Book Review - There Is No Place For Us

One of the joys of reading is coming across a book so profound, so thought provoking, it lingers with you long after you've finished reading it. Such is the case with There Is No Place For Us, Brian Goldstone's heart wrenching tale of five low income families living on the societal margins of Atlanta, Georgia. 

Goldstone's remit is quite broad. Over 365 pages, his lens zooms in to the granular struggles of the working poor, who live one bad decision or one decision out of their control, from losing their homes and spiraling downward toward homelessness. But he also zooms out, challenging conventional wisdom about the benefits of gentrification, the failed governmental and private sector attempts to address poverty, and the rapacious desire of corporations to profit off the poor in America. 

It would be reductive to suggest there are heroes and villains in this story, although there are plenty of both; rather, Goldstone asks readers to move beyond the stereotypes we associate with the poor and homeless. The families we meet are to a person hard working, often in physically demanding jobs for little pay who live (at best) paycheck to paycheck but are never secure. Things spiral quickly for one family of four, a husband and wife with full-time jobs and two kids, when the owner of the condominium they rent decides to sell. Unable to find an apartment anywhere near the rent they were paying to her, they are forced to move into an apartment they know they will be unable to afford in the long run and when the inevitable eviction occurs, they must move to an extended stay hotel, where they pay even more than either of their two other homes and for far less room, worse accommodations, and no legal remedies or protections. 

The other families are single parent, led by mothers whose grit and determination is at once inspiring and also deeply saddening. They are on a hamster wheel that never allows them to get ahead and often has them taking one step forward and three steps back. For one woman, the triggering event is an ex-boyfriend who, while she and her children are out of the house, sets it on fire. Not only does the corporate owner of the house do nothing to assist her in finding a new home, it goes through the process of evicting her even though the home was inhabitable. Having the eviction on her credit score makes it nearly impossible to rent an apartment and she and her children get sucked into a vicious cycle of extended stay hotels, boarding houses, and living on the street. For another woman, it is discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her, leading her to move out and on her own, but with little money to house herself and her three children, she toggles between the couches and floors of family and friends until the inevitable blow ups occur and she is left to start anew. 

Over the course of telling these stories, Goldstone teases out so many of the contradictions that exist in the housing industry and the stringent but often capricious rules that make it so hard to establish stability. One woman Goldstone profiles loses her Section 8 housing when she allows a family member, an ex-offender, to live with her temporarily, something prohibited by the program. Unable to secure another apartment that accepts Section 8, she ends up at yes, the dreaded extended stay, where she quickly falls behind on her bills and is summarily evicted, left to panhandle, using her two-year old daughter as bait to garner sympathy from passersby. Of course, that same woman's credit had basically been destroyed years before when her own mother convinced her to apply for an apartment on her behalf because her own credit was poor, but when the mother falls behind on rent and gets evicted, its her daughter whose credit is now ruined. 

For other families, it is "the system" that keeps them down. Federal agencies who define homelessness differently, making it impossible to access needed services. State laws that provide renters almost no legal rights and tilt heavily toward landlords, who more and more simply rely on algorithms to determine whether they will rent to you even as they pocket application fees many of these families can ill-afford to lose but have to spend that money on the off chance they get approved. On the other end of the spectrum are the companies, private equity groups, and other conglomerates that scoop up residential properties in the growing Atlanta market. Some avail themselves of federal programs allowing them to obtain the benefit of tax credits for purchasing distressed assets and then flipping the properties before they would otherwise be able to because lobbyists stick loopholes into the federal tax code allowing them to do it. Meanwhile, the families who lived in those rent-controlled complexes are left to fend for themselves, and typically with little help or guidance.

Credit scores not only complicate the effort to find housing, but bleed into other aspects of these families' lives, particularly in transportation. The interest rates they are charged to borrow money to buy even a used car are usurious and overwhelmingly result in repossession, leaving them the unenviable task of using a wonky public transportation system that turns 20-30 minute commutes by car into multi-hour trips by bus and train. All of this while attempting to raise children, many of whom shuttle between family members' homes while losing ground at school. As these stories unfold, it is like watching a movie knowing a car crash is about to happen. Any time a family seems to be on the path toward a better tomorrow, the cruel hand of fate intervenes. 

When one woman takes her children away for a quick weekend trip, the friend she is staying with moves out of the apartment they were staying in. By the time she returns, the locks have been changed and not only is she left homeless, vital documents, like her family's social security cards and her kids' vaccination records were tossed out without her knowledge. Another mom works with a non-profit that offers to cover an entire year's rent but when the woman finds an apartment, a needed inspection takes too long and the property owner rents the place to someone else. When another apartment comes free, instead of risking losing it, she switches to a less generous program the non-profit offers, where they simply cover the security deposit and one month's rent, leaving her to take an overnight job, leaving her three kids, all under the age of 12, alone all night. She unscrews the knobs to the stove and hides all the sharp objects to mitigate the risk anything bad will happen while she's away, but lives in constant fear of it or of a neighbor reporting her to the authorities. 

