Football Counter-Programming 2016--Week 2

Welcome back everyone to another futile attempt by me to distract you from the hegemonic power of weekend college football. It's another episode of Football Counter-Programming!

So . . . last week, a neighbor friend saw the shirt above and asked me what it meant. At the time, I brushed it off because neither of us had lots of time. So I simply said, "It's a long story." To which she rightly responded, " It always is with you."

And I took that as a win because I DO enjoy having an inscrutable t-shirt with obscure references. 

But now--the story can be told. 

SO--a few years ago, a YA author I follow on Twitter (Maureen Johnson) mentioned that she had been asked to participate in a local New York charity Scrabble tournament. She was a last minute fill-in for another celebrity that ended up not being able to attend. As you can guess, that was Peter Dinklage--the actor now best known as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. But before he was paying his Lannister debts, Dinklage was best known as Finn--the star of the movie The Station Agent.

Round about the time that The Station Agent was in theaters and being discussed in the media, my friends and I had a random email discussion. In that email discussion, we were all trying to determine which celebrities each of us looked like. And people decided that I looked more like Peter Dinklage than anyone else--perhaps due to our shared trait of strong, heavyish eye brow ridges . . . and his propensity to play surly characters. (I am sometimes know to be surly around the office as well.)

 

Andbutso . . . due to all of this backstory--when I saw that Maureen Johnson was filling in for Peter Dinklage at a celebrity Scrabble tournament . . . and when I saw that she joked about how she should wear a "Peter Dinklage Replacement" t-shirt at said celebrity Scrabble tournament . . . and when another one of her readers at DFTBA.com decided to quickly put said t-shirt on sale . . . and when Maureen tweeted all of this out and said that some of the t-shirt sales proceeds would be given to the charity that the celebrity Scrabble tournament was being held to benefit . . . and when I remembered my coworker's email exchange vis-a-vie shared traits with Mr. Dinklage . . . well, I think you're smart enough to fill in the blanks, yes?

So  . . ANYWAY . .  that is the story of my Peter Dinklage t-shirt. I should probably alter the shirt to include the URL of this post (or maybe put a small QR code on the sleeve) so that people can simply Google the relevant story next time this comes up in conversation while I am wearing it out and about.

(It should be an eventual life goal of mine to cyber-link such a story to every piece of my clothing. Wouldn't THAT be a fun project? Wearable history, digitally archived? Hmmm.)

So . . . there you go. I hope that your alma mater's gridiron opponent ran back three interceptions for touchdowns while you were reading this. 

So, enjoy your Saturday, don't watch too much college football . . . and remember . . . no one cares if your second-year halfback can run the 40 yard dash in under three seconds.

See you next weekend!