Damn American flag with its stars arrayed like cheerleaders, specifically Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders except fuck the Cowboys.

We sat at the bar with money in dwindling piles, like gamblers with their chips. The team was losing, losing, losing and then it was winning, and then it won. We talked about music and restroom hand-drying technology.

We joined our families outside. The sun moved slowly. Maybe sometimes not at all. Finally we said goodbye to our friends who are moving and then we left.

The beginning of a sports season is a celebration of renewal, of anything possible, of life. I always think this and make a mental note to mark it in writing, at the beginning of September for football for example. I want to recognize it and savor it. Then suddenly it’s Week 7, Week 8. I’ve been helpless against the current of time. But in a few days Formula One starts again, and here we are.

Mom didn’t follow sports but she loved sports. The folklore of it, the mythology, traditions. The idea that people could get so happy about nothing at all. Or get so sad.

For the Super Bowl in 1979 we were at our neighbors up the street, the kid I’d been friends with all my life, Henry. The parents were having proper pre-dinner cocktails in the living room while Henry and I watched the game at the kitchen table. That was what went down in a house in a little college town with four grownups who didn’t give a fuck about football.

At a certain point my mom walked in and asked us who was playing. She didn’t even know who was playing on the goddamned day of the game.

“Cowboys and Steelers,” I said, with some idiotic pride, like I was in the know.

Without the slightest hesitation she said: “GO STEELERS.”

She knew, instinctively or through some convoluted experience, that the Dallas Cowboys were despicable and the Pittsburgh Steelers were worthy of love and support.

Until that moment I had no real idea of my own. I’d grown up without TV because this is how my parents chose to express themselves. To take their stand against vulgar American commercialism and conformity, dragging their children up alongside them. So today I was happy enough to watch any kind of flickering pixels on a screen, be they white and silver or black and gold.

But the moment my mom said that I knew she was right. One team is obviously, always, fundamentally, morally superior to the other. Cowboys suck.

So I rooted for the Steelers and they won.

What happened today?

Felt out of sorts and alienated at work. Sara said she had a bad day too.

Someone got pushed out on the tracks apparently, and died. Survivors were treated for trauma. It was on the Q line. I don't think I've ever taken it.

In many ways it was a nothing day, a treading water day. A day for killing time before you die. A-Rod wil get hip surgery (like an old woman), miss the start of the season. The princess is pregnant.

Jackie fussed and cried, "No, no, no, no, no, no!"

I made a stupendously bland meal and we watched football, Sara drifting off to sleep as her team lost by a point.

It's a pleasure to find oneself at the beginning of something. Football: four weeks in. (Already!) It goes by fast, too fast. But for now, it's just good to be inside of something, not knowing what it is. Are the Vikings so terrible? The Chiefs so good? Each season is a life, lived from summer to the dead of winter.

There's a sepulchral quiet at the bar at a minute to one on Sunday afternoon. A nice guy and his dog. A man slumped back in his chair at the bar, watching some terrible baseball documentary. The so-called glory days of Sosa and McGwire. We ask for TVs turned on to our respective games and the flickering glow intensifies the silence. Finally, I ask for some volume.

I Want Tony Kornheiser, that Racist Imbecile, Fired NOW

Granted I'm in a bad mood because the Eagles lost, but Tony Kornheiser is a total fucking jackass. Whereas John Madden might be accused of being the master of the obvious, Kornheiser is the master of the obviously fucking stupid.

The fourth stupidest thing Tony Kornheiser said tonight:

He said Donovan McNabb had to be especially fired up getting out on the field because T.O. just scored a touchdown.

Are you fucking kidding me? McNabb doesn't need to be any more fired up. And he doesn't give a fuck if T.O. scores, except that it's six points against his team. The promotion of the alleged McNabb-T.O. rivalry, a figment of T.O.'s imagination to begin with and at this point a complete non-issue, is infantile and seeks to reduce the NFL to the level of pro wrestling or, worse yet, some kind of overwrought soap opera for men. Kornheiser is the type of stupid cocksucker who buys into this shit and we have to hear about it when we're trying to watch a goddamn game on a Monday night.

The third stupidest Tony Kornheiser said tonight:

In spite of everything, you have to admit T.O. is a great receiver. Don't you, everyone? I mean, c'mon.

Jesus Christ help us. OF COURSE he's a great receiver for Christ's fucking sake. You also have to admit that the sky is blue, that war is heck and that warm apple pie à la mode is delicious. Right, Tony? Let's go down the whole list next week.

