People and Things that Came Before

So, I guess the Dallas Cowboys will be playing the part of al Qaeda.

Rex Ryan feels like this Sunday’s New York Jets game with the Dallas Cowboys carries additional significance.  He feels that winning this game is somehow more important because his New York team is playing on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. 

Full Disclosure

I am a lily-livered, bleeding-heart, liberal, egg-head communist.  Even if you’re a gun-toting, redneck son-of-a-bitch I think there are still some things we can agree on.  I can’t think of anything right now but I’m pretty sure there’s something we agree on.

Perhaps this…

I've Been Waiting to Awaken from this Dream

There is no denying the significance of this Sunday.  It marks the anniversary of a shocking, tragic, heroic day in this country’s history.  In response, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, gave the locals purple fingers (we care deeply about voter fraud, even in Fallujah – perhaps especially in Fallujah), sacrificed thousands more American lives, spent a decade on failed shovel-ready infrastructure projects and wedding crashing, killed tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis, finally double-tapped Osama bin Laden and I still don’t think we have a feeling of closure.

After all that, do you really think a Jets win over the Cowboys this Sunday night will allow New Yorkers to finally reconcile their feelings about that horrific September morning?

Perhaps we’ll never have closure.  The arc of history was bent on 9/11.  What we long for – a future that existed before September 11, 2001 – can never be.  A football game isn’t going to change that.

It’s a football game.  A juvenile, nut-punching, staying out in the rain playing football game.

Let’s hope it’s nothing more than that.

I Changed by not Changing at All…

I didn’t realize how much I missed Plaxico Burress until he came back.  I just have to deconstruct this Fire Joe Morgan-style, using the quotes ESPN.com lifted from the Men’s Journal piece.

After my situation happened…

My situation happened?  That sounds like the thousands of skels that tried to cut a deal on the thousands of crime procedurals on network and cable TV.  If I give up my boy Vinnie, what can you do for me and my situation?  You mean the situation where you brought a loaded, unregistered gun into a public place and shot yourself?  That situation?

…I turned on the TV, and the first words out [Tom Coughlin’s] mouth was “sad and disappointing.”  I’m like, forget support – how about some concern?  I did just have a bullet in my leg…

Which you put there yourself, right?  I’m missing the whole “changed man” thing here.  It was “sad and disappointing” wasn’t it?  That whole shooting yourself in the leg while you’re out on the town with your wife and child at home, depending on you not to shoot yourself in the leg.  Was that too much to ask?  Oh, right.  It was.

…and then I sat in his office, and he pushed back his chair and goes, “I’m glad you didn’t kill anybody!” 

At which point you say, “Amen, Coach.  I may be stupid but thank God I’m lucky.”  Love the detail of Coughlin pushing back from his desk.  I bet he paused dramatically between “didn’t” and “kill.”  I’m glad you didn’t…  kill anybody!

Man, we’re paid too much to be treated like kids. 

Compensation is a measure of…  respect, of course, but not so much a measure of…  maturity. 

That's what I thought: no gun, no respect. That's why I always got the gun.

He doesn’t realize that we’re grown men and actually have kids of our own.

Ah, the kids.  You went to a club drenched in bling with a gun shoved into your sweat pants, safety off, for the kids.

He’s not a real positive coach… You look around the league, the Raheem Morrises and Rex Ryans – when their player makes a mistake, they take ‘em to the side and say, “We’ll get ‘em next time.”  But Coughlin’s on the sideline going crazy, man.  I can’t remember one time when he tried to talk a player through not having a day he was having.

I thought you were just complaining because Tom Coughlin treated you like a kid, right?  Plax seems like a really complicated guy. 

I was always [Eli Manning’s] biggest supporter, even days he wasn’t on, ‘cause I could sense he didn’t have a thick skin…

Unlike Plax, who clearly lets everything just roll right off his shoulders.

Then I went away, and I thought he would come see me, but nothing, not a letter, in two years.  I don’t want to say it was a slap in the face…

Because you hate violent metaphors?  Stale metaphors?

…but I thought our relationship was better than that.

You know, it’s really hard for me to picture Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress bowling.  I just never saw Fred and Barney, you know what I’m sayin’?  Considering the fact that Plax takes a shot at Eli’s toughness – he could sense he didn’t have a thick skin – it kind of undercuts the notion that Burress and Manning were two brothers from different mothers and then, when his situation happened, Eli cut him dead. 

Was that a movie with Steven Seagal and DMX? 

It should’ve been.

The way Bloomberg treated me was totally wrong…

Totally?

…stacked those charges so high I had to go to jail…

I know!  It’s like you were a common criminal!  Oh, wait.

In jail… they treated me like a [freakin’] axe murderer…

That’s better.  Finally, some respect!

…23-hour lockdown, noncontact visiting, and only a Bible to read. 

Only a Bible to read?

Nobody deserves to live like that, man.

Isolation, no sex, and only a Bible to read…

A Benedictine monk?

On the cover of the New York Post, it said “GIANT IDIOT!”

Really?  That doesn’t sound like the Post.  They’re a bastion of journalistic restraint.

I’m thinking, “Damn, I went and gave ‘em what they wanted.  I’m just another gun-toting, famous black athlete.”

That’s right Plax, you’re a t-shirt. 

Some Have Gone

And some remain.