11/22/04 KEYS TO THE PATRIOTS GAME

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE PATRIOTS GAME.

1. Football has long been presented as a metaphor for war, with its formations, aerial bombardments and ground assaults. (Note: Thank you George Carlin. See Jose will never get caught plagiarizing from Carlin a la Mike Barnacle. If Jose ever gets caught plagiarizing, it will be stealing from someone big, like Dostoyevsky or possibly Melville. But get caught plagiarizing a comedian, even a great one? Jose would prefer not to.) So if football is like war, but without the death, pillage and shattered families what is the best analogy for this Patriots team? (Note: Okay, football has shattered families.)

Bruised, bloodied and broken, their strongest defenders shattered by injury, the Patriots have miraculously persisted and continued to win. Jose thinks one must go all the way back into ancient history for the right analogy and reflect on the story of Hanukah. Hanukah is actually a war story. The holiday commemorates the victory of a group of Jews led by Judah Maccabe (Note: Literally Judah the Hammer) over the Syrians who had occupied the Temple in Jerusalem and built a statue of Zeus there. (Note: Zeus the Greek God, not Zeus the character from the Hulk Hogan vehicle “No Holds Barred.”) Similarly, the Kansas City Chiefs have defiled our Temple by building a statue of Len Dawson in it.

What?

We don’t have a Temple?

Well, where do we sacrifice livestock to God then?

“We’re not Raiders fans, we don’t kill live animals at football games,” you say?

Well, then. Okay, maybe the battle itself is a bad analogy, but what happened afterward is a better analogy. In order to purify the Temple, the Jews needed to burn ritually purified olive oil continuously, but they only had enough oil for one day and pressing new oil would take eight days. Miraculously, the miniscule amount of oil lasted for eight days, long enough for new oil to be pressed and sanctified.


Why is this a good analogy? Well, having success in the NFL with Randall Gay and Asante Samuel (Note: Or Earthwind Moreland) as your cornerbacks is also a miracle. Maybe it isn’t a miracle like, say, walking on water or parting the Red Sea, but it is of about the same magnitude as one day’s worth of oil lasting for about eight days. (Note: On the other hand winning in the NFL with Eric Warfield and William Bartee of the Chiefs as your corners is the equivalent of parting the Red Sea, and Jose does not expect the Red Sea to divide in two this evening at 9 PM EST.)

Wait…you have something else to say? You want to say that this is also a really stupid analogy and has almost nothing to do with war? That the first siege of Vienna is a far better analogy?

Hmmm…well, yes that may be true, Jose supposes, but now Jose has introduced a story that will allow him to refer to hard hitting Patriots safety as Rodney Harrison as Rodney Maccabe or Rodney the Hammer from now on. (Note: Jose wishes he’d thought about this during baseball season. Wouldn’t Manny Maccabe have been a solid nickname?) And isn’t that really what the holiday season is all about?

2. As for the Chiefs, Jose would like to say that their defensive line is analogous to the famed Maginot line of interwar France, a mighty defensive line that’s only weakness was that it could be easily circumvented by column after column after column of German panzers. Of course this analogy is also inapt, as it is just as easy to run through the Chiefs’ defensive line as it is to run around it.

3. Jose would love to get Chiefs wide receiver Dante Hall, mediocre second baseman Homer Bush, former Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase valet Virgil and free agent pitcher Eric Milton together in a room and just listen to them talk about epic poetry.

I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE PATRIOTS GAME.