Mickey's Musings: How to deal with a bye week: Moses Guthrie, Frankenmuth and Dryer Lint
Welcome to Mickey's Musings, my weekly notebook where we skip the linear narrative and dive straight into three completely unrelated, but entirely fascinating storylines that are bouncing around in my head.
How do we handle a bye week? Especially one coming off probably the best all around Lions’ game of the season. Whatever happened to “strike while the iron is hot”? Well, each of us had to find our own way to survive a week without a Lions game.
Let’s get into our three topics and I’ll tie them together later as I share how I managed the bye week.
Topic # 1: Moses Guthrie
Probably only the most die-hard Gen-X movie fan will remember the movie and even fewer will know the character by name only. I’ll give you clue – Doctor J, Julius Erving, played Moses Guthrie in the movie. The movie?
The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh
In the film, Dr. J. plays the frustrated superstar Moses Guthrie for the fictional Pittsburgh Pythons, a team so dysfunctional, so terrible, the coach and every other player on the roster quit midseason. In true 1970’s fashion – the decade where any schlub in a powder blue leisure suit would walk up to a woman at the bar and say, “What’s your sign?” – the team is re-constructed entirely out of players that share an astrological sign with Guthrie. There were open tryouts where the first requirement was a birthday between February 19 and March 20.
After the tryouts the new look Pythons became known as the Pittsburgh Pisces, led by Guthrie. He was the only legitimate player on a team as the rest of the roster consisted of a preacher that left his congregation mid sermon to attend tryouts, a 40 year old that fired up old-school two handed set shots, an ex-con, a radio DJ that spoke entirely in rhymes and a musclebound overly intense player that rarely spoke throughout the movie.
The team went on a run to qualify for the playoffs. They made it all the way to the Championship and Guthrie addressed the team with a pre-game speech. He said, “You’re talking about Shitty bounce after Shitty bounce just to get TO the bridge. No many alive should stop you from crossing over.”
Topic # 2: Frankenmuth
I’m sure everyone has heard of and/or been to Frankenmuth. For those of you that haven’t - Imagine a place where traditional German dirndls meet the Great Lakes, and you’ll find Frankenmuth. Affectionately known as "Little Bavaria," the place looks like a living cuckoo clock, complete with Alpine architecture, horse-drawn carriages, and the melodic chimes of the Frankenmuth Glockenspiel. That doesn’t even mention Bronners! Bronner's is the world’s largest Christmas store, open 361 days per year. You can go to the Frankenmuth Brewery and have a pint of “The Hef” – German Hefeweizen, their gold medal winning German wheat ale then head to Zehnders for the famous chicken dinners and afterwards take a walk across the street to the wooden bridge and down to the river area. Frankenmuth is a delightfully campy Midwest escape where hospitality is served with a side of polka.
Frankenmuth, Zender's and Bronner's
Topic # 3: Dryer Lint
Nearly 15,000 home fires per year are attributed to dryers with over a third of those being due to the accumulation of dryer lint.
Other than those 10 seconds you spend peeling it off the lint screen, did you ever really think about dryer lint?
If you think about it, shouldn’t our clothes be smaller each time they dry? I mean, the lint is literally tiny pieces of clothing. So, when my shirt doesn’t fit, it probably isn’t the extra trip to the desert table at Golden Corral, it is because I washed and dried my clothes! It had nothing to do with skipping my morning workout….4 days this week….it is because it was raining and I couldn’t hang my laundry in the backyard to dry. (Does anyone still have clotheslines and put their clothes out after they wash them?)
As Jon Lovitz’ character Tommy Flanagan used to say, “Yeahhhhh, that’s the TICKET!”
Going back to the beginning I shared that quote from Moses Guthrie. Since it is the Lion’s bye week, there was no grit to fill my weekend. I feel that “Shitty bounce” he referred to is just that - having no football that I really cared to watch! But…I also officially found my bridge.
To cross over that bridge, I took up professional lint sculpting. I spent my football-less weekend channeling all my hyper-fixated energy into molding a life-sized Dan Campbell out of dryer lint. Once the masterpiece was secure in my trunk, I drove straight to Frankenmuth. I crossed the actual wooden Holz-Brücke covered bridge, checked into the Bavarian Inn, threw on a full authentic German lederhosen, and scarfed down an all-you-can-eat chicken dinner.
If Dan Campbell couldn't give me grit this week, a mountain of mashed potatoes, gravy, and buttered noodles as I sat in full 19th-century Bavarian attire had to do.
OK, maybe that’s not exactly how my weekend went, but it was close. I did watch the Bears and saw their offense come untracked with Caleb Williams back at the helm and I did see the Packer defense take down the Cowboys. But, it’s all good, we’re ready. Bring on the Packers. Go Lions.
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