It's All True

I've always had an odd smattering of knowledge. I recall one instance when I was about nine where I first used this knowledge and simultaneously experienced the doubt of the general public. Mom, Charlie and I were at a department store together. She was buying a rug or something, putting a salesman through what my brother and I like to call "The Treatment." She would have sales personnel eating out of her hand by the end of a trip to A&S. No question. And she wouldn't buy anything in the end.

While watching another salesman fall to pieces around her, I noted a flurry of activity. A man was walking through the rug department and setting off excitement as he passed. "It's Richard Dreyfuss!" someone exclaimed. Another person took up the cry, while the man in question, realizing the fuss he was causing, started to make for the escalator. People pointed and exclaimed. They had seen a movie star, one whose prime was the period of which I speak, the late 70's.

He could have passed as Richard Dreyfuss, but it wasn't him. For whatever reason, at nine I could recognize Richard Dreyfuss in the rug department if I saw him, and the man running like a spotted celebrity for the exit was not Richard Dreyfuss. I said this aloud enough for the adults around me to hear.

"What's that?" a woman said, looking at me with surprise.

I thought I was being helpful. This way they wouldn't be mistaken. "That wasn't Richard Dreyfuss," I said. "That's a guy who looks like him, but he's not."

The woman looked at me with the mild annoyance of one who has been asked to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. She addressed me with a wave of her hand.

"What did that kid say?" her husband asked after seeing the Richard Dreyfuss imposter finally vanish.

She looked at him with a dismissive gesture. "'Thinks I don't know what I'm talking about. Like I'm crazy or something. That was Richard Dreyfuss!"

*****

Like I said, it's been a strange week. Take for example my conversation around the lunch table. Our two English Department faculty lounges are two classroom-sized rooms, each with a long table for teachers to sit and talk over lunch. For reasons that our community could offer, one lounge is often populated with young men between the ages of 25-30 and the other with women just a little bit older. Almost all are younger than myself. The men speak of sports, politics and media outrages. The women discuss clothes, food, light television fare and children.

At the men's table, the issues can be occasionally sublime and often ridiculous. "Which is the greatest beer commercial of all time?" "Who is the shortest shortstop ever?" "Who is less talented - Mariah Carey or Madonna?" "Who is your favorite Russian psychic?" The other day, a question I could field came to the table: "Who is responsible for the longest punt in football history?"

I allowed a few names - good ones - to pass through. "Ray Guy?" "Reggie Roby?" "Randall Cunningham?" That last one isn't ridiculous. Randall could basically do anything, including punt.

"I'll take this one," I said. "Steve O'Neal, New York Jets. Ninety-eight yards."

To be honest with you, I know it sounds a little silly, too. He was a rookie when he did it, and he's almost unknown to history otherwise. But it's true, all true. They look at me like I'm making it up. Sure, they seem to say. Spoken like a Jets fan. Right. "I doubt the Jets even have any records, Marty," one says. Actually for a while Richard Todd held a NFL record he set in 1980 for passing attempts in a game. They look at me as if I fell off a truck and wouldn't know the slightest piece of football miscellany. This is how Dad felt when he told me the Giants used have a quarterback named Y.A. Tittle. I didn't believe him at first, either. That was a ridiculous name.

But at Mile High Stadium in 1969, #20 Steve O'Neal punted the ball some seventy plus yards, where it then took a Jets roll another fifteen or so to the Bronco two.

This is a general problem as I'm getting older. (And how old am I really? I turn 40 in March, for God's sake, but in public school, that can seem like 50, which isn't even that old.) The more I age, the more unreliable my information seems to people younger than myself. This is what used to make my parents mad. Why is it so impossible that I'm actually right about something? Mom would ask. Because you're old, I would think. Now I know why the woman in A&S was pissed at me. Why would some snot-nosed kid know about the star of The Goodbye Girl? Except I was right about Steve O'Neal, and the woman in the rug department was wrong.

It was worse this past Wednesday when, after the Obama win, the only thing my all-white Advanced Placement class had to say about it was that Black Panthers intimidated voters throughout the United States on election day. Really? I asked.

