The morning after I babysat so she and Kent could see Star Wars, MJ called me.
Both the girls have pink eye.
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...goes unpunished.
The morning after I babysat so she and Kent could see Star Wars, MJ called me. Both the girls have pink eye.
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Margy came to town last week, joined by her son BJ and his buddy, Randy. The guys were here to see a band they love. Margy was here for Mom’s 81st birthday. Instead of a free for all party that stuffed the house, Mom wanted a nice, quiet, grown up party. She requested dinner with her kids and in laws but no grand kids. A nice, intimate party for 20. It turned out to be not quite that big. Jay and Kent couldn’t make it due to their work schedules and JP and Royana couldn’t make it due to living two thousand miles away. Margy flew into town on Tuesday. The big party was Wednesday night. Before they even dropped their bags off, Margy and the boys wanted to stop at MJs house to meet Tater tot, who was born after their last visit to town. BJ is one of those young men who loves babies. He says he can’t see one without wanting to pick it up. You and me both, kid. Like most humans, Tot was born with the ability to tell men from women and like most boys, he is drawn to males. He doesn’t know exactly what it is yet but he can already tell that they’re more like him than women are. He adored BJ. I had been at the show Newsies the previous Saturday night and Sunday was Valentine’s Day. Jay and I celebrated by going to Mass downtown at the Basilica. It was gorgeous and our old friend, Fr. Mike said Mass. We had a nice little chat with him afterwards then went down to Hoyt’s for brunch. We’d gone to the late Mass so we missed the breakfast crowd. It was a smashing Valentine’s Day. We don’t really celebrate fake Holidays around here. I consider Valentine’s Day a fake one. If you need the calendar to force your sweetie to buy you flowers, you’ve got problems. Lincoln’s birthday is a bigger deal, if you ask me. That was last Friday. I like to celebrate Lincoln’s on the 12 and Washington’s on the 22nd. None of this stupid President’s Day crap. Most of the presidents don’t deserve a day. I think its beyond stupid and actually disgraceful that we changed the Holiday from honoring the two men without whom there would be no United States of America and diluted it to celebrating every nonentity who ever got elected. It’s nonjudgmental bullshit! I refuse to celebrate the likes of Wilson, Carter, Nixon or anyone named Bush. My point is just that the last ten days were jam packed with events. Whenever Margy comes to town, I set work aside so we can hang out and play. This brief trip was no different. The weather has continued it long mild streak so Margy, MJ and I took a long walk, pushing both Tot and Bean in strollers. We wound our way through our new favorite neighborhood, up and down some major hills to see our favorite houses and the view from the old watertower. Mom’s birthday dinner was great. She bought two full beef tenderloins at her favorite butcher shop and we supplied the rest of the fixin’s. Since there were no kids along, we decided to dress up. Our versions of dressing up differ wildly. My brother Joe, who profited greatly from Uncle Bruce’s closet a year ago, wore a gorgeous suit with a cashmere jacket. I was paint free. Everyone looked pretty good! I had brought along an envelope I found at Uncle Mickey’s house full of reprints of a story that ran in the local newspaper back in 1974 in which my Mom’s third brother, Uncle Pat, was a hero. Mom’s brother Pat was a police officer who diffused a hostage situation, ending a stand off with no casualties. I gave each of my siblings a copy of the article. This naturally spawned a long litany of Uncle Pat stories. Pat was a big man with a grim countenance. At church, he was known simply as “that grumpy guy who always leaves early.” He never actually left early. He stood at the back of the church waiting for his younger brother, Mickey, who was an usher, to finish his work. But with his steady stride and his eyes fixed firmly on the door, never looking left or right, he looked like the biggest bad ass in town while he walked down that isle. He was a cop for 40 years and never drew his weapon. Robbers holding hostages refused to talk to anyone but Pat, whom they knew by name. Even though the robbery was taking place in Richfield and so out of Pat’s jurisdiction, he showed up and brokered an end to the standoff. He was the biggest bad ass in more than just one town. He also had a gorgeous smile, a talent for story