It is a grim tableau and much of it is centered on the extended stay hotels that become makeshift temporary homes for these families. The facilities are expensive while also being filthy, with burst pipes, non functioning air conditioning units (not a small thing during the summer in Altanta), and the standard risks of crime, drugs, and prostitution. It is one of the cruel ironies of the story that the lower down the housing totem pole you fall, the costlier it is to find stable housing. And because there is so little governmental support for the working poor, in a booming city like Atlanta, families must put more and more of their modest income toward housing, which can force them to triage paying other bills. Utility cut offs, car repossessions, and even cell phone plan terminations are routine and of course, any time this happens, it is another mark on their credit score, not to mention increasing the instability these families already face. On top of all that, the laws in Georgia tilt heavily toward landlords, reducing the chances that tenants, especially ones in a precarious financial situation, will complain about leaky plumbing, mold, or cockroaches for fear of being evicted. The common thread you see through so much of this book is the willingness of companies - be they in hiring, housing, or lending - to take advantage of the desperation of the people who need them.

But even in the face of these challenges, Goldstone manages to find humanity's better angels. Be it an overnight shift worker at a gas station who allows one of the mothers Goldstone profiles to sleep in her car with her kids in the station's parking lot, promising to keep an eye out for them and allowing them to use the bathroom to clean up in the morning or the manager of a 24-hour laundromat who lets another of the women Goldstone profiles and is also homeless at the time, to use the phone to make calls in an attempt to find help. Still another, a colorful community activist named Pink is a whirling dervish of effort, dropping off meals to families, finding second hand clothes for their kids, and even putting up families for a few nights in her own home while trying to connect them to community programs. The grace notes are their own form of heartbreaking. One woman, Celeste, who, over the course of the book, gets and loses several different places, is diagnosed with cancer, spends six months living in a boarding home with her young child and other renters who range form the schizophrenic to the sociopathic, hands over a large chunk of her COVID stimulus money (which she really needs) to her eighteen year old daughter, so she, her boyfriend, and baby can stay in yes, you guessed it, an extended-stay hotel.

While Goldstone is comfortable in pointing fingers (and rightly so) at the slumlords who take advantage of these families, less is said about the decisions some of these families make, particularly when it comes to having kids. I did find myself shaking my head at the decisions that led to several of the women profiled in the book having multiple children with multiple men even as they struggle to make ends meet. Men are also vanishingly absent from the story. Of the five families profiled, only one is headed by a husband and wife. Every other adult male is either absent, derelict, or actively sabotaging the women we meet.

And the people you feel worst for are the kids who did not ask to be brought into this life or these circumstances. The children are exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, shootings, unemployment, evictions, and so much more. One child, a young teen named DJ, effectively becomes the parent to his two younger sisters when his mother goes on a weeks-long drinking bender that renders her incapable of doing the bare minimum of parenting. Schooling is often an after thought and one can only imagine the psychological damage being raised in such squalor will have on these children, but the likelihood is they will fall into the same vicious cycle of dead end jobs, scarce resources, and housing insecurity that their parents did. 

If there is one conclusion Goldstone comfortably reaches, it is that we, as a society, have largely turned a blind eye to the working poor among us. The federal government has largely removed itself from the problem, outsourcing public housing to an ill-conceived, ill-funded voucher program that cannot meet the needs of all the people who want to access it or have the available rental stock to house them. Instead, gentrifying downtrodden neighborhoods that replace public housing with pubs, bistros, and yoga studios has become the norm. While this may be in the public interest, it has been done with little thought for how to help working people who still need a place to live. The book ends on an uncertain note. The epilogue does not update us on what happened to these families, whose stories end sometime in 2021 or 2022. But perhaps that is the point. As Goldstone shows, the uncertainty and instability that marks the lives of the working poor make it difficult to find a happy ending. 

The Selfish Jerks Across The Street

As a childless home owner in an affluent suburb of New Jersey, I am not wild about paying property taxes to fund the public schools I never have, and never will, use. You would think I would be the last person to support a referendum that would allow the township to borrow almost $100 million to upgrade the facilities at the elementary, middle, and high schools. HOWEVER, I understand that paying those taxes is a civic need to educate the children in my township who will go on to college and beyond to take over the economic heavy lifting that will be needed for our country to remain competitive. I also understand that having good schools is a lure for couples who are willing to shell out a lot of money to live in my township, which will accrue to my benefit when I move out of this god forsaken state. So I will vote in favor of this referendum.

On the other hand, the first people you would think would support this referendum are my neighbors, a married couple with two kids, who have utilized these public schools for the last 20 years, as one child went through the K-12 system and is now in college and the other is graduating this year, but lo and behold these selfish jerk offs have a VOTE NO lawn sign in their front yard. Apparently, paying property taxes so their kids could be well educated was fine, but paying a little more so the next generation of kids can enjoy those same benefits is not. I will never understand people. 

Ignoble Endings - O.J. Simpson

 

Ignoble endings: A periodic series examining the sad conclusion to the careers of some of the greatest sports icons in history.

Prior posts

Joe Namath

Babe Ruth

In 1973, Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson was the greatest football player on the planet. That “The Juice” as he was also known, had reached the pinnacle of the sports world was not surprising, only that it had taken him so long to get there. O.J. burst onto the sports scene as a running back at the University of Southern California. His unique blend of speed and power combined with peripheral vision that gave him an uncanny ability to avoid defenders earned him the Heisman Trophy as he led the Trojans to the national title. In 1969, O.J. was drafted number one overall by the Buffalo Bills. Although the Bills had been competitive in the old American Football League, winning back-to-back titles in 1964 and 1965, as the decade came to a close and the AFL’s merger with the NFL neared, their fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. More so, after the merger became final in 1970, the Bills found themselves in the AFC East, competing with the still powerful Baltimore Colts and the ascendant Miami Dolphins, who had a pipeline of young talent that would lead them to three straight Super Bowl appearances.

