Boston Vs. New York, again.

NOTABLE BOSTON SPORTS FANS:
Adolph Hitler (red was chosen for Nazi armbands in tribute to Ted Williams)
Osama Bin Laden (9/11 attacks provoked by 1991 autograph snub by Larry Bird, fuck you Larry Bird)
Dane Cook (likes Boston teams because they're trendy)
Rev. Jim Jones (had a tryout with the Bruins)
Dick Cheney (admires Bill Belichick's tactics, sportsmanship)
Pol Pot (favorite article of clothing: Bobby Orr jersey)
Idi Amin (huge BC fan, apparently - who knew?)
Joseph Stalin (again with the color red - coincidence?)
Heinrich Himmler (nicknamed penis "The Green Monster")

NOTABLE NEW YORK SPORTS FANS:
Pope John Paul II (cried when Rangers won Stanley Cup in 94)
Mother Teresa (secret crush on ex-Yankee outfielder Mel Hall in 80s)
Dalai Lama (loves Knicks despite Isaiah Thomas, prays for firing daily)
Princess Diana (Prince Harry conceived after Game 6 of 86 World Series)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Elston Howard was a close confidante)
John Lennon (season ticket holder, NY Cosmos soccer)
Mahatma Gandhi (family friend of the Mara family)
Jonas Salk (schoolmate of Lou Gehrig's at Columbia)

Choose a side, America.

Meandering Thoughts: 5 Song Lyrics That Shall Double As My New Years Resolutions

"If I could tell your future, I say 'love the world you find'
in the dark times and the hard questions
let some sunshine in your mind."
- The Flaming Lips, "Love The World You Find"

"Don't let hurricanes hold you back
Raging rivers or shark attacks
Find love, then give it all away."
- Clem Snide, "Find Love"

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time."
- James Taylor, "The Secret O'Life"

"Don't let me into this year with an empty heart."
- Josh Ritter, "Empty Hearts"

"I will try to understand
Everything has its plan
Either way, I'm gonna stay."
- Wilco, "Either Way"

In summation: I would like to enjoy the world (as it is, right now) more, to find enough love that I can reciprocate and then some, enjoy the passage of time, allow myself to keep an open heart right now, and not be consumed by the things that I cannot control. Not too shabby, song lyrics! (I would also like to lose some weight.)

Happy new year, dear readers!

Meandering Thoughts: It was 10 years ago today...

10 years ago today, Chris Farley died.

Wow. I can't believe how the time has gone. What a tremendous talent that guy was. In reading interviews with his fellow "Saturday Night Live" alumni, all of them talked about how Farley was always the funniest person in the room, and the person to whom their eyes were drawn when he was onscreen. He was so much fun to watch.

A few months before he died, though, I remember sitting in my college dorm, drinking beer and watching the episode of "Saturday Night Live" which he hosted. I vividly remember having a friend of mine named Jason walk into the room, look at the screen, and say, "Wow. That guy's going to be dead soon." He was right. Farley wore his excesses on his sleeve; he was addicted to cocaine and heroin while also an alcoholic with terrible self-esteem issues. Not a fun combination, I'm willing to bet. Those excesses killed him.

Eons ago, when I was performing comedy regularly, one of the theater's respected older performers told me that I reminded him of Farley. Wary of Farley's personal history and the way that he died, I immediately shied away from that. I was taken back further when he clarified with two things: that I reminded him "in the good way" (which I took to mean my physicality onstage) and that he was quite familiar with Farley. It turned out that he'd eulogized him at one of the memorial services. To this day, it's one of the greatest compliments that I've ever been given.

I miss Chris Farley. There was a savage edge to his work, but an essential sweetness to everything that he did which made things all the more wonderful. The world needs more performers with those qualities.

Meandering Thoughts: Hey, 2007 Is Not Over Yet

There's a part of me that loves year-end lists; whether it's "Entertainment Weekly," "GQ," "Rolling Stone," or some other magazine I've not yet seen, there's a simplicity and a bit of status to these lists which provides average readers like myself with a chance to catch up with the best and brightest of the past year. However, there's a part of me that's alarmed at how early people decide to view the calendar year through the amber lens of the rear-view mirror.

I found myself at a Manhattan newsstand today, and I was surrounded by magazines and their year-in-review coverage. I had to check myself a bit with a bit of reality. It's December 7th, and publications around the world are calling a close to the year. Which, as much as I love it, seems to be a touch premature; I mean, if magazine editors were this quick to summarize the year in, say, 1941, the defining moment of the year (the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) would have been a footnote in their coverage. In 1980, there'd be no mention of another defining cultural moment - the killing of John Lennon in front of his Upper West Side apartment building. Heck, even last year, in the waning days of the year, America lost a former president (Gerald Ford) and the world lost a Godfather of Soul (James Brown).

So, perhaps in awhile, I'll have some kind of retrospective of the year. But, until then, there's music for me to listen to, and movies for me to see, and a current day to experience. Curmudgeonly? You bet.

Meandering Thoughts: On the Yankees and Johan Santana

I'm not going to discuss the Yankees and Johan Santana at length (I would refer you instead to excellent sites like Peter Abraham's Lower Hudson newsblog, or to the phenomenal River Avenue Blues), but I did have one thought on it that I thought I would be doing the entire blogosphere a disservice if I didn't put it out there.

For the first time with Yankees prospects, I feel like the Yankees are in a better position without the marquee, big-money player. Santana's great, but they should not mortgage their youth movement (not just the great young pitchers, but also sparkplugs like Melky Cabrera) for any player - not even the great Santana.

