"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

As much as I'm prone to the "if-I-just-forgo-sleep-and-work-through-the-night-I-can-pretty-much-finish-anything-I-really-need-to-get-done" mentality, it's probably not a good idea when it comes to painting. (Or, actually, anything else for that matter...)

I can generally conquer mental fatigue but when my arm has been elevated for 6 straight hours like I'm Andrea Zuckerman or something, it's time to make the Verizon call to the bullpen. In this case, the bullpen=my bed.

In Yankee news, Marcus Thames agreed to a minor-league contract with the Yankees to give themselves more left-field options. Thames, who turns 33 next month, began his major-league career with the Yankees in 2002 and homered on his first big-league pitch that June 10 off Arizona's Randy Johnson.

Interesting move. I'm into it. Mainly because I'm just so happy to read any Yankee news. They could have said, "Yankees finalizing 8-year contract with Julio Franco" and I'd probably be on board.

Plus, I feel like the more arbitrary the acquisition, the more my interest is piqued and consequently sated. Very clever, Cashman. It's kind of like when I see someone with a completely ridiculous get-up and I always end up complimenting it, regardless of whether or not I actually like it. I think it's because it's like begging for something to be said about it, and, well, as a general rule, it's better to be nice than a jerk.

I should probably just not say anything at all, I guess.

Yeah, couldn't have just finished the last letter. 9 Days left to finish this. It's gotta be a productive week. If for no other reason, then because it'll drive me bananas looking at an unfinished wall, as the last thing I see before I fall asleep every night.

Speaking of things I see before bed, I was looking for a movie on demand last week to put me to sleep and my interest is piqued by some tongue-in-cheek flick called "How to Be a Serial Killer." Pretty much fit the bill for what I was looking for in terms of short movie, somewhat entertaining, that I don't have to think about it.

But before I order it, I go online to watch a trailer, and it was then that I realized that I was staring at the #1 Ultimate List-Topper in "Worst Possible Things Someone Could Find in Your Google Browser."

I don't know why this is so hilarious to me. But I keep breaking into fits every time I think about it and the possibilities around someone coming over, asking to borrow my computer, and seeing this on the screen:

I'm sure this will now be the last time I'm ever allowed to use the internet at work.

In other news, the Saints beat the Colts 31-17 last night in an improbably boring Super Bowl. My sister begrudgingly came out with me to watch it, and right before we leave my apartment groans, "Oh God. Everyone's going to be talking about football. I can't do this."

The depths of her hatred for football know no bounds, as she sees it as a cruel impediment to baseball. "All I ever want to do on the Super Bowl is make cupcakes with little footballs on them. That's it." And she didn't even get to do that. But on the plus side, she did, once again, win, since every year she roots for only 1 thing:

"I'm rooting for it to be over."

When Peyton had the ball on 4th and goal, I told her that this is it. They don't score here, it's officially (well, unofficially I guess) baseball season.

She also couldn't figure out why me and my buddies were so bored with the game for about 85% of it. Mainly we whined about how this was supposed to be an offensive shit show. And while theoretically, a 16-17 game should be prime SB situations, we felt jilted.

My sister put up with it like a champ, though, even when I treated her to a classic case of "Kris inventing trivia anecdotes that should never be shared since in all likelihood they are 100% fabricated." BUT THIS TIME I WAS RIGHT. Sort of.

"You know where the Super Bowl came from?"
"Ugh, are we still talking about football? No more football."
"Some guy's daughter was playing with a toy or something. And it inspired the concept of Super Bowl."
"Are you kidding me with this? That makes no sense at all."
So there's that. And now the next task at hand is getting through the always miserable Monday after the Super Bowl.

That took me about 5 hours. And it's like not even 1/3 of the wall. I may or may not have underestimated the scope of work for this undertaking. With a little less than 10 days left til P&C Day, I have my work cut out for me.

And with the Super Bowl going on today, my level of productivity may or may not be somewhat compromised.

On a side note, if anyone needs any paint, I am in wild excess of it, thanks to the Benjamin Moore employee who refused to sell me a pint of paint (DESPITE THE FACT THERE WAS A SIGN ON THE COUNTER THAT SAID, "SAMPLE PINT CANS AVAILABLE $7.00.") Suffice to say it was a long, arduous battle that was going nowhere good.

Actually, that's not true. One good thing came out of it.

