Christmas dinner - Terrorists - Any Given Sunday - Dan Marino's last comeback?.

Ever eaten a Christmas lunch in glorious sunshine and 70 degree weather? Neither have I and very strange it was too. I managed to thrust a turkey and some apple crumble (called "apple cobbler" over here!) onto some friends, one of whom had never tasted custard before! Amazing! Still, he is originally from Alabama so that might explain a lot. I had to explain "Boxing Day" to some friends - in fact I'd always thought it was another bloody American invention, like most things in this world.

Actually, the apple cobbler has just reminded me of a classic Two Ronnies sketch where they play a couple of peasant-ish yokel shoe repairers in the Middle Ages and then they get a Royal Warrant - so they then put a sign outside their shoppe saying "Cobblers To The King" and promptly get arrested. Ha ha ha! Class! They don't make them like that any more!

Rented "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" last night - about the third time I've seen it but my Yankee housemates had trouble understanding the lingo. I had to explain that "boat race" meant "face" and that "claret" meant "blood" etc etc. Bloody cockneys.

I'm making sure I stay away from any large congregations of Americans for New Year's Eve seeing as they're the number one targets for all those nutjob terrorist types out there who want to blow stuff up on Dec 31st. {Yes I am going to be at a warehouse party with 400 Americans but I'm banking on the fact that Bin Laden and his cronies have been skipping their Disco Appreciation classes...) The one advantage of living in San Francisco is that we'll be one of the last places on Earth to strike midnight - so if all the computers go belly up and civilisation grounds to a halt in, say, the UK, at least we'll have eight hours to prepare for it...at least that's what I'm hoping...

Another big movie that's just opened here is an Oliver Stone/Al Pacino vehicle, "Any Given Sunday". It's about American Football (but don't let that turn you off) and features much of what you'd expect:football players-as-gladiators metaphors, games shown in slow motion, games played in driving rain, head coach Pacino yelling at the top of his lungs, a veteran sports hero coming back for one last game, an up and coming underdog beating the odds and achieving a major victory etc. All good stuff and Stone manages to package it together well.

Actually, "Any Given Sunday" could have been about the game I've just watched on TV. It was primetime Monday Night Football, a matchup between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets. There onscreen was my all-time sporting hero, veteran Miami quaterback Dan Marino, up against the Jets' hotshot rookie QB Ray Lucas. And to be honest it was almost painful to watch as the Dolphins lost a thriller. It was quite a oignant moment as many people reckon this is Marino's last season and thus his last home game in Miami. The guy's pushing 39, is the league's most prolific passer and is still trying his damndest to singlehandedly win games but it wasn't pretty. He had an average game - occasionally displaying the flashes of brilliance that make him a gridiron legend but too often making critical mistakes at crunchtimes. Watching your heroes falter can be a sobering experience and gets you thinking maybe it would be better for him to bow out gracefully now rather than keep going for "one more season". I wouldn't have said that a year ago but when you get to see these guys in glorious technicolour week in week out it kind of puts a different spin on things.

Anyhow, there's one more week of the regular season and the Dolphins can still make the playoffs (which lead to the Superbowl) but depend on other teams losing to make it. So it's kind of out of Danny's hands now I suppose. Maybe he'll get one last throw of the dice, maybe he won't, but you can be sure everyone in America is rooting for him. The Superbowl is the one prize that's eluded him in 17 years in the National Football League.

Mushiness aside...here's a funny snippet from a column in the local SFWeekly newspaper about my local 'hood...

"Mark Wladika shares with us this charming story of life in millennial San Francisco: 'I was walking down Haight approaching the Ashbury intersection when I see two hippies fighting, a man and a woman. She's screaming, 'Get the fuck off my peace sign!' and he's retorting, 'C'mon, bitch, right now!' while they shove each other. The ground is covered with an ornately rendered peace sign in chalk that I assume is the object of the conflict. Then another pedestrian approaches and the man stops, turns to the passer-by and asks, 'Spare any change?' When the pedestrian ignores him he goes back to shoving the woman.'

"Uh, peace on earth and goodwill among men, everyone."

Seems even the hippies have a little Pre Millennial Tension.

Peace and flowers,

Kieran

He was born with a gift of laughter
and a sense that the world was mad.

Rafael Sabatini