brett favre's last game...

... and he probably will be on the sidelines, not playing because of a concussion...

This afternoon will be the last Vikings game of this football season, since they were too pathetic to make the playoffs. And Brett Favre's final game will be anticlimactic since the game is pretty meaningless and he'll be out of the action. He'll just be over there on the bench while the announcers gush about his career. This his final year as a player just sort of fizzled out, but he found ways to be at least interesting on the field and off the field. He's been a major presence in the sport since 1992, so it's sort of sad to see him finish.

Our friends Tony and Diane are coming over to watch the game on TV with Jerry and Tom and me, saying goodbye to the Vikings 2010-2011 season and preparing for the off-season ways the Vikings will have to stay in the news: Who will be quarterback next year with Favre gone? Will there be a season next year or will there be an owners' lockout? What will happen to the still deflated Metrodome? Will the Vikings move to Los Angeles after the 2011 season if they don't get a new stadium? The drama will continue.

acceptable levels of violence

You know I'm a non-violent person -- very anti-war and against all forms of physical abuse -- so my love of football sometimes must seem like an obvious exception to my principles. But we all have exceptions to our principles, do we not?

That NFC Championship Game last January between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints almost made me re-think football. The obvious game plan of the Saints was to injure the Vikings quarterback, Brett Favre, to the point of having him carted off the field, perhaps permanently. It was brutal to watch but at the same time, realistically, maybe just an extreme version of what football is. Football has been compared to war -- men fighting for territory -- and it has left many football players in pain and with disabilities for the rest of their lives.

Yet the season officially starts tonight -- a rematch of the Vikings and the Saints -- and I'm anxious for it and I hope the Vikings smash the heck out of those rotten Saints. So maybe football is just another of those Guilty Pleasures of mine. Are you keeping track of these?

my last football comments for a long time, I hope

Last Monday morning was just so weird. There was a cloud over downtown Minneapolis, throughout the skyways, within the offices, as people tried to come to grips with the trauma of having witnessed the Vikings choke, a few inches once again from reaching the Superbowl. It was one of those shocked-but-not-really-shocked kind of things, where you actually expected the Vikings to blow it but yet you kept finding reasons to hope. And just when you became a believer again, there was another kick in the face. You know?

And, for me at least, that game became a reason to permanently despise the New Orleans Saints. Several things were obvious in that game -- first of all, that the Vikings were the better team... and, more obvious, that the Saints coaching team had based their whole game plan on injuring the Vikings quarterback, Brett Favre. Let's face it, football is a rough game, sometimes almost violently so. But I had never seen a game where injury, maybe serious injury, was so recognizably the intent.

So I can't think about football for a few more months.. The Superbowl? I hope we don't even watch -- Let's all go to the movies instead that day.. But if I do develop a smidgeon of caring between now and next Sunday, I'll have to look to the other team, the Indianapolis Colts, to show the Saints how football is really supposed to be played.

counting crows

It's eerie.

We're up here on the 26th floor looking down at Loring Park, downtown Minneapolis, and for the last few weeks, on certain nights and certain mornings, there are thousands of crows flying over the park and hovering on various apartment buildings down below us. The contrast of these black crows flying over the white snow is startling. Their shreiky cawing, thousands of them, woke Jerry up this morning.

A neighbor told us that the crows come back like this every few years.

It's like the movie The Birds. When will they attack? Or are they trying to tell us something?

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The mid winter sports update:
Minnesota is on a sports high this week after the Vikings beat the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game and have advanced to either lose to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday or to go on to the Superbowl. So next week -- an even higher high or a low low as football here ends for another season as we know how close we came to the prize.

Jerry and I were at the Vikings/Cowboys game, along with 63,000 other screaming fans, one of the most fun games I've ever attended. There are all kinds of things wrong with football as a sport, but, wow, the energy generated by that many exuberant people is hard to describe. It's a shame that day to day life can't generate that kind of excitement and that kind of a rush.

more sports and weather

It looks like Brett Favre isn't coming to the Vikings after all, or, who knows?, maybe he just wants a chance later on to get his name back in the headlines again, Will he un-retire or won't he? I know the guy is a dweeb, but I just want to see some spark in this franchise so that they don't move to Los Angeles in a couple years if they don't get their new stadium, and maybe he could be a one-year spark.

