DELLFRANKLIN.COM
CLASS WARFARE IN TRUMP'S AMERICA
A BALLPLAYER'S SON
YOGA FOR KNUCKLEHEADS
THE SHORTEST BAR MITZVAH
PERSONAL WORSTS
FEEL THE GAME
ANGER, JUNK, AND BREAD & WINE
KELSO'S SWING
SKETCHES OF SAN FRANCISCO
HAPPY JACK'S STORIES
THE CABBIE'S LIFE
CORPORAL LAVERY (AND OTHER ARMY STORIES)
A RIVERBOAT JOURNAL
THE ADVENTURES OF WILBUR
THE PRESIDENT WE DESERVE
MY DAD'S STORE #2 "GRAMPA FUCKED A SHEEP"
WHO CAN AFFORD TO GO TO THE STUPID BOWL?
Who goes to the Stupid Bowl, and who can afford it? Hearing that no ticket is under $3000.00 makes one wonder just who this game is for—the true fan, the fanatical football lover who really can't afford it but goes in debt just to say he went to the game, even if it's a stinker? $3000.00? $6000.00 for a couple? Because nobody goes to a game alone. A needy person can buy a decent clunker-car for 3 grand to drive around for a year or two and get from job to job and shop without worrying about taking a bus or spend precious big bucks on a cab driver in foul weather and probably can't fathom what it costs to go to the Stupid Bowl, where a bunch of stupes root on a bigger bunch of stupes bashing each other around, breaking bones, shredding ligaments and cartilage, and deadening brain cells.
You can drink and eat cheeseburgers in a local tavern for 3 grand a year and tip your bartender big, like you won the lottery. You can buy rounds for your friends and watch the Stupid Bowl on several big screens and yell and scream with your drunken pals and hope to win the pool or a side bet. You won't have to wait in line for your food or booze or to take a long, pleasant piss, and you can do drugs in bathroom stalls, good drugs with all that cash. Yeh!
And, for 6 grand you can go to high-end joints and get 86'd just for not looking cool or pretty or trendy and not behaving yourself around a bunch of stiffs.
Some tickets, even bad ones where the players seem miles away and you need a huge screen to really see what's going on cost over 4 grand, which means 8 or 9 grand for a couple, plus perhaps a plane flight and hotel room, which might add another grand or two. One can buy a 5 year old Toyota Camry with all the amenities provided in that model for that amount of money, which means you can go on a trip and not worry about breaking down and getting ripped off by some sleazy mechanic in some strange town or city where nobody knows you or cares about you, but just wants your cash no matter how poor or downtrodden your financial affairs are.
With 8 or 9 or 10 grand one can take a spouse on a cruise anywhere one wants, Europe, the West Indies, South America, and savor gourmet food, $100 bottles of wine, and spas, massages, a pampering only the very affluent who can afford cruises indulge in, and if you happen to be in Europe, cruising down the Danube or hanging out on Greek Isle drinking ouzo and dallying with ladies of the night, you can stop off and go skiing at Cortina D'Ampezzo with European high rollers and royalty.
Reportedly, people who can afford it are coming from all over the country and even foreign countries to rent homes and apartments in San Francisco and its adjoining cities for as much as $12,000.00 for a few days just to see the Stupid Bowl, which means they will dine in the finest restaurants and drink the most expensive wines while wives shop in the most pricey boutiques and hobnob with the techie geeks who have bought up most of the homes and apartments and made the city too expensive to live in for ordinary San Franciscans and therefore sapped its once thriving off-beat character like a giant hypodermic needle sucking out its blood and marrow.
But everybody will make money in this playground for the rich, even the bottom-feeders grubbing around for a few crumbs.
The other day on a sports talk radio show, Hall of Fame Guard for the great Green Bay packers, Jerry Kramer, said that some tickets are going for 40 grand, which means 80 grand for a couple. Kramer, who played in the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and '68 in the LA Coliseum (which were not Stupid Bowls) and won, said he bought 4 tickets for his nephews at $10 a piece but the kids had no interest in going, so he gave them to some kids hanging around the stadium.
Christ, with 80 grand I can buy a house in some rat-hole like Brawley, California, or Burns, Oregon and live like a king. Or I can stay where I am in relative squalor but join the exclusive country club in nearby San Luis Obispo and hang around a bunch of golfers and card players who will hate me because I like Obama.
Also, with 80 grand, I could finance a homeless shelter for veterans in San Luis Obispo and cease feeling guilty every time I say no when the checker at the Dollar store in Morro Bay asks me to contribute to veterans.
