Dad has taken issue with the title of the blog, particularly with the use of the third word.

Is it time to make a small modification?

Clean up our act?  Nah.  We're from Dirty Jerz.  Go Jets Ho!

It’s no secret that New Yorkers generally have a love-hate relationship with their sporting team coaches.  Uttering the name of one of these gentlemen in a crowded subway car will usually garner you at least one “He should be fired”’s .  Yet we remain in awe of these chaps and hang on to their every pronouncement as though they were oracles, or even the demigods of sport, capable of moving mountains and delivering our heroes to the promised land.  I needn’t belabor this topic. After all, it can be summed up in one awesomely loved/loathed New York byword: Steinbrenner.

So I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t both horrified and also a tad bit pleased to see poor Tom Coughlin bulldozed by Giants running back TJ Ware in yesterday’s NY-NY faceoff.  

 But I would also be lying if I told you that I wouldn’t kinda rather have seen Rex Ryan laid out flat under similar circumstances.  It might at least give me the opportunity to feel bad for him.  Because as of right now, I’m pretty ticked off with the old Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I understand that part of Rex Ryan’s bluster is calculated to take the heat off his team.  He doesn’t want to saddle his players with the burden of public scorn that they cannot bear, so he places it upon his own hefty shoulders, going so far as to invite the media mockery.  But there are moments when our Tyrannosaurus Rex just goes too far.

Keep in mind that this is a blog being written by a little sister for her older brother.  I wouldn’t dream of trying to act older/wiser than YM, and I am pretty sure that YM knows better than to try and act bigger in the britches than HM.  We also all know that Mom, in all of her loving fairness and her complete and total equity, cannot help nor be blamed for harboring a secret and inextinguishable torch for HM--the eldest, the tallest, the grandest of the lot.  These are not matters to be disputed nor to be helped.  What we can do within the pecking order is to know our place and do our best within it.

Which is why I take issue with Rex when he tries to pull off this kind of reasoning:

"  There's no way I'm going to be second fiddle. If we were playing the New York Yankees, I don't want to be second fiddle to them. This is the same type of deal. I want to be the best team in football, not just the best team in this city. But we'll start by being the best team in this city….Quite honestly, I never came here to be little brother to anybody.”

The New York Yankeees….whaaaa?!?!  Comments like this leave a person to wonder just how addlepated Ryan actually is, and does he even know what sport his team is playing??!  The fact is that the opening moments of yesterday’s match revealed that the Jets were, in fact, the better team on the field.  I’m willing to go that far, having reveled in the sparkling display of Jets D that looked so spot on in the opening twenty minutes of the match. That alone could, should, have set us up for the win. 

It seems to me that it was just plain bad coaching at the helm that drove us into the ditch, and left us, the better team on yesterday’s field, to consider the bleak prospects of 5% chances.  That’s just not a number that I can take to the bank. I live in Harlem, and I know some Five Percenters who think that makes them legit.   

But I guess I’ll reserve my opinion on that for another blog.

It is difficult to describe just how dull Christmas day can be for the little Muslim children of America’s ‘burbs.  Time creeps to a sloth’s pace as one waits for friends to finish their revelry, and for shops and markets to open once more. To pass the time, I would faithfully watch the misadventures of Ralphie in A Christmas Story, besotted with the Red Ryder BB Gun, his heart’s sole desire.

No longer a resident of the suburbs, I now live in the one city of the world that lights its shops and plies its trade, come holiday, hell or high water.  But the great blizzard of 2010 trapped all New Yorkers indoors for a period of three endless days, during which time little was playing on television save this classic flick.  Three successive viewings of the film played in the background as I read feverishly for a comprehensive exam in Islamic travel literature and paced the apartment in which I was literally trapped.  By the time I got to a passage about Baghdadi ‘Abbasid travelers so heavily bundled in layers as they prepared to travel north to the frontier edges of dar al-Islam that they could no longer walk nor mount their rides, I looked up to catch a glimpse of the classic scene of Ralphie’s brother so smothered in puffy zippered warm things that he could no longer move the arms distended on either side of his snowsuits.   

I had to laugh at this weird nexus, but it was strange enough that I firmly resolved not to watch A Christmas Story again for at least a couple of years.

Christmas time is upon us again, and my new sister in law is planning to visit with my eldest brother for the weekend.  She asked me what we might do to pass the time together.  I was hard pressed for an answer, since we have no particular tradition for Christmas, and asked her if we ought to consider baking a gingerbread house.  But I didn’t reveal the real prospect that this weekend has to offer the Mahmood household: a face off between the New York Jets and the New York Giants.  You could not ask for a more tailor made event to bring each member of our very eclectic family in front of the same screen.  It might not be the warmest and fuzziest celebration, since allegiances under the same roof are not united.  But it will make for a historic Christmas weekend.  A Jets victory over the Giants would set just the right tone for a Triumphant Underdog 2012.  Merry Christmas to all, a Happy New Year, and GJH!

