What's Up? Docs.

THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN a great documentary and a great dramatic film is that with a great doc, you become so captivated with the subject that you want it to go on and on. If it's a two-hour documentary, by the time it reaches the end, you wish it was four hours; whereas with even a good three-hour movie like, say, JFK or Gangs of New York, you kind of endure the length and surreptiously want it to end. Plus you can more readily watch docs over and over again and become so absorbed that the length is never a question.

Theatrical release documentaries have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, led by a slew of lefty, political, mostly anti-Bush fare, most famously those by Michael Moore (Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) and Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed, Uncovered, Wal-Mart). PBS, with shows like Frontline, American Masters and P.O.V. , has been the televised showcase for the work of modern master Ken Burns, who, along with his brother Ric Burns, has seemingly never made an uninteresting film. Noted filmmakers like Martin Scorsese (No Direction Home) and Sydney Pollack (Sketches of Frank Gehry) have also made important recent forays into the genre.

So here are the 40 or so docs that have burned their way into my memory, that not only have changed the way I look at the world, but have changed the way the world looks to me. Something like that. I actually just wanted to do a top 10 favorite documentaries list, but more and more movies kept coming to mind and so it grew and grew. Of course, for that reason, this post may never be truly finished.

A lot of these I haven't seen in a long while and so my comments are comin' atcha via the miracle of selective recollection. I think the Warhol film the other night got me inspired to catalog some of the best documentaries I've ever seen at any point during my long, fruitful existence. Anything I thought of late in the game after I made my list gets honorable mention, but it's not really a ranking, just that my initial impressions cut the deepest. For instance, I thought of Rude Boy first and then only later Westway to the World, which is probably a better starting point for Clash enthusiasts, and works really well as a terrific, fleshed-out Behind the Music episode, but without as much pure live footage as Rude. Where Westway really shines is in covering the early stages and formative roots of the Clash as they went from garage band to something like world domination.

Except for only one or two instances I've seen each and every film listed below. I'm providing links where I can to either IMDB or allmovie.com so that you can get other takes and rankings or even purchase the DVD. Hey, it's all up to you.

1 Grizzly Man (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427312/
Werner Herzog's gripping character study of self-mythologizing Timothy Treadwell, who lived among giant grizzlies in Alaska. Not sure if seeing a movie composed entirely of Treadwell's unadulterated footage would have made for a better movie. Still debating that, but no denying the seductive allure of the subject as he pushes his luck and defies the odds a little more each season, until ... well, I won't spoil it here in case you've been in a coma for a few years.

2 No Direction Home (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367555/
Martin Scorcese's thorough tour through the Dylan folklore, with particularly effective cataloging of the early influences and contemporaries that shaped him in part one, and the volcanic eruptions of his immense, uncontainable, unquenchable inventiveness following in part two, merely changing the direction and landscape of pop culture and mainstream music in the process. For me personally, the perfect marriage of subject and execution. Inspiring.

3 End of The Century: Ramones (2003)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:283421
Saw this one at the Angelica as soon as it came out with some of my old punk crew, which made it that much more enjoyable. Problem was, the volume level was criminally low considering how important an element noise and loudness played in their presentation. Fortunately, a few months later it was broadcast on PBS (along with a short film about Joe Strummer), where I was free to blast away whenever the boys were shown onstage.

4 Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll/avg.dll
Can't really be overestimated or overstated in terms of its impact, and if didn't tilt or swing an election in its favor, so to speak -- not for lack of trying -- its influence on straight political polemic is perhaps still being felt if you consider the recent spate of like-minded features (Why We Fight, Inconvenient Truth, etc.). For all but the most committed Bush loyalists, a convincing litany of charges adding up to a severe testament to the madness of Emperor George. Great unapologetic agitprop in action.







5 Ken Burns' Baseball
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:189543
A modest little undertaking in 9 majestic parts and something like 18 hours of gorgeous archival photos, painstakingly tracing the history of the game. With terrific narration and commentary that in many instances reaches for the poetic and succeeds triumphantly, the rule here is the further back it reaches, the better, but each decade has its own inherent charm. The footage of Babe Ruth, however, comes closest to dominating the proceedings.

6 Ken Burns' Civil War
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:9774
I wasn't as down with this one by Ken Burns as with some of his others. I'm not really a Civil War buff; I always gravitated toward the American Revolution and found its anti-colonial sentiments more stirring somehow. But this undoubtedly set a high standard for future documentary treatments of Big Historical Events. Great use of period photos and actor narration.

7 Sex Pistols: The Filth & The Fury (2000)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236216//
From conception to destruction, myth to demise and all sordid points in between. Media manipulation was the linchpin behind the legend of the Sex Pistols, but there was undeniable substance lurking behind all the Malcolm McLaren-inspired shenanigans. Like Great Rock & Roll Swindle, the film was directed by Julian Temple; both films serve as bookends to the bollocks, never mind that the band really meant it, man, even if Malcolm saw it all as Situationist shock theater. Lasting image from Fury is juxtaposing the pitiful dementia of Shakespeare's Richard III with Johnny Rotten's menacing, confrontational stage persona.

8 History of New York (2004)
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&EAN=841887051286&itm=3
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/index.html
Ric Burns' terrific 7-part, 14-hour monster of a series begins back in the day (1609) and spans the history of the city that would eventually come to be known as Gotham itself through the centuries, building up to That Day (9/11/2001) when New York was redefined yet again. Holds up to repeated viewings like few documentaries of its kind, and featuring an expert cast of talking heads.

9 Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:242750
Defies the reassuring, agreed upon casting of Oswald as a nutjob, but in my opinion draws erroneous conclusion of LHO as lone gunman, instead of the victim of an overarching historical conspiracy to paint him as patsy. Raising the mind-blowing theory that LHO may have been a double agent for one of the intelligence agencies, the film does a credible job of demonstrating how his short life straddled many of the seismic political currents that may have set in motion the crime of the century. Oswald can be seen playing both sides of the Cuba issue, defecting to Russia, meeting mysteriously with radical communists in Japan when stationed there as a Marine, and establishing possible ties to Jack Ruby before the JFK assassination.