Simpson’s first few seasons with the Bills were solid, if unspectacular. Perhaps owing to the dearth of talent around him, defenses loaded up to stop the run. O.J. was limited to eight games in his second season but even in years one and three, where he played all 14 games, he failed to crack the 1,000 yard barrier and the team won just eight games in that three year stretch.

The tide began to turn slightly in 1972. The team was a little better and Simpson notched his first 1,000 yard season. But the following year would be his masterpiece. With a better offensive line and more playmakers, the Bills started out 4-1 and Simpson broke out of the gate with a 250 yard performance in the team’s season opening win. Seven games into the season, O.J. topped 1,000 yards and the unthinkable was actually on the table – could he eclipse 2,000 yards in a single season? A three-game skid dashed the team’s hopes of a playoff berth but they – and Simpson -  closed strong. Riding a three-game winning streak into the season finale at Shea Stadium against the New York Jets, O.J. was just 61 yards away from breaking Jim Brown’s single-season rushing record of 1,863 yards. The field was in awful shape. Snow mixed with mud and grass to make for difficult footing, but none of it bothered Simpson. He bested Brown in the first half but he was not close to being done. Although the Bills had put the game was out of reach, quarterback Joe Ferguson (who only threw five passes the entire game!) kept feeding O.J. the ball. In the fourth quarter, Ferguson pitched the ball to O.J., who followed his fullback Jim Braxton over the left side of the line for a seven yard gain, going over the magical 2,000 yard mark. In the end, O.J. carried the ball 34 times for 200 yards, ending the season with 2,003 yards. To this day, he remains the only player in NFL history to go over 2,000 yards in just 14 games.  

For this singular achievement, Simpson won the MVP award and he followed up the 1973 campaign with a solid 1974 (more than 1,100 yards and his lone playoff appearance), an even more impressive 1975, where he came within just 46 yards of again surpassing Brown’s previous record while tallying more than 2,200 yards of total offense from scrimmage and setting a then-NFL record of 23 touchdowns, and another first-team All-Pro performance in 1976, where he topped 1,500 yards. That five-year stretch, from 1972-76, is among the greatest in NFL history, with O.J. playing all 14 games in each year and totaling 7,699 yards, an average of more than 1,500 yards a season and 110 yards a game. Indeed, O.J. was so far ahead of the competition, no other running back came within 2,500 yards of that five-year total.

The Bills rewarded Simpson for his efforts. Before the 1976 season, he signed a three-year contract extension through the 1979 season for a then-unheard of amount of $2.2 million. A knee injury limited O.J. to seven games in 1977. While he recovered from surgery and with two years left on his deal, the Bills shipped O.J. back to the West Coast. While the Rams and Raiders both balked at the trade compensation needed to acquire Simpson, the San Francisco 49ers bit, sending Buffalo five draft picks while picking up the tab on the remainder of O.J.’s contract.

It was a calculated risk. The 49ers were not a particularly good football team, they won just five games the season before trading for Simpson, but with O.J. just 2,129 yards away from breaking Brown’s all-time rushing record, perhaps they thought he still had enough left in the tank to lift them into contention while the team could market his attempt to break Brown’s record as a means of goosing attendance at their games. The bet did not pay off. In 1978, the first year the NFL went to a 16-game schedule, the 49ers won just twice, averaging an anemic 14 points a game while committing more than 60 turnovers. Like his early seasons in Buffalo, O.J. was running behind a weak offensive line, but with more than 2,300 carries under his belt, the wear and tear of nine seasons in the cold and snow of Buffalo, and the injuries he suffered to his knees, O.J. no longer had the speed to avoid tacklers, the agility to cut back, or the strength to break long gains. Still recovering from knee surgery, O.J. played in just 10 games that year and rushed for less than 600 yards. Worse still, one of the draft picks the 49ers traded for him ended up being the first overall in the following draft owing to the team’s 2-14 record.

The 1979 season would be O.J.’s final one. Whatever magic he once had in his legs was now gone. He was a shell of the player he had once been and his performance on the field toggled between mediocre and poor. Relegated largely to a back-up role, O.J. would tally just 85 yards in his final five games, a total that earlier in his career he would have eclipsed in one half of a single game. In nine of the 13 games he played, he gained 30 or fewer yards. With the team on its way to matching its woeful 2-14 record of the previous season, O.J. was handed the ball just twice in the final game of the season, a loss at the Atlanta Falcons. It would be the last game of Simpson’s career.

TV Review - Dexter: Original Sin

In Hollywood, the most valuable commodity right now is “trusted IP” (intellectual property). At a time when there is more competition than ever for our entertainment dollars, studios that are gambling tens of millions on movies and TV shows are far more willing to churn out a steady stream of remakes, sequels, and spin offs than risk producing something new that might flop. Why swing for the fences when you can hit a bunch of singles and doubles by releasing Wonka (the Willy Wonka origin story you did not know you needed), The Penguin (a Batman spin off that also serves as a prequel to the next installment of the latest Caped Crusader trilogy), House of the Dragon (because we can’t get enough of Westeros) or rebooting old TV shows like Matlock, Night Court, or Frasier. 

