Monday night I (unlike too many Giants fans who stayed home like pussies) attended the Saints' "home" opener. A photo gallery of 23 pics is posted, though it's nowhere near my best work, especially considering I was only 11 rows away from the New Orleans cheerleaders.

My Thoughts on the Game:

• There were 10,000 empty seats, about twice as many as were at Yankee Stadium on Monday night. An absolute disgrace on the part of Giants fans. Here we were, with a solid chance to be one of seven NFL teams to start the year 2-0 (which we did), and we couldn't come close to filling the stadium for a game that was supposed to double as a charity drive ...

• ... which it hardly was. Sure, there were signs everywhere touting charitable websites, but I saw only one person collecting cash in a bucket. And he needed a bodyguard to protect the booty. I had to retreat during a piss-break sprint just to catch him.

• The fans that were there were true Big Blue backers. Wow, I forgot how much energy runs through that joint.

• The Giants play at San Diego on Sunday night, which means we're playing with house money. Even a loss would bring us back home at 2-1 against the shaky Rams on Oct. 2. Come back 3-0 and you're gonna see the most raucous tailgate and in-game crowd since the 2000 NFC championship run.

• I have total confidence in Eli Manning to make the right read and almost none to make a great throw. I missed the ESPN Sunday Night Football's crew's take on the game, but I imagine they called him a rising star. In reality, he's been pretty pedestrian, even with the Giants' combined total of 69-29 through two games.

• Payback's a bitch, and I never forgot the shit I took in New Orleans from Saints fans who cursed, yelled at and berated me for visiting their town while wearing my No. 80 Shockey jersey to the Superdome in the Joe Horn Cell Phone Game in December 2003. Fuck 'em. Cubs fans got theirs, too, in June. That's the way it goes as a tourist, I guess. Wear the wrong laundry and get cursed at.

• And yet, if you don't speak unless spoken to first, these games are easy to get through. A few in our group were Saints backers, true friends with family displaced. An entire family of 'Aints fans sat in front of me and were well-behaved, of course. A guy and gal from N'Awlins mooched off our spread in the parking lot. It was all good. It was business as usual. Drunkards on both sides did their best to embarrass those with a shred of maturity.

• Our pre-game meal included hamburger, cheese, bacon, chili, sausage and an obscene amount of beer. The rule for Section 129, Row 11 was: "If you smelt it, you dealt it ... and probably weren't the only one."

• There's never been a better scenario than this: Giants go to 2-0, both my fantasy teams go to 2-0, the Yanks win, and the Sux lose. Great night.

Paul Katcher owns and operates the Upper West Side ’s most popular blog and periodically contributes its content to realhoboken.com. To see Paul’s photo gallery from the Giants-Saints game or to read his past work, visit www.paulkatcher.com.