10 Hitler's Henchmen (1991)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:22650
It cannot be denied that the Naxis, although pure political evil, are documentary gold: engrossing, mind-blowing and frightening. It's all here in this six-part series on those evil boys from Berlin: Hesse, Goebbels, Himmler, Speer, Donitz & Goring -- collect 'em all -- with cameos by Josef Mengele, Martin Borman, von Ribbentrop, etc. Holding it all together is Hitler himself.

11 Rude Boy (1980)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:9815
Picky purists will tell you this isn't a documentary at all. They would technically be right, but the principal reason for this movie to exist is the stirring, incendiary, flaming hot footage of The Clash onstage (the new DVD release even has a menu button that will allow you to view only the songs and skip the meandering bits of seemingly unscripted narrative in between). Everything you needed to know about not only why the band's legend continues to endure, but what roiling emotions punk brought to the surface every time it was done right. If a lead singer ever had any more gruff charm and charisma than Joe Strummer, they would have to outlaw it on the spot. Catch the Clash at their absolute blazing peak and learn what all the fuss was about.

12 Kurt & Courtney (1998)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138563/
Did Courtney Love actually take a hit out on grunge-meister Kurt Cobain, whether for the money or to somehow further her own career and street cred, or did the rocker really use a shotgun to trigger his suicide? That question lies at the center of this fascinating look at some nebulous and unanswered details relating to the death of the Nirvana lead singer. Absorbing film that makes a startlingly successful bid to be taken seriously.

13 Jails Hospitals & Hip-Hop
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:184447:184447
Another film that plays much better than it sounds, thanks to the cocky, assertive talent of Danny Hoch, who jumps chameleon-like among several streetwise hip-hop personas (including his own), to great effect. At times it's stunningly poignant, at other points somewhat cringe-inducing, but always totally, undeniably original. Audacious and memorable.

14 Baadasssss Cinema (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321353/
Loving overview of the blaxploitation movie, mostly from its heyday in the early 1970s. From interviews with prominent actors and directors of the time, the case is made that exploitation is relative: nobody seems to have any regrets; to the contrary, films like Shaft, Superfly, Black Caesar and Foxy Brown are shown not only as great fun, but as legitimate sources of pride for an audience and community eager for heroes of their own, especially those out to give Whitey some much-deserved comeuppance.

15 Ken Burns' Mark Twain (2001)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:269391dll?p=avg&sql=1:269391
In which we learn the seminal event in the great writer's life was the death of his younger brother, for which he took responsibility and blame. The guilt seems to have driven him to heights of creativity and enriched his black humor with more depth and poignancy than otherwise may have existed.

16 Warhol
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0862644//
Didn't even plan on watching it but caught the last two hours the other night. Worth it just for the footage of Velvet Underground playing as part of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia extravaganza, but there's a ton of priceless footage unearthed here: the Factory's drugged out denizens, would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solaris, the cautionary tale of Edie Sedgewick, Jackie O, Dylan are only a few highlights of the second half.

17 Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History (2003)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:291188
Nice document to have for those who would dismiss this constitutional crisis and hijacking of a government as a "third rate burglary." Show this to all who would attempt to resurrect the Nixon legacy. Not that chronicling monumental abuses of power has any current relevance. It's stressed that even with all the obvious Nixonian transgressions, Tricky Dick's downfall was engineered in large part by moderate Republicans who grew tired of his large corrupting shadow. Recent revelations that Henry Kissinger himself now serves as an informal but influential advisor to President Bush on the Iraq War proves that American political history not only repeats itself but has a disturbing penchant for the surreal.

18 Outfoxed (2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418038/
Any film that has as one of its tent poles the notion that Bill O'Reilly is a blustering, bombastic fool cuts straight to my heart. And this movie does much more than that, putting the propagandistic machinations of the Fox News channel in bas relief and shining a much needed disinfecting spotlight on the turgid personalities populating this right-wing echo machine and posing as fair and balanced purveyors of objective information. Behind the scenes memos and incisive examination of who gets past the "no spin" gatekeepers says otherwise. Conservative guests outnumber liberals and progressives to a degree that gives the lie to their litany of half-truths, hatchet jobs and falsehoods.

19 Crumb (1994)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109508/
A study in creativity, artistic integrity and familial madness, the film traces the accomplishments and obsessions of the legendary underground artist who created some of the Sixties' most enduring iconic images. The captivating depictions of Crumb's mom and brothers make you feel sad and guilty but like all effective voyeurism, just try turning away.

20 Don't Look Back (1967)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061589/
In which the artist as an unappreciated, shrewd, cunning rock&roll showman vies for time with the introspective, earnest folky serves as a telling metaphor for similar dichotomies in us all. The fact that the music is brilliant and Dylan is caught in magnetic, mesmerizing medias res, at the absolute pinnacle of his most fertile period, doesn't hurt a bit either. "Give the anarchist a cigarette."

21 Gimme Shelter (1970)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll
Celebrated or lamented as the event that officially ended the idealism of the 1960s, the concert film of a free Rolling Stones show is renowned for the death of a fan at the hands of the Hells Angels biker gang naively entrusted to handle security detail.

22 Wild Man Blues (1997)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll
The DVD box shouts "Extraordinary," "Fascinating" & "Remarkable" -- high praise blurbs indeed but this time the hyperbole is warranted. Woody comes off as bumbling, indecisive and neurotic but somehow likable and even gutsy, while Song Yi is the masterful passive/aggressive control freak both lovingly encouraging the Wood man and cleverly manipulating him. There's a real love for the music permeating throughout as well.

23 Ziggy Stardust (1973)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086643/
Thank goodness for D.A. Pennebaker. He not only gave us Don't Look Back and Monterey Pop, but this priceless treasure capturing David Bowie's on tour in his last incarnation as the androgynous rock messiah Ziggy. Really a straight ahead concert movie, the play's the thing here, highlighted by mesmerizing performances of "Width of a Circle" and other prime cuts of vintage Ziggy-ness.

