Friends, Halloween is upon us. And to be frank, it’s perhaps the most depressing holiday on the calendar for the precise life-space-time coordinates I currently inhabit. I’m 35. I’m happily married and have no kids. And that’s the hole in the donut for Halloween.

Age 1-13: Dress up and get candy.

Age 14-20something: Parties and attempted coitus.

Age Married with Small Children: Escorting the little darlings around and stealing the best of the loot under the guise of “too much sugar”.

Age Married with Larger Children: Praying the little darlings aren’t doing what you were doing/trying to do at that age, going to the neighborhood costume party to see what happens when Angie from two doors down gets drunk and starts making out with Pam’s husband.

Age Grandparent: seeing cute pictures of your grandspawn. Having the option of a) giving out full-size candy-bars, b) giving out fruit just to fuck with the little bastards, or c) turning off the porch light and pretending you’re not home.

But no. When you’re married with no kids, all you’ve got is other people’s little snotrags and realizing that you’re not getting the party invitations you want, and the invitations you are getting…you don’t want.

Last year, my wife went out of town, but I got through it by inviting two friends over and sampling as many Oktoberfests as we could get our hands on. We barely made it out alive.

Unfortunately, there won’t be a repeat this year, so I am left bereft, with only the lovely Dr. Mrs. Mayhem, a drug-addicted cat and my seething resentment to keep me company.

And boy, is there plenty to be Seethingly Resentful about. BRING FORTH THE ACCUSED!

GENO SMITH

CHARGE: Fucking up my buzz.

Geno. Fucking. Smith. It was all there for you. Hell, you had the Pope Mayhem Benediction to help you go out there and fuck your team up like they owed YOU $600 for a plane ticket. It was going to be a good day for me. Like Purim in the Fall- get completely smashed and revel in the downfall of those who would do you harm.

But no. You lasted less than 1.5 quarters. Yes, it was your third sack already, and yes, you had shown a dangerous glint of near-competence on a touchdown pass to Quincy Enunwa. But seriously, you wretched excuse for a West-By-God Virginia product- you couldn’t give me one full shitastic game, could you? And then Goldman Sachs comes in and proceeds to NOT fuck it up. Between this and the competitors in beisbol’s final whateveritis they do, I am beginning to seriously consider the possibility that some of that HRTN dimensional flipping shit might be happening AS WE SPEAK! Or read. Or whatever.

The only upside was the cavalcade of Jetsiness that they managed to wring from the situation. First, Fitzmagic went straight teen-who-doesn’t-want-to-be-at-Grandma’s-party at his press conference, pausing only to give a left-right-right combo to Woody Johnson, the GM and Toddrick Bowles for “not believing” in him.

Then, the crack Jets medical staff told Ian Rapoport that the injury was not serious  and that the knee would be fine.

Patron Saint Emeritus Joe Namath also decided to fire off his own special brand of (surprisingly spelling and grammar-error free) Twitter Taek on Geno’s toughness, remarking on Twitter “If you’ve got a right knee injury keeping you out of the game why are you standing on the sideline the entire 2nd half? How bad can it be?”

Whelp, some of you already know how this story ends: turns out Smith had a pretty fucking severe ACL tear and is done for the season. So the Jests’ medical staff looks like a bunch of boobs (not that kind, Gate D), Namath is forced to give a “my bad” (his words) for being the In My Day guy, and the team is faced with a starting quarterback who already had a contentious off-season with management resenting the hell out out every one of his bosses despite making $12 million this year. And the Sophie’s Choice of Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg at QB2.

When reached for comment, Mr. Namath informed CrimeBeat! that he didn’t give a crap about the game but still had no desire to kiss it.

JOSH BROWN AND THE MARA CABAL

CHARGE: What the fucking fuck?

Ok, usually CrimeBeat! shies away from actual depressing crime news, because this is a dick-joke site and I do this for enjoyment. But seriously. Josh Brown is/was a kicker for the New York Football Giants (Note: there are no other New York Giants anymore, you can drop the qualifier), who like to hold themselves out as some sort of model moral franchise and forget that the team knew Lawrence Taylor should have been behind bars instead of on the field but enabled him anyway.

Josh Brown was arrested for a domestic violence charge in 2015, alleging he physically and verbally abused his (now ex) wife. She later had to be protected by Giants personnel from her husband at the Pro Bowl. He was given a one-game suspension earlier this year for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. At the time, Brown stated “while I do not agree with the suspension, I will accept it. I have exhausted the appeals process and have no other options along those lines.”

It has subsequently come out from the the King County, Washington sheriff’s office that things were a little more severe than originally reported. They released a whole bunch of shit (including some therapy notes, which makes Lawyer Me a little uncomfortable) wherein Brown makes some pretty goddamned stark admissions about physically and verbally abusing his wife repeatedly and with (up until then) little remorse or even appreciation for the harm he was inflicting.