Philadelphia, in the words of Husain Naqvi, "a series of slums with no interconnecting city in sight."  Philadelphia, in the words of Dad, "what a dump."  Philadelphia, a city whose slim claim to a modicum of fame consists of the possession of a cracked bell that doesn't even ring. 

Philadelphia, I hope you enjoy your win tonight.  You have so little else to celebrate.

A three game winning streak is typically all it takes for Rex Ryan and Co. to start the swagger....and we all know how that turns out.  That's why it's actually encouraging to hear Bart Scott take a more dispassionate view of his team and what's needed,

"You have to be playing your best football. We’re still trying to play our best football, we’re still trying to play completely as a team. You can be playing great as a unit one week or as a unit [the] next week. But a Super Bowl team puts it together consistently. You have to be able to play three games -- if you get in the playoffs, three great games -- to get an opportunity to win the Super Bowl. You just don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m a Super Bowl team.’ You have to be able to get better, and you have to play a certain way.”

Scott, now a seasoned 30-something player, seems to have the right perspective to bring a maturing influence to his teammates, and to provide the kind of encouragement towards consistent cohesion and forward moving progress that will push our players playoff-ward.  He also seems to have the sort of high octane energy that counts.  During a recent interview on the Jets Network, Scott admitted a weakness for Mountain Dew, that fizzy acid green jolt of carbonation and unadulterated caffeine typically associated with gaming geeks and insomniac nerds stuffed in the basement computer centers of U.S. colleges across the country.

Mountain Dew: Elixir of the Jets?  I know our mantra is Go Jets Ho, but maybe this week while we watch our heroes, we can Do the Dew.

I spent a considerable number of weeks this semester discussing convivencia Spain with students.  The marvel of the Moorish heyday has left no small impression on the class, and has tempted me to put down my numerous Arabic tomes to consider the pursuit of Spanish fluency.  After all, what polished academic dares complete her course of studies without attaining proficiency in at least one Romantic language?

It should come as no surprise that all and sundry have turned me to the most recommended program for the acquisition of this Romance language: the hyper-romantic telenovela.

I have been told that if I wish to learn Spanish, I should put myself on a strict diet of these syrupy Spanish confections. Having been raised on a steady consumption of Bollywood, I should find this a particularly easy transition to make.

 The telenovela should not be confused with the American soap opera, in which the same series and the same heroine can be counted upon to reign supreme for decades on end.  There is no analogue for Susan Lucci in the telenovela realm.  Instead, the telenovela provides its audience with the pleasure of viewership for the indefinite and unknowable future.  There is no way of predicting when an escalating story arc may suddenly come to an abrupt finish.  The story unfolding before the viewer’s eyes may continue to blossom for months on end, or may come to sudden completion in a couple of dazzling, heady weeks.  The true devotee of the telenovela understands to appreciate the run, no matter how long, and to taste the sweetness of whatever successes the favored characters are able to find.

 

It is not especially difficult to imagine Mark Sanchez as the buff male lead of a particularly addictive Mexican production.  Recently spurned by his own fans during the Bills match, Sanchez has managed to woo his way back into New Yorkers’ good graces with the dramatic turnaround delivered in last week’s episode against the Redskins. 

The most engrossing serial productions leave the audience begging for more. Let's see what Mr. GQ can do!

Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Juliet was clearly not a Jets' fan.  Consider the names on our roster:  Plaxico Burress.  Antonio Cromartie.  Vladimir Ducasse.  Santonio Holmes.  LaDainian Tomlinson.  D'Brickashaw Ferguson.

It's almost as though Alexandre Dumas and William Shakespeare were jointly invited to name a cast of characters for a joint stage production of epic proportion, featuring swashbuckling heroes of true valor.


We all know that ink was never spilled for the sake of a great epic that didn't include a few great names.  We also know that no cracking adventure story ever made it into print without a strong element of peril at work.  So if there be peril in our upcoming skirmish with the Redskins, I say, bring it.  Our aristocrats know how to throw down the gauntlet and how to keep us on the edge of our seats until the very last.

My friend Katie recently made one of her spectacular but brief (comet-like!) appearances in New York City, courtesy the 30^th street station Bolt Bus, and handily coaxed me, despite the hecticness of the midterm season, into attending the screening of the soon to be released documentary, The Island President.  Because her brother Craig has garnered associate producer credit on the film, we unabashedly planted ourselves, with all the smugness of next of kin, in the front row in order to take in this extraordinary film.  It presents the life of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives—described as a modern day Atlantis, these islands are indeed veritable jewels adorning the Indian Ocean, and are the favored resort of Bollywood star and European adventurer alike.  Sadly, these idyllic islands are poised to sink ignominiously into the ocean waters that seem to lap with such limpid, gem-like beauty on each side.