I'm reminded of the quote with which Vin Scelsa begins his great radio show on WFUV - which he himself took from the music writer David Fricke. It goes like this: "Respect the elders. Embrace the new. Encourage the impractical and improbable, without bias." I want to see the Yankees continue to embrace the new. It might be impractical for the Yankees, given their business model, to go away from the veteran with the track record, but I think it'll be more exciting.

Some things we're thankful for this Thanksgiving...

Here are some things - some are pop culture, others are not - that we're thankful for this Thanksgiving.

- We're thankful that we've taken the time out to watch "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," the hands-down funniest show on television (it's on FX). While we're especially partial to Charlie Day's character, the illiterate, glue-huffing, constantly shouting Charlie, there's so much else about this show that's awesome. If you're not watching it, you should be.

- We're thankful for the safe, healthy arrival of a certain newborn little girl.

- We're thankful for another Thanksgiving of listening to "Alice's Restaurant" at noon. And we're appreciative of Alice's spirit, which is absolutely worth emulating.

- We're thankful (and, to be frank, excited) that our brother's working on a book. On the same token, we're excited about a free software program that we recently discovered that may help us get that screenplay we've wanted to write going.

- We're thankful for the "I'm Not There" soundtrack, which is absolutely as awesome sounding as we'd hoped it would.

- We're thankful for Paul Lukas's Uni Watch Blog, which legitimizes our long-standing interest in sports-related minutiae.

- We're thankful that Chuck Norris has embraced his mythology in the name of politics. We're not crazy about the other dude he's working with, but we're grateful to start off this upcoming year of campaign overload with a good laugh.

- Most of all, though, we're thankful for our friends and family, for the things that remain constant in times of flux, and for the simple, elegant things that make things worth doing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Meandering Thoughts: Live From (Somewhere Else In) New York: It's (Still) Saturday Night

I've always admired the television show "Saturday Night Live." What's not to admire? By design, the show is an inherent work of art: it's live, performance-based television in a way that few others can even come close to mimicking. Sure, "American Idol" is a live show - and features live performances - but there is a vast difference between singing traditional and familiar songs live and what "Saturday Night Live" does, which is perform one-off, generally-topical sketches. Sure, "Mad TV" is a sketch-comedy show - but it's performed in a traditional, taped format that allows for "re-dos" and what I assume is the television equivalent of digitally remastering a live performance for a concert album.

"Saturday Night Live" has brought some tremendous talents to the forefront of our culture - besides the original cast of Not Ready For Primetime Players (Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Jane Curtin), many other talents have either gotten their big breaks or honed their craft while doing this show. Bill Murray, Harry Shearer, Al Franken, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Jan Hooks, Kevin Nealon, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Janeane Garofalo, Molly Shannon, Norm MacDonald, David Koechner, and Will Ferrell are among the many folks who have (at one time or another) been in the repertory company of this show.

Creatively, the show goes through its peaks and valleys; when it's on, the show's generally responsible for creating some lasting moments of cultural stability - but when it's not, it's subject to cries of "Saturday Night Dead" and "Saturday Night Live hasn't been funny in years." It's the price the show pays, for better or worse.

Recently, production on the show has halted due to a writer's strike - a strike which we here at bTb adamantly support, we should add. So, the cast of Saturday Night Live did something pretty cool: they got together at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater* in Manhattan and put on a a live stage version of their show as a benefit for their crew. The reports are trickling in from sources like the New York Times and the Huffington Post (the HuffPo even namechecks longtime friend of bTb Justin Purnell).

The verdict: sounds like a hell of a time. Naturally, I wish I'd been there for it - I'll have to make do with the stories that I'll no doubt hear from my NYC friends. If I hear anything particularly cool, I'll pass it on.

[* By way of full disclosure, I should note that I was a regular performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater from 2001-2003, and have performed there on somewhat sporadic basis since. I am most assuredly biased here - bTb]

Meandering Thoughts: On "Cool"

In his most recent column in "Entertainment Weekly," horrormaster Stephen King has attempted to take on one of the greatest cultural divides of our time: the difference between what's cool and what's not cool.

"The meaning of cool," King says, "is beyond definition (and) beyond modification." This is irrefutable. I would posit that, from a writerly perspective, once you attempt to define what "cool" is, you immediately lose all credibility. You can always give examples of what you perceive "cool" to be, but once you try to create a structure for "cool" and "coolness," you're done.

In this article, King doesn't attempt to create this structure - rather, he gives some examples of what's cool (among others, he cites John Fogerty's new album, Barack Obama, "Prison Break," Elmore Leonard, and Fred Rogers) and what's not cool (among the cited: George Clooney in "Michael Collins," Hillary Clinton, Patricia Cornwell, and "Friday Night Lights"). He's quick to point out that being uncool is not necessarily a terrible stigma (for example, he thinks that "Friday Night Lights" is an excellent show - it just will never have the cache/sexiness of a lesser-caliber show like "Prison Break").

These are all valid points. Then, however, King blows all credibility whatsoever by insisting that he's cool, saying "Remember, cool is not a way of life; it's a state of being. Like your height. I can't help being 6'3", and I can't help being cool. Same way Michael Crichton can't help being 6'9''...and not cool." (King, for the record, looks like this. I'm just saying, is all.)

Anyway. A golden rule of "cool," if such a thing exists, is that you cannot insist overtly on your own coolness. It just can't be done. If you have to tell people that you're cool - and King most certainly does here - you're absolutely not cool, and the other things which you've pronounced to be "cool" are tarnished in turn.

