The Pilgrimage

Jerry Seinfeld, after essentially disappearing for a decade following his show's finale, appeared in every relevant publication last year to promote his film Bee Movie. Each time, the writer interspersed the story with references to old Seinfeld jokes, as if the questioner was secretly hoping that Seinfeld would later read the interview and chuckle quietly to himself, secretly happy that he had discovered another die-hard fan of his work. I can specifically recall two separate interviews that concluded with the writer ending the last relevant paragraph and typing "not that there's anything wrong with that" as a separate sentence to end the piece.

Similarly, it is tempting to populate a recollection of a Bruce Springsteen concert with allusions to lyrics and song titles. Of course, I am secretly hoping that Bruce will read this, chuckle quietly to himself, and decide to invite me onstage to dance at his next show. A game manager might chose to write responsibly and abstain from too many admittedly corny references. A gunslinger, however, would take the complete opposite approach and decide to sling as many of them as possible.

Seeing The Boss at Giants Stadium has to be on everyone's bucket list. I can finally cross this one off of mine; now, all I have to do is purchase the various types of buckets that make up the remainder of my list and I'm set. The experience is probably a lot like seeing Brett Favre at Mall of America Field.

The concert itself was on a Saturday night. I began the pilgrimage to the Meadowlands from my campus in Philadelphia, stopping by Rutgers University in New Brunswick to pick up an old high school friend. This leg of the trip was marked by my aggressive driving and devil-may-care demeanor, as well as the wind tossing my hair heroically in the wind as I grew to be 6'4''. Even thinking about Bruce has this effect on people. I would have made better time in getting to my friend's house at Rutgers, but the weather was a bit foggy and the streets were clogged with disappointing football teams. Damn you, Cook-Douglas Fightin' Wildcats!

I left Philly at 12:30 and was in New Brunswick by 1:45. We made the trip back to our hometown, where a third friend was meeting us in order to drive us to Giants Stadium. This third friend is without a doubt the biggest Springsteen fan I have ever met. To wit: he called the entire Super Bowl halftime set list – accurate both in terms of which songs and in which order. Second, he called that Springsteen would play two relatively obscure tracks when I saw him live in Philadelphia. He has also seen Bruce sixteen times in concert.

We were in our hometown from 2:30 until 3:00 watching the conclusion to a college football game. Central Connecticut State was playing Sacred Heart on a network known as MSG+ HD, which not only proves how we will watch any scrub college football game under any circumstances, but that my plans to gamble heavily on the Oklahoma Thunder preseason is now only the second most pathetic thing of October 2009.

We finally traded for enough shotguns and struck out for the show. Sadly, the fourth member of our party got dysentery and died, ironically, of a bullet ricochet. A pizza place on Route 22 provided the pre-tailgating nourishment for our party. Garlic doesn't give me bad breath, but it will make my lips taste pretty bad until I brush my teeth – forcing me to abandon my plans to kiss Gary Tallent during "Jackson Cage".

Traffic wasn't too bad, since most of the last chance power drives had taken place the previous night. I couldn't fully grasp the significance of seeing The Boss play on his home turf until I caught sight of the iconic Giants Stadium sign atop the side of the stadium in the parking lot. Finding a parking spot, seeing dozens of Jersey license plates, watching frumpy old people happily act like they're twenty – it was good to be home.

Tailgating from 4:00 until 8:15 is an experience that is very similar to attending a family reunion. I felt an undeniable but inexplicable bond of affection running through a large group of moderately weird looking people. My favorite part of the entire experience was how hundreds of cars were each blaring classic Springsteen songs to the extent where if you walked from your tailgating site to the port-o-potty, every five steps you'd hear a riff from a different track.

Interactions with strangers at tailgates are always fun. The combination of E Street-generated goodwill and tons of grilled meat made everyone a little happier. A neighboring woman approached us and offered grilled sausage and pepper sandwiches, which were delicious, but the grilled zucchini she gave us next was somehow better. I saw a guy who looked exactly like Vinny Testaverde's younger brother – down to the curly swept back hair and goofy posture. Another guy looked exactly like Stan Van Gundy. Actually, considering that we were in Jersey, it probably would have been more surprisingly if I saw a guy who didn't look like Stan Van Gundy.

