It's fourth block, and with about half of my students at the Phillies' victory parade in the city, I'm sitting here in a half-empty classroom writing. I have been cheering the Phillies on throughout the Series, and I made sure to go into town right after they won to at least drink deeply the mania Philadelphians have felt in the wake of the team's slightly improbable win. I saw young men and women kissing each other like strangers on V-J Day. I also saw a man climb a lamppost, only to have his pants slip to his ankles in the process. I saw people queuing up to climb atop bus shelters, trampling them down by doing so. Someone in an Easter bunny outfit was dancing around on someone's shoulders. Innocent vegetation and landscaping on Broad Street were pulled from their roots and paraded around the streets like war booty. For some mysterious reason someone carried a floor lamp around, its chord trailing behind, as if it were torch. The lampshade wobbled ominously.
After living here for a decade and a half, I still don't call Philly teams my favorite. I would have been happier if the Mets had lived up to their potential and payroll the way the less salaried Phillies did. But still, the Phillies are a team with a 45 year-old starting pitcher, with largely homegrown talent and no free agent bigwigs (minus the peerless Brad Lidge). They are, in other words, extremely likable. Can you name a team of professional athletes that qualifies for that description? Keep thinking. The Phils are a bunch of nice guys, finishing first. But I would have been happier with Johan Santana, Carlos Delgado, and their expensive contemporaries doing the same.
The Mets did once in my lifetime, when the 1986 team managed somehow to escape ignominy by allowing the Red Sox to practice a calamity on themselves. It was an beautiful, awful, terrible thing to watch. My parents went to bed for the final inning of Game Six, fully anticipating that I would report to them that the Red Sox won. They gave up. As for me, I wanted to stay up, with tears in my eyes, watching the Sox win because I felt that it was an historic moment. I was so disappointed. How could the Mets lose to the Red Sox, a team inferior to them in every category? And then, it happened. And when it happened, I knew I had to let Mom and Dad know, but in truth I didn't have the words. I didn't have the schema. I was overwhelmed and humbled by life's unselfconscious penchant for shocking both its winners and losers alike. The Mets won Game Six by virtue of a wild pitch and a missed Mookie Wilson grounder that should have been an easy out. I didn't know why the gods, for once, picked my team to enjoy the fruits of others' misfortunes. Why? Then the Mets won Game Seven. Why? Why me? Why was I so lucky?
I haven't had occasion to ask the same question since. The Jets were 15 football minutes away from the Super Bowl (one that they would have won) against the Falcons in January 1999 had it not been for the Broncos' Terrell Davis scoring 12 touchdowns in the fourth quarter of the AFC Title Game. It's not the same thing. Not even close. Having a beloved team win a championship is a life-changing experience. Don't ask a Yankees fan about it, at least maybe not 10 trophy-less seasons under the the current spawn of Steinbrenner have passed. How did Sox fans feel after 2004? How did NY Giants fans feel after 1986? I remember a sign held aloft by a Giants fan right after Super Bowl XXI in Pasadena that read, "Dad, Your Dream Came True." It wasn't just the sign holder's own dream, but a generation's dream. That's how it feels. It feels that big. When the Mets won the 1986 World Series, it felt like that. Like my dream came true. And my Mom's. And my grandmother's. It was freakin' huge.
But in 1986 I wasn't quite ready for it. It was just too overwhelming. It had to mean something that the Mets, a baseball team that I had followed with almost as much zeal as I had the Jets, were champions of their sport. It could have meant that my life was looking appreciatively better, but I chose instead to read Bill Buckner's misfortune as a foreshadowing of my own. Surely the gods (or God) looked upon the Mets victory as barter for something calamitous in return. I remember how Gorbachev and Reagan left their summit in Reykjavik unhappily in October, and I took the confluence of a potential world conflict and a World Series to be a sign. If the Mets win, the world will be vaporized in a nuclear war. Yeah. There would be no other way. So the happy championship of my life turned into a nightmare of assured doom. Instead of the metaphorical, "Now I can die happy," it was "OK. So this is it. Now I'm going to die."
This is what obsessive fandom does. It enervates your spirit. It takes years off your life. The numbnuts who trashed Broad Street Wednesday night weren't real fans. The guys who either scaled the lampposts or who carried the lamp weren't interested in baseball. The true Phillies fans were probably too exhausted to even leave their house. A parade or a riot are not enough to exercise the full feelings of fulfillment, so why bother going out?
I got over my fear of instant death. Nuclear war was probably not contingent upon Bill Buckner's sore ankles or Ray Knight's World Series exploits. But luckily the formal feeling of joy didn't leave me for years and years. A sign hung over the Long Island Expressway leading up to Shea Stadium that read "New York Mets 1986 World Series Champions." It hung there after an incongruous number of years passed. But that hardly mattered. It hung in my heart a similarly ridiculous period. So should it for the fans of the Fightins.
One of my colleagues suggested that if the Jets ever won the Super Bowl I would have the right to go to New York and quiz the lamppost jumpers about their own credibility. He is a Philadelphia purist, which means that he hates New York, but I suppose a New York Jets purist is better than a bandwagoneer. Plus, I'm not a Giants fan. "You would have every right," he said, "to ask as many factual questions about Jets history as need be in order to figure out who did and who did not deserve the honor to cheer on the Jets' victory parade."
"Can you name the backfield the Jets brought into Miami to play the unbeaten Dolphins in 1972?" *
"I wasn't even born yet."
"That's not relevant. Next question..."
The fact that we will probably not need to worry about such an event any time immediately soon is irrelevant, I suppose. Being a true fan means you always dread the unthinkable, you always harbor the dreams of the impossible. Everywhere people tell you, "Be realistic," "Be reasonable." I don't go to work in skin-tight lemon yellow denim pants. I am reasonable. But I believe the Jets will someday hoist the trophy again. I have my limits.
* John Riggins, Emerson Boozer, Cliff McClain, Hank Bjorklund, Steve Harkey
Jumat, 31 Oktober 2008
Rabu, 29 Oktober 2008
Shea Stadium Being Demolished
It is an hour and counting to the Phillies' renewed Game Five with the Rays of St. Petersburg, and all I can say is that if anyone doubts the cosmic energy of fandom, he needs only sit among Philadelphians this week to feel their bipolar energy. Up three games to one, many were planning their day off to attend the victory rally. Stymied by the wind and cold rain Monday night, many began to imagine the hand of God working through Bud Selig's machinations against them. One friend of mine has invoked the Fog Bowl throughout all of this, pointing out that extreme weather is a reasonable last resort for the powers that be - always so long as Philly loses the big one. Whatever. I hope they win. It would be a nice place to live in for a while. No one is suggesting that Philadelphians will be any happier or nicer for real, but it would be nice if they had an excuse to pretend to act that way.
Meanwhile, I found myself publicly shedding a tear at work when I opened a cautionary e-mail from my brother with a link to the first videos I've seen of Shea Stadium being taken apart piece by piece. I pass this lugubrious gift onto you. I guess I've said everything I've needed to about this, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the scoreboard go down was that Shea was where my Dad took my to my first sporting event - the Jets-Colts home game of 1975. I still called him "Daddy" back then. I was six.
