why the algo machine has completely broken down across the web.

I’ll invest more time interacting with social media in a qualitatively productive manner. I’ll also continue to experiment with YouTube. Perhaps there are actually people out there who’d rather look at my face and hear me talk than read my stuff. Hey, it’s possible.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll have more updates for you soon, including my latest book. See you in the sun. 🙂

Seriously, WTF?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

A billboard in Bismarck, ND blew my mind.

Source: Photo by The Glorious Studio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-diamond-rings-12427696/

I had to go out of town recently for a dentist appointment as medical service providers are few and far between in the great stupid state of North Dakota. Since there was nobody in network in my town, and my previous dentist office hardly ever has an actual dentist on staff — just hygienists and one moron office manager— I had to drive three and a half hours to go to a new dentist for X-rays and a cleaning.

Yes, I had to stay over night in a hotel, rent a car, and drive halfway across a state just for a one hour appointment. It’s insane, I know.

But that’s nothing compared to a completely fucking insane billboard I saw while I was down there.

I was parked at a Wendy’s eating my actually not bad spicy chicken sandwich when I looked across the road and I saw a big yellow billboard for a jeweler in town advertisting payment plans for engagement rings for as long as 48 months.

What??? I almost dropped my sandwich in shock. Who the fuck is financing a diamond engagement ring for four years? Good Christ, most marriages don’t even last seven years. You might be getting divorced by the time you pay the damn thing off.

My mind was blown. I was utterly floored. Are people — “men” — actually doing this, I wondered. I couldn’t believe it. Then I began to think about the many, many imbecilic male slobs I’d encountered in my life. Slovenly creatures in backwards hats, flip flops, scruffy beards, cargo shorts, forearm tattoos, fast food afficionados, fantasy football betting, sports-enthused, vape-toking, video game playing, Monster Energy drink sipping Neanderthals — yes, I could totally see many of these specimens going “Hur dur, happy wife, happy life,” and walking into that jewelry store ready to sign up for basically car payments on a twinkling rock for their idiot girlfriends.

Am I the only one who sees how insanely stupid this is?

How dumb do you have to be to sign up for four long years of debt just for a rock? There are a million better things to spend money on in a new marriage than a piece of bling.

Dear men, stop doing this to yourselves. Seriously.

No woman who truly loves you and wants to be with you would want you to finance a rock for four years. Only a gold-digging Instagram thot who takes seflies at the gym in her booty shorts would demand that, not someone truly worthy of years of your sacrifice and financial hardship.

A worthy woman would want you to put that money toward a house, furniture, a car, baby things, or other practical purchases that really matter and help build the foundation for a successful marriage and family. Not a shiny stone.

An engagement ring is just a symbol. She didn’t win the fucking Super Bowl, gents. Buy her something modest and within your budget, and move the fuck on in life.

In fact, this makes for a good litmus test. The bigger the rock she expects, the bigger the undeserving asshole she likely is.

This simp epidemic has to stop. I mean, think about the underlying misandry of that billboard’s message. It reflects a societal expectation that men go out and financially fuck themselves royally as a traditional precursor to marriage.

Now imagine the message, but directed at women. Imagine that billboard was offering payment plans on appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers that women go buy so when they get married they can be good little stay at home housewives. Or imagine it was advertising payment plans on BOOB JOBS so hubby can have a nice set of flesh pillows to bury his face in after a hard day’s work. Imagine all the outrage at that.

Well, it’s the same thing with this silly and frankly asinine expectation that men burden themselves for years for a stupid rock.

Fuck. That.

I could see dropping like $5k on an engagement ring. Maybe even $10k if it’s within your budget. But only if you can pay that in cash and it’s not going to force you into indentured servitude for the length of a presidential term.

Marriage is tough enough without additional and unnecessary financial burdens. Why make it needlessly harder on yourself?

I wouldn’t care if it were Sydney Sweeney. I’d rather be single for life than finance a rock for ANYONE.

Seriously, WTF?

Our Decades Don’t Have Cool Nicknames Anymore

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The Trumpy Twenties? The Terrible Twenties? The Turbulent Twenties? The Spendy Twenties? Just spit ballin’ here.

Photo by Viridiana Rivera from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-2025-planner-with-pen-and-plant-29996971/

I truly believe that in the year 2000 our timeline somehow got diverted into the Shithole Dimension in which we currently reside.

How? I blame Y2K. We were supposed to let that supposed “glitch” play out, not “fix” it. Instead, we collectively ctlr+alt+deleted our way into this nightmare world.

That, or the gods simply hated those stupid “00” New Year’s Eve glasses everyone was wearing celebrating the Millennium, and decided to punish us with two and a half gray mushy mash no identity decades. What is the difference between the year 2003 and now? Seriously. None. If you stuck me in a Delorean and sent me back, I’d hardly notice any changes. The clothes, the tech, the political scene — all virtually the same.

