One-Eyed King

NOW, YOU MIGHT THINK someone would have better things to do with their time than defend the Dallas Cowboys' honor in what passes for the sporting press these days. Well, unfortunately, in my case you'd be dead wrong. Turning to Peter King's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on SI.com, I should have known better than to expect a storyline involving something along the lines of the Cowboys winning the last MNF game played at Texas Stadium, the highest scoring game in the 98-game rivalry. Nah, that's too pedestrian an approach for the clever King; instead, he goes all Bizarro World and raves about how great the gritty Eagles looked while losing! It's a totally slanted article, but by now no one should be surprised by Peter King making excuses for Andy Reid. King starts with a pro-Philly agenda early and never lets up. Johnny Donovan, the excerpts please:

"The Eagles were tremendous last night. All that stood between them and beating the best team in football on the road was a botched Donovan McNabb-to-Brian Westbrook handoff with nine minutes left at the Dallas 33, trying to expand on a three-point lead. That's a once- or twice-a-year event, that kind of stupid play, and it shouldn't take away from what the Eagles showed the country in a scintillating football game."

Judging by this opening, if you weren't fortunate enough to have witnessed this absolutely thrilling football game, you might conclude the Cowboys were somehow handed the game by a gutsy but snake-bitten Eagles squad or, gasp, a blown official's call. Yes, there was a fumbled handoff on the Eagles' third-to-last drive of the game. But Philly got the ball back 2 more times! The drive after the fumble the Eagles were forced to punt, and the next time they had the ball, McNabb was sacked twice as the Eagles ran out of downs. So the Eagles had TWO MORE CHANCES to scintillate America some more by driving for a winning score. I guess they had demonstrated their "tremendousness" enough already by that point; by then there was no reason to show everything in the arsenal to the largest cable TV audience since they began tracking such things.

An impartial writer might balance out his piece by including some of the botched plays by the Cowboys in the first half that all but gift-wrapped not one but two Eagles touchdowns. I don't know how "once or twice a year" those plays were, but they were major factors in the Eagles comeback nonetheless. An ill-advised pass by Romo led to an Asante Samuel INT, his return gave Philly the ball at the Cowboys 33 yard line; the next play was a make-believe pass interference call on CB Anthony Henry that set Philly up at the Dallas 1. Brian Westbrook scored on the next play.

Then came the drop by Romo in his own end zone. That act of self-destruction was set up by another: a badly muffed kickoff return by Isaiah Stanback forced Dallas to start the drive on their own 5 yard line, a false start moved it back inside the 3, and then came Romo's fumble. That sequence gave Philly 14 points in 14 seconds -- suddenly turning a 14-6 deficit into a 21-14 lead -- which some might even call a once-in-a-generation happenstance.

Next, the deluded King lists three reasons why the Philadelphia Eagles just might prevail over the Cowboys and Giants after all in the tough NFC East division: 1, Philly can really play the run; 2, Donovan McNabb is back and better than ever; and 3, Brian Westbrook is Brian Westbrook. That's what I mean by having an agenda. Sure, all these things are true, and Philly will probably be in the division race all year, but was this the time and place to pontificate to his readers about it?

The Cowboys won 41-37 in thrilling fashion, and yet in King's column we find no mention of the electfrifying rookie Felix Jones, who set a Dallas franchise record for kickoff return yardage. No mention of Romo's performance, who by the way managed to outplay McNabb when it counted most -- 21-30 for 312, 3 TDs (123 QB rating) versus 25-37 and 281 and 1 TD (99 QB rating).

In the first half Eagles sold out to stop the run, pinching their LBs tight between the defensive ends. In the second half Marion Barber churned out enough first downs to seal the game, scored on a rushing TD, and also caught a 17-yard TD pass, but King never cares about numbers or facts when they don't work to prove a point he's intent on making:

"I don't care about Westbrook's stats; don't even tell me what they were. The great thing about this guy is he can get splattered like a squirrel in the road by a Hummer on one play, then he's back to make a play the next. What must he feel like the day after a game? Remember Larry Brown, the old Redskins running back? You couldn't believe the abuse Brown took on Sundays, and then he'd be back, fresh, the next week, running over somebody."

Just a pointless anecdote by Uncle Peter. Westbrook for the record was 18-58 rushing in the game, Barber 18-63. And this is the time he picks to make his stretch of a case that with "LaDainian Tomlinson getting nicked, Westbrook, right now, is the best all-around back in football for my money. He's what Tiki Barber was for the Giants for the last three years of his career -- an indefatigable runner and receiver you could build an offense around." Westbrook is a dynamic player, but it's not like he was close to being the best player on the field Monday Night. So put away your hero worship, King, and instead maybe some insight into the game that was just played, if you even watched it.

Predictably, Clueless Pete sets up the choice Andy Reid quote:

"As Reid said after the game, the Eagles just looked tougher last night. "We're a tough-minded football team, and that's important,'' Reid said. "I'm proud of the guys, man.''

That's not bias, though, to single out the Eagles supposed toughness in a game where TE Jason Witten separates a shoulder but misses just one series, when S Roy Williams fractures a forearm on a special tackle teams and is lost for a month. I'm sure Wade Phillips was just disgusted with his own team's effort on Monday night.

King concludes with his pseudo justification for the Eagles losing and Dallas winning. No mention that the Cowboys defense clamped down, holding the Eagles to just 7 points after halftime. Or how, say, Marion Barber playing with bruised ribs gutted out some tough yardage down the stretch. No, it's a case of the Eagles sort of overlooking a specific part of the game that you just know Reid & Co. will fix by the time they meet Dallas again.

"The Eagles lost this game because they couldn't get pressure on Tony Romo. Period. They've got the terminally underrated Trent Cole and Chris Clemons to fix that, and it must be better. But I wouldn't worry. Cole's not going to be as invisible as he was last night."

I searched that paragraph in vain for any praise or credit given to the Dallas O-Line -- superbly coached by Hudson Houck -- for keeping thosee mighty Eagles away from Romo and for giving up no sacks in 31 pass attempts. But I guess Flozell Adams, Leonard Davis and Marc Columbo had nothing to do with Cole and Clemons looking invisible; they must have stopped themselves all night. Rest assured, if Dallas loses this week at Green Bay, you won't see Peter King writing about how noble they were in defeat.

Week Two NFL Caravan

Broncos 39, Chargers 38
One brutal start to the 2008 season for San Diego. Opening week's last second loss to Carolina, this week's last minute jobbing by the refs in the form of a garbage call by Ed Hochuli. A blown call in Denver's favor in the first half after the replay mechanism malfunctioned was nothing compared to an apparent Jake Cutler fumble that wasn't. Postgame, a steaming Norv Turner said Hochuli admitted he blew the call, which Turner rightly called "unacceptable." Has the officiating improved at all since the black eye on the league that was the Seahawks-Steelers Super Bowl? I don't see how you make that case when one team clearly walked away with a win yesterday that was all but handed to them by the zebras. An old-fashioned AFL shootout, with over 900 yards total offense combined, ruined by a ref who didn't know the rules. At the least, I don't wanna see Ed Hochuli anywhere near a playoff assignment this year. Denver's Brandon Marshall caught 18 balls, 2 short of the record, against a Chargers secondary that embarrassed itself, with no one more guilty of covering no one than Antonio Cromartie, the NFL's new brand of "Toast." Usually when a QB goes 21-33 for 377 it's good enough for a W, but Chargers are wasting great play of Phil Rivers: his 594 yards and 6 TDs good enough for a stellar 122+ passer rating, but not enough to prevent 0-2 start.

Colts 18, Vikings 15
New York region got this exciting game, which thankfully offset having to watch the one-sided Giants thrashing of pitiful Rams. Colts spotted Vikes a 15-0 lead before Peyton Manning got hot in 2nd half, connecting with emerging Anthony Gonzalez 9 times for 163 yards. Amazing Adrian Peterson rushed for 160 in giving Minny astounding 180-25 edge in rushing yards. Despite legitimate upgrades in talent all over the roster, and with the world's best RB, Vikes will still go only as far as their unpolished QB Tarvaris Jackson will take them. So far it's been a journey to Oh-and-Twoville. Jackson is only 25, but I don't see him getting much better any time soon. That's as kindly as I can put it. Not a fan, is another way.

