Week 8. "More like New Dork"

The suggestiveness of New York teenagers dressed as zombified versions of their favorite superheroes is enlivening, provocative. America is a homily on the egoism of muscle and capes; a Halloween costume well executed, but late now, is fraying at the edges and dripping from the nose, due to the belligerent donning it. Last night, on the train, I was asked if I knew where I was going. I said that I did, but sort of. Wonder Woman's bloodied forehead lowered, there were her boots. A clear moment on a chaotic ride west: her chin lifts from her chest revealing the fear that electrifies her milky eyes, she says, "I don't."

Football shows up fashionably late and sensibly suited for every holiday event of the autumn season. (Even the scheduling of a Bye for the perpetually costumed Oakland Coliseum was a fine display of tact on the part of the NFL: don't overdo it sister, no one likes a braggart). The fans are excited and the cameras frame the Frankenstein's, Dorothy's, Wicked Witch's and TinTin's like this is the first Halloween. (On Thanksgiving, the NFL's endless stream of steaming turkey images are so nostalgic, I'm made to reach for my small pox blankie. On Christmas the sleigh bells chime in and out of commercial breaks with the ardent charm of hope in sport and natural man). It is a season of cold, focused energy, thundering consumption and uncanny results. The World Series was shocking, yes, but it is baseball, where shocking isn't defined by upsets or comebacks so much as by nuance-as-norm: the persistence of details explain away the big play. Game 6 did not clinch the World Series, only further punished its stamina.

There were, in a more accepted definition of the word in sports, shocking upsets around the league today. The Saints wore their Losers mask as their defeaters wore one of a Winner, though I argue it was just Halloween. Baltimore was nearly defeated (not an upset unless you're a gambling woman), Minnesota beat Cam Newton and the Panthers at Carolina, and the Dolphins lost by only three to the Giants in New York. I realize a win is a win and therefore not an upset, but a near-upset and upset do both function in a similar way in a greater context. They force an examination of what good is and why anomaly is generally accepted under the umbrella of good. For example, The Saints loss to St Louis will be disregarded over the course of the season. St. Louis was without a win and the Saints were coming off a sixty point victory. Rarely do teams go without a win over an entire season and it is easy to have your guard down after beating a similarly terrible team by sixty just a week ago. The game was an anomaly, an asterisk. The Saints are good still. On the other hand, even though the Baltimore Ravens won, they may not be good anymore. Last week they lost to the Jaguars, a poor team, and then today, came back to barely beat an awful Arizona Cardinals squad. The near-upset is cause for concern for the Ravens because it exposes flaws in their design. Flacco is not playing well enough that if a team can manage to score on that defense (which is good), the Ravens offense will have difficulty manufacturing a victory. A win, even a poor one, (or an anomalous loss), will preserve the veneer of a good team, allowing for scrutiny only with the disclaimer that they are Winners still. As the season bends into its half time stretch, reshaping its muscles and strengthening its core, the good teams are beginning to separate as those without upset: The Patriots, The Packers, The Steelers, The 49ers. Re-evaluating the status of the league and the teams that are good melts away the nonsensical talk about teams like the Lions, Bills and (earlier in season) the Eagles. It allows for Tim Tebow to slip into the sort of Hades occupied by the Carson Palmers before him. (I will give Tim Tebow some sort of hell every week on out). The upsets this week are a nice lens in which to start viewing the remainder of the season. The costumes may be stripped off and discarded into the street; they may be something you always wanted to wear but couldn't until this weekend [you sluts].

When I moved to New York, not long before Halloween last year, my brother asked me how I like it. I says presumptuously, "it's good you know, I mean it is New York." He says, "more like New Dork." I quietly took offense, thinking he meant 'who cares, bro'. Now... I think what he really meant, is that here is a new kind of dork where the losers are winning, the cool is damned yesterdays. Smart kid, he knows the best Halloween costume is Santa Claus.