Stephen King is uncool. He's written some cool books, sure, but he's also responsible for sap like "The Green Mile" and a good number of subpar books as well. Beyond his picture (above), I also refer you to the fact that he plays in a rock band called The Rock Bottom Remainders - which would be cool if it weren't an all-author band. You see, authors aren't cool, pretty much ever - however, their books may or may not be. "Misery" is cool. Playing the guitar on an atrocious version of "Wild Thing" alongside Amy Tan? Uncool, about ten million times over.

Keep in mind, I don't think of myself as being cool at all. Lord knows, I've tried to be cool - the trying, though, immediately made me uncool, which is a stigma I've carried with me ever since.

When it all comes down to brass tacks, I think of the words of the late Kurt Cobain, who sang, "I'd rather be dead than cool." That seems completely reasonable. I mean, I don't want to be dead. So, I want to be cool even less.

Of course, that's contingent upon words of wisdom coming from Kurt Cobain, who's both dead and cool (go figure).

The Woody Allen Question

Towards the end of Woody Allen’s “Manhattan,” Woody’s character Isaac Davis is asked what makes life worth living. In typical Woody fashion, he hems and haws and then says the following:

“Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face...”

Every now and then, I ask myself that question – to think about what are the things that are sustaining me through my second-to-second existence.

In August 2005, on an old journal on the Improv Resource Center, my answer was the following: “A long conversation over a few drinks with a good friend. A hug from my mom. A postcard from my dad. An obscene voicemail from my brother, overseas in the military. The first few weeks of September, when summer fades and the trees up here change color and the school year begins. Pad thai. The Sunday comics. Flip-flop sandals. A long walk with my I-Pod on shuffle. The squeal and laugh from my godson when I pick him up and hang him upside-down. Love, in all its forms, shapes, and seasons.” In December 2002, my answer was a tad less precious and more focused on more-temporary things: “Sitting on the Hudson River side of a passenger train between NYC and upstate. A cup of coffee late at night when you really, really need one. The last three songs of "Automatic For The People." Doonesbury collections from the 1970s. Stepping into the water at Waimea Bay, Oahu. Driving alone and singing, loud and out-of-tune. The feeling you get when you're onstage.”

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve thought about this question. I blanche a little bit when I look at my past answers – in 2002, I was probably trying to be too pop-culture savvy, and in 2005, I was extremely sentimental to the point of overtly romanticizing things, I think.

So, hmm, without being too much of either of those things, why is life worth living? Right now?

It’s about the little things for me – the lunch, dinner, drink with a friend and the opportunity to play catch up. It’s allowing myself to be surprised by something, whether it’s a new aspect of a story from an old friend or family member or something silly like a cannon that shoots pumpkins into the horizon. It’s very much all of those other things, too, all of which mean a lot to me and always will.

But it’s also a really good Belgian Farmhouse Ale. Anytime a TV show or movie makes me laugh out loud. The opening notes of the Band’s “Chest Fever.” A soy chai latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup. Weddings. Babies. Calvin and Hobbes. A glass of chilled white wine, preferably a Riesling or a Gewurtztraminer. The Staten Island Ferry. The Hudson and Mohawk Valleys when the leaves change color. Elton John’s song “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” The movie “The Princess Bride,” every time. Third kisses, much more than the first. Sunday mornings. Sleeping in with someone else. Subway or commuter trains, in any city, when you have the time to enjoy the ride. Tom Waits’s “Closing Time” album. Bronx pizza.

So, those of you still reading: what’s your answer to the Woody Allen Question – what are the things that make life worth living?

Please respond, either in the comments or on your own blog. I’d love to know what you think.

Meandering Thoughts: Musical Moments

I've been thinking a lot about music lately. Over at Beerjanglin, I just wrote a piece that focuses on the combination of beer and music; meanwhile, my friend (and new blogger) Bobbo wrote a great piece that talked about a monumental concert event I attended last weekend at a farmstand outside Kingston, New York. (I'd talk more about the farmstand concert - which featured the legendary Levon Helm and was absolutely goosebump-inducing - but I instead invite you to read Bobbo's version of it instead - he did a great job of encapsulating a great musical moment).

Anyway, I wanted to talk about another musical moment that happened recently. Have you ever had a moment where you listened to a song and it absolutely captured the moment to the point where it felt like narration? I had one of those moments the other day.

I took myself a long weekend; I spent a whirlwind of a time in New York City, where I caught up with some old friends and had a lot of meetings that, without being too revealing, portend a great amount about my future (both immediate and distant). Anyway, at the end of this weekend, I ventured my sedan back towards Albany, and spent a couple of hours of my Tuesday evening on a dark, eerily quiet Taconic Parkway traveling north. I'd packed some CDs that I hadn't listened to in awhile for the trip; I decided to listen to Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love" album for this leg of the journey.

As I neared the Austerlitz-Chatham exit (the final one on this stretch of road), the final track of this album came on - a haunting, melancholy ballad came on. Here, now, are some snippets of Springsteen's lyrics with explanation.

I'm driving a big lazy car rushin' up the highway in the dark
I got one hand steady on the wheel and one hand's tremblin' over my heart
It's pounding baby like it's gonna bust right on through
And it ain't gonna stop till I'm alone again with you

I, too, was driving a big lazy car and I was hurtling up a darkened highway. That alone made my eyes open wide. While I can't say that I was thinking about being alone with somebody per se, I was definitely thinking about a lot of things - my future, mostly... And yes, I drive with one hand steady on the wheel. I know we're not talking about mindblowing stuff here, but it certainly resonated.