Redskins 29, Saints 24
Washington rebounded from putrid 16-7 loss to Giants in opener to knock off New Orleans. Reggie Bush, the NFL's most overrated player, had a 55-yard punt return TD in which he classlessly waved at opponents for about the last 20 yards. The TD put the Saints up 24-15 at the end of the 3rd quarter, but those were the last points NO would score, just like when Bush taunted the Bears on a TD in a playoff game two seasons ago and they shut the Saints out after that. Bush had 63 yards receiving but was only 10-28 rushing. Jason Campbell had best game as pro, 24-36 for 321 yards, including a game-winning 67-yarder to Santana Moss. Saints a solid candidate for most overrated team going into the season.

49ers 33, Seahawks 30
Changing of the guard in NFC West? With Cards' hot start and 49ers looking much improved at QB, Seattle is looking very vulnerable in Mike Holmgren's last year at the helm. More importantly they're 0-2. Luckily the perfect tonic is at hand in the form of the sacrificial Rams coming to town next week, then a bye. But the schedule is relentless after that, with games upcoming at Giants, home to Green Bay, at Tampa Bay and San Fran, before a home encounter with the Eagles. More importantly, Matt Hasselbeck looks lost, with a 45% completion percentage and 3 picks on the year. On the other hand, Julius Jones, with 127 yards against the 49ers, looks ready for a breakout year.

Cardinals 31, Dolphins 10
I kept seeing the numbers rolling in across the screen. Kurt Warner: 9-9 for 221 and 2 TDs, 12-14, finishing 19-24 for 361 yards -- a perfect QB rating. Cards start 2-0 for the first time in 17 years. Ironically, just when all the pigskin prognosticators stopped picking Arizona as their surprise team, they may be taking a step forward from last year's 7-9 team. I'm gonna assume the Dolphins will improve upon 2007's 1-15 debacle, but it's not gonna be by a whole bunch more wins. I see all the makings of a 3-13 team.

Patriots 19, Jets 10
NE wins ugly, Jets lose ugly. There's gonna be a lot of ugly if Matt Cassel doesn't look any better in coming weeks. Cassel was tentative, shaky and unsteady in going 16-23 for 165 yards. Let's just say he played worse than his numbers: severely underthrowing a streaking Randy Moss, who was 10 yards behind the nearest DB, for a sure TD on one play. I thought there was a reason Belichick kept this guy around for 4 years, but there are practice squad QBs scattered throughout the league that can outplay this guy. You gotta take the bad with the good when Brett Favre is your QB, and on this day there weren't enough good plays to offset the bad pick that turned the game decisively in favor of Pats.

Bills 20, Jaguars 16
Jacksonville is one of those teams everybody seems to overrate when it comes to preseason picks; everybody is anxious to put them on the next level, along with teams like the Saints and Vikings. Jags are a solid team with few weaknesses that looks to be there all year if David Garrard can repeat his efficient, almost flawless 2007 play (18 TDs, 3 INTs). Trouble is, very few QBs in the history of the game have gone an entire season and thrown only 3 picks. Law of averages may be catching up with Garrard, as he's already thrown 3 picks in the first 2 games, with only 1 TD. Jags find themselves 0-2 and staring up at Colts and Titans. They may have to get used to the view. Buffalo QB Trent Edwards, a comer in this league, had a very solid game, going 20-25 for 239, and his passer rating after 2 games stands at 107.7. With continued improvement from Edwards, it's the Bills, not the Jets, who will be challenging Pats for AFC East title till the very end. Bills among most disciplined, best-coached teams in football. Talent is now starting to catch up to the schemes, as the rest of the league will find out.

Titans 24, Bengals 7
No Vince Young, no problem, it's only the Cincinnati Bengals we're talking here. A methodical, read boring, win for Tennessee. Conservative game plan for Tennessee, only 118 yards for QB Kerry Collins more than enough to offset a quizzically subpar Carson Palmer, who through 2 games has yet to throw a TD. He's got 3 INTs and just 228 total passing yards. And the Bengals running game is almost nonexistent. They better find something in a hurry, because a road game against the Giants awaits, followed by games against the Browns and Cowboys. If Marvin Lewis lasts the year, it will be as coach of one of the league's least competitive teams. I wanted to say worst team, but then remembered the Chiefs, Rams and Dolphins are still technically NFL teams.

Raiders 23, Chiefs 8
Raiders will be in every game this season if they just let Darren McFadden tote the rock 20-25 times a game. Yesterday, in overwhelming Kansas City, McFadden had 21 carries for 164 and Michael Bush added another 90, part of an even 300 yards rushing for Oakland. Of course they will win a lot more close games if they get more than the 55 yards passing they had yesterday from JaMarcus Russell. Chiefs seem absolutely rudderless as a franchise now, and it's gonna be painful to watch this team on a weekly basis.

Panthers 20, Bears 17
Had Panthers down for my sleeper team. It wasn't the Jake Delhomme who almost stole that Super Bowl from New England a few years back with a magical second half (12-21 for 121 yards, 1 INT), but magic is what Carolina seems to have going, as evidenced by their two miraculous wins to open the 2008 season. Panthers were staring a loss in the face, trailing Chicago 17-3 midway through the 3rd. But they scored 17 unanswered to close it out. Bears' TE Greg Olsen lost 2 fumbles in a defensive struggle, with both teams COMBINING for 462 yards (Panthers 216, Bears 256). Can't blame Rex for this gross one.

Giants 41, Rams 13
Thankfully we were spared from having to take in this stinkeroo, with NFL generously beaming Colts-Vikes to NYC at 1pm. Semi-close game early, then Rams seemed to remember how much they're supposed to suck, and got down to it in the second half. If this was the last game of the year, people would be trotting the 'Q' word out -- quitting. But it's early in the season and so we just gotta assume they're this bad. Last week told me all I need to know about how the Rams care about winning: RB Steven Jackson yucking it up on the field with the Eagles after a 38-3 crushing of his team. Think they'd like Kurt Warner back at QB right about now? I do, because for whatever reason Marc Bulger is playing like a shell of his former self behind a porous offensive line, but maybe he's just proving that he wasn't that good in the first place. Playing Eagles and Giants first two games may be skewing the Rams' enormous degree of suckitude in getting outscored so far 79-16. Time will tell, as it always does.

Packers 48, Lions 25
Despite lopsided final score, Lions didn't pack it in down 21-3. In fact Detroit stormed back to take 25-24 . No ground game whatsoever for Lions; a game, battered Jon Kitna found Calvin Johnson for 2 scores. But the outstanding play of Aaron Rodgers (42-60 on the year with 4 TDs, good enough for a 117+ QB rating) figures to lead to some enterprising Packers fan making a mint selling "Brett Who?" t-shirts outside Lambeau Field.

Buccaneers 24, Falcons 9
Need a few more weeks to get a read on both these teams. Figures to be up and down year for both teams with uneven QB play week to week. Atlanta rook Matt Ryan came crashing back down to earth with his 13-33 for 158, 2 INTs and 4 sacks. Brian Griese efficient enough with no turnovers on 18-31 passing.

Steelers 10, Browns 6
For second week in a row, Romeo Crennel dubiously went for a FG late instead of the TD. Last week Cleveland went for 3 while trailing 28-7. This week with 3:21 left, trailing Pitt 10-3, he goes for the FG, which means the team still needs a TD to win. Bad message, playing not to lose instead of to playing to win. Steelers, on the other hand, never beat themselves and are hands down the most physical team in the game.

