A Cut Above

I’ve just returned from yet another early morning drive to Logan International Airport to drop off the latest wave of Panamanian visitors. They were a really fun group but this week’s change to more autumnal weather certainly wasn’t as welcome as they thought it would be. They were good sports, after determining we hadn’t turned up the air conditioning overnight. My wife was ready with a set of sweaters and coats to mitigate the low temperatures completely out of the realm of experience for these tropical personages.

They spent their last day in the USA doing what I’ve come to realize is required, a frantic final shopping expedition. My wife expertly sheparded them through all her very good friends, Macy’s, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and of course The Christmas Tree Shoppe. They were left a little in awe of her prowess by the end of the day. I assured them she had honed her skills through extensive practice over the years.

I was a little thrown last night when I turned on the Monday night football game to find all the programming in Spanish. The young Panamanians had figured out how to select the SAP on our very complicated remote and then forgotten to switch it back to English when summoned by the shopping master. It’s funny that the facility of youth with technology certainly extends across borders as these two delightful young people only needed a couple basic instructions on the remote before they were doing things with it I didn’t know were possible. They returned in time to show me how to switch back to English.

My fantasy football team struggled into the win column for the first time despite the best effort of Andrew Luck to set an all-time low for points from a quarterback, he was still in negative territory heading into the fourth quarter. Fortunately I had the Jets defense also which was intercepting his passes and picking up his fumbles. We beat the Wingman and my wife promptly declared she felt bad for him, saying we shouldn’t pick on him. I don’t think she gets the whole concept yet. The Cantankerous Friend has one of the only two undefeated teams left and I’m sure we’ll hear his thoughts on that development shortly.

My Closeup

Late in the evening my wife cajoled me into showing the Panamanians the extent of my Hollywood film career, all three seconds of it. I was in the film Gardens of Stone back in the 1980s and watching it now I'm constantly reminded, usually by my wife, how skinny I was back then. Always a confidence booster but I did enjoy sharing it with them and explaining some of the military traditions the movie explores. I was pretty svelte.

I finished the next in Lawrence Block’s most excellent Matthew Scudder novels, Out on the Cutting Edge, yesterday. A now sober Scudder is trying to track down a girl missing for several months when a friend from AA mysteriously dies. The seemingly impossible case challenges Scudder whose dogged pursuit of the truth eventually leads to a very unpleasant social impact when the two cases intersect. His luck with women remains consistently unfortunate.

Scudder is a hero truly worthy of admiration not because of any truly special talent other than a deep, world weary sense of justice. He’s not some supercop hyper-skilled with weapons but a simple man seeking redemption on so many levels for mistakes made earlier in life. I get the impression Block loves Scudder but feels the need to line his path in life with tragedy and injustice so he can mount his sprung horse to find justice through tarnished knight errantry.  Scudder will never be “pretty” or “cool” but is so compelling. I’ve already started the next in the series. A sample from this latest, when Scudder is awoken in the early morning by a mysterious phone call:

“It was a quarter to five. It had been past two by the time I turned the light out, so I’d had less than three hours. I sat on the edge of the bed and went over the conversation in my mind, trying to find a deeper message behind the words, trying to place the voice. I had the feeling I’d heard it before but couldn’t draw a bead on it. I went into the bathroom and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over the sink. All my years looked back at me, and I could feel their weight, pressing down on my shoulders.”