Week 7. In Heaven

Football is the comics' comic. I don’t mean football is a sport that only other sports could see the value in, or that professional athletes in other sports feel that professional football players are influential and talented in ways only they can really appreciate, I just mean that no matter what they say, women don’t actually like it. And they shouldn’t have to, because it is way too homoerotic. They definitely shouldn’t have to in bars. Men don’t even like watching football in bars. Trust me, I am so close to being a man, and I am so far from liking watching football in a bar. Yet every Sunday, I walk past bar after bar (literally, just one bar followed by one more, on my way to the store. Two bars total.) and they are filled with women. Some are wearing jerseys, I can’t believe it. Football games are damn long; a big block of a Sunday can be devoted to one game alone. Most of that block of time is not football action. Most of that block of time is occupied by silly, powdered-up former players and coaches ejaculating the remaining bits of their teeny brains through their mini mouths. In addition, the commercials that run on loop throughout the day cater to our little dicks’ grand ambitions of getting bigger through the acquisition of material things, and by things, I really mean trucks. During actual football action, most plays are less graceful than graceful: bodies recklessly colliding and the ball carrier advancing barely 5 yards, the whole play barely visible to a Cable audience. Multiply these things together and you get a product that is rather masturbatory (I don’t need to gender qualify that statement as we all know the female orgasm is a myth). The way a Sunday looks on Cable: God in the morning, pre-game pre-cum in the noontime, a game full of players wearing pants that allow a visible outline of their penises, more awful talk by more bald men wearing wigs later, followed by more football that contains mostly ads for trucks.

If the situation was reversed and the basic cable programming every Sunday of the autumn was dominated by women playing football, women talking heads bobbing up and down, and commercials offering material things women value considerably more than men, men would not spend 3.75hrs, twice in a day at a bar. Occupy Wall Street is happening. Activism is sheik. So this is what I’m asking: Women, get out there are and stop supporting football if you don’t love it. Why? Because then games and game programming could start being more honest, more gay. Football is still posturing itself as a wholesome heterosexual event on a Sunday because many types (genders) of people watch it, many “moral” people. Tim Tebow took up plenty of air-time yesterday. This is the guy who did an abstinence ad with his mother during one of his games when he was in college...because he what? believes in the right to life? I doubt it. Tim Tebow is a god-fearing man. Two more things about Tebow: yesterday he threw for just 165 yards and he is on the second worst team in the NFL. Yet he was all over the tube, tell me that was for his performance? God is boring and he already exerts plenty of control over Sundays. With the help of women’s movement, we can turn boring god-filled football Sundays into a more honest football Sunday experience. Not just something masturbatory, actual wholesale masturbation. Instead of having to mask a Tebow appearance as statistical, Cable can just show him changing after the game. “Tim Tebow, in his first start, played mildly well, but if you look now, you can see his penis, if you want.” The Broncos are terrible, they have no chance of making the post season. And the way they will win will be ceramically boring as Tim Tebow is an awful passer. So let’s show him naked!

Right now the world of Cable football is one that requires patience and persistence, grueling knowledge and many, many beers. But I believe it can be just as exiting as DVR Football, with all its pausing and fast forwarding and rewinding. I think if in your middle class homes and middle class bars, you women watching Cable football can man up and turn away, stay home and do something better, then Cable sports can be the best it can be: gayer than Tim Tebow.

Week 5. Everything Sucks

Have you ever compromised a crime scene? I haven't. But I definitely can. I would never want to compromise a rape crime scene because I think that rapists should be caught and tried, fairly. If I wanted to compromise a rape crime scene, I would throw an open can of paint all over the scene. At the very least, the scene would become highly complicated (also complicating things would be my outlandish presence there, followed by my own arrest shortly thereafter). Things can escalate quickly, can't they? My good friend Alex used to talk about quickly escalating situations from weird to capitol punishment-level and what sort of skillful moves would be required to do so. For example, walking into a nursery school playground is weird, but picking up a boy and sprinting down the road with him gets you some time (Even if you don't take him anywhere, which is sort of aggressive on the side of the law). One swift move, premeditated or spontaneous, is a game changer.

Oh yes football! Here are two "swift move" suggestions for two teams.
1) The Philadelphia Eagles fire their coach, Andy Reid. The "dream team" are 1-4, which is plenty reason for a firing, but more plenty, is that they are not going to change the way they play (or as Andy Reid said after yesterday's game "we just need to get better." Churchill-esque!) because of him. Reid, very much unlike Mr. Obama, is holding back a team of talented individuals from moving forward with an extraordinary experiment: winning on talent. I'm saying Andy Reid is slow, he is very slow, but it doesn't matter. He is a slow learner. That matters. He has mismanaged this group of guys from week 1. Much of the analysis surrounding and leading up to this season suggested Vick will try to remain in the pocket, get rid of the football quicker, but let plays develop instead of breaking them down and relying on his running skills to carry the load. I'm unclear why any coach would not only put those stupid thoughts into action, but why any coach wouldn't rape those stupid thoughts into submission before they wreaked havoc on his team. Last season when Vick was doing all of those things, the Eagles were good. They had some problems though, like their offensive line. Vick was sacked plenty last season and his skills (the very ones listed above) were what kept them a late season contender. Vick's skill set as a quarterback are unique and truly, perfect. He does very little wrong and unlike, say Brett Favre, he is quite conservative with the ball. Vick isn't running around like Kermit Frog, flopping his legs and swinging the ball every which way; he is a controlled force, like a drone strike, killing terrorist defensive schemes. Obama! Reid's inability to harness Vick's talent by improving the O-line is why he should be fired. Reid's firing will not make the offensive line better, but you can get lots of years in jail for just picking up and running with a child that is not yours.

