Detroit Lions Week 3 Song of the Game: “Sober” by Tool

“Jesus won’t you fucking whistle”

Naturally, this unsightly week is my domain. It is my burden, my sin; my turn at Song of the Game. There would be no other way this could be. I’m happy to be here, too.

Ryan suggested this song should be “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. While I might not have a respectable taste in music for mass consumption, I do have the good sense to ignore such suggestions for cheap puns. He is dismissed.

Lions-Falcons Song of the Game: “Sober” by Tool

Listen, all the music I listen to—it’s not for you. This was abundantly clear when I tried to inject some proper heartfelt suggestions into the playlist last year, like Baroness or Earth. Someone dared to insult Jedi Mind Tricks as some sort of ICP knockoff, which is not only hurtful to me but also incredibly dangerous given what Vinnie Paz might do. Also, don’t insult juggalos.

But my taste in music does have a base in 90s grunge, alternative rock, post-grunge and the million crawling sub-genres metal and rock descended into before its final death as a popular music form.

It was a death well-earned. This form of music outlived its usefulness and squandered its artistic right to exist in the prior decade. It cashed out. The young children playing in decadent Babylon—they tried to save it, but it was not enough. Rock is a shade now, wandering Hades without thought or memory. The story of that shade is for another time.

In spite of that, I liked grunge and alt-rock. I liked the weird and sadistic turn of that music, the dismissal of the spandex and hair for jeans and suicide. There was something unnecessarily human about the whole venture. It’s the sort of mortality that gets snuffed out with a shotgun after every bone is already broken. So sure, let’s go with that. It’s a proper metaphor for this wretched Lions football game.

There is an exception to this love.

I do not like Tool. I do not find their music pleasant, even within the context of sorrow and pain as pleasantry. I think even less of their fans. The image of the Tool fan leaps to mind immediately, and it’s the image of Maynard James Keenan wearing a mop on his head. Tool is thought of far too highly for a form of music that detested such elevation. I believe the referees in this game were Tool fans; if they are on the older side, perhaps their sons are such.

Amazing. Somehow Maynard James Keenan (who, I must emphasize here, owns a vineyard for godsake) manages to piss off just about everyone in this here Instagram post, including the vegans he’s supposedly apologizing to after the fact, plus all the weird hard boys at home who think that this was a virtuous mission to “solve” veganism with meat or whatever the hell. I think that’s a pretty apt metaphor for everything that happened in the Lions-Falcons game.

Here’s some more metaphor in the lyrics of “Sober.” I like to think this is from the viewpoint of the referees.

“I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well
I will find a center in you
I will chew it up and leave
I will work to elevate you
Just enough to bring you down”

Somehow Tool isn’t on Spotify, which is just fine honestly. You wouldn’t want to go all season seeing this on our playlist, reminding you of this hellhole game every week. Just stew in it now and let’s move on.