"Theater Of The Hopeless"

WITH ALL THE rainouts last night forcing doubleheaders today, there are a total of 20 MLB games being played today -- the most in one day since August of 1974. And I hope my Yankees lose both of their games today at Yankee Stadium to the Tampa Bay Rays, all the better to hurt the Boston Red Sox, who come into today trailing by only 2 games. Not that the Yankees need any more reasons to lose this season. Mike Mussina, after tying Cy Young for career strikeouts, gave up a 2-run single to the next batter, and Rays lead 2-0.

Derek Jeter is at that point in his career where almost every day he seems to be tying or passing one or another Yankee legend's record. The other day it was passing Babe Ruth in hits, and with his first hit today he is now within 8 hits of Lou Gehrig for most hits all time at Yankee Stadium. It seems only yesterday me and my dad were agreeing that this skinny kid with the #2 on his back has a chance to be something special.

When the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles 90210 clinched the AL West with a win over the Yanks in their series finale the other day, it marked the earliest a team had clinched a division title since they went to the divisional alignment for the 1969 season. Yanks, on the other hand, have the AL's 7th best record, and 12 other teams in MLB have better records, which helps to put their lost year in perspective.

More painful perspective: Yanks scored 2 runs or less 46 times this year, compared to 33 in all of 2007. I'm tempted to say after all the number crunching, maybe it all comes down to something as simple as not making up for the loss of Jorge Posada's 2007 production (.338, 20 HRs, 90 RBI), which if spread across a season would make right a lot of offensive woes. Whatever the conclusion, Yankee fans are gonna need a fall guy for the year, and the name Brian Cashman immediately springs to mind and will do just fine.

Now it's 7-0 Rays, and the word forfeit never sounded so reasonable. Forfeit the game, give up the season already. Nothing to play for over the last 10 games at Yankee Stadium. That's pitiful really.

Yanks' radio man John Sterling just called this game "the Yankees' worst of the year" -- as if such a thing were truly quantifiable. Anyway, it seems there's been a "worst game of the year" almost every week this season.

The other day Tyler Kepner, Yanks' beat writer for The Times, called playing out the rest of the season a "theater of the hopeless." Can't argue with that. We all waited for the hot streak to come, hoped for the run that never came, but unlike even last year, this Yankees team didn't have the collective heart to will themselves to win day after day, and so the long playoff run ends not with a bang but with a whimpering wind through what will soon be not only an empty ballpark but an abandonded one.

The Yanks have only 3 hits today, all by Jeter, against Rays starter James Shields and we're already in the 6th inning. This is their 2008 season in a nutshell, the utter futility. Better the season ends this way, however, than another first-round knockout in the playoffs. That's somehow worse. Let's hit bottom, take stock, reload. All that's left for a Yankees fan this year is rooting agains the Red Sox and rooting against the Mets, and then hoping Jeter gets those 6 more hits for the record. That's what happens in losing seasons: the fans of the team start paying attention to individual records.

Read & React

HOLY HAND GRENADE, has there ever been a more eventful Week One in the NFL's history?! Between the major injuries and the big blowouts, it seemed like everybody was drawing definitive conclusions based on just a game played.

Based on the first game results, the dogs of the league would appear to the Rams, Bengals, Texans and Lions; all 4 teams are virtual locks for last. Don't think the Redskins will be as bad as they showed Thursday versus the Giants; they're an 8-8 team, but that's still bringing up the rear of the loaded NFC East. That's as far ahead as I'm willing to look. One game at a time, as the league's most trusted cliche puts it.

The first inclination among both writers and fans after Tom Brady's season-ending injury was to write off the Patriots with extreme prejudice. Now, Jets fans can't contain their giddiness, and who can blame them feeling optimistic when they look at their QB situation compared to their division rivals. But I for one would not be so eager to bet large sums of money against a cornered Bill Belichick, at least until we see Matt Cassel play a few more games. I just hate writing off a player before he gets his fair shot. Hell, didn't we learn anything from Tom Brady and Tony Romo coming out of nowhere? Let's give the kid a chance. I think there's a reason that the talent evaluators on the sport's model franchise over the last decade kept Cassel on the roster all these years.

Now, just like in baseball, where I refuse to follow the first 10 games of the endless MLB season, I usually try not to put much stock in Week One or Two results, no matter how one-sided. It takes at least 4 games into an NFL season before you know anything about how the season is gonna play out .

One thing I especially dread is the trend of "Power Ranking" NFL teams. You now see this regularly on every football Website. I mean, this is not college football, where rankings are everything; unless I'm mistaken, there will be a playoff tournament after the regular season, so ranking the Cowboys first, Giants second, Chargers third, etc., is an exercise in complete futility.

Remember how we were inundated all last year experts writing off the NFC's chances of winning a Super Bowl any time soon or even staying on the same field as a team like the Patriots or Colts or Chargers. How did that work out, all those columns about the supposedly inferior conference? Now just a year later, NFC teams like the Giants, Eagles, Cowboys and Packers are as deep and talented as anything the AFC now has to offer. Panthers and Saints may be a notch below those teams but still dangerous if Delhomme and Brees stay healthy at QB. There are major question marks surrounding the Colts (Manning's health), Chargers (losing Shawn Merriman) and Pats. Broncos and Steelers may be class of the conference by midseason. How the worm has turned.

Seems a little too early for such a showdown matchup, but Week Two gives us Eagles-Cowboys this Monday Night. Would have been nice in Week Six or Seven, but we'll still learn a lot about how strong this NFC East division may be. Everybody seems to want to focus on Romo's struggles last December in the 10-6 Eagles win -- the Jessica Simpson pink jersey game -- overlooking Romo's 38-17 dismantling of the Eagles at Philadelphia in a November Sunday Night game, when he went a blistering 20-25 for 324 yards and 3 TDs. Nice to know that Romo has that to fall back on, because judging by the experts no QB has ever completed a pass against the Eagles blitz.

But Romo will continue to be scrutinized until he erases the playoff drought, as if he's personally responsible for the Cowboys lack of postseason success since 1996, as if he ever stunk up a stadium or was, say, "Eli Manning Against the Panthers" bad -- throwing up 3 awful picks. No, Romo has exactly 1 INT in his two playoff games against 2 TDs. Yes, he hasn't played up to his own regular season standards in the postseason, but when measured against all-time greats like John Elway, Peyton Manning and Brett Favre, sometimes the football gods test even the best before pointing the way to Football Valhalla. That's what makes the journey all the sweeter.
No QB in recent memory ever took the beating that Eli Manning took his first 3 seasons, not only from the out-of-town football pundits but also, and especially, in his own hometown from fans and sportswriters alike. In 2007, when Manning threw 20 INTs in a so-so regular season, the criticism became a feeding frenzy (and it's not like I wasn't one of the hungriest sharks in the sea), reaching the point where people were almost competing to throw the nastiest, lowest blows in Eli's direction. That's my latest conspiracy theory for why the New Jersey Giants rode one of the unlikeliest, most unbelievable waves to a championship in the history of organized sports. The notoriously temperamental and contrary Football Gods decided to reward poor Eli for taking all those personal cheap shots. And it's that same logic that this year Tony Romo gets his just reward, bringing his Cowboys along with him to the Promised Land. If you've got a better working theory, I'd love to hear it.

The Airborne Toxic Event - Moving On

Unforeseen Musical Directions

If, as Kurt Vonnegut said, "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God," then what can be said about unexpected concert tickets at the last minute? That's what happened to me on Friday night as I found myself taking in the Airborne Toxic Event at Roseland Ballroom, a group that I had never, ever heard before at a concert venue that I had never, ever been to.

Turns out my friend Steve had an extra ticket to the show. For the last few weeks he had been jacked up about seeing Airborne Toxic Event and since his taste in music is almost a mirror image of my own, I jumped at the chance to see some good live rock & roll in what some still call the Big City.