Nasheed’s sudden ascent to power at age 41 placed him at the helm of the lowest lying country in the world, the leader of a nation literally washing away before the inhabitants’ own eyes, faced with little hope of survival unless a dramatic change in environmental policy is made by larger, neighboring countries (see: India.  And China.  No small feat to demand that these burgeoning industrial titans stem the tide of their ever increasing consumption and polluting output.) 

What the Maldives does have going for it is a leader shrewd enough to realize that he needs to maximize on, not bemoan, his islands’ decidedly underdog status in this skirmish.

Although the Maldives may be the last place on the mind of a Jets fan, it is interesting to note that Nasheed, in the midst of a PR campaign at the United Nations in New York City, and in preparation for the Copenhagen Climate Summit so crucial to his cause, nonetheless found time in his tireless schedule to grab a burger and a coke at a local sports bar, where he took in a match played by the Jets’ division rivals, the Buffalo Bills.  Although the audience is only afforded a short glimpse of the scene, we nonetheless see Nasheed and his close cabinet members taking in the Bills’ match, at first with interest but some natural degree of confusion, which seems to vanish as they get involved in the atmosphere of the New York sports bar and find themselves rooting for the local team with genuine enthusiasm.  I was struck by the image of the no-longer-quite-so-young and physically petite leader of a hapless, drowning nation rooting for a team that has only managed at its best moments to lose four consecutive Super Bowls (and that back in the 1960s) and which takes as its mascot the buffalo, an animal which was once King of the American Prairie and has since been rendered nearly extinct. 

This begs the question I posed in a previous post: does the cheering of a hapless team somehow mirror the constancy one must show in a foundering nation, even if the prospect of getting submerged forever flickers in the horizon? It seems to be that there must always be some of us who reserve their energies for championing the most important cause of all, that of the underdog. 

I only wish that Nasheed had chanced upon a Jets’ game, so that we could link his story more closely to that of our chosen team.  For which Jets’ fan does not understand the deep and abiding appeal of rooting righteously for the less favored team on the field? 

Today, it was the Bills who faced the Jets, and it was the Bills who seemed to demonstrate better consistency and crisper play supplemented by clear communication between teammates.  Bills’ player Stevie Johnson may have enjoyed his early celebration, in which he seemed to mimic a gunshot wound to the leg, the better to rub salt into Plaxico Burress’ injury while presaging a Bills victory.  And it seemed all too clear that the Jets would most certainly lose the game to a team demonstrating better coordination on all necessary fronts.  And yet, we dared to exhale at the very last when the maligned Plaxico and a shaky Mark Sanchez managed to finally, critically, connect, opening up the berth for Holmes' satisfying catch.  And although we were still rattled, we dared to believe in an imminent Jets win.  It would not matter how well placed the theatrical #13 was in the Bills’ end zone in the game’s final moments. The tide that seemed all too ready to drown the Jets suddenly washed them to the safety of higher ground. 

Go Plaxico Ho!

Not only do you have one of the best sounding names in the NFL today, you must also have webbed Spidey hands to have made that stunning one hand grab.  Plaxico: Hero of the Day. 

(Take that, Stevie Johnson.  You're still unlucky #13.  You mocked the ones who stole your win!)

Honorable mentions must go to the referees and to the fans.  For now, I will decline to comment on the performance of our QB: the fans at the stadium may have already said enough!

Is it worth pointing out that the Jets emerald green and white striped uniform bears a distinct resemblance to the Pakistani flag?  As the lady in the link posted by Leader of Jets Nation points out, "You have to have faith in your team."  Indeed, you must always have faith in your nation, especially when it is most difficult to muster the conviction.

(Or was this pep talk a mere ploy designed to get a nice photo of Mark Sanchez onto GJH? You make the call!)

Week 11 State of the Nation Address

This sums it up with surprising accuracy:

http://nyc.barstoolsports.com/random-thoughts/this-is-why-i-wont-raise-my-kids-to-be-metsjets-fans/

I know that we are all upset by the back to back losses by the Jets.  But Go Jets Ho! followers know how to NOT throw in the towel.

Speaking of towels, look at this gem that I discovered in the 2011 Official Casebook of the National Football League,

"A.R. 5.28    ILLEGAL UNIFORM
Third-and-6 on A21. A1 passes to the tight end who runs out of bounds at the A45. At the completion of the play, it is noticed that A2 has a towel that is approximately 20 inches long attached to the back of his belt. Written on the towel is “Superstar.” Ruling: A’s ball, first-and-10 on A45. A2 must be suspended for at least one down and the towel removed. He can remain in the game by taking a charged timeout if the equipment is repaired."