Springsteen continued:

A friend of mine became a father last night
When we spoke in his voice I could hear the light
Of the skies and the rivers the timberwolf in the pines
And that great jukebox out on Route 39
They say he travels fastest who travels alone
But tonight I miss my girl mister tonight I miss my home

Here's where the connections got more personal. While a friend of mine didn't become a father last night, one of my closest friends in the world is on "any day now" status for fatherhood. Which is weird and different. I find myself wondering not whether fatherhood will change him, but rather, how much it will. It's weird and different and not really something I've taken the time to attend to in a friendship. And that part about missing my girl and missing my home - well, that part'll get me for awhile. I'm not in a relationship right now, and I don't miss my ex-girlfriend, but there's something about being in a relationship that I miss dreadfully, that made me feel somewhat closer to complete. I miss that all the time. And part and parcel with the weekend was that sense of home - so much doubt and change.

I could go on, but to be honest, my story would diverge even further from Springsteen's in the song. That being said - I love it when I can make a connection with a song, even if it's a painful, philosophical one.

Anyone had anything similar ever happen?

Meandering Thoughts: Alice Sebold's "The Almost Moon"

Over the weekend, I finally began (and finished) Alice Sebold’s new novel, “The Almost Moon.” I’m not much of a book reviewer, so here’s my quick take on this book:

The difficulty faced by Sebold in creating a followup to her previous novel (the multimillion-selling “The Lovely Bones”) is the indelible impression left on readers by that book. For me, as a reader, one of the things that I was absolutely captivated by in terms of “The Lovely Bones” was Sebold’s character of Suzie Salmon, the young, dead narrator of the story – it made an otherwise dark story extremely palatable, largely because of the grace and beauty of that youthful presenter and the idea that came with her of a heaven being personally defined. It added a light sheen to a dark story; ultimately, I feel that this is what made “The Lovely Bones” wonderful.

In “The Almost Moon,” Sebold sets out to shed the otherworldly childlike presence that inhabited the pages of “The Lovely Bones.” She does so immediately and with the subtlety of a jackhammer – her lead character in “The Almost Moon” is a woman in her late forties who, within the first pages of the novel, gets frustrated with her infirmed, mentally-questionable, elderly mother and kills her. It’s no brutal a starting point than “The Lovely Bones” (which is told from the point of view of a young girl who has been raped and murdered), I suppose, but I think I was hoping for something that might be even slightly reminiscent of that sense of innocence and beauty. That’s lacking in “The Almost Moon,” which takes us through a day in the life of an extremely troubled woman.

In short, I didn’t like “The Almost Moon” too much. When it comes down to brass tacks, though, this was probably an impossible book to follow. As much as I admire Sebold’s artistic intent to create distance between “The Lovely Bones” and what will be the remainder of her career as an author, though, I found myself missing the childlike voice and sense of innocence that was so central to that book as I read this one.

Meandering Thoughts: On Counting Crows and "August And Everything After"

One of the pleasures of growing up in the Dunford household was the slow earning of privileges. Specifically, as my three brothers and I got progressively older, we were allowed to stay up increasingly late and watch different kinds of television.

I couldn’t tell you how old I was when I started watching “Saturday Night Live,” to be honest with you. I could tell you that the cast of the show included such comedy superstars as Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, and Chris Farley. I could also tell you that, before I watched a single frame of a live show, I was already well versed in the culture of “Saturday Night Live” – a couple of years before I’d seen the show, I read a copy of “Saturday Night: A Backstage History,” a now-out of print book that chronicled the show’s ups and downs in graphic, sensational history that my Uncle Chris gave to me to read during a visit to my grandparents’ house. Enamored with what I’d read (even though the book was a warts-and-all portrayal of the show and process that didn’t necessarily lend itself to being viewed in a good light), and spurred on by my father’s habit of taking movies out from the library, I began to watch older “greatest hits” highlights of “Saturday Night Live” – the best sketch comedy work of folks like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Eddie Murphy.

However, when I started watching the show on a regular basis, I found the comedy end to be somewhat lacking. Like many viewers of the show, I was measuring the show with one of the harshest yardsticks possible – that of the aforementioned comedy gods. Let’s face it – when you’re trying to fill shoes as big as those left behind by the late, great Gilda Radner with the feet of someone as catastrophically atrocious as, say, Melanie Hutsell, then you’re already kind of dooming yourself to failure.

The reason I watched a lot of the shows that “Saturday Night Live” aired during my high school years was because of the music. In one season of the show (the 1993-94 season), the bands that performed included Nirvana, Cypress Hill, the then-newly-revitalized Aerosmith, Smashing Pumpkins, and Snoop Doggy Dogg. The music was generally phenomenal during my introductory years.

The band that I remember the most from this time-period on “Saturday Night Live” was, surprisingly, Counting Crows. The Counting Crows debuted on “Saturday Night Live” in January of 1994, the same week that my father had a heart attack. I remember staying up to watch the show with my older brother, who was home from college at the time, and watching the entire episode of this show. I’d not heard of Counting Crows before the previous week’s announcement of the musical guest, and I had no idea of what to expect until I heard the first notes of their first song.

The song that they played was “Round Here,” which was unlike anything else I was listening to at the time. My musical tastes were dominated by angry, grungy rock music (although my favorite album at the time was R.E.M.’s quiet, melancholy “Automatic For The People”). “Round Here” wasn’t particularly angsty or loud – it was quiet and melancholy without being particularly sweeping or orchestral. It was yearning music, sung by a weird-looking dude with dreadlocks and played by a band of folks who didn’t look like the grunge-muppet misfits that I liked to listen to. Perhaps it was the time and place, or perhaps it was the right sounds and message at the right time, but I was completely mesmerized.

