I’m not one of those fair weather football fans. I’ve always believed that your team is your team, and you root for them every week of every season, whether they are good, bad, or indifferent.

That being sad, it was hard to be a Giants fan this past weekend. Their play against the Saints was absolutely disgraceful. This is an enormously talented team that seems to have no heart, no head, and no discipline. Tom Coughlin needs to be fired. For all the talk about what a hard-ass he is, he actually seems to be a candy-ass when it comes to disciplining his team. Bob Whitfield helped blow a game a couple of weeks ago when he head-butted an opponent after a play was over, drawing a fifteen yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Pretty stupid for a fifteen-year veteran, but okay, everyone gets angry sometimes. Then, against the Saints, Whitfield does EXACTLY THE SAME THING again, head-butting a Saint after the play and drawing another fifteen yarder. At that point, Coughlin should have shown the idiot to the bench and sat him down for the rest of the game… but no, he keeps him in, and sure enough, a couple quarters later, Whitfield gets ANOTHER costly fifteen-yard penalty. This is NOT discipline.

And Eli… don’t get me started. If Coughlin had any guts, Eli would have been benched by now. Parcells did not hesitate to bench Drew Bledsoe and insert Tony Romo at halftime in the first game between the Cowboys and the G-Men, and it turned the entire Cowboys season around. Last night, Nick Saban pulled Joey Harrington and inserted Cleo Lemon for the Dolphins against the Jets, and the week before, in Minnesota, Brad Childress sat down Brad Johnson and put in Tavaris Jackson. The Jets won both those games, true, but in both cases the new QB gave the team a much-needed spark. I can’t help but wonder if Jared Lorenzen might not provide the same sort of spark for the Giants. The kid is huge and raw and has an absolute cannon for an arm, and he looked pretty good in pre-season, but it has become plain that Coughlin is never going to give him a chance, no matter how badly Eli Manning plays.

Pfui. I say, fire Coughlin, and play the Hefty Lefty.

The weird thing is, the Giants still have a good chance to sneak into the playoffs. If they do, they will be the worst playoff team of all time. It’s a disgrace, really. Tiki deserved to go out on top, not like this.

On the other hand, I have the Jets, who won another good one last night against the Dolphins. That was a lovely Xmas present. Nearly gave me a coronary, however. I went out to Christmas dinner with some friends, so I did not watch the game live. No problem, though, I had TIVO set up to record it for me, so after everyone went home I settled down in front of the television to watch. The first three quarters were not the most exciting football I’ve ever seen, it must be said — it was pouring in Miami, and in the steady rain neither offense could seem to get untracked. There was some good hitting, though, and both teams hung in there. The Jets had a 3-0 lead at the end of the third quarter, but then Nick Saban went to Cleo Lemon at QB and suddenly the Dolphins came alive. They roared down the field for a TD, but the Jets came right back with a TD of their own on a great toss from Chad to Jericho, who stretched out like Plastic Man as he was falling to get the ball across the goal. With time running out, the Jets D rose up and stopped the Dolphins three-and-out, and I thought the game might be safely in hand… until a lousy, short punt took a bad hop and hit one of the Jets in the back and the Dolphins recovered deep in Jets territory. My heart lurched. The Jets have a long history of having games and seasons destroyed by freak plays like this, strange moments that somehow turn everything around… and sure enough, the Dolphins took the ball and were advancing deep into Jets territory for a go-ahead TD or a tying field goal, and then… URK… my TIVO recording ended abruptly!!! The game had run past its allotted slot.

So I never saw the end. Fortunately for my sanity, the end was a good one. The Dolphins did indeed tie it up, and the ensuing kickoff had the Jets back deep in their own territory, but then Little Leon the rookie broke a 64-yard run on a screen pass, and Mike Nugent kicked a game-winning field goal as time ran out.

What hey. Maybe these aren’t the Same Old Jets. The Same Old Jets would certainly have fallen apart after the punt took that freak hop, but these Jets bore down and came back. Leon was great… but I have to credit Chad and Eric Mangini as well.

Of course, the acid test will come next weekend, when the Jets host the dismal Raiders. Win, and they are in the playoffs. The Raiders are 2-13. Nonetheless, the Same Old Jets of years past would find a way to lose and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Can Mangini prevent that? We shall see. A Jets fan never makes assumptions.

As for the Giants… I want Charlie Weis and Scott Pioli next season, thank you very much. If Weis can’t turn Eli around, no one can… but if that happens, I’d hope that at least Charlie would have the guts to try Lorenzen. Let’s see what the Pillsbury Throw Boy can do!

Current Mood: null

Here’s wishing a Merry Christmas and Joyous Yule to all my friends and readers.

Current Mood: null

I can’t believe that it has been almost a month since I last posted here. Sometimes the days and weeks do really seem to fly past in a blur.

For me, it’s been a month of bad news and good news, some serious, some trivial.

Good News. The Jets. The Jets don’t have half the talent the Giants have, but they seem to be playing twice as well. Coaching is everything in the NFL, and it seems the Jets finally have a good one in Eric Mangini. Let’s see if he can keep it up in the last four games.

