Starting Five

1. Millions in the northeast still without power due to Sandy. In New York City 111 homes in the Breezy Point section of Queens are laid to waste due to a hurricane-related inferno.  Whatever we can do for these homeowners, it would be much appreciated.

2. The new-look Lakers lose to the Dallas Maveicks in both teams’ season debut, 99-91. Before the game Mav owner Mark Cuban, asked about the team that already had one of basketball’s three top players — and fiercest competitor– in Kobe Bryant, and then added Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, quipped, “I hope they suck.” They did last night, as Howard missed 11 of 14 free throw and Nash missed 6 of 9 shots. LA, which has 33 All-Star selections  in its lineup, was out of sync the entire second half. It’s only one game, but LOL now only has 81 remaining to win the 73 Ron Artest forsoothed.

3.  Another shark attack off the coast of California, though this one occurs in Humboldt County, hundreds of miles north of last week’s. The surfer suffered a 14-inch wound but survived.

4. Gary Myers of the New York Daily News opines on why Rex Ryan never played The TebowLin last Sunday’s blowout loss to the Dolphins: “Ryan was scared of Tebow doing well, even in a meaningless situation. Can youimagine if Ryan pulled Sanchez in the fourth quarter against Miami and Tebow led the Jets on two touchdown drives?” (a chorus of ESPN talking heads cry, “No, we cannot.”)

5. Greg Merson, 24, outlasts Jesse Sylvia to win the World Series of Poker and $8.53 million.  Merson ended the 12-hour fisession ion by putting Sylvia all-in with nothing better than a king-high. Sylvia had a queen-jack suited,nut the community cards yielded no face cards. As far as we are concerned, the WSOP doesn’t happen until we hear Norman Chad’s commentary on it.

Devastation, deforestation,  saturation, and evacuation: that is Sandy, and no, Mike Tyson is not writing this entry. Let’s hunker down and recap the “super storm.”

Breakout Stars (on a night of “Not Any Stars”): Ali Velshi, Governor Chris “I could care less” Christie, the dangling boom, Mayor Bloomberg’s sign-language interpreter, the Chelsea dollhouse, the Lower East Side transformer.

Random Observations

Sea-N-N: The seminal cable news network appeared to adopt a water’s edge doctrine for all its on-air personalities, including Anderson Cooper and Erin Brunette. Then there was Ali Velshi, a business reporter who found himself full-moonlighting as a human flood gauge in Atlantic City. Velshi spent most of the evening on a main drag immersed in anywhere from two to three feet of water, providing saturation coverage in every sense to CNN’s reporting. Our only question: Where was Lou Waters?

Fool in the Rain? Velshi was both ubiquitous and amphibious

The Dangling Boom… Poised 90 stories above a luxury apartment being constructed at the corner of 6th Avenue and 57th Street, a crane went from being fully erect to suddenly, well, flaccid on Monday afternoon. The first furious winds of Sandy had sent it into this position, creating the largest and most conspicuous metaphor New Yorkers had seen in quite some time. The building, One57, will house millionaires and billionaires — the top two properties have sold for $90 million (so, you know, Occupy’ers, if you’re looking for a new intersection on which to set up camp).

The Dangling Boom not only poses great danger — it weighs a few tons and is poised 1,000 feet above one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan — but also provides a living symbol of the price of conspicuous consumption. “It’s the Crane of Damocles,” one of our more clever (okay, our most clever) friends texted. “It’s hanging over the head of everyone who aspires to be nothing more than rich.” That, and anyone who was hoping to pop in for happy hour at Rue 57.

Hurricane, hurtin’ crane

Irony Alert/False Alarm  Only a few hours later someone tweeted that CNN was reporting that the floor of the  New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water, prompting some wiseguy (looks around innocently) to tweet, “Great. Wall Street needs yet another bailout.”

Alas, the news was false.

Lydia Callis, the sign-language lady at Mayor Bloomberg’s press conferences. We both sing and sign her praises. Watch here.

So at around 10 p.m. Monday night, on the local NBC affiliate, an ad ran for the Bahamian resort Atlantis, conjuring images of an undersea city. Just what New Yorkers needed to be thinking about at the time.