So after the guy tells me 1 quart covers 100 square feet, after I tell him the entire wall isn't even 100 square feet, after he tells me he doesn't have pint sizes, after I tell him I'm looking at an offer for pint sized cans, and after another 25 minutes of aggravating back and forth about why I can't get the pint, I ask him, "Ok, what am I supposed to do with 5 quarts of paint when I need like 1/15 of that?"

His response=gold.

"Well, do you have kids?"

"Seriously?"

"Well, if you have kids, you can use the extra for fingerpainting."

That's right. He wanted me to give me non-existent children 5 cans of latex wall paint so they could get some fingerpainting use out of it.

Normal.

Alllllmost done with the sketching. Just gotta put in the little doorways along the bottom. Some awnings. Maybe a couple of street lights. And then it's PAINT TIME.

I went out this morning to Benjamin Moore, even though I kind of wanted to wait til I was fully done with the pencil outline first. But for some reason I feel like the paint store is open for about 23 minutes a week, and this might be a rare opportunity to actually lock up the paint purchases.

So I go to the paint place on 87th and York, and in response to every. single. question. I asked, the man working there rattled off some boilerplate monologue about the differences between flat, eggshell, and semi-gloss finish.

I'm not even kidding. Even when I asked if I could get a size smaller than a quart. Very well played, B-Moore guy. I stopped asking questions after the 3rd time. "FINE I'LL TAKE THE QUART-SIZED. IN EGGSHELL. I DON'T CARE ANYMORE."

Genius. A wildly unhelpful man leveraged his gruffness into sales of 5 paint cans. And a paint brush.

I'm pretty sure I just got jedi-mind-tricked.

Well played, sir. You're like a more clever version of Amtrak Julie.

I was reminded of a scene in Ace Ventura yesterday, after my sister--who is insanely brilliant/talented and basically this otherwordly prodigy/pundit in all things art--saw the work-in-progress wall.

And the scene it reminded me of?

"Well, that's a fine painting, Pollina. But unfortunately, real painters have to worry about a little thing called...PERSPECTIVE."

Sigh.

So...Day 3=more an exercise in seeing exactly how much use I can get out of a 2" by 1" pink eraser. HOWEVAH, I have a feeling tonight is going to be aggressively productive. Mostly because I just am impatient to start the painting part of it, and I know how I am: I'll stay up til 5am killing myself to finish this, which will consequently lead to me crashing Friday afternoon. I really wish the human body didn't require any sleep at all.

That, and I wish there was a function on email systems where you could postdate an email. Like if I remembered an email I had to send out at like 3am, I could just write it and schedule it for delivery for 8am...because really, anything you write at that hour is going to be overshadowed by the backstory behind it. It's like Christmas morning for my mom every time she gets an email with a timestamp past 1am. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING AWAKE AT THIS HOUR? STORY?"

My birthday's coming up...there's 2 gift ideas right there. Sleepless physiology. Postdated emails.

I may never again be as thrillingly overjoyed as I was on February 3, 2008. I used to think this was actually kinda sad, but now I just am happy to have known that unique breed of sublime euphoria at least once in my lifetime.

In honor of this special day that I can only assume is on the queue for "Events to Eventually Be Declared Federal Holidays," here's a reprint of the column I wrote during the Giants Super Bowl XLII ticker tape parade:

About 50 blocks south of me the New York Giants are holding court in the Canyon of Heroes. Thousands are flooding lower Manhattan in an overwhelming parade of gratitude. Thank you, Big Blue. For doing for your fans what the Red Sox did for Boston in 2004. We needed more than just a Super Bowl, and somehow the Giants gave it to us.

They didn’t simply win an NFL championship. They toppled the most arrogant, “flawless,” and powerful force ever to take the field. They stripped down Brady to reveal he is, in fact, mortal. They humiliated a man who spent the 2008 season calling pass plays on 4th and goal, running up the score, and perfecting not just an army of athletes, but a condescending smirk he bestowed upon losing coaches on 18 different occasions.

Every Brady sack, every pass completion, every tackle–they weren’t just “playing to win.” It was like watching a team transcend themselves. Yes, the Giants fought their way to the Super Bowl, but never had they looked like this.

They were playing on a different level as they bounded into history on a kind of karmic boomerang, bringing everything that had happened full circle and into a surreal realm of poetic justice…

Spygate

This all started with New York. It seems fitting it should end with New York. I don’t know if I think the Patriots are really cheaters or not, but their response to Spygate allegations were even more offensive than illegal sideline taping. New England fans were giddy over the 40+ point wins Belichik repeatedly posted, but maybe this gave the league an all-access pass to the Pats’ playbook–as the season wore on, the Pats’ offense became less of a mystery, with the team barely scraping by against teams like Baltimore and Philly.