Which brings us to Dexter Morgan. You remember him, right? The Miami PD forensic technician who was also a serial killer. Dexter premiered in 2006, right in the middle of the so-called “Difficult Men” era of TV launched by HBO with The Sopranos and in time, would include other iconic characters like Don Draper and Walter White, all of whom were morally bankrupt but had just enough redeeming qualities that audiences rooted for them. Dexter Morgan was no different. Yes, he killed people, but The Code, instilled in him by his adoptive father Detective Harry Morgan, dictated that only people who “deserved” to die (awful criminals who somehow cheated the system and avoided being brought to justice) ended up covered in plastic wrap on Dexter’s kill table.

The show was a success right off the bat. Dexter hit that sweet spot in the cultural zeitgeist where critics lauded its complex and layered storytelling and fans were sold on the main character’s duality, the strong supporting cast, and yes, let’s face it, the blood and guts. Dexter was the kind of show that both received prestigious awards and got the weekly recap treatment in the blogosphere. Its first season twist that the serial killer Dexter was tracking turned out to be Brian Moser, the biological brother he was separated from as a child after they witnessed their mother brutally murdered by a drug trafficking cartel, cemented the show’s bona fides. Most long-time fans will tell you the worm turned after Season Four, which ended with Dexter’s wife Rita dead in a bathtub and, in a history-repeats-itself moment, their son Harrison sitting in a puddle of her blood on the floor beside her. After that, it seemed like the show ran out of things to say. Story lines became increasingly unbelievable, the vaunted Code Dexter lived by was compromised as innocent lives were taken in service of keeping his secret safe, and it all culminated in a universally despised series finale that saw Dexter leave his sister Debra to die in a hurricane while he skipped town.

And you would assume that was that. Dexter would live on, be it on streaming platforms, DVDs, or occasional re-airings on Showtime, but those last few seasons had tarnished the show’s legacy, which was usually summed up as some version of “started out great, but stayed on the air too long.” But a funny thing happened on the way to the cultural graveyard. Owing mostly to the need for content during the pandemic and perhaps wanting to right the wrong of the show’s final season, Showtime greenlit Dexter: New Blood, a one-off, ten-episode miniseries. The show was successful enough in recuperating good will with fans and critics alike that Showtime not only decided to reboot the main show, but also signed off on Dexter: Original Sin, a prequel whose first (only?) season ended last week.

Prequels are tricky. The main challenge is telling a compelling story within the limitations presented by the fact that the main characters’ fates in the future are already known. Original Sin tried to walk this tightrope with a flood-the-zone strategy which produced a choppy, uneven, and mostly uninteresting result. After taking care of some not-so-minor housekeeping in the first scene of the first episode (spoiler: Dexter was not in fact killed by his son in New Blood, he’s lingering on an operating table clinging to life) we flash back to 1991, where newly minted college graduate Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson) ditches his plans to go to medical school (which he was going to attend as a way of tamping down his urge to kill people) and, after stopping at a job fair booth sponsored by Miami Metro, is hired as a forensic intern working under no-nonsense Tanya Martin (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Familiar faces abound – in addition to Harry (now played by Christian Slater as opposed to James Remar from the original series), we have younger versions of Deb (Molly Brown), Batista (James Martinez), Mazuka (Alex Shimizu), and LaGuerta (Christina Millian). Added to the cast is Harry’s boss, Captain Aaron Spencer (Patrick Dempsey with a god tier mustache) and partner, Bobby Watt (Reno Wilson).

From there, the story expands out in multiple directions. In the 1991 timeline, Miami Metro is simultaneously tracking two high profile killers. One has kidnapped and killed a young boy and, shortly after the body is recovered, kidnaps Captain Spencer’s son. The other is preying on vagrants in a way that suggests he might be a serial killer. All of this happens as Dexter gets his first taste of murder (a nurse who he realizes is slowly attempting to kill Harry by changing his medication as he recovers from a heart attack) and Deb is feeling isolated in the wake of her mother’s death the year before while Harry and Dexter become even closer now that the two are working under the same roof. But if that is not enough, the writers threw in a second timeline from the early 1970s. There, Harry and Bobby recruit Dexter and Brian’s mother Laura Moser as a confidential informant and in doing so, Harry initiates an affair with her and starts bonding with young Dexter.

If this sounds like a lot, it is because it is, and in trying to service so much plot, the show suffers on both ends. For example, Dexter, having never killed anyone before, is somehow a master locksmith able to break into homes and has the foresight to create a sanitary kill room but gives no thought to how he will incapacitate his victims (he ends up figuring it out during a fortuitous visit to an animal farm and realizes using a strong tranquilizer to knock out his victims is far better than his original method of surprising and overpowering them). At the other end of the spectrum, almost all of Deb’s story could have been edited out. Aside from flinging profanity at a rate that might be even greater than her adult version, she is given very little to do, but lots of time to do it, including side drama with her high school volleyball team and a multi-episode romance with an older guy who (predictably) turns out to be a jerk (she never did have much luck with men).

The choice to spend so much time in the 1970s timeline was also ill-advised. The backstory of how/why Dexter was adopted was already well known not just as part of the show’s canon, but literally in flashbacks that were already done. Yet Original Sin spends significant chunks of every episode in that past, as we watch Slater (rocking a ludicrous wig in a limp attempt at de-aging) first recruit then seduce Laura as she works her way up through the drug cartel. Her inevitable demise (just as bloody, if not more so than shown in the original series) produces no shock value and the writers needed to resort to Brian attempting to kill baby Deb as a needle mover for why the Morgans ultimately decided only Dexter could stay with them.

