The Maestro

I’ll never forget the time I was walking home from school when I saw Peyton Manning. It was right around the time when he’d just been drafted by Indy. But curiously, the Peyton I saw that day was dressed all in black, with hooded robes over his head and red, bloodshot eyes. He stood there, in the middle of the street, staring off into nothing, until all of a sudden, I heard him cry, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”. All of a sudden, the ground opened up in front of me and a great monster appeared, destroying everything in its path. Everything crumbled away until there was nothing left, save for the blank, empty sky that now stretched endless miles ahead. I stood there, shocked, scared, and unable to move, paralyzed with fear & despair that one man had just suddenly destroyed my entire world with but a few simple words.

It was about that time when I suddenly woke up in a haze to find that the whole thing was nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination, and that Ryan Leaf had somehow gotten us the shitty Mexican off-brand version of Oxycodone yet again. That stupid motherfucker.

---

 

Balls of Steel

Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico – March 19??

I forget the year and time, but I remember it was during Spring Break in Cancun that I’m sitting with a couple of my friends at the Rasta Bar off Kukulcan Blvd.  I’ve heard the place doesn’t exist any more.  Some kind of fire or something.  Ha!  A fire at a reggae bar that constantly smelled of weed!  That’s not unusual at all!

But I digress.  We’re sitting at the second floor area with our toes in the sand looking on as two blondes from Tennessee are getting their first tattoos.  I lean over and see the design, which is curious.  It seems to be a bag of Earl Grey tea with the number 16 on it.  That’s a weird thing but it’s Spring Break so no one is really questioning anything at this point.

From downstairs comes a booming voice yelling at one of the blondes, “Ashley are you done already?!?!”   The girl quickly replied, in a Southern accent, “Almost!  By the way, I went to the Farmacia earlier!  We’re set!”  The guy went to the bar and asked the bartender if they had any Budweiser.  Red Stripe was the drink of choice at the Rasta Bar, but the bartender fished an old Corona can out of the cooler and told him it was the Mexican version of Bud.  The guy got super pissed and put on a funny face and started to curse.

The bartender summoned his two buddies at the end of the bar and they, politely, asked the guy to leave.  Surrounded, with no protection from anyone, the guy curled into a ball and fell to the floor.  Only when “Ashley” came down with her new tattoo did he get up.  The last words I heard from the couple as they walked out were, “PeyPey, are you ok, baby?”

Postscript: As I was researching the cause of the fire, I found out that authorities discovered that the number 18 had been painted on the wall shortly before the fire erupted. The culprits were never found.

---

 

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

I never knew how I got separated from my friends.  We were all drunk.  So very drunk.

As soon as I stepped into the clearing, dimly lit by the waning winter sun, I knew that my instincts had betrayed me; the path I’d followed through the poplars hadn’t led me back to the campground as I’d hoped, but deeper into the woods.  Deeper into darkness.  When I saw the four mounds of freshly turned dirt, my heart stopped.  There was a fifth hole – I’d practically stumbled into it.  A slender leg, clad in a fishnet stocking, emerged from its depths, leaning casually against the edge like an insolent student’s foot on an adjacent desk.  From behind me, I heard the rustle of dead leaves.  I froze.  A pair of gloved hands reached around and covered my eyes.

“Guess who?” A familiar voice murmured.

My paralysis broke and I whirled, taking a step backward and coming yet closer to tumbling into the unfinished grave.

Peyton grinned. “Run along, now,” he said, and leaned down to pick up the shovel he had set down.

Warily, I took a step sideways, keeping my eyes glued to him as I edged back towards the path.  “You’re not going to…hurt me?”

“Why would I?” He smiled.  “No one will ever believe you.”

And he was right.  No one ever did.

---

 

Horatio Cornblower

This past June my dog, although 13, was healthy although starting to slow down.  Out of nowhere, on June 29th, her heart ruptured and we had to put her to sleep.  The vet said it was the strangest thing he’d ever seen:  in her stomach was an orange and blue athletic sock.

