Being Thankful--Happy Thanksgiving 2015

I recently asked some people to explain what non-material things--besides family, friends, home and technology--they were thankful for.  Here's mine:

--A job I like.  (Most people I know hate their jobs.  I love mine.  Not every day is a fairy tale, but I love the job overall.)

--A good career, with good benefits.  (I get lots of sinus infections--as if that was my career instead.)

--My numerous interests.  (Writing; literature; baseball; baseball cards; the writing industry; short story and novel reading [and writing]; antique buying and dealing; dealing baseball cards [I'm also a part-time picker]; football; walking; hiking; biking; movies...)  You get the idea.  I think boredom is the worst kind of hell.

--My abundance of energy. (Until lately, I could subsist quite well on 4-6 hours of sleep per night.)

--My "intelligence."  (Real or imagined.)

--My imagination. (Which can often get out of control, and which is often not a gift.)

--My health.  (I used to be a lot worse off, and my sinuses--as terrible as they are--used to be much worse.)

--My sense of humor.  (Again, real or imagined.  If I'm only half as funny as I think I am, then I'm still hilarious.)

--My proximity to mountains, beaches, rivers, hiking and biking trails, and big cities.

--My local sports teams.  (I've got the Patriots and Red Sox.  True, the Sox finished last the past two years, but even then they're entertaining.  And they've still got 3 World Championships in the past eleven years, with a few other post-season appearances thrown in.  Plus I've got Fenway.)

--Great neighbors.  (Bad neighbors can be nightmares.)

--Heat, electric and an affordable education.  (Most people in the world don't have any of those.)

AND A HEAD'S UP TO CHRIS AND JAY AND TO ALL MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS WHO MADE THIS THANKSGIVING STRESS-FREE AND WONDERFUL.  YOU'RE THE BEST!!!


WHAT'RE YOU THANKFUL FOR?  (It's okay to comment even if it's not Thanksgiving anymore.)

Quick Jots 2.1.15

--The website urlmetrics.com says that my website, the one you're currently reading, is ranked 13,660,425 in the entire United States.  I don't know if this is deplorable, or actually really good.  There are about 360 million people in this country, but how many of them have websites or blogs?  10%?  That would place me 13.6 million out of 36 million, which I guess isn't that bad.  But if that ranking also includes sites like msn.com, and other huge pages like that, than the ranking is really impressive.  I mean, I don't post any video, or music.  Very few pics or links.  Mostly, just me ranting, really, and usually about books or movies--not riveting for most people.  So, I can't decide if this is really cool, or if it really isn't, or if I just need to get a life.  Or any combination.  And I don't know how I stumbled upon urlmetrics.com to begin with, as I was just logging off to go to bed.  (It's 1 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2015.)

--And the site said this blog has an estimated worth of $749.93!  This is interesting because I pay less than $50 a year to keep it going, and I don't sell anything on it, and I don't have any ads on it.  Does this mean that my thoughts have actual value?  Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice...

--So now I'm thinking how I can make the actual $749.93 from this, without putting up any ads.  I would never do that to you, my cherished readers, or to myself.  So...anyone wanna cut me a check for $749.93?

--If you wanna see for yourself, here's the link.  The monthly visits and monthly pages viewed stats are way off, by the way.  I get many more than what it says, for both.  I got 1,594 pageviews last month, which was a little low for me, according to the Google Analytics stuff.  I'm just sayin'.  So, I wonder what the ranking would be if the stats were correct on that page?  I need a moment to get over myself.

So what else is going on...

--I got just over 19" of snow here this week, Tuesday and Wednesday.  And it looks like I'm getting 10" to 12" more Sunday night through Tuesday morning.  Damn good thing I have lots of house projects and writing things to do.  And I don't mind the cold, as it actually improves my sinuses.  Still...I think I can do without for awhile now.  I can see more ice on my driveway than cement.

--And it's going to be -3 here Thursday night.  That's real temp, not wind chill.

--I've had enough with the Patriots' hijinks, but still...If you make the teams bring their own 12 footballs, you're begging for a problem.  I mean, the $1 billion + business that's the NFL can't afford its own 24 footballs for one of the two playoff games playing that week?