The weaknesses in these side plots are only slightly made up for in the main storylines. Dexter, still a newbie to the force, figures out that Spencer has kidnapped his own son thanks to a blood drop left on the outside of a box that contained one of the boy’s fingers and a hesitation cut on the severed digit. Fair enough, but the reason why Spencer, a decorated, high ranking police official with everything to lose randomly decides to not only kill an innocent child but kidnap and mutilate his own son, is not revealed until the denouement to the case. Initially, it seems he is using the kidnapping as a pretext to go after drug dealers (he even goes so far as to plant his son’s basketball jersey in the home of a bad guy, resulting in a massive shootout that leaves Bobby in a coma), which might make sense on some level, but as it turns out, the boy was fathered by another man and Spencer could not get over the humiliation of being made a cuckold; so not only was he going to kill his non-biological son, but murder his ex-wife and her new husband, presumably the same man she had been having an affair with. But again, none of this is revealed until the very end of the last episode, even though Spencer had been revealed to be the kidnapper midway through the season, with no motive for what he was doing.  

Meanwhile, Harry and LaGuerta’s unsolved murders investigation ultimately leads them to a dead psychiatrist in Tampa who, Harry learns while leafing through the guy’s files, had treated none other than Brian Moser. In the season’s final episode, it all gets pieced together. The victims were people who had bullied or harmed Brian as a child, from the son of a family who locked him in a closet to an orderly in the mental hospital who sold Brian’s medication instead of giving it to him. The final victim, the social worker who kept moving Brian from home to home before eventually dumping him in a state facility, is dismembered using a chainsaw a la the method of his mother’s execution.

And if the show had focused on the parallel tracks Dexter and Brian were taking toward their fates as serial killers, it would have made for more compelling television. Indeed, the show has always been interested in this idea, but given the chance to explore it more fully, the writers took a pass. Instead of slowly and meticulously following Brian’s life after the Morgans rejected him, Brian’s revenge tour was yadda yadda’d into a short vignette in the season’s final episode, giving what should have been at the heart of the story a feeling of being rushed and incomplete. Similarly lacking was a more developed sense of Harry’s torment over separating the two boys after their mother’s murder. As we know, Harry ultimately committed suicide after interrupting Dexter as he was dismembering a body. Original Sin hints at the guilt Harry feels not only for Laura’s death but what happens to her two children, but his sense that Dexter had some inherent “good” in him while Brian was simply evil is also hand waved in another short, close-the-loop scene in the final episode where Brian eludes arrest by overpowering Harry near the scene of his latest murder.

In the end, I am not entirely sure who Original Sin was being made for. I can’t believe it was drawing a lot of new viewers unfamiliar with the Dexter franchise, which makes some of the storytelling decisions even more curious. I mean sure, if you wanted confirmation that Batista has always rocked a pork pie hat and a goatee or that Mazuka has always been a perverted sex pest with a rat-a-tat-tat laugh that grates on your last nerve the moment you hear it, well, you can check those things off your list. If you wondered where Dexter got the idea to dump bodies in the Biscayne Bay, look no further than the friendly records custodian who loaned Dexter her boat when Deb was stranded on some random island because her sketchy boyfriend ditched her. On top of all this was a general laziness in closing other loops. When Deb rejects a scholarship to play volleyball at Florida State University, it is so she can go to the police academy, but in the real world, *no* academy would accept an 18-year-old! At times it felt as if the writers were going out of their way to do fan service on minutiae that might matter around the margins but when given limited time to tell a tight story, some high level acting talent ended up being woefully underutilized (hello, Buffy!) while core narratives also suffered. Finally, while Dexter always had its fair share of gore, Original Sin went out of its way to amp it up, from animal mutilation to child abuse and decapitations, the blood flows freely, but the psychology of why this violence is being perpetrated is given short shrift. Had the calculus been flipped, the storylines would have been more interesting.

The best prequels and origin stories extend the universe that was created by their predecessors by having something new to say about the characters who inhabit that world. Better Call Saul succeeded because it took the familiar Albuquerque underworld we were first introduced to in Breaking Bad and tilted the camera to a different aspect of it, finding new people and new ideas that created a richer landscape in a familiar place. The show succeeded precisely because it took its time developing those characters and their stories. On the other hand, Original Sin failed because it was content to rest on its laurels, recycling core elements that Dexter introduced almost two decades ago while racing through the steps necessary to broaden the viewer’s understanding and investment in the people on the screen.

Ignoble Endings - Joe Namath

 

Ignoble endings: A periodic series examining the sad conclusion to the careers of some of the greatest sports icons in history.

 Prior post: Babe Ruth

When Joe Namath jogged off the field at the Orange Bowl on the night of January 12, 1969, he was, with the possible exception of Muhammad Ali, the most famous athlete in the world. Namath had just led his New York Jets to victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, backing up a guarantee he made days before that the Jets, two-touchdown underdogs, would win.

Namath’s raised index finger in the universal sign for “#1” was instantly iconic and, in its way, an exclamation point at the end of the history of the American Football League (AFL). Founded in 1960 as a competitor to the National Football League (NFL), the AFL flailed in its first few seasons, but when the Jets outbid the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals and signed Namath to a then-unheard-of contract valued at $400,000, the league’s credibility received an immediate shot in the arm. Namath’s style was well-suited for the AFL, which played a more open, free-wheeling style of offense than the NFL. Namath would become the first quarterback to throw for more than 4,000 yards in a season and his brash style on the field was matched by his bachelor lifestyle off it. Namath became one of the first modern day athlete celebrities, hawking everything from aftershave to pantyhose while the tabloids ate up photos of him out on the town in New York with a revolving door of attractive female companions.

