For years I’ve been privately and publicly declaring the second weekend of the NFL playoffs to be my favorite of the season. Four games, about fourteen hours of sudden-death football, the #1 and #2 seeds of each conference finally showing up (or not, sometimes). This adoration is practical above all: The four best games being played, the only four games being played, are all shown on “regular” television. I don’t have to leave the apartment – though I often do – to see all that’s happening that’s good. I don’t have to sit through another Jets-Dolphins game when there’s a superior matchup somewhere, anywhere else. And, I finally get to see some of the best players in the league for an extended period of time, not just on Sunday Night or Monday Night (since those might not be good games with good teams anyway).

It’s probably clear that I don’t like the sport enough to buy the Sunday Ticket, or to frequent the bar that does shows the game and houses the fans of my favorite team. So I know many of my complaints are moot, but that shouldn’t take away the glory of these here playoffs.

Carrying on:

I’ve also thought that the conference championship weekend was better than the Super Bowl, almost every time, but for both quality and quantity, it seemed safe to assume that the Divisional Round was where it had been and always would be at. But after this year’s letdowns, the Packers demoralizing the Falcons and an underwhelming Bears/Seahawks game, I began to reconsider those assumptions. I turned to the numbers.

Now, there’s often more to these games than their final scores: Much of the fun is the experience itself, often with friends, often with beer and food and a hooded sweatshirt. And while it’s an oversimplified way to look at it, the numbers do speak, so here goes:

After checking Wikipedia (it’s like Gospel, of course) for the final scores of the second and third rounds of the playoffs (4 games; 2 games) over the last five years – nice round number – and tallied the differences.

2006-2007: 3, 9, 3, 3; 4, 25 (avg: 4.5 & 14.5)
2007-2008: 4, 22, 4, 11; 3, 9 (avg: 10.25 & 6)
2008-2009: 3, 11, 12, 20; 9, 7 (avg: 11.5 & 8)
2009-2010: 31, 31, 3, 17; 3, 13 (avg: 20.5 & 8)
2010-2011: 7, 7, 27, 11; 5, 7 (avg: 13 & 6)

Maybe it’s all been the afterimage of one glorious weekend.

Expectations met reality in the playoffs five years ago. I can see myself now, curled up in a blanket in my second Queens apartment, the one without all the dank, looking forward to a weekend of playoff football and hardly being disappointed. On average, that was the best set of games we’ve had in the recent past (though yesterday’s were pretty damn good, if sloppy – more on those later, probably).

Half of these playoff weekends averaged under 10 points of difference – and that’s not differential, because this is not calculus. Nearly half of the games – 11 out of 24 – were decided by less than a touchdown. If I’ve only convinced myself with these sweeping, half-assed overgeneralizations, that’s good enough for me to tweak my anticipation and really have my ducks in a row for next time.

(6th of 6: Introduction, 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20)

Six weeks ago I celebrated – lamentingly – the recent anniversary of my having quit smoking by remembering the 20-odd most memorable cigarettes I had over those few years. It was yet another example of the biographical resin scrapings I have to do every so often, and yearn to do less often. The line between relatable anecdote and self-indulgent therapy is blurred mostly by style, and it’s never more in question than when my sense of nostalgia for an event or situation dwarfs whatever objective importance the event actually has. So much of it is context, and egotism, moments in my life given a significance they would otherwise not have earned.

Luckily, there are also those instances of “I remember where I was when…” Too often these communal moments are memorable because of their dire seriousness. Probably the two biggest of the last fifty years, at least in the U.S., with all due respect to the all of the other horrible stuff that has happened, are JFK’s assassination and the Towers falling. It’s evolution that makes our attention perk up at seminal moments like these, but would that it’d be as easy to remember the best of times. Sports and politics and religion bind portions of the world together, but even if the Yankees win a World Series, so much of their own city, even, feels hatred and envy and hatred for these fans, blessed from birth, their once and future brothers. I suppose that’s why I enjoy rock concerts so much, us all being on the same side.

It’s rare, but every so often there is an event that unites people in an amoral way. The 2003 Blackout rings this bell for me (even though, and I hate to admit it, it looks like 11 people died because of that event. I can’t gloss over that figure, but I will continue). It wasn’t a sinister attack, or an “act of God,” or anything very much localized. It brought the Northeast together under the same circumstances for two days. And for everyone but a few no less than disheartening cases, it united a population with nothing to blame, or cheer, or feel very good or very bad about. It was a mild chaos, a tempered anarchy. And it began while I was taking a walk.

