On the Road to Vegetarianism Pt. 2 + An Afternoon at Wrigley Field

A while back I posted about switching over to a mostly vegetarian diet, and now I'm nearing the 6-month mark (June 4, to be exact). I have, to my amazement, kept it up.  For some of these months, I've gone weeks without eating any meat, though I still do have some from time to time (this past week I don't think I had any). I also have almost completely given up all processed, prepared foods, unless I'm getting them at a cafe or restaurant (where I have little choice, though I've been trying to patronize restaurants, when I can afford to, that prepare whole foods on the premises). Since January perhaps the only processed, prepared foods I've bought would be oatmeal (and I do also buy the organic rolled oats from a nearby food coop), orange juice, and a few other items like wine.  I haven't bought any frozen dinners or anything else frozen and processed, though I do still sometimes pick up frozen fruits and vegetables, and fish. Other than chocolate, I've stopped buying any candy, and haven't bought any sorts of chips except tortilla chips from restaurants, or an occasional bag made locally. One of the most difficult things to maintain, particularly over the last month, during which I was involved in several very stressful committee assignments (similar versions of which over the past few years led to my having stopped cooking and ordering out food when I felt most under duress), has been the cooking, breadmaking, baking, and so on, but I'm glad to say that I've kept it up.  I note this not for a pat on the back, but just to acknowledge that it amazes me that I've been able to keep this going.

My diet now consists mostly of those hated carbs, and yet, as I noted before, almost as soon as started eating this way I immediately began losing weight (20 lbs, now close to 24 lbs--I've gone from 220 lbs. to about 196 or so, give or take the day) , and I've kept it off.  I had sworn off potatoes after C passed on an article about how bad they are for you (think heavily starchy root vegetable growing in toxic soils!), but I love potatoes, so I've started to reincorporate them into various dishes, where applicable. I have not, however, had French fries more than 1-2 times over the last 6 months. I eat a lot of bread, as any reader of this blog knows. Since the food coop I often shop at in Chicago has had a regular supply of organic sundried tomatoes, I've been regularly baking whole wheat sundried tomato bread, with a few detours, especially during the colder months, to rye bread (I will probably make a pumpernickel loaf again this summer, just because it was so good) or to French bread (which is one of the easiest breads you can make).

I can say that I eat a lot more squash (especially zucchini and yellow squash, which I loathed as a child), eggplant, and beets (which I also wasn't fond of, though I don't know why). I also regularly devour carrots, one of my favorite foods, as well as broccoli, brussel sprouts, and turnips. I eat grains, including couscous and quinoa, and legumes, like lentils and black beans, that I didn't used to eat so much. I don't, however, eat much salad, which I always associated in my mind with 1) healthier eating; 2) weight loss; and 3) vegetarianism. Occasionally I will have salads, and I'll probably eat more once the summer rolls around, but in general, they're not part of the mix. Another bonus of this approach has been that I spend far less money on a weekly basis on food. The coop's prices are decent, but I always end up paying less than I do at the supermarket, and the food usually comes from local (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, etc.) farms (or organic farms in California, Florida, etc.). Interestingly enough, the fruits often seem to last longer that supermarket fruits, which makes me wonder how long they've been sitting on trucks. When I add up how much I will spend at the coop and, say, at Trader Joe's, it's usually far less than I was spending when I primarily hit the supermarket. (Can anyone tell me how Trader Joe's keeps its food prices so low?)  Even when I factor in an occasional visit to Whole Foods, which I was boycotting for a while, my food expenses are still lower than before; and because the food I cook lasts, I spend far less (often nothing) on a daily basis buying lunch, etc., as I once did. (I also avoid the bleached, excess-gluten bread that's overtaken the US market, making many people sick. I often wonder, if more of us baked our own bread, how widespread would the gluten-related problems be that plague us?)