The Jets’ win in Super Bowl III was not just career defining for Namath, but validation for the AFL, whose representatives in the first two Super Bowls played were outclassed by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. Those losses affirmed in the minds of many sports reporters (and the public) that the AFL was an inferior league with less talented players, but when Namath and the Jets upset the Colts, that thinking began to change and indeed, the following year, another AFL team, the Chiefs, easily handled the NFL’s representative, the Minnesota Vikings, ending any discussion of whether the two leagues were on par from a talent perspective.  

Unfortunately for Namath, his fortunes and those of his team began a slow but inexorable decline after their Super Bowl triumph. Although Namath was named AFL league MVP in the 1969 season, the Jets failed to defend their title, losing to eventual champion Kansas City in the divisional round of the playoffs. The following year, the AFL and NFL formalized their merger and created two conferences. The Jets were placed in the East division of the new American Football Conference, a mix of NFL teams (Baltimore and Miami) and AFL teams (New York, New England, and Buffalo). The Colts and Dolphins would dominate the division for the entire decade, appearing in four straight Super Bowls and winning every division crown. The Jets stumbled, as many of the players who served as the foundation for their improbable Super Bowl III victory got old, retired, or were traded. Management failed to replace these cornerstones with quality players and Namath was hampered by injuries, missing large chunks of the 1970, 1971, and 1973 seasons.

The results were predictable. The Jets finished last or next-to-last in the division five times between 1970 and 1976. Longtime coach Weeb Ewbank retired after the 1973 season and the Jets cycled through four coaches in the next three years. Namath’s performance on the field was average at best. Saddled with few weapons and a leaky offensive line, his completion percentage hovered around 50 percent, and even in the couple of years he was not spending long periods of time on injured reserve, he was tossing more interceptions than touchdowns. In 1975, the Jets limped to a 3-11 record, Namath completed less than half his passes and threw nearly twice as many interceptions (28) as touchdowns (15). 1976 was worse. Playing in 11 games, Namath tossed just four touchdowns against 16 interceptions and the team matched its atrocious 3-11 record from the season before. Whatever magic Namath had in his right arm appeared to be gone.

The team and Namath were at a crossroads. In the era before free agency, owners held almost complete control over their players’ fates. Namath, now 33 and virtually immobile in the pocket due to chronic knee injuries, was earning far more than his play warranted and when the two sides could not reach an agreement on a contract the Jets did what would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier – they released Namath.

But Namath landed on his feet. In what you might think of as an eerie mirror image of the Jets’ signing of Aaron Rodgers decades later under the theory the team was just a good quarterback away from winning a title, Namath was signed by the Los Angeles Rams, a perennial contender who had reached the NFC title game in each of the previous three seasons, only to lose each time. Incumbent Pat Haden was serviceable, but lacked the strong arm (or cache) that Namath possessed. But the experiment lasted a mere four games. In the first three, Namath failed to throw for 150 yards while completing just half his passes. In what would turn out to be Namath’s final professional game, the Rams traveled to Chicago to play the Bears on a rainy Monday night in October. Namath struggled with the weather and the Bears defense. He completed just 16 passes on 40 attempts and was picked off four times before a late hit knocked him out of the game and, as it turned out, ended his career. He remained with the Rams for the rest of the season but never again set foot on the field of play.

 

 

This Is Why Grammar and Punctuation Matter, People!

 

Ten NFL Takes - Week 17

 

Take number one: I know the NFL preaches parity, but I’m not sure that means one of the top storylines for the final week of the season will be who gets the number one pick in the draft and not who gets in the playoffs, but here we are. There is only so much drama you can milk from a couple of teams fighting for the third wild card or jockeying for seeding position, but four teams with a shot at the number one pick because the product on the field has been so lousy this year is a terrible look. I know ratings are strong and the NFL basically prints money, but there has been A LOT of bad football this year. There are *nine* teams, that's a shade more than a quarter of the league, with four wins or fewer. In other words, more than a quarter of the league has won one quarter or fewer of their games. And yes, Lions/Vikings for the one seed is a great story, but it also draws attention to the weird way teams are seeded insofar as whoever loses will be (depending on whether Detroit wins tonight) either a 13 or 14 win wild card. 

Take number two: Because this week started on Wednesday and will not end until tonight, it is easy to forget that the Chiefs just went 3-0 in a 10 day span and won all three games handily. I know we got numb to dynasties during the Patriots’ two decade run at the top, but what the Chiefs are doing right now is just so so impressive. They revamped their wide receiver corps and offensive line *during the season* in a way that made both better while the defense has been the best of the Mahomes era. Bet against that three-peat at your peril.

Take number three: It pains me to say that about the Chiefs because as has been well documented, Lamar is my absolute favorite player in the game. He just makes things look so effortless, like everyone else is going at full tilt and he is on cruise control. He has such command of the Ravens offense right now, it is football played at the absolute highest level and yet I have zero confidence the team will make it to the Super Bowl. 

Take number four: If there is a playoff spot on the line and you walk into Giants Stadium against a 2-13 team with literally nothing to play for other than to lose and get the number one pick and instead of thumping them, you give up 45 points and lose, you deserve to be mathematically eliminated from a playoff spot. Embarrassing. Plus, your QB situation is as follows: door number one: a freak athlete who can’t complete 50 percent of his passes or door number two: a soon-to-be 40 year old who has zero mobility and throws at least one interception every time he starts a game.

