Somewhere along the winding twisty path of life, I lost my superstitious nature. I'm not sure when it happened, exactly, or how, but at some point I stopped believing in luck, fate, karma, curses, hexes, voodoo and the state Moneyball Lotto.

Looking back, it all makes sense now. Belief in those sorts of things implies faith in some sort of universal order -- a cosmic cause-and-effect, what-goes-around-comes-around, I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I perpetual game of tallying the scores between every creature, concept and corporation and making sure it all comes out even. What's more, it suggests some level of control -- or at least a meek influence -- over this wildly elaborate and grotesquely Goldbergesque scheme of punishment and reward, simply by throwing salt over your shoulder or avoiding breaking a mirror.

Frankly, I think it's much simpler than that. Four decades on the planet have taught me that shit falls apart, often at the least convenient time. The cosmos isn't looking out for me, or "out to get me"; that's just what it does. And a decade-plus each of marriage and dog ownership have shown me that I have no "control" to speak of. I can keep my fingers crossed for days on end; it won't change my luck. It might give me arthritis, but that's not luck. That's arthritis.

You might think it sad to have put aside such a whimsical slice of human existence. Perhaps it is -- but it's also pretty damned liberating. There's so much less to worry about, once you realize there's nothing much you can do about most of what used to worry you. When "everything happens for a reason", it's worth scurrying around to find those reasons, to influence them, to understand their subtle implications.

When you move on to "shit happens", shit just happens. Maybe you have some say in it, and probably you don't. And most probably, you'll never see it coming in quite the way you thought you would.

So why ponder such abstractions tonight? As usual, it's a symptom of grief. Many people tend to wax philosophical when dealing with loss, and I'm no different. It's how we cope with something unpleasant -- like, say, when our team has just lost the Super Bowl. Just for instance. Not that I'm bitter. I'm just saying. Goddammit.

Of course, other people have different ways of coping. Take my wife, for instance. She might have something more visceral, more confrontational in mind. Like earlier tonight, when she noticed -- while I changed from my "I'm a big boy" work clothes into some comfy sweats -- that I was wearing my referee boxers recently mentioned in this space. She huffed, and said:
"I'm no magician or shaman or dude who can see the matrix and fly like sunglassed Superman and yank bullets out of PVC-clad hotties' boobs."

'Well, maybe if you'd worn your football panties on Sunday, we'd have won that game!'

Now, I don't think she was being literal. My wife is not so much the superstitious sort, either.

(She couldn't be, really. The girl owned a black cat for most the years she was growing up. Unless she took some ridiculously circuitous Family Circle route to the bathroom every morning, she was crossing its path. Constantly.

And look how it turned out for her -- she's grown up just fine, with a good job, good friends, and... uh, married to me.

Okay, so fine. Maybe she ought to be just a little superstitious. Shaddup.)

I think she was just venting her frustration in a game that we both invested a lot of time and cheering and three bowls of bean dip in. But it did come off a bit aggressive.

(Though to be fair, it also represented a new plateau in our relationship. It might well be the first time that she saw me wearing a pair of underpants on a Tuesday and just assumed that I hadn't also worn them on Sunday.

Now, that's love, baby. Or some reasonable facsimile thereof.)

I patiently explained my feelings on most of the above to her. What I wear, I said, or how I act or think or feel or hope, has no bearing on a sporting event happening hundreds of miles away. I'm no magician or shaman or dude who can see the matrix and fly like sunglassed Superman and yank bullets out of PVC-clad hotties' boobs.

And anyway, the day my choice of underwear can influence the activities of fifty-three men six states away is the day I want off this ride. Because it's gone seriously, seriously weird.

So we agreed to disagree -- both about whose fault our team's loss was and about how to go about moving on. I'm trying to forget it ever happened. She's snarking about my underwear. By the time football season rolls around again, we'll probably be ready for another roller coaster ride. And next Super Bowl Sunday, I'll be sure to wear the correct underwear.