I haven't had my HDL and LDL levels checked since last summer, but I'd be surprised if they haven't gone down. I know that my blood pressure, which often rises during very stressful periods and which I was keeping down with medication, appears--feels--as if it's gone down. I FEEL better on a daily basis, and not just because I can just fit clothes that I'd pushed to the back of the closet. (I do go to the gym regularly and have for years, but that wasn't pulling any weight off or lowering my blood pressure, it seems.) One thing that becomes clearer from eating this way is that the amount of salt in my diet has gone down dramatically; eating fewer processed, prepared foods, I'm getting fewer foods that are drenched or pickled in salt. I check labels assiduously, but I've come to realize that the manufacturers may be underestimating the amount of salt they put into food, and even they aren't, as the New York Times article I link to above makes clear, the salt content of processed foods is dangerous highly for a great many of us. I still eat sugar (I use it in the scones, for example, in sugar cookies, and so on), but I know I'm getting far less sugar, especially of the refined kind, that is wreaking havoc on the people's pancreases. I still eat eggs and butter (I love them!), but I have far more control over both--and dairy products in general in my food--than before. I still do eat fish, and some meat, but as I've noted, in far smaller quantities than ever. Sometimes I miss it, and crave it, but usually I don't. I certainly don't miss fast food at all, and I was never a big consumer of it, but I alongside pizza (which I also make myself), I still occasionally will eat things along those lines, as when I dropped by Hot Doug's, one of Chicago's premier joints, and indulged a few weeks back. (And they handmake all their sausage, fries, and so forth, so....).

One thing I've striven not to do is prescribe my approach for anyone else, including C. I know friends and relatives who are struggling with health issues (diabetes, weight gain struggles, etc.), and I also realize that given all the terrible information we get daily about our diets, all the hectoring and condescension, all the misfocus on pecuniae and far too little on how simple, delicious and easy home cooking whole foods are, how extreme so much of the discussion is (you must eat "raw foods," you must "avoid carbs," you must you must you must), I want to avoid that approach, especially with those close to me, most especially because I feel that it's up to everyone to make personal choices that they feel are best for them. I'm glad that I've finally given up deli meats, one of my favorite lunchtime foods, especially now that I know how awful most of the commercial forms are for people's health, especially when it comes down to blood pressure and overall heart health (how many of us really do go to a butcher's shop and get fresh, locally smoked and prepared meats? I don't think I've had such food in the US since I was very small).

One consideration that presses me, though, when I stop by one of the local supermarkets to grab something or other, is what would happen if a majority of people said No to the industrialized food system we have in this country; what would happen, I think, to all the jobs associated with these businesses, all the workers who I know need these jobs, benefit from them, are hanging on because of them? As I mentioned, I can go weeks now without buying hardly anything at the main supermarkets I used to shop at all the time in Chicago (and Jersey City)--supermarkets which, sadly, send me coupons for bottled water, of all environmentally deleterious products!--and when I am in one, I think, why so much of this pre-packaged foodstuff, this quasi-food, which is wreaking havoc on our bodies and our society, in here? Of course I know the answers, or at least some of them, and they have do with capitalism, consumerism, convenience, and so much more. But if more of us just said enough of this--and, if we so decided, patronized restaurants that weren't part of this industrial system but actually prepared whole foods on the premises, as many do for very little money--what would the effect be on the supermarket world, the industrial food world, the health care industry, as we know them?

I know this is what some people are advocating, and I'm sympathetic to the larger notion of a shifting in food industry paradigms, in farming, in selling food, in how we integrate food into our lives in this country. But at the same time, I'm also worried about the effects these shifts might have on the people at the bottom of this system, the most vulnerable people who rely on the millions of jobs it creates. Given how little concern the federal and state governments, policymakers, and many corporations and their leaders have for the prospects and fortunes of working-class and poor people, let alone middle-class people, all of whom are being devastated by the system as it currently stands, I cannot but worry what will happen if we change the way we operate. And yet it's clear to me, based on the many articles and books (by Michael Pollan and others) I've read, on the many discussions I've had over the last few years, and on my own health experiences, that change is necessary. How to effect it so that it benefits those who most could benefit from it rather than disadvantaging them, as always, in favor of those who already have money, power, and everything else, is one of the questions I keep asking myself every day.

Now, can I keep it up through the summer and on through the end of the year?

