Just Another Game

The Super Bowl has become just another football game: regardless of how well the teams play during the season, one team dominates the other in the final game of the season and the other looks inept. Tom Brady is a much better quarterback than yesterday’s game showcased, so it’s embarrassing to have to be "losing quarterback Tom Brady" for the coming season! Eli Manning stepped up to the plate and scored the homerun, but so what? who cares? I’d already seen all of the “hot, new commercials” a dozen times, the half-time show was like watching a bad foreign film without subtitles, and the actual football game was tedious. My vote? Take the “super” out of the bowl and just end the darned season already.

I did, on another track, receive a phone call from the manager of the McDonald’s at which I purchased the nastiest Angus mushroom burger ever. I complained at the chain’s website, provided the specific details of the outlet location, and figured nothing would come of it. My suggestion to the manager is to forget the mushrooms as they are not a product that does fast food well. Mine were black, shriveled, and slimy, not an appetizing accoutrement to any burger, so I threw the whole thing into the trash. It also featured Swiss cheese, although I said several times that I don’t eat Swiss cheese and requested yellow cheese instead. I don’t remember which fast food joint offers to do it my way, but it’s not Mickey D’s.

My Saturday plan was to attend the food truck event downtown, featuring 40 assorted food trucks accompanied by stars from the cooking shows (my favorite weekend pleasure), but 9,999 other people had the same thought. No parking; no easy access; and long, long lines at all the trucks. With an entrance fee of $10 to attend the event, then the cost of food (and calories) extra, I decided to return home and knit headbands for my dotter. Her ears get cold, but she isn’t a hat fan, so I made her an assortment that she can try for the coming cold spell the weather reporters keep predicting. If they work, fine, I can make more, but if they don’t, the ear warmers are easy to make and use up bits ‘n pieces from my stash of multiple boxes of yarn hidden in the guestroom closet.

My Discover card people contacted me again to remind me that Amazon.com is using my outdated card. Yep, I know that, and I keep changing the info on the appropriate page in the website, but evidently Amazon’s amazing technology does not allow for change. Guess I’ll have to switch out the card and delete the Discover card altogether.

Been watching movies at the theatre with my movie buddies, so have seen some outstanding movies, such as Albert Nobbs and Iron Lady, as well as a cute chick flick, One for the Money. Janet Evanovich has written a series (current: Explosive Eighteen) of TRNs (Trashy Romance Novels) that feature a female protagonist, Stephanie Plum, who jumps into a job as a bounty hunter because her cousin has a bail bond business and Stephanie always needs money. The setting is New Jersey, the family is Plum crazy, and it’s both the characters and the romance that help the series be so engaging. The major conflict is between Stephanie, her former boyfriend, Morelli, and the hot, really hot mystery man, Ranger, whose business is personal security. Throughout the 18 books in the series, I’ve taken sides, deciding that Morelli is a commitment, Ranger is for as long as he’s interested, and Stephanie is enjoying both at her whim, as well as theirs. What’s funny is that they both know they are sometimes almost simutaneously enjoying Stephanie in a carnal manner, but don’t seem to be as upset about that as I think they should be. Stephanie isn't even upset at that triangle: shouldn’t she at least see one into a relationship and then break it off if it’s not going to work before taking up with the other?

Yeah, I’m old-fashioned that way: one at a time, girls.

Finishing up with the two outstanding movies, Glenn Close’s portrayal in Albert Nobbs is without equal. The physical appearance of the character is entrancing because it’s difficult to distinguish between the woman actor and the fictional male character. The story is subtle, nuanced, layered as it builds from a quiet beginning to a silent fade-out. Close projects an intensity of emotion through her eyes that confirms the eyes as the windows to one’s soul, and she does this without moving another part of her body. When she meets “the painter,” neither she nor I is aware that he, too, is a woman in man’s clothing, doing a man’s job. That meeting becomes the pivotal moment of Albert Nobbs' life, the exact moment when his life begins to fade and her life begins to emerge. The film is, in the vernacular, A-MAAAA-ZING and an absolute tour d’force for Glenn Close.

The second film of note is The Iron Lady (starring Meryl Streep), which seems on the surface to be the story of Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of England, but is much more deeply the story of Margaret Thatcher, a woman whose political life becomes bigger than the sum of its personal parts. It is gut-wrenching to slowly realize that the old woman on the street is the same woman who carved a path into England’s history, but movingly poignant to accept that she is living her past again and again by keeping her deceased husband alive in her present. The day she finally throws away his suits and his shoes sent tears coursing down my cheeks as I realized that once she accepts the past, she also has to accept her present, and her present is devoid of the various forces that made her such a formidable woman. Not only was my heart on the screen, but it was also with my dear friend who is suffering from a slow mental decline herself, and reflected onto myself, especially the feelings of not being who I once was and not knowing who I currently am.

But, most importantly, I’ve been taking good care of my two girls, taking a walk every afternoon, and cuddling with them during the evening hours. I’ve been offered another female Jack Russell terrier, but that’s not a good idea either logistically or practically. The man up the street took the dog from his daughter, who has 4 other large dogs, and wants to find it a good home. He and I have exchanged pleasantries for the past year as I’ve walked past his home and greeted his little barkers, so I’m thinking that he told his daughter that he knows a patsy who will take the dog off their hands. Just sayin’. Mia is aging, but she’s still frisky enough to walk every day and strong enough to pull me to a sudden stop when she wants to sniff a bush, so I’m not ready to send her to the glue factory just yet. The problem is, of course, having someone stay with them when I want to travel, and that’s a problem often without solution, which means I stay home when I want to be gone.

Have some thinking to do.