Peyton Manning killed my dog.

---

 

SonOfSpam

Regret is useless. We can’t change our past, yet we waste astounding amounts of time and energy dwelling on mistakes, missed opportunities, and questionable choices. Such is the nature of our being; while we argue that our experiences must be reviewed in order to avoid future missteps, the reality is that the remembrance of pain does not often affect subsequent decisions, but instead allows us to wallow in the misery we unconsciously crave. Self-flagellation is purifying in some strange way, as though one’s conscience can only be eased through psychic agony. This abstraction dawned on me as the news of Peyton Manning’s retirement was promulgated throughout the media, for I once had an opportunity to gaze upon Peyton’s penis, and I demurred.

The year was 2004, and I was attending a taping of The Jay Leno Show. For reasons I won’t delve into here (suffice to say, mezcal was involved), I found myself urinating in an empty production office near the Tonight Show soundstage. Suddenly the door opened, and in walks Peyton Manning. He was to be a guest on that night’s show, and the Green Room was just down the hall. “I assume you want to piss too Peyton and my God that’s a huge forehead hey what’s up,” was my stream-of-consciousness greeting to him, but he just shook his head and indicated he wanted to find a quiet place to masturbate as a means of relieving his nerves. I finished my plant-watering (the plant was fake upon recollection but I like to think it appreciated my urine anyway) and told Peyton I’d leave him to his dolphin-flogging. Wait, he said. For $20, you can watch. “That’s generous, Payton, but I couldn’t possibly accept money for this.” He sighed heavily and corrected me; apparently, I was to pay him for the privilege of witnessing his mangasm. I knew my decision must come quickly, as he seemed ready to come quickly. “Well, thank you for the offer, but I only have $20 and I need to keep drinking,” and with that, I left the room and stumbled out into the late afternoon Burbank sunshine.

Had I but world enough and time, I would take the view laid bare and see the dong of Peyton Manning. What is life but a collection of vignettes, and yet this story remains, like most of Manning’s late-career passes, frustratingly incomplete. If only. If only.

---

 

Low Commander of the Super Soldiers

The year was 1888. I was the captain of my own ship, searching off the coast of New Zealand for treasure with my crew of 20. One evening, a great storm hit us, and as we made our way towards land to seek safe harbor, we struck a large object, far from shore. My crew was quickly convinced that we had stumbled upon the capsized wreck we had been searching for, but I was much more skeptical. Despite the thought, I ordered the nets to be cast into the harsh sea, in search of any clue as to what we might find nearby. After but a moment, we found something.

As if by magic, the wind died and the rain halted, but the thunder and lightning continued in the distance. My crew shouted off the port bow and hauled in their net. As it was raised from the water, I began to scream in horror. The creature tangled within had tentacles 35 feet long and eyes larger than a dinner plate! Before anyone could react, two of my crew were swallowed by its mighty beak, concealed beneath the wriggling appendages. It then began to pull itself aboard, and the crew cowered and ran to the opposite end of the ship. As the Captain, I stood before them all, but not before reaching into my coat pocket to produce and down a bottle of Ugly Jack’s finest “Brig Hooch,” as he called it. I did not plan to meet this creature or leave this mortal coil sober.

Suddenly, the creature stopped and laid one of its unblinking eyes upon us. In a transformation too horrible to describe, it slowly began to take the shape of that of a man. The new figure before us stood naked as the day, well over 6 feet tall, but with a sprawling head that pulsated like that of a heartbeat. In a goofy, but clearly inhuman voice, it spoke to us. “I still must feed. Bring me another sacrifice.”

Before I knew it, the crew had shoved our newest recruit forward, and he tumbled onto the deck before the beast, less than a foot away, shaking with terror . Without a moment’s hesitation, the creature smiled wide and fell onto its back, wrapping it’s legs around the poor soul’s head. The great beak protruded forward, as a ghastly appendage dangled over the victim’s head. With a sound that to this day still haunts my dreams, the recruit was no more

The beast proceeded to stand and then face us. “Who… What ARE YOU?!” I stammered, trembling. “Peyton Manning,” it replied. “Someday, the whole world will know and bow before me!”