Both David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon did their late-night talk shows in front of empty houses on Monday night. Here’s a clip from Letterman’s “monologue” and from Fallon’s open. As you can see, it was a refreshingly different way to open both shows. Here’s hoping it persuades both men to step out of the routine a little more often. Letterman used to be renowned for stepping out of, and then stomping, the box. Here’s Dave’s “Frankenstorm Top Ten” list (“Trumpical Storm?”).

Chris Christie. How cool is New Jersey’s governor? He’s like Tony Soprano without all the contract killings and Russian hookers (as far as we know). Christie called out the Atlantic City mayor who failed to heed his warning to have everyone evacuate, praised the Democratic president for all of his assistance (“I spoke to him personally three times yesterday and he gave me his phone number at the White House”) exactly one week before the election, and when asked if GOP candidate Mitt Romney might be touring the areas of devastation in New Jersey, bluntly replied, “I could care less” before taking a huge bite out of a meatball sub. Or we may have imagined that last part, but we still love the governor of our home state. He fits it like a jughandle.

Get Christie love…

That same clever friend of ours noted that every time he saw the graphic “Sandy Ravages” on CNN he thought of “Randy Savage.” So, it was a Macho Storm, too.

The Chelsea dollhouse, or as any NYC real-estate broker would describe it, “Plenty of available light.”

A religious zealot could make the argument that God was punishing the Jersey shore for Snooki and J-Wow, and who could blame them?

Thing we won’t forget: the young man taking shelter in the ATM vestibule at about 5 p.m. Monday afternoon, asking us when the subways would be up and running again. “Days,” we replied. “Where do you live?”  His answer: “The Bronx.” The look on his face…

Our one hope was that the storm would abate for five seconds, and that a disembodied voice would boom down from the heavens proclaiming, “YOU MUST START THE TEBOW!” Then the storm would resume. That would’ve been the ultimate OMG moment, emphasis on “G”.

“God saw how great wickedness had become, and that Tebow was only seeing playing time as a punt protector, and decided to wipe mankind from the face of the earth.”

Herman Cain. Hurricane. We’re still trying to divine any meaning from that correlation.

Hurricane Sandy Playlist

1. Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head….B.J. Thomas

2. Atlantic City…………………………..Bruce Springsteen

3. Higher Ground……………………….Stevie Wonder

4. Anything by the ’80s Scottish pop band Wet Wet Wet (we’ll vote for their remake of “Love Is All Around”)

5. Stormy Weather……………………..Ethel Waters

6.  Rock You Like a Hurricane……….Scorpions (we are no fans of the tune, but it’s sort of obligatory)

7. Umbrella…………………………………Rhianna

8. Fool in the Rain…………………….Led Zeppelin

9. Blowin’ in the Wind…………………Bob Dylan (chosen ahead of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Hurricane”)

10. Ridin’ the Storm Out………………..REO Speedwagon

11. Rain King……………………………..Counting Crows

12. Five Feet High and Risin’…………Johnny Cash

13. Who’ll Stop the Rain? …………….Creedence Clearwater Revival

14. Sandy”…………………………………..Springsteen

Starting Five

1. HBO: Boardwalk Empire. Cable News Channels: Boardwalk Waterloo. The Jersey shore is about to be battered by Sandy. Sandy Hook is about to be battered by Sandy. How dire is it? All of the Starbucks in Manhattan are closed! (we know). Emergency planning includes posting Tim Tebow atop Empire State Building and asking him to, shirtless, raise arms to the heavens. “Fine, go ahead,” says Rex Ryan, “but Mark Sanchez is still our starting quarterback.”

Sandy versus sandbags: the battle begins

2. The San Francisco Giants sweep the Detroit Tigers to win the World Series. Yes, Marco Scutaro had the game-winning single and Ryan Theriot (a.k.a., “The Riot”) scored the game-winning run, marking the first time an NHL defenseman had done so. Most surprisingly, the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years and the likely American League MVP, Miguel Cabrera, struck out looking to end the game, the series and the 2012 season.

