There are always a few moments during the NFL season where I really question why I watch football. It’s violent, it’s dangerous, it’s causing long-term health problems for its players. White, male owners get richer off the backs of largely black labor and the league has shown time and again it doesn’t care about women, gays or other “non-male” fans. Truly, it’s a deeply flawed sport, but gosh darn it I can’t seem to stop watching.
This Sunday, while watching the Giants get whopped by the Cowboys, I had another moment where I questioned why I watch grown men beat the tar out of each other for fun.
In a touchdown attempt, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones tried to force his way past a Dallas defender by lowering his helmet and smashing noggin-first into the helmet of Jabril Cox. It ended, sadly, quite predictably: Jones struggled to walk off the field and is most likely extremely concussed. And seriously, when I say extremely concussed, I mean EXTREMELY concussed. Danny Dimes couldn’t even walk to the locker room; the Giants needed to take him back on a cart.
Not only did Jones get his brain scrambled, the Giants lost running back Saquon Barkley early in the game to an ankle injury. And no, I’ll not be linking a video to that because frankly, his ankle turned in ways ankles shouldn’t turn and no one needs to see that. The Giants ALSO lost wide receiver Kenny Golladay to a knee injury (although as I write a report says it’s not a bad injury). Not great!
As soon as Jones got hurt, I pretty much stopped watching the game. I was already bummed out on football after I stayed up until midnight the night before to watch Alabama lose on a last-minute field goal. My Bama fandom is yet another irrational bandwagon that no one understands, but hey, let me live! So yeah, I was bummed out on football before I even started the Sunday slate of games. I didn’t even watch any of the 1pm games. Instead, I chose to watch The Many Saints of Newark…
Other Tidbits and Gabagool
I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK. OBVIOUSLY THIS IS YOUR SPOILER ALERT.
Okay, so The Sopranos is one of the shows I finally got around to watching while I was working from home in 2020. I immediately became obsessed with this world, and immediately realized my desire to be a mob wife, going so far as needing my boyfriend to stop me from buying a faux fur coat kickstart the look. Truly, and all kidding aside, I loved the show and it fed into my fascination with the mafia and organized crime. When I was in college, my favorite class was Organized Crime, taught by a former FBI agent from New York who had SO many stories about interacting with the Five Families, just as the prominence of organized crime lessened in New York City.
For those of you who haven’t seen The Sopranos, the new film from series creator David Chase might not intrigue you very much, but it should, and I thought the film was great. The series prequel focuses on Dickie Moltisanti, father to Tony Soprano’s nephew Christopher in the TV series. During the course of the series, Tony Soprano (played by the late and great James Gandolfini) notes how influential Dickie was on his life, so it makes sense that this prequel chooses to focus on Dickie rather than just young Tony. Set against the Newark race riots of the late 1960s, Many Saints captures a lot of the tension between the white and black communities and chooses not to sugar coat the racism that led to the city burning, though it did gloss over a lot of the black struggle and could’ve spent more time on the black characters in the film. The film does put some focus of the story on rising criminal boss Harold McBrayer, a black associate of Dickie’s who wants more than to simply be a runner for the Italians. We also get some good backstory on Tony Soprano, his mother and his father.
The casting of this film is about as pitch perfect as can be: Alessandro Nivola, who plays Dickie, should be nominated for an Oscar. He was so good at giving a nuanced portrayal of a bad man who seems to have genuine love in his heart, especially for Tony. The film also features Leslie Odom, Jr as Harold, Jon Bernthal as Johnny Soprano (Tony’s dad), Vera Farmiga as Olivia Soprano (Tony’s mother), Ray Liotta playing double-duty as “Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti and Salvatore Moltisanti (Dickie’s father and uncle), Michela de Rossi as Dick’s Italian bride (and later Dickie’s mistress), and perhaps most notably Michael Gandolfini, who plays the teenage version of Tony Soprano. As the son of James Gandolfini, Michael had quite the task of playing the younger version of the character who made his father so famous. The writers smartly allowed Michael to play teenage Tony as a smart, but unmotivated kid who has no real desire to get into the world of organized crime. He sees the toll it’s taken on his father and uncle, and he doesn’t want to be part of the crime syndicate his father tries to get him into. In the film, Tony is more interested in petty crime, usually in an interest of making money or as a result of boredom. But we all know how the story of Tony Soprano ends, with him going on to the lead the North Jersey crime family (and likely dying for it), and Michael played the part of a conflicted Tony well. Seeing him in that role was so surreal and I recognized so much of his father in him. From the small smirk on his face to the similar tone and cadence in his voice, this casting choice was terrific. He conveyed the best parts of Tony, the parts that made him almost (almost) redeemable in the original series and showed us that the criminal who was Tony Soprano was made, not born. Criminal Tony Soprano was made because of violence and revenge, two things this character was constantly exposed to. In this world, Tony probably didn’t have a chance to be anything other than a mobster.
Ray Liotta also gave a superb performance as brothers Dick and Salvatore Moltisanti. He got to be his trademark gregarious self as Dick, but he really shined in a very understated performance as Sal, the brother who was toiling away in jail after being convicted of murder. Sal spends all day reading and listening to jazz, preferring the black jazz artists to the white jazz artists, a small tidbit that was not lost on me. Vera Farmiga also really stood out, playing the cold and calculating Olivia Soprano, a woman so clearly struggling with mental illness and the difficulties of being the wife of a mobster. In the series, you don’t have much sympathy for Olivia - she is cruel, mean and unpleasant. But Farmiga is able to give you a sense of how hard it is to be a mob wife and how the emotional, physical and psychological abuse of that life can make one cold and distant.
Some of the supporting cast felt more like silly impressions of their older counterparts, but overall, I didn’t mind it. Seeing this film was kind of like seeing my friends again, you know, if my friends were budding gangsters, psychopaths and murderers. It was a nice compliment to the greatest show of all time and it was just darn good mob movie. I also have to shout-out my adopted hometown of Newark, who’s warts were on full display in this film. Newark is a much different place now and is truly leading the way on police reform, which was the reason the riots started in the first place. Newark is now considered one of the safer big cities in the nation and didn’t see a spike in crime during the pandemic like every other big city. The police also didn’t fire any shots in 2020, with deescalation techniques and community resources being deployed instead. If y’all are sleeping on Newark, you really shouldn’t.
Anyway, I’m gonna go rewatch the series now and find all of the Easter eggs that were sprinkled in throughout the movie. I’m not gonna lie - at the end of the movie when Tony is looking at his dead uncle (ordered to be killed BY HIS OTHER UNCLE JUNIOR and yes I was NOT OKAY after that reveal) and The Sopranos theme song starts playing, I was giddy and ready to run through a wall. I was so juiced up that I immediately had to rewatch the pilot episode. It was that good. So, if you have two free hours, I highly recommend you watch The Many Saints of Newark. Then I recommend you go to Jersey diner and get some gabagool and disco fries.
Other Tidbits, this time with racism, misogyny and homophobia
Literally as I write this, Raiders head coach Jon Gruden has resigned after MORE icky emails were leaked to the New York Times. While he was a broadcaster for Monday Night Football on ESPN, Gruden had sent emails to former Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen, and well, it’s just gross -
There’s no way Gruden was going to survive this, and what a stunning fall this was. Sadly, it was not terribly unpredictable; when I saw these leaked emails, they offended me, but they didn’t surprise me. I can feel a post about this brewing in my brain, so I will save my thoughts for a bigger, broader commentary later this week.
All I can say is that Urban Meyer must be feeling pretty darn good right about now…
Also, congrats to my Cardinals who are now 5-0 to start the season. WOOOOOO!