So while watching the scoreboard get pulled down, I'll be damned if I didn't just plain old get weepy, in front of adult people no less. Women are good for when you get weepy because they get weepy with you, and it was mostly my female colleagues around me at that point. One of them pointed out that at least the Vet went down in South Philly in one fell swoop. That was easier to endure. Now you see it, now it's an instant memory. It sat as a massive, formless pile of gnarled concrete wire and rubble for a long time after the Citizens Bank Park opened next door. As such, it didn't even look familiar anymore. Just a pile, and though I never had much of the same attachment that others have around here for the old concrete serving dish that was Veterans Stadium (a stadium that never got around to having a corporate re-naming, thank God) I think Shea reduced instantly to a pile of rubble would have been easier to handle. Like rubble, memory is formless, and rather beautiful that way, I think. Seeing images of Shea in its increasingly skeletal stages of decay and death is, as Charlie pointed out to me, very hard to watch. So, steady, old friend. It's almost over. It's almost done. You'll be at peace soon.
Meanwhile, I found myself publicly shedding a tear at work when I opened a cautionary e-mail from my brother with a link to the first videos I've seen of Shea Stadium being taken apart piece by piece. I pass this lugubrious gift onto you. I guess I've said everything I've needed to about this, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the scoreboard go down was that Shea was where my Dad took my to my first sporting event - the Jets-Colts home game of 1975. I still called him "Daddy" back then. I was six.
So while watching the scoreboard get pulled down, I'll be damned if I didn't just plain old get weepy, in front of adult people no less. Women are good for when you get weepy because they get weepy with you, and it was mostly my female colleagues around me at that point. One of them pointed out that at least the Vet went down in South Philly in one fell swoop. That was easier to endure. Now you see it, now it's an instant memory. It sat as a massive, formless pile of gnarled concrete wire and rubble for a long time after the Citizens Bank Park opened next door. As such, it didn't even look familiar anymore. Just a pile, and though I never had much of the same attachment that others have around here for the old concrete serving dish that was Veterans Stadium (a stadium that never got around to having a corporate re-naming, thank God) I think Shea reduced instantly to a pile of rubble would have been easier to handle. Like rubble, memory is formless, and rather beautiful that way, I think. Seeing images of Shea in its increasingly skeletal stages of decay and death is, as Charlie pointed out to me, very hard to watch. So, steady, old friend. It's almost over. It's almost done. You'll be at peace soon.
Minggu, 26 Oktober 2008
Jets 28 Chiefs 24
Congregation gathers down by the riverside
Preacher stands with his Bible, groom stands waitin' for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly.
Wonderin' where can his baby be.
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.
- Boss, "Reason to Believe", Nebraska
What are three things that are interesting to Jets fans about this picture? One, the irony in this week's win of Leon Washington scoring the most exciting play for an offense lead by the most exciting quarterback in football history. Two, Joe Klecko's number in the background reminding us that, though he appears on the nominating list of defensive lineman eligible for the Hall of Fame, he has about as much chance as Ken Anderson does at being named a Hall of Fame quarterback. Third, those boots, those belts...our cheerleaders look like Catwoman's henchgirls from the Batman of Adam West. "Ladies," says he, "I know for a fact that it's not too late to turn away from this life of depravity and crime."
Another week, another disappointing Jets performance, albeit this time a win. For most of the game, the Jets' offense was outshined by the #29 offense in the NFL. All three of Brett Favre's interceptions eventually (if not directly) lead to Chief scores, so I guess he's not really NFL's top rated passer anymore. He looked like Joe Namath from the early 70's, only probably a little more reliable. Laverneus Coles' game-winning catch was nothing short of magic. At long last, the general Coles-Favre misunderstanding seems at a close. But make no mistake. Favre was frightening today, and not in a good way. Sure, every time he passed today, the computer screen read "FAVRE short pass to...," or "FAVRE pass short to...," but still he threw two of three interceptions as a result of just basically chucking the ball into the air with that strange nihilistic flair for which he is so rightly infamous. Perhaps he's still unaccustomed to an offense scheme that runs counter to his basic instincts, or maybe he's just batshit crazy. Chad Pennington, on the other hand, had as fine a day as he could expect in Miami. He is no longer a Jet. After Favre's interception inside the Chiefs' red zone was returned by for a 91 yard touchdown by Brandon Flowers, my wife said, "Well, at least Favre really is a Jet now."
Still, a win's a win. The Lions haven't gotten there yet. Neither have the Bengals. At the beginning of the season, one might have seen games against the Raiders and the Chiefs as wins, easy or no. This did not entirely prove to be the case, and we are left with the usual feelings of unease as another game crawls to its uncertain end. Though the Bills lost to the Dolphins, this just signals the general chaos of our division. The AFC East, once the feeding ground of Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak, is now the home of football's Moe, Larry, Curly and Schemp, all of whom behave as if they are reacting to just another eye jab from just another Stooge. Speaking of slapstick, one of my favorite images from the Chiefs game is of a Favre pass just barely making into Leon Washington's hands after nearly doinking the ducking Alan Facena in the head. And how many times can #75 and #78 be activated as receivers on pass plays? Many, many times, apparently. I'm not altogether sure if anyone was fooled by Robert Turner and Wayne Hunter as receivers, but they sound like a pair, don't they? Tonight on Turner and Hunter, the boys get into a scrape with the precinct captain over "excessive use of force." Next week, New York's toughest cops pose as wide receivers...
And may I here offer my special pleasure taken at the idea of beating Herman Edwards yet again, the coach who was so eager to leave the Jets after 2005? He was so eager to leave the largest football market in America, and (here we sound like a spurned relative) where did it get him? He will be fired at the end of the year. He is dead to me. Which begs me to ask the question...
Who else is DEAD TO ME?
This is just a cheap rip-off of everyone else's rip-off of Stephen Colbert, but since no one reads this blog anyway, it can hardly matter. We're just going to keep rolling that boulder uphill. I mean it's not like it's ever going to roll down over me. It's just a continuous, endless, infinite uphill climb. This is Gang Green Land. I can't go through a list without going off the NFL map, so obviously let's just say Parcells and Belichick are the devil, Jerry Jones is a medicine show huckster fraud, and that despite the universal NFL hate he's gotten outside of Denver over the years, it actually took John Elway's cheesy public endorsement of John McCain in Colorado this week to finally render him dead to me. Blah, blah, blah. The Jetskins are dead to me. The NYT sports section is dead to me after being on notice for a long time. I'm still pissed at Al Groh. I still don't know why Weeb Ewbank thought Charley Winner made a better coach than Chuck Knox in 1973. Why won't the Hall of Fame nominating committee put Winston Hill's name forward? When are they going to vote in Joe Klecko, those bastards? Doesn't anyone who plays professional football vote vaguely left of center? What's the matter with all of these people? I'm going to take down some names here. Some of you people are in some serious @#$%ing trouble.
There. That's another blog entry shot to hell. Ex-Jet Jonathan Vilma proved why the Jets deserve to be dead to me. He proved his worth in a game-saving interception for the Saints in London this past weekend. But here's a great piece about an American going abroad to watch English footie over there - specifically a match involving my new favorite footie team, the Blues, in Birmingham, England (pronounced BEH-ming goom).
Preacher stands with his Bible, groom stands waitin' for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly.
Wonderin' where can his baby be.
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.