24 The Wobblies (1979)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll
Remember being inspired by this bad boy about the International Workers of the World labor movement when I saw it in a theater during the punk era! All singing, all dancing, the exhilirating recollections of the hardened old strikers from a time when it appeared the good guys might really win versus the heartless, greedy Pinkertons, mine owners, factory bosses, strikebreakers, scabs and coppers. If this movie doesn't touch your heartstrings, you're probably dead. Or a Republican. I don't know which is worse at this point.

25 American Experience: Fidel Castro (2004)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:316848
Like the Nazis, the camera can be said to love Fidel. Whether it's the constant army fatigues, the beard, the cigar, even the CIA recognized early on that this man's charisma was gonna make him trouble. That's why assassination attempts can be seen as the sincerest form of flattery. This riveting film covers all the bases, from law school to guerilla war with Che, trips to New York, the post-Revolution reign of terror and Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis.

26, 27 & 28 Woodstock (1970)/Monterey Pop (1968)/Isle of Wight
(woodstock) http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:55219
(monterey) http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll
(wight) http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:135873
Taken together, these three outdoor concert films would make for a comprehensive anthropology of what it meant to be young and a hippie in the groovy 1960s. I think Monterey has the best music (Hendrix, Who, Janis) performances, Woodstock best captures the zeitgeist of hippiedom, while Isle of Wight shows the strain and ugly underside of the youth culture turning on itself.

29 Rod Serling: Submitted for your Approval (1995)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297727/
From the golden days of early television anthology dramas thru to Twilight Zone, Night Gallery and even features like Planet of the Apes, for which he wrote the memorable, quoteworthy screenplay, Serling jammed an incredible amount of ambitious ideas and political insight into every thing he touched. His refusal to settle for lower standards and battles with censors and the lowbrow, demeaning forces of commerce were lifelong demons to battle. There is an unyielding, uncompromising struggle for quality and morality that is still inspiring.

30 Soul of a Man (2003)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368287/
Technically, like Rude Boy not a documentary at all, but an incredibly imaginative recreation of the lives of three seminal early blues men. Directed by Wim Wenders and shot in some sort of oldtimey looking sepia tones and also incorporating authentic era footage, the details are painstakingly realized to the point where if you suspend disbelief the persuasive reality takes over and you couldn't see it happening any other way. Best of the multivolume Blues series curated by Martin Scorsese and shown on PBS. Stunningly original filmmaking.

31 I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (2003)
ttp://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:266231
This was the film about alt-country darlings Wilco's refusal to compromise when confronted with their record label's dissatisfaction over their new record's lack of commercial prospects. I was a big fan of the group and had them live several times, but this movie had the odd unanticipated effect of making me like the band a good deal less after I walked out of the theater -- due to something about lead singer Jeff Tweedy's personality that I can't quite put my finger on -- call it pretentious, overbearing, precious... Another big turnoff for me was the group decision to fire/dismiss guitarist and unreconstructed rocker Jay Bennett, unfairly and shabbily handled by Tweedy & Co. in my view. So it goes sometimes.

32 Battle of Algiers (1966)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058946/
It was rumored that the U.S. government thought it would be a smart use of taxpayer money to show this docudrama to our troops before they went overseas to Iraq to fight yet another anticolonial insurgency, so as to learn from the mistakes and transgressions the French made in their brutal excursion into Algiers. Some joker, however, apparently switched reels at the last moment and popped in Bill Murray's Stripes instead and now all hell has broken loose over there. I've never seen it, but its historical significance merits inclusion here.

33 The Howlin' Wolf Story
http://www.howlinwolf.com/dvd/dvd.htm
After seeing it looking at me from a shelf in J&R Music World, this was the DVD that led me to finally buy a DVD player! And it didn't disappoint either, with good sound and images from the fertile mid-1960s period of the Wolf, as well as a goodly amount of complete song performances. Only thing detracting from perfect package is lack of early Howlin' Wolf in action, but who knows how much footage from then even exists. Does include the Wolf together with early Rolling Stones on a 1965 British TV show, Shindig. A complex, multifaceted portrait of the towering, talented blues legend.

34 Lou Reed: Rock & Roll Heart
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:160243
Definitive look at the grumpy former glam rocker, from growing up on Long Island to walks on the wild side with the Warhol crowd. When asked how much longer he would be doing this (i.e., writing and performing rock & roll), Reed responds with righteous indignation, rightfully asking the interviewer if he would pose the same question to an old blues guy. The implication is clear: a musician keeps going until something stops him from making music. Touches all the right notes, with some good Velvet Underground material if I recall correctly.

35 Eat The Document (1972)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233629/#comment
I've never seen this Dylan doc, but then very few other humans have either. Eat This Document is assembled from footage shot during the same 1966 tour that served as the basis for Don't Look Back, but it's supposed to be even more raw and amateurish.

36 Unforgivable Blackness: Jack Johnson (2004)
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:310830
Boxer Jack Johnson is a dream subject for any documentarian, but in the hands of a Ken Burns? Elevated to great cultural significance with metonymic ramifications and ripples for black-white race relations that have run troubled through the river of American history. Is there a better anticipation than looking forward to the second night of a great documentary like this after you finished watching the first part totally enraptured in the subject matter?







37 Frontline: Hunting Osama Bin Laden
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/
Portrait of the al-Qaeda leader goes a good way toward penetrating the myth without dulling his undeniable charisma and the sway he holds over large swaths of the earth's population, and for that reason of course it's important documentary reportage.