I have not traveled near the sea since.

---

 

yeah right

Yeah, I met Peyton. You could say the circumstances were a little odd. Every June on the occurrence of the first full moon, a massive three day rave is held deep in the heart of America. It’s not talked about, it’s never written about and it’s only known to the core ravers who attend annually. This is the rave to end all raves. It’s a full 3 days 24/7 of non stop techno/house and trance music produced by the finest underground DJs on the planet. One of the top DJs is a buddy of mine and that’s how I found out about its existence. Several years back I was given the directions for the rave with about a one hour notice. If you’ve been to a rave you know the drill, “Set trip odometer as you turn on State route 134, travel 8.7 miles and turn on the dirt road” that type of thing. After driving through acre after acre of recently planted corn I started to hear the first pulsing rhythms of the initial DJ set.

Entering a clearing I saw the biggest homemade dance floor that I’ve ever seen. Plowed out of the middle of a field was a groomed and watered dirt dance floor that was big enough to hold thousands of ravers. The sound system was phenomenal with speaker towers a hundred feet high and the sound emanating from them was an undeniable groove centric pulse that dictated that you dance.

First hour there I’m given a hit of acid from my DJ budy just to get into the groove going. Joints are being passed like it’s Woodstock and the crowd was into really starting to get into it. Dancers whirled like dervishes, hips swayed and the music was just ripping. As the acid began to kick in I noticed that some of the dancers had worked up enough of a sweat that they began taking off their clothes. The women there? Holy shit these girls were smoking hot and fit as could be. Dancers bodies. I get the my own internal groove going and hit the dance floor. I’ve never been much of a dancer but you couldn’t help yourself. The music, the rhythms. Damn.

After a couple of hours of groove effect, I headed back towards the clearing where everyone had parked their cars. After popping open the trunk of my car so I could grab a bottle of water I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see who it was and it was none other than Peyton Manning.

“Here dude, hit this” he said as he held out his open palm.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ecstasy” he said “And it’s fucking killer”

“I dropped some acid a little while back and I’m not sure if you’re supposed to mix the two drugs.”

Peyton said “It’s called ‘candy-flipping’ and it’s the greatest experience you’ll ever have in your life.”

I inhaled the offered powder and immediately felt the rush of adrenaline and psychotropics head straight to my brain. “Holy fuck!” I said.

Peyton just said “Fucking Hell man. You’re rolling now.” Then I watched as he opened his hand again and poured the equivalent of 6 caps of ecstasy into his hand and then proceeded to inhale the entire thing. It was easily the biggest hit of ANYTHING I’ve ever seen somebody inhale. “I love this shit, dude. I’ve been coming every year since college.”

“Do you know where we are?” I asked, having gotten lost coming in.

He tilted his head back and let out the loudest roar I’ve ever heard another human make.

“OMAHA!”

---

 

Darkest Timeline Zach Morris

The day that I met Peyton Manning?  Well, I’m not from here, so I’ll tell the tale of when I knew Darkest Timeline Peyton Manning, San Diego Chargers superbust.

He had been selected second overall, after Jim Irsay commandeered the draft room in a drunken whirlwind, throwing pills down his throat and shouting at Bill Polian to “take goddamned Leaf or you’re fired!”

Peyton had self-destructed in San Diego, letting the disappointment of being picked second so soon after losing the Heisman to future All-Pro Cade McNown color every season (2) he spent with the Bolts.  Peyton had succumbed to the pressures of being a Manning, and played so poorly that Eli went undrafted.

I met Peyton when he had been retired for 3 years, in 2003.  He had spent a season backing up Drew Bledsoe in Cleveland, and his career had ended there.  He came to Bayside as an assistant coach for the football team, and looked as bad as you could imagine.

