Getting Our Philly

Our old pal and colleague John Gonzalez, who abandoned the paper version of Unfair Park for Boston magazine, sends this missive about the doings in his hometown of Philadelphia, where, word has it, there is some kind of big football game to be played this weekend. John?

"Eagles fans are frighteningly priceless. Last night, every time Michael Irvin opened his mouth on the pregame show, Birds fans booed the shit out of him. And when they weren't doing that, they were chanting 'asshole.' Also, one thing that might not have been picked up by the TV microphones was the beginning of a chant that most people expect to fill the building on Sunday. They used to sing, 'TO, TO-TO-TO, T-O, T-O.' Now it's, 'OD, OD-OD-OD, O-D, O-D.'

In the parking lot after the game last night, there was an impromptu writers' gathering. A bunch of them drank some beer and hung around. At about 1:45 am, one of my writer buddies said a drunken guy wearing a cheesesteak head thing wandered over to talk to the reporters. The guy was slobberingly drunk and complaining about how you can't do anything in the new stadium anymore, how he missed the 700 level at the Vet, all of that. At one point he said, 'Do you know, they chose me as Fan of the Game before it started, and they ended up taking me out of the place in handcuffs?'

This coming Sunday is going to be a lot of fun."

So, who's playing? --Robert Wilonsky