Honorable Mention:
Liberty! (American Revolution) 2004 : http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/liberty.html
The War That Made America (2006): http://www.amazon.com/War-That-Made-America-French/dp/B000E1MXZ0/ref=pd_sim_d_2/002-6971490-8846449?ie=UTF8
Eyes on the Prize (1987): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092999/
The Grateful Dead Movie (1977)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076104/
Woody Guthrie (2006): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/guthrie_w.html
The Men Who Killed Kennedy (1988): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254033/
Klaus Kinski: My Dearest Enemy (1999): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200849/
A Constant Forge (John Cassavetes) 2000: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346794/
Image of an Assassination (Zapruder Film) 1998: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165324/
Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan & the Blacklist (None Without Sin) 2003:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=293561
Ken Burns' Jazz (2001): http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1402825&cp=1412587&view=all&parentPage=family
Lewis & Clark (1997): http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1402900&cp=1412587&view=all&parentPage=family
History of Dallas Cowboys (1960-2003): http://www.amazon.com/NFL-Films-Cowboys-Complete-History/dp/B0000C8http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074605/AO2
Harlan County USA (1976): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074605/
Hearts of Darkness (1991): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102015/
Roger & Me (1989): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098213/
Before Stonewall (1984): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088782/
Frontline: Behind the Mask (IRA & Sinn Fein) 1997: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/
Ramones Raw (2004): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425388/
An Inconvenient Truth (2006): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/
About Baghdad (2004): http://www.aboutbaghdad.com/
History of Rock & Roll (1995): http://www.amazon.com/History-Rock-Roll-Obie-Benz/dp/B0002234XQ
IMDb Documentary page: http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Genres/Documentary/
Documentary Film at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film
The Documentary Channel: http://www.documentarychannel.com/main/index_new.php
NFL Films: http://www.nflfilms.com/specialorders/
Documentary Films.Net: http://www.documentaryfilms.net/

Say It Ain't So, T.O.

Well, as a Cowboy fan who first didn't want Terrell Owens in the first place, then hypocritically changed his mind when we finally got him, this morning I'm not sure what to think after, oh, about the 4oth or 50th thing T.O. has done, intentionally or not, since he joined the team a few short months ago to draw attention to himself above and beyond what has actually taken place on the field.

Yesterday afernoon I read that he had an allergic reaction to some pain medication he was taking. Then I get home last night and it's all over the radio that he may or may not have been trying to kill himself. So now we are thru the looking glass here. What is it with wide receivers in the NFL? There is a preposterously high preponderance of head cases populating the position -- led by T.O. but followed in outrageousness by NBA-like prima donnas like the cousins Keyshawn and Chad Johnson, Steve Smith, Randy Moss, Antonio Bryant....

Someone needs to do a dissertation on why the wide receiver position breeds such erratic, selfish, attention-grabbing personalities. It gets so the normal wide receivers is the exception, to the point where players like Marvin Harrison and Torry Holt who just go about their business are aberations. Even on my high school team we had a few guys who were a real handfull to deal with, Mike Allen and Mark Yancey.

But nobody comes close to T.O., whose timeline Timeline of Antics fills up one of those five subject notebook deals we all used in school. And this from a guy who really doesn't get in trouble off the field like most athletes in terms of drugs, alchohol or spousal abuse. No, it's just a Hindenburg-sized ego, or the biggest set of coincidences and bad timing in modern sports history from a guy who still has his share of sympathy and support from ex-teammates and coaches and writers around the league. I agree with the take by Vikings receiver Billy McMullen, who played with Owens in Philadelphia, who also didn't believe reports of a suicide attempt. "Too proud of a guy to do that," McMullen said. "Too much going on. Too much faith in him. Too much God in him to do that."

I think in this specific case, no way was the guy trying to harm himself. Nobody in love with himself to this degree wants to kill himself. But I'm past the point of being full of T.O. stories. I just want him to be another player on the team, another receiver, one of the best in the NFL. I am tired of him drawing attention away from the other players and from the games themselves. I want my season back. I want to read about Julius Jones and Roy Williams and DeMarcus Ware. I want to hear from Bill Parcells without him having to defend/explain/justify matters T.O.-related, unless it's game plan related.

I'm sure Giants fans and Eagles fans and Redskin fans deep down are wishing Owens the worst. Giants fans were predicting a big blowup between Parcells and T.O. before the season was out, but they should have been worrying about their own problems, such as the mutinous statements and actions of their own Jeremy Shockey and Plaxico Burress. Two more well adjusted receivers.

Not that Owens doesn't fit right in with historical head cases in Cowboys history; after all, we've had our share of outsize personalities and enigmatic iconoclasts like Charles Haley, Dieon Sanders, Nate Newton, Michael Irvin, Duane "Sphinx" Thomas, who once went a whole season literally without talking to anyone -- media, teammates, coaches -- and Lance Rentzel, who was married to actress Joey Heatherton but creatively managed to gain more notoriety by getting arrested for an indecent exposure episode involving a 10-year-old girl.

Rentzel, of course, wore uniform number 19 and was, you guessed it, a wide receiver. Wikipedia claims 7-time Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong was named for him. But Wikipedia claims a lot of silly things. It's more likely he was named after former AFL standout Lance_Alworth, also a former Cowboy who wore #19 but known more for his Hall of Fame exploits with the San Diego Chargers, where the acrobatic WR earned the nickname Bambi for his graceful strides.

Stingrays & Grizzlies & Crocs, Oh My

After watching Werner Herzog's 2005 biodoc of delusional but fascinating Timothy Treadwell, the self-styled Grizzly Man, I've given serious contemplation to also kicking drugs, changing my name to something more alliterative, affecting a strange effeminate voice, and dropping out of human society to live among the wild squirrels of Central Park, or maybe among the wild ducks. Whatever is less dangerous. Because when you grow up in New York City and live and work among its multitudes of insane denizens, why tempt fate more than you have to? That's why you don't see many native New Yorkers bungee jumping or hang gliding as a rule. Isn't getting home in one piece almost like running a daily deadly gauntlet in its own right?

The movie got me to thinking, who was tougher, the dude who lived among 10-foot grizzly bears and carniverous foxes in the Alaska wilderness, or the crazy Aussie who wrestled giant alligators and crocodiles and such, before being bested by a giant stingray? First of all, we all had pet stingrays growing up, right, and what did our moms always tell us? Do not under any circumstances try to take a bath with little Stingy because they really don't like to be crowded. I mean, isn't that Stingray Raising 101?

In terms of the still unpatented Gruesome-Death-O-Meter, I also have to favor Treadwill. Yes, it's a grotesque way to meet your maker, getting your chest sliced open with a footlong serrated poisonous bull-ray tail, but does it trump becoming a Grizzly Manwich for pissed-off wild bears? I think not. Zoologists don't call 'em ursus horribilis just to show off their Latin.