Giants co-owner John Mara then went on a radio show and said he knew about the abuse and signed Brown to a $4 million deal anyway.

Shit has subsequently hit any number of ventilation devices

The NFL says it didn’t know the extent or seriousness of the abuse because it’s inquiries to the Sheriff’s Office went essentially unanswered. The Sheriff (who I imagine talking exactly like Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke despite being in the Northwest) says he didn’t release any information or tell the investigator who called anything because they didn’t say they were from the NFL and he assumed the caller was just “some yokel,” and maybe if he had known who he was talking to, he would have been a little more forthcoming. So the NFL may or may not get a pass here, because no sober person ever really expects the “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” card to yield any positive results. Still, the baseline suspension for domestic violence is supposed to be six games, so we better start hearing about why the NFL deviated from the sentencing guidelines.

But more directly, we are now playing the Watergate game with the Giants: who knew what when? And the simple answer is that it’s largely immaterial. They knew about the incident. Brown told Mara point blank that he had abused his wife. That’s the goddamned end of it. Every team in the league saw the Ravens, the Cowboys and the Vikings get raked over the coals for (temporarily) standing by a domestic abuser. Your marketing machines go into overdrive during your fake-ass Breast Cancer Awareness month to show how much you Care about Women. And goddamnit, Josh Brown isn’t even close to talented enough to earn the But He’s A Really Good Player pass that teams and secret assholes are willing to give in overlooking reprehensible off-field conduct. A serial abuser is a serial abuser, but a special-teams serial abuser? Even Tampa Bay doesn’t value kickers that highly.

Here is Mara’s non-apology:

“We believed we did the right thing at every juncture in our relationship with Josh,” team president John Mara said in a statement. “Our beliefs, our judgments and our decisions were misguided. We accept that responsibility.”

Misguided. Great word, “misguided”. It’s soooo close to “wrong”, but with the subtle hint that there were good, defensible reasons for the decisions that ended up, by unforeseeable happenstance, landing us in a giant Jacuzzi full of rotting pig intestines. You weren’t “misguided”, Mr. Mara- you were a miserable excuse for a human being.

I understand that long-term involvement with the NFL creates a sort of skewed view of humanity, values and acceptable behavior- teams pay millions to defenders for doing what would get them 2-5 years if it happened on the street. But at this point, I’m lobbying for a new mandatory set of staffers: every head coach, every owner, every GM has to be accompanied at all times when attending to team business by a neutral observer whose sole job it is to hit an “Electrocute” button whenever their charge is being a miserable son-of-a-bitch.

As a post-script, and lest you feel too much sympathy for a man who started to confront his darkest demons and may someday redeem himself, Brown issued a parting statement which included the statement (in direct contradiction to everything else revealed so far) “It is important to share that I never struck my wife, and never would.” Josh, the time to retrench and soft-pedal is before your own damning words have been publically revealed. Please enjoy your new career in real estate.

Fuck. Now I’ve angried up the blood….

ANONYMOUS ASSHOLES WHO BURGLARIZED DEMARCUS WARE’S HOUSE

CHARGE: Burglarizing DeMarcus Ware’s house. Can’t you read?

On a (relatively) lighter note, two or more low-lifes realized that if DeMarcus Ware was running around live on teevee Monday Night, he likely was not at home and therefore allegedly decided to visit and take his shit. And take his shit they did. Ware returned home to find his place ransacked and tweeted that he had been robbed during the game.

There were, however, a series of hidden cameras in Ware’s house that caught the perpetrators “in action”.

Several wags have noted a slight resemblance between Suspect #1 and our own Senior Hobo Correspondent Jim Tomsula. However, I would note that Tomsula has never worn a polo shirt in his life, or at least not one with the collar still intact.

Then, of course, there is the question of where exactly Ware had these hidden cameras placed, and for what purpose. The background in the released pictures suggests a garage or storage room of some kind, but I think it’s absolutely safe to say, with full journalistic integrity, that there were multiple hidden cameras in the bedroom as well, and that Ware may or may not be some sort of deranged pervert. Hell, I was right about Aqib Talib, so let’s throw another dart at the board.

As a side-note, I enjoy the Denver Post writer’s compulsion to explain the legal distinction between robbery and burglary. THAT’S GOOD PEDANTRY! /slaps newspaper, hard.

No listing of property stolen has been released other than Ware’s Super Bowl Ring. Rumor has it that items left behind include the Carolina Panther Offensive Line’s self-worth  and a tear-stained-but-impeccably-written letter from Jason Garrett begging him to come back to Dallas.

FINAL NOTE: The Hoodie Crusade offer still stands: Remission of any and all sins, original or cliche, for the man or woman who brings me the Hood of The Dark One or dies in the attempt. As his Greatriots are playing at Buffalo this week, I am upping the ante: if you bring me a drawstring, you get remission of venal sins and a pan of Communion Brownies. Foxboro delenda est.