I could donate a few grand to Doctors Without Borders or the ASPCA or children with hairlips or Feed America or the Red Cross or a hundred other groups that mail me literature just because I gave a few bucks I could afford to a couple of these organization.
If you really want to make the scene, you can dish out chump change from a couple hundred bucks to well over a grand to attend pre-game parties sponsored by Sports Illustrated, Sean Diddy, Chris Brown, Pharell Williams, Club 50, the Hilton, Rolling Stone Magazine, Playboy, a tailgate party run by sports interview shill Erin Andrews with the nice ass, and a few others…you can take selfies and send them home to the poor toads locked into a stuffy bar full of howling proletariats—hell, put it on your credit card for 18% and live on your memories, the delirious joy of seeing and being seen by the 1 per cent who are entitled and deserve to attend something as stupid as the American Stupid Bowl, a raging free-for-all grab-bag of our all devouring greed at its most eloquent.
John Willingham
One of the best! Great, punchy sentences. Makes an excellent point.
dell franklin
The notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin.
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12/10/19 Charter Members of the Who's Who
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11/8/19 In Cayucos, Patrick Knows
10/8/19 An American Beauty in Cayucos
7/27/19 Boring Rich White People
7/19/19 The Town Pirate
7/6/19 Empty Castles and Ghost Streets
6/21/19 Happily Homeless in Cayucos
6/9/19 A Wasted Empty Gym
5/18/19 A Love Supreme
5/4/19 I Get Invited To a Church
4/22/19 Tennis Court Chaos
3/23/19 Things Are Falling Apart
2/7/19 Time For Black Women to Rule
1/27/19 Wilbur's Disappearing Act
1/14/19 A Guiltless Soprano's Binge
12/16/18 Geezer Ball
11/25/18 Our Clueless, Yellowbelly Commander In Chief
10/31/18 Trump's Ongoing Reality Show
9/23/2018 Clueless At 75
6/13/18 The Wearing Down of a Sense of Decency
6/9/19 Sports Shorts, June 2018
5/10/18 Rudy Giuliani: Horribleness Personified
5/1/18 An Aversion To Luxury
4/7/18 Personal Worst: Everything I Touch Turns to Shit: A Confession
3/20/18 Visiting a Friend In Prison
2/25/18 Little Cayucos' Hated New Stop Sign
2/20/18 Russia Knows ...
2/8/18 Angel In The Waiting Room
1/14/18 The Real Shithole: America!
1/7/18 The Ultimate Brioche, Belzondalt & Bukowski
12/13/17 Vanishing Glory Days In Our Small Beach Towns
12/14/17 Female Democrats on the Warpath
12/5/17 Wilbur's Disobedience & Nefarious Doings
11/30/17 The GOP's Cowardly Sycophants
11/16/17 Small Town, Family Business, Happy People
11/6/17 Trophies For Geezers At The Cayucos Vintage Car Show
11/3/17 Time To Reverse The Mating Ritual
10/25/17 Donald's Evil Tax Plan Propaganda
10/14/17 Brioche & Blubber
10/4/17 The Exalted Dotard and His Puerto Rican Fleas
9/24/17 Our Trash-Talking Dotard
9/15/17 The Stupidest Person in the Room
9/7/17 Donald's Big Black Heart
8/23/17 Trump's Craven Military Shield
8/11/17 Subhuman Abominations Unglued
8/8/17 Sports Commentary 8/8/17
8/6/17 Enter the Steel-Gaze General
7/27/17 Twist, Sessions, Twist!
7/23/217 The 2-Czar Bromance
7/13/17 Messiah Donald Adopts Evangelical Hypocrites
6/30/17 Thrift Store Rags: How I Found Class Off the Beaten Rack
06/26/2017 Class Warfare In Trump's America "The GOP's Heartless Health Care Plan"
06/16/2016 My Father the Coach
06/05/2017 Class Warfare In Trump's America "Angry Trump, Angrier America"
05/30/2017 Class Warfare In Trump's America "Hubris & Hysteria"
05/15/2017 Me & Wilbur in a Mendocino Bar
05/10/2017 We're All Momma's Boys
05/04/2017 Class Warfare in Trump's America "Viciously Attack His Fragile Ego"
05/01/2017 Bread & Wine #3 "Expanding My Quest For the Perfect Bread"
04/22/2017 Class Warfare in Trump's America "Plug Ugly Haters"
04/10/2017 Bread & Wine 2 "The Continuing Hunt For the Perfect Bread"
04/09/2017 Class Warfare in Trump's America "The Liar-In- Chief's Liars"
04/04/2017 Class Warfare in Trump's America "The Donald's Oligarchy of Rich White Vultures"
04/02/2017 Bread & Wine
Class Warfare In Trump's America #8 "Heartless Foundations"
Class Warfare In Trump's America #7 "Subhuman Abominations"
Class Warfare In Trump's America #6 "It's Time For All Good Women to Come to the Aid of Their Country"
Class Warfare #5: Boycott All Political Cable TV Programs
01/31/2017 The Day Of The Dong
01/10/2017 Class Warfare #4: Billionaire Cheapskates
01/03/2017 My Joyous Christmas With Wilbur
12/11/2016 Class Warfare #3: America's Super Macho Blowhards
12/01/2016 Thanksgiving at the A.M.E. Church Of Los Angeles
11/19/2016 Class Warfare #2: Knock That Nigger Out!
