And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and Boy, I know I'm one...

I'll be attending the New York Giants-New Orleans Saints football game at the Meadowlands (aka Louisiana Superdome North) tonight. The Saints are the "home" team, having been removed from their home due to Hurricane Katrina.

After countless college football games and even one XFL game, this marks my first NFL contest. Four rows from the field. I'm very excited.

Still, I find myself slightly torn. I am a NY Giants fan, but with all that's happened in the Gulf Coast, the New Orleans Saints have taken up the reigns as "America's Team." They're a heartwarming sports story. Something I can appreciate.

So I think that means I can't boo. I need to be tasteful with my heckling. I can't very well root for anonymous hearts to be broken with the Saints suffering a tough loss. I need to be well-mannered, a good sport.

I've decided that instead of unleashing my trash talk at tonight's game, I'll do it here now. Get it out of my system.

Apologies to those this might offend.

"You guys play like you're homeless."

"We're gonna blow through you guys like Hurricane Katrina."

"Did you take New Orleans and the under?"

"You guys seem a bit sluggish."

(singing) "Under the sea... Under the sea..."

"Hey, speaking of patron saints, did you know...?"

"In case you forgot God doesn't love you anymore, that TD should've settled it."

"Flood of emotion? Oh, it's a flood of something alright."

"If you want to be America's team, you need to overcharge me to pay you and your cronies' salaries while you send me off to a tiny nation to botch up your personal agenda while you completely neglect the possibility of something actually happening to me.
"Oh, you charged me $90 for this ticket? Carry on then."

...and there's more... but it's time to go.

Leave your tongue-biting thoughts or un-American sentiments for me in the comments section. I'll be booking my reservations for Hell in the interim.

Added Tuesday, September 20 @ 1:03am
The Giants won.

"They sure weathered that storm."

"What stinks? Oh, it's just New Orleans."

"Good game. Now let's all go home."

Not everything about the Mets is downright awful lately.

The Mr. Met commercials, in all their glory.

Still Googling after all these years...

It's kind of like eBay, but now you can have millions of pieces of worthless crap at your fingertips for free.

Reason #412 People need to leave the house more

What frightens me is not that a fantasy blog stock system exists. Instead, I'm frightened that said game thinks we're worth something.

Buy low. Sell high.

...in a New York minute.

September 11th. 4 years later.

The skyline still feels empty. Things are different, even if back to "normal."

I was an RA in Syracuse that day, woken up by one of my residents who was checking to see if my family was alright. I watched the events unfold with a room of people who, a month prior, I didn't know. I worried as I didn't know if my older brother (a messenger), younger brother (who attended school less than a mile away), or my sister (less than 5 blocks away) were OK as all of Lower Manhattan was chaotic that morning. They were accounted for at 7:30pm that night, and I later felt relieved and guilt at the same time. Relieved as my folks were OK, guilt as others weren't so lucky.

4 years later. It doesn't have the ring of "5 year" or "10 year" or "25 year" and the rest of the Hallmark anniversaries. Still, born and raised and returning a New Yorker, it doesn't garner any less significance.

We remember. New Yorkers never forget.

You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand.*

*Or while I'm bailing out my flooded attic

Police begin seizing guns of civilians

Mr. Compass, the police superintendent, said that after a week of near anarchy in the city, no civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms of any kind. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

You should know the NRA cancelled its 44th Annual National Police Championship, to have been held in Jackson, MS from September 11-15. You know, out of decency to the victims. Because they are always considerate of the victims.

Still, the government taking the guns from the civilians? Think Heston's up in arms over this?

That order apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property. The guards, who are civilians working for private security firms like Blackwater, are openly carrying M-16s and other assault rifles.

Er, nevermind.

You gotta love it, though. Somebody still speaks from his soul.

You can question his opinion. You can question his tact. But, sir, you cannot question Kanye West's stones...

Information can be a very dangerous thing.

Today, East Coast residents can finally acquire a free copy of their credit report from one of the three major credit organizations.

Now if only they'd tell you your FICO score.

Or how long it would take to pay your credit card bill if you payed just the minimum balance* every month.

Or a million other things credit card companies would prefer you not knowing.

(*FYI - Minimum credit card payments are doubling from 2% of the total balance to 4%. This won't help you pay it off substantially faster, but it helps a smidge. The more important thing is that your credit card bill, if you just pay the minimum, is about to double. How this hasn't made a peep in the news outlets is mindblowing.)

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

I've officially been in Denver, Colorado for 24 hours now. I'm trapped in an industrial park in Englewood, though my room at the Marriott overlooking nothing is nice.

I've been nailed with a fate so heinous, it's tough to describe: I can't stop farting stinky farts. Alright, maybe it's simpler to explain. Apparently, the higher altitude causes the gas to expand, and that somehow makes whatever room you're in smell like Elizabeth, New Jersey. I'm afraid to light a match for fear of nuclear meltdown.

