BIG GAME HUNTING

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-14-19)

     We host a Super Bowl party every year, only I can't say the words "Super Bowl" because I could be accused of trademark infringement. I've never knowingly infringed upon anything in my life and I'm afraid I'll get caught red-handed one of these days. "Hey YOU- what are you doing over there at the edge of that thing?" "Who, me? Nothing." "You're infringing upon something over there, aren't you- get away from there." "Me? Nooooooo. If I was going to infringe upon something it wouldn't be this crappy little thing, believe me." Anyway, kickoff is an hour away and I'm still drawing the boxes for the Super Bowl pool. One time I drew eleven boxes on each side and didn't notice until we picked the numbers.

     Now  it's 5:50 and we only have 10 people at the party and a hundred boxes to fill. And just like every other time I have to donate 30 bucks to prime the pump, and I do mean donate, because I NEVER WIN. You wanna know who wins? Somebody's wife who runs an art installation in the Brooklyn and doesn't own a TV and thinks football is kind of barbaric but loves my wife and bought ONE box for three dollars because my wife told her to, it'll be fun. Finally the party filled up and the pool filled up and the game was ready to start. First, of course was the National Anthem, but before that two girls came on the field and sang a pre-National Anthem anthem that I found out later was "America the Beautiful," although there wasn't a particularly strong resemblance. I also found out later that the two girls were "Chloe x Halle."

     But I'm here to report on the game, not all the other stuff. Somebody finally kicked a field goal, and the score was 3 to nothing for about an hour and a half. It seems to me you could multiply Chloe x Halle and come up with more points than that.

     Then it's halftime and the guy from Maroon 5 takes the stage. Girls know him as Adam Levine, and guys know him as The Guy from Maroon 5. My friend Jamie said hey that's the guy who lives right over in Katonah, and I said no that's the guy from Matchbox 20, this guy's from California, and Jamie said no that's the guy from Eve 6, and that this guy used to skateboard drunk all over San Diego and I said no that's the guy from Blink 182. And Jamie said, "So who the hell is this guy?" "I have no idea, but it seems like more math than I was expecting," I said. I read that Maroon 5 had been getting a lot of criticism on social media for performing in the Super Bowl halftime show. I figured the criticism had to do with the fact that they're kind of a girly-sounding band for a football game, but it turns out that it had nothing to do with that. Apparently they were being called out just for TAKING the gig. Everybody else turned it down so they could protest the fact that Colin Kaepernick couldn't protest during halftime himself because he isn't in a band and can't turn down the gig himself because he wasn't asked to perform. I think I got that more exactly right than anyone else who tried to explain it to me. The part that nobody explained to me is what does the halftime show have to do with protesting during the National Anthem? They should be protesting Gladys Knight for singing the National Anthem, but she seems too nice.

     Anyway the guy the guy from Maroon 5 is up there singing his heart out, and to show you that his heart is in the right place he whips his shirt off. That was no great loss because the shirt looked like a tablecloth that somebody laundered in with wrong color clothes, but the shirt he was wearing underneath was even uglier. When I realized that it wasn't really a shirt but a bunch of bad tattoos I turned to the girl next to me and said, "Jesus, how many horrible tattoos can you fit on one dude?" And she said, "Could you move out of the way, I can't see." I said, "He's got all that bad body art to hide the fact that he hasn't hit the gym in a while." She said, "He's completely ripped." "That's exactly it, he's OVER-ripped, and he's over-buff. Look at him, he can hardly move. That's not what women want, is it?" Well, what women really want is for me to get out of the way so that they can see the television.

     I left to get some more ice from the kitchen and when I came the Super Bowl was over. So, yes the game kind of sucked, and yes Tom Brady won again and we're all kind of sick of him since he seems even nicer than Gladys Knight and he's good looking like the guy from 3 Doors Down and his wife is a super-model and his dog is a super-model and his cat is a super cat-model, et cetera. But you'd better get over it, because pretty soon we won't have football to kick around anymore. Why? Because moms are getting wise to the fact that when the football announcer says, "Well, number 23 is a little shaken up on the play," that means that number 23 has internal bleeding and his foot is now facing the wrong way. Injuries are becoming such a problem for the game that now, even if you just say something stupid like most of the material in the above five paragraphs, they send you to the sideline to clear concussion protocols. When I was a kid and I got hit in the head, it was precisely BECAUSE I said something stupid, and the one who hit me was my Mom. And now those very same moms are ruining the game because they care about their kids. I've never heard of anything so ridiculous. But for now, I'm going to relax, have a cocktail and enjoy the game in the comfort of my own home, even though it's over, since I just got more ice. It's better than sitting in a crowded stadium with 10,000 Maniacs.
 