The second stupidest Tony Kornheiser said tonight:

The Cowboys are the "greatest," or "most valuable," or "biggest" or some stupid shit like that sports team in the world, more so than the Yankees.

What kind of childlike jerkoff even has this conversation in the first place? It's akin to seven-year-olds arguing about which color is the most awesome color ever or whether a truck is cooler than a motorcycle. What a moron. Where does he come up with this?

The stupidest thing Tony Kornheiser said tonight:

It was some kind of celebration of Hispanic-American Month at Texas Stadium, I guess. A weird and tense theme in the first place - there are millions of illegals in Texas and millions of Texans who hate them just as they eat food that's been prepared by them, live and work in buildings that are built by them, and rely on them for countless dirty, dreary tasks. ESPN's idea of a homage was to have Hank Williams, Jr. blurt out "Andele!" before the performance of his stupidass, redneck football song and to occasionally post the score between "Los Águilas de Philadelphia" and "Los Vaqueros de Dallas."

Cute, guys. Nice. Way to get some intern on Babelfish and throw the Hispanic population of this country a bone. Are you kidding me?

But it gets worse. After they replayed the Spanish-language broadcast of the Cowboys' kick return for a touchdown, Kornheiser's idea of a tribute was to say that he only knows high school Spanish, and he's not sure what the announcer was saying, but it was either "No one can touch him" or "Can you pick up my dry cleaning tomorrow?" I'm not sure I have the exact words right but I have not exaggerated anything. Evidently, the network sent the booth a message that Tony would have to apologize and he dutifully did so, much later in the game, without referring specifically to the initial incident.

I try to be open minded when most things like this happen - it does our free society no good to crucify everyone who breaches some dogmatic code of political correctness. But FUCK THIS GUY AND FIRE HIM. If he weren't such a fucking jackass in the first place, a comment like that might be forgiven as unintended somehow, or misguided without being meanspirited. But in the context of the night's half-assed tribute to Hispanics, and given Kornheiser's dimwitted discourse, he gets extra demerits. I WANT HIM GONE.

It was a day spent facing the television, a posture more draining than it appears. It was the first big day of football, and the Eagles won big, looked great; meanwhile, the Yankees tiptoed away quietly, miserably, almost invisibly in a 5-2 loss to the lowly Mariners.

It's all coming back now: leaves sprung loose from trees, darkness in the afternoon, the innate cold of things and plays whistled dead.

Steve was beside himself that the Giants won. We were all planning a skiing trip and as we were leaving the Super Bowl party I asked him if he and Natuza had a ride yet.

"Oh!" he smiled. "We've, we've... made other arrangements. Already." He could barely suppress his laughter, cheeks red and rosy, eyes like slits. As though their arrangements involved a top-secret trip to the moon.

Practically the entire fourth quarter, he'd sequestered himself on the outdoor deck, peering at the TV from the other side of the sliding door, his breath clouding a patch of glass. 'Cause it was good luck. Only at the end would he come in from the cold.

The time after the Super Bowl is over and before bed, dirty like dishwater, with the too-bright lights and all our heads clouded drunk, when the post-game interviews fade into ads and then the requisite, over-hyped network premiere, when the guests disperse to put their coats on, linger ten minutes more, and then leave for good. It's like the doldrums in the middle of the second quarter, when you're not sure where you are, whether you're watching a football game, and whether you need to drink more beer or take a piss.

This was an incredible Super Bowl, one to redeem many others, and to justify all the attendant dreariness.

Stumbled up windy Third Avenue late last night and right into this place, one of these new places that seems to be run by kids out of college and caters to drunk kids out of college and serves them cheesesteaks and cheeseburgers and fries and as I stood in line I thought someone was going to say something about football and I'm wearing my Eagles hat. Someone sitting at a table, a black guy in his twenties, was talking to someone in line in front of me, something about the Giants and who are they rooting for, and then he saw me and said, "This guy's an Eagles fan," and I said yeah but I'm a Giants fan for today and it was as though I hadn't said a word; he paused a beat and went on talking to the others.

The Patriots won again tonight, goddammit, but the thing about winning all the time is this: all’s there’s left to do is lose. I thought I’d say this poignant thing cuz they lost tonight but instead I’m saying it cuz they won.