Take number five: I’m happy for Baker Mayfield. Kicked to the curb by the Browns, a cup of coffee with the Panthers, a cameo with the Rams, and he finally gets in a good situation to show up and show out. Good for you.

Take number six: The Bengals did all they could to give away their game against the Broncos. Going for it on fourth down instead of kicking field goals, awful clock management at the end of the fourth quarter, their defense letting a freaking rookie march down the field to tie the game at the end of regulation and then doinking a gimme field goal that would have won the game and yet, they still won! Lots of things have to break their way next week to get into the playoffs, but I kinda feel like the powers that be in league HQ would far prefer a Bills/Bengals game than a Bills/Broncos blow out.

Take number seven: Every fan base (with the possible exception of the Chiefs) has its gripes, but consider Falcons fans. This is a team that screwed up their long-term prospects, their season, and a must-win game. Their salary cap is messed up because they signed a guy in his mid-30s who snapped his Achilles to an absurd contract that kills their ability to make moves. They then kept that guy behind center three weeks too long instead of going to the first round pick who functions much better in the offense they run and then their coach mismanaged the end of their game in Washington (we thank you!) by waiting too long to use his time outs. Just a brutal trifecta. 

Take number eight: 2024 was a potentially historic draft class. Four receivers (including a tight end) have gone over 1,000 yards, one running back has done the same, and at least two, and possibly three, rookie quarterbacks will be in the playoffs. That does not even account for less heralded guys like Joe Alt who you can pencil in as an all-pro level right tackle for the next 10 years or Quinyon Mitchell who is already shutting down top flight wide receivers. Such a deep draft of talent. 

Take number nine: Pittsburgh. Nice story for the first two months of the season, but in a three game stretch against Philly, Baltimore, and Kansas City, you went 0-3. There’s no shame in that, but you’re a one-and-done (unless you draw the Texans, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it) in the playoffs. Your ceiling is the divisional round because we no longer have a league where winning 18-16 rock fights is enough to win the Super Bowl. Get some dudes on offense and move it into the 21st century. 

Take number ten: The Tom Brady experiment is not working. It’s to the point where I cringe knowing he’s calling a game. Yes, he will drop one or two good points (albeit ones any broadcaster of repute would make, for example, criticizing the Packers for running the ball near the goal line as the clock wound down near two minutes at the end of their game) but the rest of his shtick is just … not good. Perfect example of giving a guy a job too big for his skill set and hoping he would learn on the fly. He (and we, as viewers) would have been better served if he got some reps working the “B” or “C” games for a season or two and then, if he was showing the kind of acumen necessary to do the game of the week, promote him. Unfortunately, we are coming to the part of the season where color commentary actually matters and he is just not up to the task. 

Windows of Opportunity

I was thinking the other day about how when you get divorced at 40, as I did, you have a five-to-seven year window of opportunity to find love again, get married, and start a family. But that did not happen for me. After that, another five-to-seven year window is available to date women who are either so young (say mid-to-late 20s) that there is no chance for a meaningful, long-term commitment or are more age appropriate (say early-to-mid 30s) that will probably not lead to marriage b/c at that point you're in your late 40s or early 50s and the idea of having kids at that age is just not appealing. Well, I missed that window too. Now that I'm in my mid-50s, I think there is a lag, a few years before the ~ companion ~ window opens with some other soon-to-be senior citizen who maybe had kids or maybe they did not and will be retired like me and able to just experience life but without all the messiness and complication that existed when we were younger. Until then, I will just be a cat dad. 

2024 Year In Books

 

When you're a friendless loser with no social life, it opens up lots of opportunities to read good books. This year was no exception. One thing has changed for me is incorporating what I might call junk food into my literary diet in the form of murder mysteries. They are a bit hit or miss, although I did love Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series. The others. Eh, kind of hit or miss. Most of my reading is still non-fiction and there were a few real bangers this year, including an excellent biography of Keith Haring (book #29) a book on a disputed Warhol that read more like a thriller combined with an insider's look at how high end art is sold (book #10), a riveting accounting of the biggest bribery scandal in the history of the U.S. Navy (book #21), and a meditation on the "greed is good" 1980s (book #25). I hope you found some gems in your own reading and look forward to seeing what 2025 will bring.   

1. The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman

2. The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman

3. The Book of General Ignorance, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson 

4. The Dictionary People, Sarah Ogilvie

5. The Christmas Guest, Peter Swanson

6. World Within A Song, Jeff Tweedy 

7. The Last Devil To Die, Richard Osman

8. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers,

9. The Sopranos Sessions, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz

10. Warhol After Warhol, Richard Dorment

11. The Maid, Nita Prose

12. The Framed Women of Ardmore House, Brandy Schillace

13. Takeover, Hitler’s Final Rise to Power, Timothy Ryback

14. How To Solve Your Own Murder, Kristen Perrin

15. Palestine 1936, Oren Kessler

16. The Mystery Guest, Nita Prose

17. Nuclear War - A Scenario,  Annie Jacobsen

18. A Shot In The Dark, Lynne Truss

19. Challenger, Adam Higginbotham

20. Life Sentence, Mark Bowden

21. Fat Leonard, Craig Whitlock

22. The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson

23. The Golden Spoon, Jessa Maxwell

24. When The Clock Broke, John Ganz

25. Triumph of the Yuppies, Tom McGrath

26. Cue The Sun!, Emily Nussbaum

27. The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty

28. The Wide Wide Sea, Hampton Sides

29. Radiant, The Life and Line of Keith Haring, Brad Gooch

30. The Greatest Game Ever Pitched, Jim Kaplan

31. There Was Nothing You Could Do, Steven Hyden

32. We Solve Murders, Richard Osman

33. Paris In Ruins, Sebastian Smee

34. The Machine, Joe Posnanski

35. The Mistletoe Mystery, Nita Prose

36. Lost - Back to the Island,  Emily St. James and Noel Murray

Ten NFL Takes - Week 16

 

