Been an interesting week here in Lake Wobegon …

Oh, wait.  That guy got sh*tcanned, too.  (FWIW, he seemed to have had the best response to getting fired.  In so many words:  “I’m 75, we worked out the issues, and I don’t really care what you think.” Subtext:  I’ve made a boatload of money and this is a perfect excuse to spend my time enjoying it, rather than producing my work for you to enjoy, or not.)

Can’t go to the Met – James Levine gets it in the neck today on the front pages of the tabs.  I think it’s likely he won’t be filling in to conduct Tosca on New Year’s Eve.  But I’m not that up on opera-house gossip, so I could be wrong there. 

One of the NY tabloids aptly coined it:  “Pervnado“.  Me, I’m still haunted by the vision of that bungee-jumping scene from the first “Sharktopus” and the “Sharknado” series of flicks didn’t do much for me after the first one, but YMMV.)  Same tab piled on Eliot Spitzer with revelations from the trial involving some Russian paid-companion lady, which had been gag-ordered pending resolution of her case.  You can find them on the internets;  they’re definitely NSFW.  They have a term for him in Noo-Yawk-ish:  hopeless schlub.

Setting all that stuff aside, I really need to get on to the football.  This week, Owner John Mara and soon-t0-be ex-Giant coach Ben (NOT Bob) McAdoo and not-yet-ex-GM Reese gave the sports-talk world a huge early Christmas present by benching Eli Manning and doing it in perhaps as ham-handed a manner as possible.  Not only have all the talk radio shows been dominated by callers engaging in barbed-wire-whip-self-flagellation  (they all lead off with “I’m a lifelong Giants fan”, “I’m a Giants season-ticket holder” or the like) on How Horrible It Was to Bench Eli in Favor of Geno Smith.  It even gave Mike Francesa a chance at one more of his epistolary rants, when he’s down to less than a dozen shows before his retirement from WFAN.  Not since Woody Johnson had his J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS fire the GM and give Fat Rex Total Control (all at Fat Rex’s instigation) can I remember Francesa blowing so many gaskets.  (You might remember the J-E-T-S rant, where Francesa led with “Da Jets … are … a sewer. …” and went on from there for the better part of an hour.) Sinners in the hands of an Angry God….

My two cents on this matter:  (1)  Eli, welcome to the way Corporate America treats everyone else.  (2) Eli, welcome to the way Corporate America treats everyone else.  You think you’re special?  (3)  Tom Coughlin and Eli will win a Super Bowl in the next two years for Jacksonville.

After I started writing this, I got interrupted for a road trip.  In the car I heard on the radio that “reliable sources” indicate McAdoo will be fired by tomorrow morning.   Given the performance of the Giants so far this year and the constant indiscipline (see, e.g., Odell Beckham making like a dog at a hydrant, which led to the Football Gods taking it out on him as I predicted) and lackadaisical performance (Everyone, every game), this couldn’t have come too soon.  I suspect Ray Handley has a spare spot on his living room couch set up for McAdoo, and it will be filled soon.

I hope Geno Smith gets a fair look from other teams after good performance(s), and gets out of the swamp that is the Meadowlands.

I’ve been working on one of my projects and, as is normal, we on the project discuss all sorts of things while working.  Whistling while you work is not particularly appreciated, but chatting and sharing experience is.  One of my colleagues had been working on a different, long-term project until earlier this year.  The nature of the beast is that when the work is done, the project is over and you move on to the next.  He’d spent better than 2 years on it, then an interlude and a call-back to clean up more stuff, which happened once or twice.  Then last month, an email to the effect of “you’re being furloughed.  We do not know whether there will be any more work on this project”.

I guess he expected a thank you or whatever for his loyal, overtime service but, like I said to Eli, this is how Corporate America treats you.

I was listening to the Green Bay game in the car, and it seems the owners’ special “cleats for charity” game shoes have one problem:  they don’t grip the turf.  So everyone was falling down in their good-looking, write-a-check-and-feel-good cleats.

Speaking of which, the owners are dangling $100 million “for social justice projects” to turn the players away from protesting and into Uncle Toms.  Thing is, the payout is over 7 years.  Split over 32 teams, that works out to about $360k per team per year.  In other words, one game’s worth of nacho sales.  Shows you what the owners think about police killing black men, and how much they value them.

Saw the end of the Jets-Chefs.  It was entertaining in that so-bad-it’s-good way we all thank Roger Corman for teaching us.  Andy Reid’s team is imploding.  No idea why, but more barbeque will help, I’m sure.

You’ll note I haven’t mentioned my Stillers, the Iggles nor the Patsies yet.  As expected, the Pats won over the Bills, though it took them the whole first half to sort that out.  The Iggles play tonight, which should be an interesting game.  And the Stillers tomorrow night.  The Bungles are a trap game, make no mistake about it.  The Black and Gold almost fell into one last week and if they continue the Kardiac Kids thing when Cheatin’ Bill comes to town, they’ll wind up in the #2 seed at best.  Seeing the debacle – PR, professional, and human – of the Giants deciding to sit Bad Eli (not entirely his fault, given his O-line has sucked, but he’s contributed mightily to the debacle) has given me a new appreciation of the Drama in the League.  Figuring out what goes on with the Cheating Cheaters more closely resembles those days of the Cold War when learned professors of Russian (and Communist) Studies wrote lengthy pieces for Foreign Affairs deciding who was up and who was down based on who stood where atop Lenin’s Tomb for the Big Parade.  The Giants have made the Yankees’ Bronx Zoo days of the late 70s look positively tame by comparison.

Speaking of the Yankees, I welcome the hiring of Aaron F*cking Boone as their new manager.  He’ll do well, I think. His presence will give Sawx fans something to chew on as Judge’s bat launches baseballs over Lansdowne onto I-90.

No surprises in the college playoffs.  The Boys found a way to keep Wisconsin out and get the usual suspects – Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, etc. – in.  Oklahoma tokenism.  Corrupt.  Unsurprising.

One more thing, on a more serious note.  Discussing with colleagues “what are your weekend plans”, one with young kids mentioned he won’t be watching any of the games because he’s given up football.  Not because the kids take up all his time (even though they do), but rather because he doesn’t want them exposed to football at all.  “The Concussion Thing”.  His kids play soccer, go to pro soccer games when the local team doles out reduced-price tickets to the kids’ leagues, and don’t know squat about football.  It’s gonna take more than a couple commercials of moms telling how they love football and their kids playing it, and some chump change to health programs to move the soccer parents back to football.  Chew on that, King Roger.