We left the “Go-Go 90s” or the “Gay 90s” or “The Decade of Peace,” for the “Oughties.” Or is it just the “Zeroes?” Or the “Two-Thousands?” Boring and WTF either way.

Even IN the ’90s, we used to say, “It’s the ’90s, baby.” On New Year’s Eve of 1999, I remember partying with some coworkers at a popular resort named after a Roman emperor to Prince’s song “1999” the moment the ball dropped. It was awesome. It was like we knew we’d reached an Apex of Cool and the universe had serendipitously rewarded us with our very own anthem for the year with a song written way back in 1982. How’s that for a pre-expectation of good times? People were excited for the ’90s already in the ’80s. Who the fuck was looking forward to 2009? 2013? 2017? 2023? The current year?

“This the ’80s and I’m down the ladies.”

Then just today I’m driving along and I hear the classic 1989 song “Funky Cold Medina” by Ton-Loc, which includes the line I quoted above. The previous seventies decade may have been the “Me Decade,” but even in Ronald Reagan’s America people were ready to get down. And that was with the Cold War still going on. The “Swinging Sixties” were turbulent, sure, but defined by great music, social changes, and apparently swinging. It was a decade marked by sexual experimentation and liberation. So like the ’70s, ’80s and ‘90’s, it had a certain sex appeal. Then before that you had the “Rockin’ Fifties.” Also known as the “Fabulous Fifties.”

It wasn’t all fun and fornication, of course. You had the “Fighting Forties,” due to WWII. The “Dirty Thirties” thanks to the Great Depression. But before them you had the “Roaring Twenties,” because of the skyrocketing stock market.

Meanwhile, the 2000s, or “Oughts” or “Zeroes” has no real nickname. The “War on Terror Decade?” Too negative. “The Age of Premptive Strikes?” No, too cynical. “The Bush Years.” Come on, man.

Okay, forget the 2000s. Onto the “teens.” Or “twenty-tens.” Or “twenty-teens.” This decade doesn’t even have a proper numerical designation. Can we hope for at least a halfway decent nickname? I’m drawing a blank here. The “Troublesome Teens?” The “Tiresome Tens?” Oh, I know. the “Transformative Teens.” Kind of a catch-all. Plus it subtly alludes to the whole transgender craze starting during the latter part of the decade. And it was a transformative decade, for sure.

Which finally brings us to this decade. The twenties. We’re halfway through and I’ve yet to hear any kind of a definitive nickname. I’ll refer you to my suggestions up at the very top. The “Terrible Twenties” sounds too dramatic. The “Trumpy Twenties” is too specific.

Besides —

We don’t yet know how the next five years will shake out. For all we know, we’re all of us gifted with unicorns that piss gold coins and shit Godiva chocolate in this decade’s latter half. In which case we’d be the “Enchanted Twenties.”

It could maybe be the “Twitter Twenties,” if it hadn’t become X. I like “The Spendy Twenties” best as it alludes to high inflation and the costs for everything getting completely out of control. I went to the supermarket recently and eight chicken wings cost $18. Eighteen dollars. Fuck it, I’ll just eat carpet.

I’m not ready to write off this entire decade just yet. I’m willing to give it a chance. But unlike the ’90s or ’80s, the twenty-twenties has got no vibe. It’s got no aura. No zip. No rizz, as the kids like to say. Frankly, I’m embarassed to be living in it. Especially when I’ve had better. Way better. That’s not good. We need to reset those computers back so they just read two digits again, so we can spring out of this bizarro pocket dimension of identity-less decades and back into our old reality. We should have had the “Duuude-Thousands,” then the “Terrific Teens,” before living smack dab in the middle of the “Friendly Twenties.” Instead, we are lost and adrift, and without a name.

Why Western Birth Rates Have Collapsed

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

What population and fertility trends in Nigeria say about the West.

Photo by Vika Glitter from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-carrying-babies-while-sitting-on-chair-1648396/

Despite not having any kids, I’ve become intrigued lately by all the doomsdayers out there raising alarms about birthrates and replacement rates. Elon Musk, who has 14 children with five different women himself, talks about it almost every day on X. Recently, he retweeted a user who shared some shocking graphs:

Source: OurWorldinData

Then there’s this one:

Source: National Statistics Offices

Wow. That is what’s called a precipitous collapse. The West will be extinct before long at this rate.

Anecdotally, my grandmother had eight kids. My biological father had seven. My mother had four. I have two half-siblings who have two kids each. My youngest half-sibling has none, as do I. Only a few of my cousins have more than one child. I’ve witnessed in my time a severe narrowing in the number of kids couples have over the generations. Marriage rates have also gone down. The average age people marry has gone up. And the number of children people have who happen to get married or cohabitate has shrunk across the board.

Not so in Africa, according to the graphs above. Especially countries like Nigeria, which actually has a population explosion that is projected to reach over 400 million by 2050, according to the World Bank. The United States’ population is currently 340 million for comparison.