Bad News. The Giants. Oy. What can I say? Can they think of any more ways to lose games? Tiki Barber is a great, great player, and I love Jeremy Shockey’s fire, and the defense has some studs on it as well (when they are not all injured)… but Eli has been maddeningly erratic, and the team’s lack of discipline is shocking. Coughlin has to get the blame for that. They should have hired Charlie Weis to replace Fassel. Unless the G-Men turn it around soon, though, they may be looking for a coach again at season’s end.

Good news. Home renovations. The house is finally coming together, and it will be very nice once we get moved back in.

Bad news. Home renovations. It was supposed to be done in early November. Then by Thanksgiving. Then by early December. Then by Christmas. It’s still not done, and I don’t think it will be done by Christmas either. Cardinal rules of home remodeling: everything takes longer and costs twice as much, the disruption and annoyance levels are always much higher than you anticipated. Parris and I are still living across the street in my office, with the cats. We haven’t killed each other yet, which can only be a testament to our love for one another. I have been tempted to behead the cats a few times.

Good news. Thanksgiving. One of my favorite holidays of the year. We went out to the gorgeous new house Carl built for Melinda and had a great turkey dinner cooked in their vast and splendid new kitchen. Great turkey, and Melinda made one of her justly-famous apple pies (my favorite dessert, I’m just an all American boy). Good turkey, good wine, good company, nothing beats Thanksgiving with friends (except maybe Thanksgiving with friends, family, and mashed rutabagas).

Bad news. Christmas. My least favorite holiday of the year, and it is already bearing down on us like a freight train. Sorry, I have no Xmas spirit. Bah, humbug. Every year, for decades now, Christmas finds me stressed out like nobody’s business, trying to complete some script, story, or novel that I have promised to someone “by the end of the year,” sweating blood over my computer, and forgetting about the Dread Day until it is almost too late. I used to do all my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. These days I do most of it by catalog, but I still manage to wait so long that I always end up paying extra for the SuperDuper Priority Overnight Shipping for Idiots Who Didn’t Shop Until the Last Minute. And then I have to WRAP the presents. I am the world’s worst present-wrapper. I am usually wrapping presents at three in the morning Xmas day, to have them ready before Parris wakes up. Some year, I know, Christmas stress is going to give me a major coronary. I just hope it’s not this year. I can’t possibly die this year, I have far too much to do.

Good news. The election. Hey, hot damn, we threw the rascals out! A lot of the rascals, anyway. I am not naive enough to think the utopia will now ensue, but it certainly felt good to win one for a change, and the Senate will certainly be better off without Rick Santorum and George Allen.

Bad news. The election. Okay, we didn’t manage to throw ALL the rascals out. Heather Wilson snuck back into the House, dammit, and Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-Who-Walks-like-a-Republican, got back in as well.

Good news. Work. I’ve been home for this past month — no cons, no tours, no awards dinners — and that has enabled me to be much more productive than in the months preceding. The new WILD CARDS book is almost done (some great stuff in there too) and should be finished by the end of the year. Gardner Dozois, Daniel Abraham, and I finished the novel-length expansion of SHADOW TWIN, and sold it in both the US and the UK (just last week, in fact). I’ve inked a couple of exciting new subrights deals that I expect to be announcing very soon (watch my news page)… and we may be close to a couple of other subrights deals that I won’t be announcing, because I am not allowed to talk about ’em yet. The comic book adaption of THE SWORN SWORD is finally underway, and several other cool comics projects are in the works, but I can’t talk about them just yet either. The month has been a blur of work, in other works.

Bad news. Work. None of the projects I wrapped up was A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Work has been going well, yes, but not especially on DANCE. I am not going to be able to finish it by the end of the year as I had hoped. I know this will disappoint all of you. Many of you will write me sympathetic and supportive emails (and I do appreciate those, even if I don’t have the time to reply). A few of you will write me nasty, intemperate emails about how I’m doing this all just to screw my readers. Sigh. My editors, agents, and publishers will be even more disappointed than my readers, but no one will be as disappointed as me. Believe that or not. All I can say is that I HAVE gotten several other obligations off my plate, that my contractor swears in blood that the home renovations will be finished soon so I can have my office back again, that I’m working on DANCE and I will continue to work on it. What I will no longer due, however, is announce any more dates by which I hope to finish and deliver the book. All that those estimates ever seem to do is ratchet up my stress levels and get me more grief. I hope it won’t be taking much longer… I have almost two months at home before my next scheduled trip, to Boston and NYC in February, and one thing that has become very clear to me is that the more I travel, the less I get written. (And speaking of Boston and NYC, do I perchance have any fans out there in New Haven, Connecticut?) I have even thought about cancelling my annual trip to Boston and New York, though I am reluctant to take that step, since that is usually the only time of the year that I get to see my family in New Jersey.

So that’s the latest. What can I say?

Only this.

Go Jets. Go Giants. Go Dragons.

Current Mood: null