Which is the ones with the little Matrix characters on it. They may not help our team win, but I'll have the snazziest 'panties' at the party, at least. Call me superstitious, but that's got to help me 'get lucky' eventually, right?

...Right?!?

(For you Super Bowl party hosts, my latest Zolton Does Amazon piece over at ZuG, Practice Makes Party, might be just the bash-planning guide you're looking for.

Unless you're afraid to look like a Smurf. Or you don't like kosher salsa. Or vibrating cocktail weenies.

Oh, come on. You have to go look now. How could you not?)

It's a month or so belated, but I'd like to publicly thank my old workmates for the thoughtful -- and delicious -- parting gift they bought me when I left at the end of December. They were kind enough to pitch in together to make me a member of a Beer of the Month Club. Because they know that the way to a man's heart is, of course, through his liver.
"They're tough to find, barely known and obscure to all but the most thorough brewficionados."

(Of course, to get to just about anything in there these days, you've got to go through a bit of liver. That shit is everywhere by now. The way to this man's prostate is probably also through the liver, but we don't need anyone navigating that particular route on the map.

And thank goodness it didn't come into play in the gift selection. Or the going-away party. Eep.)

This is not just any Beer of the Month Club, though. Oh, no, Augustus -- this is the Rare Been or the Month Club. These are brews that you won't likely find on your local package store shelf, Liquor Barn sale rack, or watering hole drink menu. They're tough to find, barely known and obscure to all but the most thorough brewficionados. And why is that?

Because they're freaking WEIRD.

Now, don't get me wrong -- that's not a bad thing. For me, in fact, that's a very good thing. I'm no suds expert. I know what I like, and it's helpful if a few favorites aren't that hard to track down on a thirsty Saturday night. Or Friday evening. Or for that matter, lunchtime on a Tuesday.

But those favorites are not the mass-produced muted-flavor brews that you see in your grocery store displays and catchy Super Bowl ads.

(Except Guinness. I make an exception for Guinness. We have... history.)

So I am a bit of a beer snob, I suppose. And these 'rare' beers are a snobbyists hopped dream. Love 'em or hate 'em, these bottles were evidently picked to be as crazy-eyed different from 'regular beer' as possible. The first shipment came a few days ago, and here's what was in it:

Bottle #1: A beer made in the south of France -- where, like, four people live who aren't making wine or snooting around the fancy beaches. And one of those people decided to brew his own beer, apparently.

Only, he or she doesn't actually drink beer, because whoever whipped up this concoction can't possibly know about the sorts of things that people think pair well with beer, and which don't. This beer is made with nougat. NOUGAT. Actual, honest to Betsy, in-your-Snickers NOUGAT.

Does it taste like nougat? Oh, yeah. Nougat and beer. The most natural and obvious taste pairing since tuna fish and Pudding Pops. It was right there in front of us the whole time; it just took six hundred years and some floppy French wine flunky to clue us in to the pairing.

The beer tastes approximately like you'd think beer and nougat together in your mouth would taste -- only maybe sixty percent better. By the time I could see the bottom of my glass, I was enjoying the sweetness -- but also pretty happy they only sent one bottle. I think I prefer my nougat wrapped in chocolate and buried under some indeterminate number of Musketeers.

Grade: B-

Bottle #2: This beer was Belgian, for which it gets full credit. Because let's face it -- what the hell is there to do in Belglandia other than make beer, drink beer, drink more beer and curse the day you met beer in the first place? It's not like they have a Planet Hollywood or anything.

So an awful lot of beers come from Belgium, and many are quite good. This one was a Christmas beer -- apparently Sinterklaas digs him some brewskis -- and just the oddest bout of doodad brewing a drunken bunch of near-Frenchmen could come up with.

First, as I mentioned -- it's a Christmas beer. You'd expect something dark and rich, like a porter or stout, to stave off the wintertime cold.

Nope. It's an IPA.

