Boo these men

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Say what you will about booing the home team, the Jets deserved everything they heard on Sunday.

I’ve always embraced booing as a simple and effective way to express emotion in large crowds. I know some fans think it’s only appropriate to boo their own teams if the team shows a lack of effort, and undoubtedly the Jets were trying on Sunday. Sort of.

But lifeless, unfocused play merits booing too, and there was plenty of that. Boo Mark Sanchez — hard as that is for me to say — for forgetting that Sean Smith was a Dolphins defensive back and not a Jets receiver. Boo the offensive line for not giving Sanchez much time. Boo Rex Ryan for failing to have his team prepared to bounce back after a miserable loss. Boo Brian Schottenheimer for entirely abandoning the run.

About that: It’s true that the Jets weren’t running the ball effectively. But they also weren’t passing the ball effectively, and the Dolphins never had a big enough lead to force the Jets to pass to play catch-up. It was a sloppy day and the ball was wet and everything else, but those conditions are bad for both rushing and passing.

And it seemed like every run play the Jets called was a counter or a draw that took hours to develop. I’m no offensive genius, but when you’ve got a purportedly great line and a couple of purportedly great fullbacks and nothing else is working, seems like you might want to go back to the basics.

The only thing boo-worthy about the Jets’ defense was that they once again failed to have the appropriate number of players on the field in their goal-line package and had to burn a timeout. How many times can that happen?

But it’s an accomplishment for the defense to hold an NFL team to 10 points, even in crappy conditions, when the team is given good field position again and again. And tons of credit should go to Dolphins punter Brandon Fields. How many times the Jets wind up just outside field-goal range on fourth down? If Fields didn’t average 56.4 yards on 10 punts, the Jets probably would have been able to scrap their way to a victory despite the lack of offense.

It’s only one game, coming off another only one game. The Jets sit at 9-4 in a conference that will probably only require 10 wins for the playoffs. So barring a downright Mets-ian collapse, they’ll probably still get in. And once the playoffs start, as we saw last year, it’s at least partly a crapshoot or — more accurately — a contest of which team picks the right time to play its best football.

Forget any of the best-team-in-football talk, though. That was shot after Monday, and should now be buried deep beneath the Meadowlands with Jimmy Hoffa. Certainly, the Jets have the talent and capacity to play like the best team in football for a stretch, but I suspect the same is true of many teams and this one swayed us only by doing so early in the season.

The small, pathetic upside for Jets fans is that the team doesn’t appear to benefit at all from home-field advantage, so a slate of road playoff games might not be the worst thing.

Sandwich of the Week

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Something to read while you stew over the Jets game.

The sandwich: Beef sausage hero, Ma Peche, 56th bet. 5th and 6th in Manhattan.

The construction: Beef sausage on baguette with jalapeno mustard-relish and fried shallots.

Important background information: My second trip to a Momofuku restaurant in two weeks after never having been to one before — that alone should speak to the quality of the pork buns.

Actually obtaining a sandwich to go from the Midtown installment requires some foresight: You have to order online the day before or on the morning you want your sandwich. After the pork bun experience I knew I had to have one of these, but it took me a while because I never remember lunch until around noon, and by noon it’s too late to order.

It felt cool to order it, like I knew some sort of secret code. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it might be needlessly complicated. Do you have to special order the sausage or something?

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Before I even bit into the beef sausage sandwich I knew it was going to be a letdown after the pork buns. Granted, there are some Hall of Fame sandwiches that would be letdowns after the pork buns, but looking at it — just a sausage sitting atop a mustardy ingredient goo on a piece of French bread — I didn’t feel the same pull I did from the glimmering, fatty pork.

The sausage itself was very good. No flavor stands out besides the obvious sausage flavor, but it’s not overwhelmingly greasy or processed-tasting at all. A good solid, sausagey sausage. And though it was beef, in terms of taste I’d say it seemed more toward the Italian side of the sausage spectrum than the German side. It had a nice snappy casing and was well-prepared.

(I know a guy who worked for a while as a fromagiere — a professional cheese taster in a restaurant. Dude was incredible; I never realized anyone could know so much about cheese. He could taste cheese and, in many cases, identify the county from which it came. I wonder if there’s an equivalent job for sausage. There are so many variations of sausage, it’d be good to have an expert catalog them all in some fashion. I guess, though, there are a lot of bad sausages out there, so it wouldn’t all be glorious.)

The bread itself was fresh and flaky, but it might have been slightly too hearty for a sausage sandwich. This is a matter of taste, of course, but the bread was so thick that you either had to take a huge bite to get bread and sausage together or take smaller bites that were mostly sausage staggered with mostly bread. I’m here for the full package, please.

Same thing is true for the ingredient goo. It was itself delicious — easily the highlight of the sandwich — but it got buried so deep down in the crevice of the bread that it was near-impossible to get a bite of sausage with adequate jalapeno mustard-relish on it.

They say it’s cucumbers, jalapenos and mustard on the menu, for what it’s worth, but obviously I know what mustard and relish taste like combined. And this tastes a lot like that. Those cucumbers must be pickled. Indisputably good, though — I don’t really care what they call it if it’s good. The mustard had a nice bite to it and the relish part added sweetness.

The jalapenos brought a little flavor, but not too much heat. I rectified that with the hot sauce they included on the side. Word is there were crispy fried shallots in there, and if I strain hard I can remember at least a little bit of crunch, but I think most of them were drowned in goo and rendered uncrispy.

In all, it was a collection of really delicious elements and, truth be told, a very good sandwich — some sort of more uppity take on the hot dog, really. It just felt like it had the potential to be much more if they were better distributed or in better proportion. As it was, it was a nice sampling of good flavors but not a single, cohesive, transcendent sandwich.