telling, loved babies and collected fine, hand painted porcelain. He was an amateur magician and any kid in the neighborhood who found a penny (or rock) could ring his doorbell and watch as Pat magically transformed the penny (or rock. He was an equal opportunity magician) into a piece of bubblegum. He was my God Father and over the years gave me the coolest Christmas presents ever. In fact, I have four different cowboy statuettes that all came from him. The other day, snuggling with me in the recliner, Babalouie pointed at a figure of a confederate officer with blond hair showing beneath his Stetson. “Grampa!” Babalouie yelled. Yes, it does look remarkably like Babalouie’s cowboy grandpa. From Pat stories it was a small step to Uncle Bruce stories and from there it was only natural to proceed to Kevin stories. My Mom has three brothers, all of whom were legendary in their fields but no one can touch our cousin Kevin. Long story short, I have a photo of Kevin with the Pope in my kitchen right now that was taken a few months back. For dessert we had my Mom’s favorite: white cake with burnt almond frosting. It’s an acquired taste. The next day, my sisters and sisters-in-law were my Dad’s lunch guests at his men’s club. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, they all brought their sweet hearts. Dad filled a table for ten. After a spectacular lunch, the chef (who looked like he was 17) came out and spoke about his education and experience with food. It was fascinating. All the ladies in attendance got long stemmed red roses to take home. I went back to Mom’s later to hang out with Margy. After dinner, she and Mom and I unpacked the five boxes of Pat’s old collection that Mom had taken out of Mickey’s apartment. We spent several hours cleaning decades worth of smoke and dust off dozens of treasures big and small. Margy pulled out her IPad and we looked up as many of them as we could. A few items we were actually able to find exact replicas available on eBay but most we could only find similar things. Nothing was worth so much that we wanted to rush right out to the nearest antique dealer and cash in. I wasn’t surprised: Pat was never rich, he bought things he loved that he could afford. It was really fun cleaning them up and revealing the true beauty of all those pieces that had been hidden in the murk of Micky’s apartment. It’s a good thing he’s moving: it’s forced him to get rid of everything he doesn’t need, toss out decades of accumulated stuff, give away all the furniture he doesn’t use and clean everything he does use. It could very well turn out that he’s not really blind at all, he just couldn’t see through the dust in his apartment. My Mom scrubbed off a pair of dingy old candlesticks. They glitter like the Waterford crystal they are, now. Her Mom brought them back from a trip to Ireland in the ‘70s. I’ll bet they hadn’t been cleaned since she died in ’85. Friday, we made a field trip I’ve been meaning to take for years but never got around to it: W visited the Russian Museum on Diamond Lake road. I’d heard nothing but raves about the place and its right here in our neighborhood. It’s insane that I hadn’t been there before. The current show is Russia in WWI; two stories of photos, film and artifacts. Fascinating stuff. The Gift shop is packed with gorgeous things. Jewelry, scarves, hand carved boxes, prints, hand painted eggs of every size, color and description! I was very tempted by a print of a painting of a monastery. Everything in that gift shop spoke of a culture that was overflowing with whimsy, personality and an appreciation for nature, beauty and art. Back in the early ‘90s, just a few years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jay hosted a team from the Ukraine at MCTC. In appreciation, the team gave him some little gifts. These included a booklet of postcards from their home; pictures of parks, boulevards, public buildings: the sort of thing you’d bring to a foreign country to show off your home town. In such a situation, you’d want to bring the best of the best, wouldn’t you? For instance, I’d bring shots of Minnehaha Falls, Lake Harriet, the Sculpture Garden, the Rose Gardens, the Arboretum, the downtown skyline, etc. What struck me about the photos in the booklet they gave us was how drab, unimaginative and downright ugly everything in it was. Standing in the gift shop at the Russian Museum, I couldn’t help but contrast the wonderful things representing pre-revolutionary Russia with that stack of ugly photographs out of the USSR. That’s what communism does to a nation. As I wrote about Penny, the socialist from the show the House of