So maybe you'd guess it's brewed with traditional Christmas flavors, like candy canes or cinnamon or North Pole frozen elf sweat.

Sort of. Try 'pine needles' and 'ginger'. Because those are two things you've probably always wanted to pour down your throat together. I know I have.

Luckily -- for me, at least, since none of us is ever likely to see such a beer again -- the brewers didn't go overboard with the yuletide add-ons. They shook the old Christmas wand over the brew no more than twice, leaving only subtle hints of extra flavors. Happily, when I say that this beer was like "Christmas in January", it's only because I'm sitting here drinking on a Thursday night, and not because I feel like an evergreen forest full of gingers just got shoved down my gullet.

I don't like my hops over-sullied. And these folks didn't. Nice Belgianing, smart people.

Grade: B+

So that's the first batch of rare 'n' weird beers. I got a second boxful last night. Haven't opened them yet, so I don't know precisely what sort of crimes against simple Reinheitsgebot brewing they represent. Crabcake ales or squid ink porters or lagers infused with potpourri? No idea.

But one thing's for sure -- they're not going to be Coors or Bud Light or Old Milwaukee's Best or another of their ilk. And that? That makes them delicious.

Sometimes, it's about the small victories. The little things, the minor wins, those brief moments when you can shake your fist in the air and crow, 'Hoho, Universe -- I finally got one!'

Or so I'm told. It's not like I would actually know. When it comes to little things, I'm 0-for-everything. Batting zero. Shutout city.

Every once in a while, it seems as though I could win. I get close. And then the door slams shut, and I'm put back in my place until the next horrific emasculating nightmare.

Take dog poop, for instance. I've been dealing with dog poop for a long time -- just over twelve years now. That's almost as long as I've been dealing with our dog.

(Like, very almost. There was that brief magical period when we had the dog, and we thought, 'Hey, maybe this one just doesn't poop at all. Could it be we dodged the big dog turd bullet altogether?'

And then, two hours later, WHAM! One squat, and the honeymoon was over. Ain't that always the way?)

For most of my poop-scooping experience, I've used bags. Clear open-top plastic bags meant for freezing food or keeping sandwiches fresh. Poor little buggers come off the shelf, thinking they'll be stuffed full of Otter Pops or PB&Js. But no. It's half-digested horse meat and three-day old rawhide passed through a mutt intestine. *bzzzzzzzzzzt!* Thanks for playing!

(At least I'm not the only one who never wins. Keep yer chin up, sammich bags!)

As of about three months ago, though -- just about the time cold weather was setting in -- the paradigm changed. My wife decided, bless her precious little heart, that the 'old bags' just weren't cutting it any more. Suddenly, the plain one-gallon transparent jobbies winked out of vogue, like shoulder pads on sports jackets or movies with Renee Zellweger.

Instead, I was told, we had fresh new fashionable poo receptacles -- little rolls of plastic bags in neon green and pink and orange, tucked into a little holder and designed precisely for the purpose of snatching steaming scat from besmirched sidewalks.

"Life does nothing but get harder and dumber and more impossibly aggravating as you get older. That's just how it is."

Fine, I said. I don't need the big sales pitch. I've used a leaf for the job, when I had to. Hell, I've used a dollar bill. I've had frozen turd bags, rooms full of doo, and sacks of crap steeped like sun tea in the back of my Maxima. It's not art, it's not rocket science -- and if you're asking me to be fashionable while I'm collecting cuckoo canine kaka, then we're all going to be sorely disappointed. Just give me the damned bag and open the door. I've got shit to scoop, lady. Bags is bags.

Or so I thought. Turns out, these bags are not bags. Not always.

No, sometimes these bags are sheets. Little rectangular sheets of plastic that come out of the little holder so tightly squeezed together that the sides don't separate. You can -- sometimes -- twist the edges between your fingers to get the sides to open up, or pick at the rim of the bag for a purchase, but that's about the only way to turn these neon-colored sheets back into the bags they were advertised to me.

