If Lewis and Clark knew when they were blazing the Oregon Trail that a city the likes of Eugene would eventually come into existence, they probably would have stopped in Tulsa. I hate to say it, but Eugene makes Salem look like the freakin’ Garden of Eden.
Fitting that it is a town of ducks; I mean, I sure as hell couldn’t stay there for more than a few months at a time without wanting to head north, south or anywhere not called Eugene. I feel the need to migrate even before I notice the transient with the lazy eye and four teeth staring at me, cackling and talking to his acid-flashback-induced imaginary friend.
Not that Eugene doesn’t have its positives — after all, it did get mentioned in a Sublime song! So there you go … way to riot!
But seriously folks, I have nothing against Oregon’s third-largest city. It’s a fine place to go and win a football game. In fact, I’d say that for opposing football teams and fans alike, Eugene is a great place to score — be it on the multi-colored turf, with a hippie chick whom you told you were Jerry Garcia’s nephew, or from a seventh-year burnout peddling meth out of his foster mom’s Acura.

Sorry, but no matter how much blood money Phil Knight pumps into the town, he’ll never be able to purchase class. Though he did purchase one fancy-schmancy stadium. The plasma screens in the locker rooms are a nice touch, ’cause after all, you wouldn’t want to miss your cousin’s appearance on “COPS” because you had football practice.
Then again, Corvallis might have a few more bucks for our stadium expansion if the Reser family had impoverished Malaysian toddlers making $150 burritos for six cents a day. And even with all that immorally earned income, they still haven’t installed a mirror big enough to truly capture the immaculate conception of facial hair that is Mike Bellotti’s mustache. That thing puts Ron Jeremy to shame.
I don’t know if I’m watching a football game or “Magnum P.I.” half the time.
It is then I realize I am incurring retinal damage from the hideous upchuck of a uniform that seems to be coming out of my screen like the dead chick from “The Ring.” What color were you going for there? Base-of-a-frat-house-toilet yellow? Or just vomit? You know your uniforms are bad when the crew at Hot Dog on a Stick is pointing at you laughing.
But I don’t want to focus on the jerseys too much — for fear of blindness, of course. There are more pressing issues to discuss.
Like how everyone thinks Corvallis is nothing but a cow town that’s full of cow pies and smells of cow dung. So, we may have a few more dirty, smelly animals running around the general vicinity than Eugene does. But at least they don’t ask me for spare change or if I have a spare cigarette.
All I want to do when I venture south is to get into one of Eugene’s many fine watering holes to check out some scenery I’m not used to — not see firsthand what happened to all the Deadheads after Jerry died.
Folks, I don’t mean to rag on Eugene too much. I always enjoy going down there — it’s just that I enjoy leaving even more.
Seriously though, the Civil War is all in good fun. It’s a time when we all can appreciate what each town has to offer.
Be it hippies, rednecks, cows or cannabis — we all share in the experience of living in either the poor man’s Seattle or the smart man’s Albany. At least in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we should be coming together, bringing our finest gifts to the table — like how the Indians brought fish and the pilgrims brought smallpox. After all, Eugene’s fine horticultural products and a big glass of Corvallis chocolate milk should be sampled and celebrated together, shouldn’t they?
So, in that spirit, I make one simple request to you Duck fans this weekend: Don’t get too bent when you see a Beaver on the street this weekend celebrating an Oregon State University victory with a PBR tall-boy raised oh-so-gloriously above his hunting cap.
Instead of getting pissed and starting a riot, go ahead and accept the fact that Corvallis, OSU and the Beavers have solidified their place on the food chain — standing on top of a pile of feathers that once resembled a duck.