His demeanor as a coach suggested that he wanted to be anywhere else, at all times.  What you call “Manningface” here we called “Peyton Pout”, but it looked the same.  All signs pointed to extensive drug use, and mid-season, he was carted off to a treatment facility to take care of his problem.  He later married Tori, a year after she graduated.  A truly pathetic tale.  I was shocked to see him somewhat successful here, but, of course, things were different where I’m from.  For one thing, Screech became Emperor, and destroyed the world.  But that’s a tale for another day…

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entropy

I used to take a lot of road trips, driving back and forth across the country, and after a while, you begin to get used to the rest areas on certain stretches of Interstate. They are, without fail, boring as hell, except for the grafitti. You’ve seen it, all the nonsense involving mothers, shit, and sex. Crudely drawn genitalia, and random confessions of total strangers. After a few thousand miles of this, I decided to add my own twist to it, by asking the same question on every bathroom wall.

“How long did you think you were going to get away with it?” I wrote in black Sharpie on rest stop walls across I-40, up I-5, down I-17, everywhere I stopped, I wrote this (I-95 doesn’t really have rest stops where I drove it, just long stretches where you stop for hours because “merging” is foreign to North East Corridor drivers), and everywhere, I waited to see what would follow.

After a year or so, I started seeing responses, again, in the banal “your mother” and fecal matter type, until I started seeing a single response written in the same hand, under the question, in every stall.

“Until they find the bodies.”

At first I thought it was an odd coincidence, maybe someone stuck on the same driving loops I was, but I’d never seen anything like it, before or since. And it happened EVERYWHERE I posed my question, even the oddball bars I started visiting in places like Indianapolis, Boston, Denver. Always the same even hand, writing out that disturbing answer, and no one else ever wrote anything after it or crossed it out. Just “until they find the bodies,” calm and even, everywhere.

The last time I wrote it, I did so as a lark, when I was way out of my way late in the Summer back in 2011. I finished up in the stall, worked my way out to wash up, and someone pushed past me. He was tall, built, and seemed familiar. I wondered why he picked the same stall I had just used, but whatever. People are fucking strange.

I washed my hands, and as I finished, the man walked out of the stall. I saw his face clearly in the mirror, and said, “Holy shit, you’re Peyton Manning!”

He just did his aww-shucks chuckle, nodded, and stepped toward the sink. I saw him put something into his pocket, and he stopped at the sink next to me. He stared ahead for a second, thinking something over, and then finally put his left hand down on the sink, leaned toward me, and whispered:

“They still haven’t found the bodies.”

My eyes widened in shock, and as I turned to him, he slipped quietly out the door. I decided to slowly dry my hands and wait for him to leave, all the while trying desperately to ignore the bloody handprint he left on the sink as he leaned on it.

---

 

blaxabbath

I was in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 dicking around, protecting freedoms, making a sweet eighteen-grand tax-free — you know, whatever. And since it was post-9/11 America AND an election year, the USA’s Support Our Troops game was strong. Even with beam-melting hot takes such as, “Support the troops, bring them home!” or “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” it was April into a year-long deployment but many-a-Joe were looking for motivation, as complacency was casting a cloud of weakness over our firebase (as well as dozens of FOBs like our own across the small, dusty, shitbox country.

I remember that I was on my routine duties, a daily review of potentially useful (but never actually) intelligence reports from other HUMINT teams in theater. Each report was about 65% administrative/filing information, 35% error-ridden documentation of poor intelligence collection efforts. Coupled with the complete scrubbing of any worthwhile details so the classification level could be dropped low enough to share with our Pakistani “allies”, I took intel analysis as more of a chore than a patriotic duty. Oh, the Taliban hates the US government and wants to kill President Bush; are you sure 51+% of America isn’t the Taliban? Or another 19 year old blonde ‘Counterintelligence Agent’ report that reflects an insightful nugget that “an anonymous source cites third-hand knowledge that an anonymous Arab and/or Pakistani male may be planning to blow up a U.S. convoy somewhere on the roads of Afghanistan. NO FURTHER DETAIL.”