And you know what makes them stick more? Cold. Did I mention we started using these in the winter? Yeah. Good times, sunshine. Good times.

Now, all of this was to be expected. Life does nothing but get harder and dumber and more impossibly aggravating as you get older. That's just how it is. And I spent many a frozen fumble-fingered night standing over a fresh heap of mutt dung, fiddling with one of those stupid effing openless bags and cursing whoever turned my wife onto the godforsaken idea in the first place.

(Because I can't curse her directly. She KNOWS.)

Until one night, I won. Accidentally, to be sure -- but I really thought I'd won. I was fiddling and cursing and fumbly-fingering as before, when suddenly the top of the bag ripped. And in that little ragged plastic edge, the two sides. Magically. Came. Apart.

I felt like Columbus discovering some new land he thought was back in the other direction. Or the 'Eureka! guy, with the bathtub thing. Or whats-his-name Dyson, when he first thought of putting his balls into a vacuum machine.

(Oh, you know what I mean. Keep yer dust trap on, sparky.)

So for a week, I won. The dog would skitter to the door for a walk, I'd grab a bag and a leash and lead her out, she'd crap her pooching little brains out, and I'd rip the bag. On purpose. Just rip it halfway to hell, open it up, scoop, dump, and be done. After an entire winter of losing, I'd finally won. I beat those bags. Victory was mine!

That lasted about a day. Soon enough, I found the flaw in my winsome little scheme. Namely, that in the dark in the middle of the night -- which is prime pooping time, if you ask our persnickety-boweled mutt -- there's no way to tell one end of the bag from the other. So soon enough, I was faced with a pile of pup poop, pulled out a bag and ripped the living shit right out of the bottom.

As you may know, this maneuver does not produce a bag. No, sir. Instead, I stood there holding a new hot pink plastic headband -- which is just peachy if a Jane Fonda movie revival were to suddenly break out. But it's a pretty piss-poor tool for removing shit from a sidewalk. And not 'winning'. Not by half.

So now I'm back to scrabbling at the corners of these ridiculous bags, freezing my Dyson balls off trying to find a millimeter of space between the sides of these horked-up pooping bags. I had a solution to the problem, for one brief shining moment. And then it blew up in my face.

Also, it dripped on my shoes. And onto my pants. And I washed my hands for three hours that night, but I could still smell the kibble. Yuck.

So now I've learned my lesson. 'Winning' isn't everything. Or the only thing. Or anything. Those 'small victories' are for other people, in other places, with far more sanity attached to their choice of poop bags. Until I can train the dog to crap directly into a double-handled Hefty, I'm on my own. In the dark. With plastic neon 'sheets'.

I should have known it would end like this. Universe, you got me again.

When you join a new gym -- as I recently did, thanks for your athletic support -- you find yourself thinking about all sorts of new things.

You might wonder whether you're sweating more than anyone else in the room. You may worry that you pedal like a girl on the stationary bike. You could spend an afternoon trying to determine the least 'dirty old man-like' spot to take in a yoga class.

(These are merely examples.

No, you shut up.)

Mostly, though, you'll think about your underpants.

I'm serious. I've belonged to this gym for three weeks. And I've given my undergarments more consideration in the last twenty days than I have in twenty years. It's like I don't even know me any more.

Here's the thing. Most places you go in life, you don't much care about the state of your underwear. If they're on, clean -- or for some people, clean-ish -- and flipped around the right way, that's all you need to know. Most of our unmentionables don't get seen, felt or mentioned throughout the course of our daily lives. Not on the bus. Not at work. And not in the coffee line at Starbucks. We're too civilized for that.

But the gym, now -- the gym is a different animal. There's a locker room there, so you can change into your sweat-stained T-shirt and prissy-pedal your way through a workout. And you're also changing pants, which means exposing your underpants. And that leads to choices. Choices you never thought you'd need to make.