Of course, Werner Herzog knows mortal danger first-hand, having directed the late Klaus Kinski (www.klauskinski.de) for all those years -- an authentic madman in an industry full of pouting posers. Croc Hunter Steve Irwin, however, probably had the cooler coterie of celebrity friends like phone-throwing Russell Crowe, and he left behind a loving nuclear family. Conversely, Grizzly Dude not only managed to get his girlfriend Happy Mealed by ferocious carnivores, but left behind a set of grieving parental units on Long Island to explain how their once seemingly normal son came to his, ahem, grisly end. (By the way, the interviews Herzog conducts with Treadwell's parents are eerily reminiscent of those conducted with Virgil Starkwell's ashamed parents, minus the phony eyeglass-nose-& moustache disguises, in Woody Allen's brilliant 1969 mockumentary Take The Money and Run.)

So the lesson here, if there is one? You want nature, get some goldfish or a fucking parrot or just turn on Animal Planet. But unless you want to be fodder for Earth's unforgiving food chain, I would strongly advise against naming yourself after some fierce, undomesticated creature and then proceeding to make a big show of living among them. Animals usually get the last laugh.

All Things Ziggy

In a long-ago previous post I postulated that David Bowie's 1972 album The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars has stood the test of time as the greatest rock & roll record of all time. Nothing has changed my mind since then. Nothing likely ever will. My MP3 player is programmed to play the song Ziggy Stardust first whenever the thing is turned on. I never get tired of hearing its opening chords building to an epic crescendo before the vocals kick in.

My older brother Don was (I guess still is) a big glam rock fan, altho we never really used that term; we just played a lot of records by Slade, T.Rex, Bowie, Stones, Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople, along with Dylan, Black Sabbath, the Stones during that time period and I credit him with passing on his good musical taste to me, as well as his old records. Ziggy and the 1970 Bowie album The Man Who Sold The World were the two standouts for us, to the point where to this day we still quote obscure lines from both records ("praying to the light machine" ... "I'll never go down to the gods again") whenever the need arises.

Of course we're far from being alone in the high regard we hold these songs chronicling the adventures of an androgynous alien rock star messiah living in the last days of Planet Earth -- hands-down the best of that oft-neglected musical genre. A terrific and rewarding Website (http://www.5years.com/start.htm) is dedicated to the Ziggy Stardust album as well as Bowie's other early '70s masterpieces, and there are far worse ways you can waste your time than reveling in the amazingly brilliant landscape of sound, image and wordplay that came out almost 35 years ago.

While Bowie was obviously the originator of the sci-fi meets hi-fi Ziggy concept, it is impossible to overstate the contribution of the still-futuristic-sounding guitar pyrotechnics of Mick Ronson on not only this particular album but all of the early Bowie ouvre. Ronson also played on Lou Reed's seminal Transformer and produced the album along with Bowie. Released about the same time as Ziggy, Transformer addresses similar issues of sexuality/identity/fame and stands inarguably as Reed's best solo work to this day.

Too Much On The Magic Bus

Who saw this coming? Turns out a Lousiana state trooper noticed a strong smell of marijuana when Willie Nelson's tour bus was pulled over on a traffic stop. Giving new meaning to the term Farm Aid, the cop finds almost 2 pounds of pot on the bus, as well as a copious amount of magic mushrooms. You get the feeling Willie wasn't there on no research project, to paraphrase David Bromberg in his most excellent cover version of Mr. Bojangles. What I found most interesting was that the 73-year-old Willie wasn't even the oldest person given a ticket for possession; that, ahem, doobie-ous designation goes to Willie's sister, 75-year-old Bobbie Nelson. And the youngest dude clocked in at 50. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This is a reality series waiting to happen. Word has it that there's a long line of roadies volunteering to work gratis for the next leg of the tour...

Five years ago at around this time, The NY Times started publishing A Nation Challenged: Portraits of Grief , their special section devoted to coverage of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. I remember the days following 9/11, reading those capsulated memorials of the victims' lives made me break out in tears almost every time over the senseless loss of life. Now imagine the thousands of American soldiers lost in the march of folly that is the Iraq war, and the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian killed by our hands. It seems life has become a little less precious somehow and a lot more fleeting...

So much for truth in journalism. It seems some joker won like $600,000 on game show Deal or No Deal, hosted by sometimes funny but now suddenly disturbingly omnipresent Howie Mandel. I watched about 10 minutes of the show last season -- 10 minutes of my life, as the kids say, that I will never get back -- but today's Daily News had a story on the Staten Island truck driver, charitably calling him a Ralph Kramden look-alike. But what had me chuckling was when they described this fat fuck as "beefy"! Webster's dictionary defines beefy as "muscular in build, or brawny." No, my friends, calling this obese slob beefy is like saying Moby-Dick is just a big fish. Decide for yourself, folks. Oh yeah, now the fucking guy wants his own show and is referring to himself in the third person: "Matty wants to be on TV." I guess when your stomach qualifies for its own census tract, you can sometimes lose track of yourself. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/453811p-381867c.html

Last week while fooling around on the Mac I use here at LT, I found out that whoever sat at the desk where I sit now could almost pass for my musical doppelganger. They laid off the fulltime proofers here in mid-June, hence my presence as a freelancer, but left behind were over 20 GB's of iTunes, or 4,440 songs, enuf apparently to last for 12.8 days. I am thankful for this timeless gift and legacy of good taste. I guess proofreaders really do it better. Now all I need to do is save up for an iPod and, presto, I can fill it up with downloads of songs by Dylan, Neil Young, Morphine, Johnny Cash, Beck, Moby, Beth Orton, Tom Waits, Coldplay, Lucinda, the Stones, CCR, Black Sabbath, White Stripes, Peter Tosh, Cypress Hill, Son House, Elvis Costello, Pixies, Pavement, the Smiths, Lightnin' Hopkins, Jesus & Mary Chain, Robyn Hitchcock, Radiohead, Velvet Underground, Warren Zevon, even William Burroughs, Cat Power, Mazzy Star, Bright Eyes, Stephen Malkmus ... on and on it goes. There's also more than a little (too much) Mozart, Debussy, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, even the ever-popular Gregorian chants...