It was August 14, 2003. I’d graduated from college in May, stayed home in June, found an apartment in July. I spent July and August shuffling between there and home, filling time in various ways before I started grad school in the fall. So I was at my childhood home that particular day. Used to a certain freedom in college, exacerbated by my first real apartment, I’d grow restless from time to time and this one afternoon had to take a good long walk. I brought my cell phone – my first, my boxiest – so I could make plans for that night en route. I strolled through adjacent neighborhoods, vaguely familiar territory, for about half an hour before flipped open the phone, threw the clutch, and tried to make my first call.

No dice.

Didn’t give it much thought. I was still sort of new to cell phones, so while it was unusual, I figured it was just the technology. But on my way home, I passed what looked like a graduation party, or a birthday party, in the grand old suburban style, with the balloon on the mailbox and the cars spilling out of the driveway and the father in the khaki shorts and buckled sandals chatting while letting the burgers do their thing behind him. I overheard one such dad welcoming another to the party, strangely asking him if he’d “brought power with him.” Seemed a little abstract, but no matter, my furrowed brow and I would be home soon.

Heard what had happened.

I’m not sure of the chain of events of the afternoon, of the order to the disorder, because I did hear that my sister walked home from work, crossing the Queensboro Bridge on foot back to Astoria (which, oddly, I duplicated in reverse just a few mornings ago, for reasons even less practical). Thinking about it, the phones must have worked for even a short time, because I got in contact with a friend of mine, the friend from the Weezer shows, and we plotted our evening.

First: My dad had gotten a grill, possibly for Father’s Day, earlier that summer. I cooked all the time out there and was eager to do so again, especially on that night of all nights when it became truly necessary. My friend knew of my enthusiasm, so I was delighted but not entirely surprised to hear his mom had offered to give us whatever meat was left in their fridge, meat she’d rather us cook and enjoy than let go to waste. The essential ingredients were taken care of, but we needed other provisions.

So: We went to Pathmark. Newly 21, I was happy to drink at home, no longer at the proverbial kid’s table. We got beer, but lacking a nice old plastic cooler, I purchased a styrofoam one. (The environment hasn’t forgiven me, so why should you?) We got beer but the other pickings were slim, especially ice: No bags in the whole icebox. Rats.

And then: We had our barbecue. All the meat we wanted, cooked to a delicious crisp. All the beer we could drink, at just below room temperature. Lacking substantial quantities of ice, the best we could do was a noble “cool water bath” that really did little more than get the labels all wet and peely. But we were living.

With no power, our options for the later evening and night were difficult to assess. Movies, pool, even bars – our go-tos were all off the table. We could have sat around inside, making sure the candles were staying lit and burning evenly, but we headed out. And we headed to the one place nearby where we could continue feeling like the adults we barely were: high school.

That was it, really. The chillest of chill evenings, and I never, ever say “chill.” It was a keyhole glimpse into a simpler way of life, and for those couple of hours, that’s all it had to be. We brought some beers with us. We talked about life. We talked about the future, and the past. We talked about girls: his girlfriend; my crush, my having stuck my foot in my mouth to create a situation with her that only a sonnet could accurately capture (and only a song could eventually resolve).

And we smoked.

(Here’s the first in an occasional series of entries where I’ll take a closer look at two movies and pseudointellectualize and come up with some half-interesting synthesis. The French title speaks to the pretentiousness of the exercise. If you’re put off by the phrase, next time you’re at a party find a plate of hors d’oeuvres and fucking choke on them.)

Raging Bull would be a naturally fruitful choice for an examination like this. There are comparisons (uh, boxing movies, ones that address the beginning and aftermath of a career, a narrative that focuses along the way on a brotherly relationship) and lots of contrasts (black and white vs. color, high stylization/slow motion/camera trickery vs. a muted approach, one star vs. two virtual co-stars). Thing is, I haven’t taken the time to watch Raging Bull recently, whereas I saw The King’s Speech the day after The Fighter, so the similarities and differences were fresh, perhaps even more oddly conspicuous given the change in subject, time period, etc.