So, what’s going on? Why can’t the West reproduce itself? I’ve heard all the excuses: expensive housing, cost of living, the job market, etc. However, according to a recent study that looked at the population trends in the African country, “income does not play any significant role in the demand for children in Nigeria.”

The 2022 study is titled “Fertility and Population Explosion in Nigeria: Does Income Actually Count?” You can check it out at this link here.

There are some key takeaways aside from the obvious ones involving increased life expectancy, declining death rate, and high infant mortality. Nigeria has seen improvements in both those areas over the last 59 years, though its infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world, and correlates with the higher number of births.

But if it’s not income or medical care that’s keeping the West from reproducing, what is? Culture, mainly. Take a look at Nigeria’s attitude toward children in general, and see if there’s a marked difference with the West’s.

From the study:

Children are viewed as a future investment and given the uncertainties of them having a brighter future, a poor household can produce more children to try their odds. That is, out of the very many children, some could have a chance to become prominent individuals in the society. Apart from that, some traditional Nigerian households views greater number of children as a strength to the family in terms of providing family labour at the subsistence level.

There are other cultural factors at play, which I’ve broken down here:

  • early marriage
  • universal marriage
  • prolonged childbearing
  • low contraceptive use
  • cultural emphasis on large families due to fear of lineage extinction.

I bold-faced the last one because it ties in with high infant mortality.

Fear of extinction fostered increased reproduction in the face of perceived high child mortality with the expectation that some of the births would survive to carry on the lineage.

It also is what most differentiates Nigeria from the West. Those few who procreate here in the U.S. do so within a bubble of relative security. It’s never been safer or easier to have kids from a medical point of view. Yet families in the U.S. remain largely fractured and small. Members are often adrift from one another. Who fears their family name dying out who isn’t named Trump or Musk?

Meanwhile, Nigerians reproduce as if they have a gun to their heads. Is it mostly due to the infant mortality rates? I don’t think it’s that simple. I get the sense that even if infant mortality were to suddenly incline here, it’d be met with indifference. Most women support abortion rights and put off having children until their 30s. Few men want to become fathers. Fertility and parenthood are not treated with celebration but looked at like nuisances. As obstacles to having fun or achieving life and career goals.

Photo by Janko Ferlic from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pregnant-woman-1692050/

People are staunch individualists, focused intensely (selfishly, even) on their career and capital acquisition over reproductive relationships. We’re a culture obsessed with entertainment, dopamine fixes, and endless sensory distraction. To put it crudely, women would rather strip on OnlyFans or sip mimosas at the bar with their girlfriends on Friday nights, while men would rather play video games and jack off to internet porn, than do something as backbreaking like start a family. Much less a family above the replacement rate.

Sex education starts young, with a heavy emphasis on contraceptive use. We all remember the condom and banana demonstration in fifth or sixth grade. Sex ed also pounds on this idea that getting preggo is basically the end of the world. While out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy is obviously not ideal, that anti-natal sentiment carries on into adulthood. Fewer people marry, and hardly anyone marries young. In fact, the idea of getting hitched prior to age 25 is seen as absurd. Your twenties are supposed to be for “experimentation,” and screwing around, not getting serious with anyone.

None of this is to say Nigeria’s population explosion is an ideal to aspire to for the West. Severe poverty persists. Excess population is a drain on resources. In fact, the baby boom is considered a crisis in the country. The study states in its conclusion:

Population control is therefore sacrosanct to save the nation from peril.

Nigeria’s high infant mortality rate also continues to be a problem. By reducing that, in addition to better sex education, the country may be able to reign in its population.

In fairness to the West, medical technology may help extend life spans and quality of life far beyond what’s typical. Many people continue to work into their seventies and beyond, and not just our politicians, either. Plus, our infant mortality rates are extremely low (5.6 deaths per 1,000) compared to Nigeria’s (72.2 deaths per 1,000) and other African countries.

It is possible that a birth rate below replacement is a natural and inevitable byproduct of a modern, developed civilization. But it’s odd and disquieting that even in the face of imminent extinction, our collective response is nonchalance. At what point, if at all, does self-preservation kick in? For many Millennials and Gen-Zers, it will be their social media accounts that will serve as their final legacy, not their genetic progeny. A sad state of affairs.

I found this study fascinating because it helps dispel the myth that income and cost of living are the biggest factors in why few in the West want kids or want many of them. It’s not a financial issue, it’s a cultural one. I don’t see those trends reversing anytime soon, if ever. We’re never doing away with sex education. We’re never going to tell our teens to shack up young or put off college to have a family. We’re never going to be anything but workaholic, screen-addicted, materialistic pleasure-seekers who only seem to have families by accident instead of intention. What modern woman aspires to having kids period, much less four or five? What man would choose breadwinning over fantasy football and e-thots? Face it. We just hate kids.

