Poet is up there with king, emperor, pope. ―Gregory Corso

Happy New Year from the Far Left Coast!

Make that frigid left coast. Weather Underground had the temperature at 23 degrees at 6:30 with the day looking to top out at 34. It's shaping to be a good day to lock in the classical radio station, brew a cup of coffee or several through the course of the morning and early afternoon, and curl up under the Ultra Plush Sherpa Throw that Tulsa Santa delivered for Christmas with a book or several.

A Dana Stabenow mystery set in Alaska fits right in. Less so maybe in that the tale takes place in September rather than the heart of Alaskan winter. Can't have everything. Spoils of the Dead, fifth book in the Liam Campbell series, is lighter fare than the novels for which Stabenow is best known featuring diminutive Aleut sleuth Kate Shugak and her partner Mutt, half husky, half wolf, but a good read nonetheless.

Oscar and Lucinda by Australian novelist Peter Carey is on standby if I run out of pages in Spoils of the Dead. It is early going with this one, just over a hundred pages into it. The book brings to mind Halldór Laxness' novel Independent People, for which Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955. Independent People is set in Iceland early decades of the 20th century. Very poor, stubborn, fiercely independent sheep farmers eke out a hard existence in a harsh environment. There is a lot of rain and consumption of mind-boggling quantities of coffee. The story begins slowly, the opening chapters a bit of a slog, and builds to a sustained, near devastating intensity. I sense that Oscar and Lucinda could develop in a similar fashion.

Because it is New Year's Day, let's rant not about politics but about the American religion of college football and the depraved condition into which the postseason sacrament of the bowl game has fallen. Remember when this was a day devoted to the four major bowl games, Sugar, Cotton, Rose, and Orange, and the parades you had to sit through to get to them.

The Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic and the Capital One Orange Bowl served as yesterday's semifinal games in College Football Playoff, with Alabama pounding Cincinnati and Georgia trampling Michigan. The championship game between Bama and the Dawgs presents a dilemma: How to root for both teams to lose?

Once upon a time a team had to be pretty good to garner a bid even to a second-tier bowl. No more. With 44 bowl games befouling the holiday season, the talent pool is diluted to the point that a bowl invitation is not much of an accomplishment. Teams with losing records go to bowl games.

Maybe I am being too Scrooge-like here. Why begrudge fans something to cheer about in a grim year?  If your team's victory in the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl brings you happiness, who am I to rain on that parade?

My home state sent Coastal Carolina to the Tailgreeter Cure Bowl (no  idea what a tailgreeter is or why there might be need for a cure), South Carolina State to the Cricket Celebration Bowl, Clemson to the Cheez-It Bowl, and South Carolina to the Duke's Mayo Bowl. All four South Carolina teams emerged victorious. In fairness to Clemson, the Tigers fielded a team short on experience that closed out the season with a 10–3 mark, none too shabby in what was an off-year for a school accustomed to contending for the national championship.

Meantime, the USC Gamecocks celebrated a decisive 38–21 victory over North Carolina in a matchup of teams with 6–6 records with a bucket of mayonnaise dumped over the head of Coach Shane Beamer, apparently a promotional gimmick cooked up by some Duke's Mayo marketing whiz. The promo did not come off quite as anticipated. Reportedly the bucket slipped and clanged against Beamer's noggin, adding injury to insult (Dan Lyons, Many CFB Fans Worried About Blow to Shane Beamer’s Head During Mayo Bath). It remains to be seen how that image will play out when Beamer tries to sell himself and his program to blue-chip recruits and their parents.

The San Diego County Credit Union Bowl game between UCLA and NC State and the Barstool  Sports Arizona Bowl (no teams listed) were canceled due to Covid.

You would not make up names like these if you were writing juvenile sports fiction (see ESPN's bowl schedule for a complete rundown). It is kind of the college football version of reality TV. Could American culture get any sillier and more dumbed-down? Don't ask. It's a rhetorical question.

Thanks for bearing with me on that. The Muse is fickle today. No particular reason. As my old friend Brooklyn Judy used to say, sometimes things just be that way. We'll get back to political chicanery, shenanigans, and general dumbfoolery, cultural malaise, and I hope more substantive essays on literary and intellectual topics soon enough, all flavored with as much wit and insight as your oft humbled scribe can muster.

I close with wishes for joy and peace to come your way in the year ahead. As always, thanks for dropping by my Portable Bohemia.

Two new blog posts:

• Joyeux Noël!, December 24, 2021. We can never wish family, friends, and the strangest among us happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël, season's greetings too often. This is a time for reaching out however we are able, in ways great and small…read more>>

• Year's End 2021: Looking Back, Taking Stock, Bumbling Onward, Ha!, December 30, 2021. Samuel Beckett liked his whiskey regularly. Toward the end of his life he had to forego alcohol for a time while being treated for a vitamin deficiency. His biographer and friend James Knowlson commiserated. "That must be a bit of a bitch, Sam…read more>>

Keep the faith.

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Pictured below: Never-Trump dog Holly sports her new bandanna from The Bulwark