What it’s worth: Cost $10 and a five-block walk. Probably worth it, though next time I’ve got lunch planned out far enough in advance to order it from Ma Peche, I’ll probably try the banh mi or the noodles.

How it rates: 75 out of 100.

Well this is terrifying

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After five shark attacks in six days in Egypt, a scientist believes a shark might have developed the taste for human blood. We’re screwed.

I was swimming with some friends in Florida a few years back and a lifeguard type drove up on an RV and yelled at us to get out of the water. We got all pissy and started giving him bluster about how there were no laws that said we couldn’t swim there, until he said, “there are sharks in the water.” That is a foolproof way to get me out of the ocean.

Recapping the Rule 5 Draft with Toby Hyde

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Our producer was in my ear telling me to move on to Pedro Beato so I didn’t get to make this point about Brad Emaus, and Toby’s point that high-OBP guys without much power might struggle when they reach the bigs: I remember Mike Salfino having similar concerns about Brett Gardner before last season. Since Gardner strikes out a little more and hits for a little less power, he’s not a great comp for Emaus (just in terms of stats, and beyond the obvious differences in position, handedness, speed). But Gardner, obviously, still found his way on base enough last season to be a very valuable player for the Yanks.

And though he’s not a home run hitter, Emaus showed at least doubles power in most of his stops before the Pacific Coast League, so I’ll hold out hope that he knows what to do with a pitch over the plate when he sees it.

For what it’s worth, in talking to Toby before the show, I brought up Ben Zobrist — again a terrible comp for Emaus for a variety of reasons. But Zobrist showed a pretty remarkable batting eye in the Minors without a heck of a lot of power. Then in a season and a half in 2008-09, he posted some pretty huge power numbers.

Course, The Zorilla took a big step back in 2010.

Again, I’m not saying Emaus should be considered the instant favorite to take over the second-base job in 2011, or even that the Mets should stop looking for a capable second basemen. Just holding out hope that he’s more than a guy with a good enough eye to get on a lot against inferior pitching.

Is this really a thing?

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His presence did not go unheralded in the apartment, in a new warehouse conversion along the Brooklyn waterfront, although the intimate cluster of guests could have easily served themselves. “In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.”

“If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”

That seems to be the consensus of a growing crowd of 30-something New Yorkers who wish to signal they’ve graduated from post-collegiate squalor to young professional coming of age. No matter how small their abodes, they won’t invite friends over for cocktails without the assistance of a bartender — even if there’s barely room for the bartender to stand.

– Tim Murphy, N.Y. Times.

Wait, hold on: Is this really a thing? It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to a house party, but technically I’m going to be a 30-something in a little over a month. And I can’t really imagine anyone I know hiring a bartender to work a party in a tiny apartment. Seems like conspicuous consumption to me, and, worse, a huge waste of space.

Of course, like I said, most people I know don’t throw a lot of house parties. Or if they do, they don’t invite me.

If you’re having a party and you’ve invited me, know that I’m totally cool with a spread of hard liquors and mixers in plastic bottles on a sticky table, and maybe some cans of beer on ice in a cooler underneath. If that’s unsophisticated, I don’t want to be sophisticated.

Also, if you ever catch me saying something like, “If you can’t afford a bartender, you shouldn’t have a party,” please, please punch me in the face. In fact, though I’m generally a pacifist, I’m tempted to find Dustin Terry and fight him just on principle.

Lots of Times links today. Hat tip to Chuck Cannongeyser for this one.

To the Quebecois coming to Nassau Coliseum tomorrow

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Dear Sirs and Madams:

I hope you read English because my French is quite limited. I support your efforts to return NHL hockey to Quebec. I don’t know any of the politics or economics behind it, but to me it’s b.s. that the Nordiques even left in the first place, because obviously Canada is for hockey (and vice versa), and because the Nordiques had a sweet logo that I have on a t-shirt somewhere. I don’t follow hockey much, but I’ll admit it’s a pretty sweet sport. And I know that the Islanders suck and don’t draw well, and that often when I turn on an N.H.L. game I see teams I’ve never heard of before. Has Columbus, Ohio really had a professional hockey team since 2000? Did I just miss that entirely?

Anyway, on behalf of Long Island, Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead, my longtime home, I welcome you to Uniondale. My advice to you is to spend as little of your time in the area in Uniondale, though inevitably you will spend hours on your way into and out of the Nassau Coliseum’s parking lot,  no matter how few people attend the game. I think more people park there than actually go inside. No one can really explain it.

You’ll probably want to eat while you’re in the area. If you have access to a car, drive west down Hempstead Turnpike and gawk at our amazing array of fast food fried-chicken purveyors. But resist the temptation to stop at the Popeye’s, the first KFC, the Kennedy Fried Chicken or the second KFC, and drive all the way down to the very end of the Chicken Strip. There you’ll find Wings N’ Things, the best option for a truly local experience. If you’ve got enough friends with you, I recommend their 80-piece bucket, which is actually on the menu.

And if you’re really looking to sample the best of local cuisine, take a left on Henry St. and proceed south. (I should note now that the drinking age in the United States is 21, so if you have anyone younger than that interested in purchasing alcohol, you might want to stop by Henry Street Liquors, a strange pocket of apparently independent territory where those restrictions are not enforced. You’ll see the big yellow sign.)

Henry Street becomes Baldwin Road and eventually Grand Avenue. On your left, you’ll see a shopping center with an Associated Supermarket. There’ll you’ll find Ferring Deli, one of the area’s very best, plus a good pizzeria and Jamaican bakery. Enjoy. If you pass another KFC, you’ve gone too far.

Enjoy your stay on Long Island, and feel free to take the Islanders with you.

Ted.