To quote a meme I recently found on X: “We traded bedtime stories for higher GDP.”

If Harvard University Is So Smart, Why Do They Need Federal Funds So Badly?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Our country’s resident genius factory needs YOUR money and they need it now.

Photo by Ozan Çulha from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/young-girl-on-the-beach-in-a-harvard-t-shirt-17375488/

No, seriously. Why? Why does Harvard, a name synonomous with ultra elite education; a bastion of uber smartypantsism; the university whose name you have to say with the proper inflection(it’s HAH-verd, not HAR-verd) or else you’re glanced at askew with disdain — need desperately to suck President Trump’s nipples for that sweet federal funds milk?

According to Axios, the Trump Administration is freezing $2.2 billion in funds due to “diversity, equity and inclusion practices and alleged antisemitism.”

Wait a minute. Is this not the same university that once saw the likes of boy wonder tech wizard Mark Zuckerberg grace its halls? The Zuck who hacked into the university’s computer system so he could steal photos of female classmates and rank them according to their looks for his website Facemash? The same Zuck who would go on to found Facebook, now Meta?

Last I checked, Zuck’s networth is almost $200 billion. $2.2 billion is like chump change to him. Why doesn’t Harvard just call The Zuck up and ask him to spot them a few billy? Did they lose his phone number or something? What if they made an account on Facebook and tried to “poke” him? Is poking still a thing?

(Plus, Zuckerberg is Jewish. So him handing his alma mater a gigantic check would help dispel the whole antisemitism thing. Two birds with one stone.)

Or what about President Obama? He graduated Harvard Law School. He should know all kinds of loopholes and tricks. He’s a lawyer, afterall. Even if he couldn’t help, he might know someone else who could. He was the Commander in Chief. He probably has a big network on LinkedIn he can tap.

Or what about calling JG Wentworth? Doesn’t Harvard remember the slogan? “It’s my money and I need it now!” Just call 877 CASH NOW. So easy.

Meanwhile, Harvard is shitting its pants about losing their few billion. University president Alan Garber says:

“For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”

This guy Garber should change his name to Gerber. As in Gerber baby food. As in he sounds like a big crying baby. This is Harvard, dude. You have the smartest, the best, and the brightest people on the planet within arm’s reach! There’s no need to get hysterical. You swing a cat and you’re gonna hit someone making the next trillion dollar tech start-up.

Harvard getting its panties twisted over this is like Lex Luthor freaking out that Superman might fine him for jaywalking. If I were a student or graduate of Harvard I’d be embarrassed.

I’m sorry, but if Harvard can’t figure a way out of its little $2.2 billion problem, then I don’t see it being any better than your local community college.

Chuck Dixon’s ‘Levon Cade’ Series (‘A Working Man’) Is Inspiring

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Eleven books produced in one year. Holy shit balls.

Source: By Amazon MGM Studios — https://www.vitalthrills.com/a-working-man-trailer-featuring-jason-statham/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78846003

I’m a recovering “beat-em-up” fan. Back in the day as a teen I used to love those terrible Steven Seagal films like Above the Law and Marked For Death. Or Jean-Claude Van Damme stuff like Bloodsport and Death Warrant. They were constantly on rotation on USA and TBS and other freemium cable channels in the late ’90s. Films that were passably entertaining for immature adolescent minds, but in retrospect are ridiculously cheesy and absurd. But hey, if you haven’t seen Seagal break a Jamaican dude’s arm in half or Van Damme roundhouse kick a guy into a furnace, you haven’t lived.

Nowadays, Jason Statham is your go-to macho man face puncher and bad guy beater downer. Strangely, actors even higher up the talent totem pole have had a go at their own fistacuffs franchises. Bob Odenkirk is Nobody. A-lister Denzel Washington is The Equalizer. And of course Internet Jesus Keanu Reeves is John Wick.

Everyone wants to kick ass these days! Who can blame them? Have you seen the prices of things lately? Going to the grocery store anymore is like going to a Fuck Me in the Ass Parade.

The latest is A Working Man, where Statham plays a former blacks ops soldier turned construction guy who has to return to his face-stomping roots when his boss’s daughter gets kidnapped or something. I’ve not seen it, nor will I ever. Just like I didn’t see Statham’s last flick The Beekeeper, which had pretty much the same plot. The latest edition of Statham Beats Up Some Guys interests me about as much as hanging around a bunch of backwards hat-wearing dude bros talking about their fantasy football picks.

(No man should have a hobby with the word “fantasy” in it. Like, are there sparkles involved? Pink glitter? GTFO of here with that.)

Anyway…

What is pretty cool (and surprising), is that A Working Man is based on a book. Which is part of a book series, actually. By a real author. Not some A.I. trained on Seagal and Van Damme flicks. Chuck Dixon is a prolific author known mostly for his work in the comic book industry. He co-created Bane, aka the villain who broke Batman’s back. So, this guy is well-experienced in creating characters that know how to kick the crap out of people.

