Things I wrote in 2015

Here are a few things I did in 2015.

1. A review of the working dogs group in the Westminster Dog Show. It is the best group, and also not coincidentally the group most capable of dragging you off a cliff to your demise without an ounce of remorse. I can write about dogs for the rest of my life.

2. A weird essay about going to the Masters and landscape architecture and World War One and wealth. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that I felt less than Augusta National. It felt more foreign to me than Myanmar. I can say that with conviction, because I went to Myanmar this year. The entire place feels like an enormous piece of plastic surgery, and the best part of the entire experience was driving a very fast car into the parking lot and out of the parking lot every day.

3. I drove a Hellcat. This was the car I drove in and out of the parking lot every day. Please do not tell Dodge this, but I let other people drive it. At least two of them pulled over after a minute or two, handed me the keys, and said “I can’t be trusted with this.” These are two people who are smarter than I will ever be. Buy this car.

4. A long piece about Myanmar, a very simple game called chinlone, and travel. To be honest, I think I screwed this piece up from the start, and never really corrected it. But it’s all there, and it took a lot of time and effort to screw something up this thoroughly. Sometimes you just keep making mistakes until you get it right. At this rate, I plan to write a perfect travel/sports piece sometime around the age of 78.

5. MAD MAX REVIEWED. I still believe every word of this review in the all-caps language of my soul.

6. Waylp, Steve Spurrier up and left. The coach who basically got me into football retired in unsentimental fashion, which...well, that’s how it was going to happen all along.

7. What we talk about when we talk about work and football. Or a quick look at how we confuse the two, over and over and over again, without ever thinking about what work eventually does to us.

8. I climbed a Mexican volcano (and did not get to the top.) This was a video thing we did for Land Rover where a crew of us from SB Nation tried to climb a few volcanoes. Thanks to my terrible conditioning and a few logistical snafus we did not get to the top. DO YOUR CARDIO AND DO NOT BE FAT IF YOU ARE TRYING TO CLIMB AN 18,000 FOOT VOLCANO. Fun note! The area where we were climbing was bristling with cops with AR-15s and flak jackets. After we were done, the guides told us a group of bad dudes had killed a few people in the area the week prior to our arrival, and that they weren’t really sure where the perpetrators were. Then we went to dinner.

9. I previewed every SEC Game. If not accurate, it was at least deeply felt.

10. Broke. A thing about paying college football players, and going from boom to bust to boom and back to bust again, and about how money and class are the things people still hate to talk about in the United States. Someone commented on this by saying “well, your politics are obviously personal here.” My response: so are yours, you just don’t admit it.

SB Nation presents: Spencer’s adventure in kiteboarding