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.
Minggu, 19 Oktober 2008
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.
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)