During the latest hours of the 23rd, I was working in the command room (in the private sector, this might simply be called ‘The Conference Room with the Speak Phone”) with a single lonely private who was manning the radio. I had an office but it contained orange juice, vodka, and some bootleg dvds of The Sopranos where the episodes were out of order so, midseason, Pussy turned up dead but then the next episode he was alive and everyone was acting fishy around him — yeah, it was a frustrating watch. So, apart from the distractions in my own workspace, I liked the command room because our position on the mountain allowed our radio to pick up all kinds of signals and it wasn’t unusual to hear the calls of a firefight going down on a clear night, such was this.

My stack of reports was triple the normal thickness as the Pat Tillman fratricide (which was already reported to the US news as a Killed By Enemy Fire, the deliverable of a massive institutional cover up by the Army) somehow had become a [leading, I’m sure] topic of conversation with intelligence collectors and sources from Herat to Khost. Tillman wasn’t in my unit, nor the unit to which I was attached. He wasn’t even operating near our AO when the ambush occurred. Still, I read the reports because…well, I don’t know why. Maybe because I thought they may share information about enemy tactics or tendencies. Probably just because it was my patriotic duty.

When the private on radio duty asked me to cover for him while he freshened his coffee, I naturally agreed. Never forgetting that keeping an eye on our own was another part of my patriotic duty, it was always good business to maintain rapport with the wiener private who had access to every classified conversation over his head simply because the Colonel was afraid that his computer would freeze up at any moment.

The moment the private turned out of sight the radio came to life. Like a pair of balls dropped on my face, I couldn’t turn my attention away from the transmission, which bellowed through the space, clear as day.

“All roads clear…Beginning movement to waypoint Charlie-Omaha-Lima-Tango…Approximately 15 Taliban fighters confirmed at waypoint…All units ignore artillery sounds…Repeat: ignore artillery sounds. Do not run to shelter.”

I rushed to my reports and dove into the pile. After making a small mess, I pulled out a report from an interview with an english-speaking school teacher near Sperah. The morning of the attack, the old man (this detail was not in the report but everyone in Afghanistan is an old man) was inadvertently picking up the calls of Tillman’s Ranger convoy while trying to listen to a cricket game on his radio. He had reported that a deep male voice with a “different” American accent had informed the convoy that their route was clear and to ignore sounds of “rocket fire”. When pressed for further detail about the radio transmissions, the report stated that the source found it memorable that every other US transmission he had heard since 2001 called for “Oscar Bravo” while this voice spoke as “Omaha Budweiser”.

I heard a faint thud break through the silent night as I ran across the room to the alarm control.  It wouldn’t matter, I knew. The alarm was a pre-event warning. At this point, we’d be better off leaving everyone in their huts where, at least, they’d be safe from random shrapnel. As the thuds continued and the whistling began, I keyed the microphone and spoke. “You’d better hope you get all of us because we’re coming for you when this is over!”

The dials of the radio bounced to life during the response.

“Some guys leave a place after a long time, and they’re bitter. Not me.”

---

 

Bud Winston (via Old School Zero)

Loyal Winstonians, I can now bring you a tale… no, a confession, that I’ve been keeping inside for a long time. You see, I promised Peyton I wouldn’t tell this story until he was dead and buried, and now that he has officially been interred, I can let loose my soul in a way I have been praying to do before I die.

You see, before I was the star beat reporter you all know and love today, I spent my time in the effulvium-coated trenches of sports journalism known as the SEC, usually forced to spend my time as the point man deep in The Shit, which is what we called the Louisiana-Mississippi border. So on one weekend of leave, I found myself in the depths of a five-star bender in the worst parts of Houston, or what is now known as Hoyer Country. It was there the dispatchers found me, throwing me into a gym shower and turning on the Bay Rum Aftershave hose so that I could have the appropriate aroma of exhaled gin and sleaze to get back on the beat proper.