We had less than zero interest in the first band going on at 8, so instead we hit a midtown bar for a cold one, getting back to Roseland just in time, literally as the band took the stage for their first song. One thing the band had going in their favor was that the name Airborne Toxic Event was taken from one of my all-time favorite books:

"The band takes its name from the postmodern novel White Noise, by Don DeLillo, which won the National Book Award in 1985. In the book, a chemical spill from a railcar releases a poisonous cloud, dubbed by the military as an “airborne toxic event.” This serves as a metaphorical device for the novel’s themes of mortality and media consumption, as the protagonist Jack Gladney is forced to confront the prospect of his own death."

ATE was actually second on the bill, with Scottish band The Fratellis headlining. The Airborne lineup was your standard 2 guitars, bass and drums, but the 5th member happened to be an electric violin player, a modern day Scarlet Rivera if you like, who also played keyboards and tambourine. Something about the arrangements as well as the lead singer's raspy vocals immediately reminded me of Arcade Fire, judging by the 4 or 5 songs that I know of that band.

After about the 3rd song, the singer mentioned that the Roseland air conditioner had stopped working that very morning, and indeed the place was not only like a sauna, but served the exact same purpose as one, drenching band and audience alike in a sheen of sweat, yet unlike, say, a packed rush hour subway platform with no AC, somehow this felt just right. The lead singer/rhythm guitarist, whether intentionally or not, had that Joe Strummer chopping at the guitar strings while backing away from the mike stand move down pat, but I guess if you're gonna emulate someone as a rhythm guitarist, Strummer's not a bad monkey to ape.

Airborne Toxic Event only has one album out, so the set lasted for just short of an hour, then a long break of 40 minutes or so before the main act, the Fratellis, hit the stage. We took the opportunity to get some air in the lobby, where I saw something that may turn out to be an amazing coincidence.

I had passed by the place hundreds of times, but had never set either foot inside Roseland Ballroom, which was a famous ballroom dancing place from the 1920s until the '60s. It's a huge, cavernous place, pretty much kept intact from those old days.

Here's your irony alert. I had just spoken to my friend Anthony on my way to the concert about an hour before I met Steve, his brother Matty and their friend John in front of Roseland on 52nd Street. Tony mentioned that our old friend Urb had pulled up in front of his parents' house in Astoria and said hello to his dad last week: "Hey, Mr. Trentacosti, remember me?" Now, I've known Tony's parents for years and years, and I know his mom's name is Mary, but I couldn't remember his dad's name. That's what I was thinking as he told me the story.

Just a few short hours later, I'm drinking a beer and checking out the scenery in the lobby when something on the wall catches my attention. It's a neat little tribute with the names of all the couples who first met while dancing at Roseland and then got married. About halfway down the first column I see Mr. and Mrs. John Trentacosta, 1953. Yes, it's spelled slightly differently, but I know from experience that long Italian names like Trentacosti or long Greek ones like Eleftheriou and Vrakipedes from my own family are usually off by a few letters whenever someone else is writing them down for posterity. I know the year 1953 is about right, because that's around when my folks got married and they were about the same age as Tony's parents. I have a call into Tony right now and we'll get to the bottom of this.

Anway, I knew even less about The Fratellis going in than I did about Airborne Toxic Event, and came away less impressed by their shambolic brand of neo-glam. Oh yeah: their lead singer seemed to have his own Marc Bolan thing going on. Not that they were terrible or anything, just more 1970s derivative and somehow less memorable than Airborne Toxic Event. Yet the capacity crowd clearly felt otherwise, with most of the young'un's in fact there expressly to see the aforementioned headliners The Fratellis. As if to prove it, great numbers of them could be heard singing and even on occasion chanting along with the band in something very close to unison. Let's say by all indications they got their money's worth.

Monday Postscript: Heard from Anthony this morning and, yes, his parents did meet at Roseland in 1953. His dad must have been some ballroom dancer, because two years later they got married and they're still together more than a half century later. You have to admit me seeing their names still there on the Roseland lobby wall Friday has to be classified as one helluva New York coinky-dink. I do have a cell phone pic by way of documentation, just in case there are any skeptics out there.

Un-Conventional Impressions

I PROMISED MYSELF I was not gonna watch a second of the Republican Convention this week, but there I was last night, soaking up the entire asylum, er, assembly of Rich White Simpletons shouting "USA! USA!" If you spotted a black face and it wasn't attached to a security guard, your eyes are much better than mine. There was a Jon Voight sighting, however.

The reason a political junkie like yours truly thought long and hard about skipping the festivities was purely medical: my blood pressure and stress rising to apoplectic levels was a very real threat that I gave into at the last second. To try to prevent all my pent-up disgust from exploding all at once, my strategy consisted of screaming obscenities loudly and giving the middle finger often to the television screen. Like most adult males of my particular demographic and psychological profile, this kind of behavior is ordinarily confined to your big sporting events.

One of the reasons it would have been wise for me to skip the Tuesday night lineup was because it featured two of the more revolting politicians our broken democracy can lay claim to: Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman. Now, these two phony lying hucksters would have been abhorrent human beings no matter what profession they chose; but it was as attack dogs for the corrupt Republican platform that they were there speaking last night, back to back.
Fred Thompson has obviously polished his "Aw Shucks" corn-poke act over the decades, most notoriously employing his hayseed hypocrisy to great effect as the leading force in the Senate driving the Clinton impeachment back in '97-98. Last night he got great applause for his usual stump speech, which mostly bravely defends America, apple pie and motherhood against a degenerate Hollywood and media elite bent on handing the dangerously liberal Obama the election before a single vote is cast.

Choice Thompson: "Sarah Palin is the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to field-dress a moose!" Call off the election now! It's over!

Joe Lieberman has an undeniably morbid bearing, and last night at the podium he looked at times like a mortician at a Sweet Sixteen party. He mumbled and stumbled through a singularly uninspiring speech -- his own creepy sotto voce laughter disturbingly, frequently audible over the humming of the less-than-fully aroused convention crowd.

Lieberman's appeal to disaffected Dems and independents was not only exceedingly superficial and disingenuous but also totally unlikely to have any effect on the election. After 8 years of the most deliberately polarizing president in at least a generation, lapdog Lieberman is appealing to voters to put Country First -- incidentally the convention motto, which took on unabashedly bizarre and proto-Fascistic overtones considering the militaristic stamp of the night.

Tonight it's Rudy Giuliani's turn, one of the very few modern day pols who, to me, rivals the above two for sheer soul-sucking malignancy. Then it's America's chance to get to know Sarah Palin, the cartoonish-sounding, self-described "hockey mom" a desperate John McCain tapped as his running mate.

My first reaction to the Palin nomination was, Great move for the Republicans. Cynical, desperate and almost wholly marketing-driven, yet potentially brilliant politically. But over the course of less than a week, the lack of vetting (has that word ever been used with more frequency than this past week?) by the McCain camp is startlingly obvious, and that's leaving aside for the moment the tabloid frenzy over her unmarried teenage daughter's pregnancy.

There is already enough politically exploitable baggage attached to her that Louis Vuitton will be opening an Alaskan outpost should the McCain-Palin ticket be cashiered in November. The Democrats would be wise to lay low until the debates and press conferences thrust Palin further into the spotlight. Obama-Biden operatives would be wise to use her own words to show that her brand of frontier conservatism is out of touch with the voting mainstream.

As far as I can tell, Palin supports creationism being taught in schools to the exclusion of evolution; abstinence education in lieu of sex education; is rabidly pro life and anti-abortion; and in a more comical vein exhorts fellow Alaskans to pray for a natural gas pipeline and for oil drilling in her state: "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said. This kind of stuff makes her a hit with the evangelical crowd and will ensure a higher turnout among those lunatics than if, say, Lieberman or Tom Ridge were the VP choice, not uncoincidentally reported to be McCain's original selections. But does it garner her enough support among moderate women and environmentally minded voters, not to mention the coveted youth vote that has gone overwhelmingly Democratic the last two elections.