Dixon’s series is called Levon Cade, and features the vigilante going on various quests involving revenge and likely crushing a few throats. There are twelve books in total. The first, titled simply Levon’s Trade, premiered in December, 2021. The others came in rapid succession, sometimes as little as three weeks apart, over the course of 2022. The eleventh published in August, after which Dixon took a sabbatical before dropping the twelfth and final (?) in February, 2024. Not bad. Guy banged it all out in roughly a calendar year.

Look, these are not labyrinthine literary feasts like A Game of Thrones. These stories are Fisher-Price simple and Neanderthal stupid. No shit. But when you get down to it, there are really only two genres — “Man with Gun” and “Girl Bangs Guy.” That’s about it. James Bond, for all his British sophistication, is just another “Man with Gun” story. Titanic is the ultimate “Girl Bangs Guy.” The classics usually combine the two in interesting ways. Double Indemnity, for instance. There are some exceptions, often seen in experimental or prestige award stuff, but nobody cares. People only pay attention when someone’s fucking or getting murdered. Can you name the book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature four years ago? No? Have you ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? My point exactly.

I am not a fan of simple vigilante series, in either book or movie versions. I read Killing Floor once, the first Jack Reacher book, a long time ago, and the experience was akin to tattoo gunning my eyeballs. I am a fan of writers, however. Especially ones who put in the effort to carve out their own success, in whatever genre they choose. A Working Man has likely done well enough at the box office to merit a sequel. Who knows. It could even be a franchise like John Wick. I have no idea. I’ll never see the films anyway. I outgrew the need for them a long time ago. But I do appreciate them and the writers who make them.

Women Are Abandoning Marriage Because Men Suck So Hard Evidently

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?

Made with Midjourney.

There’s this hilarious scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is over a friend’s house eating dinner and he notices that the glass of water he’s drinking is unfiltered from the tap. This petty but not unimportant observation leads to his host being offended, and Larry (surprise, surprise) getting kicked out.

You just can’t win with people like Larry. You serve them a nice dinner in a nice apartment with good friends and fun conversation, and they’ll still find some unforgivable flaw in your presentation that crumbles the whole affair.

What does this have to do with the point of this article? Well, it would seem many women have essentially become a bunch of Larry Davids, while men are that distasteful unfiltered tap water. Except while Larry David remains cuddly and lovable despite his eccentricities and obsessions with behaviorial minutiae, this whole “men ain’t up to snuff” refrain we keep hearing is getting old and ugly and obnoxious, not to mention making women actually come off looking worse.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “American Women Are Giving Up On Marriage.” A title written as if it should be blasted by a bullhorn atop a castle wall and met with wailing and gnashing of teeth by sackcloth-wearing commoners in the streets below.

However, I think a more honest title would be what I wrote in the sub-title section above: “How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?”

These types of rah-rah-women articles pop up now and again like herpes sores, and like that STI, they ain’t ever going away. Nor should they. It’s good to be reminded that women are surpassing men and that men are falling woefully behind and that women are so clearly better and have tons of options and that men suck and blah, blah, blah. Afterall, women’s clear superiority may not be readily evident to us boorish and ignorant men with our thick skulls. We must be constantly reminded of women’s superiority and our unfiltered tap waterness lest our puny male brains forget. Frankly, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t see these articles constantly.

I’ll spare you the details of this latest update on the state of the Überfem. It’s your standard, “women are making more money and graduating with more degrees while the pool of men in similar economic positions is shrinking” celebrat — or, lament. Basically, we’re suffering from an epidemic of unworthy, unmarriagable male losers! Meanwhile, the number of elite world-beating boss babes has never been higher.

A 29-year-old woman says of house hunting and having kids:

“I’m financially self-sufficient enough to do these things myself,” said Vorlicek, a Boston-based accountant. “I’m willing to accept being single versus settling for someone who isn’t the right fit.”

Well, given the absurdly low-barrier to qualify for mortgage loans, virtually anyone is financially self-sufficient enough to “buy” a home if they have a job and a pulse, so I’m not sure how much of a flex that really is anymore.

But let’s examine the glaring contradiction in her statement. This lady is NOT okay with settling with a full-grown man who “isn’t the right fit.” Okay, fair enough. However, she IS okay with giving birth to a child, who could end up being any random personality, good or bad, and to whom she’ll be legally and physically responsible for, and unable to extricate herself from without severe difficulty.

I mean, at least with the man you can dump or divorce him and make him go away (eventually). A kid is kind of stuck in your life FOREVER. Or at least for 18 years.

I could be wrong, but what I’m picking up subtextually from this almost-thirty-lady is a pathological need for control. What kind of a person is incapable of managing the vagaries of an adult relationship, but feels they are finely suited for taking on the rearing of a child? Children as we know never present any difficulties whatsoever. They are houseplants, really. Stick them in the corner and just forget about them.

