Clowning Around

Hello World, Happy Super Bowl weekend! It seems that the 51st edition of the annual classic is known officially as Super Bowl LI (or as Bill recently quipped, "Are they playing the Super Bowl on Long Island this year?") and is set to blast off on Sunday with the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons strapped in for the ride. Even people with no particular interest in professional football can easily get caught up in all of the hoopla, and there's no lack of parties, betting pools, and viewing events at sports bars and social clubs everywhere in the country, around the world, or no doubt, far distant galaxies throughout the universe, I dare say. It's a media frenzy and retail extravaganza, probably single-handedly responsible for more big-screen TV purchases than anything else in history - and not to mention, beer, pizza, potato chips, more beer, salsa, buffalo wings, chili, beer, pretzels, nachos, and dip. Oh, and beer. Bill figured it would be the perfect opportunity for us to go to Home Depot and get a replacement shade for an upstairs window, on the theory that nobody would be in a hardware store at the time of The Big Game, after all. Of course, they don't sell television sets at Home Depot, so probably the entire sales staff will be in the break room watching the Super Bowl while we're trying to shop, but at least it's a good idea in theory anyway. Alert readers may wonder, and well may they wonder indeed, if the Super Bowl is well and truly upon us, whatever became of the regular winter donnybrook known as the annual congregational meeting at church? This historical ecclesiastic rumble has settled down considerably since its fists-flying and chair-throwing heyday, and frankly, I haven't tossed a hymnal at anybody in so long, I'm afraid that whatever was left of my distance and accuracy has long since gone by the wayside, and more's the pity, I'm sure. This year's meeting was a week earlier in January than usual, in case there was bad weather and had to be postponed by a week, it would still be in January. That made it harder on the poor beleaguered Treasurer (who shall remain nameless, but looks suspiciously like me) trying to wrap up all of the December expenses, and round up the bank statements to balance everything up, and still make copies of everything with one less week to work with, thanks not. But the meeting went off without a hitch, and was a typically amicable affair as they are nowadays, with not a bit of fighting, or even shouting and name-calling, and throwing anything is just a distant memory from the far away past. Even the budget passed with barely a murmur, which would have been unthinkable in the bad old days, and we were out of (what used to be the inaptly named) Fellowship Hall with more than enough time to spare, and get on with our lives. What used to be a good excuse for a fight now seems like nothing more than a handy reason to have a pot luck luncheon, with plenty of fried chicken, quiche, baked ziti, rice pilaf, potato salad, and brownies to go around - and I don't mean that in a bad way, believe me. Heck, I'll take sweet potato pie over chair throwing any day. Of course, Thursday was Groundhog Day, and among the roughly dozen or so furry prognosticators that are around nowadays, the results were about evenly divided between six more weeks of winter, or an early spring, so I guess that everyone can just go ahead and make of that what they will, top hats and all. Speaking of winter, because the Christmas season starts so early (and in the stores, earlier every year) it can all too easily wear out its welcome in a hurry with some people - and if they've had their tree up in the house since before Thanksgiving, it's no surprise to see it out at the curb as early as December 26th, with an air of "good riddance" about it that would have been unheard of back in the old days. On the other hand, some people are just as happy to let the good (King Wenceslas) times just keep on rocking (around the Christmas tree) and you can still see wreaths, lights, and yard decorations scattered around town, weeks after Santa has packed up his sleigh and taken his reindeer and elves south for a well deserved vacation in the sun. This was brought home to me in textbook fashion as we've been driving around here and there in the weeks after Christmas, and I noticed so many cars coming towards us, who apparently remembered to take out their fuzzy brown reindeer antlers in the aftermath of the yuletide season, but completely forgot to also remove the puffy red nose on the front of the grille while they were at it. Now it looks really funny to see a car driving around with what appears at this point to be a big red clown nose, and no other accessories to put it in context, however out of date that might be. I admit that I'm usually the one who complains about over-dressed cars with their mustaches, bras, eyelashes, and bumper diapers, but I can't help but laugh every time I see one of these clown cars coming toward me, looking like it's just escaped from the circus with all of its greasepaint and frizzy wig flying. Honk, honk! Meanwhile in our very own after-Epiphany domicile, Bill was more than equal to the Herculean task of taking down our Christmas tree, and wrestling it into the backyard by sheer force of will, with very little bloodshed, and no actual casualties along the way - and which is not something that we take for granted around here, I can assure you. It dawned on me later that there should be music to un-decorate by, the same as we have the Yule Log on TV to put up decorations by beforehand. I was originally thinking of Christmas carols played backward, like recording engineers used to do in the old days of vinyl records, with their supposedly diabolical messages hidden in the grooves for the conspiracy theorists and paranoid among us to ferret out in their lonely basements. But then it occurred to me that there really should be new songs in the post-holiday period just for this particular purpose, and I call on the musical community to put their collective heads together and come up with something to turn this somewhat depressing drudgery into more of a cheerful occasion, with some peppy tunes that we can whistle while we work, as it were. Here, I'm thinking of ideas like "Undeck the Halls," "Santa Claus is Leaving Town," "O Go, All Ye Faithful," "And So This is Not Christmas," and my personal favorite, "No Holy Night." I realize that Irving Berlin and Mel Torme are not going to come back and take care of this for us, but there must be songwriters of today who can handle this, and I say we spare no expense in gathering them up to make it happen. Quick, garcon, send the clown car for them! Elle