The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Gooooooals

1. Get my feature outlined today and written by the end of the day on Thursday.
2. Get my photo column outlined today and written by the end of the day tomorrow.
3. Go through submissions for my techniques column by the end of the day Monday. Collaborate with April on submissions, get them finalized by the end of the day Wednesday and get the copy written by the end of the day Friday.
4. Get 1000 words written on The Book every day between now and July 16.
5. Have the Best Anniversary Ever on Tuesday. Jim says he's already planned an evening full of stimulating surprises and exciting allsortsathings. Including dinner at a place he will not yet name, but which I'm kinda hoping might be Clarklewis. Or Park Kitchen. Or, y'know, whatever.
6. Have a thoroughly amazing, guilt-free, 100% metal time at the Mastodon show Thursday night. (Oh yes. I am going to see Mastodon. The awesomeness is palpable, even if I am going all by myself.)

Here's their video for "Blood and Thunder" for you to enjoy...

And here's a compilation of Gooooooooals. (Sorry about the Linkin Park.)

Go Giants!

Yeah, that's pretty much all.

Back from Las Vegas last night... still a little tired, a little perhaps hungoverish, but still looking forward to the game. May the gods of accuracy place their benediction on Eli's throwing arm... and may the demons of interception plague that plaguey Tom Brady.

How I know I'm really a boy, Reasons #4678-4681

1. Football (srsly, if anyone had to beat the Packers, I'm glad it was the Giants. I may feel a post brewing on Eli Manning.)
2. Mogwai, also Mastodon, also Godflesh
3. Fear and loathing of rom-coms
   
4. Unstinting adoration of movies made from comic books (or sharing a comic book-style aesthetic, or leading to comic book spinoffs) (X-Men, The Crow, Sin City, Grindhouse and Army of Darkness, respectively)

Do you think President Huckabee will send me to the gender re-education camps, or do you think he'll let me slide on account of my uncanny fondness for makeup and girly T-shirts?

In which I wax unpoetic about my favorite thing about America

So I got an e-mail from my favorite wacky local art-goodies store, Collage. And it announced that they are having a super! incredible! "shopping-mall-proportion!" sale in tandem with several other local indie stores. Awesome! Swell! Let me grab my wallet!

But wait a minute. When is this event scheduled?

On Superbowl Freakin' Sunday, that's when. Right. During. The game.

Hello, Collagians! Don't you know that that's like scheduling a big sale on CHRISTMAS? Just because I'm female, incorrigibly non-athletic and generally divorced from all things Middle American doesn't mean I don't like to settle down on the couch (well, bed... we have no TV in our living room) of a weekend and get my game on.

Yes! I love watching football. I love marveling over the sheer size of the linebackers, swooning over the high-school handsome quarterbacks (though my favorite QBs are all... well, rather less than handsome), deciphering the obscenities the coaches are barking into their headsets, imitating the bizarre end-zone antics of the receivers (flinging the ball into the play clock? srsly?), eating Cheesy Beer Squares (neither cheesy, nor beer, nor a square. Discuss.), having Jim explain to me the more arcane ins and outs of the official rules, flinging around the jargon like I know what I'm talking about (ask me about two-point conversions!), yelling "GO PACK GO!" at appropriate and inappropriate moments, yelling "TOUCHDOWN [WHOMEVER JIM'S ROOTING AGAINST]!" whenever possible, laughing at the dorky signs the fans hold up, commenting on the clever and less-so commercials...

...yeah, basically I like everything there is to the art of watching football on TV.

And it never fails to astonish me how people get all snootier-than-thou about their chosen hobby of not watching sports. "Oh. Football. You mean American football?" (sniff) "I don't know if that even really counts as a sport." Or just the cut-dead "I don't follow sports."

Well, la-dee-freakin'-da for you, Petunia Polopants. I'm so glad you're too refined, too special to see the fun in (boozily) yelling exhortations at a bunch of three-inch-tall players (yeah, we've got a little TV) who can't freakin' hear you anyway. Or too classy to want to waste your time in a sports bar with a bunch of other people (some of whom may even be wearing jerseys!) boozily yelling exhortations. But don't harsh my mellow, huh? I mean, I really couldn't care less if you want to spend your Sundays watching lacrosse or playing table tennis or crocheting afghans or sorting buttons or what have you.

But spending our weekends during the season wrapped up in football... especially during playoffs, for heaven's sake!... is as close as our family comes to anything resembling Religious Ritual. And you gotta respect my religion, man, and I gotta get all cranky and uptight if you don't accommodate me by scheduling your sales in such a way as to allow me to fulfill my religious obligations and still attend. 'Cause it's the American way.

(Go Pack Go!!!)

U-6 Soccer: Tale of a Triumph

So today was Fisher's first soccer game as a player, Jim's first as a coach, and my first as an assistant coach.

If you're not familiar with the wonder that is U-6 (under 6) soccer, it goes something like this:

15x20-yard field. Three kids from each team on the field at a time. No goalie.

No goalie. Yep.

So we showed up, thinking we'd encounter a group of like-minded children with a similar mix of bursts of uncontrolled semi-athletic activity and obstinate daisy-picking.

Nope. It was the luck of our team (the JAGUARS) to go up against a crew of mini-Peles (the COUGARS) whose mothers all apparently read soccer strategy guides to them in the womb. They were disciplined. Eager. Focused. Well-versed in the finer points of kicking the ball down the field in the correct direction. They'd all been on official soccer teams since age 4 (or 3, some of them) and this was their second season playing together as an Unstoppable Soccer Juggernaut.

Their team was accomplishing complicated forward- and backward-pass maneuvers. Our team was struggling to remember which appendages they couldn't use to touch the ball. (Hands.)

Officially, U-6 soccer isn't supposed to keep score.

But unofficially, we got our asses whooped. Final score was 7-zip. (And this was accomplished in 4 5-minute quarters.)

Back to the practice field...