It’s not often that a reporter gets what they want. This time, though… I wanted a real story. And for my sins, they gave me one.

I had been granted access to the golden child of Tennessee football, a one Peyton Manning, for reasons that have never been made clear to me. I was to accompany him on a “normal day” for one of these fluff profile pieces to show just how human and relatable these chosen ones can be. It was going to be a multi-page, big headline, full of color, and it was going to have my name on it. Me, the guy who had most recently covered the warm up routine of a punter for LSU who couldn’t tell you any letter past ‘C’.

I met with Peyton at Archie’s compound, and the interview was going by the numbers… until Archie left and I was alone with Peyton. He got a gleam in his eye and asked if I wanted to see what he was really like during a ‘normal day’. I agreed, and he got up and started walking towards the Weeping Willows at the edge of the sprawling yard, and, like the lapdog pool reporter I was at the time, I followed closely at his heels.

We wandered along stone paths that soon became dirt, and as we went along, the moss crept in on all sides and began to cover the path, the trees were becoming older, and mist surrounded us. I kept Peyton’s back in my view in order to keep moving forward, that is, until the mist lifted and a structure rose before us. It was a perfect replica of a backwoods moonshine runner’s cabin, but made entirely out of some sort of polished stone. It was nestled into a hillside at the end of a cleared grove, surrounded on all sides by the twisted dark trunks of ancient trees. There were men milling about there–boys, too–all clad in overalls and dirt, with pale skin as if they’d never escaped the darkness of that grove, all moving bags of grain and piles of wood between liquor stills that were mostly hidden from sight.

Peyton had opened the front door of the building and was motioning me inside. We went in, and it was a perfectly preserved moonshine speakeasy, and it was hopping with business. An empty table sat in the center, which Peyton took us both to. We sat, and as we did, the entire room went from boisterous and and loud to eerily quiet and still. All the patrons turned their faces to look at our table, and as they did, Peyton became still, his eyes losing focus and seeming to see beyond the walls around us. A roughneck man came to our table with a jelly jar filled with an amber liquid and set it down in front of Peyton. The room seemed to hold their breath.

Manning reached slowly down and grabbed the jar without looking or even moving anything but his arm. He brought it up to his mouth and drank greedily, the liquid spilling all over him as he did. As he put the jar down, his eyes snapped into focus on a deformed young hillbilly boy, and Peyton snapped his fingers. The boy limped over and our roughneck waiter broke out in a sweat. The boy stopped in front of Peyton and turned around.

I’ll never forget the next sequence of actions. Peyton cocked his arm back, as if for a pass, and then threw it forward and into the flesh of the boy’s back, which seemed to fill the boy with a particular ecstasy. When Manning brought his arm back out, his hand appeared to be melting, and was somehow fused together with an old revolver. Peyton turned his attention to our waiter, his mouth falling open to moan “ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH!” as he fired all six shots into that poor man.

At that moment, Peyton’s forehead grew an entire inch.

Well, I don’t have to tell you that I got the hell out of that place, out of those woods, out of Tennessee, and out of the godforsaken South. I can only hope that someone in a secret military organization bombed the hell out of that area and exterminated the whole nightmarish operation.

BREAKING NEWS! I’ve just been informed that Peyton actually only retired and did not die, so I will now be going underground and into hiding. Until the next time, loyal readers, remember… you never read this!

