The cynical fan will approach tonight’s Phillies game with typical lumpy-throated apprehension and reacquaint themselves with the face-buried-in-hands position familiar to recent autumn’s past. However, this feels different. You’ve seen what this team did through its injury maelstrom. You’ve written them off every month, yet, here they are TIED with the San Diego Padres for the National League wild card and two games behind those bastard Mets. If the Phillies lose any of these games — especially tonight’s against the Braves — it’s back to almost again.

This team, more than those other flukey Ed Wade clubs, seems more stable offensively, but the schizophrenic pitching rotation hasn’t instilled confidence in anybody since, oh, spring training, when the Phillies were supposedly overflowing with live arms. But weird shit’s been happening all year, and even though the Phillies should have no business hanging around this long, that’s exactly where they are. Hanging around, to either torment or uplift.

Let’s enjoy this. Also, even though there are tickets still available, nobody move — you might jinx something.

Heart keeps pumping through sick and thin [Daily News]
Padres Loss Puts Phillies in Tie for the Wildcard [The 700 Level]

ALTRUISM: Neubauer pledges $25 million to university

LOCAL SMARTY-PANTS: Temple prof says teenage behavior is due to scrambled brains

NUTTER: Art class superstar (video)

LOCAL POLS: Montco Dems want Asher money returned

(more…)

Today’s Daily Examiner quip comes from the New York Times, which introduced the Sunday Styles crowd to Silk City Diner — and to Philadelphia lingo that you apparently have to be 100 percent wasted to actually use:

“The jawn is a Philly word. It means ‘a good thing.’ It can be a noun, like you can say, ‘Yo, pass me that jawn’ or ‘I’m the jawn.’ ” But, he cautioned, “It is never a verb. You never say, ‘I jawned.’ ”

The Bar Car is Rocking [NY Times]

Last night kicked off the autumnal portion of Center City Restaurant Week, the twice-yearly, Center City District-sponsored prix fixe dining event. It’s a great marketing idea: Offer up some discount grub to give people a reason to revisit the city after they’ve spent a lazy summer down the Shore, and rope in some new customers in the process.

But the reality can be a bit messier for diners and food professionals alike, says a local waiter/bartender/host who’s a veteran of nine consecutive restaurant weeks (including the latest one): Regular patrons may find their favorite restaurant inundated with strangers, leading to longer wait times, less than stellar service, and sometimes even inferior cuisine. On the other side of the order pad, restaurateurs and especially front-of-the-house staff must endure a sometimes backbreaking and hellish week for a lot less than they usually earn.

Here are his suggestions for what to keep in mind as you make your bargain culinary forays:

The food might not be the restaurant’s best effort: “It depends on where you go. There are plenty of restaurants that are famous for putting out crap. They just want to exert the least amount of effort and put out minimal food. Other restaurants, like Davio’s and Django, genuinely care about this week and the concept and are better known for giving good value.”

Restaurants are damned if they do, damned if they don’t: “You have this very large percentage of people that only go out during Restaurant Week. They’ll act like they’re regulars, but in fact, they’re only regulars of Restaurant Week. And restaurants that don’t participate just fall off the map.”

Poky crowds are killing your server: “The only way to make money is by having a rapid turnover, but Restaurant Week becomes a group thing. Especially with colleges. Trying to get 10 Penn students in and out in an hour can be a tremendous challenge.”

Want great service next week? Tip now: “It’s tricky for the servers. You’re faced with less than half of your usual check average. Plus it’s a week of running your ass off for a quarter of what you normally make. Some people get the deal and pay the normal tip. Others get mad because they didn’t realize that drinks and tax weren’t included in the price.”

Wait-staff zen: “It’s become an excepted part of life. You know it’s coming, you know you’re going to be working everyday, so [waiters] should just stop bitching about it and just deal with it. If you do that, it pays off. Mumbling and grumbling about it from the get go, you’re really just screwing yourself.”

Center City Restaurant Week [CCD]

Nobody puts Five in a corner: Donovan McNabb unveiled football’s largest middle finger toward those who lambasted him last week: 21/26 passing, 381 yards, 4 touchdowns. Most columnists were certain that the McNabb of old was gone. Perhaps he just needed to remove that clumsy knee brace to regain his old form, both physically and mentally. Is it too soon to proclaim him fully healed? Enjoy the silence, as it’ll be right back to screaming and second-guessing next Monday morning should McNabb revert to gimpy insignificance against the Giants on Sunday night. For now, though, he’s unstoppable.