MOUNTAINS AND MOLEHILLS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-07-19)

      My sister Kathy and her husband generously allow us to use her home in the Poconos for a ski weekend, regardless of the fact that she could be named in a lawsuit because of something I did on the ski slopes. Luckily her husband is a lawyer. A ski trip is a great way to stand up against the fierce New England winter weather and shout from the top of the mountain, "Give me your best shot, because right now there is NO PLACE in the world I would rather be than right here, with the possible exception of indoors."

      I just read that some guy is suing Gwyneth Paltrow for running into him while skiing and then leaving the scene. I guarantee you that if Gwyneth Paltrow ever hit me with her skis or any other part of herself I would come right back here and brag about it. "Hey, you'll never guess who I ran into?" My version of the story might involve some embellishment regarding how charming she found me, and that she laughed with me about something other than my skiing. So Gwyneth, if you're out there and you run me over with your skis, you should probably come back and finish me off with your ski pole, fair warning.

      As a skier I consider myself an expert novice. I've been fine-tuning my lack of skills for years now, but there's till plenty of room for improvement. And by that I mean that if you see me on the slopes you should give me plenty of room, in case I haven't improved. Simply getting off the ski lift can be enough for me to cause an accident. My wife tells me to keep to my own side and stay the hell away from her when we're getting off the chair. She's referring to an situation last year where there was literally an intermediate slope at the end of the chair lift, and even though I kept my tips up when dismounting and checked for loose clothing, I forgot to not stick my poles out to the side underneath her skis. I tried to blame the incident on Gwyneth Paltrow of course.

      Skiing is the one sport where people often feel the urge to dress up in costumes or dumb-looking hats, I'm not sure why. I saw someone on the lift line dressed in a bunny outfit like it was Halloween, and my mouth started to water automatically like Pavlov's dog, thinking that somehow I was going to get candy. The more I thought about it, the bunny outfit started to seem like a good idea, because I have a friend who is a ski instructor, and I don't want him to ever recognize me trying to walk back up the ski slope sideways with my skis on because I didn't know it was a mogul trail. Why don't they mark those mogul trails with a big skull-and-crossbones? Somehow I always end up on one of those damned things with one of my skis going in a direction that my other ski already tried and had no success at. They have warnings labels on chainsaws telling you not to use them inside, but I guarantee you that a mogul trail will hurt you probably worse and definitely faster than trying to use a chainsaw indoors.

      But we made it down the slopes and back up again, and at night we went over to Shenanigan's at Lake Harmony for Karaoke Night. The host begins by singing a song himself, to get the ball rolling and because he's the only one in the room who can actually sing. He starts walking through the crowd with that wireless microphone singing "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)," and when I turn around he's right in front of my face, singing, "You're a FINE GIRL!" And scaring the crap out of me. I turn to face the other way but there he is again! "What a GOOD WIFE you would be!" I'm afraid to turn around again so I just shut my eyes and wait until the song is over. I'm still a little traumatized by the incident but also gratified that I would make a good wife.

      I'm going to write a whole separate column on karaoke, because there's a lot going on there, but suffice it to say that every time we go to Karaoke Night I threaten my wife by saying I'm going to get up there and do "Summer Wind," with my World Famous Frank Sinatra Imitation. And she says Please, please do not do that, and I try to extort a few bribes from her, and we dicker back and forth, and while all this is going on, some idiot gets up to the mike, and what does he do? "Summer Wind." And not only does he make a mockery of the song by doing it perhaps better than I would have, but now I have no leg to stand on with the bribes.

      So I have to quickly pivot to Plan B, and I'm about to suggest that I storm the stage to perform "Strangers in the Night" in a Sinatra-off, but just then 10 teenage girls wearing "State Champions" jackets grab all the microphones and yell the song "Don't Stop Believin'," using only one of the notes, at approximately one million decibels. They only know one of the notes but they know all the words, so they don't have to bother reading them off the screen and they can concentrate on just the yelling, and of course their dance moves, which they stole from the cheerleading squad. Midway through the performance I had to turn my chair so I wouldn't be deaf in just one ear. Later when I could hear again I asked them what they were state champions of and they said field hockey, and I said thank god it wasn't karaoke.

     So, if you see a deaf looking guy singing Sinatra songs in a bunny costume walking sideways up a mogul trail, steer clear because it might be me.