Switching from football to a sport that is actually in season -- baseball. The Minnesota Twins, the team that was almost dissolved several years ago by Major League Baseball because the state wouldn't build them a new stadium, moves into their brand new stadium next spring. The stadium is looking good, everybody is excited about finally having baseball outdoors again after twenty-some years inside the Metrodome, an awful venue for baseball but which somehow helped bring them two World Series Championships. And there is certainly something romantic about picturing those beautiful summer nights watching baseball outdoors. But remember what I was telling you about what a terrible April we had this year -- the wind and the rain and the cold? And do know how many snowstorms Minnesota has had during the month of October while some teams somewhere were off playing in the World Series? Let's hope for lots of rugged season-ticketholders. And players.
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On the home front: we've taken our house off the market for now and are going to try to stick it out. :-)
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My next blog will be sport-less and weather-less. I promise.

oh, to be in Phoenix!

It would be pathetically predictable for me to go on and on about this Minnesota winter -- how it is the worst in years; how it was 17 degrees below zero (not counting windchill) as I was walking to work this morning; how we are currently having days when the temp doesn't even go above zero all day long; how it seems to snow every other day; etc., etc.

So I won't. You know how I hate being predictable.

But this evening I was thinking about Phoenix, Arizona, where the temperatures today were about 75 degrees (above zero). Tom and I were at the Minnesota Wild/Phoenix Coyotes hockey game in St. Paul this evening. The first thing I always think is, how did Phoenix, a city out there in the middle of the desert, get a team that plays hockey, a winter sport? And then I'm thinking, what about those Coyote players, flying north to play in Minnesota, where the temps are 90 degrees cooler than where they left. Gosh, it must have been a shock to their systems. They were awful tonight, even with Wayne Gretsky coaching, losing to the Wild 6-3.

And I do have to say that I'm sure that a winter in Minneapolis is not as bad as a summer in Phoenix!

.... but I do admit, as I go out there to scrape ice off my car windows, that a couple days in Phoenix might feel good right about now....

Maybe this coming weekend, for instance, when the Arizona Cardinals are hosting my Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday for the NFC championship, the winner going on to the Super Bowl (Sorry, I just switched from hockey to football).. ! I could hang out with the Eagles fans that you know will be interspersed in those home-team stands .. (And how did Arizona ever get a football team, anyway??) Go, Eagles!!
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It's been a while since I've blogged, and I've been meaning to have some profound thoughts looking back at 2008, and here it is the 13th of January already.. Is it too late? I'd hate to be like one of those people still wishing people Happy New Year in March!

a late-autumn sports update

A few days ago, Jerry's business partner Clark said he'd like to play some racquetball with him... Now Jerry has never played racquetball in his life, and with his back and neck problems, a game of racquetball would put him in traction for a week at least... So I said, tell Clark I'll play some racquetball with him... That offer threw my sister Joan into a tailspin... "You're not going to play racquetball!", meaning, I guess, that she thinks some intense exercise would give me a coronary. Hey, I used to play tons of racquetball, who cares if it was 20-some years ago?!.. I still have my racquetball trophies, who cares that they're dusty and falling apart?! so we'll see if Clark, 20+ years younger than myself, gets desperate for a game and if I survive it.

So to my sister, I guess my involvement in sports can only be as a spectator. I was thinking about that night before last at the Vikings-Bears game. There was actually a lot of exercise involved, lots of jumping up and down and high-fiving people around us... What a great game... Vikings 31, Bears 14. What made it even sweeter was that we had a lot of glum Bears fans sitting not far away (Have you ever noticed how Chicago Bears fans never have necks?). Plus there was a dopey looking guy sitting behind us wearing a "Palin 2012" shirt. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to be a spectator, obviously.

Anyway, I had to hurry and blog something about the Vikings because at least briefly they are in first place in their division (even though they are only 7-5). A typical Vikings reaction to winning a big game like the Chicago game would be for them to lose next week to the lowly Detroit Lions (The Lions are 0-12).

Other local sports teams at the moment: NHL Hockey: the Wild are 14-8-1. Typical Wild season. NBA Basketball: the Timberwolves are 4-12. Not unusual for the Wolves. Guess we're going to go for the draft pick again.

That's it for sports talk, fans.
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A later note, 12.7.08. Fortunately, I was wrong, and the Vikings managed to beat Detroit (just barely). So, for the moment, they are still in first place, and the Lions are 0-13.

football fantasy

Now that the tear gas and the other nasty smells of having the Republican Convention in our Cities have mostly blown away and the SWAT storm-troopers have moved on to wherever it is they normally hang out, it's time to change the subject... Besides, if i think about Sarah Palin for even one more minute, I might barf.
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My brother Ronnie, who lives in South Jersey, called me a couple weeks ago to tell me something funny. He had just read the Sports Illustrated picks for the top NFL football teams this year, and they were picking our team, the Philadelphia Eagles, to meet my adopted team, the Minnesota Vikings, in the NFC Championship Game, which the Eagles would win, but then the Eagles would lose to New England in the Super Bowl.