You apparently need to drink plenty of water here, too. It's apparently silly easy here to dehydrate. One of beer's ingredients is water. I'll try that.

Tonight marked our first foray into the greater Denver metropolitan area that didn't involve the words "airport" or "liquor store." We ate at a steakhouse called the Buckhorn Exchange, which prides itself on 500 animals stuffed and stapled to walls while hiding out between the slums and the railyard. I couldn't determine if I should be attempting to score some crack or throwing my belongings in a sack and leap in a boxcar. I ate a Buffalo Prime Rib. Tender. Dissolved in your mouth, so tender. Like eating a baby, but with more guilt.

Time to go down the hall and drink myself blind. Maybe you'll get a drunken Denver post in 3 hours.

Dare to dream, kiddies. Dare to dream.

Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm.

Just because.

All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

My car has logged over 72,000 miles.

It's traveled in 10 states (NY, VT, MA, CT, NJ, PA, MD, DE, OH, WV) and one Canadian province (Ottawa). It's never been involved in anything larger than a few scratched bumpers. It's been updated with a new Rockford Fosgate sound system, so the music is perdy. It's even been featured in an episode of "Law & Order" (as the murder weapon, no less!).

Why do I bring this up? Well, my car needs about 15 gallons of gas to go from E to F. When I first inherited said car after I graduated from dear ol' Syracuse University, that averaged about $22.50 per fillup. I used to say with confidence "fill the tank" at every available opportunity.

Now, I'm averaging about $37.50 in one of the highest priced cities for gasoline in the dear ol' US. I don't particularly like New Jersey, but I find myself longing for romps down the NJ Turnpike merely to save the $3 per gallon extra I spend here in Brooklyn. And God forbid I drive in Westchester...

Now, I get news that we're now living in the highest gas increase in our nation's history.

Thank you, W. Congratulations again on your second term, by the way.

Now, OK, I know i'm the eleventy billionth person to chime in on this conversation, and I'm not particularly bringing any new facts to the table. But I do have one fact to offer that I don't think is being nearly mentioned enough:

I know gas prices are high. Please stop telling me that.

I had this revelation on the way to work in a cab the other day. 1010 WINS-AM had a brief report on high gas prices. The reporter visited gas stations in NYC and asked people what they thought of the high prices. And you know the responses, "Man, it's hard." "It's so expensive." "I don't fill it all the way like I used to." And it just hit me. I've heard this interview previously. I read it in the newspapers, saw it on TV. It is literally the only story ever aired about the high prices.

As a wise Spinach-eating sailor used to say, "I've had all I can stands and I can't stands no more."

These reports NEVER discuss governmental pursuits of alternative energy. They never discuss how most cars don't need anything higher than an octane rating of 87, or how some gas stations are charging even higher rates to make a little extra profit. They never discuss hybrid cars or vegetable oil cars or cars with the floor below the driver's seat ripped out so that it may be powered Flintstones-style. They never discuss drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known affectionately as ANWR (pronounced ann WAHR'). The reports are always "Gas prices are high and there's no end in sight. Suck it, consumer."

So, right here, right now, I make one simple request. Keep reporting on the high gas prices, but please stop reporting ONLY on the high gas prices. Package it with SOMETHING. Show me the vegetable car. Let me read about how this is the highest gas increase in our history, and what is being done about it (which, knowing our current administration and our President - who, let's not forget, started as an oil man in Midland, Texas himself). Bring up progess about ANWR, but also about how modes of alternative energy would actually make drilling in ANWR unnecessary. (For a hilarious bit on why Alaskans are for drilling in ANWR, read this. I especially like the part about how oil pays for schools.)

And hurry up. Challenge the machine. My car's got 40 states to go and is having a hard time finding work in television.

Zing!

Sunday's food for thought, courtesy of Mike Lupica:

It is no great shock that the same President who believes Palmeiro's version of things still thinks he's got a working plan going for him in Iraq.

Now, while the body count keeps rising, he thinks he needs the longest vacation any President has taken in 37 years.

Sometimes you think he knows as much about this job as he did about running the Texas Rangers.

Tired of the same ol' college football preview?

Grab a football if you love hip hop.

We're trying to make a movie, not a film.

When was the last time you saw a great movie?

Not a good movie.

Not Batman Begins cause it was cool and Liam Neeson was great in it.

Not Million Dollar Baby because it won all those Oscars.

Not Ray because everybody talked about it.

I mean the last time you went to a theater and got blown away without somebody telling you, "This movie is going to blow you away."

Sadly, you won't be getting a chance anytime soon.

