Shallow | Center

How the Other Half Lives

You thought the Eagles' NFC Championship win meant that snowballs were being tossed in hell? Try this one on for size: They're oozing happiness at WIP.

With the Super Bowl more than a week away, the local media are jumping on every ridiculous angle and nonstory they can get their hands on. The 11 o'clock news breathlessly reports that Terrell Owens may or may not be ready to play in Jacksonville, which is exactly what we knew the day he went down. Today's Inquirer includes a story in the Magazine section on a reporter's attempt to find and purchase an Eagles hat in New England. No, really.

Amid such attention, the Phillies' annual media caravan chugs along in irrelevant anonymity. No wonder Jim Thome was so enraptured by the scene at Lincoln Financial Field last Sunday. As I've pointed out recently (he said shamelessly), the hometown nine need only look across the parking lot for an example of how to spend wisely and win consistently. Writing in today's Daily News, Bill Conlin tells Ed Wade that about the only consolation he can take is that Eagles salary cap guru Joe Banner was once as despised as he is. Once the Birds are done, the town's attention will turn to the Phillies, whose fan base, Conlin writes, seems already to have made up its mind:

Thanks to the negative energy that has trickled out of the front office all winter like a car battery on a 20-degree morning with the parking lights left on, there is more than the deep dislike of this organization's modus operandi that I sense from thousands of fans. There is a fan perception that not only has Wade & Co. done nothing more than take three steps forward and four back, but that it will be a terrible ballclub this season.

Conlin's not ready to write off the season yet, and neither am I, but no one can deny that the Mets, Braves, and Marlins all took bold stabs at improvement this off-season while Wade peered at his pair of 7s and decided not to take any cards. So as much as I'm ready for spring training to start, I think I'll savor the next week-and-a-half of football frenzy. It might be the only playoff action we get this year.

Theeerrrrrre's Johnny

By the time I was old enough to watch late-night television, Johnny Carson had become self-caricature. "Mailing it in" would be a kind way of describing his Tonight Show performance most evenings. It seemed as if he had no interest in sitting in his chair and listening to elderly people talk about cabbages they had grown that looked like Abraham Lincoln's head. And certainly I had no interest in watching such drivel. David Letterman was coming into his prime then, all cynicism and sarcasm, a bracing blast of fresh air to blow away Carson's stale Hollywood parlor show. And Jay Leno, in his regular Monday-night guest-host gig, was smirking and sharp, a laceratingly funny contrast to the tired and boringly conventional sycophant he's become. Carson's best days, clearly, were behind him. He was funniest as a Saturday Night Live subject, in a devastating skit in which he transformed himself into "Carsenio," a hopelessly cluelss, white-bread send-up of Arsenio Hall.

And then came that final week of shows, and suddenly Generation X was treated to the brilliant comedian whom our parents had extolled for so long. It was if Carson had recognized the long, slow decline he had been in and rallied himself for one last burst of greatness to prove, once and for all, who the master was. Johnny Carson died yesterday after 13 years of retirement, leaving behind a staggering number of imitators to go with a truly indelible pop-culture legacy.

Fly, Eagles, Fly

The snow continues to fall as I write this. There's about a foot already on the ground outside my house, just north of Philadelphia, and a nasty wind is expected to blow through the region today.

Significant precipitation should be over by kickoff, but the wind will play havoc with passing and kicking games throughout the game. I don't even want to think about how brutal it will be for the spectators.

The weather, of course, is a mere backdrop for the main story -- the Eagles' fourth consecutive attempt to win the game that would send them to the Super Bowl. While the stray pundit has allowed himself to be dazzled by Michael Vick's blinding talent, most feel that this is finally the Birds' year. Donovan McNabb's emergence as a truly elite player, Brian Westbrook's good health, and a defense sprinkled with Pro Bowlers all augur good things.

I'm as cautious as any Philadelphia fan; years and years of heartbreak will do that to a guy. And the fact that everyone around here thinks that the Birds are all but a lock gives one pause. Despite this, I feel good about this afternoon. Yes, the matchups are decent from the Eagles' perspective, but more than that, this team has done exactly what it was supposed to do since training camp began. Previous teams would play down to the level of their opponents, lose games they were supposed to win, go into the tank at weird times; not the 2004-05 Birds. These guys have displayed an impressive, season-long focus, and I just can't see them dropping that today.

So: Eagles 23, Falcons 10.

See you in Jacksonville.

Tidal Waive

It just keeps getting better.

Now It All Makes Sense

After reading this, there can be only one conclusion: Ed Wade is punking us.

Trends and Neighbors

It's impossible not to read Larry Eichel's piece in today's Inquirer, on how the revenue generated by Lincoln Financial Field has helped the Eagles sustain their remarkably enduring status as one of the NFL's elite teams, and not think of the other team playing in a new South Philly stadium.

Like the Eagles, the Phillies used anticipated and actual stadium income to upgrade their roster. Yet while the Birds are a model of wise spending and on-field achievement, the Phillies act like trailer-park lottery winners who burn through their cash with blinding speed and wind up exactly where they started.

