The Year in Review

Hey. Sit up. Lean in. Don't fall asleep. The dessert is still out there, you know, and it could be witheld. I'm just saying.

Okay, so the year started as it always does with the Super Bowl. I forget who won, but I know it wasn't the Patriots. What? Oh yes, it was Pittsburgh and I was glad for Roger Bettis or perhaps it was Richard Bettis, that Bettis fellow, who retired after the game. The Bus they called him. John Bettis?

All right, all right, Jerome Bettis. I knew that.

I remember another player called the Refrigerator, William Perry? He was on the Bears and they KILLED the Patriots a number of years ago. We kicked ass after that, though.

Don't try to distract me.

What's the dessert? None of your business. You'll see it when it gets here.

So the Super Bowl commercials this year were lousy, I think. I do remember one where young women were dressed as sliced pickles and onions and jumping into "buns" to make Whoppers or hamburgers or some such. I can picture the ad team that came up with it.

"This is going to make history!"

"It will be better and funnier than the Budweiser lizards!!"

"We are awesome."

Oh my, weren't they sadly wrong.

So moving on from the Super Bowl, we had the Winter Olympics and it was held in a sort of wintry country. Was it Italy? Yes, the games were in Turin, and no one wore a shroud, though perhaps they should have. I didn't actually watch.

Anyway, I do remember that Michelle Kwan didn't make the team, but the authorities huddled together and came up with a preposterous reason why she SHOULD make the team and she kicked somebody else off and went. Then she got hurt and had to leave and the next person had to come. How much do those transatlantic flights cost anyway? I would love to know all about those bitchy little groups of figure skaters. We can only imagine the drama. They should have their own TV network--Thin Ice.

I think most entrants in the Olympics fell on their keisters. I think you could tune in each night and see video of entrants falling on their keisters. There was an American female skier who had her race won and so decided to do a loop-de-loop or scissor split or something else very strange, and fell on HER keister and came second or third in the race. She said it was no big and she couldn't wait to get home and have decent food or something like that. See? All our marketing efforts are coming to fruition. There was another skier, a young man, a surfer dude kid, who more or less did the same thing, didn't he? Brag about how much he was partying and then bomb every race? Bode Miller, that's the boy.

Yeah, dude. Bode. I wonder how many headline writers wrote "bodes well" or "bodes ill."

I think Dick Cheney shot somebody and the person who was shot apologized profusely for what the vice president and his family had to go through. There were many jokes about this on the internet, but I always delete jokes and so I don't know any. It's rather like feudal times, though, isn't it? Oh squire, hit me again, will you? Which sounds homoerotic and makes me think maybe feudal times were homoerotic in their way.

There was a rape case at Duke University and it couldn't have been timed better for the release of Tom Wolfe's I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS (good book). That's all I could think of and I'm not that different from other people. That's what my friend Chris and I always say. If we find someone annoying, we know that other people do too, because we aren't that different. It's comforting.

Then that really weird guy in Thailand, who was clearly over there for the sex, confessed to the JonBenet murder and was brought to the U.S. on a plane where nearly everyone including the stews, took his picture with their cell phones. You could tell he wasn't guilty by the way he kept trying to see himself on everybody's monitor. I wonder how much we spent for that. He definitely wore eye makeup.

Then we came into the spring time and my book was released. I was totally out of it for several months. I had the best time of my life, although I think other things may have been going on in the world. Oh gosh, I wish I could live it all over again.

The Red Sox were not even in the playoffs. It was a hateful fall for that reason. The only good thing was that the Yankees were eliminated in--HAHAHAHAHA--the first round. Very sweet.

I have gone through the celebrity obituaries and choose to name only two. Steve Irwin lived with gusto. Do we know anyone else, I mean anyone, who would jump into a brown river in the middle of the night to grapple with a creature of any kind, let alone a two-ton alligator? Ed Bradley, and I know nothing of his life, must have gone through hell to get his first job. He was elegant. I saw his interview with Bob Dylan and it was riveting. Dylan was so on edge, he was practically biting his nails. Bradley got Dylan to say that he could never write anything really good again, which was certainly wrong, but Bradley gets the credit for pulling such a thing out of his subject.

After reading the obits, I do feel that we all need to live to 80. At 80 people nod their heads and say yes, s/he lived. S/he had a chance for a life and took it. I intend to live well past that. I am going to be the world's crotchetiest old lady that ever was. I think I am already.

Oh yes and Theo Epstein, the young cute GM of the Red Sox, got engaged. I did want him for my daughter or at least for my editor Leah. Damn. [note to daughter's boyfriend: only kidding, I think you are awesome]

Doug Flutie retired. It doesn't seem possible.

Jerome Bettis.

Now you may have cake. Or whatever you would like. But I'm not having any. Five pounds to go.

A bientot
love,b