There was lightning and there was rain. The sky above the meadowlands was on fire. What does it all mean, I wonder? Who was mad at whom? Was it a matter of old gods railing against new gods? Another Gigantomachia? Why did so much water fall that night? Why did the heavens pour down their rage as the little Roman, Mark Sanchez, was mounting a triumphant drive toward the end zone just before the half? Something great, some massive force objected to the possibility of The Jets scoring a touchdown just at that point. Some Titan, some Olympian, some Norse spirit of old had put his or her foot down. A field goal we can deal with, said the force, but a touchdown is absolutely unacceptable. And so the heavens were opened and the floods fell from the sky, and the light streaked across the horizon, and the thunder shook the earth. And Mark Sanchez did throw an incomplete pass. We cannot rule out the possibility that the Old Man is in league with forces beyond our ken. Brett Favre turned forty-one the day before the game. In football years he may as well be Methuselah. He may as well be seven hundred and eighty and two years. Who begat this old man, anyway? And who begat the man who begat him? Old people from the South. Old souls from a town called Kiln, which sounds like a place that was founded before the Bronze Age. Not surprising at all when you watch the Old Man play. Brett Favre hurls the football like it is a prehistoric lump of dirt in a game whose rules were forgotten with the drying up of the last tar pit.
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