I am not happy Francis is back.

Large10/01/2022 3:15 PM

Here’s a confession I’ve made before: I don’t read blogs.

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And as long as we’re coming clean, here’s another: I don’t listen to podcasts.

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I write blogs (occasionally) and I record multiple podcasts every week that I believe to be as entertaining as my moderate skill set dictates, but I have zero interest in reading or listening to other people’s work.

One of the things I do partake in is social media. For the most part, it is a waste of time that is making us all dumber by the second, but it is also a necessary evil for anyone with a similar job as me.

So I am casually strolling Twitter earlier this week and this comes across my timeline…

And the first thing I said when I saw it was, “Dammit.”

Francis is back and I’m not sure if I like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I like “him” or at least I like the idea of who he is. I am just not sure if I want him to exist anymore… Do you know what I mean?

You probably don’t, so I will go on.

Francis is a loose cannon. He’s a well-groomed powder keg and he’s back in a warehouse filled with scattered matches and oily rags.

In his first term in office, he was an innocent fresh-faced youngster who had navigated the first two decades of his life without callouses… Literally or otherwise.

He was not only born on third base but the genetic lottery also allowed him a healthy lead between third and home.

When I first met him, I said to myself, “Now there’s a guy who has never eaten a sandwich without the crusts cut off.”

To which he quickly read my mind and said aloud, “You fat idiot… I don’t eat carbs."

By the end of that first term, he had become whatever German word perfectly combines the feelings of complacency, boredom, and frustration… Perhaps it is “weltschmerz” but “mütend” is also close. Google both and decide for yourself.

He was Andy Dufresne, but instead of a Raquel Welch poster, he had a keyboard. And inappropriate blog subjects carved out a tunnel to his pipeline of human feces that eventually led to the white sand beaches of Zihuatanejo.

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— I’m not overly comfortable with that metaphor… Perhaps his keyboard was the mineral hammer and the Raquel poster was the inappropriate subject that he was burrowing behind?

Or maybe Francis was Morgan Freeman’s character and Barstool was that big piece of obsidian that had no business being hidden at the end of a stone wall near an oak tree in Buxton?

All I know is that in any comparison of Francis’ life to Shawshank, I play Brooks. —

"Large, you wanna be a contestant on next season's 'Surviving Barstool'?"

But then he got fired… And it wasn’t pretty.

I spoke to Francis often during the process and you could tell he was not enjoying his first callous.

But he persisted, and even thrived… Although, who are we kidding, his fabled Trust Fund provided him with the requisite safety net for him to take chances.

Along the way, he grew as a person and shrank as a human… Literally… Francis was never doughy, but is more lean and muscular than ever… It’s distractingly beautiful.

He started a podcast called “Oops” that I have never listened to, but have heard good things.

He honed his standup routine to what some (not all) would call “surprisingly good”.

He quit his whorish ways, met the love of his life, and got married.

He went to Africa… Which doesn’t seem too extraordinary, but keep in mind that the last time a member of the Ellis clan went to Africa was probably in the early 1600s, and it wasn’t for vacation.

And now he’s back… And I don’t think I like it.

As I said before, I don’t read blogs.

But now that’s a lie… I should’ve written, I ‘used to' not read blogs because I clicked on that fucking Griner piece and pored through it like an 8-year-old getting his first Playboy as a birthday gift from his weird uncle.

But unlike that Playboy, the blog was wonderfully written and perfectly timed.

Here it is for those who missed it…

You know… Back when I used to read the Comment Section religiously, people would occasionally float the idea of having a “Blogging Tournament”. A series of head-to-head contests between writers to determine who is the best.

It was and still is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea for many reasons, but that doesn’t stop it from being mentioned regularly.

And in a time where Barstool is slowly morphing into a reality/gameshow platform, now my nightmare is some moron will greenlight an actual best blog contest. And if that were to happen, I am CERTAIN that our paths would cross… Maybe in the third round after he clears out a couple of low seeds while I scrap out some close wins over Trent and Duggs.

If that were the case, it would probably be the first forfeit in the storied history of Barstool competitions.

I would (metaphorically) tuck my tail between my legs and roll over onto my back displaying my literary genitals to Francis in a show of defeat. All the while hoping that he rakes his smooth hands up and down over my 4 sets of nipples saying, “Who’s also a good boy (and blogger)?… LARGE is a good boy (and blogger)!”