I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Our Team

Are you a sports fan? Apparently nobody isn't these days.

My boyfriend insists on watching football. He cooks, so I put up with it. And, since I fell in love with Seattle when we went to visit Margie last month, I was pleased that the Seattle Seahawks won their game against whoever it was they were playing. "Hey, they won," I said at the end of the game. "Isn't that nice."

Fans don't get much more die-hard than that.

I wasn't in Seattle this past week, but might as well have been:

Tuesday night it was a business dinner followed by a panel discussion at an industry meeting in San Antonio on Wednesday, and from there my favorite photographer Kevin and I drove down to South Padre Island to conduct a site visit for our April conference.

This is what winter in South Padre looks like. It's almost never really cold, but the weekend and much of the week were damp, gray, and chilly. The Winter Texans are pissed. They didn't schlep a fifth wheel all the way down from Manitoba for this crap.

The weather was no problem for us; it was 12 degrees in Austin the morning we left, and frankly, walking along the beach is monotonous under the best of circumstances.

It was much colder in San Antonio on Tuesday night. Dining at a restaurant where the 6-ounce filet costs about what I spend on a weeks' groceries with my boss' boss' boss and a handful of high-ranking strangers (our panelists) made me feel like a kid permitted to sit at the grown-ups' table.

And unfortunately, the conversation neatly sidestepped any mention of topics about which I am knowledgeable - say, tourism, or opera, or (if you want to be naughty) salacious gossip about people who work in tourism or opera - and focused almost entirely on two areas where I can't say anything at all: 1, football, about which I understand nothing whatsoever; and 2, politics, about which I have opinions I won't air in mixed company. I think I was the odd man out on both fronts.

So aside from a few pleasantries with my boss' boss' boss (whom I really like a lot, and who had brought me along with her to help with planning the logistics for the panel session), I had nothing at all to say during dinner, and got the distinct feeling that my only function was to be needlessly expensive, kind of like government relief programs, but not at all like Mack Brown or whoever that other guy is they got in to replace him.

I wonder if I could find a tourism job in Seattle?

Football, Football, Football!

Doesn't anybody ever argue about the philosophical conflict posed by the concepts of predeterminism vs. free will anymore?

On Facebook, I mean.

The Dallas Cowboys are currently, or have until quite recently been, playing a football game. Their fate is uncertain as I type this, so for the moment, like Schroedinger's cat, they exist in a simultaneous state of victory and defeat. Until I open up Facebook and see what actually went down.

But that might not happen until morning.

Since there are some people, somewhere in the world, who care about the game enough actually to watch it, I realize it's a little self-centered to take this approach. Still, it's only fair. If they're going to clutter my newsfeed with stupid sports-related ephemera that no rational person could possibly be remotely interested in, I get to reduce them to hypothetical constructs. Fair's fair.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, I've been streaming "Portlandia" on Netflix.* This is becoming one of my favorite shows, though I've never been to Portland. I have a handful of important reasons for enjoying the show:

1. Carrie Brownstein bears a striking resemblance to my sister Jessie.
2. Bikes! Bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes.
3. We watched Dune the other night with the "No Olympics" episode of Portlandia as a chaser, which leaves you with an interesting mental image of Paul-Muad'Dib leading his people to enlightenment and world domination astride an exercise ball.
- 3a. And you could use that little plastic spike stopper in the exercise ball to make a crysknife. They don't seem to have mentioned crysknives in the movie.
4. Even though I've never been to Portland, I've been to both Seattle and Brooklyn. Seattle seems a bit more bike-friendly, but Brooklyn isn't set at a 45-degree angle.

There are some difficulties inherent in conducting a relationship with a member of the football cult. My boyfriend likes football quite a lot. He isn't fond of cats. God only knows what he sees in me.

Probably my philosophical leanings.

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*Did I mention that I'm an unusually deep thinker?

Marshmallows: No

I just read this Yahoo feature on Thanksgiving side dishes.

All right, fess up: who likes marshmallows?

I don't have too much problem with most other foods, using that term loosely. I think Wonder Bread is gross, but I don't care if you eat it. Cheez Whiz? Ick! Don't eat it when I'm around, and I'll pretend not to know. Cilantro sets off my gag reflex. You like it? Please, buy it all! Cool Whip? What's wrong with you?! Eat whipped cream fer crissakes! Why would you schlep a big glob of trans-fat on - oh, fine, do whatever you want. Eggplant is eh: not inedible, but given a choice, I'd rather eat Kraft mac-and-cheese, sorry. And you all know my fond, irrational feelings on candy corn.

But marshmallows are an abomination.

How can you eat these things? Not to say that they have no purpose. You can take them camping. You can poke them on the ends of sharp sticks and set fire to them. You can watch, mesmerized, as they dissolve gradually into blue and pink and lavender flames;* I don't think iceberg lettuce would do that, though you can always give it a try.

And why would you contaminate a perfectly good Thanksgiving side dish with the gelatinous little bastards? Sweet potatoes are yummy. You can chop them up and bake them in brown sugar syrup. You can mash them. I suppose you could even sautee them. They're good with turkey, gravy and stuffing, if (to be perfectly honest) a little redundant with the mashed potatoes. But if you can't have redundancy at an orgiastic holiday feast, when can you? Grandma always made up for this by also serving soybeans. Eat your soybeans! You never know when you might suffer from a wax shortage.

But marshmallows? No. They are not tasty and they are not good for you. They make hot chocolate slimy and undrinkable; they convert S'mores into S'Lesses. Rice Krispie treats? Whatever. Just try to tell me those have any nutritional value whatsoever. You might as well eat spray insulation.

Under attack next week: football. What is with you people?!?

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*Food rule #1: If it turns pastel when you set fire to it, it isn't food.