...Now that I think of it, I kind of did the same thing in my last days at the Transcript. I had just gotten a new Dell computer, and I downloaded about 30 or 40 great CDs I brought from home onto my hard drive, great stuff if I do say so myself like the Clash, Vulgar Boatmen, Steel Pulse, Louis XIV, the Shins, Hot Tuna, Marley, Dylan... so some lucky person who inherited my work space can enjoy their great good fortune for having digitally crossed my path. So it goes. For now I will listen & learn & enjoy my own serendipitous good fortune.

Speaking of serendipity, last week on Jeopardy the Final Jeopardy category was "A 1950s POEM." As soon as I saw the clue, I knew the answer was gonna be Allen Ginsberg's Howl, because really how many poems from that decade, or any decade, are etched into popular culture enuf to warrant such a mention. Maybe Robert Frost, or Carl Sandburg. Sure enuf, Alex came back after the commercial interlude and recited a few of the more obscure verses, not the opening line -- I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness -- which would have been a giveaway, but there was a reference to a mental institution, if I remember correctly. Only one contestant was hip enuf to get the answer, or the question, as the case may be, but it was enuf to propel her to well-deserved victory. You could tell she was very happy that knowing such relative arcana literally paid off for her.

Caught a few minutes of Bush's unhinged press conference on the News Hour last Friday, following the Senate's bitch slap of his proposed Cover My Ass, None Dare Call It Torture legislation. Apparently the basic precepts of the Geneva Conventions still are unclear to him, because he was seen asking the musical question, "What does that mean, 'outrages against human dignity'? It's very vague." I don't know, call me naive, but maybe Abu Ghraib taught us that it is outrageous to lead a prisoner around by a leash, attach electrodes to someone's genitals, sic wild dogs on people, to waterboard someone, little things like that, in addition to the deplorable behavior by some of our fratboy troops which have not only outraged but also enraged large numbers of people around the world who now wish to do us even more harm than before 9/11. Let's not forget the goodwill this administration squandered back in 2001, when the world was all but united in grief and empathy toward us following the attacks. The sentiment was wholly shared by yours truly, a former punk rocker and self-styled anarchist in the best sense of the word, who wore a Fuck the Draft button during the freaking Carter Administration (until my mom summarily confiscated it lest my old-school Korean War veteran father catch sight of it), and who shocked my friends by wearing an American flag button for weeks after 9/11, who supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and who wanted to just kill somebody or something for causing such death and destruction to my beloved City. But on Friday here was President Nutjob jabbing his finger like a crazy person at the assembed press corps, who were seen cowering in the face of his jittery bellicosity. The performance should have frightened any sane person, but after his 2004 debate meltdowns, especially the shocking incompetence Bush displayed in the first one, you have to ask if the nation has become inured to such behavior on the part of this belligerent bully. We have become an object of scorn for people around the world because of this lying megalomaniac , and I'm sick about it. Our long national nightmare indeed.

Back On Track

The Cowboys got a much needed victory versus their longtime arch rivals, the Washington Redskins, last night, 27-10, evening their record at 1-1. It never gets old beating Little Daniel Snyder. The game had a little bit of everything from a Dallas standpoint. On offense, Drew Bledsoe bounced back, the offensive line provided solid protection, Julius Jones ran with purpose, the defense got tons of pressure on Mark Brunell, and even Mike Vanderjagt got into the act, making good on two field goals, one a booming 50-yarder to put the game on ice. And Aussie P Mat McBriar showed why his strong leg may be a lethal weapon this year, leading the league after two weeks with a 50.8 average. LB DeMarcus Ware was a force, so much so that John Madden was continuously singing his praises. Maybe the player Dallas passed up in the 2005 draft to take Ware, San Diego LB Shawn Merriman, has a slight edge so far in sacks, but I think we saw enuf out of Ware last nite to be satisfied with what we got, even if the Sporting News recently ranked Merriman 11th, offense and defense, in their poll of the NFL's 101 best players.

Terrell Owens caught only 3 passes, all in the first quarter, and his timing with Bledsoe is nowhere close to what the QB enjoys with Terry Glenn, still one of the more dangerous and sure-handed deep threats in the game, despite being on the other side of 30 now. Unfortunately, Owens left the game late with a broken finger, so it's good timing that the Cowboys have a bye week before their next game at Tennessee, followed by the much-anticipated October 8th showdown at Philadelphia.

Nobody Understands It Can Happen Again

20 YEARS FROM NOW, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, I believe those Americans who now oppose George W. Bush will be looked upon with the same favor as those patriotic Germans who fought against Adolph Hitler assuming absolute power. It's good to remind yourself that you are not alone. Read http://www.furnitureforthepeople.com/actpat.htm;
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0828-23.htm;
and also http://www.oilempire.us/reichstag-fire.html

For a great dismantling of David Brooks' latest sycophantic column of hagio-praise of The Great Uniter, read this piece by Ellis Wiener, titled Our Mister Brooks. Choice line: "Here he is at last: President Eddie Haskell, laying it on thick to Our Mister Brooks, who, in this performance, plays the role of June Cleaver." For all of you born after 1970 or so, that's a Leave It To Beaver reference.

