Hail to the Redskins

At the risk of alienating readers on this, the biggest day of Primary Season, the Fashion Week -- dare I say -- the Puppy Bowl of American electoral politics, I feel compelled to say a word about professional sports: I lived in New York City for several years, during the waning days of the Yankees empire and I don't recall for the life of me encountering anyone who cared about football. I taught in an elementary school in the Bronx for three years and never once had occasion to toss a football to a kid during recess; yet today the Giants are feted on the streets of Manhattan and their perpetually vexed quarterback has come to assume an unearned place in the mythos of the game. New York, I love you, but stop with the bullshit.

The Giants play in New Jersey. The entire team, with the exception of one player, lives in New Jersey (now that the vilified, contrarian Tiki Barber has retired). Of course, there are practical explanations for these two facts --ones having mainly to do with space -- but it stands to reason that in a city rife with handball and basketball courts, concrete and earth-formed baseball diamonds, football and football players have no place. Even the Jets, who make a far better case for being New York's team and whose cause won the backing of the skilled Mr. Bloomberg, couldn't wrangle a football stadium out of the chagrined local populace. New York, clearly, is not a football town.

And what about the quarterback, Eli Manning (pictured above)? Some say he has been vindicated and that his various doubters are now silenced, but what game were these people watching on Sunday? I saw a slight young man who put up decent statistics -- but hardly iconic ones -- get bailed out by a trio of gifted wide receivers and a defensive line hell-bent on destroying Tom Brady's mortal soul. On a day when a hero of my youth, Doug Williams, was chosen to present the Lombardi trophy, reminding us anew the raw deal black quarterbacks used to get, an insanely hyped white quarterback vaulted to glory -- surprise, surprise -- on the shoulders of black players.

In the pivotal offensive play of the game, Manning -- lucky as hell -- squirmed his way out of a sack and put up an ill-advised prayer to a well-covered David Tyree. Tyree managed to secure the ball away from his defender, trap it against his helmet, fall backwards, roll over, and somehow not lose possession. This was a spectacular play...for Tyree. Is there room for him in the pantheon? Maybe. Maybe not. One of the greatest plays in football history is The Catch in the 1982 NFC Championship game. Everyone knows Joe Montana threw it, but how many people remember it was Dwight Clark who caught it?

As for the game I was watching on Sunday, it was won on defense: the Patriots were held to 17 points, 140 yards fewer than usual, due in no small part to the Giants' unsung Justin Tuck, who had six tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble. For his services, he got one MVP vote out of 20. Eli Manning got 16 and a half. Justin Tuck won the game for the Giants. How many people will remember him?

my brushes with fame

SO...big week for me here in new york, aside from being mauled at work.

anyway, i happened to see oprah-hating jonathan franzen at a book party the other night. which was featured on gawker, no less. i was gonna ask him about spring awakening, but his giant head (tucked away in a corner) intimidated me.

but the WAY more important news is that i went to see genesis last night- in new jersey, no less. hell yes, people. we had bad hair, bad denim and seriously bad dancing. i mean, c'mon, you really just can't dance to "invisible touch" no matter how many pyrotechnical feats are involved (and in case you were wondering, there definitely were pyrotechnics).

before i say anything more about the concert, i just want to assure people that i didn't start liking genesis out of some homage to bret easton ellis. no, i was just a really fucking cheesy kid. "hold on my heart" (which phil performed, seated, and even ridiculed himself thereafter for the song's sentimentality) and most of phil solo (e.g. "separate lives" or "one more night") really spoke to me as a 10 or 11-year-old. i know, i can't explain it either.

my love only deepened when i saw their behind the music. the departure of peter gabriel, the class differences between prep school preppies banks & rutherford vs. hoi polloi collins (which was underscored last night by the prep boys' smart blazers and collins's member's only jacket), collins's melodramatic separation from his first wife, etc. really great stuff.

so about the concert...yeah sure, they looked pretty old, although i loved tony banks. not fazed by anything, this guy. it was as if he put down the ny times crossword puzzle to rock out on the synth. while phil collins was going "crazy" in a very choreographed fashion with the tambourine, banks just played on, unperturbed. i mean, just look at that mug. you can trust your life to that guy.

i was pretty sad they didn't play "don't lose my number", "misunderstanding" or "illegal alien" among their many great hits, but you can check out here what the tour setlist is. what the setlist doesn't tell you is that there was a 15 minute drum solo between phil and that other drummer. so i guess a drum duo?

Train of Thought

You know there's something to that whole butterfly-tsunami thing. I got to thinking about it yesterday with Jon Corzine's Curse of the McGreevo car accident . If All-American superstar phenom Lindsay Harding (pictured)--the best player on the best team in the country--hadn't choked and missed both her free throws at the end of regulation in Duke's Sweet 16 match-up against Rutgers--a team they had beaten by 40 points earlier in the year--Rutgers would never have advanced to the final, Don Imus would still have said any number of asinine racist-sexist things, but not the thing that gotten him into trouble, and Jon Corzine wouldn't have been misusing New Jersey gubernatorial resources to go play Henry Kissinger at the Imus-Rutgers summit, and that Dodge would never have run him off the road. And there wouldn't be Captain Obvious headlines like this one. And Snoop wouldn't have made me dumber just by reading his take on the whole Imus fake news story. Basically, if Harding had hit those free throws, the world would be a better place. Kurt Vonnegut would probably still be alive, and that kid from that show who everyone loves to hate, well, he'd be dead. So, basically hers was about the most devastating sports-related choke in history. Except for this one.