3. Cowboys fall behind 23-0, roar back to take lead, then lose in excruciating fashion at home to the New York Giants. Dez Bryant made a sick game-winning TD catch, but it was ruled that the tip of his finger touched beyond the end zone before any other part of his body landed. Clearly, as one ESPN anchor opined, Dallas needs to draft wide receivers with shorter fingers.

It is, after all, a game of millimeters

4. Weather Channel’s coverage of the 1991 Perfect Storm, featuring the impeccable tonsorial stylings of Stu Ostro.

5. The BCS standings have a top five of Alabama, Kansas State, Notre Dame, Oregon and LSU. Two of those five teams play USC, and another two play one another (this Saturday). Kansas State was doubly hurt by Notre Dame’s win at Oklahoma (the Sooners’ rating plummets, while the Irish remain undefeated), while a USC victory versus Oregon this weekend would assist the Irish in a similarly compounded fashion.

Reserves

Darren Rovell tweets, “Is it bad that I’m most concerned about my mancave flooding?” and yet another wave of Americans wonder what TV executives he has pictures of and with whom. RovellsMancave already has a hashtag.

And at the other end of the spectrum, this photo of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Regiment guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Don Draper and Zou Bisou in Hawaii. Filming has begun on Season 6 of Mad Men.

Your high school English teacher is secretly thrilled that an HMS Bounty sunk earlier today due to Sandy. No word yet on the status of William Bligh or Fletcher Christian.

Hey, who’s that deliriously happy nut job singing along to Journey at the World Series? Oh, it’s the former only lead singer of Journey. Steve Perry is quite the recluse, so this is like seeing a Sasquatch along side the highway (a real Sasquatch, not some dude in a Sasquatch outfit). Here’s another angle. It’s good to see Perry this happy. The only people who sing Journey tunes who appear happier than Perry are these guys.

Steve Perry: ZZ Top and ABBA are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Journey is not.

Today’s thought: The Prius is the veggie burger of automobiles.

Fascinating profile of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a cover story from The Atlantic. Call him the “soda jerk” if you want, but we think he’s way ahead of the game on this one. There was a time in NYC when it was considered boorish to prohibit smokers from lighting up in restaurants and bars.

On our timeline this morning we had a few southerners griping that Hurricane Sandy is overhyped. That SEC mentality extends far beyond the gridiron, apparently.

Sandy: “Because the power that you’re supplying/It’s electrifying!” (in a power-outagey sort of way)

Sports teams as potentially deadly forces of nature, a list (Whose idea was this anyway?):

Miami Hurricanes (NCAA)

Tulsa Golden Hurricanes (NCAA)

Pepperdine Waves (NCAA)

Alabama Crimson Tide (NCAA… oh, they’re a force of nature, alright)

Carolina Hurricanes (NHL)

Colorado Avalanche (NHL)

Tampa Bay Lightning (NHL)

Chicago Fire (MLS)

San Jose Earthquakes (MLS)

Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA)

Tulane Green Wave (NCAA… thanks to @StumpTheRob)

Seattle Storm (WNBA… thanks to @JimMcDonald)

Starting Five

1. A Mighty Wind… We’ve got your Cloud Atlas right here, chief. Hurricane Sandy bears down on New Jersey and New York City, where the subways and buses will stop running Sunday night at 7 p.m. New Jersey spawned rocker Bruce Springsteen, who wrote a song called “Sandy”, which now may transform the Jersey shore into a city of ruins. Our only advice: Do not board a fishing boat with George Clooney and Marky Mark no matter what type of haul they promise you (but if you do, damnit, HEAD FOR THE FLEMISH CAP!)

“Sandy! You’re a deadly force of nature.” “What’s it to you, stud?”

2. A Mighty wiND: No. 5 Notre Dame barrels into Norman, Oklahoma, a 10.5-point underdog and physically dominates the No. 8 Sooners, 30-13. The game was closer than the final score — it was tied 13-13 midway through the 4th quarter — but the Irish prevailed thanks to a 50-yard pass from Everett Golson to Chris Brown, a true freshman making his first career reception, and the standard superb play of senior linebacker Heisman candidate Manti Te’o, who now has five interceptions after having zero in his first three seasons.

