Dinner and a show

Patrick O'Grady

Oct 1

"Adiós, muchachos, compañeros de mi vida ... (?)"

The New York Times spent most of yesterday pitching live episodes of "Let's Make a Deal" from the nation's capital. And today they're telling me that nobody could give a shit; they'd all rather be watching "The Golden Bachelor."

Well. Sounds like poor editorial judgment to me. Should've led with another Taylor Swift story.

Whoops, there she is.

Well, I gave a shit — no, not about "The Golden Bachelor" or Taylor Swift, who gets more eyeballs than a TikTok video of kitties in a titty bar — but rather the brinksmanship peacockery so deplorably on display in DeeCee.

It's a weakness. But I could afford to indulge it.

Dinner was leftovers from Friday night — Melissa Clark's paprika chicken with taters and turnips — so cooking was a rerun, or, more precisely, a reheat, at 350 for 20 minutes.

This left me at liberty to observe, and screech, and curse, and place bets with myself about what would finally emerge from all the shit-talking, gesticulating, and shoving that usually precedes a whole bunch of nothing happening on the middle-school playground of your choice.

This is pointless idiocy, of course. Right up there with cashing out the 401(k) and putting it all into bitcoin and NFTs; playing poker with a man named "Doc;" or gambling in any of the various casinos masquerading as "sports" in this world.

By closing time, the can had gotten kicked another 45 days down the road and I had lost every bet.

Still, could be worse.

Ukraine must be wondering how they wound up out on the sidewalk with an IOU in one pocket of the fatigues puddled around their ankles. And the woodlice gnawing on Charlie McCarthy's balsa-sack apparently found out this wasn't an all-you-can-eat deal.

This morning I decided this class in Political Science Fiction 101 reminded me of a scene from "Cannery Row," in which John Steinbeck describes the upshot of an uprising by "a group of high-minded ladies" in Monterey, demanding that "dens of vice" like the Bear Flag whorehouse be closed.

Writes Steinbeck:

This happened about once a year in the dead period between the Fourth of July and the County Fair. Dora usually closed the Bear Flag for a week when it happened. It wasn't so bad. Everyone got a vacation and little repairs to the plumbing and the walls could be made. But this year the ladies went on a real crusade. They wanted somebody's scalp. It had been a dull summer and they were restless. It got so bad that they had to be told who actually owned the property where vice was practiced, what the rents were and what little hardships might be the result of their closing. That was how close they were to being a serious menace.

You think maybe the ladies in DeeCee got told? Who knows? Not me, cousin. But we have 45 days to find out.

Anyway, once the cartoon was over we got straight to the featured attraction, which included the aforementioned leftovers; rewatching "Reservation Dogs," which concluded its three-season run this past Wednesday; and debating whether we should take down our hummingbird feeders, which hadn't been getting many (if any) customers the past few days.

I argued for staying in business, and boom! Just like that a hummer appeared at one of the backyard feeders, which are visible from the living-room couch. Maybe he was an elder who didn't care to make the trek to Mexico this fall. Maybe she likes the new landscaping. Maybe they like "Reservation Dogs." Pronouns are a bitch.

Anyway we reloaded those two feeders and called it a night. This morning, The Last Hummingbird Standing brought a cousin over for breakfast. It wasn't Matt Gaetz. I'll call that a win.