We laughed for several minutes. I don't think it occurred to many people in either the Philly area or in Minnesota that these teams have anything special this year. Besides that, everyone knows that both of teams do better when nobody is predicting that they could win. It's a jinx! Having Sports Illustrated pick them probably means that neither team will even make the playoffs!

Week One: The Eagles are off to a good start, beating St. Louis 38-3. The Vikings are off to a typical start, losing to Favre-less Green Bay. And the Patriots are now Brady-less for the season, which probably blows Sports Illustrated's AFC pick too.
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Speaking of New England, Jerry and I leave later this week for a few days in New England, after a brief stop in New Jersey for my cousin Darlene's wedding.

08.08.08 @ 8

I was at the coffeeshop at 8 this morning to see Jack. It's his last day on the job. He's been the manager of the shop for the last several years, and we can always depend on him for a smile and some friendly chat. He's a young, vibrant guy, obviously too talented to be a coffeeshop manager the rest of his life, is going back to school -- to the University of Minnesota (just down the street) to study theater. Another starving actor, or maybe not? Still, it's sad to lose one of my coffeeshop friends.

As I write this, I'm sitting at the Volkswagen dealership, waiting while my GTI has its 20,000 mile checkup. Across the lobby, the TV is on. In a far-away time zone, the Olympics opening ceremony is happening right now to be followed, of course, by two weeks of Summer Olympics. I'm a casual Olympics observer, will watch some gymnastics, maybe some diving.

The opening ceremonies, which I find mostly annoying anyway, will be re-broadcast tonight on American TV. We'll miss it. We have tickets for the Jungle Theater, at 8 o'clock -- Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Maybe one of these years, we'll see Jack up on stage.

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Brett Favre ended up with the New York Jets?? Jerry, an avid Jets fan (sporadically), doesn't know what to think.

inside the mind of Brett Favre

I haven't mentioned football since the 4th of February, but -- hey! -- training camp has opened, as depressing a thought as that might be....

Two seasons ago, I was at the Vikings-Packers game at the Metrodome, where I had overdone it on the mustard. When I took that first bite of the hot dog, the mustard went squirting out the other end of the hot dog and landed on the back of the woman sitting in front of me... She and her daughter were Packer fans (there are always thousands of Packer fans at the Vikings-Packers game, since Wisconsin is only a half-hour away), and the mustard just hung there right smack in the middle of her #4 Brett Favre jersey. When I pointed this out to her, she, not appreciating the asthetics of how perfectly the yellow of the mustard matched the green-and-yellow Packer jersey, seemed to think this was the intentional work of an overzealous Packer-hater. And Vikings fans are usually so civilized (not like, for instance, Eagles fans!).

I'm, of course, not a Packer-hater. Nor, for that matter, particularly antagonistic to Brett Favre. The Green Bay Packers are an amusing little team. And one thing I've always admired about Brett Favre, besides the fact that he is a highly adequate quarterback, is that he always stuck with the same team, even though Green Bay is the least glamorous of all National Football League cities.

So, back in February, Favre, after umpteen years as a top quarterback, retires. It was a good time to retire. He had just had a good season, except for that last playoff game at Green Bay, where he was obviously freezing to death while Eli Manning was cool as a cucumber.

Then, after four or five months of retirement, he decides to un-retire. The Packers, meanwhile, have moved on and groomed another starting quarterback. They don't want him. So he thinks, Hey, maybe I could play for the Vikings (who desperately need a quarterback) in that nice warm Metrodome (where he has always been booed, but never mind that). Or how about Tampa Bay? Heck no, the Packers say, you miserable ingrate.

This is a guy who grew up in Kiln, Mississippi, a hot muggy place. And Favre is getting old (almost 40!), and you know how old people can't take the cold anymore. The blood doesn't circulate like it used to. Who can blame the man for wanting to be out of Green Bay December/January wind chills?

I do wonder, though, why he wouldn't rather quit while his body is still working reasonably well, before his throwing arm turns to Cool-Whip and before he gets the mind-altering concussion from being thrown down on his head one too many times? Or is it the quarterback mentality, the need to stay in the center of the picture?

