Weekend Musings

It's a beautiful holiday weekend here in Buffalo. I spent most of the day yesterday outside and after months of hiding indoors on crutches it was amazing. It was a perfect afternoon to toss a quilt on the ground and relax with a book while mindlessly running my toes over the comfortably prickly, too long grass. One of my favorite things about Buffalo is the four distinct seasons. Between the humidity and the total lack of any kind of breeze, days like Sunday are few and far between in Alabama.

I also spent the weekend watching Tivo'd episodes of MTV's The Paper. I didn't watch much MTV even when I was in their target age group - I was busy listening to Ricky Nelson, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees, none of whom are big MTV staples (go figure) - but I'm addicted to this show. It follows a high school newspaper staff in Florida. I was a newspaper kid in high school so all the drama over editorial positions and assignments and little cliques of friends is very familiar. (I wanted to be the sports editor but ended up being the photography editor. I was told the guy who got the sports position was more qualified but I'm pretty sure it had more to do with the other guy being a guy. I was the one who was actually on sports teams, knew all the coaches and advisers in the sports department, and oh, yeah, could write a complete sentence. I hadn't thought about this is in years but The Paper made it all come rushing back. I have often wondered if professional papers are any more functional than high school papers though. Do the City and Regions writers really want to be in sports? Do the beat writers really want to be columnists? Do the columnists wish they were out in the thick of things?) Anyway... it's a good little show. Trevor and Gianna are straight from Satan and Amanda is adorable. I can see why she has some problems with the other kids - she is kind of bossy and oblivious to the effect some of her actions and comments have on people - but her worst sin is really just being different which is the only sin that matters in most high schools.

We also saw the new Indiana Jones movie on Saturday. Pretty good. I'd put it on the same level as Temple of Doom which is admittedly damning with faint praise since ToD is easily my least favorite in the series. I do wish the plot and script had been a little bit better. After years of "We want to make another Indy movie but we haven't found a story we all like" this one was... not that good. But it had some entertaining aspects to it and it was fun to see the old gang together again even though Marian - one of my all-time favorite movie heroines - was kind of wasted in my opinion. People who are complaining about it not being as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark need to get a grip. Not many movies are Raiders, one of the most perfect movies ever made.

Just so this post has something hockey related in it, here's my favorite link of the day, courtesy of Mirtle. He examines the Penguins payroll over the next couple of years and shows how difficult it's going to be to keep the current Penguins squad together. After all the harping about Buffalo blowing up the Stanley Cup team they had (the one that won zero Stanley Cups), it was nice to see that this is probably going to be a struggle for everyone in the current NHL. We got to go through the experience of trying to retain a young, successful team first, that's all.

Okay, I'm off to the waterfront!