No, seriously, you’d have to be some kind of anti-social asshole control freak to actually think that.

This next lady was confronted with a simple directive from her mama bear: Get a boyfriend by Christmas. But she ran into complications:

Katie spent the first half of 2024 going on three or four dates a week with men she met on apps, such as Hinge and Bumble, in the hopes of finding a husband before turning 30. By the end of the year, she had ramped down the search, calling it “the only thing you can put 10,000 hours into and end up right where you started.”

[Bold-face above mine]

Three or four dates a week? For the first half of the year? Hmmm…let me break out the abacus for this one. Thirteen weeks…three or four a week. That adds up to anywhere between 39 to 52 dates in total.

Mind you, these are NOT just random men. These are the men that SHE chose from the vast sea of spermatozoa via the apps. These are the cream of the crop, no pun intended. Yet none measured up after a real-life meeting in the flesh? Seriously? None?

NOTE: If you can’t find an acceptable partner amongst a pool of prescreened applicants that YOU chose for fifty dates, most likely YOU are the problem, not them.

But no, let’s hear the cope:

Many of the men Katie met, she said, either seemed turned off by her ambition or weren’t career-oriented enough for her. She felt discouraged by just how many of her male friends similarly said they expect their future wives to prioritize their families over their jobs.

By the way, Katie’s big professional ambition is running Lume, a “leadership coaching startup” in NYC. I tried looking it up and the only companies I found with the name Lume were a cannabis dispensary in Michigan and some site that sells women’s deodorant. Since I’m sure Katie’s Lume is a highly lucrative elite consulting empire and surely not just a couple gals gabbing away in a rent-by-the-hour office somewhere, I’ll just assume this glaring oversight on Google’s part in not ranking it on the front page is due to sexism and misogyny.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-tank-top-holding-white-ceramic-cup-3779760/

This next young, er, middle-aged rather, lady, laments a failed relationship, saying:

“He wanted the white picket fence and me at home with the kids,” Jones said. This despite the fact that her salary was nearly 50% higher than his.

Jones is 38, and from her picture, bordering on obese. In other words, she likely has a narrow chance of becoming pregnant and carrying a child fully to term without luck or expensive IVF treatments anyway. So, I’m not sure where her former BF got off thinking she was going to be having kids anytime soon. I’d say that ship has sailed. And since we don’t know her salary, we don’t know how much more she makes than her ex-beau. But it’s not like she’d have to become a dreaded stay at home mom forever. Likely just for a few years until the kid is old enough to go to school on their own. Then she can return to work. Millions of women do this every year. It sounds like her former BF was just concerned that his child would have a committed parent there for him or her for the first few critical years of their life. I say good on him and hope he found someone better.

This next lady is 33 and has a five-year-old from an ex, but she frets she won’t be able to find anyone because:

She has yet to date anyone else in part because she worries about living in a red state with a six-week abortion ban. “I have a child that I can’t leave behind to drive to Virginia if I had a pregnancy scare, and I definitely can’t afford another child as a single mom,” she said.

LOL. Fucking LMAO.

In addition to the litany of criteria men must worry about qualifying for in a relationship, now we must contend with being rejected solely because some lady can’t run to the nearest kill-a-kiddo center in the offchance our rigorous premarital boning results in an unexpected pregnancy?

“Hey Bob, why’d your last girlfriend dump you?”

“Because Planned Parenthood was two states away!”

Imagine hearing that.

What kind of low lifes is this lady fucking? No, let me put it another way. Why would you be okay with fucking a guy but not okay with him babysitting your kid for a few hours while you dash across state lines for the ol’ vag vacu-suck? That’s essentially what she’s saying here. If he’s not responsible enough to babysit your kid, then maybe you shouldn’t be fucking him. Just a thought.

Here’s the deal. When you’re consistently presented with dozens of partner options; when you’re in your late 30s and you’ve sampled a buffet of male suitors for two decades; when you’ve been through college and had one opportunity after another to partner up; when you live in a fucking major city and you still can’t find a guy who “measures up,” it’s not because there aren’t quality guys. It’s because you’re a picky, unsatisfiable asshole. You’re a female Larry David. That is who you are. Only not funny. Not cuddly. And not lovable.

And to quote the hostess from that Curb scene, “I think you should leave.” Thank you.

My Experience At Super Bowl LIX

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Watching my team win was awesome and unforgettable.

My Super Bowl LIX ticket.

As someone who’s not into cars or bling, and is a “cheap ass mofo” (not minimalist), I decided recently to focus more on experiential expenditures rather than material ones. This has actually been tough for me, because I love investing and saving my money. It’s like an obsession. I save about 60% of my income. In a former life, I must have been one of those guys riding the trains during the Great Depression looking for work, because I never feel like I’ll have enough. Growing up dirt poor doesn’t help things either.

I’m trying to fix my “deprivation mentality” when it comes to money. That doesn’t mean becoming a spendthrift. It just means not being such an irrational tight wad. As much as possible anyway.