I sought out a copy of Counting Crows’ debut album, “August and Everything After,” soon after, and I fell in love. 1994 wound up being a miserable year for me personally, but there was always comfort in that album for me – whether it was the ballads (“Anna Begins,” “Sullivan Street”) or the faster songs (the ubiquitous radio smash “Mr. Jones,” as well as “Rain King” and “A Murder Of One”). For better or worse, that album soundtracked a lot of terrible things for me that summer – hospital visits, funerals, and the car trips and waiting rooms in between.

Like just about every year in history, 1994 came to an end, just like every streak of luck (whether good or bad) comes to an end. I still find a lot of comfort in the “August and Everything After” album; I’ve never thought about why I do, really, but I think it has something to do with having made it through the difficult times and emerging. I mean, I cannot listen to a wide range of music (from Bob Dylan and Mercury Rev to Radiohead’s “Kid A” album) without thinking about being in Manhattan on September 11th , 2001), but I can still listen to “August and Everything After” without those feelings coming back.

Interestingly enough (and perhaps coincidentally), when I’m in periods of transition, I find myself gravitating back to the Counting Crows. For example, when I decided to move to upstate New York and pursue my Master’s degree, the song that meant a lot to me was “A Murder Of One.” The end of college had a lot to do with “Recovering The Satellites,” from their second album for me. Now I’m in another time of transition, and I find myself back, listening to “Sullivan Street” from that album. It’s comforting and wonderful.

Meandering Thoughts: On Bill Belichick And Cheating

This is the NFL policy on videotaping other teams. It comes from a memo sent to all head coaches and general managers on September 6, 2006, prior to the start of last year's season: "Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches' booth, in the locker room or at any other locations accessible to club staff members during the game."

The coaching staff of the New England Patriots, led by Bill Belichick, was caught two Sundays ago in the act of videotaping the signals of the New York Jets. (This was apparently not their first violation of this edict: last year, when the Belichick-led Patriots played the Green Bay Packers, a cameraman was detained and believed to be doing something similar.) They have since been punished by the commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell: the team will forfeit up to two draft choices in next year's draft, the team was fined $250,000, and Belichick himself was fined $500,000. This should have, by many accounts, have been the end of things.

However, Bill Belichick all but assured that this story would be far from over. The day the penalties were announced, Belichick released the following statement:

"I accept full responsibility for the actions that led to tonight's ruling. Once again, I apologize to the Kraft family and every person directly or indirectly associated with the New England Patriots for the embarrassment, distraction and penalty my mistake caused. I also apologize to Patriots fans and would like to thank them for their support during the past few days and throughout my career. "

"As the Commissioner acknowledged, our use of sideline video had no impact on the outcome of last week's game. We have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress."

"Part of my job as head coach is to ensure that our football operations are conducted in compliance of the league rules and all accepted interpretations of them. My interpretation of a rule in the Constitution and Bylaws was incorrect."

"With tonight's resolution, I will not be offering any further comments on this matter. We are moving on with our preparations for Sunday's game."

To be helpful, I placed the troublesome part in bold. You see, sports fans, Bill Belichick refuses to admit that he cheated. His clear and blatant violation of the year-old policy? An incorrect interpretation.

Ultimately, this highlights the attitude that is currently causing a great deal of difficulty for the National Football League. Simply stated, Belichick might as well be imitating the cocky, balding record producer from the "Chef Aid" episode of South Park -you know, the one who'd bellow "I am above the law" while squeezing more hair gel onto his combover.

In refusing to acknowledge what he did, Belichick is doing two things - neither of which are particularly good for him.

First, he's stonewalling (think a less-serious, non-governmental version of Richard Nixon circa Watergate) - rather than admitting responsibility, he's seemingly trying to stop the amount of information that is publicly known about his actions from getting out there. He's not discussing the events - which is understandable in a way, as his primary responsibility is to prepare his football team for games. However, the way he's going about it seems practically designed to make him seem utterly and completely unlikeable - he's quickly become a football version of Barry Bonds; unapproachable, surly, and generally churlish. Bonds, at least, has never been caught red-handed, and continues to deny; Belichick's been caught and penalized and continues to deny. In the NFL, a league which prides itself on its character, this can only get increasingly worse.

Second, his antics - and they are antics, no matter how much people will try to downplay them or qualify them by saying, sans evidence,"oh, everybody does this" - is overshadowing what might be a tremendous all-time team. My personal distaste for everybody in a Patriots uniform aside, this current Patriots team might be one of the best to play in Foxboro; they made some smart moves over the offseason, buying tremendous amounts of talent on both ends of the ball to go along with Tom Brady and the other talent that already existed on a playoff team. Image is everything in this league; right now, instead of golden boy Brady serving as the team's primary focus, the klieglights of the media are focused directly at the man on the sidelines. Belichick dresses like a hobo on the sidelines, often sporting tattered sweatshirts. He looks squirrelish and distrustful; to find out that, behind the scenes, he's acting this way as well will only keep the bright lights shining onto his persona. This is not good for the Patriots; they spend the big bucks on the players partly to keep Belichick in the background.

Will this go away? I don't think so. Unfortunately for Patriots fans, the tone set in the first year and change of commissioner Roger Goodell's reign over the National Football League has been one of personal accountability and punishment; if, as it is currently being speculated, the taping of the Jets is the mere surface, then there's a lot more bad stuff coming down the pipe for Bill Belichick and the Patriots franchise.

Meandering Thoughts: An Appreciation of "For Better or For Worse"

One of the many cultural benefits of growing up in New York City, aside from its myriad museums and artistic happenings, is the access that I had to many different sources of media. It seems almost incongruous now, given our current culture of information available on-demand whenever and wherever, but when I was growing up, I had access to a number of newspapers for a constant stream of information. Every Sunday, after church, you could stop by the corner store and pick up any one of a number of newspapers, from the highbrow New York Times to the lowbrow New York Post to the Spanish-language El Diario.

