Monday, Monday

Oy...whatta weekend. So many topics to cover, so this will be more stream-of-consciousness, Spinal Tap Mk IV vibe....

1) Neil Young at Shea's Friday night - Awesome, awesome concert. Easily the best show I've seen all year and probably the best I've seen since the Cream reunion at MSG in 2005. His wife Pegi opened the show with a nice country-folk set. Neil came out for an acoustic set that was something special. He played my personal favorite ("After The Goldrush") and pulled out some surprises ("Harvest" and "Mellow My Mind"). After a break, the full band came out and blew our minds. He opened with two Crazy Horse classics, "The Loner" and "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and never let up. I'm definitely picking up his new album Chrome Dreams II if only for the staggering "No Hidden Path" which clocked in at 25:13 during the concert! Encores were "Cinnamon Girl" and "Like a Hurricane". My friend and I were floored by the whole experience - it's been 20 years since I've seen a show at Shea's and the grand ole' theater did not disappoint. There were some VIP sightings - former Mayor Masiello was sitting four rows in front of us and we did notice, walking past us in the aisle....Thurman Thomas?? I guess ol' Thermal digs Rust Never Sleeps.

2) Sabres vs. Carolina Saturday night - OK, the game was of secondary importance...Buffalo steamrolled the hapless Canes en route to an 8-1 laugher. The real fun began when my buddy and I went out after the game. We ran into the wife of a prominent local businessman who was having a girls night out with her friend. Turns out my friend knows her well, so we were hanging with them most of the evening. They were a lot of fun and even managed to get me dancing. The real revelation was when said wife told me she used to be a Playboy Bunny way back in the day (in the Playboy Club, not in the magazine). I'm not really used to women telling me they had any affiliation with Playboy, so I tried to do the polite thing, but there really is no etiquette for a moment like that. So I looked at her chest.

She was very nice about the whole thing, so no damage done (I think).

3) Bills vs. Redskins on Sunday - It's a good thing Joe Gibbs is suffering from early onset dementia because we really should have lost this game. But for Washington's inexplicable failure to run out the clock in the 4th and Gibbs's mental fog in forgetting you can't call consecutive timeouts to freeze the kicker, we'd be staring down a 5-7 hole today. The defense played superbly, as usual, especially shutting down Clinton Portis. Trent Edwards played well, but he's not setting the offensive world on fire. We'll get nowhere with more zero-offensive touchdown performances like yesterday. Our defense is game, but it ain't the 2000 Ravens D. Once we get healthy (read: the return of Marshawn Lynch), we have be more productive in the red zone.

Also, Joe Gibbs should retire before he embarrasses himself and his organization any further. Has anyone tarnished such an impeccable legacy in so short a time span? That a man who won 3 Super Bowls with 3 different quarterbacks failed to remember what any 7th grader knows about calling consecutive timeouts is a sad commentary on how much the game has passed him by.