Jeff Whitten

Local Columnist

Welcome to the latest issue of the Pembroke Mafia Football League, and right off, we like poetry.

It speaks to our sensitive self, the side of us that we PMFLer’s like to have a chat with sometimes. Especially if it’s in a hot bath with some pumpkin spiced candles and a big 16 ounce Miller Light and some pork rinds while we’re making our own bubbles.

That’s when poetry rocks. You need a loofah, though.

Besides, what, if not poetry is this: Eeeny, meanie, miney, mo, Catch a Clemson fan by the toe, If he hollers, let him go. Eeeny, meanie, miney, mo.

Hey, ol’ Shakespeare himself couldn’t have put it better. Nor, I suspect, could the Bard have topped this jewel in a million years of trying: When you’re up, you’re up When you’re down you’re down When you’re up against the PMFL you’re upside down.

True story, that, and

this: There was a time not so long ago when, as editor before I ran out of steam and started hating everybody, I wanted to make at least one paper rhyme from page 1 all the way to page 14, or whatever it had shrunk down to at that point because I’d just about killed it.

The human condition, after all, is nothing if it can’t be stuck in a rhyme.

Anyway, I couldn’t pull it off. But consider the below effort, which I just rattled off because I’m an idiot.

Russ Carpenter should’ve been a Beatle Just look at his hair. And Ben Taylor to see over people Has often to stand on a chair.

Yet being short is okay You ain’t in the way, But hairy mammal is weird So is a beard And a manbun is definitely fey.

(For once, I’ll quit while I’m almost ahead).

This week’s standings:

Ben is in first with 23 misses. Mike Brown is in second with 24 misses. Mike Clark, he of the many groupies, is in third with 27 misses.

In fourth are the Rev. Lawrence Butler and retired Chief Petty Admiral B.J. Carter with 29 misses. I’m in fifth with 30 misses.

Dr. Gene “The Yak” Wallace is in sixth with 35 misses. Ted O’Neil is in seventh with 36 misses.

Freddy “Gruesome Twosome” Howell is next with 41 misses; Noah “The Other Yak” Covington and Carter “Pineapple Jack” Infinger follow with 43 and 44 misses, respectively, and in last place is Alex ”The Missing Yak” Floyd, with 478-1/2 misses.

This week’s picks:

Due to technical difficulties – this laptop is for some reason wheezing up a storm, which laptops should not do– this week’s games were unavailable.

Thanks for reading, be nice to animals and old people and little kids, and vote for Pedro.

Whitten is an occasional columnist for the News.