Most of my friends who are ever going to get married are. No
bellies are swelling with babies. Since leaving age 40 in my rearview,
birthdays haven’t been packed with pizazz either. (Now every January 4 is just
met with a sigh of relief that all my body parts are still in working order. For
the most part.) This lack of big formal shindigs has forced me to put an
inordinate amount of importance on some pretty mundane things.* Three of the biggies fall in this
nether region of the calendar that is February through April. Sadly, all
involve a lot of me staring at the television and experiencing a heap of
vicarious experience. But on the positive side, none of them involve me having
to wear a tie, match the color of socks to my belt, or any personal hygiene
more intense than an every-other-day shave.
*I feel like there was
a whole bunch of big events when I was younger. It always seemed like something
was coming up, be it proms (voluntary formal wear), graduations (diplomas and
gifts involving money), and weddings (my first open bars). I remember getting
amped up for teacher meetings because of the days off from school. My standards
may have been a bit low. The moral of the story is, nothing in life seems as
cool once you lose summer vacation.)
For brevity’s sake, I am leaving out the extremely mundane
things, movie premiers and TV show finales. (I can’t move forward without
mentioning this: I am writing this a few hours after watching the How I Met Your Mother series finale.
Yes, that sentence alone is worth every ounce of ridicule you have been storing
up. Go ahead and let it out, I can wait. Finished? Anyway, I watched all one
hour of it and it was horrible. Just…bad. I am running the finale of Breaking Bad in the background to the
taste out of my mouth. So if things turn a little dark and methy, you know
why.)
Let’s run it down chronologically-
February:
The Oscars. I wish I could tell you why I was addicted to this
show, but it is just beyond me. There is no reason for a heterosexual man to be
this interested in the movies’ dog and pony show each year. But I am there
without fail, soaking in it like a sponge. I should probably find a support
group to meet with.
I understand, there is plenty to hate about the broadcast. I
loathe the rundown of who wore what and who looked best in it and blah blah
blah my head just exploded. I can’t tell one designer from the next. Here is
what the pre-show red carpet show looks like to me: ‘Look! A blonde, skinny 20
something actress in a fancy dress! Oh wait, there is a brunette 20 something
in a fancy dress! Those girls look hungry, I wish someone would give them a
sandwich.” Repeat for 30 minutes and you know what it is like in my head.
The other things that baffles me about the Oscars is how
much crap people give the hosts. I don’t know why any quaso-comedian/personality/hose
would ever agree to do it. The Monday morning* after the awards is a parade of columns about how horrible the
host was for a multiple of reasons. They were in the wrong format/too stiff/not
interesting/played it too safe/misogynistic. It is literally a no-win
situation, unless you are Billy Crystal in the 80s or Johnny Carson for like 50
years before that. Please, Tina Fey and Amy Pohler, don’t’ ever do it; I can’t
take the abuse you will undoubtedly get.
*Why are all award
shows on Sunday? I feel like it is a subtle way to shove it normal peoples’
faces how rich and famous you are. “Oh it’s Sunday, I am so rich and famous I
don’t’ have to worry about getting up and going to work and starting the work
week.” Sorry I have a real job, various Academies.
I think there are two reasons I got so sucked into the
Oscars. One, the many, many clips. At the ripe age young age of 13ish, there
was no way I was seeing clips of critically acclaimed independent or foreign
movies other than the Oscars*. I consider
it educational programming, like Sesame Street.
*The Moxie is an
independent theater currently in Springfield, MO. It specializes is showing
independent films, foreign films, and documentaries. A teenage Michael Allhands
with a Premiere Magazine subscription would have killed somebody for this kind
of theater. Instead, I was stuck trying to rent the one copy of Do the Right
Thing from the local video store.
Number two, there used to be a whole heck of a lot more
surprise involved. In the pre-internet days, there could be a great deal of
mystery about who won. Now, if you read any entertainment web site at all, you
know exactly who will win.*
*12 Years a Slave won
best picture this year. I have not seen it, so I suppose this means I am a
racist. As for the nominated movies, I felt like Her and Gravity were the best.
However, the Spectacular Now was the best movie I saw last year.
March:
The NCAA Tournament. The odd things is I am not particularly
a big fan of college sports. I have never understood cheering for a school
where I have never set foot on the campus, let alone attended for a second.
Being a Missouri State alum, that means I have a rooting interest in tournament
games about every 15 years. Yet every March I take the first Thursday and Friday
of the tournament off, gorge myself for two solid days of basketball at a local
establishment that has many televisions and adult beverages, and root like
crazy for upsets.*
*A few years ago the
first day fell on St. Patrick’s Day. I hope all evidence of my activity that
day have been destroyed.
Some observations:
-Within the 48 hours, it becomes very hard not to hate the
word “bracket.” I start to feel like I am stuck in The Manchurian Candidate and bracket is the work that triggers me
to start assassinating people. At least that is what I am going to tell the
authorities. In addition to people going on and on about how their brackets are
doing, who do you have in your bracket, and I really need this team to win for
my bracket there are about one million web sites who do their own “creative”
pop culture brackets. I have seen things like brackets of Most Annoying People,
to Best Characters in the Wire, to
Worst Names of the Year. And yes, I read every single one. Stop the insanity!
-I see about the same five commercials over and over. The
most annoying are promos for the 501st version of CSI, ads for local attorneys (if I ever
have to hire an attorney who is running ads on local TV, something has gone
horribly wrong), and, new to this year, was Pringles. The Pringles ad slogan
was “You don’t just eat ‘em!” Really, Pringles? Because I am pretty sure I just
eat them. I am really not sure what else you want me to do with them. Build an
addition to my home? Make very salty necklaces? I think I will stick with just
eating them.
-Any year Duke is out in their first game is a success.
April:
Opening day of baseball season. Yes, I am one of those air
bags who loves to wax poetic about the new baseball season every year. No one
wants to spend a lot of time in conversation with “that guy.” So, I will try to
spare you. Just go watch the James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams, I can’t put it any better than that. (Why are
baseball movies by far the best sports movies? It has to have something to do
with the pace of the game, right? It is really easy to insert witty or dramatic
dialogue into a sport that require standing around for at least 80% of the
actual game time.)
I am a walking cliché when it comes to baseball. My youth
(which makes it sound much more important than it actually was) was spent
bowing at the altar of the NBA. You can’t blame me; I was growing up when Magic
and Bird were in their prime and Jordan had just arrived in the league. But as
I have grown older, baseball appeals more and more to me. There is an intellect
to the game that cannot be matched. We are getting really close to blow hard
stage here, so I will cut it short.
So, that’s it, that’s the list of the big events in my adult
life of big events. At least until I get invited to another prom.
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