[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I survived the Oscars thanks to Tom Hanks. My weekly Sunday night dinner crew is cavalcade of wonderful people with one tragic flaw that flies in bitter conflict with my own. Theirs is that, despite many degrees, they love watching awards shows. Mine is that I never check the award show calendar so I know which weeks to pretend to be sick and stay home.

I was warned this go round. I bemoaned my predicament mid Grammies on Twitter and a friend responded with the date and air time of the next trap, the dreaded Academy Awards. I forgot. Thankfully, three time Best Actor Award winner Tom Hanks, in what I see as a clear attempt to shut the door behind him and broach no competition, is narrating a great nature show about ‘Merica that aired opposite the movie self-love fest. If there’s one thing my Sunday dinner crew likes more than awards shows, it’s nature shows. Thank you, Tom. You’re showing God’s work.

The show was beautiful, and it’s all right here stuff. We’re in America. You should go out and see it. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Get out of work and spend an afternoon admiring the bounty we’re soaking in. If it’s raining, see if Tom’s show is streaming.

First, a little verse.

***

“Dan Brown?” This was after a few hundred feet of pondering.

“He was hugely popular.”

“Yeah, and his books are objectively not good.”

“He sold something like 80 million copies.”

“Something like that.” We went left towards the put-in. Our afternoon walks go left towards the put-in when weather allows and whim concedes a longer go along the creek. Right takes us home. “What about Stephanie Meyer?”

“She sold a billion.”

“Yeah, but if you played a drinking game and drank every time someone’s eyes were described as golden or bronze, your liver would fall out. Oh! Fenimore Cooper.” When my wife, when anybody, drops the James in James Fenimore Cooper, you know she’s thinking about Twain’s “The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper.” That’d be fun to read again.

“What about Carrot Top?” And there, crossing the little rill that bisects the westernmost widening of the park as the first owl of the still lit evening sounded from somewhere back a ways on the far bank, I realized that I was seriously thinking about how to interpret Carrot Top’s career.

The thing is, I’ve laughed at his stand up. I’m not a fan, but from what I’ve seen he gets one in every so often. He has throngs of fans. Just not my thing. He is the butt of a lot of jokes, though.