Even after 8 years of the Bush nightmare, most progressives and mainstream Dems just can't work themselves into a frenzy of personal hatred over John McCain, given his back story of overcoming overwhelming suffering during those years in a Vietnamese POW camp. Any other candidate would not be getting the near-free ride he's enjoyed so far, rightly or wrongly, judged solely on the merits of his uneven political career and constant shifting of opinions. In an earlier, simpler time, such unsure waffling would be branded as the dreaded "flip-flopping" -- a labeling that ringingly resonated with the double-digit IQ crowd that the Republicans almost exclusively set out appealing to in their every campaign move.

What makes the Rovian strategy so effective is that it simultaneously appeals not only to the grossly uninformed and blissfully ignorant among the electorate, but also to the reptilian part of the brain that often drives gut reactions and first impressions. Those are the emotions that cut deepest and last longest, and thus the more considered and thoughtful sections of our mind are often at a loss to parry them, no matter the ultimate consequences.

George Orwell wrote that Mankind at this stage of its development was ill-equipped, perhaps even fatally unprepared, to meet the challenges and demands that history was making of it, and thus we keep electing dysfunctional politicians and getting the resultant unresponsive governments we deserve. As good an explanation as any for the rotten state of our nation since right about the time the highly coordinated firing of assassins' bullets cut short a certain young president's life back in 1963, and thus our last best hope in the process, after but a thousand short days.

Not Dead Yet

THERE ARE MUST-WIN GAMES, and then are games like today at Yankee Stadium, when the Yankees had one last chance to resurrect a disappointing season. After dropping the first two games of a crucial series to Boston, and after trailing most of the game 2-0, the Yankees came back for a dramatic 3-2 win.

Mike Mussina had yet another quality start, giving up just 5 hits and those 2 runs over 7, and Jason Giambi provided the offensive fireworks with a pinch-hit, game-tying blast in the 7th and then the game-winning single in the 9th off Jonathan Papelbon.

That leaves the Yankees with 29 more games, 29 more chances to stave off their first non-playoff season since 1993. It starts with 3 games against Toronto, which won't be easy if no other reason than they'll be drawing the Blue Jays' 2 best pitchers, A.J. Burnett (16-9) and the Seaver-like Roy Halladay (16-9, 2.69 ERA).

The first Yanks-Red Sox game featured Andy Pettitte vs. Tim Wakefield, one of the last knuckleballers in the game, and was notable for a textbook case of home plate umpire Tim Reynolds squeezing the strike zone for Andy Pettitte. The result was a frustrating 7-3 loss, especially for one Alex Rodriguez, who started off the most important series of the season with one of his worst games as a Yankee, considering the circumstances. Alex struck out twice and grounded into two double plays, one with the bases loaded late, in going 0-5, while adding an error in the field for bad measure. Other than that, he had no hand in the Yankees losing that night.

Last night was a listless 11-3 affair where Sid Ponson continued his downward slide. I think the Yankees got all they're gonna get from him, and now hopefully Joba Chamberlain can come back from injury and take his place in the rotation. It may be a case of delaying the inevitable, but let's play the games out and see where it takes us as August turns into September.

Another day, another article critical of Yankees GM Brian Cashman in the Daily News. After Bill Madden detailed his many shortcomings on Sunday, today's piece by Peter Botte has Cashman fully accepting blame. Of course, Cashman falling on his sword at least merits him some points for honesty and accountability, but at this stage of the game blaming Cashman for the Yankees' underachieving is a little like saying George W. Bush kind of screwed things up in Iraq:

"And it was Cashman who convinced the Steinbrenners to focus on developing young pitchers such as Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy -- who've combined for zero major-league victories in injury-plagued campaigns -- rather than flip some of the youth for an ace pitcher such as current Met Johan Santana last winter."

To me, the jury is still out on that non-trade. There are at least 10 other moves I would criticize Cashman for before getting to that one, starting with the latest one: the trade of reliever Kyle Farnsworth for a well-past-his-prime Ivan Rodriguez. It was a totally unnecessary move, and somehow weakened us in two spots: the bullpen and defense.

Derek Jeter is getting hot at just the right time, adding another 3 hits today. So in his absolute worst year, Jeter is still hitting .294 with 8 HRs and 60 RBIs hitting second in the order. After getting bashed by haters like Mike Lupica all year, he's still right there with whatever numbers Jose Reyes is putting up in his best year.
Now, in all fairness, you have to give the Mets some credit for bouncing back last night in Philly after their horrendous meltdown Tuesday night. Of course it helps when it's your ace's turn to take the mound the next night and you have Johan Santana in that role, and Mets MVP Carlos Delgado hit yet another big HR to tie it late.

The meltdown in question took the form of the Metsies blowing a 7-0 lead to the Phillies, almost a funhouse mirror image of their 7-game folderoo over the last season's final 17 games. The Mets scored all 7 of their runs in the first 4 innings, following their season-long script of scoring early but failing to add runs late, then watched the Phils chip away, tying it with single runs in the 8th and 9th. Chris Coste's hit in the bottom of the 13th gave the Phils one of their most dramatic wins of the year, one that ultimately would not carry over to the next day.

The Mets have bounced back with wins after almost all of their blown games all season. Just when you thought they were going into a nasty tailspin, they right the ship. With their shaky bullpen, expect similar late-inning troubles. But that ability to bounce back, along with their patty-cake schedule the rest of the way, should bode well for the Mets as they try to avoid a similar collapse to 2007.

Ending Better Than Mending

AH, WHAT A NICE TIME of year for the pro sports fan here in New York. Baseball pennant races are ready to heat up in earnest, and in Flushing and the Bronx as well. Pro football is about to start its regular season, the U.S. Open just started here in Queens for all you tennis weenies out there, and the Olympics is finally, mercifully over. And oh what a regular human rights festival we had there in Beijing! That's just China being China, get used to it.

The big baseball questions here in New York can be reduced to two, I believe: Will the Yankees finally miss the playoffs this year after 14 straight years, and will the Mets collapse like a cardboard condo again this year? We're hoping the answers to those perplexing queries will be, respectively, Hell No and Fuck Yeah.

The Mets were on a nice little roll until this past weekend, when they lost 2 games to Houston. Yesterday's game in particular was a nasty one, with yet another stunning 9th inning bullpen collapse. The Metsies were out to a 3-0 lead early courtesy of a Carlos Beltran blast, and with Ollie Perez (who I predict will be a New York Yankee next year) dealing, I looked at the feeble 'Stros lineup and said to myself, Self, why are you wasting your time watching this? So I tuned out, only to find out later that the immortal Brad Ausmus and Darrin Erstad had dashed the Metsies' hopes on this cruel summer Sunday, taking Pedro Feliciano deep, or "going yard" as ESPN geeks might put it on Sportscenter. Then ex-Yank flop LaTroy Hawkins came in and shut the door, extending his Astros scoreless streak to 10 games. Yeah, this baseball season is not too crazy...

So after the Mets got well against the little sisters of the poor -- aka Pittsburgh (57-73), Atlanta (57-73), and Washington (46-85) -- teams with a combined record of 71 games under .500, they ran into a decent Astros team (66-64), who took 2 of the first 3 games at Shea. The two teams play one more game tonight before the Metsies pack their duffel bags and head off to unfriendly Philly (71-59), with stops in Florida (67-64) and then Brewtown (76-55) to follow. We'll see if the Mets are the powerhouse their more delusional fans claim they are or the dogs most Yankees fans hope they are.

Speaking of unhinged fans, you would think I would have my hands full with the Yankees doing all they can to keep their own heads above water. But after writing them off at least 3 times over the course of this long season, I'm ready to get back on the bandwagon. If I'm wrong, no one will remember, and if I'm right, well, I'm used to that by now.

Yanks find themselves in strange position of being underdogs down the stretch, what with Sid Ponson, Darrell Rasner, and Carl Pavano manning the rotation. Three games at home against the Red Sox kick off the last 32 games of the year. Yanks need a sweep, will settle for 2 out of 3, but a sweep the other way and it's Nellie, Bar the Door. That Yankees bandwagon will be emptier than a Mitt Romney campaign promise.