At 7:45, it was time to finally head onto the field. This was no time to gunsling and risk accidentally ending up at a Bon Jovi concert at Metrostars Stadium. I spent $100 for the right to stand on the floor, roughly one hundred feet away from the stage. One of my friends who met us there had recently sacrificed a bull to Poseidon, and thankfully the lord of the wine-dark sea smiled on us and blessed us with the ability to move up in seating until we were forty feet away from the stage. That, and the fact that my friend knew a state trooper who ushered us closer to the stage. Also, I just finished reading Odysseus. I have always been a firm believer that poetry should either be epic or nonexistent, so I enjoyed it.

Having floor seats at Giants Stadium to Bruce Springsteen is the kind of sentence that you like to run over and over and your mind, much like the sentence "I have tickets to the midnight showing of The Replacements VI: Replace This!" Legions of happy faces smile back at you when you look up into the stands from the aluminum-covered floor. To be honest, there were moments where I enjoyed pretending that I was a member in the band and they were all looking at me. Yes, it's lame, but if you ever have the experience you'll understand what I'm talking about. Plus, the history of Giants Stadium was flashing through my head – Parcells, LT, the Emmitt Smith in '93, Keyshawn, Vincenzo, 41-0.

The first song was a new one specially written to close Giants Stadium, which needless to say was poignant and effective. His first actual song was an awesome rendition of "Out in the Street" off of The River. Adam Sandler covered the song pretty well, but Bruce did it better. He played the entire track listing from the album Born in the U.S.A, which is fortunate since I believe the following concert he played all of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Springsteen also gave two fantastic, fiery speeches, one coming as fireworks erupted across the top of the stadium. And, he closed with "Thunder Road".

Frequently, during concerts, Springsteen will invite a small child from the rows closest to the stage to sing the chorus to a song or for a quick dance. This happened several times during the show, most notably during "Dancing in the Dark", as Bruce responded to a sign "asking for a 13^th birthday 'dance'" and pulled the girl onstage for thirty seconds near the end of the song. As long as this girl doesn't grow up to star in an overrated sitcom, I will remember it as the finest moment of the night. A living legend creating a birthday moment for a little girl combined with the cultural signficiance of that song was almost too much to handle. By the time Bruce – aided by 60,000 backup singers – finished crooning "it's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win", any doubts that a 60-year-old man could kill it were removed.

On the way out, I noticed a few of his older fans that looked like they had 35 years worth of Springsteen concert memories written into their smiling faces. I imagine that they keep coming back year after year not for the chance to hear "Born to Run" for the millionth time, but rather to revel in all the finer details of a Bruce show that make it so special. For me, it was the smile on the girl's face as she left the stage, the cracks in the Big Man's hands when he crushes a solo, and the spittle flying between Bruce and Stevie when they sing so close together on a shared mike that they could kiss.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

My friend's BlackBerry was originally only taking photos in sepia, which I assumed was a tribute to that classic Springsteen track "Tough Times Down at the Sepia Factory". Fortunately, the error was fixed, and here are the highlights:

Huge banner seen outside the stadium on the way in. The silhouettes of the band members, which you can kind of see on the left part of the image, were the best part.

View of stage, before seating upgrade.

This is actually the image from the when I attended the ceremony where the Giants retired Kerry Collins's jersey.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce

"...from the coastline to the cities all the little pretties raised their hands!"

View of the stage, after the seating upgrade.

Stan Van Gundy!

I love this guy for wearing this jersey to the Bruce show.

Keep Pushing 'Till It's Understood

Move-in day for incoming freshman at my college was Thursday September 3^rd. I remember my own first day at school – butterflies, handshakes, forced smiles, teary mother, nascent friendships – and I became nostalgic watching a new generation of kids cliché their way down a new path full of journeys.