Their evidence consisted of two guys standing somewhat ominously in front of a polling place on Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia. When I speculated that these "Black Panthers" of which they spoke were actually representative of one local instance, the kids didn't believe me. The Black Panthers, they insisted, changed the flow of the election.

That's insane, I told them. There really is no Black Panther movement anymore. The real Black Panthers eventually graduated to become Crips, convicts, worm food, professors, business owners, drug addicts or Republicans. There is Black rage in America, yes, but no Black Panthers. Here were two guys menacing people in front of a door, dressed in all black clothes and berets they probably bought at I. Goldberg's, looking angrily into the camera, having the thrill of their lives, but it didn't mean that the spirit of Huey and Cleaver was alive and well across the United States, or even in Philly for that matter. In fact, I'm convinced that the little guy "Panther" in the video is a local crackpot King Samir Shabazz, a guy so ridiculous he actually got thrown out of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Only the Philadelphia Weekly takes him seriously, and that's as an eccentric character.

But, the kids almost suggested, if I didn't know that for sure that it wasn't a nationwide ploy to scare white people, then how could I deny the viral web evidence of Black Panthers intimidating voters - even if the evidence shows it was the same lame Philly story, originally told by Fox, repeated over and over?

Whether young or old, this has been my problem. I don't know everything, but what's the point of having my eclectic and nearly useless knowledge of history, sports and popular culture if no one believes me? It's not like I understand science or math. As Uncle Morty asks in My Favorite Year, "Do I look I come from Minsk? I know what I'm talking about."

Responding as a Jets Fan Does

This has been an interesting week, hasn't it? I mean, yes, I had a feeling the Jets would win at Buffalo, but then I was even more surprised that they did it well, especially at the front line, especially in the secondary. I came away feeling oddly uncomfortable, as if this meant something truly sinister. This is the way I am. I've commented before that my wife has picked up on the general mixture of happiness and displeasure that accompanies my experience of my football team actually winning. When they do.

Then there was the election. I work with a 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in my department. This is a highly conservative white blue-collar community with a diversity of relatively conservative Asian, Middle Eastern and South Asian families and a politically liberal African-American one that has been growing for years. Our English Department is 90% white, which means that it reflects its community, especially among its men. I can talk sports with my fellow men, but when we talk politics, I know I'm going to be somewhat in the minority. I voted for Obama this year, and in any other high school in any other suburban area outside Philadelphia, I would probably not be as alone as I am here among Reagan's children. But unlike in years past, when I had to endure the self-satisfaction that I grant some of my colleagues felt in the wake of two Presidential elections (one more notorious than any in American history), this year my team won.

My team? Actually, I hate that. When I was in high school during the final decade of the Cold War, no one spoke of Red states and Blue states. Red was the dubious color of international Communism whose influence could be felt in pink and purple. Lots of colors weren't safe from red's emasculating influence. It's what Tories wore in the Revolution. Blue was more manly and patriotic. It's what we were taught the Minutemen wore. It was the color of all Government-issued material. I drove my parents' blue 1980 Chevy Malibu in high school that I discovered one day my friends had garnished with the words "Property of the Federal Government" with their fingers in its layers of winter dust. We weren't split into teams yet. Yes, there were Democrats and Republicans, but even then these weren't two absolutely discernible sides. There were Democrats and Republicans of a variety apiece, some liberal, many more moderate, some conservative. I may be romanticizing the past a bit, but I recall that we were not yet forced to identify ourselves with the colors of the electoral map. I have only one team, and their colors are green and white.

But since I have a team already, I'm accustomed to what it feels like when my team wins. Or, rather, I'm accustomed to my team losing, which is why I'm more at home when they do lose - in the regular season, in the playoffs, or even in a Presidential election. When they do win, it's an uncomfortable thing for me to talk about with people the next day. I'm used to complaining about a losing pass rush, no offensive line protection, a mercurial coach, a lack of tall receivers. I'm never under the impression that I need to explain or enjoy their winning.