That's what's happened to me. I'm no fashion hound. I get out of bed in the morning, and put on the first pair of jeans and striped rugby I find in the closet -- the way Nature intended. What goes underneath -- boxers, briefs or a ballerina gown -- is usually of little consequence to me, or anyone else.

(Though for the record? It's boxers. Made the move from tighty whities back in college, and never looked back.

To be fair, I actually can't look back, mostly. If I turn around too fast, I could spin out a testicle. These things are unsafe at any speed.)

These days, however, I find myself standing over my dresser with undies drawer drawn, musing my strategy. I miss the good old days -- the straight-shootin', grip-it-and-rip-it times -- when I could grab any old hunk of fabric out of there, toss it around my waist, and get on with the morning. But now? Now that I've joined a gym?

Not so much.

"Everyone in the locker room will laugh and point. Or recoil in horror, and refer me to a good urologist."

Now I have to consider the options. That pair's no good; it's got a hole in the leg. People will think I'm non-ironically ghetto. And those with the weird stain -- which should teach me not to drink chai tea on my couch pantsless on a hot summer night -- those won't do. Everyone in the locker room will laugh and point. Or recoil in horror, and refer me to a good urologist. I don't want any part of that.

Of course, some of the issues are not so cut-and-dried. Or spilled-and-dried, as the case may be. Take my sailboat underpants. I have a pair of boxers, and they're adorned with little sailboats all over. The pants are otherwise fine -- structurally sound, free of blemishes, of approximate size to fulfill their duties -- but there are cute little sailboats tucked all over the print. And I've ruled them out on gym days. I've made the decision that if I wouldn't wear something on my chest at the office, then it's not seeing the light of day on my crotch at the gym, either. That's the rule. I've drawn the line.

Sadly, much of my undercarriage covering wardrobe falls on the other side of that line. Joining 'sailboat boxers' are, in no particular order, 'puppy dog heads', 'smiley faces', 'Professor Utonium action poses' and 'silk Valentine hearts'. And those are just the easy ones.

The ones that keep me up at night -- or rather, standing at my dresser with uncovered junk at seven thirty in the morning -- are the toughies. Like 'football referee calls'. This one pair of boxers is black with little referees all over it making hand signals, and the name of each call -- like 'Offsides' or 'Pass Interference' -- written underneath. It's sports-related. Not too kiddish. So are they gym-worthy?

I look at it this way. Would I want to be in the locker room, mid-change, and have some random guy look at my ass and think 'Illegal Procedure' or 'Roughing the Passer'?

No. No, I emphatically would not. So football motif notwithstanding, these boxers are not in the gym day rotation.

What is in the rotation is the plainest, boringest, most fifties-grandpa-argyle-sock nondescript bunch of plains, plaids and gently paisleyed that you've ever laid eyes on. Because they might actually have eyes laid on them, and that seems like the path of least mortified embarrassment. As usual in life, if it makes me smile, chuckle, or swell with joy, then I'm not bringing it out in public.

And so, I spend more time per week mulling underpants than one man should in a lifetime. But so far, no one's kicked me out of the gym, run my boxers up a flagpole or flicked holy water at my privates to make the horror go away. So I suppose it's going well, for now. At least until I stop in for an impromptu workout on a My Little Pony day.

That's gonna be hawkward.

Sometimes the key to being a husband is realizing that you can't win.

Not to say that you never win. It's just that some situations, maritally speaking, are entirely impossible to navigate. Like, most of the ones that occur while you're conscious and within loud shouting distance of your wife.

Take tomorrow, for instance. Tomorrow, I was scheduled to accompany my lovely wife to a classical music concert in the afternoon. She asked if I'd attend, and I said I would. Most of these concerts, she goes to with a friend of hers -- they make it into a "girls' afternoon out" with dinner or tea or cucumber sandwiches or lingerie pillow fights, or whatever the hell girls do when they're out together.

"Of course, I'd be happy to accompany you to the concert / ballet / formal ball / family reunion / proctology exam, honey -- why, what sort of husband would I be if I weren't thrilled to pink little bits about this electrifying event?"