2) Mark Sanchez gets to throw the football as many times as he wants. Poor Mark Sanchez! I live in New York, let me tell you these fans (papers) are awful to him. It's shocking, because really, he is quite handsome. Oh I mean, he is actually quite good. He has an excellent arm and a good target with Burress. What he does not have are two great running backs. Instead he has two mediocre ones. What he also has is a strong defense and a great defensive coach. When you can rely on your defense, why not take some chances with your quarterback. He only threw 26 times this week, of those he completed 16. He threw two touchdowns, threw no interceptions and had a 105 QB rating. The Jets are a good team, they are supposed to be a good team, and Sanchez is supposed to be their boy. Next week the Jets should let him try, then the Post can jump all over him with lazy puns like "three and doubt!"

Week 4. Half Time

I eat plenty of candy: something around a pack and a half of M&M's daily, around. Sometimes I have ice cream after dinner, or other times that I eat it. Additionally I carry a pack of Lifesavers with me at all times. Next to my computer at my desk is a bowl of butterscotch candies. They aren't Werthers Original, but individually wrapped still. Last night I found an unwrapped butterscotch candy in my bowl. I thought it was strange, and unwrapped, could only get stranger, so I ate it. Truth be told I ate half, like I ate half of the Patriots/Raiders game, half of the Ravens/Jets game and half of your mom's game.

This is what I learned in Week 4. Passing is most integral to winning in the NFL now. Alex Smith played well this week and the 49ers upset the Eagles. Matt Hasselbeck has been passing well and the Titans are a winning pick. Drew Brees seems always good and the Saints follow suit. Peyton Manning doesn't play, the Colts are bad. Forming an argument here... But wait! It's a faulty one. Sunday night Joe Flacco threw for 160-odd yards and the Ravens beat the Jets. Jason Campbell threw for 344 in a losing effort to the Patriots (and Brady's season low 226). How does that figure? Passing is most important for sure. Quarterbacks matter more than running backs unquestionably. Winning teams with losing defenses are just that. I have already heard speculation that if Ben Roethlisberger, who may have broken his foot this week, plays next week, The Steelers can still be a contender, still be a great team. I don't get it. They look awful. That is a lot faith in a broken man, but he is a passing man.

No non-passing teams are good. Passing teams are good in different ways. Sorry Russia. This is what I like about that: The football traditionalists, the ones who talk about defense and "pounding the ball" (incessant gayness in the old school) and "games are won between the tackles", etc etc, necessarily give way to a style that isn't better or worse, but new and different. Each teams' value will now be judged on gradients of their passing game. How nice is that? The style of game that Manning and Brees (and to an extent Roethlisberger and Vick) have been playing successfully for a half decade now is the style of a winning team. Those styles are different, (Manning's omnipotence, Brees' long arm, R's and V's high excessive-time-in-the-pocket/amazing-broken-play ratio), but they work for their football teams now better than any non-passing team's style work for them now. A good example is the Minnesota Vikings.

Removing need of a great back or a great defense in favor of a need for great quarterbacks, flankers and offensive coordinators cuts the traditional NFL in half. A running back can no longer compensate (on the level of an entire season) for a below average quarterback. Yes, that used to be possible. It is interesting to me how the NFL vocabulary will have to change, while a new spectrum of wholeness is being injected into it's current half-ness. And this season is particularly interesting because (arguably) the founder of the passing-matters-most style, Manning, is not playing. It is now easier to witness how other teams are making their unique "half teams" whole for them. For his contribution to the NFL and for how awful the Colts are without him, Manning should be given the MVP this season. He is probably eating M&M's right now, which is exactly how I plan on winning my MVP award next season.