===

Today I did something I haven't in years, which is go to a baseball game. As J's Theater readers know, I'm a huge baseball fan, and it so happened that one of my teams, the St. Louis Cardinals, were in town to play the Chicago Cubs. I hadn't gone to Wrigley Field since 2001, when I lived just around the corner from it, for various reasons, including its post-game drunken fans, who went so far as to douse my dreadlocks with a cup or more of beer, but I said what the hell, classes are (nearly) over, it's been a brutal quarter, it's the holiday weekend, it's been years since the drenching, it ought to be fun. It was. I scored a ticket right next the stadium (police were everywhere, so it was legal), for a seat just behind the Cubs' dugout, right beside third base. The sightlines were excellent. I found myself wedged between Cubs fans who, when they inquired about my not cheering for their team, were polite enough, and otherwise quite genial. The people booing the Cardinals, and in particular Albert Pujols, were sitting elsewhere. The fight that broke out--I couldn't tell whether it was Cubs fans brawling among themselves, or some Cardinals supporters in the mix--was well down the nearby foul line. My neighbors were mostly concerned with cheering on every single Cubs accomplishment that occurred, and sipping (or quaffing) their beers. And chatting about coworkers and friends.  The Cards had walloped the Cubs the night before behind ace pitcher Chris Carpenter, but today, it was all Chicago. Behind starter Carlos Silva, who'd come over from Seattle with a 5-13 record, the Cubs defeated the Cardinals 5-0. The Redbirds couldn't get a single rally started. And Silva, despite last year's problems, is now 7-0, the first Cubs pitcher to go undefeated that long since Ken Holtzman in 1967. Which is fine, since the Cardinals won the Series that year, over the New York Yankees. Cubs and Cubs fans, it was your day.

Photos:


Cubs second baseman Starlin Castro (isn't that a great name!?) checking the flyness of his pants, as Cardinals coach José Oquendo looks on

Cub outfielder Alfonso Soriano leaving the field

Cubs starter, now temporary reliever, Carlos Zambrano, warming up
Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, on 3rd base, chatting up 3rd base coach José Oquendo

Cubs first baseman Derek Lee

Cardinals relief pitcher Mitchell Boggs, and first baseman Albert Pujols

Cubs pitcher Carlos Silva unleashing a Gibsonesque fastball

Cubs outfielder Keisuke Fukudome, on 3rd base

Alfonso Soriano batting

Alfonso Soriano, on 2nd base

Albert Pujols in his fielding crouch

Unemployment Benefits Cut + Baseball's Back + Poems: Shin Yu Pai

I hate to start on a down note, but today 400,000 Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, because members of the Senate GOP--first Kentucky's former baseball player Jim Bunning (see below), and now Oklahoma's gift to the country, Tom Coburn, MD, who reportedly committed Medicaid fraud and also reportedly performed a tubal ligation on a woman against her will--see fit to play games with their lives. Their hobbyhorse, never once raised during the votes for the unfunded Bush tax cuts, which destroyed the surplus President Bill Clinton left and added over $1 trillion to the deficit, or the rush to send troops to raze and occupy Iraq, or blow money on Medicare Advantage, a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, is that any spending must be "paid for."

As anyone who has ever been unemployed and relies on unemployment insurance knows, this little bit of money can be the only thing keeping a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and your lights on. But to Tom Coburn, Jim Bunning, and others in the GOP, the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, including their children and elderly relatives, who'll also suffer, doesn't matter.

Won't you join me and urge others in calling Tom Coburn to let him know that he is playing games with people's lives, and you don't like it?

Phones:
Washington: Main: 202-224-5754
Tulsa: 918-581-7651
Oklahoma City: 405-231-4941

And if you have a Democratic Senator or two, why not call them and tell them to stop whining and take drastic action to stop the suffering of fellow Americans. They can give tax cuts to the richest people at the drop of a hat, but can only cry and rend their garments and complain about the the terrible GOP when people really need help--and the money that's due them. And you can always call GOP Senators, if they represent you, to urge them to put pressure on Coburn to stop his dangerous, cruel games.

***

Bunning's mention, acrid though it is, provokes another, more pleasant thought: baseball's back. Yes, the national and now an international pastime began last night with the Boston Red Sox--of all teams--defeating the defending World Series Champion New York Yankees 9-7.  Ugh!  I won't read the Red Sox victory as a (bad) omen, especially for the Yankees, who stayed right in the thick of the game, but rather as the stats suggest, as a breakdown by middle-reliever and former starter Chan Ho Park. 161 more games to go, guys, it can only get better.



