Against you ≠ with the Vikings

It has come to my attention that certain people consider it disloyal for a Packer fan to criticize the team's on-field leadership, in the person of Brett Favre. Hmm...now what does this remind me of?

"But I do sort of like it when they do all three at once."

At lunchtime today, I was waiting in a long line at the Two Boots Pizza counter at Grand Central when this marginally sketchy-looking guy cut the line in front of me. The line was ragged, and it seemed accidental enough, so I didn't say anything, but I did move up a bit. That's when the guy turns to me and mutters, "I don't like it when people stick they fingers in my eyes. I don't like it when people stand in back of me, or stand close to me." He then ordered a plain slice and stood there vigorously cleaning out his nostrils with a paper napkin until the time came to pay. Which he did, plus a tip.

And can't they do something about the smell on the N/R?

I don't know why, exactly, but I was hoping to see the union get the pointy end of the transit strike. Maybe it's because I'm not big on unions. In the early part of the last century, they were on the side of progress; today, on issues from trade to the environment to education reform, they're more often an obstacle to progress. Maybe it's because some of the union's demands seemed greedy, and the strike seemed timed to inflict maximum pain on businesses and commuters. Or maybe it's just because I, presumably like most New Yorkers, take public transportation for granted, and only notice it when some bus driver pulls away as I'm knocking on the door, or some station agent lets me stand on the subway for an hour before announcing there's no train service.

But it occurred to me, as I watched five buses rumbling nose-to-tail up First Avenue today, that there might be a downside to the union's comeuppance: Now transit workers will give even less of a fuck.

On the bright side, Aaron Rodgers looked prettty good.

If there's an upside to the Packers' utter humiliation on MNF last night, it's the end it promised to put to any ambivalence fans might feel about Brett Favre's retirement. How could anyone honestly believe the team that gave up 48 points to the prodigiously mediocre Ravens while failing to score a single touchdown of its own could turn things around enough to have a winning season next year? And yet my position seems to be a minority one among Packer fans. One guy I watched the game with made a serious argument that the key to a playoff run next year is snapping up Terrell Owens. Because of course the guy who couldn't set aside his ego in Philadelphia is going to do it for a losing team in the league's smallest market, right?

I love Favre as much as the next guy, and I'd be happy to watch him play, and even lose, for another 10 years -- if he were playing well. But he's not. His decisionmaking, never his strongest point, has been deteriorating, and it has made the difference in several close games this year. Yes, he's been getting crummy pass protection, and he lacks a standout receiver. But Favre has played and won under these conditions before. The difference this year is he no longer has the patience to put together long drives or the discipline to throw the ball away under pressure. And every time the subject of his own errors comes up, he just falls back on rationalizations about it being his job to try to make something happen. I hate to say it, but retiring at the end of the season is the best the Favre could do for his team -- and for his legacy.

This guy writes for The New Yorker?

And of course no sooner do I finish excoriating adult gamers than I find out James Surowiecki, whom I otherwise admire, is one of them.

Oh, and I forgot to mention...

The fucker goes barefoot in the laundry room, and he subscribes to the New York Sun.

Why must you toy with me, Yahweh?

Insofar as my existence has a bane, my next-door neighbor is it. He is a gamer. And while that term conjures the image of a skinny 15-year-old, he's a actually a middle-aged man.

While I think playing video games after college should be banned as a rule, I particularly loathe this guy because his videogame sounds are clearly audible in my living room. Shoot-em-up games, in case you were wondering. Lovely thing to listen to, all gunfire, explosions and screaming, over a weirdly unmusical bass line. This typically goes on for 12 hours at a stretch on weekends, and four our five hours on weeknights. Still, I waited a long time before going over to complain because I listen to a lot of music and thought that whoever lived there might well tell me he could hear that just as clearly.

But finally came a day when the explosions and the repetitive bass line got SO loud that something had to be done. I knocked on the door, and my neighbor, whom I had never seen before then, answered. (Short and stout, indeterminately Hispanic and/or Asian, pockmarks, wife-beater. Isn't it vindicating to find out someone you already hated is ugly?) By "answered," I mean he opened the door about four inches and said, "What?" I told him what. He said, "Ok," and slammed the door. The noise subsided to a tolerable level...for that day. Over the following weeks, it crept back up, and this week I went over and complained again, with the same result.

But today, I heard the sound of moving men in the hallway. On my way to take out the garbage, I asked one of the movers who was moving. He indicated the guy next door's apartment. I was delirious.

But somebody must have checked my karma account and realized I was overdrawn. The doorman says nobody's scheduled to move today or tomorrow, and the game sounds are once again coming through the wall.

Pretend you're reading this seven months ago

Just watched Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. I made a deliberate decision not to see it in the theater because it bugged me so much every time I read an interview in which George Lucas cited the huge box office success of Episodes I and II as conclusive proof of their non-awfulness. So I waited it out, got the Netflix dvd, and spent a sunny Saturday morning flopped out in front of my 15" laptop screen watching it.

And I have to say, it wasn't terrible. Extremely mediocre, of course, with horrendous dialogue and more than a few unintentionally laugh-out-loud hilarious bits, but it also contained several moments of great resonance for someone who nurtured a full-blown Star Wars obsession until embarassingly deep into his teen years. I still think Lucas has forgotten how to tell a story, either with words or with images, but if you spot him the ending, as this film in effect did, he can at least get the job done. I give it two stars, with an asterisk for "surprisingly undisappointing."