My favorite, growing up, was the New York Daily News. It wasn't intimidatingly massive like the Times, or in a language I don't understand like either the Post or El Diario. It was reliable - a great sports section, relatively-unbiased news. Most importantly, though, it had an awesome comics section - a pull-away 12+ page section on Sundays, and 3 to 4 pages of daily strips on the other days of the week.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the comics of my childhood. When I was young, my favorites were always the cartoons that didn't talk down to me. Calvin and Hobbes was unrelenting in its quest to bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood, and as such, a constant favorite. I appreciated the life-is-somewhat-dismal outlook of Charles Schultz's finest Peanuts moments. I always read strips like Doonesbury and Bloom County, as well. The one other favorite of mine? Oddly enough, it was the relatively-saccharine For Better or For Worse.

I can't tell you why I took to For Better or For Worse. The strip has always seemed like it was aimed towards the generation two ahead of mine; while it's readily featured three young characters, who have aged in real-time since the strip's inception in 1979, it's a cartoon that, like Doonesbury, is ultimately by a baby-boomer for an audience of baby-boomers. I guess I've always been appreciative of author/cartoonist Lynne Johnston's no-frills approach; where strips like Doonesbury and Bloom County diverted easily and often into the political, For Better or For Worse did a pretty phenomenal job of maintaining an intimate, personal point of view. There wasn't any political commentary, nor was there too much angst. The strip maintained a point of view for a great amount of time without getting too jokey or too flashy; it tackled a lot of capital-i issues (one character had a severe stroke, and another one fended off a possible sexual assault) without being too preachy. Everything that was done over the span of For Better or For Worse was done with a certain grace; this is not to say that the strip always succeeded (like many other strips, the author obviously struggled to write about adolescence and youth from her adult perspective), but it maintained a real dignity.

Recently, For Better or For Worse author Lynne Johnston announced her retirement. According to media reports, she's decided to phase out the strip gracefully - rather than wrap it up right now, she's going to use the next few months to create a "hybrid comic" where she'll use a flashback format to look back at the strip's original days before signing off sometime in the new year. Good for her. It's a plus to see a strip like this go out on its own terms, rather than see it taken over by a media conglomerate and farmed out. It might not be the hippest, edgiest strip, but it's always come from a singular point of view. I'm glad it's going to maintain that to the end.

I'm not really a constant visitor to the comics page anymore - I haven't been, really, since I stopped commuting in to work in New York City and stopped reading the New York Daily News on a regular basis - but, weirdly, I'll miss For Better or For Worse. It's another piece of my childhood - my strange, quirky, different childhood - that's disappearing. I can only wish it well.

Meandering Thoughts: ESPN Brings Forth The Apocalypse

I was home sick from work today, which gave me the opportunity to watch some daytime television. In between trips to the bathroom, my television basically stayed glued to ESPN. It used to be that ESPN could be counted on provide some great sick-day programming; if it wasn't something decent like "SportsCenter" (which - despite its many misses and the fact that the show itself has become a series of commercials and sponsorships that has drained it of every single iota of journalistic credibility - can still be counted on for some mostly solid programming), it would be something awesome like "NFL Films Presents," which could leave you breathless after watching 1986 Buccaneers highlights for a half-hour.

However, what I beheld on ESPN - between the hours of 2:30 and 3:00 pm - was so very atrocious, so horrendous, so horrifying that I actually peeked out my living room window a couple of times to make sure that four horsemen were not stampeding down my street and that the apocalypse was not actually nigh. And while I'm still not actually sure this wasn't the case, I can say with some surety of what was actually occurring on my television.

The name of the show is "First and Ten," and the ESPN website describes it thusly: "With ESPN First Take's Jay Crawford and Dana Jacobson refereeing the always heated discussion, Skip Bayless and daily guests debate the top ten sports stories of the day from number ten to number one. In the show's first three segments, Skip and panel sound-off on each of the ten topics in a point-counterpoint debate. The final segment is "Extra Point" - the final word from all three on any sports issue they pick."

The show that I saw barely resembled that description. Yes, Dana Jacobsen and Skip Bayless were present. (Jay Crawford was apparently on vacation; the nondescript female talking head who assumed his place was possibly the least distinguished person to have graced the small screen at all. I couldn't tell you her name, or for that matter, anything else about her aside from her gender.) There was no "panel." Rather than having "daily guests," they had talking head/"sportswriter" Stephen A. Smith appearing. To call this show one of "discussion" and "debate" is like calling John Wayne Gacy "quirky." There was no discussion. There was no debate. There was a lot of screaming and posturing.

Why was this show atrocious? Let's look at the blustery talking heads at its Satanic core: Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless.

First, Stephen A. Smith. In the history of mankind, there has never been so much credit and credence given to someone who has so little credibility. Smith has been a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1994 - according to the paper's website, he has covered "Philadelphia 76ers, Temple University basketball and football, and college sports" and is now a columnist-at-large (which he began doing in 2003). Smith's lone other credit? Working for ESPN as a talking head, Smith has moved from commenting on basketball to a slew of other duties, including co-hosting SportsCenter and NBA Basketball coverage. ESPN even gave Smith his own television show, "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith," a talk show which gave a retroactive intelligence to "Thicke Of The Night" and "The Pat Sajak Show." ESPN banks on Smith as a personality - but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for this; Smith comes off on television as a belligerent, blustery ignoramus who makes up for content and reason by generally maintaining a vocal volume that seems better suited to amplifiers at a punk-rock show.

