Monkey Business

Hello World, Happy Chinese New Year! The annual extravaganza started early this year, and ushers in the Year of the Horse, which apparently bolted out of the starting gate with sparks flying, rather than waiting around until the middle of February as they often do. So for all of us born in 1918, 1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990 or 2002 - and I'm one of them - this is our time to whoop it up and live large, with our manes flying and hooves pounding across the lone prairie, yippee-ki-yo. This would be a good time to enumerate the specific qualities that are identified with people born in these years, but unfortunately my last two poor addled brain cells (which I have renamed Silver and Trigger for the occasion) have been too busy knocking back rice wine and lighting firecrackers to be relied upon for the pin-point accuracy that we strive for in this recurring compendium of blathering drivel, so we will have to do without. Left to my own devices, and if my own personal characteristics are any indication, I would say Horse people are short and dumpy, cantankerous, forgetful, persnickety, delusional, easily overwhelmed, hopelessly unromantic, comically unathletic and woefully near-sighted. I think the Luddite part goes without saying, but on the other hand, the idea of a high-tech horse smacks too much of the malevolent spirit of Affirmed, and I think we've all seen plenty of that already. Once February is here, we're left staring down both barrels of Super Bowl Sunday, and no getting around it. The Big Apple (and riverside neighbors in its orbit) will be pulling out all the stops, and leaving no stone unturned, in a media frenzy of overkill and hyperbole that will be hard to top. After 40 years, the actual game now is of minor importance compared to all of the hoopla, and when it comes to jumping through hoopla, nobody does it better than the city so nice, they named it twice. It may be true that only the mayors of Denver and Seattle care who wins the game, and only the gamblers care about the score, but everyone loves a great party, and this is one rip-snorting, high-octane, star-studded blow-out that can't be ignored, no matter how hard you try, and I ought to know. (I understand that space aliens in far distant galaxies have already complained about the noise, but they're well-known party poopers, so I wouldn't put much stock in that - although I wouldn't recommend taking down the cloaking devices yet, just in case.) For anyone else who doesn't mind taking chances, along comes Eli the famous ape from the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, who has picked the correct winning team in the Super Bowl for the past 6 years: the Giants in 2008, Steelers in 2009, Saints in 2010, Packers in 2011, Giants in 2012 and Ravens in 2013, without ever seeing a football game in his entire life. His pick this time is Seattle, so we'll see if his record holds up, or if Peyton "The Comeback Kid" Manning has what it takes to beat the odds, and make a monkey out of Eli the ape - which admittedly, should not be all that hard to do, since he's at least half-way there already. Personally, I've long since learned not to bet against a sure thing, and for what it's worth, my money's on Affirmed. For some people, the even bigger news on Sunday will be Groundhog Day, with all of its attendant fanfare and rituals, as the world's gaze is firmly fixated on the furry prognosticators coming out of their burrows to declare the upcoming conditions for a yearning populace. At this point, I'm pretty sure that just about everybody but the ski slope operators are sick and tired of winter snow and frigid temperatures, so we'd all be just as glad to find out that Spring is right around the corner, rather than the opposite, and thank you so very much not. (I don't mind saying that if The Keystone State's famous Punxsutawney Phil ever throws his lot in league with the nefarious Comrade Mischka and the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, I expect that things would start getting pretty ugly around these parts this time of year, and that's putting it mildly.) In any case, it doesn't really matter what they see when they come to the surface, the one thing we can be sure of is that it still can't be 6 more weeks of football, because the Super Bowl represents the last gasp of the gridiron gambols until training camps open again in the summer, alas. Unlike last year, they already had the Pro Bowl on the previous Sunday, when there were no other games, because it was after the end of the playoffs, and during the extra week off before the Super Bowl. They held the game in delightful Hawaii as usual, but it was a real departure in other aspects, notably the rosters of each side, full of the cream-of-the-crop from across the league. The commissioner's office described it as "unconferenced," meaning that instead of being the usual AFC vs NFC, or East vs West, or North vs South, or even Lefties vs Righties, or whatever other arbitrary criteria they historically use to distinguish between the teams, this time around, they decided to match Team (Deion) Sanders up against Team (Jerry) Rice, letting these legendary greats hold mock drafts to select the players they wanted, regardless of franchise affiliations or geographic restrictions. Whatever they were thinking, it must have worked, because the result was a tightly contested defensive battle that was won by a last-minute 2-point conversion play, in a nail-biting conclusion not usually associated with these kinds of all-star powder-puff games, in any sport. Heck, if they keep up like this, the Pro Bowl will soon be right up there with Punxsutawney Phil in terms of media attention, and the next thing you know, Eli the famous ape will be picking the winners in advance, I shouldn't wonder. And speaking of wondering, alert readers may be wondering, and well may they wonder, if January has already come and gone and the Super Bowl is looming right before our faces, whatever became of the annual congregational meeting at church - where historically speaking, fistfights are the norm, name-calling is just about mandatory, and chair throwing is a time-honored metal event? (Get it?!) After the congregation refused to keep following blindly after the Super Bowl in its dogged persistence ever deeper and deeper into February, they adopted a new constitution that specified the meeting had to be held in January, come what may, and picked the last Sunday of the month for this purpose, sending out notices, collecting reports, and organizing meal components for the potluck luncheon. All this, mind you, in spite of the fact that I had said from the very outset this was a week that I would be unable to be at church, and since I would be responsible for the year-end financial reports and the proposed budget for next year, would blow a sizable hole in the agenda items that contentious factions would need to fight about - I mean, that thoughtful adults would want to discuss in an amicable environment of mutual respect and serious consideration. There was no changing their minds, however, try as I might, and finally I just handed over all of my paperwork to the schnook - I mean, the investment chairperson - who had been designated to present it at the meeting in my place, and went on my merry way with a clear conscience. It seemed unthinkable to me that they would go ahead and have the meeting without me, but they were bound and determined to see it through, no matter what, and I was not going to stand in their way. In what I regarded as an ironic twist after the fact, apparently The Almighty had other plans, because even though the weather was unremarkable that day, and in no way prevented anyone from arriving at church, and even though notices had been sent out and everyone reminded, it still happened that not enough voting members showed up at the appointed time, and they could not convene a quorum to hold a congregational meeting where official business could be voted on. So in the end, they had to start all over again anyway, pick another date, this time in February after all (and coincidentally now even later than the Super Bowl to begin with) and I would have to go ahead and do all the reports that I would have had to do in the first place - and all of which duplication of effort could have been easily avoided if they had just picked a different Sunday to start with. I won't say it's not nice to fool Mother Nature, but on the other hand, they do always say, the devil's in the details, and I personally never doubted it. Of course, it will do no good to blame anyone now, but just between you and me and the doorpost, it certainly seems to have Affirmed's evil hoof prints all over it, and this being the Year of the Horse anyway, we could all be in for a bumpy ride ahead, and that's not just Eli the famous ape talking, believe me. Elle