Seriously Chapter 64: For 2010 - Living, Loving & Learning

All blessings go out to the 600 or so of you who've been bombarding me with concerned e-mails and frantic-yet-thoughtful faxes. The events of the last four weeks have passed like a blur, like a wondrous blur of self-discovery. Now I know a man talking about "self discovery" is vomitous but truth is the coin of this realm and I'm giving it to you straight. I fell off the wagon, alright? Jameson's, Old Grand Dad and anything else I could suck down, I fell off hard. That's right - Seriously, the boss, the big cheese, the mover of men, the keeper of the flame, but in reality - the Emperor With No Clothes. Unbenownst to you, my dear and cherished fans, up until December 9th, 2009, I'd been in the sickening throes of a multi-month, Tsunami-level, one-man-wrecking-crew of a bender, the likes of which Los Angeles County hadn't seen in nearly a decade. Frankly speaking, even whores avoided me this time around and I say that with a head bowed in shame. I've reached dizzying heights in my time, had more success than any man ever deserved, made a ton of money, bedded more beautiful woman than Jan Michael-Vincent ever dreamed of, but never have I been able to conquer this cursed, infernal booze-bug of mine. I know most of you know my story, it's public. You know that by the time I was a fifteen year-old stringer for the old Cincinnati Post, they called me "Hitch" because I was the kid who could "drink the chrome off a trailer hitch." But I'm not gonna sit here and regale you with stories because then it'll seem like I'm fostering some element of glamorization. Booze kills and my lifestyle kills. Three ex-wives PALE IN COMPARISON to the wrath of the grape. I thank God I'm alive and I thank God for the folks at The Santa Clarita Center who took me in when I had nowhere else to turn. Yeah, at 10,000 bones a week but what do you care, cynics and haters? I'm trying to get soul-eating parasites like you OUT OF MY LIFE!

But I'm back now, fresh for the New Year, and I'm really looking forward to churning ahead so I can give you the sports news you have, thankfully, entrusted me to deliver. (Yeah, that's a poorly written sentence, I didn't say EVERYTHING has changed)

The departure of Warthog-From-Hell, Coach Brian Kelly, from the U.C. Bearcats to (snot and spit) Notre Dame, and the attending trauma that this caused for my family, that was the triggering event that led to what we in the booze-biz call, "rock bottom." And losing my quiet little friend from just outside Morgantown, Chris Henry, that didn't help Seriously's family, either. But that was the beginning of December and here we are now, friends. It is 2010 and I humbly ask, once more, for your sports confidence as I rise, I'd like to think, like a Phoenix, putting one mother f-ing foot in front of the other. There's football games to be played, the NBA's on fire and lookie right `round the corner, pitchers and catchers are coming. Yeah, WTF, I'm back. It's great to breathe again.

Stay tuned.