Some freshman looked overwhelmed with the sheer size of their new campus and its enormous student body. An uneasy mixture of ambition, angst, and Axe hung in the air. As with all freshmen, the men mainly wore cargo shorts and ill-fitting polo shirts and the women mainly wore nothing. Much like that recent Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow film Butt Cancer, I thought this was in incredibly bad taste.

New Student Orientation, or NSO, is among the most fun times on campus since dozens of open parties are thrown each night. Two friends of mine, also juniors, joined me in going to a few such events last night. I acknoweledge that I am too old to be doing this, but my alternatives were playing a Madden 1995 emulator and watching a rerun of Hung.

Parties during NSO frequently have crowds spilling out from houses onto the street. Campus security prioritizes student safety over actually enforcing any laws. Upon entry at the first party, I heard some guy brag that he had “eight beers, three shots, plus some jungle juice…no, was it nine beers? Yeah, I had ten beers!” Fortunately, I had taken him with the first overall pick in my Fantasy Drinking league so I knew that my team, Lendale Lite, was going to win its first round matchup against Dante’s DWInferno.

Too soon?

The conventional frat party was fun enough, despite my sobriety. The dance floor was sufficiently awkward, with enough people making the “hey check it out I’m fist pumping lol” joke that I knew it was time to go. We left around midnight and decided to see what else there was to see.

We crashed a hipster party. I braced myself for the worst. I assumed the women would be sporting ironic moustaches and the men would have ironic ovaries.

There were indeed enough snobbish hipsters to prevent me from fully enjoying myself or having self-confidence due to the fact that I weigh more than 45 pounds. That being said, the vast majority of them were wonderfully friendly and welcoming despite the fact that I was clearly a non-ironic fish out of mainstream water at their party.

It became clear moments after entry that the difference between the two parties could not have been more pronounced. The hipsters had set up a giant projector and screened Fast Times at Ridgemont High across the side of their house. I saw Damone impregnate a girl on a sixty foot screen. Hand-drawn cartoons covered the place and were inked directly on the walls. The frat brothers threw a bigger party and therefore felt that they should have a larger say in how the new republic was governed, but a hipster we met published a New Jersey Plan giving each party equal say. Bicameralism is one of the more ironic forms of government.

I got to know a few of them. I liked their music, their swagger, their comfortably predictable efforts and nonconformity. They were great conversationalists and drank Yuengling, a proud American beer. Most generally agreed with the mission of the United Nations, but found it too weak to affect real world progress and were alarmed by its anemic third down conversion rate. I liked these people.

The first hipster I approached was wearing a wife-beater with New York Times headlines all over it. These weren’t famous headlines, just ones like “Staten Island Councilman Stubs Toe”. He also wore a keffiyeh, mutton chops, and had hair down to his hips. He told me had had graduated, and I knew he looked familiar. I finally placed it, I went to Cheesecake and he was a mu-a-fi-a waiter there. I asked him what kind of music he liked expecting him to name some garbage by Animal Collective and Fleet Foxes. “I’m a huge Springsteen fan. Actually, pretty much everyone around here loves him.”

I met a girl named Ivy next. She had a friendly face, bangs, and light skin. She wore an oversized teal t-shirt, striped leggings, red shoes, teal earrings, and some very bright red lipstick. My friends and I kept making jokes about how “Ivy is probably a little out of our League” and “let’s just go hit on her less attractive friend, NESCAC”.

The night was nearly over. But then, from about twenty feet away, I heard a familiar chord progression as a guitarist and his drummer sang about trouble in the heartland. “Badlands”, perhaps my favorite song by Bruce, was being played by a hipster named Luke at the corner of 39^th and Spruce. He had a giant Adam’s apple, skinny jeans, and looked like a cross between various recessive and dominant traits.