White receivers have to do a little bit extra: Kevin Curtis does his best Greg Garrity impersonation, stealing the hearts of the blue-collar green-bleeders. Brian Westbrook pinballed off of defenders one too many times yesterday. He should never have to practice again if he’s going to survive the whole season. The Eagles are lifeless without him.

Who needs defense on days like this: The Eagles defense needed to do very little yesterday except play deep and attempt to keep the Lions’s 14 receivers from getting behind them for most of the second half. Plenty of chaos-causing for Lions quarterback Jon Kitna (Brodrick Bunkley, you’re a changed man) and a timely interception by Sean Considine proved to be enough to hold off a chuck-happy Lions offense. Still … Kitna threw for 446 yards, but did so with the Eagles relaxing in prevent defense for most of the day and with a Joselio Hanson secondary.

Gå Örnen! I’m not 100 percent convinced the yellow and blue uniforms didn’t have something to do with this output. Should the Eagles make the playoffs, trotting out those pee-and-it’s-a-boy!-colored beauties one more time doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

That’s just Eagles fans being … Eagles fans: The boos were inevitable. But was it really necessary to cheer so loudly for Kevin Kolb? Probably not. Careful what you wish for: For all we know, he could be the next Bobby Hoying.

REAL ESTATE: Don’t sell your shore house right now

FUMO: Judge won’t delay trial (free reg. req.)

LITIGIOUS BLUEBERRY HEIRS: Anthony DiMeo’s fight with blogger Tucker Max is dismissed

IN MEMORIAM: The Wall Street Journal on Penn and Temple benefactor Howard Gittis

(more…)

Thanks to everyone that called in to win free tickets to tomorrow night’s sold out Aerosmith show at the Borgata. There was the Andy Reid impersonator who wanted to take his son to see Steven Tyler sing so that his son, who’s had some problems of late, could see that drug use at an early age can actually turn out okay for you. There was the frantically horny woman with the beer bottle story. The dying man whose doctor prescribed two Aerosmith tickets. Various people offering various services. But none were particularly inspiring or all that funny, and I’m married, so, you know, the offers really couldn’t be accepted anyway. So then along came a voicemail from a local singer named Jeremy, who proceeded to wail snippets of all the Aerosmith hits into his handset in a glorious falsetto tone. This went on for a few minutes. Jeremy sounds like the kind of guy who is going to make the most of a night at the Borgata, so I think that this time around, talent takes the prize. Have fun, Jeremy, and I want a full report on Monday.

Today’s Daily Examiner quip comes from an interview with former Sixer Allen Iverson, who now regrets the legendary “we talkin’ ’bout practice” diatribe that both endeared him to and alienated him from many in the sports world:

“You can’t be a scoring champion and an MVP and an All-Star and all of that without practice … I didn’t want kids to get the message that you don’t need to practice, because when you’re not practicing, someone else is out there practicing, getting better.”

Iverson regrets bad talkin’ ’bout practice [Philly.com]

Casino-Free Philadelphia continues to kind of fight the power

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board kind of fights back

40 acres and McNabb

Vince Fumo dumps Dick Sprague

Farewell, Stephen A. Smith

Rendell again accused of hound-doggery …

… but The Blonde in question says that dog don’t hunt

Homeland Security scare tactician comes to visit

Your delays apparently mean big bucks to airport tchotchke sellers

We’re not sure why the universally loathed employees of the Philadelphia Parking Authority — you know, the ones who ticket you one minute after the meter expires and apply the dreaded boot when you don’t pay up — would want to further provoke us angry citizens by having their names and faces plastered all over TV. But after seeing a fancy camera trained on a guy writing a ticket yesterday, I placed a call to the PPA, and, apparently, that’s what’s going to happen: The A&E cable network is in the middle of producing Parking Wars, “a new real-life series which profiles the everyday people on the front line of the enforcement division of the Philadelphia Parking Authority.”

This won’t be the first time that PPA workers have been featured on A&E. In 2003, an hourlong episode of Take This Job was devoted to our colorful booters, towers and meter maids — sorry, Parking Enforcement Officers. A&E execs apparently thought the subject matter entertaining enough to warrant a weekly series, whose air date has yet to be determined. (The popular Dog: The Bounty Hunter show also got its start on the same “Take This Job” series, so you never know …) So, the next time you want to scream at, bitch-slap or bludgeon the person giving you that ticket, keep in mind that it might all wind up on the tube. — Victor Fiorillo