Football. A particularly unusual day, except for the Colts winning and the Texas losing (badly). The Texans make the Jets and Saints, both known for their inept play, look like wankers. The Texans have a tendency to actually play good enough to win now and again, but then just collapsing in amazing fashion. Two key moments: blowing a twenty one point lead against the third string quarterback of the Rams, including after being ahead by ten with less than a minute to play (an onside kick was involved).
Yesterday was in a fashion more amazing: after missing a medium range field goal with less than four minutes to play, they actually had a chance to tie, after the Titans (who are just mediocre) went ahead with :10 to play -- a long run back (the team has a good returner) and penalty set-up a thirty or so yarder. Didn't make it (Kansas City missed a 41 yd field goal, after getting the ball back with less than: 30 to play, losing to Dallas -- hurting the Giants in the process). Anyway, the Jets, Packers, and Giants won (the first two are 3-10 ... thus the rarity), while the Bears finally lost (ditto ... Viks just came back now) -- Pittsburg is just too good of an offensive team. Oh, clearly the back-up QB of the Raiders (4-9) might just be worse (along with the team overall penalty-wise) than the Jets' third stringer. Or, the QB led team, to be fair.
Movies. After something of a drought, I managed to see a month of good movies, though all indies or foreigns. The Xmas season (sorta a compromise between "happy holidays" and "Merry Christmas") promises to bring some mainstream movies as well. Anyway, a quintet of good movies to see, if you can. All are well acted and does a good job introducing strong leads to viewers and worlds perhaps quite foreign to theirs, but having a certain universal appeal all the same. After all, few things are truly foreign when our fellow humans are involved, and probably, in some fashion we directly or indirectly are involved with the plot concerns in some fashion.
Unveiled concerns an Iranian lesbian who hides out illegally as a man in Germany -- the emigrant/hiding aspects of the plot perhaps more important than her sexuality. The Syrian Bride involves the complexities of a woman from the Gaza Strip trying to marry someone from Syria -- after leaving, she won't be allowed to come back. Down to the Bone concerns a mother in upstate NY trying to fight drug addiction. And, Transamerica involves a man (Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives) about to have a sex change operation meeting "his" long lost son for the first time. I'll toss in Cape of Good Hope, a South African film about an interconnected group of various races dealing with problems of love, race, and class.
As to the Xmas season. First off, the weather here in NYC is playing its part -- we had a bit of snow already and hopefully will have another timely snow storm -- perhaps a couple days before, so that driving on Christmas Eve and day (a decent amount involved for our family -- we are not quite as close together as years past) will not be too hard. Second, I continue to enjoy shopping. For instance, major chain mega-drug stores have a bunch of odds and ends on board for sale -- by chance, I was able to cheaply buy an extra cute present. Also, I put together the tree for the mom -- yes, she prefers the fake sort, which is actually to some degree logical and practical. And, less wasteful. Anyway, another family member has a real tree, so the experience is still there. Finally, there is the trick of finding presents for those (unlike one person who just needs something cute, preferably cat related) harder to satisfy.
Oh, apparently FOX News has this whole "War on Christmas" deal that has been used as fodder for a couple hosts on Air America (they are having fun with it, but it's really silly). I am not sure how many actually take this seriously, except to the degree they are a bit annoyed the ACLU etc. appear to go "overboard" about the whole thing. The silly part of it really is that FOX News (one host actually wrote a book on the whole battle, lol) is railing against stores who say "Happy Holidays." [Fox's own website did this -- until someone called them on it; in fact, so does the White House. Clearly, they have gone off the reservation and need to be schooled.]
This seems good business -- it covers more ground, both in time and people overall. Thanksgiving, for instance, is a holiday, right? It is not just some pro-Jew or Muslim thing; not that is exactly a bad thing either. Anyway, seriously, Xmas as a cultural thing no longer is really religious. If anything, the commercial side of it should not be -- do we want K-Mart to try to be more religious or something? Is that really their bailiwick? Anyway, there are football games on while the presents are opened, and Christmas is a good day to watch a movie with the family. At least, that has been our practice.
So, it is all connected. Really. Happy Holidays.