A Brief History of Gunslinging

Much ink has been spilled over Brett Favre’s decision to return to the NFL. Favre’s name is synonymous with gunslinging. A gunslinger, of course, is one who plays aggressively – some might say recklessly - and takes huge risks in order to reap rewards. Sometimes these risks pay off and you win the Super Bowl; other times, you end up spending a year playing for the Jets. Personally, I love watching him play and I’m happy to have him back, though I wish it were for any team other than the Vikings. Nevertheless, Favre is far from the first gunslinger in our history. What follows is a look at gunslinging through the ages.

10000 B.C.: Hunter-gatherers finally satisfy their respective mothers by settling down, having some kids, and developing agriculture. First known instance of gunslinging when man decides to suck on cow’s udder, hope for the best.

9000 B.C.: Mesopotamaia develops in one of the more fertile crescents of the time period. Anatomically correct idols built, leading to much giggling among the era’s pubescent population. Spearslinging at an all time high.

3200 - 2500 B.C.: Growth of urbanism in the Indus valley. Earliest recorded evidence of warehouse parties and the written word. Man who created warehouse party is universally celebrated; man who wrote first word soon beheaded for crimes against the state. Brutal Shirt tribe oppresses and ultimately conquers more timid Skins. Vinny Testaverde hits Methusaleh on a slant pattern in the end zone to win first Orange Bowl.

1800 B.C.: Beginning of Shang dynasty in China. Comical obsession with alluvial plains ultimately dooms empire, leaving future military historians to wonder what might have been. Most agree Shang looked great at the combine against a chair.

1728 B.C.: Hammurabi writes his famous code. Crime plummets as “eye for an eye” becomes the law of the land. Number of eyes also plummets. Gunslingers everywhere persecuted for their beliefs, asked to simply manage the game.

500 B.C.: Reforms of Cleisthenes establish Athenian democracy.

478-404 B.C.: Athens dominates Aegean through Delian League. Sadly, when traded to American League, fail to live up to expectations as ERA soars. Parthenon built as gunslinging architects look around Greece and decide “not enough columns”.

399 B.C.: Socrates tried and executed in Athens. Socratic Method, hemlock drinking see surge in popularity.

218 B.C.: Hannibal uses elephants to attack Rome. Romans forced to use A-Wings and tow cables to circle elephants three times in order to get them to trip and explode.

146 B.C.: Romans sack Carthage and Corinth. In a display of horticultural gunslinging, they plant salt so nothing can ever grow again.

60 B.C.: Social disorder emerges in Rome as the empire expands. Attempts at social networking prove fruitless, as most civilians chose to either take black and white pensive photographs of themselves or “become fans of” wheat farming.

46 – 57 A.D.: Missionary journeys of St. Paul. Paul later comes out of retirement to sign with rival Zoroastrians.

313 A.D.: Constantine gunslings with an unprecedented decree of religious tolerance. Huguenots rejoice.

410 A.D.: Visigoths sack Rome, though controversy persists to this day as scholars feel Rome merely slid to allow Visigoths to break Mark Gastineau’s sack record.

600-1400 A.D.: Dark Ages. Human progress lags. Spanish inquire about everything from which God you worship to why you got home so late last night – we agreed to midnight, mister! Gunslinging lags.

850 A.D.: After building huge lead, Mayan civilization collapses.

1354 A.D.: Ottoman empire develops after capture of Gallipoli, later leading to classic Jay-Z line “I ain’t an Ottoman, I’m an Otto…man”.

1470 A.D.: Incan government decides that all farmland is to be state owned. Locals fear this means insertion of government bureaucrat between you and your okra.

1492 A.D.: Columbus slings his way across the Atlantic and successfully finds a passage to India.

1507 A.D.: In least interesting occupation of all time, the Portuguese take Mozambique.

1517 A.D.: Luther publishes 99 Theses, later developed into a Steve Gutenberg vehicle by Disney.

1500 – 1600 A.D.: Renaissance. Gunslingers across Europe reject lives of their fathers, eschewing careers in mudwallowing and corpse fondling to revive art and literature from the classic world. They are branded as “fairly gay” by their contemporaries.

1520 A.D.: Suleiman the Magnificent shatters record for funniest name by a ruler, besting previous mark set by Tamerlane the Your Mother.