Daily News' Bill Madden gave more ammo to all the Brian Cashman haters out there, and we know who we are, in his Sunday column, as part of a longer piece chronicling the "demise" of the Yankee empire. Madden did not paint a pretty picture of the young talent in the Yankees system, nor did he pull any punches in Cashman's direction. Regarding the minor league pipeline of young players, there's just one teeny problem: there is none, and according to Madden, most of the fault lies not in our (lack of young) stars, but in our Cashman:

"It would be nice if they had a couple of young position players like the Mets' Murphy and Evans coming in the system, but they do not. They do not have a first baseman to replace Jason Giambi, or an impact center fielder, or a shortstop to spell (and eventually replace) Derek Jeter, or a second baseman who could enable them to deal the enigmatic Cano while he still has value.

The reason they don't have any of these players in their system is because they continue to do a terrible job of scouting and developing. They spend millions more in Latin America than almost every other team and yet the only position players from there to make the big club over the last 10 years are Alfonso Soriano, Cano and Melky Cabrera. The draft? An even bigger disgrace. Jeter, in 1992, is the last player they drafted who became a regular.

And the beat goes on. In this year's draft, the Yankees took pitchers with their first three picks: No. 1, Gerrit Cole, whom they did not sign because their scouts obviously didn't get to know the kid's makeup or his family situation; No. 2, Jeremy Bleich, who's going to need Tommy John surgery; and No. 3, Scott Bittle, whose arm problems were so severe they elected to pass on signing him.

After a while, you have to wonder what fatal attraction Cashman's player evaluators have with injured pitchers. Last year, they took North Carolina State righthander Andrew Brackman in the first round, knowing he was going to miss all of this season with Tommy John surgery. And, then, of course, there's the immortal Humberto Sanchez, purportedly the key return player in the Gary Sheffield deal with Detroit, who also underwent Tommy John surgery and is still rehabbing somewhere.

Cashman keeps stockpiling pitchers who come up hurt or fall on their face when they get to the big leagues. Enough! He is banking on the offense coming back next year, even though everyone will be a year older and there is nobody to step in when the inevitable injuries come. Off the way this season has gone, with young, homegrown teams such as the Rays and Twins giving their owners so much more bang for their buck, the Yankees returning to power would be an even bigger surprise."

___________________________________________________
As soon as I saw Osi Umenyiora being helped off the field the other night against the Jets, I knew it might be serious. If a player makes it off the field without any help, it's usually not too bad an injury. As he was being carted off, he didn't appear to be in great pain, but this one didn't look good, for the Giants at least, right from the proverbial get-go.

I'll be honest, because the alternative is to sound like a hypocrite: As a Dallas Cowboy fan, I'm happy anytime a starting player from a rival team goes down; that's just the way it is. But in my opinion, Osi is overrated. He's a good pass rusher who doesn't really play the run that well, unlike the retired Mike Strahan, who was/is a more complete player. I always looked at Osi as the black Mark Gastineau: He gets the flashy numbers, but what about all the other plays where he doesn't get the sack?

Umenyiora had 13 sacks last season and had an All-Pro year, but I don't consider him an All-Pro. Put it this way, I think Strahan was a better player than Umenyiora, but Jason Tuck has the skills to be better than Osi and perhaps even as good as Strahan. And that's coming from an objective Cowboy fan, remember.

The other guy the Giants are counting on, Mathias Kiwanuka, let's face it is still an unknown entity. Giants have already announced they are moving him back from LB to his more natural position, DE. Any way you slice it, the Giants are presently without 23 sacks from last year, and sacks don't grow on trees.

All anybody wants to talk about when Umenyiora's name comes up is that fluky 6-sack game against the Eagles last year, the one where he lined up against 3rd-string OT Winston "Turnstile" Justice, not the 4 playoff games where he had 7 tackles and came up totally sackless. A good player, one opposing offenses have to contend with, but not the major force some would make him out to be.

Something tells me Giants will be this year's version of last year's Miami Heat. That post-championship year can sometimes be a case of a team crashing back to earth, especially one that played way, way over its head.

Even if Strahan comes back, he's not close enough to football shape, and perhaps the right mental state, to be as effective as he was last year. You can take that to the bank, or at least the drive-through teller, if you're so inclined, because if and when Mike Strahan comes back, you can bet it's all about the crazy money the Giants are about to throw at him more than his love of the game. Just one man's considerably informed opinion.

Let me throw out a few crazy baseball stats, because my extensive market research tells me the kids go silly for that kind of stuff...

Going into yesterday's game, Mets had attempted only 2 steals in their last 11 games. How can that be?

Phillies' Ryan Howard, Pat Burrell and Chase Utley all over 30 HRs already, and their 95 combined HRs is more than Washington Nationals' entire team at 91 and maybe some other teams as well, but right now I'm not quite interested enough to look it up. Maybe you can find out and get back to me if you're not too busy. Oh...

Mets offense worst in baseball over last 3 innings (your 7th, 8th and 9th for those keeping score), which isn't helping their suspect bullpen put any games away, that's for sure.

Cubs' Carlos Zambrano has now hit 4 HRs this year, tying all-time record for HRs in a season with a good 6 weeks left. The same game he tied the HR record was Zambrano's 7th straight start with an RBI, which may be almost as remarkable as the HR record. Zambrano, 13-5 as a pitcher, may be the biggest two-way threat in baseball since George Herman Ruth plied his trade for the Red Sox of Boston; Zambrano has 16 career HRs.

Phillies will have already played the new Manny Dodgers 8 times after tonight, while the Mets not only haven't played L.A. since the big trade, but I'll be damned if they don't have to play them the rest of the season. There's always the NL playoffs, though...

By the way, since the trade, in 22 games Ramirez is hitting .380 with 6 HRs and 21 RBIs; while in 21 games for Boston, Jason Bay is hitting .333 with 4 HRs and 18 RBI. Pretty even...

Not a stat per se, but I have a feeling Xavier Nady is the new Paul O'Neill: professional, deadly serious, still young player in the middle of the offense for years. Counting both his Bucs and Yanks numbers, Nady has hit .328, 21 HRs and 80 RBI. Just like O'Neill, Nady switched leagues and was about the same age (29) as O'Neill when he was traded from the Reds for Roberto Kelly.

According to my sources, Mets up 3-0 over Astros, courtesy a Carlos Delgado HR. Delgado, you might remember, is the guy Mets fans booed relentlessly and wanted to run out of town two months ago. Thought he was finished? His hot streak makes him a ton of cash next year and possibly one last big contract.

Let me give you a football stat that's been eating a hole in my mental pocket the whole offseason: In their fluky, lucky win against Dallas in last year's playoffs, the Giants vaunted offense gained a total of... 52 yards. That's right, 52 total yards in the second half, yet somehow the Giants walked out of Texas Stadium with the unlikely W instead of the L they so richly deserved.

Now the offseason is winding down, the real games about 10 days away, and finally a chance for redemption, another shot at glory and the beginning of the war of attrition that is the NFL season. For the most part the Cowboys bring back the same 13-win team, with a much-improved secondary led by Pacman Jones and some high draft picks. Gone are the horrendous Nate Jones and Jacques Reeves, who gave Giants receivers so much cushion in that playoff game that they were barely in the same zip code at times.

Speaking of good offseasons, the Philly Sixers, a team on the rise if there ever was such a thing, made what I think are 4 solid moves since their season ended with a decent accounting of themselves in their playoff series against the Detroit Pistons.