Elliott, beauty and art are nonstarters to the true believers. To them, life is better when everyone is ground down to the common denominator of poverty. Better we all starve in equality than allow some to have more than others. In such a society there is no room for art, artists or anything that elevates the human soul. Its not a coincidence that communist nations outlaw the Church. Then we went down to the basement to see the paintings there. I nearly melted when I stepped off the elevator. The exhibition was Olexa Bulavitzky, who had emigrated from the Ukraine to the US just after WWII. He spent the rest of his career painting here in the twin cities. They are simply the most amazing things I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen Sergeants and Monets up close. None of the images online come close to doing the paintings justice. Why have I never heard of Bulavitsky?? It’s even more amazing since he lived and worked right here in my neighborhood. Best nine bucks I ever spent and I must get back while that exhibit is there. Saturday, Ty, his kids and I went to see the Tommies last regular season game. Both kids thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards, they came to my house for dinner and I set up the over the door basketball hoop I bought for Babalouie. We hung it on a drawer in the kitchen so it was low enough for him to slam dunk on. He played for four hours. Sunday, I finally got a little bit of work done. I had planned on working until Jay called me down for dinner but instead, we were invited out to Ty’s house for dinner. Megan had spent the day before acing her teacher’s certification tests and it was time to celebrate. So…out we headed. At home, Babalouie showed me the hoop his dad had hung on his crib. He insisted I watch him play ball in his bedroom. In fact, Babydoll told me he was “Taylor”, his favorite player on coach’s team and we had to chant “Offence” and clap in time, just like we did at the game. We did that until dinner was on the table. It was the best day ever! Monday was my last chance to actually get some work done. Then MJ called. I had promised her months ago that when she and Kent had a chance to see Star Wars, I’d babysit. They finally had a chance. I worked till midafternoon, then went over and played with the kids while they went to the show. I was home by seven and I could have gone back to work but by then, the week was pretty much shot. You can’t really play all week and make money. Sometimes you just have to take some time off. Most of the world thinks of Christian Bale as the latest incarnation of Batman: the Dark Night. (We won’t include Ben Affleck, who will never be known as anyone but Ben Affleck.) But for a generation of singing and dancing young ladies, Mr. Bale will forever be known as Jack Kelly, the signin’ dancin’ newspaper slingin’ union organizin’ young scrub in Disney’s 1992 musical, Newsies! Based on the movie, the musical is here in town and a dozen of us went together last night. We began the evening with a large, Italian dinner at Buca di Beppo. We had a long table in the back and ate until we could barely walk. We’re native Minnesotans and we know how to do winter. We stoked up our internal furnaces with a ton of starch, then walked four blocks through subzero temperatures to the theater. Believe me: we were all wide awake by the time we showed our tickets to the usher! I love the Orpheum. I have no idea how many shows I’ve seen there over the years. Christmas ’14, my girls and I all saw Motown, which was fabulous! I think the first show I ever saw there may have been Annie, back in ’76. Since then, I know I’ve seen the Boomtown Rats, a Beatles homage (Shout?) Basia, Michael Buble and more. Part of the problem in trying to remember is that the State theater is right across the street and I’ve seen lots of shows there, too. Both theaters are opulent, gorgeous, fully refurbished beauties that make you feel as though you ought to be wearing feathers, diamonds and furs just to walk in the door. I love it! Last night, our tickets were up in the balcony. We had barely gotten seated when the lights went down. The show is the story of the news paper boys (called ‘newsies’) battle against the greed of the newspaper’s owner, Joseph Pulitzer. It seems in those days, the newsies had to buy stacks from the publisher before selling them on the street, so the circulation depended on the newsies, selling as many sheets as they could. When circulation went down, instead of taking the losses or improving the content, Pulitzer raised the price of the paper for the newsies from .50 cents per hundred to .60 cents. A 20% increase is quite a kick in the pants! Their response to this injustice was to organize and strike. I couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t just charge more for the papers they sold. That’s what I did a little over a year ago, when my supplier raised the price of canvas by 20%. Maybe next time I have to pay more for paint, I should pirouette around Michaels and beat up a few old ladies? Nah. I’ll stick to the laws of supply and demand. I guess that’s why no one’s ever going to write a musical about needlepoint designers. Besides, back in 1890, it’s plausible that the newsies had been selling papers for a penny a piece and I suppose a 100% price increase would have been hard to sell to the public but who knows? If all the papers raised their prices…wouldn’t have been much of a story, would it? The other plot point I couldn’t help getting stuck on was when the plucky young Girl Reporter /love interest, in order to gin up support for the cause, excitedly got an article and large photo of the striking newsies printed…in the newspaper…which they weren’t distributing anywhere in the city…so what was the point of that, again? The point was the show stopping number “I’m the King of New York”, silly! Anyway, when watching a cast of athletic, graceful young men dance their well sculpted asses off, who cares about the internal logic of the plot? NOT ME. As usual in live theater, half the fun is being amazed by the staging and the sets. For Newsies, the set was composed of a three tiered scaffolding in three articulated parts. These sets moved to, fro, up, back and separately to convey tenements, Pulitzer’s office and basement and the inside of a theater. It was ingenious and fascinating to watch as the cast and the sets themselves performed dance numbers on so many levels of the stage space. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that included more athleticism. Most of the numbers included running up and down all three stories of that scaffolding as well as hand springs and flips across the stage yet at the end of such numbers, none of the dancers could even be seen to be breathing heavily. I’m pretty sure there was a time in my life when I, too, was young and fit but I really don’t remember. The only weak spot in the whole show was Katherine, the Girl Reporter. Her singing and dancing was adequate but her acting was…well, you could tell she was just acting her little heart out. You know how Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly used to deliver their lines in that East coast- actress diction no one in real life ever spoke with? That’s how she talked and it sounded bizarre, especially against the Bronxy dialect of the newsies, all of whom were superb. The show was so good that I was surprised when the lights came up at halftime because it all went by so fast! I do think that the Orpheum could make a killing if they sold ice packs for the knees of us old codgers squeezed into those balcony seats which have no legroom, whatsoever. We all stood just to ease the strain on our poor, throbbing knees during intermission (not half time). The second half (act) was just as good and sped by just as quickly as the first half (act). It did feel good to walk the few blocks to where we’d parked afterwards. No need for icing the knees when you can simply march around in ten below weather. All in all, a great night and I can’t wait to do it again! Last Sunday, I watched the Super bowl for the first time since the Vikings fourth defeat back in the seventies, which broke my heart and hardened it against football. We hates it, forever. Of course, the problem is that I don’t hate football. I love football. When I was a kid, I loved it far too much for my own good. So, in keeping with the way I live my life, I avoid it. Why bring upon myself that brief entertainment that can only end in heartbreak and pain? Football, for me, was like a drinking binge: the hangover just isn’t worth it. The last time I watched more football than I did this year was 1999, when my son Tyler played for State Champion De La Salle. The islanders lost only one game that season, to a team from California. Most games, they scored their first touchdown on opening kickoff. That’s how I like my sports: dominant and in the bag. Jay tells me its because I’m not a true competitor. He’s probably right; it was never the competition I enjoyed, only the winning. That’s why after setting a city record my senior year of high school, I turned down overtures from the University of Minnesota. I knew I was way too small to be a successful DI hurdler and I hated the training. Like my daughter who is a whiz at math but hates it, I was a good runner but more than happy to never, ever do it again. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the Super Bowl. I did not care at all who won and was able to simply enjoy the game. More importantly, on Monday night, the Johnnies came to St. Thomas to play basketball. Lakers, Celtics; Vikings, Packers got nothing on Tommies vs. Johnnies as a rivalry. St. Thomas beat St. John’s twice in football this year and made it to the national championship game. Yeah, the Johnnies aren’t foaming at the mouth over that at all. The basketball team beat them up at St. John’s earlier in the season so Monday was their payback. St. John’s is the only game of the years where the Tommies pull out the bleachers at the ends of the court. Standing room only, lots of student fans, boisterousness (yes, I mean drunkenness) and good fun all around. I went with both my boys and my brother Bill, who is a Tommie’s alum. My folks were going to join us but in the end didn’t have the energy to fight the cold and the crowds. Ty didn’t bring Babalouie due to the aforementioned boisterousness. We wound up sitting with my brother in law, Mike. It was a neck and neck game, the outcome of which was in doubt until the very last seconds when the Tommies managed to steal the ball and win by one point. That’s far too close for me to enjoy: I like the blowouts. If the opponent is worth defeating, he’s worth destroying! That’s my motto. I would’ve made a good Hun. Tuesday is the day I drop off my completed orders at the Picket Fence, pick up my check and new orders. This week, I completed a special order I’ve had for two months and completely dreaded doing. A customer had brought in a photo of an Icon and asked me if I could reproduce it in needlepoint only much, much bigger. I took one look at it and said “Yes!” I always do that. I frequently regret my cocky assumptions. This particular Icon featured a Virgin Mother who looked like she was twelve years old (which may be historically accurate) and a peaches and cream blond. Which I’m fairly sure is not historically accurate. The problem with the design was that Mary’s halo was festooned with apples, pears and flowers and she was holding a basket of grapes and flowers as well as the Baby Jesus. So much detail and I had to paint it in such a way as to preserve the glow of the halo. All this on needlepoint canvas. And it was huge, so I could pack in tons of detail. It was more work than I usually like to invest in one design. I charged accordingly and the client loved it so everyone was happy but I did tell the ladies at the shop that I would double the price if anyone else ever wanted that design. I paint pictures for money. If that ever feels like work, I need to be paid exorbitantly for it. Wednesday, Jay’s team played Augsburg, which is right here in town but still an ‘away’ game so I skipped it. Ty took Babalouie to see it, then dropped by the house afterward. Babalouie is just as in love with basketball right now as he had been with football last fall. In fact, as we snuggled in the recliner, watching Frasier, he told me that I needed to get a basketball and hoop. Thursday, at Aldi, they had Avenger over the door basketball hoops sets so I got one. Next time Babalouie comes over, we’re playing. It snowed a bit this week. As slow, desultory, nonchalant snowfall that seemed to say “This? I only snow like this when I don't care what happens.” It was gorgeous and so light and fluffy that Zack was able to clear his car off by blowing on it. Last night I watched the movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E. starring Army Hammer and Superman.* IT WAS AWESOME!! I never watched the show when it was on. I was too young, for starters. I was aware of it and I knew the two main characters were an American spy and a Russian spy. Aside from that, I have no idea how similar the movie is to the show. But if the show had the same sense of humor and James Bond over the top cool that the movie has, I want to watch every episode. Zack watched it with me and we shouted with laughter through lots of it. It has become our favorite Guy Ritchie movie and we’re Ritchie fans. My favorite moment was when Illia Kuryakin’s boat explodes in Napoleon Solo’s rearview mirror so Solo crushes the enemy boat with his truck. Sound crazy? It is. I loved it. Today I have to try to get some work done before getting all dolled up and heading out. I’m going to the theater with a group of my favorite people. Newsies is playing at the Orpheum. *if there is such a thing as too handsome to take seriously, Henry Cavill comes perilously close. Star Lord tames dinosaurs.
What could be more fun? I watched the latest installment of dinosaurs running amok last night. It was exactly what I hoped it would be: ridiculous, over the top fun with Chris Pratt, who is quickly climbing my list of favorite actors. I’m a fan of Michael Crichton’s work. He was a good story teller. Not all of his stuff is great, some of it is just silly fun but in the last decade or so of his career, he had some important things to say. Jurassic Park is a classic monster movie and it holds up really well after two decades but the book is really a modern classic about the hubris of scientists. The heart of the tale is a dire warning to heed the law of unintended consequences. Not everything we can do are things we should do. The dinosaurs are just the chocolate coating that helps it go down easier. The follow up to Jurassic Park, the Lost World, is equally as good . The book is a modern take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, warning of the dangers of abandoning the things we create. To create is to take responsibility and responsibility is something modern culture strives to avoid at all costs. The cost, unfortunately, could be civilization itself. The movie that Steven Spielberg made based on Crichton’s second dinosaur fantasy completely missed the point. Oh, the movie employs a few of the scenes of high action taken directly from Crichton’s work but the heart of the story is excised so thoroughly you can’t tell it was ever there. Jurassic Park 3 was just an excuse to use the monster scenes from the books that hadn’t made it into either of the movies. But Jurassic World, as fun as it is, actually revisits the theme from the book The Lost World. Chris Pratt plays Owen, a former Navy Seal who now works as a trainer, raising, studying and (to a degree) training the four velociraptors on the Island. Part of the problems that form the heart of the book The Lost World, occurred because the animals that survived the destruction of the initial theme park were simply abandoned. There they were, equipped with the instincts of pack animals, with no parent generation to teach them how to survive as a pack. Instead of simply being wild, as opposed to domesticated animals, they became feral, lacking even the social skills they needed to get along with each other. The title of the book refers as much to these poor animals, as lost as the Lost Boys of Neverland as to the abandoned island inhabited by creatures resurrected millions of years out of their time. In Jurassic World, the new generation of raptors are treated like the wild animals they are, but imprinted on Owen when they’re hatched and carefully raised as a pack in which Owen is the Alpha. When Owen is informed of the creation of a new, bigger, super predator, he’s appalled as much by the hubris of the insane scientists who thought it was a good idea to make a Turbo T-Rex as he is by the fact that once they’d designed the poor thing, they’d raised it in isolation, away from even the idea of the outside world and other creatures as anything but food. So when it inevitably escapes, it kills everything it comes across. Naturally. After that one scene, the movie eschews the larger issues dealt with in Crichton’s books and gets right to the business of colorfully killing people via dinosaurs. We get to see people get stomped on, bitten in half, swallowed whole, pierced with beaks of pterodactyls…it’s great. Unlike the first movie, I was never at all concerned for the fate of the two kids stranded alone in the park. I also felt no compassion for the assistant who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the boys when she was plucked into the air by a dactyl and eventually swallowed whole by the sea monster. The sleazy lawyer from JPI who got eaten off the toilet by the T-Rex was a far more human character than she was. I felt his fear and pain. She was just a cardboard cut out. Watching this movie, you know from the moment they mention the new giant superpredator that it’s going to escape its bonds and run amok. What could possibly be worse than a Super Rex loose on the Island, leaving a trail of dead dinos in its wake as it rampages closer and closer to the resort full of people? Well, how about adding the velociraptors to the mix, thinking that somehow, if we set them free, they’ll hunt down the Super Rex? No one, not even Owen, although he does protest the plan, thinks to ask “what do we do then? Even if they kill it, we’ll have a bunch of raptors loose on the island. How is that better?” So now there’s a Super Rex and a pack of raptors loose on the island. Hmmm. Would adding a T-Rex to this mix make things better, or worse? I’m thinking that letting out the T-Rex is the last thing I’d want to do in this situation. But hey, I guess that’s why I’m not writing dinosaur fantasies. Not only does The Girl let out the T-Rex, she also manages to outrun it in stilettoes. Just in case you forgot for an instant that this is a really dumb movie. In keeping with that point, the monsters conveniently decide to ignore all the tasty, defenseless little people huddling nearby and fight each other instead, allowing the people to crawl to safety. I don’t know; somewhere with doors that have knobs, not handles. All I know is that one minute the giant predators are all fighting each other and the next, the surviving tourists are on what must be an air craft carrier that somehow materialized offshore. The final rule of really dumb movies is not to sweat the details. What I took away from Jurassic World was that even with all the best intentions and what you think are impregnable defenses, it’s a terrible idea to release a horde of alien creatures you don’t understand into your society. Hmmm…maybe Jurassic World isn’t as dumb a movie as it seems. Yes, Please!
