I want
to make this clear so that no one thinks I’m dead or, more likely, that I’m
being even lazier than usual. In fact, given the fact that I’ve been working on
this editing gig (for real money, too), I’ve actually been less lazy that usual.
Anyway,
before I disappear from this space for what easily could be another month or
more, I’d like to survey a few things that have been going on.
One of
those things is winter, a season that I genuinely like and will deeply miss
when global warming renders it climatically meaningless, but that this year
doesn’t know when to stop. (I see no contradiction there, by the way: As we say
in the meteorology business, climate change Fucks Things Up.)
I’m off
from work today, and this morning I spent at least 10 minutes layering myself
in three pairs of thermals before driving into the District for a run. While
necessary and effective, such laborious dressing is supremely annoying. I love
the way Nat King Cole sang the word “eskEEmos” in his classic version of “The
Christmas Song,” but I do not personally enjoy dressing up like an Eskimo. If I
did, I would move to Nunavut. All that padding makes me feel like the Michelin
Man when I’m running. Also, when I have to pee it takes a seeming eternity just
to find and extract the source of the urge.
There’s
been much to-do this winter, all across the country, about the polar vortex. Which
allegedly is a longtime weather term that hadn’t ever really applied to
conditions in the United States until this winter, but which I suspect was
simply made up by the PR team that came up with the film The Matrix because it sounded fiendishly awesome. In the DC area,
what the polar vortex has meant is that since December we’ve experienced far
more teens and single-digit temperatures, wind chills of zero and below, and snowfalls of varying depths than we usually do.
It’ll get seasonably warm or better for a few days, and people will walk around
in shorts and T-shirts in the 45- or 50-degree weather just because they
nominally can, although it’s premature and frankly kind of stupid. However
briefly, hope prevails over reason. But then the mercury plummets once again,
as a new wave of Canadian air proclaims, “Not so fast, hosers!”
Today is
the last day of February. Spring is imminent and consistently warmer
temperatures are inevitable. Baseball spring training games already have begun
in Florida and Arizona. Soon enough, the dog will be panting and Lynn and I
will be complaining about how hot it is, given this region’s tendency to go
from spring moderation to summer heat in the span of a week or two. But at this
point I have to say enough already. I don’t look good in knit hats. Also, in
the car, my CDs skip unless I give them
an intense massage. I look forward to the days soon when I consistently can go
hatless, when my car CD player doesn’t skip through a four-minute song in 30
seconds, and when I can urinate without first needing to dig around in my pants
as if they were an excavation site.
So, what
else is going on? The Oscars.
The
Academy Awards are coming up Sunday night. Parenthetically, March 2 also will
be my dad’s 86th birthday, but I’m guessing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences will not award him a public service statuette for a lifetime of infrequent
movie-going, not to mention his utter distaste for the sex, violence and
vulgarity that are Hollywood’s wheelhouse.
I’ve seen
most of the nine films nominated for Best Picture, quite a few of the nominated
acting performances, and, this year, even all the nominated short
documentaries. This afternoon, I plan to take in the nominated short features,
as well, which are playing on one bill at a DC theater. The only awards about
which I have really strong preferences are Best Picture and Best Actor. I’d love
to see 12 Years a Slave win because
it’s the best rebuttal I’ve ever seen to those who romanticize the Old South,
fly the Stars and Bars, and argue that those who fought for the Confederacy
should be honored for defending Dixie's way of life from Yankee aggression. It’s a
brilliantly conceived and acted film, and it's incredibly hard to watch. As it
should be. My Best Actor nod, meanwhile, goes to Matthew McConaughey, for both
his outstanding work in Dallas Buyers
Club and for making a bona fide thespian of himself after years of dicking
around in unchallenging pretty-boy roles.
I have
to give a shout out to West End Cinemas in DC. It’s an aesthically dumpy complex
of three theaters, with tiny screens and uncomfortable chairs. But West End’s taste in film selection is outstanding, and I’ve
spent many happy afternoon hours there over the past year. Most recently, that’s
where I caught the Oscar-nominated short documentaries, which run the gamut
from the reconciliation of a gay man and the ex-skinhead who nearly beat him to
death, to a profile of a dying inmate in hospice care at a maximum-security
prison. Another of the short documentaries showcases the world’s oldest living
Holocaust survivor, an improbably optimistic one-time concert pianist who still
was feeling joy at the keyboard at age 109. She was in the news this week upon her
death at 110.
Polar vortex,
the Oscars … February also has been about the Winter Olympics, continuing horrors
in Syria, and upheaval and instability in Ukraine (which now joins seemingly two-thirds of the world in those
categories).
All I
can think to say about the recently concluded Olympics are these things: 1) Sochi was an asinine
place to hold the games both climatically and in terms of lending Vladimir
Putin unearned legitimacy. 2) I found it difficult to get excited about competitions
in which undetectable nanoseconds separated winners from losers. 3) I really
liked, however, a line I heard somewhere, with reference to the biathlon, that for the
next four years now, anyone seen skiing and shooting a rifle at the same time again
simply will be known as a crazy person.
I must
confess that I also enjoyed the dredging up of the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan
knee-bashing incident upon that Olympic circus’s 20th anniversary. Tonya Harding is
such a tragic figure—her own worst enemy, whose sad upbringing seemingly preordained
her current state of denial. She says she’s happy now as a wife, mother and landscaper.
That seems unlikely, given that her double chins shake with ill-contained fury
at the ways she insists she’s been wronged by the press. But for her sake, I
kind of hope so. Nancy Kerrigan achieved Olympic glory and seems to bear her
former rival no ill will, to her great credit. But you wonder whether Tonya
Harding ever will subdue her demons.
Ukraine?
The economy’s in freefall, and disunity between its nationalist east and
Russia-loving west threaten to rip the nation asunder. Syria is a humanitarian apocalypse,
with no end in sight. Meanwhile, unspeakable violence continues unabated under
the world’s radar in countries from Congo to Sudan to North Korea to Mexico. In
South America, Rio de Janeiro is preparing for an Olympics for which it seems
economically ill-suited by bulldozing its slums and leaving homeless its
poorest citizens.
Wow, I
am all over the place, literally and figuratively, in this post! All I meant to
do was announce a blogging hiatus. It seems that I should add thanks that my
biggest personal complaint is a transitory cold snap.
When I
next post, the weather is sure to be warmer, but the world’s problems are just
as certain to unchanged. It’s enough to make you want to huddle under a
comforter, whatever the outdoor temperature.
