Carmy's Jacket and Movies From 1973
Diamond Concierge Service #006
Hello! Things have been a little hectic so the concierge e-mails got a little off-track. I’m sending this one on a rare Monday, but we’ll be back to a normal weekend routine next week.
I don’t watch football that much anymore. I used to block out Sundays to watch games. It was relaxing, a nice way to know that for a few hours during the week, I’d be doing something pretty mindless by enjoying watching a sport part of my family considered next to religion. That’s my Midwestern side, I suppose.
Eventually, I came to this mental impasse where my sympathy for the players and the toll the game takes on their bodies and brains collided with the feeling that the game had become too boring and corporate. That team owners are mostly all awful people, the games take too long with not much happening, and then there was the little voice in my head that said “It’s not the same game it was when I was young,” the way my grandpa said something similar when I was a kid about the version of the sport that was played then. The thing is that it’s good it isn’t the game it was when I was a kid, because when you go back and read about the fates of some of the men who played football in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it’s pretty grim. CTE, drug addiction, lifelong injuries, suicide, and a list that goes on and on.
Football is an ugly sport, and that’s the beauty of it. In order to watch it, I had to buy into the ugliness, and I got to a point where I couldn’t do that any longer, especially because the league has turned it into some weird, mangled, sanitized version of itself. I could say I made a stand and said I didn’t want to watch it only because it’s a sport that demands its players sacrifice their bodies play after play, but that’s not the entire truth. I just got bored with it. The only two things I know about this season are that the team I grew up rooting for is absolute trash and Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce (maybe also trying to cover up some of her SEO tracks), and that’s about it.
But I still find myself going back and watching videos of the sport from way back when. Games or plays from before I was even born, and especially old NFL Films the Sabols did in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s something about it I can’t quite let go of, and since I’m watching videos that are from so far in the past, I tell myself there’s no harm now even though I’m not certain of that.
All this is to say that Dick Butkus died last week, and Butkus was the person who personified everything I liked about football, possibly due to the fact that I wasn’t born until nearly a decade after he stopped playing, so I only knew him as a legend or a seemingly friendly guy who showed up on TV from time to time. But, man, the legends were great. My family talked about seeing him once in public like it was maybe the single biggest event since one of my ancestors decided they didn’t want to be a cossack punching bag so they got on a boat and said “Take me to America!”
Butkus was big, mean, cool, and had a terrific mustache. And one of the things I loved the most about him was the trope he embodied, one that you don’t hear about much anymore when it comes to football or any professional sports, really. He was the son of working-class parents, an immigrant father, and a mother who worked overtime every week cleaning and folding other people’s laundry. He grew up working and played football for his vocational school, showing a knack for the sport that just needed him to be tougher and stronger than everybody else. He went to the University of Illinois and played through his senior year, then was picked by his hometown Chicago Bears in the 1965 draft, even though Butkus was a fan of the Chicago Cardinals growing up before they moved to St. Louis and eventually Arizona. He went on to play for some really bad Bears teams alongside Gale Sayers, another generational talent whose greatness couldn’t help the team win. And that’s part of what makes me love Butkus and Sayers so much. They became legends even though their teams mostly stank, each becoming the personification of their position, the kind of players people like me who weren’t even alive when they played still talk about.
Reads
First things first, I was lucky enough to get on a podcast I really love, A Very Good Year, and I somehow nabbed the films of 1973 as my subject. Jason and Mike always have terrific guests on the show, and I couldn’t believe none of them had done ‘73, especially because I think it’s one of the best years in movie history. The only trouble was picking a Top 5, but I had to be honest and I also didn’t feel like I needed to add my voice to the chorus talking about The Exorcist or Serpico, that’s why they didn’t make my list.
Speaking of movies where the demon Pazuzu possesses people, I’ve been a big fan of The Exorcist 3 for a long time, and it’s one of those sequels that I think people wanted to hate when it came out at the time because people love to hate things. But it’s actually a really weird and creepy film, perfect for Halloween season viewing, and David Roth gave it some well-deserved love.
What happens when a critic steps away from being a critic? A.O. Scott had to ask himself that question since his career changed, and he wrote an interesting take on life as a “civilian” going to see a movie.
Stuff
Todd Snyder is having a sale right now and if you’re looking to get into the Fair Isle sweater vest game, they’ve got you covered for a pretty decent price.
Firstport is one of the only brands that does that fake vintage thing in a way that appeals to me, and the green cord “New England by the Sea” hats are really good.
In case you didn’t see, the patchwork jacket Carmy wears on The Bear was made in a very limited number that sold out really fast. The good news is that NN07 says there’s supposedly another number of them coming out sooner or later, so stay tuned.
There is something incredibly funny about that “New England By The Sea” hat.