Who was that drug-running dictator, Noriega? The wide, pockmarked face. The impassive air, subtly tinged with menace. He fixes salad at the salad station below my work, now. Guy looks just like him. Is that why I don’t care for him much? More likely it’s the way he grips fistfuls of salad ingredients in his surgical-gloved hand, almost defiantly, like, Fuck off, I’m not using the tongs. Gringo. My brother got paid a dollar an hour to pick these tomatoes and I’m getting ten to pick ‘em back at you.

Which I appreciate. I’m a bourgeois yada yada. But when you put the corn, the bacon, the tofu and the chickpeas in your mitt like that it all acquires the same briny, sour savor. And here I am back upstairs under the fluorescent lights going, yuck. I’ll never eat from the salad station below my work again.

The strident and explosive buffoonery on the sidelines and JumboTron were occassionally interrupted for a few seconds of solemn, nearly ritualistic activity: the football game. The quarterback emerging from below center, the clack of helmet upon helmet, quarterback dropping back, dropping back; his linemen endeavoring breathlessly to block without holding, more clacks and dull thuds as some level their assignments to the turf, a wobbly screen pass and then - some linebacker meets him with his uneasy embrace; a safety comes to his assistance, and it's over.

Our seats were on the north side of the stadium and we found ourselves half blinded in hot, yellow sun. I sensed it searing my forehead as we scrutinized the field, awash in golden haze, and tried to discern the movements of the shadowy figures upon it.

I decided to watch the last quarter of the Eagles game at our new bar, Dive 75. Beside me sat a couple, seemed like regulars. Someone else joined them and asked the obligatory questions, what've you done this weekend.

"I had the twelve-hour flu," the guy said. "You've heard of the twenty-four-hour flu. I had the twelve-hour flu."

He seemed all right to me. Prolly fully recovered. Did seem a tiny bit jaundiced though. Had that salty-eye look we've all been cultivating, what with the bars we frequent and the happenstance foods.

The Eagles stood up on defense, unlike last week. Last week is a story for tomorrow.

I left my tip and left a bit furtively, out to the crisp, fall air around the street.

A curiously sad and fraught day. The day after the Super Bowl, figures. It's the only universally celebrated holiday, and just about the only one we don't get a day off for besides. It's inevitable that the half of our dreams that are dashed, or our prideful, whimsical bets that are lost, would combine ferociously with the beer and the chips and the beer and the whiskey and the pretzels and the beer to provoke dark mornings of self-loathing indeed, all across the land.

Tony Dungy said they proved they won it the Lord's way and I don't like that, I don't like it one bit.

He hears the sounds of fucking through the walls.

The lid was off the jar.

His lip bled into his cupped hand.


God I was tired yesterday and I'm tired again today. I briefly lost consciousness on the couch while watching college football - Syracuse and Iowa - and reading some article about Dick Cheney. It became increasingly difficult to focus on either the article or the game and then my mind became aswim in a menacing froth of whistles, huddles, arms negotiations and Condoleeza Rice.

I came so close to dying today.

I walked out of the office and headed east on desolate Canal Street to the terrifying intersection of Hudson and Watts and the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. At night I don't think so much about it, maybe 'cause I'm tired and it's dark and the whole world seems somehow less perilous, softened in the gloom.

I got the light and I walked.

My ears plugged with earbuds and Donald Fagen cooing in his Jersey know-it-all, adenoidal snarl.

A car raced around another heading west on Canal and abruptly cut across. In the space of about half a second I formed the following distinct thoughts, apprehensible as gradual stages in some deliberate process of realization or at least of coming to terms:

1. That car can't possibly be coming at me.
2. Can it?
3. Is that car coming right at me?
4. I mean, right at me?
5. At full speed?

I broke into an awkward, loping gallop, three steps maybe, just enough for the demon car to squeal past my back, not slowing nor swerving nor honking nor giving the least indication.

I exploded into motion, it occurs to me now, the way they said that new defensive tackle the Eagles drafted, the way they like him for his explosiveness, and I thought at the time, what a dumb football cliché, explosiveness.

To explode into motion. All the requisite muscles suddenly and completely given to the task of displacement at the instigation of a subconscious or superconscious thought.

When it was over and I reached the other side of the street, I thought, What now?

The football game on the TV, the reason it looks bigger, more real, more alive than real life is simply the presence of the frame. The frame eliminates chaotic chaff. Guiding eyes and minds according to accepted aesthetic constructs. The frame adds life.