Look, y’all, life is tough out there. For everyone! Unless you’re one of the few fortunate souls to live in that sweet, sweet 1 percent of income distribution of the United States, you’ve probably got
more than a few things to worry about in this life. And sometimes, that means you phone one in.
Take Paul Thomas Anderson, for example. The director of the buzzy sensation One Battle After Another — not to mention some of the great American classics such as There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Boogie Nights — once dropped an inscrutable Thomas Pynchon adaptation of Inherent Vice featuring a whole cast of actors I totally forgot were in the film. You know, folks like Owen Wilson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Maya Rudolph, and Hong Chau. I do remember Joaquin Phoenix screaming a few times, but that’s always memorable, ya know?
Why did PTA, fresh off of The Master, decide to release a film with an impossibly obtuse plot, a barrage of competing genres, and a tone equal parts sleepy and slap-sticky? Your guess is as good as mine. I left that theater back in 2014 utterly confounded… but still rather delighted!
The truth is, you can’t always write the great American novel. Even Hemingway wrote Across the River and Into the Trees. Sometimes you uncork a masterpiece on the world and need to take a breather. But you can’t just stop working. So you clock in, put in a few shifts at the ole’ 9-5 and while away the hours. The trick is balancing the responsibilities ahead of you while building up to the next great thing.
OK, so that’s a lot of preamble, and you probably already get where I’m going with this. And we haven’t exactly been subtle in regards to our feelings about Mizzou’s 42-6 win over UMass. Was it a full-throttle masterpiece? Nope! Did it get the job done? I’ll let the 36-point margin of victory answer that question. A win is a win is a win is a ahhhhhhhh you get it. Mizzou is 5-0, ranked No. 19 in the AP Poll and is squarely looking at the possibility of another 10-win season, which would be a program-best third in a row.
But here’s the thing about these in-betweeners, the games/movies/novels/things between the great works: They often tell us more about the team/person/writer/whatever than any masterstroke of theirs ever could. Yes, we get it, Ahmad Hardy is awesome, he can run through SEC defenses. That’s so… mainstream. Don’t you have anything hip and different to show us? Well, can I interest you in a Santana Banner interception? Perchance, seven snaps and a 71.7 PFF grade for Henry Fenuku? This bad boy [slaps the hood of UMass’s bus] can hold exactly two Javion Hilson QB hurries. You still need convincing? OK, these games are way more fun to watch than those like we watched against South Carolina last week. Would you rather be panicking over every third-and-five, or cracking your third beer with three minutes to go in the first quarter because you know it doesn’t matter if you pass out by the time they play Mr. Brightside?
All kidding aside, it’s games like this one, where the starters are clearly disengaged or, at the very least, not as focused as they ought be, when you start to see young guys take advantage of their opportunities. Maybe struggling rotational players find their footing or backups start to show their mettle. I only half-joke about the Santana Banner interception. Can you imagine if he started realizing his potential?
We don’t have to love every Mizzou Football game. Because, in the end, it’s not Eli Drinkwitz’s job- OK, it’s kind of his job. It’s not the team’s job to make us enjoy their football. It’s their job to finish four quarters, point to the scoreboard and say, “we scored more points,” and for us to respond, “yay woohoo.” Is it nice to understand and enjoy the why and the what behind every win? Sure, it makes my job easier anyhow.
But would I take seven more inscrutable wins on the way to an undefeated season? You bet your ass.
For winning in a way that was pleasant but confusing but pleasant nevertheless, Mizzou gets 3.5 out of 5 sunhats from Inherent Vice, one of the film’s enduring images for me. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know.
