No More Merciful Beheadings, and Call Off Christmas

As weeks do, this one has developed themes all its own, without much prompting from me. That's probably for the best as if it had been following my lead, the week for everyone would have been about junior varsity boys' basketball and not wanting to cook. It's not that I think you wouldn't have enjoyed junior varsity boys' basketball, it just helps if one of the players is in some way a blood relation. I find it's not really possible to enjoy a sporting event if there isn't some focal point to build a specific rooting interest around. Less to support and more to focus the lens of life's injustices as you become increasingly, fanatically, theologically certain that every single other person involved is out to exploit, injure and psychologically torment the helpless 160-pound 6-foot-2-inch man-child you were foolish enough to hand over into their care. I'm barely even talking about the other team, I'm talking about the referees who are in the obvious employ of the opponents, the coaches who continue to stifle burgeoning greatness by awarding anything less than 100% of available playing time, the teammates who selfishly insist on being demonstrably more experienced and more gifted than our special, special boy... Sports at all levels isn't about teams, it's about enemies and imagining ways to maim or kill them in a totally metaphorical way (wink) during the totally metaphorical combat of athletic competition. In fandom at any level, there is no such thing as an "overreaction." It's just a question of levels. It's not aggravated assault, it's evidence of who wants it more.

This week, all on its own, decided it was going to be about cancer and counting things in billions. Luckily so far I don't mean that billions of people have gotten cancer, although I guess if you're going to get it, as many of us should try to between now and the next presidential inauguration. Apparently we're going to be actually trying to do something about it. That didn't really help out David Bowie or Alan Rickman or that old guy who was married to Celine Dion... If you're reading this, that means you have internet access, so you definitely know about the first two, but I bet you didn't give a thought to the third one, you heartless starfucker.* Although, given whom we are talking about, you could be forgiven for thinking he died anonymously a long-ass time ago. I can't think of a time where I saw a picture of him and came away impressed with his pulsating vitality. That dude had white hair when Titanic came out. All things considered, making 2016 seems pretty impressive. That's probably the main reason he got less press than Bowie or Rickman: we all saw it coming.

The other theme this week: billions of dollars. Part of that might just be me because I finally saw The Big Short, a movie that tries REALLY HARD YOU GUYS to help me understand financial... something. Hopefully the ellipses indicate its level of success, but that's not the movie's fault as much as it is my numbers allergy. I did get the main gist of the film's nuanced message, which was: anyone in finance who is not also a giant movie star is probably a bad guy. Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, all looking out for you. Noted character actor Melissa Leo, though? BOOOOO! Be more rakishly handsome and bankable, Melissa Leo, and maybe we'll start trusting you again.

Also billions of dollars moved around when the St. Louis Rams were given permission to move back to Los Angeles, the place they were STOLEN FROM, breaking the hearts of all kinds of middle class white men in their early 20s** when they'd moved to St. Louis in 1995. The best part about it isn't that some of us will be able to attempt to fit into team-branded shirts we haven't tried on since the first Clinton administration, no. It's that the LA stadium plan is almost completely privately funded, bucking the trend of corporate welfare as state and municipal governments fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, incentives and tax concessions to keep teams, for little or no economic benefit. St. Louis, which was still paying for the stadium deal that brought the Rams there 20 years before (and upgrades along the way to satisfy the terms of their league-worst lease conditions), and the state of Missouri have been falling all over themselves to hand over even more money to the Rams, who didn't even want it. It probably feels like a loss in StL (and believe me, I know exactly what it feels like), but as a whole, as a country, billionaires paying billions of dollars for things is how money is supposed to work. St. Louis dodged a bullet and LA got a football team without having to fork out public money. Win-win! Except for oh noes, the traffic-pocalypse it will cause! You know, eight days a year when they have home games. 10 if you count preseason. And Inglewood is not that hard to avoid. Unless you're in an airplane, I guess. But eh, omelet, eggs, you know that whole thing...

Most surprisingly in the Billion Dollar News category? Powerball. Such is the frenzy caused by the words "billion dollar jackpot" that, for the first time in my life as a wage-earning adult, I actually bought a lottery ticket. And then I won! Well, almost. I think I had one of the numbers on one of my draws (I bought 10), but one of the dudes who won? Chino Hills! I've been there! It's on the way to my girlfriend's house! Man, to think I was just 15 miles (40 minutes with traffic) from buying the right ticket at the right place at the right time. Lucky for you, though. A billion dollars? I'd give up this low-paying blog racket in a second.

---

*Also the nickname of Rene Angelil since his pacemaker surgery.

**YES, ME. I feel things. About football. Leave me alone.