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Beerguyrob

I was about 11 when I met Peyton the first time. I was as shocked as all the other kids, because a face like that seemed designed to cause kids nightmares. Then he started to talk, and once we got past his speech impediment – a nervous tic that, when convulsed, caused him to scream, “OMAHA!” – we accepted him as a normal kid who had had an abnormal thing happen to him. The name of his disease was craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, and it caused calcium deposits on his skull that forced his face out of shape. “What’s the matter?” he liked to ask. “You never seen anyone from New Orleans before?”
Peyton thrived in high school, absorbing knowledge and making friends however he could. Gradually overcoming discrimination and becoming a favorite volunteer equipment manager on the school football team, the coach asked Peyton to accept a job as a counselor’s aide at Camp Bloomfield, a summer camp for blind and disabled children, where they played flag football. He worked at that camp for three straight summers, and looked forward to going there every year, eager to teach the kids the new plays coach had shown him at school. At our high school graduation, Peyton took home academic achievement prizes in mathematics, history, and science. He was even accepted to the University of Tennessee on an academic scholarship.
That final summer, Peyton felt the need to leave his chronically depressed and drug-addicted mother, Rusty, and went away to the football camp one more time. At camp, Peyton fell in love with a girl named Diana, a blind girl who could not see his deformed skull but was entranced by Peyton’s kindness and compassion. Peyton used his intelligence to explain to Diana words like “billowy” and “clouds,” using cotton balls as a touchable vision of “billowy clouds.” In return, she taught him the Tampa-2 defense, using her Braille press to show him the routes necessary to beat the coverage.

Near the end of the summer, Peyton faced the pain of separation from the person to which he felt closest. Diana was going away to a school for the blind, and he was due to start at Tennessee. The night before she was to leave, they decided to make their emotional love physical. However, Peyton, not knowing what sex was, simply pulled out his junk and rested it upon Diana’s face. We didn’t have the heart to tell him how wrong he was, instead wanting to let him live out his remaining days thinking he was no longer a “virgin”. We knew he would probably never see Diana again, so where was the harm? The next week, his mother, Rusty, tried one morning to wake up Peyton, but found him unresponsive in his bed, a smile on his face. She thought it was from a good dream, and we did nothing to ruin that image of her peaceful baby boy.
The Peyton Manning I knew died in 1978. The Peyton Manning I have watched break all those NFL records is a mod I created in “Madden”, and I named this player in Peyton’s honor. I even gave the character a physical deformity that matched my friend’s, and each Sunday I boot up the PS4 and watch him play, a large, lumbering man unhindered by the ailment that took his life. My children wonder why I cry alone in my den, watching a video game play football; I can only hope that they will one day have a friend like mine.

---

 

Don T

It was early March, 2012. My cellphone rang: “T, Peyton. I need your ears. Talk me through this.” We usually texted, but his emoji usage was inscrutable. “Very well Paitn”, I said to him in my stilted English, and added: “Which team is the best fit for you? What do you see happening late this year?” Then he told me his nuanced assessments.

One outfit was composed mostly of free agents with diverse skills; a few slackers, sure, but were well coached and out for blood when the time came. The other was a solid organization that builds from the ground up and has a very defined culture, but relies more on physical ability. “I couldn’t lead those guys now, after the operations”, he said of the second team. “But I like their branding opportunities” added Peyton, with relish.

The rest was classic Peyton. Even though he knew both teams’ playbook, Manning was still goading me to watch the 2011 film again to review some stuff. “Cherf”, I said to Peyton, “I need, like, 500 mg of Unwindulaxin pronto. So just answer me: are you #TeamEdward, or are you #TeamJacob?”

“Jacob”, he answered decisively, and elaborated: “He definitely teabagged Bella in the woods in front of Edward, and he’s gonna marry his daughter, who you know is gonna be waaayyy hotter than Bella”. And when Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II came out that November, nobody second-guessed Manning’s decision.

History may celebrate him as a leader, but to me Peyton Manning will always be an analytic brander and, above all, a champion–of prodding scrotum into flesh.

---

 

Why Eagles Why

Yeah, I’ve met Peyton Manning. God willing, neither I nor any of you goodly people will ever meet him again.

I was on the crew for one of his Papa John’s commercials. Ask anyone in TV or film production what the worst job is, and they’ll all say the same thing. Commercials. Working 20-hour days with frustrated directors who think they’re making Lawrence Of Arabia instead of selling pizza is not a pleasant way to earn a living.

