Day: February 4, 2012

I was in the supermarket today and a big jovial man with a big cart stuffed with buffalo wings, Nachos, Doritos, hot dogs, pizza and hamburgers came up to me and bumped my car, and then laughed and pounded my back, nearly knocking me into the poultry display. “You ready for the Giants?,” he asked, beaming from ear to ear. I was a bit embarrassed about my cart, which was filled with Broccoli, Almond Milk, wheat Fusilli, brown rice and various fruits and vegetables. “Let’s bang carts,” he suggested, “like Dodgem,”, as I fumbled to get my Ipod out of my ear and into my pocket. He was warming up for some macho banter.

I had briefly forgotten that today is yet another Super Bowl Sunday – XLVI – endowed with Roman Numerals to give it even more gas and gravitas than it already has. For me, it is more significant than my birthday because it reminds me that my inner male is very different from a lot of other inner males. I want to be a regular guy, and am working on it. I have always wanted to be a regular guy, and I think most guys do, on one level or another.

Just this morning, I announced to my sneering and incredulous wife that I was going to watch the game. “Really?,” she jeered, not as sensitive as she sometimes can be. I don’t have enough male friends to get a Buffalo Wing thing going, and no group of men has ever invited me over to watch the Super Bowl. When I was a kid, my favored male activity was running for my life while the other males tried to find me and beat me to death. If I went to a  real Super Bowl Guy Thing,  I probably would keel over and die halfway through the first quarter, after eating  my wings and Doritos.

“Yes,” I always say, “I want to watch the ads.” Usually I last until the end of the first quarter and then I can’t take it anymore. There is so much bull and hype surrounding the Super Bowl, so much pretense, that I can’t really even find the game even if I try. Still, my inner male wants to come out. My goal is to make it through a whole game. This year, there is a local element – the  New York Giants. All week, I can go up to the other guys and say, “hey, how about those f—– Giants.” And they will talk to me.  All I really know about the Giants is that their coach has a foot fetish and that is impressive to me. It’s all I need to know.  I do not have wings, but I do have wheat grain cracker chips and some V-8 vegetable juice. I am psyched.

As I was checking out, the cashier looked at my food and smiled. “I’m not having a Super Bowl party,” I said, a bit defensively.
“I see,” she said. “I love those wheat chips.”

It could be a fun game. And I am always interested to see the ads.

A day or so ago, I wrote about the brave mouse who sacrificed his life trying to get an oversized dog biscuit into his mouse hole at the far end of the farmhouse. He was so determined to save his biscuit – it was three times bigger than the hole and I couldn’t believe he could even move it –  that I spared him, caught him and got him and his biscuit outside, but the mouse never got to celebrate his biscuit. He ran into Mother the barn cat. Lenore found his body outside.

I buried him by the edge of the garden, along with his biscuit. Between Mother and my mousetraps, many mice have gone to glory here, but this one seemed especially worthy to me and I couldn’t bear to kill him. Mother had no qualms. Cats do not emotionalize things.

But there is another twist to the story. I took Lenore outside this afternoon to keep me company while I took some photos and I was lost in my own world, and she came rushing over to me wagging her tail and eager to bring me something, which she was pressing against my leg. It took a second or so to see the tail sticking out of her mouth, and then the remains of the biscuit and dirt.

Lenore was very pleased with herself, and she is quite emotional about food. If there is a moral to this story, perhaps somebody else can figure it out. I love Lenore.

Maria and I will be at Gallery 99 in Glens Falls this afternoon. Gallery 99 is a new idea, a mobile art gallery seeking to reconnect art with people who want to buy it at affordable prices. I wanted to give my own readers and bloggers a first opportunity to buy my photos, some of landscapes, one of Izzy, some of chickens and their magical shapes. Maria is selling them on her website, and you can see them and buy them there. I’m offering 10 and these will be the only photos I plan to sell, unless Maria decides otherwise.  I am always a bit queasy about art shows and about selling photos. But let’s see what happens. They are matted. $75 plus shipping. Some people do not see photos as art, some do. I’m not sure.