Last year I traveled to Thailand and the Philippines. The year before that I did a solo flight experience in a Cessna plane. I’d still like to take pilot lessons one day and get my private license, but I’m just not ready to commit the time and money to see it through properly. I go on regular road trips around the U.S. I have a generous work schedule, which gives me plenty of time off to do what I want. As a single guy with no kids, I also have tons of freedom. So, there’s really no reason not to get out there and see the world and “do stuff.” I have a tendency towards homebodyism. I’m trying to fix that, too. I am a writer, afterall. We’re prone to not wanting to go outside unless forced.

Fly, Eagles, Fly

Anyway, going to a Super Bowl has always been a dream of mine. I never watched football much growing up. In fact, the first game I ever watched was Super Bowl XXXV, between the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants, which was a boring blowout win for the Ravens. But next year saw the powerhouse St. Louis Rams against the New England Patriots, where Tom Brady won his first of many Super Bowls in a shocking upset, and I was hooked.

I’ve been an Eagles fan since birth. I grew up mainly in Eastern Pennsylvania. For a number of years I lived in Philadelphia, before moving out to the frozen wasteland of North Dakota. I’ve been a fan since the Eagles were a lowly doormat of a franchise that was still the only team in its divison to have not won a Super Bowl. I was there during the exciting but frustrating Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid years in the 2000s. I was there for the Michael Vick blip. I was there during the catastrophic Chip Kelly and Sam Bradford years. I was there, of course, for my team’s first epic win after the 2017 season in a rematch against the Patriots (whom we’d lost to in Super Bowl XXXIX 21–24). I was also there for the heartbreak two years ago when we fell short against the Kansas City Chiefs 35–38.

When the Eagles headed back to the Big Game this January, I finally had the opportunity to fulfill one of my dreams. I’d considered going before, but the high prices for Super Bowl tickets, in addition to travel and lodging costs, had put me off. But this time, things aligned much better. I was off the weekend of the Super Bowl anyway. Finally, I had the time, the money, and certainly the interest.

StubHub Snafu

Since I’m not usually one to go to big concerts and other events, I wasn’t used to buying tickets on big reseller websites. And here is where I ran into a little snag. I paid for a ticket in section 649, Row 16, Seat #1. Except after the transaction went through, I wound up with Row 8, Seat #19. It was in the same section, and technically it was an “upgrade,” as the row was closer. But part of the reason I had chosen this ticket was because it was for a seat right by the aisle. Alarmed at this sudden switch, I Googled to see if this sort of thing had happened before. Turns out, this is kind of common. Evidently, people will resell their tickets through a site like StubHub, and either misrepresent the actual seats they have, or they don’t technically have the ticket yet as they bought it from somewhere else.

I considered calling up StubHub and investigating/complaining. Another Google search revealed that this, too, had questionable and unfruitful results. Stubhub doesn’t like to give refunds, just “upgrades.” So, for anyone out there looking to buy tickets, beware of B.S. like this. It’s annoying and somewhat fraudulent. Even though it worked out in my favor with a better seat, that doesn’t excuse the fact that I didn’t get what I technically paid for. I jumped at this ticket to get a seat by the aisle. That was the main attraction. I could have easily waited.

A Word On Super Bowl Ticket Prices

Look, there are a lot of other things you could buy instead of Super Bowl tickets. You could buy a decent used Rolex watch. A nice two-week vacation overseas. A whole new wardrobe, including a bunch of NFL apparel. Or even a diamond engagement ring.

However, if you’re planning on going to a Super Bowl, I recommend you wait at least a week before the event to buy tickets. When tickets first became available after the Conference Championship games, the cheapest tickets I saw started at around $5,000.

That’s $5K BEFORE fees and taxes. Depending on which reseller website you go to, you might pay as much as $1,400 for “fees” (whatever those are) and another $400 or so for taxes. But if you wait at least a week to buy, prices tend to drop by a lot. By the following Sunday before the game, I saw tickets going for as “cheap” as $3,200 plus fees and taxes. All-in pricing was about $4,500. As late as Saturday before the game, the cheapest tickets I saw were about $2,500. Tickets this year were actually cheaper than last year due to the fact that it was a rematch, as well as Chiefs fatigue. But that doesn’t mean prices won’t skyrocket higher next year. Prices also depend on the venue and location. New Orleans is a cheaper city than, say, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, where the Super Bowl was held last year.

All-in my ticket cost about $4,800, though I could have gotten it cheaper by as much as $1,000 for a comparable seat had I waited until a little longer to buy rather than only one week before the game.

Note: The cheapest place I saw tickets was at Vividseats.com. I checked out all the big sites; Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, TickPick, etc. I went with the one at StubHub due to wanting an aisle seat, though that didn’t exactly work out for me.