Take number one: We already know what the most interesting off season storyline is going to be: Whither Sam Darnold. It’s SUCH an interesting argument. On the one hand, he could go to free agency and see if one of the teams that needs a starter is willing to ~ give him his bag ~ at say $40-50 million a year but taking that deal means playing for a team like the Titans or Raiders, who both suck OR would the Vikings offer him something like the deal Baker Mayfield got from the Bucs, 3 years $100 million, with some incentives that could bump it up to around $115 million. Less money, but better infrastructure and either way, you’re financially set for the rest of your life. The Vikings could also dangle JJ McCarthy to one of those QB-needy teams and try to get a draft pick in exchange and build out their roster. The draft class is thin (most analysts agree there are two first-round talents) and more than two teams are going to need new starters. Either way, dude has made himself a lot of money this year.

Take number two: That Commanders win was particularly sweet. As I’ve documented before, I cannot stand the Eagles, just hate them with a white hot passion. Chesty jerk offs who chirp a lot when they win and whine when they lose and lo and behold they coughed up what should have been an easy win and gave our wunderkind rookie quarterback a bookend game to his Hail Mary win back in October. Just delicious. The dropped third down pass that would have sealed the game, the march down the field for the winning score, the exposure of their offense as completely pedestrian without Jalen Hurts in the game. Totally made my day even though I know the Commanders will probably lose their inevitable playoff rematch like 34-7. 

Take number three: Christmas is Wednesday and we might forget that in the 366 days since then (2024 is a leap year) the Chiefs have lost exactly … once. They are 20-1 and yet. I watched most of that Saturday game and they are rounding into form nicely. The offense they thought they would have is not what they have now, but with Hollywood Brown, DeAndre Hopkins, and Xavier Worthy added to the Kelce/Gray TE combo and the one-two punch of Pacheco and Hunt, that is a multiple offense that can get you in a lot of different ways while the defense is still playing lights out. Do YOU want to go into Arrowhead in January? I didn’t think so.

Take number four: There is nothing football geeks like better than novel plays unseen in years. Back in 2006, the Patriots gave Doug Flutie the green light to attempt a two-point drop kick in a meaningless end of season game against the Dolphins (it was successful). The play was completely legal, but so obscure it had not been attempted in more than 60 years. Jim Harbaugh pulled off something similar Thursday night with the possibly even more obscure (although attempted more recently) fair catch/free kick move. These coaches study the rule book like some rabbis study the Torah. 

Take number five: If you can tell me which version of the Ravens will show up in the playoffs, I can tell you what the likely outcome will be. The version that forgets who they are, plays tight on offense and sloppy on defense, and loses their first game or the version that just plays their game, pushes the other side around on offense when Lamar is not busy dazzling them with his pinpoint accuracy while their defense flies around the ball and suffocates the opposing offense. THAT version, which has only shown up once (against the Texans last year) could win it all, but I fear another off season of disappointment in Charm City.

Take number six: Ben Johnson is just showing off. I don’t want to say what he did yesterday was disrespectful, but his gimmick fake fumble play against a lousy Bears team that was outmatched, outclassed, and outplayed IN CHICAGO borders on the sadistic. I know the Dan Campbell Lions like to do this, but if I was on the receiving end of this in a season that has gone right down the toilet, I would NOT be happy. 

Take number seven: The Giants are one of the worst teams I have seen in my lifetime. Just completely incompetent. I wonder if there is a Hard Knocks curse because their front office was ~ smelling themselves ~ as the kids say, during the off season and the on the field product looks like a steaming pile of poo. I have no idea if the Maras are going to clean house (or if it matters) but if you are Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward, I would suggest they do what I failed to do - avoid New Jersey. 

Take number eight: They are still America’s Team and if you doubt that, consider that a team officially eliminated from the playoffs before they took the field last night still led Sports Center this morning. Why? Because they are the Cowboys. I don’t make the rules, folks.

Take number nine: The college football playoffs? Not so good. Yes, the novelty of December football in places like South Bend and Happy Valley was high, but the quality of the games was low. Very low. At this point, college football players are essentially playing a professional schedule. A team that played last weekend could end up playing 16 (!) games if they make it to the championship game (which, hello, is not until the third week of January!)

Take number ten: Speaking of Happy Valley, congratulations to the Penn State women’s volleyball team and their coach, Katie Schumacher-Cauley on a great season and a national title. Not only an inspiration due to her battle against cancer, but a good illustration of how you win in college these days - good recruiting mixed with bringing in high caliber talent through the transfer portal. Looking forward to continued growth in what is fast becoming one of my favorite sports (and there is an NFL hook because one of their players - Caroline Jurevicius - is the daughter of Joe, a longtime Tampa Bay Bucs wide receiver)