Mason's Morsels

This isn’t hard-core Broncos news. It isn’t even a warm and fuzzy Broncos story. It’s pretty much about me. So if you don’t want to read this slice of self-indulgence, that’s fine. Just go to another blog entry; there’s plenty of other tidbits around here.

OK …

Still here?

Thanks for hanging around. I’ll try not to bore you.

I felt like posting a few days ago, but I had nothing to say and little I wanted to share. Maybe a picture of my five-month-old niece in a John Lynch jersey, but I’m not one for posting a million baby pictures on-line. Some people love it; it’s just not my thing.

Anyhow, my vacation was nearly two weeks old before hearing a series of words tangentially related to my professional endeavors that I least desired to hear.

“So what’s up with Jake Plummer?”

Sigh …

At the time, I was in my dentist’s office in an antiseptic Tampa suburb, having extricated myself from the chair to study the oral-care history that flashed on a nearby screen. Yeah, it’s the dental equivalent of accessing one’s “chart” in a general practicioner’s office, but I didn’t care; it’s my mouth, damn it, and I didn’t want to wait to hear if I had any cavities. Before I finished perusing the projection of my chompers, though, the name of the Broncos’ former starting quarterback had dropped into my life.

To my Bucs fan dentist — and to pretty much everyone in West Central Florida — Plummer’s not a quarterback who led numerous comebacks, or who claimed a couple of single-season franchise records that belonged to someone surnamed Elway. No, down here, Plummer’s just the guy who won’t show up for work. Most fans really don’t care about his reasons. They’d just like to see if he could make the position better.

As for my response … I won’t share the details. That’s between my dentist and I. I’m just not the full-disclosure kind of blogger. I don’t want every detail of my life out there. Suffice it to say that letplummerplay.com would probably give a different reply than I did.

And yeah, the unwillingness to detail my replay might make me a wimp in your eyes. I tend to save the soul-unburdening stuff for my private writings. If I wrote a novel, it would probably be the literary equivalent of a Coldplay CD — it would appeal to the female audience but draw less interest from the male demographic than the release of a sequel to The Notebook. Well, maybe not, because in such work, I tend to write anger exceptionally well.

Anyhow, even with the Tampa Bay talk, I’m all Broncos now. Many of us in the organization grew up cheering for other teams in distant cities and climes from Denver, but have no problem trading in the old colors for the orange and blue. Nevertheless, like fullback Paul Smith explains, I will never completely ignore the team of my childhood and its hold on me — well, unless they ever flash back to 1989 and decided to move to Sacramento or Manchester or some other map dot.

OK, now the tangentially Broncos content is over. It’s all filtering out the mental detritus from here.

Oh, and as for the teeth — no cavities this year. Even though my roots are thoroughly English on both sides of the family with a mother who remains a subject of The Queen, I will not be a candidate for the Big Book of British Smiles:

And by the way, Last Exit to Springfield could be the finest episode of The Simpsons ever produced. (Entertainment Weekly agrees.) To wit:

“Dental plan!”
“Lisa needs braces.”
“Dental plan!”
“Lisa needs braces.”
“Dental plan!”

During the “Strike of ‘88″:

“What do we want?”
“More equitable treatment in the hands of management!”
“When do we want it?”
“Soon!”

All the while, Homer Simpson fights the power at the nearby lunch wagon:

“Where’s my burrito? Where’s my burrito?”

In Monty Burns’ office, Homer’s internal monolgue as Mr. Burns discusses labor relations is beyond priceless:

Burns: “We don’t have to be adversaries, Homer. We both want a fair union contract.”
Homer (thinking): “Why is Mr. Burns being so nice to me?”
Burns: “And if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
Homer (thinking): “Wait a minute. Is he coming onto me?”
Burns: “I mean, if I should slip something into your pocket, what’s the harm?”
Homer (thinking): “My God! He coming onto me!”
Burns: “After all, negotiations make strange bedfellows.”
As Burns winks, Homer’s interal monologue changes to a scream.
Homer: “Sorry, Mr. Burns, but I don’t go in for these backdoor shenanigans. Sure, I’m flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no!”

On Smartline with Kent Brockman:

Brockman: “Homer, organized labor has been called a lumbering dinosaur.”
Homer screams.
Brockman: “Um, my director is telling me not to talk to you any more.”
Homer: “Woo-hoo!”

These only scratch the surface. Click here for more, or watch the episode sometime.

And to bring us back to The Big Book of British Smiles, which launched this odd tangent. For still more thoughts on the stereotypes of British teeth, here’s a reader-pieced treatise from The Guardian’s on-line edition.

To think, this began when I sat down with a diet soda and a few potato chips, stared at the monitor and keyboard and muttered, “I have nothing to say here.”

Eight hundred and eighty-eight words later, I’m certain … I had nothing to say here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 12:48 am and is filed under The Simpsons, Self-Indulgence, Stuff That's Totally Irrelevant, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.