Dear SJ:

What follows is my annual attempt at a Christmas letter. Normally this is set to Tom Lehrer’s “Christmas Carol.” With the passing of that beloved humorist last year, I thought long and hard about whether I’d use it again this season. I’ve decided to do just that as it’s my way of honoring him. So Mr. Lehrer: will you do the honors?

Christmastime is here by golly, disapproval would be folly
Deck the halls with hunks of holly, fill the cup and don’t say when! Continue reading →

Prefatory note: Yep. I think I’ve officially lost it.—CLS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, in Mud Lick so still

Sheriff Roy Templeton locked up every grill

Tyrone’s on vacation, thank God—he’s dim as a drill.

The station was quiet, Just two drunks in a cell Continue reading →

TITLE CARD: JUST THE NIGHTLY NEWS
important sounding music

VO: And now, just the nightly news. Good evening, this is Los Angeles. Your host is Kent Halsey.

Camera up on Kent Halsey in the main newsroom

HALSEY: Good evening, this is Los Angeles and this is your nightly news. In our top story a raccoon broke into a Virginia ABC liquor store and had its fair share of peanut butter whisky, vodka and moonshine. The animal then rampaged towards the men’s bathroom before passing out from intoxication, where store owners found it the following morning. Continue reading →

When I first purchased an Apple Watch several years ago, I thought the device would be a nifty way to talk with people when I didn’t have my phone around. A sort of modern-day take on Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio, if you will. Of course the damn thing never really got that good at sending or receiving messages—or phone calls—but it was nifty.

I got a second one around the time COVID hit, this one with the fancy-dan upgraded blood oxygen monitor. Shoot, blood oxygen monitoring was all the rage at first and people thought it would be a good indicator if you were coming down with the virus. It seemed like a good idea. Only marginally better now at sending messages and phone calls still sounded like tinny messes, but hey, Apple was innovating. Continue reading →

I remember the first sign I saw when I went to a UT game at Neyland Stadium at age nine.

It read “BUCK FAMA.”

“What does that mean, dad? Mom, what does it mean?” I asked at least twenty times that afternoon with both my parents artfully dodging that question as if they were Keanu Reeves in the first Matrix film finally realizing he can dodge bullets. Continue reading →

Greetings, friends! Have any of you driven two and a half hours away from your home to dine at a tourist bar owned by a country music singer because your spouse happened to be in that town for a continuing education seminar and they wanted to eat there? Did you have to listen to both of your kids bitch about traffic the entire goddamn way there?

No? I guess that’s pretty specific to visiting Gatlinburg.

If you’ve never been to Gatlinburg it can be pretty time consuming. Someone recently told me they thought it was what you’d get if you transported a beach resort town to the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains. I said it was the only place I knew where you could buy a ninja sword and a funnel cake on the same city block. Continue reading →

About two months ago, my son came to me expressing a desire to quit karate. My wife and I had him in martial arts since kindergarten and we’d honestly thought he’d enjoyed it this entire time. Apparently the kindest ten-year-old boy in the world doesn’t share his father’s joy at either punching people in the face during sparring or getting hit in the face during sparring. Go figure.

Anyway, he wasn’t getting off without going into some other form of physical activity. Enter my son’s friend Charlie (not his real name) who’s one of the popular neighborhood kids and something of a self-styled protector. Putting his arm around my boy, Charlie told him “Relax, you should join my church’s soccer league! You can probably even be on my team! My dad’s best friends with the director!” Continue reading →

Prefatory note: I’m currently gutted as I write this after the senseless assassination of Charlie Kirk. Apologies for moving back to the well of college football two weeks in a row but I need to take my mind off this shit. Hopefully this helps you too.—CLS

It’s time to see what the Vols can really do this season.

Beating Syracuse in week one at Atlanta was a great start. Week two’s record scoring win over East Tennessee State at Neyland Stadium was a nice preview of what the Volunteers can do when all cylinders are mostly clicking.

Now comes the big test as Georgia makes a season-early trip to Knoxville. Continue reading →

I don’t think it’s much of a secret that college football fans can be petty as all get out.

Of all the fanbases in the sport, probably the pettiest fans are those of the Tennessee Volunteers. Hey, I should know—I’m a proud resident of Rocky Top. Our fans started a Twitter shitstorm that cost a coach his job before the ink was dry on the page once, and we consider any betrayal of the Power T an egregious moral offense.

So last Saturday, you can imagine I was nervous when noon rolled around and Joey Aguilar, our new star quarterback, took the field for the first time since Josh Heupel essentially traded with UCLA, sending our former golden boy Nico Iamaleava back to California. I knew our guys could handle Syracuse but those 24 interceptions at Appalachian State didn’t look good. Continue reading →

It has come to my attention that a local high school football coach was recently fired for the egregious sin of taking his players to a football game.

Apparently the team’s bus broke down and no replacements were forthcoming. In a moment of pure country ingenuity, the coach put the team in the back of his pickup truck and drove them approximately an hour away to the site of the game. For this, he was dismissed.

This outcome is unacceptable bullshit. What was he supposed to do, cancel the game? What kind of lesson does that teach young men? If anything, Coach should’ve been given a raise for teaching all those young men that you make your towns, show up to your commitments, and give them your best effort no matter what. Continue reading →