One of the few things that makes it bearable is a well-stocked craft service table. The good ones can make you smile on the worst day. Real espresso machines. Fancy deli platters. Doughnuts. Hot soup. Maybe even an abuela serving up tacos to order. I saw Peyton at the craft service table between setups. He had been really nice to everyone and very professional, so I thought I’d go up and say hi.

Then I saw it. He was helping himself to some fruit cocktail. But he wasn’t just spooning it into a bowl. That motherfucker was picking through that shit like a surgeon and assembling a bowl composed exclusively of cherries. I turned and walked away. I know a psychopath when I see one, and I have no interest in letting one into my life. That’s the thing with a psychopath; they pass as kind of stiffly normal 99% of the time. Then, like a solar eclipse, for a fleeting instant everything arranges itself just right and you can see their true nature.

That job wasn’t a total loss; now I realize where the phrase “cherry picking” comes from. But it’s a time I’d just as soon forget.

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Monty This Seems Strange To Me

The Peyton Manning I met isn’t like the Peyton most of you know. The Peyton Manning I met seemed a little shorter in real life. Somehow less imposing. The famous “fivehead” wasn’t even really noticeable in person.

Missing was the “aw shucks” Southern demeanor. There seemed to be a Midwestern vibe about him instead. He didn’t have his Super Bowl XLI ring. I guess I shouldn’t expect him to carry it around with him, but he acted like he didn’t even remember playing in the Super Bowl.

The Peyton Manning I met wasn’t nearly as confident or quick-witted as the one I’d seen on television. He seemed unsure, sometimes rambling, almost incoherent at times. How could this be the man who had been outsmarting NFL defenses for years?

The Peyton Manning I met was unrecognizable from the man we’ve all seen quarterbacking the Colts and the Broncos. He didn’t look a thing like the guy pitching Papa John’s and Nationwide in commercials. The hair color was darker. Something was just off about the Peyton Manning I met.

The Peyton Manning I met was Trent Green who thought he was Peyton Manning.

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BrettFavresColonoscopy

I thought I met Peyton Manning once. I was sitting up at the bar at Bacaro LA availing myself of their legendary happy hour specials before I had to head the airport and grab a flight back east. Since I was sitting at the bar, my suitcase was awkwardly positioned underneath me, jutting out just enough to be annoying to other patrons. As I was polishing off my drink, apparently it crossed from annoying to obstructive as a man well over six feet tall tripped right over it on his way toward the exit and knocked into me, spilling the dregs of my beer onto the counter. He was clearly in a rush, so I didn’t even see him slip the bartender a $20 to cover some replacement beverages as he dashed out the door. The bartender let me know that a fellow patron wanted to apologize (despite my suitcase being a fire hazard) and that I would have a great story to tell since the man who spilled my beer was a legendary football player.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Seriously,” he retorted. “That man has been a class act his whole life. He was born in the deep South but eschewed the likely “home” Southern school to enroll at the University of Tennessee and lead them to greatness. In high school and college, no one could match his work ethic, which was critical given how hard he had to work to earn–and keep–his starting job on the football team. As the University of Tennessee’s star quarterback, he was beloved on and off the field, breaking the NCAA record for consecutive completions and charming students and faculty all across Knoxville. More importantly, he led the Volunteers to an undefeated season and National Championship, and split his matchups against the despised Florida Gators after his predecessor had failed to beat them in his four years as a starter. As a symbol of his legacy as a collegiate champion, they even named a street on campus after him. That guy is going to make a helluva head coach some day.”

All I could muster was a muffled, “Wow, I can’t believe Peyton Manning tripped over my bag.”

The bartender stared at me like I had three nostrils and said “Dude, that was Tee Martin. Peyton Manning is an entitled sack of shit who never won a college championship, teabagged a female trainer, was an asshole to his teammates, and went 0-4 against Florida. Fuck Peyton Manning.”