Having caught up to the white whale at long last, Moby-Dick’s Captain Ahab dies in a flurry of violence and one last address to a mortal enemy whose existence defines his life right up to its final moments: “To the last I grapple with thee,” he yells. “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
Ahab’s hatred of Moby-Dick is profound. His relationship to an implacable force of nature, a leviathan that represents so much more than a single living creature, is as much a part of him as his own crippled body. Ahab’s last words are powerful testament to this. They’re also echoed in the obituary of a woman who is defined by many things, not least of which being that she absolutely fucking hated Tom Brady.
As The Buffalo News reports, Carole Scarsella’s “family wanted to make a few things clear in the death notice” they wrote in her memory. The obituary tells us that Scarsella loved to read, especially books by Stephen King, that she “loved slot machines and Facebook games,” loved to smoke “millions of cigarettes,” and loved the New York Yankees and LeBron James. For one sentence, though, the notice turns away from love and toward its inverse. “She HATED Tom Brady,” the obituary says, underscoring the point with capital letters.
Obviously Scarsella’s feelings about Brady were an important part of her life. An obituary is never enough to capture the fullness and complexity of a single person, but it’s up to the deceased’s loved ones to use what they know in order to try. Scarsella’s granddaughter understands this. As The Buffalo News writes, she later shared a message saying she misses her grandmother “endlessly” but is “glad she is remembered and the people of Buffalo also share her deep-rooted hatred of Tom Brady.”
“To the last I grapple with thee,” indeed.
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59 Comments
In death, she speaks for us all.
esp. pats fans.
Mmmm your hate is so delicious. More. More.
– Tom Brady has a 30-3 record against the Buffalo Bills. His 30 victories are the most by a quarterback against a single opponent. He has 15 wins at New Era Field, more than any other quarterback — including those who actually played for Buffalo — since 2001. Well at least there is a good reason.
Put an asterisk on it all, given the multiple cheating scandals he and his team has been involved in
There are LOTS of good reasons to hate Brady: hating football in general, hating the Patriots in particular, hating the NFL in whatever’s between “general” & “particular”, hating that Brady kept getting away with cheating, hating Brady for his Trumpiness,….it’s a great list.
You might say it’s the greatest list of all time.
Don’t forget his punchable face. And that he’s the most boring great QB. Even when the Pats win, it’s just boring.
I can’t stand the guy either, but she knows how to take hatred to another level…
Rest in power, legend.
All of this combined is so Buffalo it hurts. Rest in peace madam.
Having grown up in New England in the long, LONG era in which the Patriots couldn’t buy a title, I love that they’re now the fucking Empire and Belichick is its Palpatine.
Oh dear lord. You’re one of them. My brother in law is too.“Something, something well, Patriots sucked in the 80’s but we stood by we are true fans we deserve victory blahblahblah”IT WAS 35 YEARS AGO. 35 YEARS!!!!
Oh no, you mistake me: I couldn’t give less of a shit about the New England Patriots. Ditto football. The change is just funny to me.I have no opinion on what the Patriots “deserve,” or any affinity for Brady/Belichick. Last time I watched a Pats game was when Ty Law was still playing for them, and going generally apeshit with interceptions. As far as watching football went, that one was fun.
OH NO. I’M NOT BUYING IT NO WAY NUH-UH.I’ll be watching you……
Imagine spending this much emotional energy on having opinions about the bread and circuses they throw at us
I like bread quite a bit, but never much enjoyed the circus at all. It is a conundrum, but you lost me (an admittedly low bar).
And conversely I imagine that many acrobats with celiac disease have exactly the opposite opinion.
So true, I never thought of that.
It’s so obvious – you go to the circus and throw the bread to the elephants. Or the emaciated-looking juggler.
He says, unironically, on a website dedicated to pop culture.
There was tons of irony in my voice. You couldn’t hear it?
Haha, must have missed it.
yeah all they had to hold them over was the best basketball team in history, championships-wise. They also have 3 world series and a stanley cup in the last 18 years.
Boston and the greater NE area can literally fuck off for 50 years.
For reference, the song “Back that ass up” by Juvenile was released 20 years ago and it’s still going strong…
Yes, let us back all the ass up!
Honestly it gets a bit tiring having the greatest sports franchise in history as your home team.