The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the tree: "George Bush's grandfather, the late US Senator Prescott Bush, was a director of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany." http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.htm


"Newly-uncovered government documents in the National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush ... served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi was machine from 1926 to 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners." (http://www.geocities.com/bushfamilynazis/)

Whenever I call my friend Paul down in Florida, his girlfriend Maura, who can only be described as a rabid Republican and Bush loyalist, invariably picks up the phone and I know it will be a good 20 minutes at least before I get to talk to my buddy. Before long we're headlong into an argument over politics, one in which every two minutes she feels the need to remind me how her degree is in American history. I just smile to myself and continue with my point. Once she said that I was anti-Bush because I was envious of how much money the president has. I had to bring up the fact that, well, he did start out in life on third base thinking he had hit a triple, to quote the late Ann Richards, who, god bless her soul, went up against Shrub in the race for governor of Texas thinking she could play fair and still win against Bush's devious, twisted Brain, Karl Rove (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green/3). I also attempted to inform her that as I was a middle class, public school educated son of a factory worker and office secretary, maybe, just maybe I started life at a slight disadvantage relative to the grandson of a U.S. Senator and son of a future CIA director, ambassador and president (http://austin.about.com/cs/bushbiographies/a/bush_background_4.htm).
But what weapons are facts against the "truthiness" of such self-righteous and sanctimonious court followers (http://home.twcny.rr.com/clarkrupert/)? I also brought up what an utter and complete failure the Boy Blunder was whenever he found the time or inclination to lift his nose up from a mirrorful of coke lines to try his hand in the world of bidness (http://alaric3rh.home.sprynet.com/science/bceo.html). He was about as good a businessman as Dick Cheney was a soldier. Not fucking very, as the Evil Doughboy somehow sought and received five deferments from serving in another distant war that the chickenhawk conservatives of the time surely framed as a battle for civilization itself (http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i05/05b01101.htm).











More heartwarming news from the front: "Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, Air Force secretary Michael Wynne said Tuesday. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/4182615.html

Wynne was previously in the headlines last year when, gasp, a weapons procurement scandal threatened his appointment by Bush to head the Air Force. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-17-wynne-nomination-scrutiny_x.htm I know it's hard to believe that a Bush official was tarred with the brush of corruption, seeing as they came into Washington promising to end the moral turpitudes of previous administrations, making the country once more safe for democracy following the Whitewater, Travelgate and Monica Lewinsky transgressions. But rest assured, the freedom to profiteer from war and death will not be easily quenched!

Generals gathered in their masses...

Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy:

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Five Years, Stuck On My Eyes

AH, NOTHING LIKE another 9/11 in the rearview mirror! Yes, another September 11th has come and gone, with both sides using that now institutionalized event to score political points. Never has the nation been so polarized, at least as far as I can remember. I was a young boy for most of the Vietnam War, and remained unborn for the nation's Civil War back in the day, so I cannot compare the self-inflicted vitriol or damage to the national psyche of those two conflicts with our present disastrous conflagration in the Middle East. We are now as a nation entrenched in our enmity and steadfast in our opinions and positions. Dug in, self-righteous and defensive.

I won't bore you right now with all my memories of that Tuesday in September five years ago, just a few thoughts. At shortly after 9:00 I got kicked off the N train at Canal Street, three stops before my Rector Street station, the conductor informing us that there was a plane crash. I found that extremely odd, and thought she misspoke and meant to say train crash. I debated waiting for another train, but after about 5 minutes, I decided I would walk the rest of the way to work. When reached the street, I noticed a steady stream of people heading uptown, while others were milling about in small groups, looking up and pointing at a fire raging on the top floors of a tall building. Someone said it was one of the World Trade Towers. At first I lingered a while, not knowing what to make of it, thinking how stupid the pilot had to be to crash into such a tall building. Then on my Walkman I heard that the Pentagon had also just been hit by a plane, and I remember saying, out loud but to no one in particular, People, we are under attack. I then found a pay phone on Lafayette Street and called work, no answer, called my mom to let her know I was all right, called Laine, and then started heading uptown, deliberately but not rushing, turning my head around as I walked every block or so to watch the flames get higher and the smoke get thicker, then heard a rumbling low moan, whereupon I looked back in time to see one entire building collapse like a giant cigarette being smoked down to the filter in one long angry draw, ashes spewing and hissing. That put a little more spring in my step as I headed toward the 59th Street Bridge, wanting nothing except to be off Manhattan Island as soon as possible and into the normalcy of Queens, the borough where nothing historical really happens. On the spur of the moment I stopped at Laine's house on 2nd Street. We watched the news for a while, then went out for a cup of coffee around the corner, before Laine went to donate blood and I continued uptown. Soon after, I remember hearing someone shout: "He said he was gonna do it and he did it! Oh man, this is the fucking chickens coming home to roost!" The man was smiling as he said it, and I dismissed him as just another New York street crazy, but later that afternoon when I got home and put the news coverage on, it dawned on me that the "he" in question was Osama Bin Laden.



SURPRISED MYSELF the other night by flipping over to ABC's Path to 9/11 docudrama during an early lull in the Giants-Colts game and being unable to tear myself away from the movie for the next two hours or so. I had heard that the movie was being lambasted by Democrats for all the blame being leveled at the Clinton administration, but I couldn't deny the power of the narrative and the overall effectiveness of the film. The look of it for some reason reminded me of the movie Traffic at first, but the more obvious influence had to be the frantic pacing and disjointed camera work of TV's hit series 24. I was just hoping that the Bushies would not be spared when it was their turn at the helm. And sure enough, Condi Rice is rightly ridiculed for her cluelessness, making good use of the infamous August PDB that Michael Moore highlighted so brilliantly in Fahrenheit 911.

But as captivated as I was by the fictional account, for the most part I stayed away from the memorial services, the same clips of the same planes smashing yet again into the same twin towers. How many times have we all watched that footage by now? When is enough enough? Even at my local laundromat at around noon, the TV was tuned to cable channel NY1, and my MP3 headphones picked that moment to cease functioning, so I watched Bush laying wreathes, vowing to protect the country (but not, apparently, to uphold its constitution), meeting with firefighters...

One other thing. How unnerving was it to have the president give his address to the nation around one hour into part two of the movie last night? It was creepy to see how twitchy his hands were, mouthing the same old hackneyed phrases over and over again. Then after 20 minutes the movie resumes, giving the whole evening an unsettling feeling of 1984-like telescreen propaganda, such that you wish the great George Orwell himself was around to chronicle the surreal political landscape we are forced to endure on a daily basis here in Bush Country.