(Besides brainstorming up ways to make sure the husbands never win. Clearly, that's agenda item number one.)

This time, though, the missus gave me the opportunity to do the right thing -- which involves snoozing next to her in a stuffy concert hall filled with octogenarian viola buffs, apparently -- so I did. Of course, I'd be happy to accompany you to the concert/ballet/formal ball/family reunion/proctology exam, honey -- why, what sort of husband would I be if I weren't thrilled to pink little bits about this electrifying event?

(It's possible I lay it on a little thick sometimes. Just possible.)

Also, I chose my moment wisely. Tomorrow's concert features Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which I don't hate.

(Not like one of those Haydn nightmares -- am I right, fellas? Hoo boy, am I right?)

So I was all prepared -- read: 'steeled' or 'resigned', if you like, married dudes -- to slap on a pair of khakis and a socially acceptable shirt and schlep downtown for a musical tour through the calendar, courtesy of some ginger Italian dude from the 18th century. Because that's how you spend a Sunday afternoon, kids.

Except.

That's not how you spend a Sunday afternoon when your buddy has tickets to the AFC Championship game, one of which has your name on it.

(Provided you have a check to cover the ticket that has his name on it, of course. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or a comp playoff ticket.)

And so, as the schedule turned, I'll be attending Foxboro Stadium tomorrow afternoon, and not Symphony Hall downtown. There'll still be music, but otherwise the two events are pretty dissimilar. There'll be only one season in effect at the game -- low-down ass-cold winter. I'll trade my khakis for two pairs of pants and thermal undercarriage warmers. And while the intermission wine selection is probably better at the concert hall -- who serves shiraz after the wildcard round these days, anyway? -- I'm happy enough to stick with beer, pretzels and the occasional ballpark hoagie.

I should point out here that my invitation to the game was not a surprise, nor an eleventh-hour occurrence. My friend had clearly stated -- and I'd relayed along to the wifely authorities -- that if the Patriots made the AFC title game, my ticket was stamped to watch it. Weeks ago, the possibility was there. Just like weeks ago -- and who can remember which came first, really? -- the Vivaldi plan was established. These were separate events, with separate timelines. None of us realized the schedules would collide as they did; it just happened that way. Pure chance. Circumstance. Dumb luck.

My wife understands this. She doesn't blame me for going to the game. But does that mean I win -- that I get full, or even partial, marriage points for innocently agreeing to go in the first place, though the tempestuous winds of fate cruelly drove me away?

No. I emphatically do not get points -- I'm told, in no uncertain terms -- for this whole debacle, because I secretly didn't want to go to the concert in the first place.

But honey, I did want to go. Honest.

"Oh, suuuuuuure."

Hey, I was planning to go. I can't help the schedule.

"Right. Reeeeeeal lucky for you."

Well, it's Vivaldi. I like Vivaldi. Comparatively.

"Oh, you wouldn't know Vivaldi from a vivisection. Bah!"

But... but...

"Humph."

That's when I know I'm cooked. You get the 'humph', you're done. So I said I was sorry, salvaged what I could, forfeited ALL the points I thought I was earning by agreeing to go... and started picking out Belichick homage hoodies to wear for tomorrow.

Hey, I'm not getting any points this weekend. I can at least stay warm out there.

So my wife will be humming to Vivaldi tomorrow with her usual concert friend, and I'll be cheering in the frigid cold down at Foxboro. That's not how I planned it to happen. It's not how I thought it would happen. But there it is. Football up. Concert down. Points unceremoniously subtracted from the marriage total.

And no winning. Here's hoping that's the only loss I have to sit through in the next twenty-four hours. The very last thing a married guy wants is to find himself wishing he were at the thing that he was getting points for, but got out of for something else that seemed better, and lost all the points in the process. That's the worst.

And if you didn't understand that last bit, go find yourself a sweetheart and tie the knot. It'll clear up soon enough.