Good morning and greetings, NFL fans. Well, the 2014 football season is underway, and already my hopes for the New York Giants going to the Super Bowl have been dashed, by a preseason performance best labeled as “dismal.”

Although the Giants did go unbeaten in the preseason, this perfect record will not mean anything after tonight, when they face the Detroit Lions on opening night of Monday Night Football. In the words of renowned sportscaster Al Michaels, “Those three words resonate like no other.”

At this point, there is a little hope for optimism. Quarterback Eli Manning, the guy who runs the show and has two Super Bowl rings, is coming off a terrible 2013 season, where he threw 27 interceptions and was a complete mess. New York started out 0-6, and although they finished the year at 7-9, I had completely given up on the season after their first three possessions on opening night. Seriously.

I kid you not. There I was, happily looking forward to a semi-successful season of Big Blue football, but in their opening game against the Dallas Cowboys, the Giant’s first three possessions resulted in a fumble and two Manning interceptions. At this point I was horrified, mortified and needed to be anesthetized.

I couldn’t believe how upset I was over their abominable play. It was at this point, not ten minutes into the freaking 2013-14 season, that I cut the emotional chord for the team that I had rooted for my entire lifetime.

Now even though the Giants played well in the second half and had a chance to win the game, I had given up. I had no forgiveness in my heart for Eli Manning. I realized this was just a football game and it’s a long season, but I was too discouraged to root on. I had lost my Giant’s mojo.

So the past is hopefully not my future, and I’m all set to go with my sixteenth year of the NFL Season Ticket package, which will enable me to watch all 16 regular season New York Giant games from the comfort of my living room. Some years have been pure ecstacy, while others have had my questioning my existence on the planet.

As all New York Giant fans know, we’ve had lots of memorable wins and incredible moments over the past couple of decades, but with it also comes a lot of pain and emotional suffering. I can honestly say that many of the greatest days of pure orgasmic joy have come from watching the Giants squash the opposition, whether it be Joe Montana and the 49ers, Tom Brady and the Patriots or Tony Romo and the Cowboys.

I remember the Conference Championships back in 2000, when the underdog Giants took on the Minnesota Vikings and destroyed them, 41-0. Up until this point, this was happiest day of my life. The Giants kept scoring touchdown after touchdown, and my andrenaline was running super high. I remember thinking, why can’t I feel like this every day? And if birds fly over the rainbow, why then, why can’t I?

I recall back in 1986, watching the Giants take apart the 49ers by a 49-3 score. My brother Brad called me during the game, and after he hung up, I thought to myself, that’s the happiest that I ever heard him sound. And I’m sure at that moment my father, my brother Paul and the rest of the Giant football nation were partying like it was 1999.

So once again this season, I have the RedZone Network that shows you the highlights of every scoring play of every game. Just when you thought your TV entertainment experience couldn’t get any better, DIRECTV takes it to a whole new level.

So that horror show on opening day is now a season of the past, and a fresh slate of games is upon us. We’ll see what happens tonight, as Eli Manning still looks out of sync and has a lot to prove. The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, not to be confused with Jean Paul Belmondo, said that, “In the football match, everything is complicated by the presence of the other team.” And that’s why they paid Jean Paul the big bucks.

So I guess I’m still a believer. I know things could be worse. Just ask my son Jason. He’s a Raider’s fan.

So for today’s photo display, we are heading back to the skies above Monterey Bay. There have been a few outstanding sunsets that have made headlines this summer, and if you were lucky enough to see the sky last Friday, you were treated to a spectacular sight.

I could see from the late afternoon clouds that something special was in the air, but I decided to have dinner with my wife and just shoot the closing act. So just before desert I drove over to a park nearby and caught the colors peaking over the Santa Cruz mountains. It was fantastic.

They don’t make them much better than that. It was world class, Santa Cruz.