You've got to love a sport that thinks of every possible contingency, and how to properly adjudicate fashion violations. Now if only we could suspend women for wearing Ugg Boots on the subway, for at least one stop and the footwear removed.  She can return to the subway by charging a pair of respectable driving mocs on her AmEx after the boots are incinerated.

Go. Jets. Ho!!!

When I was a young girl, my parents would prepare a steaming cup of black tea laced with milk and a touch of sugar for me to drink each Saturday morning.  The extra time to wallow in sheets and pillows, followed by the warm rush of sugar, caffeine and fragrance, all produced a glowing sense of well being that set the stage for some of life's most enjoyable television viewing.  Of course, with two older brothers calling the shots on what to watch on our basement Sony, I knew that I had little hope of commandeering the set in order to take in episodes of Jem.  Instead, my brothers loyally plugged into NFL Films, which supplied viewers with a weekly glimpse at an old and epic football match.  A sonorous and darkly deep male voiceover narration set a deliberately dramatic tone. Grainy film stock shots of football fields streaked in ice and snow portrayed a stage for charged and weighty struggles between modern gladiators, rare men of valor and courage.  Mute slow motion shots only heightened the drama and inspired a feeling of near longing in each of us, as the hypnotic voice moved us small children to sit aghast at the unthinkable bravery of these brawny demigods who could always muster the courage to risk life and limb in a world otherwise bereft of joy,  love, light, and certitude.


At the very least, the documentary style presentation of old games only whetted my brothers' appetite to keep up with the new ones.  In their shared bedroom, each boy had set up small shrines to their respective favorite teams, the New York Giants and the New York Jets.  My eldest brother, tall even in his early years, slender but regal with long limbs resembling that of a young colt and a head full of shiny chestnut curls, kept a shiny blue and red helmet on his side of the room and often walked about the house mimicking the sounds of a capacity crowd cheering the Giants to victory.  He seemed to bask in the attention of this crowd, relishing the applause and praise as if exclusively meant for him. Meanwhile, my older brother, with his thick, nearly unmanageable shock of blue-black wavy hair, was short and extremely slender but with substantially chubby cheeks helping to hold up thick silver Flintstones brand glasses frames, which housed even thicker astigmatic lenses.  He cherished an enormous green foam finger festooned with the hopeful phrase "Jets #1" but it was our eldest brother who would see his team take the #1 spot in a fateful 1987 victory against the Denver Broncos.

No fairweather friend, my older brother continued to spread his fuzzy Jets blanket on a twin sized bed well into his years as a medical resident.  No eater of sour grapes, he sincerely cheered the Giants to victory in 2008 without a single drop of malice or envy and called his brother to congratulate him.  And he remains to this day, a dogged and devoted Jets fan.  It is to him that this blog is dedicated.

And it was because I admired this selfless devotion that I began to watch the Jets in the 2010-11 season.  Although I had gaped agog at the screen during NFL films as a child, I had remained timid about watching football games, assuming the whole affair to be a sacrosanct realm for boys alone.  I would repair to my room during these games and I would immerse myself in the world of fiction that was my second, perhaps my first, home and would leave the gladiators to my brothers.  For me, the mention of a Jets win or a Giants loss was merely the barometer by which I might judge my brother's mood and the degree to which he might be approached for decent conversation. 

Last year, it dawned upon me that surely, I could do better than this.  Having grown up with brothers, I do not naturally share the disdain for football that many households filled with sisters tend to espouse.  I have heard many a new girlfriend and wife piteously grieved or even raging angry over the utter and complete theft of Sunday from their autumn and early winter conjugal schedules.  I have listened to women declare that football play should be abolished in American high schools to protect their sons from injury, and have heard the sport touted as "fascist," played by "meatheads," and so on.  On the other end of the spectrum, there are those women so deeply in love with their spouse or paramour that they decide to jump on board and begin to learn at least the broad contours of the game.  Some of these women become genuinely well versed in the sport over time, and must be included in the pantheon of true fans, although their initial attraction to the sport may be judged by some as lacking in some essential quality.

I do not belong to any of these camps: I decided to throw my lot in with The Jets last year in order to keep my older brother company.  What I did not expect was that I would become utterly fascinated with the game.  Granted, as we move briskly into the current season, I still struggle to comprehend many of the rules and complexities of this chess like sport.  But I have been greeted most unexpectedly by a world full of cultural pageantry and rich with the opportunity to observe, to admire, to marvel, and to learn.  It is for this reason that I have started this blog.

I hope that you will take my up the clarion call, Go Jets Ho!  It was an expression that genuinely sprang to my lips from heaven knows where one particularly crucial game last year, during the push to the playoffs. And as I watch the Jets contend with the Patriots tonight, the score board reading 23-16 in favor of the Pats, I will definitely have cause to repeat: Go Jets Ho!