And now? The Giants ended the gluttonous run by holding them to the fewest points the Pats scored all season.

Plax’s Outlandish Prediction…and Brady’s scoff

Why was this such a big deal? He predicted a modest score for the Super Bowl, and people acted like he claimed he could win with one arm tied behind his back. Not to mention the fact the Patriots unequivocally had the market cornered on overconfidence. (“19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots” was available on presale for $14.95. Amazon should have distributed it anyway–they would have made double the sales off Giants fans.)

Maybe Brady was right to laugh at the measly 17 points. But it was certainly enough to beat him.

Tom Brady’s Transformation

I’m picturing an E! True Hollywood Story about Brady, chronicling his golden boy days, and then right before a commercial break we get, “Coming up: From 18-1 to done.” Throughout the season, every clip of the MVP QB showed him laughing and twinkling, kissing babies, kicking it with the glitterazzi, helping little old ladies across the street, etc. After Big Blue’s defense kicked him into the turf, he could do nothing more than sheepishly purport his ankle had been bothering him.

And in a spectacular display of maturity befitting to a man regarded as God’s right-hand guy, Brady has opted out of the Pro Bowl.

Fourth Down and Irony

What did Stephen Gostkowski do all season, really? He’s like the intern you give the meaningless jobs to just to get them out of your hair. “Ok FINE, you want to go in? Go make the extra point kick.” Belichik’s arrogance and penchant towards general bad sportsmanship had him going for it all season on fourth down, even when up by, well, hundreds of points. The final game of his season proved no different, when he opted to pass on 4th and 13 in the 3rd quarter.

Well, somewhat different. The difference between 3 points and none. The difference between overtime and aborted perfection. Belichik impaled himself on his own sword.

United They Stood, Divided They Fell

When the Pats beat the Rams in 2002 for their first SB win, they entered the stadium introduced as a team, rather than as individual starters. A lot of their success this year has been attributed to their ironclad unity and well-oiled chemistry.

But with one second left in their final game and one loss left in their record, their fearless leader abandoned ship and hightailed it across the field prematurely–bookending his failed season with classless lies obscuring his tainted tactics.

19-0 to 18-1

The more I look at these numbers, the less they resemble W-L counts, the more the numbers 19 and 18 stand out, and the more I’m sublimely grateful to have a new chant to replace 1918.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Feburary 3 marked the biggest win of the New England Patriots’ history. And now six years later, the same date will be remembered as their biggest defeat. The symmetry is just otherwordly.

* * *

This past Sunday undoubtedly ranks among the All-Time best nights of my entire life–from the second I walked into my favorite bar in upper NYC at 3:12pm (wearing an old school Giants helmet) til the second I walked out of it, exactly 12 hours later (helmet still on).

It’s been 3 days, but I still have the 4th quarter of the game running on a mental loop, I still get chills when I think of Plax’s game-winning TD, and I’m still reliving the night the Giants restored faith in New York by bringing everything full circle. The night we witnessed a genesis of heroes.

I ran into a guy at said bar, that I had met once before–on the day the Yankees had just lost to Detroit in the ALDS. I had ventured to that very same bar on October 7, 2006, to suffer a litany of abuse, jeers, and psychological warfare. And after watching the Giants rise to glory in the same place where I’ve watched the Yankees fall from grace, this guy says, “Remembering that night makes this one even more amazing. Because we’re on the other side of it now.”

We were. We don’t pretend to be tortured Boston or Buffalo or Chicago or any other hapless sports town. New York wasn’t aching for a ring, we needed a renewed allegience. We didn’t need a title, we needed a hero.

It was a tall order, but it’s been said that heroism is not just in the man, but in the occasion. Like beating Boston as harshly and dramatically as they beat us 4 years ago. Bringing the pride and glory back to the New York in the most satisfying and stunning way possible. The ticker tape parade ended earlier today, but the streets are still pulsing with lingering electricity and delirium.

So maybe their 14-6 record proves the Giants were indeed flawed. But to New York, their season was perfect.

Ah, 3am. Apparently, my aversion to getting a good night's sleep really knows no bounds. Which can only mean 1 thing: baseball is right around the corner. (Or that I'm a 5-year old, I guess.)

Happy 18 and 1 Day!

And happy 2-minute week warning til P&C Day!