The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [120]
“Yeah, no shit,” he says. “You sure you’re a sportswriter?”
“Of course,” I say. “And I knew that was Brad Childress. I was just fucking with you.”
“Whatever.”
The NFL.com guy goes back to talking to his girlfriend. Stealthily, I get up and sneak down to the buffet. The spread is deli sandwiches, warm tortellini salad, ricotta-filled mini cannolis, macadamia white-chocolate cookies, Krispy Kremes, mineral water, and coffee. A pair of ESPN cameramen are ahead of me in line. One grabs a cannoli, holds it up, and motions to the other:
“Dude, if it’s not catered—it’s not journalism!”
“Right-on to that!” the other guy says, stuffing his face.
I dump a pile of cookies and donuts into a napkin, fold it up, and sneak back up to the press section. By now they’ve found me a desk next to a tired-looking young guy who works for the Giants Web site. I plug in, cue up the Red Sox–Yankees game on the Internet, and start stuffing cookies into my face.
A few hours later I’m still glued to the same spot, covered in crumbs and in full bloat, an off-duty media pig in a state of unabashed psychic regression, watching grimly as a parade of no-necked, clumsily tailored 250-pound black jocks get auctioned off to their new corporate masters. A mechanized boom cam swings across the Radio City floor and stops queerly in front of my seat; I bat the crumbs off my face and give a lazy wave at it. It occurs to me to wonder if anyone back in Texas is watching. What would they think? What possible sense could they make of their quiet fellow Christian Matt Collins sitting behind Mel Kiper, Jr., at the NFL draft in New York, a big brown press badge around his neck and cookie bits all over his face? It was an ugly thought and I tried to put it out of my mind.
“Hey,” a voice next to me asks. “Who was that who just went?”
It’s the Giants guy, back from the bathroom.
“Anderson,” I say. “Jamaal Anderson. A defensive end.”
“Where out of?”
“Arkansas, I think,” I say.
“An-der-son,” he mumbles, typing the name in. “Okay, Miami on the clock…”
I frown, pick up my cell phone, and start dialing, feeling guilty all of a sudden. After a few rings, a voice answers.
“Thank you for calling John Hagee Ministries,” the voice says. “All of our prayer partners are currently assisting others. You may have called at a peak period. However, your call will be answered in the order it was received…”
“So, who do the Fins take?” Giants guy asks, interrupting.
“It’s gotta be Quinn,” I say, my ear still pressed to the phone. “They need a quarterback. Shit, they had Joey Harrington starting games for them last year. You’ve got to at least try to win, you know?”
“Yeah,” he says. “But the thing about Miami is, when everything’s on the line, you can always count on them to fuck things up.”
“Yeah, I—hello?”
A chirpy female voice crackles over the phone.
“God bless, welcome to John Hagee Ministries prayer line, this is Carol!”
“Yes, hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Yes,” I say, “my name is Matt. I’m a member of the church. I went away to the Encounter Weekend, and I recently went through the Discover the Difference program. And I’m very happy, I feel blessed and all that, but I’m having trouble praying in tongues. You know, they tried to teach us that, but when I try to pray in tongues, it comes out sounding like a squirrel!”
“Gosh! Mmm-hmm,” comes the response.
“When I’m praying, you know, it just doesn’t sound natural,” I go on. “I just don’t know what’s wrong. I guess I’m just looking for some advice on what to do.”
“Okay,” the woman says. “Hold on one second, would you?”
“Yes,” I say.
Weirdly, abruptly, she puts me on hold. The Giants guy, totally oblivious, is typing away next to me. Suddenly we hear the announcement over the loudspeaker; Miami has picked, Houston is on the clock. NFL chief Roger Goodell trots up to the lectern.
“Here it comes,” says Giants Guy.
“With the ninth pick in the 2007 NFL draft,” the commissioner says, “the Miami Dolphins select Ted Ginn, wide receiver, Ohio State University.”
Pandemonium!
“Noooo!” come the shouts from