Let’s begin at the end (with plenty of spoilers): The two stories conclude with moments of triumph, Micky winning the championship and Bertie having given a successful, seminal speech. But going further, each film is tagged with a heartfelt reminder that the stories would not have ended so well for either without a great deal of help. The documentary in The Fighter ends at the beginning, with the two brothers talking, Dickie especially talking up his brother, in fact and eventually giving him the frame all to himself. It’s clear that he’s damn proud of Micky, but also damn proud of himself for having contributed to the achievement. Here the combined joy is doubled, not halved. As the credits roll we see the two men in real life, and we’re reminded that this story took place nearly twenty years ago, but they’re still as they’ve always been. In The King’s Speech, we read that Bertie and Lionel remained good friends throughout their lives. Again, the movie ends in a suitable place but the friendship goes on.

Think also of the importance of the women in these men’s lives. Micky’s mother was his manager, the nurturing having been taken to a professional level. Bertie’s wife did the legwork in finding the speech therapist that would help him overcome. The training of each is done by men, the motivation being drawn out through either conflicts of personality, slight threats of emasculation, or a certain physicality. But the arrangements (“playdates,” to stretch things too far) are handled by the overarching wisdom of a sympathetic female overseer.

I also see a good deal of desire to live vicariously through another. It’s all over The Fighter, Dickie still a touch too proud of having knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard (incidentally, the opposite of “You never got me down, Ray.”) all those years previous and in my opinion he’s quite willing to see his brother relive and surpass his success, as long as Dickie himself is a part of it. And it’s in The King’s Speech, too: Lionel is a former actor, once having well played a part he can no longer quite pull off. He’s still a performer, doing so for his children, instilling in them simultaneously an affinity for the medium. But I see Lionel’s happiness in Bertie’s enviable elocution. There’s a great deal of importance in what Bertie finally has to say, and his saying it well is clearly to Lionel’s credit. Each of these stories is told with these influences in mind and framed accordingly.

One Raging Bull comment might tie this off well: Maybe it was the greatest part of Jake LaMotta’s tragedy that his success also brought alienation from the people he was closest to. Maybe it was the greatest part of Micky’s and Bertie’s successes that their accomplishments weren’t theirs alone.

There was no encore and we were at the very back of the venue, so when the lights came up seconds after the final strum of “Butterfly,” we were almost to the door and I was halfway through telling my friend of the high praise I once bestowed on the song that didn’t need my help.

In my first and second years of college, at a Jesuit school, I played with a gathering of religious folks, a collective, really, called the Liturgical Arts Group. I kid you not, I signed up to meet girls. I tossed what guitar skills I had into the holy ring at a mass during Freshman Orientation just about a month before school started. I fell out of favor with the group during my sophomore year, after I’d changed majors, facial hairstyle, and relationship status, given up the Holy Ghost and embraced the heathenism and much of the hedonism I’d theretofore been denied, or denied myself. It was once the weekly ritual, a thing to do, a chance to perform, but by my second year my appearances were few and far between. No matter how infrequent they became, one particular night stood out and merited a rehash the night of the Pinkerton show.

There were usually about seven of us, three guitars, a bass, a piano, maybe a flute and/or a violin. We’d play on and off throughout the mass, during the short communal prayers mostly, with a full song of celebration at the very end.

On this particular night, the pianist was not there. We otherwise made do without her, but at one point in the mass her absence would be especially conspicuous. She normally played alone during the few minutes when the priest, in Catholic tradition, turned those wafers and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. The two other guitarists, a year older and de facto student leaders, knew we had to do something and thought one of us should play.

I said, “I know a song.”

And so I played it, as devoid of ego as I could be, but with all the reverence that the moment deserved. Because even if I wasn’t long for the group, or the religion as it properly demands, I was in a special place surrounded by a hell of a lot of people who would continue to believe. It was not my place to choose any lesser song.

And I didn’t put together until my friend and I were leaving Roseland, after I’d told him of my selection, that even beyond being a simple, beautiful song, the title and the lyrics attached to it are, opera aside, in two or three or four ways about transformation. I meant the far opposite of disrespect to all parties involved by co-opting the song for a religious purpose. But looking back, the fact that there might not have been a song in creation more perfectly suited for that time in my life, and for that night, gives me almost as many chills as I got hearing Rivers Cuomo play it live for me, and for all of us.