Now that a baseball team--or a semblance of one--is back in Washington, the president is once again throwing out the first pitch. Barack Obama's inaugural gesture today really stirred up the fans. First, to honor his local team, he donned a Chicago White Sox cap, which hardly pleased the Senators spectators. Then, he threw an eephus pitch that managed to flutter somewhere west of the plate. Now that was an omen!  But it was all in good fun, the Senators faced and, unsurprisingly, were walloped by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Senators, like their football counterparts (with the offensive name, no less), are, once again, a bit of a high-paid mess.



The Saint Louis Cardinals played one of their longstanding divisional rivals, the Cincinnati Reds, and looked like the best American League team in the National League. Cardinals star and reigning NL MVP Albert Pujols hit two home runs, going 4-5 on the day and tying a team record, while catcher Yadier Molina smashed a grand slam in the 9th inning and pitcher Chris Carpenter survived one shaky inning where he also gave up two home runs, leading the Cardinals romped to an 11-6 romp. Here's to hoping that they continue to play like this all season long. Go Cardinals!

Cardinal Albert Pujols, hitting a home run hits a home run in the first inning against the Cincinnati Reds at the Great American Ball Park on March 5, 2010 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

The New York Mets' starting pitcher and former Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana, one of the best in the game, allowed 1 run in 6 innings, with 5 strikeouts, to trump the Florida Marlin's young 6'7" phenomenon, Josh Johnson. The Mets' 2009 season unfolded like a bad serial, full of unexpected injuries, disaffected players, and a GM who didn't seem to know what he was doing (he still has his job, though), so perhaps after doing penance for releasing Willie Randolph two years ago, they'll turn out to be notably better. Just not good enough to keep the Cards out of the World Series, that is.

***

(© Kent Barker)

And now, for today's poems, here are two tiny ones by Shin Yu Pai, dealing with sports.  Shin Yu and I share a wonderful publisher, 1913 Press, which published her collection of formally innovative and politically trenchant poems, Sightings: Selected Works [2000-2005], in 2006.  Pai's collection includes lots of poems that also function as visual art, while not exactly being concrete, but here are two, from the section "Unnecessary Roughness," all of which riff off sports themes, clichés and metaphors, that appear to be fairly straightforward, at least in terms of form, while also addressing other issues, with a witty edge, if you read carefully.  (You can hear her reading at Reed College here.)

breakfast of champions

egged on
by the public
that guy owes
me some bacon
served up over
easy with a side
of milquetoast
buttered and laid
in a dish of milk
the one who speaks
softly, gets
whacked
first, with
a big stick

rookie

play pitcher
or catcher
take popshots
than hit
the showers
drill and suit
up for more
push-up
bras and
athletic supporters
fitting in
uniform
off sides
everyone's a winner

Copyright © Shin Yu Pai, from Sightings: Collected Poems (2000-2005), 1913 Press, 2006, 2010. All rights reserved.

NY Philharmonic Opening Night + Sports Roundup

A couple weeks ago I did something I haven't done in a while: I watched a live classical music concert on TV. The occasion was the PBS Live from Lincoln Center's broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's season opener, which marked the début of its new Music Director, 42-year-old Alan Gilbert. I'd even made a mental note of the broadcast primarily because I saw that it would include Renee Fleming singing songs not by Schubert, or Strauss, or Faure, all likely opening-night and maestro-début and audience friendly choices, but...Olivier Messiaen.

I almost didn't believe my eyes or ears when I heard and saw this after an episode of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, but then Gilbert, the son of two NY Philharmonic musicians, has from his earliest appearances with the orchestra shown an adventurousness that marks a change from the musty perspectives of his immediate predecessors, both consummate musicians, Kurt Masur and placeholder Lorin Maazel. Gilbert not only chose Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi (1934), a serious of deeply religious, dramatic connubial songs written by the composer for his first wife, whose nickname was Mi, but also opened with a newly commissioned composition, EXPO, a continuously developing orchestral piece in a tonal idiom by the Philharmonic's composer in residence, Magnus Lindberg, and, after a break, concluded with...not Mozart, not Beethoven, not Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, or Schumann, but...Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

