How strange that you, of all of us, would prove to be the most hopeful.

This Saturday is called the Barbecue:
She that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when next year the day is named,
And rouse her at the smell of smoke.
He that shall live this day, and see middle age,
Will yearly on the vigil prepare his appetites,
And say ‘To-morrow is a Barbecue:’
They will bare her liver and show his gut.
And say ‘These things I earned at a Barbecue.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot in the morning,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What things he ate that day: then shall the names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Arthur Bryant the king, Memphis and Neely’s,
Rendezvous and Jack Stack, Bermuda Black and 151,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Barbecue Saturday shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of barbecuers;
For he to-day that eats and drinks with me
Shall be my brother; be she ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle her condition:
And revelers everywhere not attendant
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That barbecued with us on the glorious day!

(Mail me if you need specifics.)

Some time ago, I got an account on something called Facebook, which my younger younger brother assured me was perhaps the coolest thing in the history of cool and would never go away no matter what. (I believe it took that title from Friendster, which was the fourth largest standing army on Earth for ninety minutes, and also a huge nookie farm.) I mostly did it to be polite to him, played with it for fifteen minutes, had the same amount of fun and acquired the same facial expression as my father when he tries to play Halo 2, and forgot about Facebook.

Until about three weeks ago.

That is roughly when Facebook hit critical mass. I know this because suddenly I am awash in friends on an account I had forgotten I had on a website I had forgotten existed. I’m not ungrateful, understand — turns out I have seventeen friends, a higher number than I might have guessed if you asked me — but it’s a very odd feeling, having people that I did not anticipate would be either a) on Facebook or b) looking for me befriend me. I don’t know how to search for people on Facebook, so it’s a fairly random sampling, plus I don’t know about Facebook protocols, plus, as with all things Internet, there is a mild level of desire to disguise use of the thing. I feel like a resident of a small town in Nebraska who finally screws up the courage to drive an hour to the county gay bar and slink in and upon doing so is welcomed warmly by his neighbor, his barber, the mayor, two fellow Little League coaches and his closest friend from fourth grade: Fancy running into you here! I’m delighted to see you! Uh…now what do we do?

“Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE! ”

I think.

Close personal friend and devout Green Bay Packer fan Big has advocated that, in lieu of baking bread, I write more.

Okay.

Brett Favre has retired. While I suspect he will not be retired come August 15th of this year, I will take him at his word for now.

I hated Brett for many years. Now that the Bears have stopped swooning before him, and instead started using him to wipe the field, I have redirected my scorn to the sports media’s swooning, which is only partly Brett’s fault. As for Brett himself, I had a minor revelation this January.

I had been graciously invited to watch the Packers-Giants NFC title game with the members of Big’s “other” fantasy league, whose Imaginary Super Bowl trophy Big had hoisted just a couple of weeks’ previous. I had played a small consulting role in this triumph, which was enough to push my Bear fan status aside and allow me entrance to the conclave. Plus I hadn’t met his second daughter or new TV yet, so off to Sheboygan I went. And I learned something shocking that day:

Packer fans don’t really like Brett Favre.

Brett and his Maddenslurped “gunslinger” style of play drives them bananas. They hate it as much as Chris Berman loves it. Again: Brett terrifies and infuriates the average Packer fan.

The league I was watching with discussed Brett the way Thurston Howell III discusses wines. “I hope we get the ‘97 Brett tonight, not the ‘94.” “Or God forbid the ‘03.” (room shudders) “We agreed not to talk about the ‘03 Brett during a playoff game. Try to focus on the ‘96.”

But that was not the best part.

After the Giants kicked a game-winning field goal in overtime, following an ill-advised interception — here’s a great trivia question to lay on your favorite Packer fan, by the way, “Who caught the last pass of Brett Favre’s career?” “Corey Webster.” — the room somberly began to mutter unkind things about Brett. (They were, in fairness, calmer than I would have been had Rex Grossman just single-handedly cost the Bears a Super Bowl trip, and it was the second time he did that exact thing in four years.)

But that was not the best part either.

The best part was the eight or ten times that Joe Buck said “Favre drops back…under pressure!…winds up to throw!…” and the room, to a man save me, put hands to face and screamed “NO!”

I will have more to say about Vegas shortly. For the moment, click here.

You may not be fired up to try it yourself, but it is impossible to not be fired up to watch Luna or Notorious rock the full auto.