- Boss, "Reason to Believe", Nebraska
What are three things that are interesting to Jets fans about this picture? One, the irony in this week's win of Leon Washington scoring the most exciting play for an offense lead by the most exciting quarterback in football history. Two, Joe Klecko's number in the background reminding us that, though he appears on the nominating list of defensive lineman eligible for the Hall of Fame, he has about as much chance as Ken Anderson does at being named a Hall of Fame quarterback. Third, those boots, those belts...our cheerleaders look like Catwoman's henchgirls from the Batman of Adam West. "Ladies," says he, "I know for a fact that it's not too late to turn away from this life of depravity and crime."
Another week, another disappointing Jets performance, albeit this time a win. For most of the game, the Jets' offense was outshined by the #29 offense in the NFL. All three of Brett Favre's interceptions eventually (if not directly) lead to Chief scores, so I guess he's not really NFL's top rated passer anymore. He looked like Joe Namath from the early 70's, only probably a little more reliable. Laverneus Coles' game-winning catch was nothing short of magic. At long last, the general Coles-Favre misunderstanding seems at a close. But make no mistake. Favre was frightening today, and not in a good way. Sure, every time he passed today, the computer screen read "FAVRE short pass to...," or "FAVRE pass short to...," but still he threw two of three interceptions as a result of just basically chucking the ball into the air with that strange nihilistic flair for which he is so rightly infamous. Perhaps he's still unaccustomed to an offense scheme that runs counter to his basic instincts, or maybe he's just batshit crazy. Chad Pennington, on the other hand, had as fine a day as he could expect in Miami. He is no longer a Jet. After Favre's interception inside the Chiefs' red zone was returned by for a 91 yard touchdown by Brandon Flowers, my wife said, "Well, at least Favre really is a Jet now."
Still, a win's a win. The Lions haven't gotten there yet. Neither have the Bengals. At the beginning of the season, one might have seen games against the Raiders and the Chiefs as wins, easy or no. This did not entirely prove to be the case, and we are left with the usual feelings of unease as another game crawls to its uncertain end. Though the Bills lost to the Dolphins, this just signals the general chaos of our division. The AFC East, once the feeding ground of Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak, is now the home of football's Moe, Larry, Curly and Schemp, all of whom behave as if they are reacting to just another eye jab from just another Stooge. Speaking of slapstick, one of my favorite images from the Chiefs game is of a Favre pass just barely making into Leon Washington's hands after nearly doinking the ducking Alan Facena in the head. And how many times can #75 and #78 be activated as receivers on pass plays? Many, many times, apparently. I'm not altogether sure if anyone was fooled by Robert Turner and Wayne Hunter as receivers, but they sound like a pair, don't they? Tonight on Turner and Hunter, the boys get into a scrape with the precinct captain over "excessive use of force." Next week, New York's toughest cops pose as wide receivers...
And may I here offer my special pleasure taken at the idea of beating Herman Edwards yet again, the coach who was so eager to leave the Jets after 2005? He was so eager to leave the largest football market in America, and (here we sound like a spurned relative) where did it get him? He will be fired at the end of the year. He is dead to me. Which begs me to ask the question...
Who else is DEAD TO ME?
This is just a cheap rip-off of everyone else's rip-off of Stephen Colbert, but since no one reads this blog anyway, it can hardly matter. We're just going to keep rolling that boulder uphill. I mean it's not like it's ever going to roll down over me. It's just a continuous, endless, infinite uphill climb. This is Gang Green Land. I can't go through a list without going off the NFL map, so obviously let's just say Parcells and Belichick are the devil, Jerry Jones is a medicine show huckster fraud, and that despite the universal NFL hate he's gotten outside of Denver over the years, it actually took John Elway's cheesy public endorsement of John McCain in Colorado this week to finally render him dead to me. Blah, blah, blah. The Jetskins are dead to me. The NYT sports section is dead to me after being on notice for a long time. I'm still pissed at Al Groh. I still don't know why Weeb Ewbank thought Charley Winner made a better coach than Chuck Knox in 1973. Why won't the Hall of Fame nominating committee put Winston Hill's name forward? When are they going to vote in Joe Klecko, those bastards? Doesn't anyone who plays professional football vote vaguely left of center? What's the matter with all of these people? I'm going to take down some names here. Some of you people are in some serious @#$%ing trouble.
There. That's another blog entry shot to hell. Ex-Jet Jonathan Vilma proved why the Jets deserve to be dead to me. He proved his worth in a game-saving interception for the Saints in London this past weekend. But here's a great piece about an American going abroad to watch English footie over there - specifically a match involving my new favorite footie team, the Blues, in Birmingham, England (pronounced BEH-ming goom).
Sabtu, 25 Oktober 2008
Jumat, 24 Oktober 2008
The Reason for the Season
I've lived in Philadelphia for 16 years, and in all that time, a home team has gone to a championship series five times, always without success. The Flyers went to the Stanley Cup in 1997 and promptly got swept by Detroit. The Sixers played brilliantly against the Lakers in game one of the 2001 NBA Finals, only then to lose four in a row. The Eagles nearly beat Those of Whom We Do Not Speak in Super Bowl something-or-other in 2004, and of course there were the rip-snortin' Phillies of 1993 who won the pennant and were undone by Joe Carter's home run. When they've been in a position to win I have always rooted for the home team, which sometimes confuses natives who look at a native New Yorker as though he were a Bolshevik at a square dance. An Eagles-Jets Super Bowl is not bound to happen any time soon, so I'm in the clear, I guess. Above all, through their good years and bad, I have grown very found of the Fightin' Phils, and their current World Series against the Rays has me too distracted to write of late.
There's no doubt about it; sports brings people together. It's extraordinary, but Philadelphia has been a genuinely pleasant city of late. This morning, I awoke to an odd, pervasive odor. What was it? A house fire? A blocked chimney? Actually, it was a gagging, residual cloud of smoke from a forest fire in nearby South Jersey. It was disturbing. But you wouldn't have known it from the smiling faces all around. As Jason Robards' character in A Thousand Clowns says, the saddest sight to see in the world is people going to work in the morning. Even worse are Philly working people, arguably among the nation's grumpiest. So here they are - Philadelphians - choked by smoke, living in a city that sees some of the nation's worst gun violence, living in a country that may well be crippled by an economic collapse. And they couldn't be happier. The Phillies are in the World Series.
And they're underdogs. Has euphoria among people here blinded them to the fact that in this Series the Phils are playing like the 2008 Mets, like a team whose specialty is leaving men on base? The Rays are certainly playing like the Mets of 1969, whose specialties were spectacular fielding, clutch hitting, intimidating pitching and unflappable, unselfconscious determination. No, I think the natives here know exactly what's going to happen. Many mention it with a smile or a wink like some of the Republicans I work with whose candidate would seem to be poised for defeat in November (from their wink to God's eyes). We're going to lose. It's an expression of comprehension laced with the slightest drab of hope. But they're not clueless.
So what's preventing Philadelphians from collapsing into their characteristic Mass of nihilistic despair? They're just happy, I guess, or at least they're telling themselves they're happy, which is sometimes the same thing. And this is what following and loving a team can do. You follow the outcome of your favorites whom you love as if they were related to you, and yet there is nothing you can do to improve their chances. This can be simultaneously comforting and discomforting, but that's a universal human reaction to fandom too complex to discuss here. The fact is that their team is in the big one, and if Philadelphians' puffy grumpiness is actually a lacquer that covers a fragile ego, then their euphoria is rooted in a rare, authentic pride. And this is true whether we are speaking of day-to-day baseball fans or not. Among my less fervent colleagues and friends who suddenly find themselves Phillies fans, the Series is at least enabling them to think about something other than the dissatisfaction they feel with their jobs, their home lives, their fragile sense of well-being. At the very least, these two weeks in the World Series defy the existential horror found in the saddest sight in the world. As for my grumpier colleagues and friends who take no pleasure in the Phillies this week, I ask that they consider that this is exactly why people are fanatical about their teams to begin with. It's more than just a hobby. It's a key to psychic survival.