I’m an outsider looking in (from Maryland with a close friend in MA) and the one thing that has struck me about Boston sports in general—their fan base feels entitled to indulge both an inferiority (“no one lost more than we did! Remember 1918!!”) complex and a superiority (“we’re the king of the facking world!!”) complex at the same time.
Agreed. And it’s fucking irritating.
I have one of those cable (well, technically a form of IPTV) packages with an “other time zones” option, and all my US East Coast zone major network stations are out of Boston. It’s kind of fun getting this viewpoint on another city’s local stuff, but if there’s one thing I can do without it’s fucking “Patriots All Access” which pre-empts goddamn Wheel & Jeopardy even when there’s no game on, and sometimes when it’s well out of season. I get liking your team, and wanting to watch games when they’re on, but this show is a total waste of airtime and has no right to exist, let alone keep me from watching early-evening game shows in the afternoon from the other end of the continent
not to defend something like this, but ALL local “sports wrap-up” shows are useless and painful to watch. The only way they could be worse is if they brag about how awesome they are but in the next breath jump down the throats of anyone who dares to point out how much they win.
Oh, I don’t disagree; that’s a whole subset of sports media I think would be no loss if it vanished tomorrow. Frankly, shrink it all back to just game coverage while the actual game is on as far as I’m concerned. If fans want to see other blowhard armchair experts drone on and on about team business, player’s careers, league shenanigans and all that ancillary shit, put it all on the sports networks or something. I’m totally understanding when a game goes over and cuts into something I wanted to watch, but totally unsympathetic when they give the aftershow its full run time when they could have shown scheduled programming by cutting it.
This instance just specifically bugs me for pre-empting things I want to see, often in seemingly gratuitous ways (when there’s a no game anywhere in sight, for instance).
Ditto. I don’t care about sports but as a New Englander, I used our teams as my default team. Still growing up I understood they were not a good team. And now we’re the big bad.
That line is actually standard in the obituary template. You’re free to delete it if you want, but no one ever has.
It is times like this I really miss the real Deadspin. What a lady!
Let’s see how long this lasts. Odd how it hasn’t been reported round here….https://www.thewrap.com/defector-subscriptions/
Already subscribed cannot wait until September. Last Christmas really felt incomplete without the haters guide to the William and Sonoma Catalogue.
Did Magary do one over at Vice this Christmas? I know they’ve been running Funbag since Deadspin got Herbinated.
I look around Christmas time and did not find it.
Is it this one?https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjd4k3/the-2019-haters-guide-to-the-williams-sonoma-catalogEither way, it’s a good one.
We’ll seeing as she is also a Stephen King fan, I’d say Tom Brady watch out.
I’m not sure about Brady and the Pats but King (from Maine) is a devoted Red Sox fan so I assume he has an affinity for the other NE teams as well.And man, I get that Buffalo doesn’t have MLB and NBA teams of its own, but the Yankees and LeBron? GTFO with that bandwagon crap.
You and me both, sister.Wait, who are we mad at again? I smoked a million cigarettes, what do you want from me?
A life well-lived.
my obituary will have a line about how Tony Romo is the worst announcer in NFL history and all of you who liked him are mouth-breathing idiots
I kinda hope by the time I die we can somehow post video clips for our obituaries because I kinda always wanted to go out with this
I was once quitting a job and my boss asked if I would like to say why at our last department meeting; I was going back to school, but I figured I’d plagiarize Bender and say, “I’m sick of this building and everyone in it.”
I thought it was a reasonably funny joke, but I was unnerved by how many people came up to me later to thank me for saying what they wanted to.ETA: I just looked it up, and I’m deeply ashamed that I got it slightly wrong all those years ago.
Tom Brady, worse than Hitler. . .at cheating in Superbowls.
Are we not doing spoiler alerts? I mean, right there in the first paragraph…
Ahh, one of the very few hatreds that are reasonable and healthy to have.
Question; is it really worth hating this guy so much?
Worth four posthumous words? Easily.
This is nearly as peak buffalo as that video of a dude eating his ladies ass at a Bill’s tailgate party in freezing temps.
Who is Tom Brady and why do I also hate him even though I had to ask that question?
i feel bad for her family. But this is tremendous content.
People “enter into rest” now? How stupid will the euphemisms get?
Now? I’m an old boomer and I have heard that my whole life.
Ah well, a first for me.Still stupid. People die. Perfectly cromulent word that is clear to all.
As a Patriots fan, I just have one thing to say: I can’t wait to see how well Cam Newton does and am glad he’s a Patriot.