First, the 76ers managed to free enough cap room to land Elton Brand via free agency, a major addition to a young team. Next, they locked up Andre Iguodola with a long-term contract, giving themselves a 24-year-old stud to build around. Then they bring back one of my all-time favorite players, Theo Ratfliff, admittedly past his prime, but perhaps capable of 10-12 minutes a night, some big rebounds, a shot block or two per game. Nice touch, Ed Stefanski. And finally I read where Jeff Ruland will be joining the coaching staff, which ought to help out the big men like Sam Dalambert. Add it all up, and why can't the 76ers be one of the top teams in the East for years to come, if not the top team? I can't think of a single good reason and, admit it, even you Knicks fans can't either.

Mean Time

THE FIRST THING you should know is that he lives with fear now. It has a hand in every public act. It is the unspoken assumption between himself and everyone else. In his mind the next violent act had already occurred and was only waiting, lurking, before it took a temporal and spatial form and became real, more real.

He starts with 100 and is huffing and red-faced but not yet sweating, all the body water sealed inside and boiling. He faces the mirror and hates what he sees, softness and confusion, fear in the eyes while he pumps the dumbbell. With two hands he grasps the bar outside the weight and pumps, curling the metal and beating it against his chest on the way up, leaving red marks on his chest, until his arms cramp up and stop midway. He smiles and feels his body through the pain for the first time in years. It becomes the morning ritual. He feels it gives him some small edge he didn't have before, a measure of readiness to confront violence, the violence that is out there, that is sure to be out there.

He sees it in the faces, in faces everywhere, in the eyes mostly. A brazen stupidity, a look that reveals the despair of lives not worth living. In the bodies of the people on the train every day, in the streets and in stores, he studies them for signs of weakness, disgusted by their misshapen forms, the bodies of those who quit fighting back.

He studies the bodies of the strong and appreciates these, and in contrast hates the great herd of bodies even more, sees the softness in their neglected bodies, like out of shape slaves. He sees the self-hate it took to quit on themselves.

Most of all he knows they too are victims, and he hates sharing this status with them. He is in no way like them. They were victims and would be victims again. It was logical. In a city of victims, a city filled with victimizers.

The detective motions for him to sit down. He is at the precinct to look at mug shots. The detective goes to a green metal cabinet and comes back with three huge black looseleaf binders. He sets them down on the desk.
"Take your time," he says, "maybe you'll get lucky. All I ask is that you're sure. We can't pick him up unless you're certain."
He opens the first book, containing white males picked up for assault. A small radio is set to an oldies station, playing Doctor My Eyes: I have done all that I could, to see the evil and the good...

The faces in the pictures frighten him to a surprising degree. The color is startling in the photos taken at flashpoint, the expressions frozen yet animated. He forgets which face he came to look for. He takes his time with each photo, searching for some kind of meaning behind the faces. About half of the men are bleeding or scratched. Street fights, he figures; two people get into a scrape and the loser charges the other with assault when the cops come.

The faces are sneering, simpering, class clown types. They are petrified, stricken, blinded by the light of the camera and the graveness of being arrested. Eyes are bloodshot, shirts are ripped, hair is matted down with sweat or crusted with blood.

Halfway into the first book he sees a face he knows. It's an old schoolmate--no, a former teammate from little league baseball, waiting here to be discovered, to complete some shared circle. The image looks back at him, pleads its case, its reason for being here among the nameless faces, and that is enough for him to flip the page and continue.

Sometimes he goes back to spend more time with faces that haunt him, that demand another look.

He wants to find the face he came here for, but the faces are terrifying. They frighten him individually, they frighten him en masse. There are hundreds and hundreds, four pairs on each page, and page after page, book after book. Containing those who have been arrested, it hits him; not the ones who were never caught, lurking here in this borough, animals who prey on the weak and defenseless, these white males arrested for assault. Assaulters.

They are all guilty, he feels it. All of them. It's on their faces and he reads it, tuned into their meanness, their savagery, and he is overwhelmed. He pushes the book away from him and his head is in his hands, overcome by this world within a world his life his opened into.

He feels worse a day later. It has been a weak since the Incident, and the more he plays it out in his mind, the more he is sure he acted cowardly. The more he wishes he had thrown at least one punch back.

When he relives the moment, the whole image in his mind brings tears to his eyes, the senseless viciousness of it.

He is hit and screams and falls to the ground. He never sees the punch coming. He is stunned and yells at them.

It eats at him.

If he had to do it all over again, he's pretty sure he would have gone after one of them. If it had been two, or even three, but it was four of them...

He visualizes it often, the punches he would throw, the first good one and then a flurry to finish him off. He sees the naked fear in their eyes but doesn't stop, can't stop. His hands are hurting and his knuckles sore, and everywhere there's blood, but still they haven't stopped smirking, and until they do he can't stop winding up and driving his fist into the face of the one who hit him.

All he remembers is the scream, then falling, his red blood everywhere, their smiling faces as they walk on, looking back and laughing. He punches now to drown out the scream, to stamp out the smirk forever.

If the Incident goes unpunished, he reasons, then the crime is compounded.

On Sundays, he waits in front of his house with a baseball bat, hoping they will come by again, completing the circle.

Daily life, he discovers, swims on all around him, not realizing that everything has changed.

He took it with him from the precinct, this feeling he was surrounded by blissful meanness, outnumbered statistically and allegorically by wolves in men's masks. He is down and withdrawn and sunken, but the next day he keeps his appointment anyway, a blind date with a friend of a friend.

He knows he will be disappointed as he sits at the bar of a place near work, full of suits and cutout faces dancing in fake delight above them, barking out orders for drinks and smiling eerily in the dark glow.

He sees his friend come in and she is there with him, walking stiffly. She is short and dark and he doesn't like her right away. He sees the night stretch out before him and he can't imagine how it will be saved.

They go and sit and it is crowded and the music too loud for their voices to carry even the short distance across the table, and so they are saying everything twice. Names, where they work, where they live and how they know each other, what time they get out of work and what time they have to be at work. The drinks arrive and cigarettes are lit.

Her mouth is way too big for her face and it is a dumb mouth, cruel even, and her words are thankfully lost in the music as she sits across from him. They are asking him, who does this song? and though he knows he just sits there out of spite. He looks around the bar and studies the faces, squinting to make out the features better, spotting the victim types. Pink, doughy faces perched ludicrously on thin necks.

He wants to tell them of his pain but they are smiling at him when he turns back. Cruel thoughts of his own are forming in his mind as he watches her, imagining her mouth as it might scream in terror, her face contorted, her eyes frozen in a flashpoint of fear.

It is a long time since he spoke last, and they are watching him more intently now, expecting something from him he just can't give.
"He's real quiet," his friend tells her.
"I knooooow!" she says. "Are you all right?"
He picks his drink up and looks into it for just a moment before throwing it at her face. She shrieks as he expected and throws her hands up, rising halfway from her seat and stopping, statue-like.
"You're a real asshole!" she shouts, and his friend is standing across the table, pushing him.
"What'd you do that for, schmuck?"
He is the only one smiling now as he grabs for his friend's shirt, ripping the buttons open. The music continues but the bar is still now as the punch comes, square on the chin, spilling him onto the floor. He looks up into the face of his friend and then to where she is sitting, her face shaking with laughter as she hides her mouth with her hands.

-- BW

Hack For Hire

THERE ONCE WAS A TIME not too very long ago when a critic -- defined in the dictionary as "one who forms and expresses judgments of the merits and faults of anything" -- whatever he happened to be writing about, would offer his unvarnished take on the subject at hand. The critic who wanted to be respected wouldn't care if he had to ruffle a few feathers in the process; he was going to tell you exactly how he felt, because integrity, not popularity, was uppermost in his mind.

For instance, Edgar Allan Poe once dispatched of something that came across his desk with the following succinct conclusion: "The most inestimable piece of balderdash with which the common sense of the good people of America was ever so openly or villainously insulted."

Cut to today, when a certain movie critic's constant over-the-top recommendations, in the form of a gushing blurb, seem to adorn almost every film advertisement. For years now this critic has poured out his love for almost every new film released by the major studios, routinely going overboard when it comes to the most disposable and escapist brand of entertainment fare, setting back the very idea of movie criticism.