There's no doubt about it; sports brings people together. It's extraordinary, but Philadelphia has been a genuinely pleasant city of late. This morning, I awoke to an odd, pervasive odor. What was it? A house fire? A blocked chimney? Actually, it was a gagging, residual cloud of smoke from a forest fire in nearby South Jersey. It was disturbing. But you wouldn't have known it from the smiling faces all around. As Jason Robards' character in A Thousand Clowns says, the saddest sight to see in the world is people going to work in the morning. Even worse are Philly working people, arguably among the nation's grumpiest. So here they are - Philadelphians - choked by smoke, living in a city that sees some of the nation's worst gun violence, living in a country that may well be crippled by an economic collapse. And they couldn't be happier. The Phillies are in the World Series.
And they're underdogs. Has euphoria among people here blinded them to the fact that in this Series the Phils are playing like the 2008 Mets, like a team whose specialty is leaving men on base? The Rays are certainly playing like the Mets of 1969, whose specialties were spectacular fielding, clutch hitting, intimidating pitching and unflappable, unselfconscious determination. No, I think the natives here know exactly what's going to happen. Many mention it with a smile or a wink like some of the Republicans I work with whose candidate would seem to be poised for defeat in November (from their wink to God's eyes). We're going to lose. It's an expression of comprehension laced with the slightest drab of hope. But they're not clueless.
So what's preventing Philadelphians from collapsing into their characteristic Mass of nihilistic despair? They're just happy, I guess, or at least they're telling themselves they're happy, which is sometimes the same thing. And this is what following and loving a team can do. You follow the outcome of your favorites whom you love as if they were related to you, and yet there is nothing you can do to improve their chances. This can be simultaneously comforting and discomforting, but that's a universal human reaction to fandom too complex to discuss here. The fact is that their team is in the big one, and if Philadelphians' puffy grumpiness is actually a lacquer that covers a fragile ego, then their euphoria is rooted in a rare, authentic pride. And this is true whether we are speaking of day-to-day baseball fans or not. Among my less fervent colleagues and friends who suddenly find themselves Phillies fans, the Series is at least enabling them to think about something other than the dissatisfaction they feel with their jobs, their home lives, their fragile sense of well-being. At the very least, these two weeks in the World Series defy the existential horror found in the saddest sight in the world. As for my grumpier colleagues and friends who take no pleasure in the Phillies this week, I ask that they consider that this is exactly why people are fanatical about their teams to begin with. It's more than just a hobby. It's a key to psychic survival.
Minggu, 19 Oktober 2008
Raiders 16 Jets 13 (OT)
Well, that was hideous. Not since the "Heidi" game of almost 40 years ago has a Jets visit to Alameda County been so marred by penalties. But at least back then two superior teams played that late afternoon. One could hardly say that about today's Jets-Raiders game. Despite Thomas Jones' efforts, the Jets offense couldn't get the big plays. Despite meeting the NFL's 25th overall defense, Brett Favre simply could not find open receivers. I am grateful that the Jets made it to overtime with Jay Feely's kick, but I felt all throughout that they really didn't want to win all that much. Andy Reid's Eagles sometimes get like that, and when they do they are among the most frustrating and dull teams to watch in professional sports. The Jets displayed a similar lifelessness today.
I'm grateful that they did not have to go down as one of two teams to have that third quantity added to their season record. It's been many years since a team finished the season with a tie, and in this era, it's a slightly ignominious distinction. This was a game the Jets should not have lost, but for the sake of each club's long legacies, I'm glad one will go down a winner and the other a loser - even though each played with an "L" taped to their foreheads. Under their helmets, I guess. Ugh. This is what uninspiring football does to a guy. Bring in Delbart Mann and his Alpine heroine, for God's sake.
I'm grateful that they did not have to go down as one of two teams to have that third quantity added to their season record. It's been many years since a team finished the season with a tie, and in this era, it's a slightly ignominious distinction. This was a game the Jets should not have lost, but for the sake of each club's long legacies, I'm glad one will go down a winner and the other a loser - even though each played with an "L" taped to their foreheads. Under their helmets, I guess. Ugh. This is what uninspiring football does to a guy. Bring in Delbart Mann and his Alpine heroine, for God's sake.
Sabtu, 18 Oktober 2008
A Day in the Jets Fan's Life - 10/18/76
It was a clear, cool autumn night, and I had to go to bed. I had bathed, brushed my teeth and combed my clean hair into a straight mop, the kind that all the rest of the kids in second grade had. I was hoping that there would be some exception made for me, that tonight would be different. But Dad's firm voice from the kitchen said otherwise. To bed. Where was the justice? This was a rare occasion, a nationally televised event. It wasn't a moon landing. The Jets were on Monday Night Football.
There was something about the way Dad told you to go to bed. He never yelled - ever, really. He spoke and stared with a determined, somewhat amused expression. The more I protested, the more he offered a determined gesture to the stairs. The grim reality of the day's end could not be avoided. I use these mannerisms myself today as I persuade reluctant students to come to homeroom instead of standing around the hallway, blocking the flow of traffic. But Dad also knew that the Jets were never going to beat the Patriots. This was 1976. The Jets were experiencing one of their lowest performances in franchise history, while the Patriots were experiencing their best. Sort of like last year. He was saving me from the worst drubbing the Jets had received since 1971.
Did Dad ever wonder if I would wake up the next morning as some kind of changeling finally capable of hitting a fastball, capable of adding three digit numbers, capable of mastering the art of tying together newspapers in the garage without all the sturm und drang with which I usually applied myself to chores around the house? It's not as if the Jets were going to exceed anyone's basic expectations. This was a game where Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan gained 103 yards against the Jets defense, including a 41 yard sprint in the first half for a touchdown. He recovered a fumble by his offense for a touchdown that made it 27-0 in the third quarter. Clark Gaines would score a late touchdown. The Jets would lose by a final tally of 34 points.
I never learned to hit a fastball. I learned that the best way to collect the newspapers was to tie them into smaller piles, but only after reading as much as I could of them there, sitting in the garage, next to the unused twine. And I simply came to a point, too, where I accepted that my father's strength for Math was not my own. My wife takes care of our bills, and, at present, I do not have an adequate sense of my money's status in a sinking economy, except that I know that I had no real money to lose in the first place. Dad came to accept nearly everything I turned into because that is essentially his way. For themselves, the Jets have never really outgrown their role as the overrun underdog. It has been their way, even in the greatest triumphs. It will likely always be thus. Though the lessons from my life's pursuits and disciplines have sometimes eluded me over time, I know that being a Jets fan, ironically, has permanently granted me my father's gift for patience and acceptance. There is no other way.