1565 A.D.: Potato introduced to Europe from South America. Gunslinging southpaw Seamus O’Flannigan becomes first potato tycoon, later inspiring a very unpopular video game.

1624 A.D.: Dutch purchase Manhattan for 24 beads, a variety of bagels, and several lewd hand gestures.

1640 – 1750 A.D.: The Enlightenment. Rejection of ancient dogma as forward thinking gunslingers embrace reason, science, and logic. They are branded as “fairly gay” by their contemporaries.

1667 A.D.: Russia acquires large areas of Poland, Lithuania, and Northeast Philadelphia. Local entrepreneurs gunsling by serving vodka to kindergarteners.

1762 A.D.: Philosopher Rousseau holds out, demanding a new Social Contract.

1776 A.D.: USA! USA! USA!

1819 A.D.: Singapore founded as a free trade port. Singaporean dockworkers union laments loss of jobs shipped overseas to themselves.

1830 A.D.: In a blow for gunslinging, last Caribbean pirate hanged. 1976 Bucs pay tribute by lovingly refusing to win a game.

1841 A.D.: Ninth President William Harrison gives longest inauguration speech in history, then gets pneumonia and dies.

1841-1845 A.D.: Tenth President John Tyler spends four years repaying the powerful Pneumonia Lobby.

1856 A.D: Senator Preston Brooks beats Senator Charles Sumner with a wooden cane on the floor of the upper chamber, leaving Sumner unable to perform his duties for three years.

1861-1865 A.D.: War of Northern Aggression.

1863 A.D.: Lincoln finally issues Emancipation Proclamation despite pundits warning him against doing so, citing potential loss of key indentured servants bloc in ’64 election.

1864 A.D.: Jefferson Davis taunts the North by grabbing crotch and yelling vulgarities. General Grant responds by burning down Georgia.

1918 A.D.: United States enters World War I in 3^rd quarter; still has fresh legs, able to defeat Germany.

1933 A.D.: Neville Chamberlain, a proud proponent of Martyball, plays it safe by punting on 2^nd down and ceding Czechoslovakia to Germany. Gunslingers everywhere call for his resignation.

1941 -1945 A.D.: USA! USA! USA!

1944 A.D.: High water point of gunslinging, as D-Day fuels the liberation of Europe.

1949 A.D.: Bruce Springsteen born in Long Branch, New Jersey.

1953 A.D.: Ayn Rand publishes Atlas Slinged, the objectivist manifesto. Atomic testing continues in New Mexico, marking the peak of the state's cultural relevance. Since then, it's just...(ahem)...plateaued.

1957 A.D: Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond filibusters against a landmark civil rights bill, ironically rendering later students of history speechless.

1960 A.D.: Snowball votes for John F. Kennedy, swinging Illinois to the young Senator and ushering in Camelot.

1963 A.D.: “When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

1965 A.D.: President Johnson passes sweeping Civil Rights Act, breaking his historic ties to southern Democrats.

1969 A.D.: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

1972 A.D.: Watergate. Most viewers who saw the debate on TV felt that Watergate won, though radio listeners gave the nod to Nixon.

1987 A.D.: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

1989 A.D: Seinfeld, a mediocre family sitcom, follows the life of George and his pals as they grow up in this wacky world of ours. Many critics feel the series is a less funny version of According to Jim.

1995-1997: Favre wins three straight MVP awards, thereby earning lifetime immunity. Fran Tarkenton grows progressively crankier.

2002: President Bush vows to “smoke him out where he lives.” Ominously, “him” and “where” left undefined.

2007: Chicagoan Barack Obama pledges bipartisanship and launches a long shot presidential campaign.

2007: Chicagoan Rex Grossman pledges bipartisanship and shares the ball with Indianapolis Colts multiple times in Super Bowl XLI.

2008-Present Day: Financial crisis. Gunslingers borrow vast sums of money, purchase toxic securities, receive government bailout, and pay themselves handsomely. Nero continues fiddling.