--And you can't tell me the other teams haven't been doing something with their footballs all this time.  I wonder if the Pats would get ratted on if they didn't win as often.  The Jets, for example, rat on the Pats, not the other way around.  Speaking of which--Every football team has cameras filming the other sideline--a few years ago during Spygate, before that, and even now, I'd bet.  I'd be shocked if that didn't happen in college, too.

--And deflated footballs didn't cause the Colts to lose by 38 points.  Unless the balls themselves can score five touchdowns and a field goal, that is.

--Having said that, a note to the Patriots: Let's just play the game, shall we?

--I'm a Pats fan, but I pick the Seahawks to win.  The Pats have trouble with great rushing QBs.  But Wilson will lose if he throws a handful of picks again.  Belichick has already forgotten more about football than I'll ever know, but I'll say it anyway: If I'm the Pats, I try to shut down the Seahawks's running game, keep Wilson in the pocket, and make him beat me with his arm.  This will be a lot easier if the Pats can lead early by a score or two, so he has to throw.

--As for the halftime show, well...I'm not her target audience, but Katy Perry is amusing.  She doesn't take herself too seriously, and she doesn't try to be more than what she is: a pop star with a core audience of 13-18 year old girls.

--That's not the Super Bowl audience, but we'll see what the Halftime ratings turn out to be.

--And I approve of a recently-released pic of her and her small dog.  It's looking at the camera like the person taking the picture has just said, "Wanna go for a walk?" or "Wanna eat?"

--And, please, I'd take Katy Perry over Rick Perry any day, every day.

--Mitt Romney announced this week that he will not run for president after all.  When asked how sure he was, he said, "Oh, about 47%."

--Mike Huckabee said he probably will run, and Sarah Palin changes her mind (or, "mind") by the minute, so I'm keeping some blog tabs ready to go, just in case.  Cuz there's gonna be a lotta verbal head-scratchin' silliness with those two.

--Speaking of blog tabs, you may have noticed that I have not been using my American Horror Story: Freak Show or Cards and Commentary blogs at all.  Just haven't had the time.  For the record, this past season's AHS was very good, light-years ahead of Coven.  Though the last two or three episodes were just Eh.  But well-done Eh, if you know what I mean.

--Biggest beef: Some sort of odd character judgement by the show's creators.  For the last two years, the last episode was about most of the characters dying, and what kind of "heaven" they go to.

--And there was something disquieting about watching three people eating popcorn while watching a guy dressed in just his underwear drown to death while chained to a cement block.

--Watching someone struggle and die in pain and vain is...well, watching someone struggle and die in pain and vain.  Just because you're watching someone die like that who'd also murdered people and who'd also watched many people die like that, that doesn't mean you're not also murdering him.

--And liking it.

--Now that I put it like that...the last episode wasn't so great after all.

--I'm tired of seeing characters knocked out just so they can wake up and die badly.  Off the top of my head, this also happened in: the remake of The Last House on the Left; True Lies; Die Hard 4, all of the Saw movies, and countless other shows and movies I've seen that I forget because it's now 2 a.m.  It's done for the same effect--this time by the movie's audience--as described above.  The movie-makers will tell you it's done for the audience's catharsis, so the audience will see that evil fails and all is right with the world again--but that's crap, of course, and they know it.

--The movie-makers do that because they assume we all have the same base instincts and desires.

--We don't.  

Golden Globes

Photo: The Golden Globe

A few quick things about the [see title]:

--Yes, I can be a big fan of football games and yet still watch the Golden Globes.  (In fact, I was told recently that I know the sport perhaps a little too well.)  One of my favorite high school memories is about when I tackled someone so hard and so immediately after the catch, that he literally said, "What hit me?"  And I actually replied, "I did."  Don't judge.

--Someone needs to make sure Mel Gibson didn't have a stroke at the Golden Globes.

--Maybe he was stunned at Jodie Foster's speech?  I mean, he knew they were always going to be just friends, right?

--Anne Hathaway's comments about Sally Field were tremendously classy.  Field wouldn't have had better things said about her if she'd actually won the award for her role in Lincoln.

--I want to look as good as Jodie Foster does when I'm fifty.  And I don't want to have to spend any money or to have any procedures to do it.  Hey, it can happen.

--Sofia Vergara's Diet Pepsi ad ran maybe 27,000 times during the broadcast.  Not that that's a bad thing.

--Michael J. Fox's kid looked like Michael J. Fox playing Marty McFly's kid in the second Back to the Future, if you follow me.  You know, when his coat's sleeves extended past his hands and his voice was so high and cracking that only dogs could hear it?