Then there's Skip Bayless. I do not know how ESPN executives looked at this person, and said, "hey, there's a guy we'd love to see representing us on a regular basis." He does not look good on television - facially, he resembles something akin to a wrinkly, harsh-faced Satan, if Satan were forced to suck on lemons on a regular basis. He makes very terrible points that make it seem less like he's a journalist considering a variety of topics and more like someone saddled with a case of utter incoherence matched with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He comes off not just as grumpy, but as an unlikeable person who would have no qualms about saying something like "Hitler had the right ideas but didn't go far enough."

Putting these two together is a terrible, terrible idea. Their personalities are grating enough, but the true difficulty with watching these two is the fact that they do not actually debate. They barely engage each other (hardly surprising, given their narcissistic tendencies). For a half-hour, they speak in absolutes. Which is a terrible, terrible thing when you consider that they are paid to talk about things that (1) haven't occurred yet, and (2) really require opinions and discussion. Neither entertains the possibility that the future sporting events that they're debating (today, it was the forthcoming NFL season and the New York Yankees) might deviate from the course set forth by their opinions.

The two of them went on and on about nothing. Smith "repeated" the "rumor" again and again that A-Rod is actually called "She-Rod" (as a Yankees fan who's heard just about everything, I have to say that I've never heard this one - it is more than plausible that Smith made this one up), and then went absolutely ballistic when Bayless called Terrell Owens "Team Obliterator." They literally only engaged each other about their made-up nicknames for athletes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these two are paid journalists! (Paid by multiple organizations, no less. Oy vey.)

Smith and Bayless are hardly the only individuals on television that do this; they're following a path forged by news channels like Fox and CNN, where journalists ranging from the quasi-likeable (I'm sure some name will come to me soon) to the blustery, Vader-esque (Robert Novak, Bill O'Reilly, everybody eles) insert their opinions into every single news story, obliterating the very concept of journalistic independence for the sake of ratings. However, Smith and Bayless have elevated meaningless, bad-for-our-society bluster to a new high in this - they suck the remaining drops of joy from sports, instead of contributing to our enjoyment of them. For that - although, surely, not that in and of itself - they should both be drawn, quartered, tarred, feathered, shivved, and shot.

And do it quick. Every time they "debate," those horsemen draw closer.

Meandering Thoughts: Nickelback Is Terrible, And Here's Why

One of my favorite movies of the last twenty (or so) years is Richard Linklater’s 1993 ensemble opus “Dazed and Confused.” The movie (which you really should see if you haven’t already) is a meandering, multi-character excursion through life on the last day of school in a Texas town in 1976.

The movie is filled with memorable performances; among these is that of Sasha Jenson, who plays the affable Don Dawson. His is a supporting role, but it is quite memorable. As the football teammate and best friend of central character Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London), Jenson is a wonder to behold. As Dawson, he is a ball of lunatic energy and is so magnetic that it makes one wonder why his acting career never really took off beyond this movie.

There is a moment that Dawson has, though, that has made me understand a central truth about a major player in the entertainment industry. Let me explain the moment, though, before I go any further. In the scene that I’m thinking of, which comes early in the movie, Dawson is walking through the halls of the school building with Pink, discussing the anti-drug pledge (and subsequent moral dilemma) that sits at the center of the plot. As is habitual for the character, Dawson is animated and engaging and generally funny. Then, a weird thing happens – he is approached from the periphery by an unknown figure, and he rears back as though he’s going to hit this guy. The guy scampers away, never to be seen again, and Dawson just as quickly returns back to being animated, engaging, and hilarious. It’s a brief exchange – ten seconds at most – but it reminds viewers of an essential truth about people; one group’s gregarious soul might be another’s feared individual.

This has made me learn a little bit about Nickelback, naturally.

I’ll be very honest. I can’t stand Nickelback. Their music does nothing for me, and after several years in the limelight, I’ve come to understand that their music will do nothing for me - pretty much ever.

That said, there are people out there who love Nickelback. (I’m willing to wager that someone, somewhere will read the above paragraph and think to themselves, “not love Nickelback? That’s unpossible.” To that person, let me clarify something: I know that you like Nickelback. I don’t.) It’s okay to like Nickelback, I think. There’s an appeal to them; I suppose there’s an entire legion of people who enjoy having the soundtrack to their workday be indistinguishable from that of a strip club laden with C-section-scarred muffin-topped “nude models.” Good for them. It’s not for me.

I look at pictures of Nickelback (I won’t provide them here – use Google Image Search), and I see the clique of guys who used to threaten to beat me up in high school. They look like bullies. But, you know what? For that split-second in “Dazed and Confused,” viewers were given a glimpse of the otherwise-awesome Don Dawson as a bully. It makes looking at a band of nu-metal goons somewhat sympathetic; in thinking of Nickelback in these terms, it makes me understand that there’s an entire world that they represent which I’ll probably never have access to, in which these guys are magnetic, affable centres-of-attention.

So, perhaps Nickelback don’t – to paraphrase the great Brodie Bruce (of “Mallrats” fame) – “look like date rapists.” And maybe they are good guys, and probably aren’t the type to dose unsuspecting cheerleader-wannabes with Rohyphnol on their tour bus. I don’t know, and never will.

That doesn’t change the fact that they consistently churn out faceless, derivative metal music that makes goons like Creed look positively, radiantly charismatic in comparison. Nickelback’s music is a wholly unoriginal concoction of pre-watered down ingredients; it takes, as a starting point, Pearl Jam’s first two albums – which were, in and of themselves a combination of Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath – and strip away the charisma of Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, replacing it with the aw-shucks blandness of Chad Kroeger. And yes, I’m saying that Nickelback sounds like Pearl Jam. And yes, I like Pearl Jam, but I don’t like Nickelback – and here’s why? Pearl Jam, even in their early, formative years, wore their influences on their sleeves – their music was influenced by acts ranging from the Beatles to the aforementioned Doors-Led Zeppelin-Black Sabbath trio, but they never overtly sounded like they were trying to be them. Instead, Pearl Jam sounded like they were a good band that took bits that they liked from those bands. Nickelback’s blandness can be attributed to the fact that they try to sound like the bands that they love. There’s a big difference, and credit is due to those who can see it.

