Change.

Right now, I'm as unmoved by change as Sam Cook was about singing to it. However, in the midst of my fluctuating pretentiousness triggered by a confluence of current events, I'll admit my eyes blinked twice to the flash of that Senator cat from the snowy, Canadian breakaway Republic known as Vermont. That was tight - I'm feeling it, because …

Lately, I haven't been much about change. I'm busy bracing for bowel ripping rage if 6 foot Philadelphia phenom Allen Iverson can't fix his cracked tailbone and carry my home team to inevitable annihilation in a Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal dominated final. But - AT LEAST I can say we got there. Change? Man, change is that trash-strewn East Coast Gotham everybody slept on making its first NBA Eastern Conference showdown since '88. The City of Brotherly Love as social icon, a delightful urban Oz of furious, hostile contradictions driven by hardened public servants; infamously brutal municip al police, yet bass dropping hip hop innovation and delicious, artery-clogging cheesesteaks. That's change. Yet, as fate would have it, Milwaukee - of all truly tasteless jokes - may make its way to the matchup with L.A. That wasn't the plan.

Neither was Jeffords. It was his supposedly decisive rhubarb stripped of conventional political logic and welded in attitude that provided the schismatic and theatrical spat against the "Establishment." His appalling flirt then marriage with independence will now remain the discordant mantra amongst the quarrelsome partisans, pundits and pontificators holding conversations already scrapped and meaningless before the rest of us even care ...

I'm not saying we shouldn't. Yet, we get pushed to disillusionment through a meat-grinding mind-blow of rhetorical tiff, endless rebuttal and raunchy squabbles we did not elect our public servants to engage in. Breaking his lone, moderate and straight shooting straw over Bush Junior's back, Jim Jeffords says "bump that" and knocked a fresh dent in the cycle. And while point is soundly made, it will be short-lived as the political Matrix of campaigns, elections, pork and corruption persist, short of national implosion and social upheaval once it hits too many paychecks.

I'll walk the verbal plank and risk announcing a useless recommendation for Jeffords as Commander-in-Chief. In him, I see what us stressed, money-drained, credit-crippled and cardiac-arrested souls would love to occasionally scream on any given commute: screw the status quo. 76ers coach Larry Brown keeps that same faith, so we nominate him as Jeffords' running mate. He pokes a symbolic middle finger in nonchalant disgust, sizing up convention in ghetto defiance. While the NBA crowns him coach of the year, Brown snorts, scoffs, smirks and rattles the purveyors of corporate permanence: "I don't care about that stuff."

Reflecting upon a swelling surge in registered Independents, Jeffords possibly drew identical conclusions. What is "stuff?" Without going into the word devouring details, "stuff" is the crack of acceptance, the aphrodisiac of circumstantial denial compounded by the expectation of thorough social or institutional conditioning. In Jim Jeffords' case, he grew skeptical of the party line forcing him to resign his own conscience in favor of a ruling conservative agenda. A tax cut was not as significant as was the thought of what people would now have to adjust to in the face of lost government revenue and drastically reduced spending on certain social essentials. The $600 per citizen payoff rebate granted, in the meantime, will ensure wool is thickly covering heads before our ears get cold, brittle and frostbitten.

In strokes of casual, cool and contemplative disgust at the status quo, Jef fords and Brown reached to the bottom of the mental stasis and stopped scanning front pages for the next traded insult - they instead reclaimed identity. Most will settle for tepid, game show dialogues and manage to avoid the heavy truths that might hurt feelings, toss emotions into brick walls and slam heads into stained teeth … although, this is sometimes necessary to jolt the change needed. Vent the un-vented rage, yet remain calm enough to discern right from wrong, truth from lie and let the rest of t he world know.

It's not even that complicated, though. Each man has a job to do and feels compelled, through honored contracts with either taxpayer or red-faced fan, to honor it. Senator Jeffords grew weary of defending something he didn't believe in because he saw, across the horizon, greater cobs of corn to shuck.. He became the most un-Republican Republican his right-washed Senate colleagues could ever ask for. After a while it wears you out.

Coach Brown - the now frustrated and Bucks-beleaguered Philly Messiah - is focused on one thing: the win. Win a Conference final, give his old college try against the Lakers, motivate, save and turn a few young upstart players into stars and maybe … just maybe … win a Championship or two along the way before it's decided retirement on Chapel Hill is the appropriate and fitting end.

C.D. Ellison is Contributing Writer to Metro Connection. He can be reached at againstthegrain@metroconnection.info.