--Mel Gibson and Tommy Lee Jones had the most memorable faces of the night.  I'll bet Mel hasn't risen from the chair yet, or closed his mouth.  And I'll bet Jones still looks like he's just bitten somebody's face off.

--Jodie Foster managed to exude class even while she was babbling and verbally floundering about.  And her speech ended very, very well.  And I'm sorry to hear her mother has dementia.  Been there.  Not fun.

--The Globes' director very wisely put Selma Hayek on camera as often as possible.  She appeared almost as often as Sofia Vergara's commercial.  Incidentally, I love saying Sofia Vergara's name, though I'm sure I'm butchering it and my accent is way off.

--I don't care too much about who wins or loses at these things, though I still haven't gotten over Saving Private Ryan's Best Picture Oscar loss.

--I never heard of Jessica Chastain before Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (which Ebert said recently was the best picture of all time, from any country) a few years ago, and now she's in everything.  Loved her speech, too, when she said that she'd been an also-ran and behind the scenes for so long, she can't believe she's made it.  Gives ya hope, ya know?

--Though the comment about torture and being married to James Cameron was funny, I'm getting very tired of people saying whatever they want about whoever they want, especially when that person isn't there to respond.  Maybe Cameron is as much of a jerk as everyone says, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be called that on camera to literally billions of people throughout the world.  Just because you can, that doesn't mean you should.

--Bill Murray looked like he'd just stepped out of a Dickens novel.  Maybe he's shooting such a movie?

--The most courageous thing Jodie Foster said was how incredibly lonely she sometimes is.  (I mean, we all knew the other thing, right?)  Read a full transcript of her speech from latimes.com here.

--Quentin Tarantino very suddenly got big.  (Read my review of Django Unchained here.)

--The Globes are always very amusing, but does absolutely everyone have to get plastered?

Shameless--Football Cards

By the way, I ran into some Action Packed (that's the brand name) football cards from 1993-1995.  Includes a Marshall Faulk rookie card (worth $10), and some Montanas, Elways, Marinos, Bledsoes, and other HOFers and stars.  All great shape; no wear or tear, corners sharp.  It's all worth over $42, but I'll let it go for $20; I'm moving and don't feel like dealing with more cards (I have literally thousands already).  Drop me an email at sb {at} stevenbelanger {dot} com if you're interested. 

Thanks!

A Response to A Blog About Patriotism

Photo: Ashkelon, re-found Roman statue, standing along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea

Always wanted to say something like this.  On a fellow's blog, about patriotism, July 4th, etc., I finally got my chance:

"Patriotism" is a huge turnoff to me, and in reality--not to mention existentially--it does not exist.  In essence, it's nothing more than kids at a high school raising their index finger at football games and shouting, "We're number one!"  (Or fans at baseball games, etc.) It insinuates competition and divisiveness where there isn't any, and shouldn't be any.  Am I proud to be an American?  I guess.  Though if I was born in Canada, I guess I'd be proud to be a Canadian, and if I was born in Romania, I'd be proud to be Romanian.  I was born in New England, so I watch all the Red Sox games, and so I guess that makes me a Sox fan.  But if I was born in Cleveland, I'd watch all the Indians' games, and I guess I'd be an Indians fan.  It comes down to me being a baseball fan, more than a team's fan, bigger picture versus smaller picture, and I suppose also that means I'm a fan of being alive, more than I am to be alive in a particular nation.  Or, the whole planet is one whole nation, and we're all one big team.  Or, at least, I think we're supposed to be.

I tried to explain this to someone this week and failed miserably.  At one point I mentioned the word "philosophy" and he asked me, with self-righteousness, if I had a degree in it.  I actually do, and said so, and said that I focused mainly on existentialism, at which point I lost him.  I tried the baseball metaphor again and that went nowhere.

Mark my words, in 20-50 years, most of the world will essentially be one country, and we'll all be using the euro, or the dollar, or whatever.  And the United Nations will have more power, and actually be able to use it, and it'll probably be called something else.  And a few generations after that, after everyone is from Godwanaland, or Pangea, or whatever that super-country will be called, people will wonder what the heck all the favoritism was all about, and the hatred.

Okay, maybe more than 20-50 years, and maybe more than a few generations, but still...