winning/ athletic and cinematic

I am not a sports fan.   HOWEVER.....if there is anything at all that pits a New York team against a Boston or New England team, give me a front row seat.  So it was with great excitement  that I toodled up to my brother's home yesterday to watch  the Jets teach the Patriots about football. 

The game, though was often a side bar in how the afternoon played itself out.  For in this room of three females outnumbered by males, I noticed a distinct difference in how men and women see the world. The decibel level when a Jets pass was completed, or a touchdown scored reached levels that only dogs could hear.  While the females noted the handsome profile of a player or how cute the small running back was, the males in the room were basically having out-of-body experiences.  There was so much testoterone in that room that I thought the wallpaper was going to start growing hair!   My nephew, a quarterback for his own high school team lept so many times  in front of the HUGE TV screen that dominated the room that at times  it seemed you were watching gazelles at full speed on the Discovery Channel.

And don't dare talk to any of them men while the game is in progress or the response will be loud neanderthal growling in your direction or total deafness to your question or comment.  They are in the ZONE and no women are allowed.  It is amazing that whether 16, 36, or 66, there is absolutely no change in the knee jerk response to a football game.  It must be genetic.  And while most people use the commercials as a break time or to socialize, here commercials became times for full scale discussions of the previous plays.   What to do??  What is this antidote for this???

A-a-a-h-h-h,  the Golden Globe awards..Yes!!!!  So I rushed home, made a little "nest" for myself on the floor, got comfy and turned on the boobtube.  And flooding out of the television like an overblown media tsunami, what did we have??  Ricky Gervais insulting recipients left, right and sideways, prompting Robert Downey to call him out on his "meanspiritedness"; Robert DeNiro accepting a lifetime achievement award with a "heartfelt" speech for which he had to instruct the teleprompter guy  to speed up because his lines were getting tangled; recipients reading lists of names of their awards speech as if their script was a telephone directory and  some actresses dressed in gowns that would want to make the fashion police have a most wanted, or should I say unwanted list for visual crimes.

But the piece de resistance was awarding "Social Network" picture of the year.  I loved "The King's Speech"and although  I have not seen "Black Swan"  all the rave reviews gives one the impression this should have been the winner.  And by the way how do you reward a movie about a networking entity that had done more to alienate people, eliminate conversations over coffee, negate hugs and embraces, diminish personal interaction, phone calls, hearing another's voice and every other subtlety that brings human beings together and fully present to one another??

Maybe the full on body blows, shoulder grabbing, yelling in your face and all out larger-than-life emotion watching a football game with a bunch of guys is not such a bad thing after all.

TV reality shows

Does anybody remember "Playhouse 90"....It was a tv show on CBS a long time ago somewhere between the discovery of fire and George Washington crossing the Delaware......what it was  was superb acting by known actors at the time..... performing  classic plays  LIVE.....so if an actor flubbed a line or a prop malfunctioned....the camera went in like a barracuda hungry for its first meal of the day.....in other words....no mistakes no retakes.....a reality show that was really a reality show.....quite unlike what we have today....

TV has had a nervous breakdown and the symptoms are reality shows...for ex..."Jersey Shore"......as an Italian American I am appalled that this is what the rest of the world sees as our reality......in my family....of educated, involved persons....there is no more room for a Snooki than there is for Al Capone.....I think they should move this show to the Discovery channel or better yet Animal Planet  as the fighting and incessant mating makes baboons and their like look much higher on the evolutionary scale. And can you imagine the amount of editing that must go on ???  " Listen, Snooki, when you belted Sammi, your ass was in the way,,,,could you do that again so we can get your left side??""

Then there is "Survivor".......I mean I have enough trouble getting through a day sometimes..with bills, too many pounds on the scale, worries about my kids, noisy neighbors, car trouble, finding a parking space in the snow and the other vagaries of human existence to worry about how a group of people  is going to get through the day sharing one bug. Who cares!!???

Let's try for another......all the cooking show competitions...."Cake Off",  "Cupcake Wars",   "Top Chef", " Iron  Chef"...God help us!!! Pretty soon there will be a show to see who can boil water the fastest.  I mean who couldn't make an eight course meal in thirty minutes to include shopping for the ingredients..  setting up, cursing out your competitor , prep time for veggies,   sabatoging everyone by hiding the spice rack , and of course having your totally bizarre one- of- a- kind wedding cake collapse because the ramrods you stuck in between the fondant and the sugar balls just collapsed.!!

And what about "The Bachelor".....last night I was channel surfing  and saw that they had a bachelor who had rejected both women at the end of a previous show return for a second chance....now granted , as he said ,' three years of therapy can make a difference',  but to see one of the women on this current show step out of the car and tell him(regarding his previous fiasco on the bachelor) " I have something for you from all the women of America" and then slap him was mind boggling.....but then again that is something I think we all feel like doing to the program directors of these incessant reality shows.