11/15/2016 Class Warfare #1: First Blow
11/3/2016 Cage The Kardashians, Etc.
10/30/2016 Extingsuish the Trumps and Clintons, Please!
10/25/2016 Keep Your Hans Off Our Women
10/16/2016 Trump the Prime Pussy Monger
9/29/2016 Hillary Defangs The Donald
9/25/2016 Trump's New Black Bamboozler
9/13/2016 Donald Trump's Real Americans
9/10/2016 These Dodgers Are all Business
8/19/2016 India: Nation of Nerds
8/11/2016 The Sporting Panorama From Rio to Canton
7/22/2016 The Appeal of a Bully: Why Americans Love Donald Trump
7/1/2016 Joc Pederson is Playing Pepper, and Other 2016 Baseball Observations
6/12/2016 Gramma Likes Cassius Clay
5/18/2016 Hanging Out With the Oldest New York Yankee
5/8/2016 Major League Hitting Has to Change
5/1/2016 Bobby Knight: Donald Trump's First Secretary of War
4/21/2016 Curt Schilling: Red-Blooded American Jackass
4/7/2016 NBA Notes: Mama Take Away Their Toys!!
3/29/2016 Cuba, Baseball, and Obama
3/19/2016 White Sox Temper Tantrums, Boo-Hoo
3/16/2016 Goofy Goose Gossage
3/7/2016 Romney The Clueless Dork
3/1/2016 Kobe & The NBA's Disgrace
2/12/2016 Old Rumpled Bernie Versus King Donald
2/7/2016 Who Can Afford to Go to the Stupid Bowl?
2/2/2016 In Your Face, Whitey!: Cam Newton and the Ali Factor
1/28/2016 Lebron's Subtle Intimidation and Manipulation
1/25/2016 Walls, Dildos, & The Clive Bundy Crew in Burns
1/2O/2016 Get Lost, L.A. Rams!
1/17/2016 Painful Things to Watch in the NBA
1/10/2016 The G.O.P. Obsession With Bill Clinton's Sex Life
1/6/2016 NFL Notes and Playoff Observations (2015-2016)
12/31/2015 Idiotic, Insipid Sports Interviews
12/25/2015 The Movie "Trumbo" and What Kind of Country We Are Today
12/20/2015 MLB Winter Tidbits 2016
12/17/2015 Notes on the 5th G.O.P. Debate
12/12/2015 Trump's Demagogue Prey
12/10/2015 Assholes
12/05/2015 Young Howie Long on the Hoop Court
11/30/2015 Billionaire Buffoons & Millionaire Divas
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11/16/2015 Hang 'Em Up, Kobe - Right Now.
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11/08/2015 Mecca of Narcissism
11/03/2105 Living Lazy and Loving It
10/31/2015 The World Series Is Not About Deserving.
10/24/2015 Hillary and the Benghazi Goon Squad
10/20/2015 How the 2015 Playoffs are Shaping Up
10/18/2015 Small Town Jihad
10/15/2015 The First Fake on Sports
10/13/2015 Lulu and Wilbur's Shenanigans
10/9/2015 Things to Look For in the Playoffs and World Series
10/6/2015 Talking Baseball is a Gut-Level Game
10/1/2015 NFL Football in the 1950's
9/28/2015 The Pope's Shameless Legions
9/25/2015 Pope Francis in America
9/23/2015 The Game Loved Yogi
9/19/2015 Trump and the Cobra
9/15/2015 Longball Robots Make For Shifting Defenses
9/10/2015 Trump's Blighted White Men
9/8/2015 "Feel" the Game
9/7/2015 Baseball's Not that Complicated
8/30/2015 Trump's Jesus Revelations
8/28/2015 Trump and the Jesus Factor
8/25/2015 Wilbur and the Town Drunk
8/24/2015 Donald Trump and the Incredibly Shrinking Men