The Lindberg piece, with its echoes of Sibelius and Americana riffs, was pleasant enough to listen to, and Gilbert and the orchestra played it with assurance and verve, as if they were enjoying themselves. This was also the first time in over 45 years that the Philharmonic had included a newly commissioned piece on its opening night program. I'm sorry but that's pretty pathetic, so even more props go to Gilbert. But the Messaien riveted me. Not only did Fleming convey the otherwordliness of the nine song's scores, capturing both their highest and lowest registers and the churning colors between, but Gilbert pushed the orchestra to fully evoke all of Messaien's shadings without ever overshadowing the singer. Perhaps the most striking moment came when Fleming sang the grim "Éprouvante," a wrenching vision of hell that the music did not stint in reflecting. It was also exhilarating to hear work by Messaien, a highly regarded canonical composer whose music nevertheless remains on the other side of the symphonic mainstream, on TV, in prime time. This bodes well, I hope, for future NYPO and other orchestral concert broadcasts, though sometimes tells me they'll still be dominated by the late baroque-to-late Romantic German standards.

As Fleming sang, I intermittently wondered what subscribers and critics thought of Gilbert's choices. As a sign of a new vision, they left no doubt. To people used to a mostly late baroque-to-late Romantic German repertoire with a few outliers (19th century French and Russian, early 20th century European late-Romantic and tonal modernist, a few American composers, and commissioned pieces, never to be played again), was probably upsetting. To end with Berlioz's vast, forward-looking 1830 symphony must have felt like a shockwave. Gilbert and the orchestra showed that they knew the score and in most of its sections, went below the surface to portray the richness of the moods Berlioz was aiming for. I'm no expert on Berlioz's work nor an authority on how other orchestras have played it, but I could hear both Gilbert's and the players' skill and precision, but also passion. It was never mechanical, as Maazel's performances often were.

Anthony Tommasini raved about Gilbert in his New York Times review of the concert the following day. He praised the Lindberg for not writing a "gnarly, intimidating modern piece"--Mr. Tommasini, it's 2009, and there are so many contemporary composers who do not write "intimidating modern" or "post-modern" or "post-post-modern" or whatever pieces that also are not treacly, neo-Romantic, ersatz movie music outtakes--and rained down kudos for Gilbert's choice of the Messiaen and Berlioz, though he was less fulsome when he described Gilbert's conducting of the latter work, saying that some listeners probably liked to hear it conducted with more of a"sumptuous feeling for color or more fantastical freedom" than on display in this concert. He nevertheless lauded Gilbert's assured and effective conducting, which not only brought the symphony to life but worked well with the two prior pieces, both in French idioms, broadly construed. The article's comment section, however, reflected more displeasure than happiness: lots of complaints not about Gilbert's music-making, which seems unimpeachable, but about his program choices.

I've been wondering about this as I've followed Greg Sandow's blog on classical music for several years. Sandow is a composer and professor at Juillard, and is writing a book about the present state of the US classical music world. One persistent element in his blog commenters' responses is a denial that the US classical music world is any trouble; another is that its audience is aging; a third is that the standard repertoire is just fine. Keeping these frequent threads in mind, I wondered to myself how much outrage there would have been had Gilbert gone farther, and in addition to the Lindberg, programmed all new music to launch his tenure. What if instead of Messiaen (whose career spanned the early to late 20th century) and the 19th century Berlioz, he had played two contemporary, living American composers, like John Corigliano and Ellen Taaffe Zwillich? Or two contemporary non-US composers, like Toru Takemitsu and Thomas Adès? Or two 20th century American composers who weren't exactly mainstream any more, like Roy Harris and William Schuman? Or truly avant-garde 20th century, post-Second Viennese school American composers, like Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, and John Cage? Or a composition in a jazz or rock-inflected idiom by the likes of Elvis Costello, or Wynton Marsalis? Would people have walked out of and lustily booed the concert as occurred at the Metropolitan Opera's premiere last week of the warhorse Tosca, based on Luc Bondy's new staging and direction?