Neal Gabler, a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg, is the author of "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, argues in an LA Times editorial that movies just don't matter anymore. His argument claims, in a nutshell that we as Americans have become so enamored with stars and how they live, that we don't even care why they're stars anymore (aka the movies).

Gabler writes:

Movies, television and DVDs are attracting fewer patrons because people, especially young people, value being entertained less than they value knowing about entertainment and entertainers. Movies have become what director Alfred Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin" — a red herring that triggers a plot but has no other inherent value. Like MacGuffins, movies have little inherent purpose except to be talked about, written about, learned about — shared as information.

This culture of Access Hollywood, People Magazine, and "The Fabolous Life of..." on VH1 is now making us dream, whereas crazy ideas like putting a movie in space simply doesn't do the job anymore.

And part of this stems from Hollywood paying too much attention to questions like "Will this make money?" and "Will this play in the Midwest?" Right before cable exploded, the credo about television was that "The best shows never air because they never get past the pilot phase." Film, an artform that should allow visual and other sensual expression, should not be held back because Kansas won't like it or a focus group didn't laugh accordingly.

We're too busy trying to know everything, to guess how movies will end before we see them (Spoiler Alert, anyone?). We will concede the actual experience of seeing the movie if we can assume how it ends. But come on... somebody, somewhere has a script we've never heard with characters we've never met and a story we've never been told. That's the one I want to hear. That's the one that will leave me saying, "Wow."

As opposed to the Dukes of Hazzard, which will inevitably leave me saying, "Wow.... that was crap."

Ok, so maybe reports weren't "greatly" exaggerated. They were exaggerated, though. I mean, I'm still here, no?

G'day, mates.

I'm back. For real.

We're a month later, a new computer, and and all around sense of "Damn, it's fucking hot outside" and it'd been too long.

So, to answer your question, the question being: "Where have you been?"

I don't really know. I know Vermont was there for a while. Took in a few Brooklyn Cyclones game. Remembered what it's like to have a social life. Still, that doesn't really solve the age old question.

Things happened while I was away. Supreme Court nominee. London. Palmiero nailed for steroids. And yet, I offered no mindless drivel to the conversation. Boo.

It won't happen again folks. We're back, and open for business. And downloading a substantial amount of pornography with the brand-spanking new 40GB Hard Drive.

Oh, internet, let's get together.

Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

We're still alive. STILL ALIVE!

We're just currently unemployed and home. We need to get out more.

We also need to stop speaking in the third person.

Unemployment, Here I Come

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

My unemployed life.

I move on today. Off to greener pastures. Well, OK. Not greener. Not yet anyway.

I Can Dream... with you TO-NITE.*

I've had that exact music lyric in my head all morning.

What's it from? I don't know. It came to me in a dream last night. A bizarre dream. Strange dream. A dream that had me backstage on one of those kiddie sitcoms on Nickelodeon. And a blond siren belts out a song, blowing everybody away...

I Can Dream... with you TO-NITE.
Na na na.... na na NA NA.

Yeah, I don't know the rest of the words. It kinda sounds like that song "I Believe" by Blessed Union of Souls (I googled it). Except sung by a woman this time, so its not as gay.

My lyric, BTW? Nothing. Well, until Google caches this one.

In the meantime, I clearly made it past the morning so this song will torment me for a while. In the meantime, I'll start playing obscure CDs in hopes of A) finding this song, or B) getting a new song in my head.

In terms of the latter, I dare you to do your worst.

(*Oh right, and since I'm publishing this now, if I hear Jessica Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, or any of those other no-talent hacks come up with this, I officially get to sue their ass.)

We're gonna be the Happiest Place on Earth, even if we have to throw you out in a box.

Child dies on Epcot ride

A 4-year-old boy on a family vacation died Monday afternoon after he passed out on a Disney World ride at Epcot.

The incident happened around 3:30 p.m. on the Mission: SPACE ride, according to Disney officials. The ride spins passengers on a multi-armed centrifuge to simulate a launch into space. It exerts more than twice the normal force of gravity on occupants.

Daudi Bamuwamye, 4, reportedly passed out on the ride and paramedics responded. Witnesses reported seeing Daudi's mother, Agnes, carry him outside to a nearby bench. Paramedics and a Disney worker tried to revive the child, but could not save him. He was prounounced dead at 5 p.m. at Celebration Hospital.

Ever notice how nobody's ever pronounced dead in Disney?

Oh, well, now it makes sense.

Cheney: U.S. Not Aiming To Close Guantanamo

In remarks to be broadcast today on Fox News, Cheney said the administration was reviewing its options at the prison "on a continuous basis." But he defended its track record, saying, "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people."

I didn't know that. Keep on keepin' on, then.

Of course, a good portion of Guantanamo detainees are referred to as detainees and not prisoners because they haven't actually been charged with any crime.