Monday Night Football

I was hoping to have pictures posted from the Great Pumpkin Massacre that ocurred at my home Sunday night, but we'll have to wait on that. Bigger things took precedence. Like going out for garlic mashed potatoes and an empty Monday evening showing of Friday Night Lights, plus a scheduled phone date with Blondie. Blondie! We miss you! Oh, and work, which, unfortunately, preempts everything else during the daylight hours. I don't think they'd be too happy if they caught me secretly uploading photos of gruesome pumpkin carnage.

The garlic mashed potatoes? Not bad. But I was practically peeing my pants in anticipation of this movie and I'm sure Phillip was only too happy to take me out last night and get The Movie out of my system. Long long ago my dad was reading a book called Friday Night Lights and even though he warned me that it was about football- worse, high school football in TEXAS- I read it anyway. I had never read a book that creeped me out in such a wonderfully fascinating way. I still can't quite get over how far backwards the Permian High cheerleaders bend for their respective football players. The move leaves out a lot of the book's social commentary, there's only one worshipful cheerleader scene, and there's not nearly enough said about Brian Chavez, the football player who goes on to Harvard. But focusing on the football field is probably what makes the movie work. I'm a sucker for sports movies- I will watch anything about a Team That Beats The Odds (hello Cool Runnings!)- especially if most of the actual sports footage is helpfully snipped out in the editing room. Friday Night Lights is nothing if not a violent bone-crushing homage to the Young American Male and I told Phillip afterwards that any boys we may have will not be allowed anywhere near a football field. Or Texas. (Our boys are liable to be chubby band nerds whose skills lie primarily in mastering video game controllers and memorizing a decade's worth of TV show scripts... ah, that's another story.) But the director, one Peter Berg, puts all the points he may want to make on the Astrodome field where it won't annoy us or bore us or get us thinking about anything other than fearing for the quarterback's life during the championship game. The actors are wonderful, especially Billy Bob Thornton who ordinarily makes my skin crawl and my eyes bleed. And did I mention Tim McGraw is in this movie? TIM MCGRAW IS IN THIS MOVIE. They ugly him up, but look what it did for Charlize Theron.

And there ends the only movie review I've ever written, a highly favorable review about a movie in which I am too emotionally invested because I Read The Book and because I BAWLED at the end and any movie that uses something other than True Love's Kiss to make me bawl is REALLY REALLY GOOD.

We topped the evening off with a phone call to Blondie that used up all her cell phone minutes and made me miss China entirely too much. If it weren't so far away- and gray and dirty and in a language I can't even sound out let alone speak- I would totally move into the apartment next door to Blondie and keep her company and eat hot pot at least once a week. Kitty, one of the girls who took us out for my first glorious hot pot experience, has emailed me a couple times, but she likes to use e-cards which have Chinese characters on them and my computer is really ornery when it comes to Chinese characters. My computer sees Chinese characters, puts one hand on its hip and the other hand does the homegirl snappy thing in front of my face and is all "Uh uh girlfriend, what makes you think I'm gonna translate for you? WhatEVER." I told Kitty to write me a PLAIN email because anything Chinese turns into gibberish by the time I see it. And then I told her to ask Blondie what "gibberish" means. And Blondie asked, "Why are you teaching Kitty these weird American words and making my job harder?"

But all of this is to say, you're just going to have to wait to see gory pumpkin innards splattered all over my dining room table. Also, photographic evidence of innocent-looking girls wielding giant gleaming recently-sharpened cutlery items.