Perhaps a better question is, would it ever happen, even under someone as open to the new as Gilbert? (When the extraordinary conductor James Levine, who heads the Met Opera's orchestra, took over the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which long been moribund under his predecessor, he jumpstarted its formerly progressive repertoire under Fritz Reiner by performing a slew of "difficult" 20th century works. I don't think, however, that he touched the likes of Daugherty, say, or Todd Machover, or Tania León.) It remains to be seen. I should note that Gilbert's second concert as Musical Director was conducting Mahler's Third Symphony, about as standard as things can get. This week he conducted Brahms's Violin Concerto, another standard piece, but paired it with Arnold Schoenberg's less frequently heard Pelleas und Melisande, which Tommasini described in his Friday review, typically, as "formidable" and "demanding," despite it's having been superseded by far more formidable and demanding Schoenberg scores (Chamber Symphony? Fantasie? Violin Concerto?), as well as innumerable more complicated soundworlds including many in rock, jazz, ambient, etc. I take the slotting in of even a fairly old-style (for) Schoenberg piece as a good sign, though. And he spoke to the audience about it! Looking through the upcoming concerts--and Gilbert will be taking the Philharmonic on the road to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore for a chunk of October--through December, it appears as though there will be lots of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, unsurprisingly, but throughout the 2009-2010 season Gilbert has slated a range of post-Romantic fare into the main concerts, including performances of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (semi-staged), Ives's Second Symphony, Anton von Zemlinsky's Lyric Suite, and, as part of the end of 2009 concerts, Webern's Symphony. Additionally, such very up-to-date works as Christopher Rouse's new commission, Zhizn ("life" in Russian), H.K. Gruber's Aerea, and pieces by Nico Muhly, Matthias Pintscher, Lindberg, and others, will be in both the main and Contact: The New Music series concerts.

To me, this programming in Gilbert's first year is a clear sign that the NYPO is moving into both the present and future, much as Baltimore's symphony has done under Marin Alsop, and Los Angeles's will under Gustavo Dudamel. Since I spend a chunk of each year in Chicago, I'm curious to know which directions new Musical Director Riccardo Muti will take the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the five years of his contract. He is known as a strong conductor of Giuseppi Verdi, late baroque and early Romantic music, and of the standard repertoire, in a lean, recording-friendly idiom, and not so much of anything that new. At least since Mahler's time.

(I am skipping the Lyric Opera of Chicago's offerings this year; they aren't staging a single opera written since 1921--Leos Janacek's Kát'a Kabanová--while the Metropolitan Opera's tiny steps outside its narrow conventional doors are Alban Berg's Lulu, Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose, and Janacek's From the House of the Dead. The unparalleled season Gérard Mortier had planned for the New York City Opera is now nothing but a phantom, like that opera company itself.)

+++

The Saint Louis Cardinals are now officially in the playoffs, after defeating the Colorado Rockies 6-3 last night. They joined the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have also made the playoffs and currently have the best record in the NL. In the AL, the Yankees are now in the playoffs, having defeated their arch-nemeses, the Boston Red Sox tonight at the new Yankee Stadium 4-2. The Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim both seem bound for the playoffs with dwindling magic numbers and the Red Sox are well ahead in the AL Wild Card Race, but the AL Central-leading Detroit Tigers are hanging on for all their lives, and the NL Wild Card race is increasingly a toss up, as Atlanta surges and Colorado falters. I'm just glad the Cardinals and Yankees are in. Now they have to keep winning.

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - SEPTEMBER 27: Mark Sanchez #6 of The New York Jets runs upfield after catching a pass against The Tennessee Titans during their game on September 27, 2009 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

As of tonight, the New York Jets are 3-0; rookie QB Mark Sanchez's 3 straight wins are a league first, and the defense allowed more than 10 points for the first time this season in today's 24-17 victory over the Tennessee Titans. The Saint Louis Rams, however, are 0-3 after another uninspired, sloppy loss, this time to the Green Bay Packers. With the Detroit Lions' victory over the Washington Snyders, the Rams have the longest losing streak, at 13 games dating back to last season. They look awful enough to make it 29 if they maintain this abysmal level of play. But they're in good--or bad--company so far: Miami, Cleveland, Kansas City, Tennessee, and Tampa Bay have also lost 3 games without a win and Carolina has 2 losses without having won one. Which of this sorry group will turn things around first? I say Tennessee or Tampa Bay, but don't hold me to that.