On to some late night humor. “The NFL season kicked off officially tonight. It’s that magical time of the year when millions of Americans transition from checking Facebook all day at work to checking their fantasy football lineups all day at work.” – Jimmy Kimmel ” Football’s back. Surprisingly, only two teams played tonight, but the Oakland Raiders have already been eliminated from the playoffs.” – Craig Ferguson

“A spokesperson for Jennifer Lawrence, one of the people who had nude photos leaked, is calling her nude leaked photos a violation of privacy. Meanwhile Kim Kardashian is calling her nude leaked photos “stuff I was going to release next week. Five geckos sent into space as part of an experiment have all died. On the bright side, they were able to save 15 percent on their car insurance.” – Conan O’Brien

“The NFL season kicks off tomorrow night. And then Friday is the start of the Super Bowl pregame show. What an awful day today. It’s 90 and insufferable. No, wait a minute. That’s me. Here’s how hot it is. I got on the subway this morning and I saw a rat eating a Dove Bar. – David Letterman

“The drug store CVS announced that the corporation is changing itself to CVS Health, and they’re no longer selling cigarettes. The CEO estimates the company will lose about $2 billion this year because they’re not selling cigarettes. It is part of their customer health focus. Competitors of CVS, like Walgreens and Rite-Aid, have no plans to follow suit. As much as they understand the consequences of smoking they also understand the wonderful consequences of making $2 billion a year.” – Jimmy Kimmel

So that’s our football report. We’ll catch you and the gang wreaking havoc on fellow outlaw motorcycle clubs tomorrow night on your final season opener on FX. Aloha, mahalo and later, Jax Teller and “Sons of Anarchy” fans.

Good morning and greetings, opening day fans. April has always been a big month on my family’s birthday front, as both my son and youngest brother share the April 7 experience. And coming up this Thursday, my father, Daniel Gilbert, the partriarch of the tribe, celebrates his 95th birthday. Unbelievable, Batman.

95. That’s a remarkable number. We are talking about 1,140 months, 4,940 weeks, 34,675 days, 832,200 hours, 49,932,000 minutes or 3,995,920,000 seconds, or about the same amount of time it took for “Mad Men” to return to AMC for its fifth season.

My father was born in 1917, a year that falls somewhere between the invention of the telephone, automobile, vacuum cleaner and the neapolitan ice cream sandwich. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he lived through the Great Depression of 1929, the depression brought on when the Dodgers left town and the super depression of being a long-time New York Knick and Giant’s fan.

Forget Dick Cheney’s little waterboarding fetish. You don’t know real suffering unless you watched the Giants dominate the statistics yet find themselves vulnerable to coming up losers on the last possession of the game. Yes, I do realize the Giants were Super Bowl champions this year, but it’s too easy to look back upon the positive as the negative is so much darker and exciting.

My father graduated from Columbia University and Brooklyn Law School. He went into the army and was part of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a wartime intelligence agency that was a predecessor of the CIA. It was formed to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines, and his unit’s assignment was to crack German intelligence codes and to figure out why BMW’s were called the ultimate driving machine. He was part of the allied liberation of Paris, when the Americans came in and banned Paris Hilton from releasing any more sex tapes.

The formulation of me began in 1950, when my parents met and after three dates were engaged, and three months later were married. I’ve had stomach aches that lasted longer than their courtship which might explain why I rushed into marriage after nine years of dating.

In 1958, they started Hooks Lane Nursery School, which grew into 100 happy children a day romping around the grounds of our home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This gig had my father ferrying the children to frolic and play at places like the Bronx Zoo, Staten Island Ferry and various parks around the Garden State. The best part was, besides the nurturing of the children, was that the day ended at 3:30 during the school year and 1 pm in the summer. Now that’s what I call a full day of work.

My father played baseball at Columbia and was a four wall handball champion. He passed the sports gene down to all three sons, as the DNA was particularly strong in the hoops department, as we grew up with chromosomes packed with the basketball jones and seven layer chocolate cake.

