New Year, New Column

January can be a thoroughly depressing month. In fact, it’s ranked #10 on my list of favorite months:

  1. July (prime summer month, 4th of July weekend, SundressFest VI)
  2. June (almost-prime summer month)
  3. October (Hunt, football, foliage, Halloween)
  4. August (end-of-summer panic is its only blemish)
  5. December (holiday time, lots of days off)
  6. May (start of summer, prime NBA and NHL playoff time)
  7. March (St. Patrick’s Day, sometimes celebrated on 3 different days, March Madness)
  8. November (see December)
  9. September (fantasy football kickoff helps with painful summer-to-fall transition)
  10. January (NFL playoffs are its only saving grace, holiday lights come down)
  11. April (it’s always colder than expected, early season baseball depressing)
  12. February (end of football season, shitty weather, nothing on TV on weekends, ugh)

But as you see, it IS playoff time, which means we all need to adjust our social schedules. That said make Saturday an HBO on Demand night. Grab a quiet dinner. But don’t make the mistake of being too hungover to go out bright and relatively early on Sunday afternoon for the best bar parties Hoboken has to offer.

The fun only gets better with the Giants and Eagles involved in a winner-take-next-round playoff tussle. And there’s nothing better than beating a Philly team whose fan base acts like the Steelers or Cowboys in terms of Super Bowl rings while not owning any.

Eagle fans will always say the Giants Super Bowl win last year — the most riveting run in the history of any playoffs in any sport — was a fluke. That Eli sucks. That Tyree got lucky. That they’re soft. That their fans are of the bandwagon-only variety.

So when Sunday comes and it’s 11:00 AM, you can be in two places:

1) At home, watching either Superbad on Starz or plotting how not to go to breakfast with your new friend.

2) Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to embark on a day of drinking, eating, eventually making bad decisions, and taking advantage of a rare day when it’s a Hoboken-only crowd that is much more open to conversation than your average Saturday night at McSwiggans or Madison.

That’s how it goes on a Sunday in January in Hoboken: The bars are packed much the same way they are during Sunday nights at the shore. The attitude of everyone involved is just…different. There is something truly rebellious, almost prohibited, about going heavy on liquid dark or clear on a day or night before you have to go back to work. The fun factor goes up by ten, and the fact that no one gets dressed up brings their collective guards down tenfold.

So enjoy Eagles-Giants Sunday. Whatever plans you have on Saturday night…Do the right thing if you know what’s good for you:

Cancel ’em.

Good to see NBC hired Matt Millen for his expert analysis for their pre-game show.

Costas: “So Matt, your record in Detroit was even worse than Isiah Thomas’s as a GM. You drafted 76 wide receivers in the first round. So what do you think the Giants have to do to stop Brian Westbrook?

Millen: “How would I know? I never even sniffed the playoffs during my tenure. I can’t believe you people are even stupid enough to pay me for my opinion!”

A recent Times Op-Ed column claims that because of the economy, hooking-up has replaced old-fashioned dating.

 

 

 

But if the columnist, whose name is a strangely-appropriate Chuck Blow, had ever been to Hoboken, he would quickly realize that hooking-up is invariably the first step to dating.

And don’t bother writing me to say I’m wrong if you go the whole Match or eHarmony route. It doesn’t count. And that’s a shame all of you will have to live with for the rest of your life, anyway…

I finally saw the aforementioned Superbad in its entirety on a slow New Year’s Eve Day up in Vermont, and I won’t even hesitate to write that it’s already in my Top 10 of all-time, and easily the best high school comedy adventure flick of all-time.

So what is my Top 10? Funny you asked:

  1. Shawshank Redemption
  2. Wall Street
  3. Karate Kid I
  4. A Beautiful Mind
  5. Rudy
  6. Superbad Anchorman
  7. Goodfellas
  8. Something’s Gotta Give
  9. Field of Dreams

Other receiving votes: Office Space, Die Hard I, Stripes, There’s Something About Mary, Blood Diamond, Seabiscuit, Gladiator, Caddyshack, Batman Begins, History of the World Part I (although there never was a Part II)

Just thought I’d share.

Does it worry any of you who voted for that guy who claimed all year that, “A vote for John McCain is a vote for four more years of George W. Bush” is acting exactly like George W. Bush.

If the span of only a few weeks, Obama has already adopted Bush’s Iraq and economic policy. And his cabinet doesn’t exactly scream change.

As they say, it’s easy to talk the talk, but, well…you know the rest.

Speaking of politics, would you want to be mayor of Hoboken given the insane task of handling a budget that has ballooned to $122 million and whose residents were blindsided with a 47 percent tax increase last year?

Either way, it looks like three candidates (minus the current mayor) will be the favorites:

Peter Cammarano, who Hoboken411 will paint as the next Joseph Stalin over the next five months.

Dawn Zimmer, who didn’t send Hoboken411 blowhard Perry Klaussen an email offering an opinion in timely fashion on some issue last year, thereby further damaging the already fragile ego of a man who reminds us how hard he works on an hourly basis. Zimmer is now considered as eeeevil as Chris Campos, and therefore doesn’t get the kind of love she received when she paid Klaussen to handle her website during the campaign.

Note to Perry (who is such an a-hole that he inserted himself into Hoboken’s Wikipedia page as a “notable resident” in the same breath as Frank Sinatra and Eli Manning): Nobody gives a shit.

Beth Mason, who will make the media’s treatment of Obama look hostile compared to the foreplay she’ll receive from Klaussen on a daily basis.

Pretty simple math here: Mason and Zimmer split the so-called reform vote, thereby giving Cammarano the win without needing a runoff.

One of the best meals in town in still Baja on 14th and Washington. And you won’t find better sangria just about anywhere.

I think it’s pretty clear now that Pennington or Favre wasn’t the right answer.

Well, at least January brings one entertaining aspect back into the fold:

Shore house interviews.

It’s always fascinating to hear those who entered a beach house last year for the first time as a new share suddenly complain that they don’t want to have to deal with any fresh faces this time around.

Uh, wasn’t that you last year around this time?

So if thinking of running a beach house, be sure to add some randoms to the already-established mix.

Otherwise, the whole spirit of the co-ed rental is broken.

What can I say?

Practice makes perfect.