Monday Morning Quaterbacking

1)Jimmy Johnson laid out the obvious on the Fox pre-game show early in the day yesterday. In order to beat the Pats, you have to get to Brady, or at least get close to him. You have to bang Moss right off the line and double team him. You have to roll the dice and take some bold shots both offensively and defensively, and change up a variety of schemes. You have to play tough and smart with special teams. And you can’t make the overt mistakes (like tossing the long ball up instead of going for short punches to eat up end-of-game time). Well, the Eagles almost stuck to the plan, and almost pulled off a road upset that woulda be heard around the sports world. Hey, this blueprint isn’t exactly a plan of unequaled genius, and in football actual execution matters as much as the ol game plan, so I think it’s safe to say that Pittsburgh looms large as the only true potential spoilers to a historic season, that match a mere two weeks away.

2)A reunion for the ever hallowed Leo’s, acknowledged by most of those-in-the-know as the quintessential Providence watering hole, took place at Jake’s this past Saturday, and, yep, a good time was had by all. It was fairly well attended by ex-employees and customers, although the participants skewered slightly towards Leo’s final years rather than the early-to-mid period. My pallies The Dino Club delivered a wonderfully recondite and ebulliently celebratory set, with Mark (“The Fountain of Youth”) Cutler digging deep into his own fine songbook while simultaneously doling out some particularly astute covers with his typical combo of passion, humor, and artistry-a mature dose of rocking for a largely over mature crowd. Leo’s was indeed the ultimate boho haunt, a place where you went to eat and wound up drinking, or you went to drink and wound up eating, also a watering hole and a scene that was bomb and strafed by the cocaine implosion of the 80’s/90’s. Leo’s ongoing collection of Rhode Island artists, rockers, politicos , scene-makers, hipster fashionistas, tofu-slurping hippies, temporary anarchists, art-for-arts-sakers, up-and-comers and down-and-outers, loud, fast, and snotty tawkers, deep-thinkers, and bar stool philosophers, and it’s scintillating mix of good food, superb service, and an intoxicating plethora of potential drinking partners will never , ever, evuuuuhhh, be matched again.

3) A magazine supplement entitled Movies Rock is included with a bunch of Conde Nast (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, et al) publications this month. Edited by the worthy Mitch Glazier, and featuring contributions from the likes of James Wolcott and Nick Tosches, it shows some potential, despite it’s ridiculous name. Of particular interest is a ring-a-ding piece by James Kaplan on Jimmy Van Heusen (“Sinatra’s Songwritin’ Wingman”), songwriting partner to Sammy Cahn and infamous Sinatra bud and confidante, it’s one of those highly infrequent must-read magazine pieces, a mutsa got lost mix of fact, oral history, hearsay and waggish writing.