The Road Goes On...Ever, Ever On

The title of the post is a reference to an abysmal song in the abysmal stage production of The Lord Of The Rings. Yes, the stage production. The MUSICAL stage production. You may have heard of it: it opened in Toronto early in '06 and closed a few months thereafter. Anyway, Tara and Winston and I roadtripped up to Toronto to see it there last spring. Quick review: it blew. Yecch. A total travesty. 27 million dollars down a big Canadian toilet. An insult to Tolkein, and an obvious cash grab by show folk, most of whom haven't the capacity to understand what was so special about the books to start with. You knew it was awful when Boromir dies towards the end of the 1st book and Aragorn breaks out into song. Now it'll be foisted upon the unsuspecting European public in London starting next May--let them discover the joy.

But its second meaning has to do with our current trip. We're on our way to a midwestern daily double. We head tomorrow morning to St Louis, Missouri, for Thanksgiving with friends. On the way back we spend a day in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana, the city that the folks who coined the term "flyover country" had in mind (sorry, Wes...couldn't resist). Since we're Saabing it, we'll probably spend Tuesday night somewhere between Erie PA and Cleveland OH. I know, you wish you were us.

So I'm just going to clean out the unmatched sock drawer of blog topics before I throw my suitcase together:

Today's USA Today produced one of the finest articles on the religious perspective on the gay marriage discussion that I've read to date. From a most unexpected source--a Baptist minister. And the USA Today, come to think of it. It's like, FINALLY, someone gets it: "Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all...The truth is that mainstream religion has moved beyond animal sacrifice, slavery and the host of primitive rituals described in Leviticus centuries ago. Selectively hanging onto these ancient proscriptions for gays and lesbians exclusively is unfair according to anybody's standard of ethics."

We're done with the plumber in Pittsfield that did our heating system, and our electrician bailed on us claiming too much work. Everyone else in town is booked solid or will be out of town for the holidays. We need a couple of 20 amp circuits run to our kitchen from the panel in the basement, and our sink and dishwasher need to be plumbed in. Anybody know anyone? The electrical work is one guy for half a day, and we already have about half the 12/2 romex we'll need for the job. Anybody?

Nationally ranked Princeton (17) beat Dartmouth on Saturday; the Avocados end their season at 2-8 this year. Ivy League football is really a very strange creature in and of itself. Brings to mind very anachronistic images of guys with funny hats and bowties saying things like "Boola boola". It's almost true, too, or at least it was twenty years ago. I will say, though, that Ivy League pre-football drinking absolutely shames a lot of supposedly serious party schools. Think about it: the lunkheads in the Big 10 parking lots drink Keystone Light while stuffing themselves full of chili and sausages. Meanwhile, Ivy guys are usually belting cheap Canadian whiskey by 10AM on game days; maybe they had a bowl of oatmeal at 8. Much of the campus is totally loaded by the middle of the 2nd quarter. The football itself is kinda lame, and there are no real fans outside the people who went there. But it's got some tradition behind it, and fortunately not that many people take it too seriously. It's like a cool antique that still works: the old Victor Victrola of the football universe.

I'll probably update y'all from the Great American Middle later on this week. Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody.