Posts for category ‘NFL’

I slept on my neck funny, or something, on Sunday night and it was killin’ me all day yesterday. Which resulted in major headache, and my day culminated with me sort of writhing in pain while watching Monday Night Football. The fact that the Niners had to fight so hard for the win over an even worse team does not bode well for the season, but I guess a win is a win.

Is it pathetic/immature of me to laugh every time I see that Carl’s Jr. flat buns commercial? Yeah. It is.

In other TV news, I have to agree with Sarah about the premiere of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. With Stacy and Clinton it’s like your girlfriends are over ragging on you and helping you go through your closet. With Tim and Veronica it was more like the Duke and Duchess of the Upper East Side came down from high tea to make horrified expressions at the commoner’s wardrobe. I mean, the makeover was still a success, but it lacked the fun factor I’d hoped for. I love Tim Gunn but think maybe he’s a better foil for the Project Runway format than for this. Not that I would turn him away if he came knockin’ on my front door.

Is it just me, or does the Superbowl feel a little anticlimactic this year? I’m sure Colts fans will disagree, but it just doesn’t feel Superbowly to me. Now Prince, he was awesome. Best halftime show in a long time, if you ask me. He doesn’t need a million people on stage with him or the fireworks or wardrobe malfunctions. He is Prince.

I picked up a copy of The Oprah Magazine** as the cover promised something from David Sedaris, which turned out to be this two-paragraph anecdote, but I guess that’s okay because there is a giant feature about shoes and also I discovered this chocolate. In only five short months we will be living in Santa Fe again for the summer and I can have this chocolate first-hand without having to pay shipping. And maybe I will win a spa vacation with Oprah and Gayle.

Remember in school taking those President’s Physical Fitness Tests like flexed arm hang and long jump and sit-ups and rope climbs? Yeah. If your fitness was at the level of mine, those days in P.E. sucked. I am perhaps going to reconcile my past and have the ever-elusive closure by participating in the President’s Challenge. I’m not sure what it is, how long it lasts, or when I can stop, but my friend Tammy invited me to join her group and I did. Now I guess I have to exercise and stuff.

I finished Magic or Madness. It was definitely a page-turner. Now I must read the next book in the trilogy right away!! I really liked how even by the end of the book, you the reader does not know who you can trust. Because of the magic system Justine Larbalestier* set up for the books, no one is all good or all bad. This keeps the suspense up and characters and readers on their toes.

*I typed her whole name without stopping or looking up the spelling! Finally!

**Best Superbowl promo: Dave Letterman and Oprah. Yes!

I’m reading Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness to break out of my longstanding no-fantasy reading trend, and enjoying it very much. I got to thinking about how descriptions of food are so present in fantasy novels in a way they are not in realistic fiction. Every fantasy book I read as a kid featured snacking, feasting, having tea, sweetmeats, Turkish delight, roasts, cakes, elevensies, and possibly magic food or food of the gods. Eighteenth and nineteenth century novels have a lot of joyful descriptions of food, too. It seems that maybe modern and realistic fiction reflects too much our contemporary sense of food guilt and diet obsession and most of the joy is sucked out of food and eating. Or characters just don’t eat—unless it’s a story featuring an “ethnic” family where food plays a more prominent part. After not reading fantasy for so long I’d forgotten how food is right there with all the other surroundings in a way that’s so life-giving and sensual. Reading Justine’s characters having sossi rolls, Violet Crumbles, and sitting down to teas featuring cinnamon rolls as big as your head reminded me.

Speaking of fantasy food, I purchased Superbowl junk treats and limited them this year to a bag of sour cream & onion chips and a six-pack of Rolling Rock. I think last year having those things plus chili, pigs in a blanket, and M&Ms was a wee bit over the top.

I am hoping to finally watch Crash this weekend, and perhaps go out to see Notes On A Scandal, Dreamgirls, or Because I Said So.

Reading, as it turns out, is hip and happ’nen. There’s this girl I know who is in sixth grade or so; I saw her at approximately 5:15 p.m. on Saturday. She’d just picked up the latest (and I guess last) book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. There was an air of urgency about her. She explained: “I have to read it before Monday morning, because everyone will have gotten it and be talking about it and I don’t want it ruined by knowing what happened.” I was thinking about it later, and I can’t remember any such like when I was her age, so whatever you think of Harry Potter or other popular series books, kids definitely seem more excited (generally speaking) about reading books.

This weekend: I finally caught up on a coffee table’s worth of magazines this afternoon, read a few more chapters of I Capture the Castle, watched the Chargers slaughter the Niners, and saw The Departed. It is now in my top three Scorsese movies along with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver. Very violent. Very intense. Very, very good. I can finally see why the ladies like Leo D. – he is actually starting to look like a man. His work in this movie is, I think, as good as any I’ve ever seen—Brando in On the Waterfront, Jack Lemmon is his more serious roles like in Hold That Tiger or Days of Wine and Roses, Fred MacMurray in The Caine Mutiny, as good as or better than the last twenty Oscar winners for Best Actor. Matt Damon is damn good in the movie, too. I see awards in both their futures for this movie. (Probably Jack Nicholson will get nominations, too, though I don’t think he does anything super special in this movie that you haven’t seen him do before.) Anyway, I don’t generally like big, long, epic movies. I like small movies about normal people doing regular things, but The Departed lives up to all the good reviews it’s getting.

Did anyone see Hollywoodland? It seems to have come and gone—I wanted to see it.

Since I regaled you with such a long post yesterday, I’ll be brief:

NFL players mostly do not wear cups. I did not know this.

I’m always really tough on Terrell Owens, but for now all I’ll do is wish him well.

In which a school library in Texas kills an ant with a steamroller.

You know about the Salt Lake Dine-O-Round, right? Only three more days! To give you an idea – Squatters, with its outstanding pub food, is in the $15 category. You get a salad, entree, and dessert! (Did you know Squatters is a very progressive company? Using energy and water efficient equipment, serving mostly organic and ethically-produced food, eschewing top-down management, committed to local grocers and growers, and more? Plus they’ve got the best black & tan in town.)

The weather here is gorge. I’m going for a walk.