Preying Manti

3. A hurricane slams the East Coast, while the Thunder shake up the NBA’s Western Conference. Oklahoma City sends Sixth Man of the Beard James Harden and three minor players to Houston in exchange for Kevin Martin, rookie Jeremy Lamb and two future first-round draft picks. OKC lost a lot of people’s favorite player, but did more than OK in the process. ESPN writers react. 

4. The SEC East is not for the squeamish. South Carolina tailback Marcus Lattimore, No. 1 on Mel Kiper’s big board of RBs, suffers as horrific a knee injury as you’ll ever see in the Gamecocks’ win versus Tennessee. Best wishes to Lattimore on his recovery. It’s far too soon to know what his NFL future holds. Only an hour or so later in another hard-hitting game involving a pair of SEC East squads — The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party — Florida wideout Solomon Patton suffers a broken arm on a hard but clean tackle by Georgia safety Shawn Williams. Florida is one of three previous unbeatens — Oregon State and Rutgers — to lose yesterday.

The SEC East had casualties on Saturday

5. The Detroit Tigers, who held the Yankees scoreless in 36 of 39 innings while sweeping them 4-0 in the ALCS, have now been held scoreless themselves in 25 of 27 innings in the World Series. The San Francisco Giants hold a 3-0 lead heading into tonight’s possible series-ending contest at Comerica Park. The Yankees scored a total of six runs in their four-game bust. The Tigers have have accumulated three in three games versus the Giants.

Reserves

Fifty, Free: Pepperdine swimmer Phyllis Reffo, who at 50 years young is the oldest full-time college student we know of, not to mention the oldest ever to compete as a Division I athlete, swam three events at this weekend’s Malibu Invitational: 50 free, 50 fly and 200 breast. Reffo is a single mother of two teenage daughters who is majoring in biological sciences. Aptly, her Twitter bio reads “Two arms, two legs, two kids, too busy.” We profiled her for The Daily a year ago.

Reffo did not place in the 3 events she swam, but she is making waves as an NCAA swimmer at the age of 50

USC loses  39-36 at Arizona despite Marqise Lee’s sublime output of 16 receptions for 345 yards. Lee, who may very well fit the definition of “nation’s most outstanding player”, had TD grabs of 44 and 49 yards plus a 57-yard catch. Matt Barkley’s Hail Mary pass as time expired ricocheted off Lee’s facemask and dribbled off his left hand. We doubt Lee will win the Heisman — he at least deserves an invite –but Lane Kiffin deserves an Anti-Coach of the Year award. How can USC, which leads the nation in penalties, be so average this season after being so spectacular at the end of last season? A BCS bowl may only come now if USC beats Oregon twice in the next six weeks. Good luck.

Colt McCoy’s little brother and Jordan Shipley’s li’l bro, Case and Jaxon, hooked up on a fourth-down conversion late in Texas’ game at Kansas to save Mack Brown’s job the Longhorns from an embarrassing defeat in Lawrence. The Jayhawks had lost 16 straight conference games and were one play away from ending that streak when McCoy, who replaced starter David Ash late in the second half, found Shipley for 18 yards on a fourth-and-long. Texas scored the game-winning TD with 0:12 left.

Stating his case: Is McCoy the Longhorn starter now?

We liked the headline “What’s next for Hurricane Sandy?” It’s a solid question. After this week, what will she DO to remain popular? We predict a prescription drug overdose, a stint on DWTS or a role in “Cloud Atlas 2: You Can’t Be Cirrus!”

Ohio State moves to 8-0 as the Buckeyes run away from Penn State in the Ineligi-Bowl. Urban Meyer is the Hurricane Sandy of Rust Belt football.

Georgia’s promotional ad, which airs during its games (almost all schools have 30-second spots during their games), is scored by a tune from Athens rockers REM.  Pretty neat, though B-52’s are wondering how come they didn’t use “Rock Lobster.”