Tuesday 11 October 2011

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Record

I would totally Photoshop Lloyd Brady's head on Jim Carrey's body if I was any good at Photoshop.

The title wasn't meant to mean anything about the season or the team.  I just liked the way it sounded (pretty clever, I thought).  But then I started to really think about it and maybe it makes sense, in a way.  Michigan is 6-0 in 2011 and will be forever.  They will never be 5-1 or 3-3 this year.  At this moment, the 2011 Wolverines are eternally undefeated.  A national championship contender of the first half.

But perhaps there's more.

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Jim Carrey plays a man who, after a vicious fight with his longtime girlfriend (Kate Winslet), decides to have his memories of the relationship erased after learning she has already done the same.  A devastated Carrey struggles to hold on to some memory of his love for Winslet while slowly watching his memories of her disappear in reverse.  It is visceral and haunting and tragically funny.  And perhaps this season is our Eternal Sunshine, our Eloisa to Abelard.  Perhaps we as fans have enjoyed this season so much, this team, these players and coaches because they have helped us, so far, to forget.  To forget the last three plus seasons of pain, of wanting and wishing but never achieving.  We want to pretend the last three seasons never happened, that the chain was never broken and Michigan has been great forever.

But at the same time we don't want to forget it all, in the end.  We struggle to hold on to some part of those teams, those three years that were filled with so much disappointment and heartbreak and joy.  We don't want to forget these wonderful seniors that stayed when so many others left.  We never want to forget the names Van Bergen and Martin, Molk and Woolfolk, Hemingway and Koger and all the others.  We don't want to lose Denard Robinson and his wonderful smile and his fantastic ability.  We don't want to lose the high octane offense and the struggle and yes, maybe even the pain.  We don't want to lose the excitement even if sometimes it hurt. 

So as we forget we struggle to remember.  Maybe that's the very essence of this season, of this team.  They are a new beginning, free from the memories of the past and yet burdened by them all the same.

Getty Images


Also in theaters:

Mad Maxttison (I know, that's terrible right?  I should have gone with Mad Mattison)- Greg Mattison is the maximum force of the future!  Travelling with an awesome dog (I know that's actually the Road Warrior, whatever) or possibly riding a polar bear, he hunts down bad defensive coordinators sowing anarchy through college football, until a final confrontation with GERG Robinson.  Spoiler: GERG dies horribly by polar bear mauling when he mistakes the bear for a stuffed beaver.

Seven- Al Borges calls seven deadly running plays from under center and Brian cuts his head off and puts it in a box.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Fingers- A heartwarming tale of one man and his quest to point at literally everything.

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