In our present, deeply unsatisfying pop culture era, any film critic worth his sense or sensibility, whose opinions are not for sale, would dislike or treat with disdain at least 8 and more likely 9 out of every 10 movies released in a given cycle. But not Peter Travers, who writes for the anachronism that is Rolling Stone magazine. So clueless, so rudderless is Travers that in his writing you can almost hear a plea to be liked, to not be left out of the discussion when it comes to the latest formulaic, marketing-driven, celebrity-promoted vehicle being shoved down the public's throats at any given moment. It's almost absurd that a middle-aged man would publicly admit to falling for the kinds of movies that are relentlessly targeted at kids who are two and even three decades younger, such that the only reasonable explanation would focus on the possibility of some sort of movie industry version of radio payola or "praise for pay"; otherwise one can only conclude, judging strictly by his own printed opinions, that Travers is just such a hapless fool as he appears to be, with the awful taste in movies to match.

What sets Travers apart from your run-of-the-mill movie industry lackey is the sheer volume of films about which he sings his never-faint-or-damning praise. Any day now there should be an Onion feature with the headline: "Comedy Movie Released That Peter Travers Doesn't Find Laugh-Out-Loud, Falling-Down, Mind-Blowingly Hysterical." Until such time, we will have to get by with Travers' own often unintentionally hilarious assertions of critical acclaim.

Let me give you a few examples, chosen randomly from whatever newspapers I have lying here in front of me, before looking a little further into just who this Peter Travers is. If, like me, you've been following Travers' career for any length of time, you know that there is a certain type of teen-oriented flick, aiming for the coveted 14-26-year-old demographic, that Travers soaks up like a pedophile at the playground. No matter how hackneyed, half-baked or unoriginal the treatment, there's a certain type of movie that will have Travers salivating. So it was no surprise that Travers, a priori, would see fit to dole out heaping helpings of praise for something like Pineapple Express, a film that will be totally forgotten in about three years, more likely a lot sooner.

ANOTHER TRADEMARK of Travers' blurbs is that they're almost never about the movie itself, but instead purport to tell prospective viewers the effect the movie will have on them, as if we are all hapless blank slates existing only for the movie industry to write all over our compliant, pliable minds. In any ad for Pineapple, you'll find at the top Travers' name in big letters attached to the blurb that proclaims the movie is "Hardcore hilarious. It slaps a big, fat, goofy smile on your face that lasts for days." Imagine the type of person smiling like a moron for days after seeing a mainstream Hollywood comedy!

Of course, these blurbs are just a few sentences cut out of an entire Travers review, but his reviews are invariably blurb-worthy because he writes in the kinds of simplistic, sound-bite-like cliches that fit nicely on a poster. His reviews are almost never about anything the director is doing technically, for instance, but are instead solely reliant on his likes and dislikes, typically comparing the film in question to two or more previous movies. That's the Travers formula, along with invariably throwing in some youth "jargon" that Travers is at least 10 years too old to have any business using, which makes for a lamentable stew that breeds the following:

"For you to grasp the true essence of Pineapple Express, let me paraphrase the immortal gibberish that issues from the mouth of Franco, who delivers a sidesplitting tour de force as the sweetly profane Saul: This is like if Superbad met Midnight Run and they had a baby and then meanwhile that freaky Quentin Tarantino talk from Pulp Fiction and True Romance met that freaky Judd Apatow TV stuff from Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and they had a baby, and by some miracle those babies met — and fucked — this would be the funny shit that they birthed."

If you're not utterly mortified by the thought of sharing DNA with this twit Travers, you too are beyond contempt, and would do well to remove yourself with all speed and alacrity to something like the People magazine website, which not uncoincidentally was Travers' former employer. Rolling Stone and People... the fact that Travers intersects both publications tells us an awful lot about the depressing state of the culture and of media. Instead let's alleviate the depression with a few more choice Travers blurbs.

Ben Stiller has made a few watchable movies in his life, and his new one, Tropic Thunder, received mixed reviews even as it breaks records at the box office. The Village Voice hated it, for instance, and found parts of it offensive. Speaking of blurbs, the New York Times critic called it "a flashy, nasty, on-and-off funny and assaultive sendup of the film industry." And Armond White, whose weekly reviews in the New York Press constantly demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of film history as well as appreciation of the power of a truly great film, found a lot to like about Ben Stiller's direction of Tropic Thunder and his inside-Hollywood jokes. There are still critics who come to their viewpoints honestly and deliver them with intelligence, and isn't that preferable to wasting time with a lapdog sellout like Travers? I mean, how can you trust someone's opinion on anything if he likes everything? The answer, perhaps, lies in yet another shameless Travers plug:

"Think of all the ways you can hurt yourself laughing, as in fall down, split your sides, bust a gut, blow your mind. You get it all in Tropic Thunder, a knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags. Major props to Ben Stiller."

Here we have the quintessential Travers. It's all there: what the movie is going to do to you when you see it (hurt yourself laughing), the tried-and-true movie review cliches (bust a gut, split your sides), the youth slang (killer, props) that is already by its nature passe if someone like Travers has caught on to it. Further in his Rolling Stone review for Tropic Thunder, Travers relates the following in lieu of an actual critique:

"Stiller took flak for the other three movies he's directed: 1994's Reality Bites was allegedly too soft, 1996's The Cable Guy too dark, 2001's Zoolander too airy-fairy. Confession: I liked them all. And I'm nuts about Tropic Thunder, with its dynamite script by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen." ("I liked them all," he confesses, because Travers sees something to fawn about in almost every movie ever made at any time by anyone.)

Travers then proceeds to demoralize readers even more, if such a thing were possible, suggesting by way of analogy that Tropic Thunder is like "Apocalypse Now as conceived by Borat." He gets paid for these penetrating perceptions? It is Rolling Stone we're talking about here, not exactly the same counterculture periodical where truly groundbreaking work by writers like Hunter Thompson was published. Talk about "long ago in a galaxy far, far away"!

HERE'S AN EXPERIMENT you can try at home: Open up any newspaper you have lying around and turn to the movie section. Your eyes can't help but run across more examples of Travers' ponderous musings. Ah, here we go, an ad for the new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Everybody seemed to pan the movie, but Travers found something to like about it: "Penelope Cruz is a stunner." Okay, but we knew that already; what does it tell us about the film, Pete?

Same page of last week's Village Voice, an ad for Bottle Shock. Never heard of it, but here's Peter again: "Hugely entertaining! There's magic in it. Rickman is droll, dazzling perfection. Be on the lookout for Bottle Shock. It's a winner." First of all, who the hell talks like that ("droll, dazzling perfection")? That sound you may hear is me crossing Bottle Shock off my list of must-see movies. Thanks, Travers, you have no idea what a service you provide.

Now moving to last week's Onion, an ad for a movie called Hamlet 2, which looks like a complete waste of time, starring the likes of David Arquette and Steve Coogan. But Travers could hardly contain himself yet again. "Comedy Heaven!" his blurb shouts in huge letters, and Travers' work is done here. You see, Hamlet 2 is a new film from the makers of South Park Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Team America, World Police, so Travers has to be out front and oversize in his approval, lest he risk being branded out of the youth culture loop. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. The Great American Movie Industry keeps churning out unctuous, noxious effluvia, and Travers is first in line to sniff all the fumes and rave about how you it smells like perfume from his killer front row seat.

Travers' Wikipedia entry is not very informative and quite sketchy on the bare facts. No date of birth for starters, although by the photo he's got to be late 40s, early 50s, which makes his singular obsession with mindless teenage films all the more disturbing. The entry says something which I didn't know for certain but have long suspected: "According to efilmcritic.com, Travers is the most blurbed film critic." That sums up his career perfectly, not the Most Influential or Most Respected, but the Most Blurbed. Almost the definition of hack journalist, is it not, and a fitting epitaph for Travers when the projector stops running and he takes his rightful place among the "no longer screening" at the Big Cineplex in the sky.

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