There was something about the way Dad told you to go to bed. He never yelled - ever, really. He spoke and stared with a determined, somewhat amused expression. The more I protested, the more he offered a determined gesture to the stairs. The grim reality of the day's end could not be avoided. I use these mannerisms myself today as I persuade reluctant students to come to homeroom instead of standing around the hallway, blocking the flow of traffic. But Dad also knew that the Jets were never going to beat the Patriots. This was 1976. The Jets were experiencing one of their lowest performances in franchise history, while the Patriots were experiencing their best. Sort of like last year. He was saving me from the worst drubbing the Jets had received since 1971.
Did Dad ever wonder if I would wake up the next morning as some kind of changeling finally capable of hitting a fastball, capable of adding three digit numbers, capable of mastering the art of tying together newspapers in the garage without all the sturm und drang with which I usually applied myself to chores around the house? It's not as if the Jets were going to exceed anyone's basic expectations. This was a game where Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan gained 103 yards against the Jets defense, including a 41 yard sprint in the first half for a touchdown. He recovered a fumble by his offense for a touchdown that made it 27-0 in the third quarter. Clark Gaines would score a late touchdown. The Jets would lose by a final tally of 34 points.
I never learned to hit a fastball. I learned that the best way to collect the newspapers was to tie them into smaller piles, but only after reading as much as I could of them there, sitting in the garage, next to the unused twine. And I simply came to a point, too, where I accepted that my father's strength for Math was not my own. My wife takes care of our bills, and, at present, I do not have an adequate sense of my money's status in a sinking economy, except that I know that I had no real money to lose in the first place. Dad came to accept nearly everything I turned into because that is essentially his way. For themselves, the Jets have never really outgrown their role as the overrun underdog. It has been their way, even in the greatest triumphs. It will likely always be thus. Though the lessons from my life's pursuits and disciplines have sometimes eluded me over time, I know that being a Jets fan, ironically, has permanently granted me my father's gift for patience and acceptance. There is no other way.
Jumat, 17 Oktober 2008
New York Jets By The Numbers - Updates
We are responsible - by law, actually - for updating the New York Jets By the Numbers already completed: 1-28.
The following are new additions to the NYJBTN:
# 3 - Jay Feeley
# 4 - Brett Favre
# 5 - Brett Ratliff
# 6 - Reggie Hodges
# 9 - Erik Ainge
#14 - Marcus Henry
#17 - David Clowney
#22 - Jesse Chatman and Ty Law
#23 - Hank Poteat
#27 - Abram Elam
Speaking as our franchise's self-appointed, unofficial and purely subjective historian and hopeless fan, I would like to belatedly welcome each of the above to our ongoing list of numbers for professional football's landmark franchises of unrealized high expectation. You could all have gotten a job acting in a soap opera that pays very well (General Hospital or the Dallas Cowboys), but you guys are cast in an endless, four-act, presentational Eugene O'Neill play that no one reads anymore, as performed in a North Central Jersey playhouse. Damn straight.
The following are new additions to the NYJBTN:
# 3 - Jay Feeley
# 4 - Brett Favre
# 5 - Brett Ratliff
# 6 - Reggie Hodges
# 9 - Erik Ainge
#14 - Marcus Henry
#17 - David Clowney
#22 - Jesse Chatman and Ty Law
#23 - Hank Poteat
#27 - Abram Elam
Speaking as our franchise's self-appointed, unofficial and purely subjective historian and hopeless fan, I would like to belatedly welcome each of the above to our ongoing list of numbers for professional football's landmark franchises of unrealized high expectation. You could all have gotten a job acting in a soap opera that pays very well (General Hospital or the Dallas Cowboys), but you guys are cast in an endless, four-act, presentational Eugene O'Neill play that no one reads anymore, as performed in a North Central Jersey playhouse. Damn straight.
Minggu, 12 Oktober 2008
Jets 26 Bengals 14
I love this football season, and not just because the Jets won this week. It's because I have no idea how all this nonsense is going to work out. I can't tell who's going to win what division. Jetskin Pete Kendall tried to run with the ball and fumbled. The Jets are winning in the unconvincing disguise of the New York Titans. The Tennessee Titans are the best team in the AFC. The Lions have a quarterback named Orlovsky. The Bidwell Family Cardinals beat the Jerry Jones Cowboys, and now Tony Romo has a broken finger. The Chargers beat the snot out of the Pats. Heavens to Mergatroid. This - this is what your momma told you a real football season was like.
Of course it helps a lot more if the Jets win, and they did, despite three Favre turnovers. Has Thomas Jones ever scored three touchdowns in a Jets game? TRICK QUESTION! He had two all last year! Abram Elam's excellent tackling yesterday served as reminder that he needs to be placed on the updated list for #27 in the NYJBTN. That's way overdue. And little Hank Poteat needs to be placed somewhere on the list for #23, especially after he enabled the much larger Calvin Pace to recover a fumble yesterday. It's nice to celebrate the little things. I'm not sure that the Jets did many of the little things all that well, but hey, they won, which is more than New England did. Did I mention that The Ones Of Whom We Do Not Speak got blown out as badly as the Jets did against the Chargers? Well, duly noted.
I have to say that following a Jets game online is a strange experience. It's like reading a game through distant smoke signals or by getting it ship-to-shore. You must be satisfied with the unpredictable "live" updates, knowing that more recent things have already happened. Plus, it's the Jets, so any kind of insane upending of fortune is possible, and you're just sitting there, waiting to get word of some inevitable tragedy. On this Titanic, the iceberg is on shore. You're much safer on the boat. Never leave the @#$%ing boat.
It's almost as strange as the experience of seeing grown men in my father's generation in the 1970's trying to watch games on their unreliable black and white TV's. Cranky male neighbors with drinking problems, uncles, friends' emotionally unstable fathers from down the road, even my own Dad from time to time would crouch down, looking into the errantly flipping TV screen or the snowy reception, hoping for a stable picture. In the bluish-grayish frame the man sees a representation of all that has gone unsatisfactory in his life; he is able to distinguish an almost perceptibly demonic, taunting smile in the midst of all that fuzzy interruption of an afternoon's respite, and it makes him think of everything in his life that has gone unattended and unrealized. Or maybe it's just that he sees how life has thrown up an obstacle when he's most vulnerable. No matter what his achievements in life, no matter how close to OK things went at work this week, no matter that he traded up for a Chevy Nova this year - he's not going to be able to watch the game on TV today. It makes him absolutely crazy. The worst part, though, is that he can't dodge the feeling it's his own fault. Shit, he says, getting louder to more than just himself now. I shoulda junked this @#$%ing thing last year while they had a goddamn sale at Sears. What was I thinking? And when his vain efforts with the white knob in the back of the RCA yield nothing new, when turning it on and off again doesn't work, he commences to beat the hard plastic TV top as a last resort. It's hard to see it as anything but a gesture of despair. The sound of his fist, pounding on the set's faux wood paneled top, is audible all throughout the house. His words are nearly clouded in the punishing sound of each concussion. What! Was! I! Thinking?!?
Anyway, it was a little like that today, only I have my laptop, and it's borrowed from the school. And when the little transmometer-thingy toward the top of my MacBook screen goes in and out of focus behind the little computer display thingy, signifying that the wireless has temporarily gone out, I feel a little like all those angry, gameless, sorry Dads and men of a Sunday long ago. Their only option was to return to the mundane chores to which they'd been assigned by gender - to leaves, to a garage oil spot, to hedges, gutters, and trees. But then the thingy comes back, the mimed game goes on with slow update after slow update, and I can go on.