I remember the first time my father took me to a game at Yankee Stadium (my brother Paul spent the afternoon collecting peanut shells) and my first basketball game at Madison Square Garden. He took me out for a chocolate milk shake after I pitched my first little league win and was always there for my high school basketball games. Unfortunately, he did not attend the National Honor Society Awards ceremony as I wasn’t selected for any honors.

I remember in the early years watching classic sitcoms with my father like “The Honeymooners” and “Sargeant Bilko,” so I guess I know where my sense of humor originated from. I’m not sure if he encouraged our devotion to “The Three Stooges,” but he still has a pretty good sense of humor, particularly if there are any younger women in the vicinity. And at 95, pretty much everyone is younger. In the words of Shemp Howard after hearing a beautiful blonde utter, “I’m his niece,” replied Shemp, “Ooo, the niece is nice,”

By the way, the new “The Three Stooges” movie opens up this Friday. If you like slapstick violence, this is a film not to be missed. Or as former first lady Nancy Reagan would say, “Just say Moe.”

My father once uttered the classic statement, “If cream cheese were declared illegal, I would stop eating it tomorrow.” He was on the cutting edge of technology, as when he came out with the line, “Why do we need color televison, black and white is fine.” I guess that’s why I don’t use a cell phone but wear my garage door opener on my belt loop.

So my Dad’s going to be 95, and I wanted to give him a shout out before he hits the century mark. He still loves telling my mother how gorgeous she is despite not “having gotten a kiss all day.” For decades of making pancakes for breakfast and continued acts of bravery in marriage, Congress will be rewarding my mother the Silver Star, the Bronze Medal and the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

In his later years before dementia took some of him away, my father would always tell me how proud he was of me. Even though I wasn’t setting the world on fire at the time, I took his words to heart, and they still resonate in my head today. I see a lot of myself in him. Thanks, Dad, and I hope I’ve repayed you by being the man and the father you would have wanted me to be.

For today’s photo fun we are heading down to Lighthouse Point and Its Beach to take in a beautiful late January sunrise. As I’ve mentioned before a few million times, moments like this really do it for me as a landscape photographer. Well, that and the thought of NBA playoff tripleheaders that are on the way.

On to some late night. “A recent survey showed that Rick Santorum is the favorite GOP candidate among Republican women. When he heard that, Santorum was like, ‘Wait — women have the right to vote?’” –Jimmy Fallon “Yesterday Joe Biden thanked Dr. Pepper instead of a woman named Dr. Paper. Biden apologized and said he meant no disre-sprite.” –Conan O’Brien”This was the week the Supreme Court heard all the arguments about health care. The mood in Washington very tense. Angry, incoherent Tea Party protesters were everywhere, including the five on the Supreme Court.” –Bill Maher

“Welcome, lotto losers. Remember, you’re not just losers. You’re mega-losers! If it makes you feel any better, the odds of winning were 176 million to 1 — about the same odds the Supreme Court will pass Obamacare. “Despite being broke and coming in last in the polls, Newt Gingrich says he’s in the race for the long haul, describing himself as ‘the tortoise in the race.’ The tortoise! See if he picks Donald Trump as his running mate they could be ‘the tortoise and the hair.’” –Jay Leno “Congratulations to Mitt Romney, the big winner in yesterday’s primary. He won in Wisconsin.Rick Santorum finished second. Newt Gingrich came in fourth behind Ron Paul. But Wisconsin was not a total loss for Newt. He did make off with a 45-pound wheel of cheese.” –Jay Leno

So that’s our first blast for the new baseball season. Slightly belated birthday wishes go out to my webmaster, chess grandmaster and lover of all forms of chow fun, Kevin Deutsch, who celebrated his big day on Sunday.

We’ll catch you posterizing opponents and throwing down vicious dunks like no one else. Aloha, mahalo and later, Blake Griffin fans.