And I do feel a little sad for all those people with the #4 Brett Favre jerseys. They're feeling a little betrayed by their hero. He apparently doesn't bleed green and yellow after all.

nobody's perfect

OK, I take back everything I said... It was a great game, and I'm glad we didn't go bowling! The Giants 17, the less-than-perfect Patriots 14; Eli Manning looking super and Tom Brady probably feeling really beat-up this morning.... and no more football blogs for 6 months (maybe?) :-)

SuperBowling

You know I like football, the NFL especially, and I like the playoffs and all that. The SuperBowl, though, has always been sort of annoying for me, unless the Eagles or the Vikings are in it, which of course is hardly ever. The game is nothing compared to all the corporate hoopla and the hours of commercials. Everybody has parties to "watch" the game and get drunk. It's usually a good time to go to the movies or go bowling, since everybody else is at home watching the SuperBowl.

We're invited to friends' house to watch the game this year, so we'll socialize while the game is off in the corner on the hopefully-muted TV. It's hard to get too excited with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants going for the championship anyway. Remember I predicted in my September 8th blog that the Patriots were going to have a phenomenal year? But who wants to see them have a perfect season? Hardly anybody. If the Patriots win, I wouldn't mind seeing Randy Moss finally get a Super Bowl ring, but I would mind seeing Tom Brady getting another one, so I guess that means I need to be rooting for the Giants, which is not easy for an Eagles fan. Would be fun to see "little Manning" win the big one, I guess, after all the abuse he takes from the New York fans.

And, if you watch, try to avoid the halftime show. This year, it's Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers... (are there still Heartbreakers or is it just Tom Petty?)... The way they do the SuperBowl halftime shows is just plain awful. They will have hundreds of people brought in from who-knows-where to jump around in phony hysteria around the stage while Tom Petty plays a couple of his greatest hits (did Tom Petty have greatest hits?). Then they'll truck Tom and his fake fans off the field, the teams will come back, one will win, one will lose, followed by idiotic locker-room interviews and a phone call from bush (unless he is choking on pretzels).... and football is suddenly gone from our lives for the next few months.

whew. it's no wonder everybody gets drunk.

the bad-hair days of January

My sister Joan, who has an all-Phillies blog, casually accused me of having an "all-Vikings" blog... I looked back through my entries to date and found that my Vikings comments comprised maybe ten percent of my ramblings. That's not bad. And now no more Vikings til late summer.

My son Jon, who has no blogsite at all, gave me a book for Christmas called No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. And you can't believe some of these suggestions. Let's see how desperate I get for ideas.

And, being in Minnesota, with no Vikings in the playoffs, the number one conversation-piece is usually the weather, which for conversation purposes has been very cooperative lately. Temperatures (not including wind-chill) when I got up yesterday morning: -14 degrees. Today -11 degrees. The kind of cold where your heart stops when you walk outdoors. Even walking to my office, which is only two blocks from home, can be a killer. This week has been so cold that I've actually had to wear gloves and a stocking-cap, the latter of which I resist doing because it means wrecked-hair for the rest of the day. One day it was so icy on that two-block walk that I slipped and landed flat on my back and cracked my head against the cobblestones. Luckily, I come from a family of very hard heads.

And, speaking of family, it was good to get back to New Jersey last weekend (where the temps actually were in the low-60s for part of the time) for my brother's wedding. It's always good to see family that I don't get to see nearly often enough, even though we had some mishaps with us almost becoming car-jackers and my brother-in-law buying A Roll. Besides the wedding stuff, we got to do the usual Jersey things I like doing -- going to Jim's Lunch in Millville for breakfast, visiting Ocean City and Atlantic City, eating cheesesteaks (which Minnesota sorely lacks) for lunch.

I know, I know... No one cares what I had for lunch.

games in the night

oh well, i'm not sure the Vikings should be playing in front of a national audience, and they've done it twice within a week... Last Monday night, they almost lost to the awful Chicago Bears, then last night they lost to the Washington Redskins. Our team is so dependent on the young stars, running back Adrian Peterson and quarterback Tavaris Jackson, and what a lot of pressure that is on these guys, still relatively new to pro football. Now it looks like the team won't make it into the playoffs. Maybe they'd collapse there anyway.

(it sure is fun going to the night games, though -- [click on the photo above] -- but how glad i am that we have an indoor stadium on these cold Minnesota evenings).

and tonight is Christmas Eve, time for a different kind of games... We're spending the evening with our friends Diane and Tony and various of their family members and friends. Last Christmas Eve, we stayed up with them playing the addictive Mexican Train Game til about 3 a.m. They all missed midnight mass.