Sunday, August 26, 2007

Gestes Top Jints

Watch Leon Washington's cut on his touchdown pass as many times as you like. He made a cut that, I swear, split him in half. The Giants did not follow the half with the ball. Without that play, it might only have been a 13-12 game, which, as I said earlier, would have made it like any other preseason game between the two teams. Naturally, when I looked up stats and whatnot, all the buzz was about the kind of game Eli Manning had. Of course. And so it goes.

Not that anyone is reading this, but I like to pretend I have to be beholden to the truth. I mean, I write about my life as a Jets fan on this site, so how could I possibly be the kind of person who would hold to standards of the truth? I am not exactly consumed by guilt about this; as my wife said to me about my taking the rap for something dumb I did around the house (I don't remember what it was, but that could describe thousands of things): "Yeah, well, it wasn't like you killed dogs or anything." No. No I did not. Not even one dog, let alone more than thirty. What can I tell you. Michael Vick has raised the bar on horror.

So, what was I going on about? Oh, the truth. A correction on the stadiums to be at the Meadowlands. On Gardner's old rubric of intelligences, my spatial intelligence would have been good enough to find a good diner in Secaucus without knowing any better, but I'm not good with graphs, diagrams and mapping skills. It took me a second there, but now I realize that, contrary to what I earlier thought, the two shots of the stadium do correspond to one another. Let's take a look at those pictures of the planned facility again.


Three tiers of the stadium in the round can be seen, except that one tier is missing in the fourth round nearest us. That was what confused me. Once I corresponded the image above with the one below, I saw in each of them a tower that peaks with an art deco spiral staircase at the edge of an enormous luxury box structure overlooking a lower tier of stands.


Take a look at that. Impressive and profoundly elitist, but that's sports. I was initially confused because I would have thought that a smaller set of outdoor stands would have been used at the end zone, not along the sidelines. But there we are - that's the shape of things.

The staircase encased in the glass tower puts me in the mind of Ibrox Stadium (I realize I've had the Old Firm on the brain lately, but then I'm the only one reading this, so whatever). It's a characteristic touch that, as far as I can see, is strictly for show.


If you look closely at this shot, you see the beautiful glass block structure framed by red brick peeking out in the far corner, a stairwell that, although it's a little hard to see, puts me in the mind of our stadium to be. I love stadium architecture, and needless to say, it's been a long time since a football stadium was built in this country with aesthetic touches that were strictly non-utilitarian.


This is what the other side of the stairwell looks like from the outside.

However, there is absolutely nothing to compete with the pointed roof structure of the new

Indianapolis Colts stadium to be - a football field house. Ridiculous, yes, but (and can one say this about anything in football?) exquisite, nonetheless.

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