Then, there are people who love Nickelback. People who tear up every time Chad Kroeger croaks “how the hell’d we wind up like this.” People who found their video for “If Everybody Cared” profound. People who vote incessantly for the band on VH1 countdown shows. These people exist. And you know what? That’s fine. I hope the dudes in 3 Doors Down are okay with you moving on, though.

Meandering Thoughts: Phil Rizzuto, 1917-2007

Phil Rizzuto died today at the age of 89.

Without being too melodramatic about it, Rizzuto was a major voice of my childhood. I grew up in the Bronx, ten subway stops away from Yankee Stadium. While my dad wasn’t really a Yankees fan per se, he and I shared a love of baseball, and so it was inevitable that we would spin the dial on our television to WPIX, Channel 11, and watch Yankees games.

It was the voice of Phil Rizzuto, supplemented by the gentlemanly Bill White, who would serve as the primary descriptor of some pretty terrible Yankees teams. I don’t know if many folks from my area would have had the love affair they had with the Yankees were it not for him, in fact. His nasal tenor voice, suffused with streetwise Italian affectation, and general good humor made it easier for kids like me to appreciate the play of otherwise-lackluster players like Alvaro Espinoza, Paul Zuvella, Steve Balboni, and Wayne Tolleson.

A lot of people will no doubt, in paying tribute to the man that the Yankees lovingly referred to as “The Scooter” (to the point where the mascot of the short-season Single ! Staten Island Yankees farm team is Scooter “the holy” Cow), refer to Rizzuto’s many malaprops in the broadcasting booth – the man would often say things like, “Nobody’s going to get to that ball, holy cow, he got it.” You know what? Things like that may not have been “accurate,” but they genuinely reflected the thoughts of the average baseball fan. The Scooter was good like that – he’d ask dumb questions, get confused sometimes, and would contradict himself – but isn’t that really just human nature? He gave voice to the average baseball fan, and will forever be adored for that.

Other things that are relevant about Phil Rizzuto: he was the 1950 American League MVP, he was the key shortstop on the Yankees championship teams of the fifties, he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame (in one of the most debated inductions in the game’s history), and the Yankees retired his number. He (allegedly inadvertently) provided play-by-play for a young man’s amorous affections in Meat Loaf’s classic song “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” and the spelling of his name in the movie “Billy Madison” showed that Adam Sandler’s titular character had no idea how to write a script z. I’m not going to pay too much attention to those details; I never saw the man play, and the rest of it kind of speaks for itself.

I will say this – I will miss that voice. I mean, he hasn’t broadcasted for more than ten years, and I’ve missed that voice. I mean, for years, it was well known that Rizzuto would leave each game he’d broadcast in the seventh inning so that he could beat the traffic over the George Washington Bridge heading back to his home in New Jersey. Anyone else would have been raked over the coals for this, but for Rizzuto, this was an eccentricity that only led to people loving him more.

Rizzuto may not have been the most erudite, booksmart person to have ever stepped behind a microphone, but he made up for it by being endearing and sweet. His was a distinctive voice, and will always remind me of a time when I would sit and watch baseball with my dad and only have to worry about whether my homework was done.

Rest in peace, Scooter.

Meandering Thoughts: On Turning 30.

In 1984, one of my favorite bands, R.E.M., released their second album – called “Reckoning,” it was an energized blast of jangle-and-stomp rock and roll. Lead singer Michael Stipe spent the bulk of the album obscuring words and half-phrases; from what I can understand, it was considered “cool” to try to decipher R.E.M. lyrics at that period in time. Anyway, one of the few phrases that could be understood on that album came at the beginning of the album’s last song, “Little America,” as the then-24 year old Stipe hollered, “I don’t see myself at 30/I don’t buy a lacquered 30.”

Initially, this was interpreted as the determinably-obscure Stipe’s version of the rock-and-roll clarion call, “I hope I die before I get old,” which continues to echo over the airwaves of classic rock radio in the attitudes and poses of acts from Buddy Holly to Nirvana. However, as Stipe got older, he backed away from that attitude, saying that – for him, it wasn’t a case of not living until he was 30, but rather, it was about not remaining preserved as he got older and older – not being “lacquered” like a fly in amber for view, but enjoying the flux that comes as part of life’s rich pageant.

Well, today is my thirtieth birthday. It may seem like a nothing milestone to some folks, but heck, I’ve never been thirty before, so it’s a little weird for me. Like Michael Stipe, when I was 24, I couldn’t see myself at 30, and I sure as shoot didn’t want to be preserved for display, with my best work behind me. I also didn’t want to ever be like any of the characters in the television show “Thirtysomething,” who, in my limited exposure to the television show, I found generally whiny and neurotic without ever really seeming anything other than privileged and bratty. Also, I wasn’t crazy about that show’s abuse of denim shirts, processed hair, and pleated khakis.

Since my exposure to those two touchstones, I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that life will always be vital if you allow it to be – if you stop moving, and stop trying, you’re all but doomed to the lacquered, preserved 30 of as seen in “Thirtysomething” where you can’t see the forest for the upper-class trees. I’d like to say that I’ve learned to embrace the struggle, but I’m still working on that. But, as best as I can figure, that’s just as good as anything else.