And when it was all over, I breathed such an unsatisfactory sigh of relief that my wife dropped her crossword puzzle down just to observe that, "When you find out that the Jets have won, you're like someone who's just been told that he might not die from his cancer." Guilty as charged.
Of course it helps a lot more if the Jets win, and they did, despite three Favre turnovers. Has Thomas Jones ever scored three touchdowns in a Jets game? TRICK QUESTION! He had two all last year! Abram Elam's excellent tackling yesterday served as reminder that he needs to be placed on the updated list for #27 in the NYJBTN. That's way overdue. And little Hank Poteat needs to be placed somewhere on the list for #23, especially after he enabled the much larger Calvin Pace to recover a fumble yesterday. It's nice to celebrate the little things. I'm not sure that the Jets did many of the little things all that well, but hey, they won, which is more than New England did. Did I mention that The Ones Of Whom We Do Not Speak got blown out as badly as the Jets did against the Chargers? Well, duly noted. I have to say that following a Jets game online is a strange experience. It's like reading a game through distant smoke signals or by getting it ship-to-shore. You must be satisfied with the unpredictable "live" updates, knowing that more recent things have already happened. Plus, it's the Jets, so any kind of insane upending of fortune is possible, and you're just sitting there, waiting to get word of some inevitable tragedy. On this Titanic, the iceberg is on shore. You're much safer on the boat. Never leave the @#$%ing boat.
It's almost as strange as the experience of seeing grown men in my father's generation in the 1970's trying to watch games on their unreliable black and white TV's. Cranky male neighbors with drinking problems, uncles, friends' emotionally unstable fathers from down the road, even my own Dad from time to time would crouch down, looking into the errantly flipping TV screen or the snowy reception, hoping for a stable picture. In the bluish-grayish frame the man sees a representation of all that has gone unsatisfactory in his life; he is able to distinguish an almost perceptibly demonic, taunting smile in the midst of all that fuzzy interruption of an afternoon's respite, and it makes him think of everything in his life that has gone unattended and unrealized. Or maybe it's just that he sees how life has thrown up an obstacle when he's most vulnerable. No matter what his achievements in life, no matter how close to OK things went at work this week, no matter that he traded up for a Chevy Nova this year - he's not going to be able to watch the game on TV today. It makes him absolutely crazy. The worst part, though, is that he can't dodge the feeling it's his own fault. Shit, he says, getting louder to more than just himself now. I shoulda junked this @#$%ing thing last year while they had a goddamn sale at Sears. What was I thinking? And when his vain efforts with the white knob in the back of the RCA yield nothing new, when turning it on and off again doesn't work, he commences to beat the hard plastic TV top as a last resort. It's hard to see it as anything but a gesture of despair. The sound of his fist, pounding on the set's faux wood paneled top, is audible all throughout the house. His words are nearly clouded in the punishing sound of each concussion. What! Was! I! Thinking?!?
Anyway, it was a little like that today, only I have my laptop, and it's borrowed from the school. And when the little transmometer-thingy toward the top of my MacBook screen goes in and out of focus behind the little computer display thingy, signifying that the wireless has temporarily gone out, I feel a little like all those angry, gameless, sorry Dads and men of a Sunday long ago. Their only option was to return to the mundane chores to which they'd been assigned by gender - to leaves, to a garage oil spot, to hedges, gutters, and trees. But then the thingy comes back, the mimed game goes on with slow update after slow update, and I can go on.
And when it was all over, I breathed such an unsatisfactory sigh of relief that my wife dropped her crossword puzzle down just to observe that, "When you find out that the Jets have won, you're like someone who's just been told that he might not die from his cancer." Guilty as charged.
Sabtu, 11 Oktober 2008
A Day in The Jets Fan's Life - 10/11/87
OK, it's time to, y'know, continue my personal campaign to make myself sound like the most miserable person on the face of the Earth for being a Jets fan...
But first, I would be remiss if I did not admit to being miserable for lots of other reasons, too. Maybe rooting for the Jets is merely a symptom of a larger predilection for misery I have masochistically enjoyed all my life. It has been the most nourishing feed for the beast, not the root cause. I can't blame it all on the Jets. But sometimes where the Jets' miseries and mine begin and end can be confusing.
Take October 11, for example - technically week six in a 16-game NFL season. On this day in 1987, I experienced a singular day of misery that showed the remarkable interactions between the depression of my own life and the ineptitude of my favorite football team. These were in perfect syncopation on October 11, 1987, when the Jets played the Colts in Indianapolis. My family had moved hundreds of miles south from where we lived in New York, and I had moved further north to New England where I was in my freshman year of college. Most of my days were spent staring into the slate gray of the autumn sky, wondering when the gods would lift me off the ground and hurl me somewhere else, some dark, numb oblivion where I wouldn't feel anything anymore. I guess I was a little suicidal, but maybe not seriously so. I don't know. I studied for my exams. I got good grades. I was miserable.
Everything that I had taken for stability had vanished, minus the fact that there was money there for my tuition, room and board. So I worked hard. I made a few friends, but they looked at me like I was a mangy cat sometimes. They kind of walked around me. Could the simple, evocative routine of following the Jets provide the relief?
No. Because as Fortune would have it, this was the year of the replacement players, the football strike. On the 11th of October, the replacement Jets lost to the replacement Colts 6-0. As an example of maddening futility, you could find no better example than two phony professional teams playing one another under the Hoosier Dome - a ceiling as numbingly white as a New England sky - in front of as many as maybe a couple of hundred human beings.
But on the day of the game I was nursing the very first true hangover of my life, one brought on by my first ever Saturday night binge drinking. I had been an awfully good kid in high school, but now that everyone had left me to my own devices, I finally decided to get really, really drunk for the very first time. Josef from Switzerland, Phil from rural Maryland, and I bought a couple of six packs of Molson and watched the NLCS from San Francisco on the tiny black and white TV propped on a desk chair. I drank a great deal, taking Pepto Bismol as a chaser in anticipation of what I assumed would be a night of intestinal failure, only to wake the next morning with a black tongue. The morning was spent vomiting, begging God for release from this life, with assurances that this was the only time I would ever let this happen to me. Ah, youth.
As I moved in my blanket from toilet to bed, toilet to bed, I finally found some peaceful slumber, the kind where the body is too exhausted even to hurl anything more. When I woke up, Maryland Phil was kind enough to lean over me and give me the Jets score, 6-0.
I spoke to him like the Gipper to Rockne. I mustered the strength to speak my last words:
"What quarter?"
"Quarter?" he asked. "No quarter, man. That's the final score."
Perhaps I was delirious. That was impossible. "Wha...what time is it?" I asked, not comprehending.
"It's dinner time. Me and Joe are going down. It's Cordon Bleu."
But it had been morning only a few minutes ago. Or maybe it had been afternoon. Hadn't it?
"Dude," he offered, trying to speak a measure of reason to the dying, seeming simultaneously amused by my blanched, awful state, "you're still sleeping it off. It's nighttime. It's six o'clock. You want anything from the dining hall?"
But it couldn't be. But it was. Six-nothing. Six o'clock. "Get me a roll, willya?" I said, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. I don't know how they greeted that ridiculous request. They had been kind enough to share the score with me, probably because the only thing they knew about me was that I was a Jets fan, because that was pretty much the only thing anyone could really probably draw out, even with a lot of Molson in me. But how else was I to respond to the unfamiliarity of losing a day in the wake of a bender? How else could I respond to the results of what was probably a crushingly dull scab game?