2nd Note: The NFL uses Ticketmaster exclusively to manage tickets. This means that even if you buy from another place, you need to have an account at Ticketmaster in order to claim your ticket and use it the day of the game. All tickets are handled via mobile, of course, which you can download to an Apple or Google wallet. It’s pretty easy, actually.

In the end, I enjoyed the view from my seat. I actually think you see better from the Terrace level than on the field level.

The Game

I flew out from North Dakota on Saturday. My earlier research had shown that it was ridiculously expensive to stay in New Orleans for the weekend. Luckily, there was a much better alternative. Baton Rouge. I flew in there instead, and stayed at a hotel near the airport. The day of the game I took a bus into New Orleans, which stopped right by the Caesars Superdome. This plan was deemed “very smart” by numerous Uber drivers I encountered who inquired what brought me to Louisiana. It was practically essential. Hotels were charging thousands PER NIGHT that weekend. My hotel in Baton Rouge had regular pricing. The bus ticket only cost $75 round trip.

As you can imagine there is tons of security around a big event like this. I saw a lot of state police in military gear, carrying machine guns and such. There were drones hovering overhead. Helicopters buzzing past. I’d heard just a a few days before the game that President Trump was going to be attending, so you know there were Secret Service and other security out in full force.

Mainly, I was on the lookout for celebrities in the wild. I didn’t see any, except whatever the stadium showed on the big screens during the game.

Getting in was pretty easy. The Superdome had a bunch of ticket kiosks. After passing through security and metal detectors, all I had to do was scan my ticket just like at any other show or event like this. Then I was in.

There were two big tailgating places just outside the dome for either team, though you needed a special pass for these areas. I rarely drink anyway, so that was no appeal to me. They were several bands set-up on stages warming up the crowd.

On one side of the stadium there was a glass display set up showing every Super Bowl ring ever made. Another display across from it showed the Lombardi Trophy. I checked out the rings, but didn’t have time for the trophy before deciding to go inside. Besides, I was more interested in seeing the Lombardi on the field later that night.

Crowd noise is always spectactular at these big stadiums. But it’s something else with Eagles fans, I can tell you. We are a passionate fan base. I think we outnumbered the Chiefs fans by 60/40, and our energy only continued increasing as the game proceeded.

I was not familiar with any of the musical acts for the National Anthem or the Halftime Show. Though I’d heard rumblings of some kind of spat between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, with Lamar maing a “diss track,” or something. I don’t know any of the details. I grew up in the ’90s when rappers settled disputes by just shooting each other, so this musical tit-for-tat seemed lame and tame in comparison to me. Why would a grown man care that another man wrote poetry about him? I hate rap anyway, and don’t consider it real music, or even a performance. It’s more like a guy talking up on stage with a beat. Like slam poetry. You might as well just have a podcast up there. I missed most of Lamar’s “controversial” halftime show anyway. I decided to get a hotdog instead. I went to Super Bowl LIX for the game, not some overrated musical act.

And how was the game itself? Fucking amazing. We beat the shit out of the Chiefs. What’s not to love about that? This was the kind of Super Bowl win dreams are made of. My Eagles blew out the Chiefs 40–6 by the midpoint of the fourth quarter, before pulling starters and letting Mahomes and company save some face with a few gimme touchdowns to make the final score 40–22. It was domination from start to finish. It was quite cathartic for several reasons. It avenged our loss from two years ago to the Chiefs. A game that ended on a ticky tack phantom holding call against us that handed the title to Kansas City. It ended the Chiefs attempt at a threepeat, or “Chiefspeat” or whatever the hell they wanted to call it. It quieted the doubters on our QB Jalen Hurts, who won MVP. It gave our franchise its second Lombardi Trophy, and fifth NFL title overall. The Eagles won three NFL Championships prior to the Super Bowl. Plus, it allowed our superstar running back Saquon Barkley to break the all-time season rushing record including playoffs. Everything about Super Bowl LIX was absolutely awesome in every way imaginable.

Final Thoughts

As much I loved going to the Super Bowl, I’m not sure I’d ever go again, even if the Eagles were in it, unless I really had the money to burn. It’s kind of a once in a lifetime thing. It’s expensive to go, obviously, and there are a lot of other better, and more interesting ways to spend that kind of money. I’ve been fortunate over the last few years financially, and this was a way of taking advantage. Watching my team win the Super Bowl in person will always be a great memory of mine. It was really something else to hear the E-A-G-L-E-S cheer as the green and white confetti rained down on the field. Even though I think the Eagles are well positiond to compete in the playoffs for years to come, there are no guarantees in the NFL. They could make it back to the Big Game next year or never again in my lifetime. Getting to a Super Bowl is hard enough on its own, much less winning one. I had a good feeling about this one, and I didn’t want to miss my chance to see it this time.

The Super Bowl has become a huge part of America culture. It’s almost like a holiday anymore. So, it was worthwhile to experience it from that perspective also. I would recommend anyone go at least once if they can.