February 13, 2010

Happy President's Day Weekend everyone! We are suffering a bit from winter colds, but otherwise fine. It turns out that Claire has had sinusitis which has gone undiagnosed, perhaps for years. We were referred to a specialist in France, which I view as an opportunity to explore a whole new neighborhood. Doctors' offices are definitely in the best areas of Paris. Anyway, this guy was a real loon.

After interviewing us at great length, he sat Claire down, donned his avatar headgear and proceeded to look up her nose. I will refrain from giving you all of the sordid details, except to say that he pronounced her nose very "curious." In spite of my best efforts, he never said why. Then he rifled around in his rows of sharp instruments and pulled out a pair of pincers that were about a foot long. He told her to sit still. Claire, sensible girl that she is, took one look at roboman with his pincers and covered her nose. I told Monsieur in French that Claire was afraid. He shrugged and replied "that's because she's a girl." Claire has been diligently studying French for 6 months now and gave him a withering look. Way to go Claire!

The upshot is that Claire is now on antibiotics, steroids, nasal spray, and stomach medicine to counter the effects of all of the other stuff. Next week, she has to have a CAT scan to see if there's any other curious stuff we haven't found yet. It's all very exciting.

While I'm sure you imagine that we spend evenings out at various bistros, wearing black berets, smoking Gauloises and drinking fine French wines, we actually spend almost every evening at home. After all, we live here. Consequently, I am watching quite a bit of US television which I download according to Megan's instructions. I did give French TV a try, but I got over it in a hurry.

As a result, I have become somewhat of an expert on crime shows, medical shows and, above all, sports. Let me now share with you a few of my startling conclusions, organized by genre and show.

Medical Shows: House.
Patient comes in, patient is very sick with mysterious symptoms, team bravely treats patient while dealing with their own interpersonal romantic issues, team really screws patient up, patient is dying, House has mundane conversation with janitor about cleaning fluid and, AHA!!, diagnoses real problem just as patient is about to expire.

Crime Shows:

CSI, CSI NY, CSI Miami: Person is murdered, forensics team, invariably showing massive amounts of cleavage and wearing stilettos and a whole lot of eyeliner wander around crime scene photographing matchsticks, chewing gum wrappers, and oil slicks and wondering why men don't take them seriously. Because they do it to sinister, yet very cool music, it seems like a glam job. Body is taken to the morgue where coroner is eccentric middle-aged man with a penchant for heavy metal, classical music, etc. Head of crime lab is either so ugly he has to wear sunglasses ALL the time, or obviously psychologically damaged which makes all of his busty minions want to give him a big hug. Obvious suspects are questioned first (motive AND opportunity AND a chainsaw in their trunk!!), then cleared, then re-suspected and nailed at the very end. More very cool music as well as many gratuitous shots of city.

Law and Order, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order SVU: Craggy DA, busty assistant DA, busty female detective and, you guessed it, psychologically damaged male partner who is damn good at interrogating those feisty suspects. I actually have a great idea for a new spinoff: Law & Order SUV. It's about the dedicated men and women that serve on an elite squad that investigates the senseless crimes committed by java-crazed stay-at-home-moms driving vehicles the size and maneuverability of amphibious assault ships and named after large, northern mountain ranges. "These are their stories."
Tell me you wouldn't tune in.

Which brings me to sports. I have to ask, WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON? Joe Buck started it during the Angels-Yankees series: He talked about the Yankees running game. Running game?? What is this, football? Then, Buck says "and the Phillies hold serve," right before they went to commercial break during a World Series game. Seriously? Tennis?

Now, I can forgive Joe. The poor guy announces more sports than Bob Costas. No wonder he's confused. But, the trend spread like H1N1 across all sports programming within about two weeks!

Acting like teenage girls, sportscasters across the nation started frantically searching for expressions to use from other sports in their sports! When they went home and their wives told them how pathetic they sounded, they pouted and said "Well, everyone else is doing it."

Dan Dierdorff, perhaps one of the stupidest people on television today (which is saying something) credited Braylon Edwards with an "assist" during the Jets-Raiders game. The only bright side is that this slightly reduced the amount of time he spent trashing the Raiders. By the way, I have found after years of research, that a football announcer's IQ is inversely proportional to the number of times he says "National Football League" instead of NFL.

Next, Brian Billick talked repeatedly about Michael Crabtree's "pitch count" during the 49ers-Texans game.

Even Chris Collingsworth, who's a pretty decent sportscaster, jumped on the sportocross bike during the playoffs. To his credit, Phil Simms completely ignored Collingsworth's lame tennis references.

But the worst, to date, is Len Elmore. During the Georgetown-Villanova basketball game last week, he said "Georgetown has to hold home court serve. WHAT??? There's not even a dedicated offense and defense in basketball. WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT??

I think I better go to a bistro and order a bottle of fine French wine.