In fact, I usually predict a loss ahead of time. "I wouldn't bet on it," I say to someone about the Rams-Jets this week, even when, at home, the Jets might actually win. Nevertheless, history teaches us nothing if not caution, and so I advise NFL pool people to take the other side in almost every case. After a while they know not to ask. So when a couple of my Republican friends asked me a few days before the election what I thought were Obama's chances, I responded as a trained Jets fan. Predict the loss. And I feel I predicted with a level of accuracy. I mean, how was it possible that Obama could win Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and New Mexico? How could one have expected him to win in the Pennsylvania's Carbon, Centre, Cambria and Elk counties? History tells us it's safe to bet against. I realize that this borders on a superstition, but superstitions are made for the fans of losing teams; they are a safeguard against the pain of an unrealized hope. Why bet on your team, as it were?

So the next day my colleagues might have thought I had been putting them on. I swear I wasn't. Who would have predicted Obama winning 364 electoral votes? I was just going by what I knew, following the basic instincts of my less than sunny disposition, my less than hopeful outlook.

Which made me consider things even further when I saw Happy-Go-Lucky last night, by one of my favorite filmmakers, Mike Leigh. What if I went through life favoring the best in people and circumstance and not relying on a depressive's doubt, on superstition and the subsequently comforting need to make everyone else think the way I do? Now wouldn't that be nice?

Jets 26 Bills 17

The Jets and Bills reversed roles today, as it is the Jets who are usually brought down to earth by the Bills. Not so here now. The Jets play mostly the same game week in and out. Brett Favre wins more often than not but throws truly risky passes that sometimes lead eventually or directly to touchdowns for the other side. Thomas Jones and Leon Washington earn more passing yards than rushing yards. Darrelle Revis has a big game. In the red zone, the Jets become mysterious and frustrating. Eric Mangini becomes physically larger. Many dumb penalties for the Jets. Illegal procedure, late hits, unnecessary roughness, delay of game. But the Bills played the more frustrating game. Two grinding drives produced nothing for them, almost as if, for this one game, I were watching the '07 Jets play the '08 team.

But they beat Buffalo, just. Several key moments stand out. Leon Washington incurs a penalty on Buffalo by having one foot out of bounds when he receives an inbounds punt. Darrelle Revis breaks up a certain Bills third down touchdown attempt by timing his coverage of the pass perfectly. Eric Barton plays an unheralded but brilliant game, with seven tackles. Kris Jenkins nearly concusses Trent Edwards as he hurls him to the ground in a perfectly legal sack. The Jets' offense may not be running perfectly, but the Jets' defense was the best I've seen all year.

The big play was obviously Abram Elam's interception in the red zone and his 92 yard return for a touchdown. This is exactly the kind of play the Jets needed, and they got it. I've been waiting for a moment like this to point out the odd juxtaposition of two players in Jets history who have worn #27, one of whom is Abram Elam. Consider that if the letters of his name are reshuffled and then listed last name first and first last, then "Male, Mabra" is another way of describing Ron Mabra who also wore #27 for the Jets, in 1977. The evidence is in our entry on the number. Of course anyone who knows the name Abram Elam might also know a few additional things about him that make this anagrammatic observation a little less charming.

Anyway, my wife and I have a new policy on weekends, the "Sixty Percent Solution." We operate on 60% of everything negative - dread, anxiety, annoyance, anger - none of which is allowed to exceed the 60% level. This allows for neither the denial of a feeling nor its exaggeration. Elam's touchdown brought it to about 75%, which allowed me to make an audible, "N'yeah. Yeah. Yeah!" This was the loudest I got all game.

My wife got loud when Brett Favre threw an interception for a touchdown at the beginning of the fourth quarter. I had decided to use the end of a Bills drive as the opportunity to take the shower I had missed in the morning, so I missed the ensuing interception that went all the way for the Bills. When I heard her disheartened response, I emerged from the bathroom just in time to see the play end. I swore under my breath. My wife suddenly exclaimed at the sight of me without my Joe Namath jersey. Actually I was without anything at all. Her reaction was one that a long-married person gives to the nudity of her partner - one of muted interest, tinged with novelty of seeing him in the nude for the first time, long ago. This reaction was at more than 60%, which, to be honest is all that a guy can ask for.

On Winning a Championship

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

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.

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).

Favre Calls Millen - Haiku

Like holding the rain,
Helping the Detroit Lions:
Harmless and futile.