It’s Groundhog day and we’re finally getting an honest to goodness blizzard. Two days ago, MJ and I took a walk down the creek parkway and we both got so hot we took off our jackets. My car thermometer said it was just a few degrees shy of 50 when I drove home. Before you get all silly and ‘what will it take for you to believe in climate change?’ on me, let me inform you that a thaw like that in January here in Minnesnowta isn’t something new and different. This year was nothing compared to ’81, when it was nearly 60 degrees on the January day when my brother and his wife got married. They just celebrated their 35th anniversary. I should call them. My point is that the occasional warm day is no more a change from usual than the subzero temps we had a little over a week ago. My additional point is that I’m lousy at remembering anniversaries and birthdays and stuff like that. Anyway, the East coast has been pummeled by blizzards and I was jealous. But we’re finally finally getting some serious snow! It started snowing while I was at the shop, doing my weekly order drop/check pickup. I actually watched the white stuff accumulate on the roof of the house next door while I was going over orders in the back room. I could tell it was coming down fast. That was six hours ago and the snow hasn’t let up. It’s been pouring snow. I love it! Oh, the drive home from Sam’s Club was iffy but no one was being stupid. It was extremely slippery but I avoided hills and made it up my driveway, so I’m good. Zack called me on his way home from work. He’d made it all the way to the park across the street but couldn’t get up the hill to get around the park. I took out a huge corned beef brisket I had in the freezer, tossed it in a pot and it’s been simmering all day. I’ve already shoveled off the roof once and Zack and I cleared the driveway. Despite the initial slipperiness, the snow is the light and fluffy kind. We’ve gotten six or seven inches so far but it was all very easy to move. I’m sure we’ll have to go out and clear it all again, since the snow is still coming down. It’s not coming as thick as it was a few hours ago; I can see the park house across the street. For a while during my drive home, visibility was about a hundred yards. The best part about this blizzard is that it could have happened three months ago but didn’t. No matter how much snow we get now, spring is right around the corner. Ash Wednesday is next week! I love the seasons. It’s easy to love winter when you have central heating, a freezer full of meat and a huge movie collection. I’ve lived in the North all my life. I know how to do it. The third episode of the long awaited 10th season of the X-Files was absolutely wonderful and for us old time, hard core X-Philes, was recognizable as a Darin Morgan penned piece from the get go. If the photo of Fluke Man (played by Morgan himself) in the opening scene wasn’t a giveaway, the set up and dialogue certainly were. From the moment the animal control officer dropped his net, saying “I quit,” I suspected the brilliant mind that gave us The War of the Coprophages (season 3) was behind this one. I was sure of it after Mulder gave Scully his ridiculous explanation for the weird circumstances prompting this exchange: “Now that’s how I like my Mulder.” Scully sighed, happy to see her man letting his crazy show. “You mean you believe me?” He asked, surprised. “No. You’re bat crap crazy.” Bat crap crazy is what she loved about him. It’s what we all loved about him. Especially because he usually turned out to be right. Loved the guy who played the ‘monster’. He was hilarious and his conversation with Mulder in the cemetery was an instant classic. “That. Never. Happened.” Mulder deadpanned. “You made that up.” The whole episode was an inside joke for those of us who practically memorized the first nine seasons. My favorite moment of the episode however, was Scully acknowledging one of our favorite details about the show; her immortality. It was in Morgan’s episode Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose (season 3) that Scully was first told she would never die and one of my favorite eps: Tithonus (season 6), which followed up on that cryptic note by showing us just how Death lost Scully’s paperwork. Bravo! So far, I’m loving season 10. I don’t even mind the fractures in our hero’s relationship. I think they’ve been explained in a credible way. Just because Scully loves Mulder doesn’t mean she can stand living with the guy. |
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