A week later, the Stock Market would crash, but on October 11, 1987, I had missed Mass for the first time in my life and, even more, missed following a Jets game for the first time in my life. I had missed lunch. And aside from following the Jets, I had found a new hobby. Oh brave new world...
****
One final note - on October 11, 1992, the Jets lost to the Colts in the Hoosier Dome by an improved score of 6-3. There were no scabs or replacements. Just bad, bad, bad football. I was living in an unfamiliar city, drunk, unhappy, isolated and alone...
Well, you get the idea.
But first, I would be remiss if I did not admit to being miserable for lots of other reasons, too. Maybe rooting for the Jets is merely a symptom of a larger predilection for misery I have masochistically enjoyed all my life. It has been the most nourishing feed for the beast, not the root cause. I can't blame it all on the Jets. But sometimes where the Jets' miseries and mine begin and end can be confusing.
Take October 11, for example - technically week six in a 16-game NFL season. On this day in 1987, I experienced a singular day of misery that showed the remarkable interactions between the depression of my own life and the ineptitude of my favorite football team. These were in perfect syncopation on October 11, 1987, when the Jets played the Colts in Indianapolis. My family had moved hundreds of miles south from where we lived in New York, and I had moved further north to New England where I was in my freshman year of college. Most of my days were spent staring into the slate gray of the autumn sky, wondering when the gods would lift me off the ground and hurl me somewhere else, some dark, numb oblivion where I wouldn't feel anything anymore. I guess I was a little suicidal, but maybe not seriously so. I don't know. I studied for my exams. I got good grades. I was miserable.
Everything that I had taken for stability had vanished, minus the fact that there was money there for my tuition, room and board. So I worked hard. I made a few friends, but they looked at me like I was a mangy cat sometimes. They kind of walked around me. Could the simple, evocative routine of following the Jets provide the relief?
No. Because as Fortune would have it, this was the year of the replacement players, the football strike. On the 11th of October, the replacement Jets lost to the replacement Colts 6-0. As an example of maddening futility, you could find no better example than two phony professional teams playing one another under the Hoosier Dome - a ceiling as numbingly white as a New England sky - in front of as many as maybe a couple of hundred human beings.
But on the day of the game I was nursing the very first true hangover of my life, one brought on by my first ever Saturday night binge drinking. I had been an awfully good kid in high school, but now that everyone had left me to my own devices, I finally decided to get really, really drunk for the very first time. Josef from Switzerland, Phil from rural Maryland, and I bought a couple of six packs of Molson and watched the NLCS from San Francisco on the tiny black and white TV propped on a desk chair. I drank a great deal, taking Pepto Bismol as a chaser in anticipation of what I assumed would be a night of intestinal failure, only to wake the next morning with a black tongue. The morning was spent vomiting, begging God for release from this life, with assurances that this was the only time I would ever let this happen to me. Ah, youth.
As I moved in my blanket from toilet to bed, toilet to bed, I finally found some peaceful slumber, the kind where the body is too exhausted even to hurl anything more. When I woke up, Maryland Phil was kind enough to lean over me and give me the Jets score, 6-0.
I spoke to him like the Gipper to Rockne. I mustered the strength to speak my last words:
"What quarter?"
"Quarter?" he asked. "No quarter, man. That's the final score."
Perhaps I was delirious. That was impossible. "Wha...what time is it?" I asked, not comprehending.
"It's dinner time. Me and Joe are going down. It's Cordon Bleu."
But it had been morning only a few minutes ago. Or maybe it had been afternoon. Hadn't it?
"Dude," he offered, trying to speak a measure of reason to the dying, seeming simultaneously amused by my blanched, awful state, "you're still sleeping it off. It's nighttime. It's six o'clock. You want anything from the dining hall?"
But it couldn't be. But it was. Six-nothing. Six o'clock. "Get me a roll, willya?" I said, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. I don't know how they greeted that ridiculous request. They had been kind enough to share the score with me, probably because the only thing they knew about me was that I was a Jets fan, because that was pretty much the only thing anyone could really probably draw out, even with a lot of Molson in me. But how else was I to respond to the unfamiliarity of losing a day in the wake of a bender? How else could I respond to the results of what was probably a crushingly dull scab game?
A week later, the Stock Market would crash, but on October 11, 1987, I had missed Mass for the first time in my life and, even more, missed following a Jets game for the first time in my life. I had missed lunch. And aside from following the Jets, I had found a new hobby. Oh brave new world...
****
One final note - on October 11, 1992, the Jets lost to the Colts in the Hoosier Dome by an improved score of 6-3. There were no scabs or replacements. Just bad, bad, bad football. I was living in an unfamiliar city, drunk, unhappy, isolated and alone...
Well, you get the idea.
On Football and Literature
After the first few weeks of wondering, fear, loathing, denial, anger and acceptance, I'm fully acclimated to the purgatorial condition of this year's team. I welcome what's to come. I think part of my struggle came from the newness of things in my life. New boss at work, new curriculum to teach, new persons on the Presidential election tickets, new quarterback. But really, once you've gotten past the range of emotions with which you greet all this newness, it's actually just the same old story. At best, we'll finish at 10-6, at worst 6-10. Sounds familiar. And that's also what I thought even before Brett Favre showed up.
The Bye week is funny. I'm actually relieved to not care about anyone winning or losing. I notice how violent the game is. Much as I would like to throw the ball on every down, I take the time to notice that defenses and ground games actually win championships. Still, what am I to do? The game is what it is, both terrible and beautiful in the one.
Which brings me to the topic that's been on my mind all week. The Nobel Prize jurist Horace Engdahl insisted this week that American literature is limited by American sensibilities. "The US is too isolated, too insular," he insists. "That ignorance is restraining."
At work, someone suggested to me that American football, with its hugeness, its ironic padding, its pajama-like uniforms and collisions is an apt representation of this supposed American ignorance. But I guess I just don't care. I love the game. It has its beauty, its subtleties and heroic narratives beneath the surface of brute force. The game personifies the country that produced it.
You might wonder why I'm talking about sports when we were talking about literature. I guess football haters see football the way that America-haters recreationally hate the US, and they choose to see only the horrible. And thankfully, they're going to have a lot less over which to sneer when January 20th rolls around. But Updike, Oates, Pynchon and (yeesh) Roth are all American writers who transcend the ugliness and stupidity of our leaders the way Tomlinson, Favre, Jones-Drew, and (yeesh) Moss transcend football's brutality. And publishing is still a game; when Engdahl insists that Europe, not the US, is still the center of Western civilization, he's sounding like a sports fan blinded by his team loyalties - a Red Sox fan unwilling to put a Yankee in the Hall of Fame, or an Eagles fan unwilling to see a Dallas Cowboy enshrined in Canton. He's full of shit.
The Bye week is funny. I'm actually relieved to not care about anyone winning or losing. I notice how violent the game is. Much as I would like to throw the ball on every down, I take the time to notice that defenses and ground games actually win championships. Still, what am I to do? The game is what it is, both terrible and beautiful in the one.
Which brings me to the topic that's been on my mind all week. The Nobel Prize jurist Horace Engdahl insisted this week that American literature is limited by American sensibilities. "The US is too isolated, too insular," he insists. "That ignorance is restraining."