The Eagles have enjoyed a level of success the Phils can only dream about, yet continually seek to improve, adding such undeniable talents as Terrell Owens and Jevon Kearse, because they realize nothing short of a championship suffices. The Phils toot their horn over their second-place finish and sign Jon Lieber. The Eagles welcome back with open arms Jeremiah Trotter, a guy who left under bad circumstances but who has a skill set they desperately need. The Phillies let a miserable human being make their clubhouse a cesspool of resentment and underachievement for far too long, then welcome back Terry Adams, a player whose skill set they already have, in abundance.

It makes you wonder whether David Montgomery's and Ed Wade's offices have windows. After all, a shining example of success is only about a Jim Thome blast away.

Thrust and Barry

Once upon a time, my career aspiration was to be the next Dave Barry. To prepare for that career, I wrote a wiseass weekly humor column in my college paper, and then, a couple of years later, successfully pitched the editor at the small daily where I worked to give me 18 inches on the front page of the Sunday features section. The former effort was largely inconsequential; how funny is it to bitch about cafeteria food week after week? The latter effort was marked by my constant, futile attempts to slip the word "crappy" past the features editor. And so after a while the humorist dream understandably faded.

Yet for several years, I read Barry with fervor, admiring the obvious humor but also the sly intelligence that girded much of his writings. I moved on after a while, not because Barry was no longer funny – he was – but because he was beginning to get repetitive. (I'm trying not to blame him for the dreadful sitcom his work inspired.) The news that he was finally going to pack it in, at least for a while, brought some degree of sadness to me. I met him at a book-signing once, and he seemed to be a reasonably regular guy – or as regular as you can be with a roomful of strangers thrusting books at you and demanding, "Write something funny." The fact that he saw me blowing bubbles in the line, then asked when I approached his table whether I had brought enough gum for everyone else (I swear I'm not making that up, as the man himself would say) made me feel as if I was talking, however briefly, with a real person.

Slate's Bryan Curtis put it well, I thought, in praising Barry as a versatile, sharp, and occasionally caustic observer, not merely the "guileless, domestic funnyman" he liked to play in print. Curtis's call for Barry to put his libertarian leanings to use as William Safire's replacement on the op-ed page of the New York Times is an interesting one, though of course that will never happen. (If Spalding Gray’s over-starched Times-esque city editor in The Paper is any guide, the Gray Lady isn’t real fond of coloring outside the lines.) Regardless, I’d love to see Barry put his considerable talents to use hurling javelins at the powers that be instead of just shooting spitballs at easy marks.

'Boats' Afloat

Don't look now, but Boats Against the Current has returned after a nearly five-month hiatus with posts on three successive days. It's movies, movies, and more movies, written with my brother's usual precision, wit, and intelligence. Welcome back to the blogosphere, boyo, and keep up the good work.

Ed Infinitum

The Daily News's Paul Hagen snagged Phillies GM Ed Wade yesterday for a Q&A, and was able to ask the question on the minds of many fans underwhelmed by the names Kenny Lofton, Jon Lieber, Cory Lidle, and Terry Adams: What the f---? Well, I'm paraphrasing. Hagen did ask what Wade considered the keys to 2005, and his response was as uninspiring as you'd expect:

Playing up to our capabilities, which encompasses attitude, work ethic, desire, performance and health. If we play up to our capabilities. If the five starters we have here do what they're capable of doing, if they perform up to what they've done in the past and get us deep into games. If we catch the ball as we have in the past. If the back end of the bullpen performs like they have before. And if our offense improves even marginally, then I think we can win.

Look, I'm not naive here. I know the team's general manager needs to toe the company line. But we've been hearing that tired "If everyone plays to his potential" line for more than two years now. Even more infuriating was Wade's answer when asked how he deals with all the criticism he's been receiving:

Being on the hot seat is not something I concern myself with. Obviously nobody likes criticism and the way I'm dealing with it is ignoring it. Because I know how hard we're working here and how close we are to being a championship-caliber club. If somebody sat down and tried to absorb all the negativity that's been out there, I'd assume we'd lost 107 games last year and finished 53 games out of first place. The reality is a little different than that, so I'm going to deal with the reality and let the other stuff fall where it may.

You know, he has a point. I'd like to apologize for feeling that 76 losses and 10 games out is just as sorry a performance as the 107 and 53 which Wade cites. I'd like to apologize for thinking that anything short of first place is failure. I'd like to apologize for demanding the best possible performance for my ticket dollar and then being upset when I don't get it. How could I have been so insensitive?

Ed Wade and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Terry Bad Day

This is a joke, right?

Does anybody working in the executive offices at Citizens Bank Park have a clue? On the same damn day the Mets display Carlos Beltran and the Yankees show off Randy Johnson, the Phillies announce that they've signed ... Terry Adams.

I mean, this is a joke, right?

So not only can't the Phils get it together from a personnel perspective, but their sense of timing is stunningly atrocious. This move on this day feels like badly written satire -- an overly long Saturday Night Live skit on Ed Wade's penchant to fix every problem by acquiring an out-of-shape middle reliever. Perhaps Wade was trying to use the New York media frenzy to obscure a move even he knows will be greeted by barely suppressed sneers -- you know, the way a celebrity married couple might announce their divorce late on a Friday afternoon. But while Peter Gammons or David Pinto might overlook this one in tomorrow's agate type, those of us who pay to go to games won't be as easy to fool.

Somebody please tell me this a joke.