I was glad to have off yesterday. Not that I'm more paranoid than the next fella, but if I didn't have to be on a train yesterday, then no sense tempting fate. Of course, now that I no longer work in the financial district, mere blocks from Ground Zero, I don't get the whoosing flood of memories from that day and its immediate aftermath bringing it all back home. For two weeks or so after the attack I couldn't bring myself to get back on the train to go to work. We were off the rest of that week -- the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday immediately following 9/11. So when it came time to return to work the following Monday, I hopped on my trusty Trek 2300 and peddled there, riding over the Pulaski Bridge that connects Long Island City, Queens to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, then over the Williamsburg Bridge to South Street and lower Manhattan to my office on the 9th floor of 67 Wall Street, wearing an air filter over my mouth whenever I was in range of the horrible burning stench that would envelop the entire region for many more weeks and months to come. I finally was able to get back on the subway a couple of weeks later, wearing my American flag button to show my solidarity with my fellow countrymen...

On September 8, 2001, a Saturday, me and Steve had tickets to Stiff Little Fingers, the legendary Irish punk band, at the Village Underground. Before the show we went to a nearby pub to get a pre-show buzz on. We were met there by Steve's friend Gavin Mcmahon, who he knew from the insurance biz. Gavin was attending his 60th or 61st Stiff Little Fingers show (for me and Steve, this was only our second SLF show), and he bought rounds of drinks for us, telling us of great SLF concerts from years past, reminding us that they don't play certain songs anymore, like the incendiary Gotta Gettaway, because ... well, just because they no longer can stand behind the sentiment of certain songs they wrote back when they wore younger, more naive emotions on their sleeves. Gavin worked for Aon Insurance, and his office was on the upper floors of one of the World Trade towers. I remember telling his girlfriend that night what a generous, friendly guy he was, buying drinks for everyone, treating me like a long-lost friend... He never made it out of the tower when the planes hit less than three days later. I think about Gavin a lot.

FOUND MYSELF BEHIND ENEMY LINES at Shea Stadium on Saturday morning. My friend had an extra ticket, and so me and Tony, his son Mike and a friend arrived early to the park in scenic Flushing, Queens on what turned out to be Shoulder Bag Day, with every fan getting a free garish blue nylon carry-all thingy with Mets and Verizon prominently emblazoned across the sides, which did come in handy as a seat cushion. The bonus for a lifelong Yankees fan like me was discovering that Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez was that day's hurler for the Metropolitans versus the Dodgers, he of the Rockettes-like high leg kick and past playoff glories when he manned the same position for the more heralded New York team of which I am a proud partisan. It's a given that Mets fans are supposed to hate the Yankees, and vice versa, but despite the Mets' unbelievable success this year, it's hard to root against them even as a Yankees fan, because they display very little of the arrogance of their last very good team, 1986, and indeed have enough solid players and citizens that make begrudging their success a last option only. It begins with their manager, Willie Randolph.

Willie was my favorite player when he wore uniform #30 and anchored those storied late 1970s Yankees teams of my formative adolescent years at second base, so much so that I chose #30 for my high school football jersey. How can you root against Willie? The same goes for guys who play the game the right way like David Wright and Carlos Delgado and even our old Boston nemesis, Pedro Martinez. So I found myself surrounded by Mets fans and, if not caught up in the late summer Shea enthusiasm, at least not actively rooting against them for this glorious September day at the ballpark, while reserving the right to express my anti-Mets sentiment later as a natural birthright of all diehard Yankees fans. Best line from a fan in our section was directed toward Dodgers pitcher Greg Maddux, winner of over 300 games and a surefire Hall of Famer: "Maddux likes men!" some wiseass screamed in the direction of the far-off pitcher's mound. And we got to hear The Clash's London Calling blaring from the needlessly loud, tinny Shea Stadium PA. Oh yeah. The Mets won 3-2, with Hernandez pitching like the El Duque of old, Delgado going yard and Wright predictably getting the winning hit.

Made it to the beach again Sunday morning. For some reason, my friend Tom brought his portable TV to catch the early NFL action, although I could have done without his attention dangerously split between the road and the game being played in small scale on the TV perched precariously atop his beverage cooler and being held in place by Tom and his brother Rich riding shotgun as we headed to Rockaway. I mean, the Cowboys weren't on till 4:00, so why do we need to chance killing ourselves to catch a play or two of the fucking Jets or Eagles games? I didn't say anything because Tom is, well, a little eccentric shall we say and you have to kind of take the whole package with friends sometimes. This is a man who brought his portable TV to a live game when we went to Dallas to catch the Cowboys. You are at the game! They have a fucking scoreboard for replays! So why are you watching a game that you are attending on a tiny television screen! It's like going to a U2 concert while listening to one of their CDs on your iPod. Makes not even a little bit of sense. Then we're on the beach and he's trying to get better reception. Finally I said, hey, let's forget about that and play some catch here. Let's live in the moment, people. When I am the voice of reason, you know something is out of whack.

Of course, getting home from the beach and watching my beloved 'Boys losing their opening game to the Jacksonville Jaguars went a long way to ruining my weekend. But one thing I learned from a misspent adulthood watching football is that you can't overreact to the first game, win or lose; the season is too long to draw conclusions from one game in a 16-game slate. That said, I did not like what I saw from Drew Bledsoe. He was like a pitcher getting lit up for 4 home runs on opening day. You have to be a little concerned for the 3 picks he threw, his disturbing penchant for repeatedly missing wide open receivers, and his deer in the headlights demeanor that was worrisome for a 14-year NFL veteran. Terrell Owens was better than advertised, getting his first TD out of the way, and Julius Jones showed some flashes. But too many penalties, a very poor effort by LT Flozell Adams, and a defense that simply didn't live up to its preseason billing made for a hard to stomach opening game loss. The good news is the Giants and Redskins also both lost, so we sit tied at 0-1 for the year with those teams, one game behind the 1-0 Eagles. One more similar poor performance by Bledsoe and I think Bill Parcells will be hard-pressed not to make a QB switch and go with soon-to-be-famous Tony Romo. You heard it here first.

See also:

Bottoming Out

Massively Relevant
Free Fallin' Down
Drumbeat of Deceit
Condemned to Repeat
More Madness
Freedom IS Authority
Donnie We Hardly Knew Ye