Week 3. Gambling

Having a gambler for a roommate Today, a day of injuries and upsets, a day when the Bills beat the Patriots, the Giants won at Philly and the Oakland Raiders were emerging as the Pick-of-the-Day against the two time AFC conference contending New York Jets, created a maniacal ambiance within my apartment and existence. I rode shotgun with Keitel in Bad Lieutenant. I did not want to be Keitel's car stereo in Bad Lieutenant.

I watch the gamblers gamble like a game sprinkled on a game. It is so sweet and dangerous, a distraction from the meaninglessness of watching sports, an investment in their own fandom, a possible eviction, a possible conviction, a possible steak, tonight! Gambling on football is a hot shower on a cold day with your girlfriend ... when she is mad at you. You might get a hand job and work things out, but you probably wont. I still want to get in that shower. I'm single, man.

It is a wonder these players don't get hurt more, speaking of gambling. These players put money down on their bodies and talents and let it ride. Seeing Mike Vick there on the sidelines two weeks in a row during contentious 4th Quarters, when his team needs him most, when he wants to be out there most, is painful as a fan. It must be more painful for the gambling fan and most painful for Vick. Maybe the off-season of CT scan debates prepared me to look for the injury instead of away, or maybe as I get older and they get younger, I empathize more honestly with the pain.

Maybe that is part of the draw to gambling. Maybe putting their own health and security on the line, with the guys they bet on, implicates them in a way that satisfies their desires to be players themselves. When Vick got hurt and the Eagles lost today, my roommate got hurt and lost today. I think I like that to a degree, yet I don't gamble. Sports writers I admire and friends I respect, they gamble. Hemingway gambled. Men gamble. Mike Vick should be my guy. I trust he will come back next week with a broken right hand and give it to the Niners like they are some Brits. We could both come back from damaging defeats to claim victory and eat steak next week. We could and we should! I should gamble, but I won't. Because Mike Vick has a $100 million contract and I'm not a terrible fucking idiot.

Week 2. Eagles at Atlanta

Michael Vick throws a football like one of those things a geriatric uses to throw a tennis ball for a cooped-up, hyperactive dog - a ChuckIt!. I don’t even need to make a joke here about how Michael Vick has never used one of those for you to understand... that Michael Vick killed numerous dogs as a former iteration of himself. Returning to a part of that former self, Vick returned to Atlanta, his first team, to offer his unique and gorgeous array of talent to an accepting Atlanta defense. He picked apart zone blitzes and cover two’s like they were blintzes and chocolate covered almonds. Get it? Anyway he had three turnovers, two very much not his fault, a couple of touchdowns and lovely sack-avoiding-maneuvering before getting knocked out of the game in the second half. No worries, because his replacement is Franz Kafka. I mean Mike Kafka. Kafka is great too, not Mike, Franz. Mike is unproven, but played well actually and looked to be leading his Eagles to a scoring drive when Jeremy Maclin dropped a good pass on 4th down. So Matt Ryan took over with Vick gone and the Falcons won. Excellent game to watch and the Falcons, after lollypopping through a static 3rd Quarter, made a great run in the 4th to eventually jump ahead 35-31.

A thing I really like: LeSean McCoy’s incorruptible perseverance on every run. He refuses to accept a simple running call, for better or worse, by taking steps sideways and even backwards from the line of scrimmage. McCoy was last night, as watchable as he was effective. He rushed for 95 yards on 18 carries, and even with Vick in the game, was the offensive leader. McCoy (and the Eagles generally) play football like fans want it to be played, as though the offensive players are avatars motivated by entertaining as much as winning. McCoy runs self-consciously eccentric. He looks back over his shoulder after a fancy run at the linebacker who tackled him and smiles, as if he did the defender a favor in letting himself be tackled... this time. McCoy is a control freak, utilizing his offensive line as though they work for him, not with him. He is also, somehow either not written about much or extraordinarily underrated. Either way he’s eluded conversation by the announcers and by my friends (dad), until yesterday. I doubt if Vick stays out for another week he will go unnoticed. His game should not be effected negatively by the defensive attention though. Vick and DeSean Jackson are as noticeable as ice cream rubbed all over your own forehead and that doesn’t stop them from excelling game in and game out, in the same, be it extraordinary fashions. If McCoy turns out to be consistently outrageous (I do realize he had a statistically special season a year ago, but leave it, because I didn’t watch any games), this threesome of exploding diamonds might be mans’ best friend. And I mean that in the gayest way possible.

Vic Chestnutt: See You Around (Cowboy Junkies Cover)