Life, Death, and Football

An older friend passed away last Sunday. His son--my best friend from LSU--called me with the news. CG was a very successful ophthalmologist and a humble guy. Despite hiving piles of money, CG lived in a modest-but-comfortable home and bought his clothes at Sears. He shared my interest in 20th Century history, and he owned a fish camp at which I enjoyed spending weekends. The family moved to Florida several years ago, in part so CG and his DW could be closer to their Disneyworld. CG grew up impoverished, but he indulged his love of Disney animation later in life, and with ample money to do so. His own reproductions of Disney animation cells were gorgeous in and of themselves.

CG had what I thought was a fun habit of probing for weak points of pride and/or arrogance the first time he met somebody. If he found one, he would poke at it relentlessly for his own amusement. I just laughed as he tried this with me. He didn't find what he was looking for, and we got on just fine.

CG's son MG told me that he realized Friday before last that CG would not leave the hospital alive, in light of his vital signs. So MG prepped CG for the LSU/Arkansas football game by putting an LSU hat on him and dressing him the jersey of a former LSU linebacker/friend of the family (whom I also happened to know) who died at a tragically young age. MG also placed an LSU pennant in CG's hand, and the two watched the game together. CG's vitals would perk up whenever LSU scored, and MG said that his dad "redlined" at the end of the game, which Arkansas won, evidently knocking LSU out of the national title picture. At least he was able to watch his last LSU game in a grand style.

Ironically, LSU may still have a shot at the title. With no. 1 Missouri and no. 2 West Virginia both losing last night, the teams ranked between no. 3 Ohio State and no. 7 LSU all have defects that could see my alma mater leapfrog over them. No. 4 Georgia came in second in the SEC's eastern division, while LSU won the SEC championship game. No. 5 Kansas came in second in the Big 12 northern division, and therefore didn't play for its conference championship. No. 6 Virginia Tech lost to LSU 48-7 earlier in the season. I love the Bowl Championship Series, mostly because it seems to get thrown into chaos every year, despite however much the formula is tweaked to avoid whatever fiasco occurred the previous year.

Southerners Without Accents

The website AmIAnnoying.com had this to say about North Carolina native son Michael C. Hall ("Dexter"):

He's a Southerner without a trace of a Southern accent (therefore he must be at least a little pretentious).

A few months ago, gentle reader/actor Cajun Boy was turned down for a role because a casting director said his imitation of a Cajun accent was inaccurate. Now, given Caj's origins in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, my guess is that he nailed the accent perfectly. As for me, when I started law school in St. Louis, some of my new friends asked where my Cajun accent was. I didn't feel like explaining that 1) my ancestors were from England and Scotland, and the British were the historic oppressors of the French-Canadian Acadians, so it would be most odd for me to have a Cajun accent; 2) people in other parts of Louisiana have other Southern accents--and then there's New Orleans, with it's own unique speech sounds; and 3) I grew up in Oklahoma, which is only kinda sorta in the South, though my parents were from Louisiana. So I said I just never acquired a Southern accent, which is probably all I should have said in this post.

There are some prominent individuals from the South who lack accents. Faux news commentator/presidential candidate Stephen Colbert (South Carolina); Fox news commentator Shepard Smith (Mississippi); hot actress Reese Witherspoon (Tennessee); and scorching hot actress Mary Louise Parker (South Carolina) come to mind. Some of them probably never acquired an accent; others probably worked at ridding themselves of theirs.

I think we Southerners Without Accents need to band together. Sure, we're humble men and women of the people just like everyone else, and not pretentious in the least, but we don't sound like the other people in our community. Perhaps we should have annual meetings at each others' yacht clubs and listen to each others' melodious, unaccented, speaking voices.