At work, someone suggested to me that American football, with its hugeness, its ironic padding, its pajama-like uniforms and collisions is an apt representation of this supposed American ignorance. But I guess I just don't care. I love the game. It has its beauty, its subtleties and heroic narratives beneath the surface of brute force. The game personifies the country that produced it.
You might wonder why I'm talking about sports when we were talking about literature. I guess football haters see football the way that America-haters recreationally hate the US, and they choose to see only the horrible. And thankfully, they're going to have a lot less over which to sneer when January 20th rolls around. But Updike, Oates, Pynchon and (yeesh) Roth are all American writers who transcend the ugliness and stupidity of our leaders the way Tomlinson, Favre, Jones-Drew, and (yeesh) Moss transcend football's brutality. And publishing is still a game; when Engdahl insists that Europe, not the US, is still the center of Western civilization, he's sounding like a sports fan blinded by his team loyalties - a Red Sox fan unwilling to put a Yankee in the Hall of Fame, or an Eagles fan unwilling to see a Dallas Cowboy enshrined in Canton. He's full of shit.
Minggu, 05 Oktober 2008
By the Bye
I've been a little occupied lately with work and life. Lame excuses, I realize. So I'm writing this entry while overseeing a senior study hall in the cafeteria, hoping that Brett Favre is using his study time more wisely than the students whose heads are sealed in sleep on the tables all around me.
Someday when I'm awfully low, I'll look back on these days and ask myself, "Was I not thinking enough about the impending game against the Bengals?" The answer - particularly after watching Cincinnati challenging Dallas - is I'm clearly not thinking hard enough. The Bengals really took possession of the game clock at different points, despite being eternally behind, and that should give us some pause. Still, Tony Romo had forever to throw the ball because his front line is composed of concrete abutments. And the Tigers gave up a crushing open-field touchdown to T.O. from which they never recovered. Maybe the Cowboys just really aren't as good as everyone says. We're wasting so much breath on "who's the best in the NFL?" now that Tom Brady is injured. It's a senseless obsession. Maybe if the newly updated Brett Favre model is in residence, we may yet break .500. Or not. God bless us all. Everyone.
But is there a God? If you're Chad Penningon, then yes. He beat the San Diego Chargers a week after beating New England. The fact that this God might not regard me very highly is kind of irrelevant. But then what do I have to gripe about in the cosmic scheme of things? I grew up in the cradle of the American Dream, maturing comfortably in the greatest of all economic booms. I have craved a Jets Super Bowl in my lifetime, but that's a paltry petition considering the healthy gifts my life has offered me.
The Almighty asks if I have any additional concerns:
Me: Um. Are the Jets going to, y'know, go to the Super Bowl...?
Almighty: (glowers noticeably)
Me: ...uh...any...time...y'know...?
Almighty: Super Bowl III.
Me: -soon?
Almighty: (shakes His Head) Super Bowl III.
So Chad Pennington gets what he wants, whereas I already have, apparently. Make it feel that way.
****
Finally, a dream last night. My brother and I had both been drafted by Chelsea FC in England and we were required to show up at Old Trafford to play Manchester United. This is ridiculous. Charlie plays soccer even now, but the last time I did in any organized fashion, I was eight and was told by the coach to just "follow the crowd up and down the field." In the dream, Charlie and I are of high school age - he is a small freshman and I am an anxious senior. We're supposed to be on the field momentarily, and I can't tell if he's in the locker room or still outside the stadium. I've got to find him. I'm supposed to keep track of him.
Suddenly, there's Arsene Wenger. Whew. He can help. He and I take the escalator down to the field level. It's a very long escalator ride.
I gather my courage. I'm new on the team, after all. Coach? I ask him, like a typical American, I'm worried that my little brother isn't inside yet. I just wanted to make sure before we get into the changing room that he's put on the roster. OK?
He looks at me without comprehension. I can't help you. I manage Arsenal. My boys aren't playing today.
Ah, shit, I think. Dammit. That's true. So where was Chelsea's manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari? It doesn't make any sense. Why was I put in the embarrassing position of asking Wenger for help when the last person he would want to help was a player from Chelsea? What's he doing here, anyway? Does Arsenal have the Bye in the land of dreams, like the Jets do in the here and now? Who screwed up in the slumbering world of FA scheduling? Better yet, who's screwing up in subconscious casting? The production crew needs reorganization. Somebody's getting a pink slip.
Someday when I'm awfully low, I'll look back on these days and ask myself, "Was I not thinking enough about the impending game against the Bengals?" The answer - particularly after watching Cincinnati challenging Dallas - is I'm clearly not thinking hard enough. The Bengals really took possession of the game clock at different points, despite being eternally behind, and that should give us some pause. Still, Tony Romo had forever to throw the ball because his front line is composed of concrete abutments. And the Tigers gave up a crushing open-field touchdown to T.O. from which they never recovered. Maybe the Cowboys just really aren't as good as everyone says. We're wasting so much breath on "who's the best in the NFL?" now that Tom Brady is injured. It's a senseless obsession. Maybe if the newly updated Brett Favre model is in residence, we may yet break .500. Or not. God bless us all. Everyone.
But is there a God? If you're Chad Penningon, then yes. He beat the San Diego Chargers a week after beating New England. The fact that this God might not regard me very highly is kind of irrelevant. But then what do I have to gripe about in the cosmic scheme of things? I grew up in the cradle of the American Dream, maturing comfortably in the greatest of all economic booms. I have craved a Jets Super Bowl in my lifetime, but that's a paltry petition considering the healthy gifts my life has offered me.
The Almighty asks if I have any additional concerns:
Me: Um. Are the Jets going to, y'know, go to the Super Bowl...?
Almighty: (glowers noticeably)
Me: ...uh...any...time...y'know...?
Almighty: Super Bowl III.
Me: -soon?
Almighty: (shakes His Head) Super Bowl III.
So Chad Pennington gets what he wants, whereas I already have, apparently. Make it feel that way.
****
Finally, a dream last night. My brother and I had both been drafted by Chelsea FC in England and we were required to show up at Old Trafford to play Manchester United. This is ridiculous. Charlie plays soccer even now, but the last time I did in any organized fashion, I was eight and was told by the coach to just "follow the crowd up and down the field." In the dream, Charlie and I are of high school age - he is a small freshman and I am an anxious senior. We're supposed to be on the field momentarily, and I can't tell if he's in the locker room or still outside the stadium. I've got to find him. I'm supposed to keep track of him.
Suddenly, there's Arsene Wenger. Whew. He can help. He and I take the escalator down to the field level. It's a very long escalator ride.
I gather my courage. I'm new on the team, after all. Coach? I ask him, like a typical American, I'm worried that my little brother isn't inside yet. I just wanted to make sure before we get into the changing room that he's put on the roster. OK?
He looks at me without comprehension. I can't help you. I manage Arsenal. My boys aren't playing today.
Ah, shit, I think. Dammit. That's true. So where was Chelsea's manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari? It doesn't make any sense. Why was I put in the embarrassing position of asking Wenger for help when the last person he would want to help was a player from Chelsea? What's he doing here, anyway? Does Arsenal have the Bye in the land of dreams, like the Jets do in the here and now? Who screwed up in the slumbering world of FA scheduling? Better yet, who's screwing up in subconscious casting? The production crew needs reorganization. Somebody's getting a pink slip.
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