Happy New Year’s Eve! These metal javelina sculptures have already broken out party hats and noisemakers as they prepare to ring out 2023 and ring in 2024 in Marana, Arizona.
I hope everyone enjoys a safe and fun New Year’s Eve and gets a midnight kiss–or, if you’re in my age category, I hope you either somehow stay awake until the stroke of midnight or don’t feel guilty about turning in before the clock strikes 12. If it makes the seniors among us feel any better, know that you’ve already made it to midnight and 2024 in New Zealand and you’re only a few minutes from midnight in Tokyo.
We’ve reached the point in the year where we’re seeing the retrospective, “what happened in 2023” stories. One of the traditional year-end articles identifies the most-watched prime-time TV shows of the year. That’s always of interest to me, as kind of a measuring stick of popular American culture and also how familiar–or, more accurately, unfamiliar–I am with mainstream TV viewing.
The Variety article on the most-watched prime-time TV broadcasts of 2023 has some clear messages. First, the National Football League is a mainstream TV powerhouse. Fourteen of the top fifteen most-watched TV broadcasts of the year were NFL games, with the Super Bowl, of course, topping the list. The NFL also was responsible for nearly half of the top 100 broadcasts, with 45 NFL games making the list. The NFL’s dominance in the year-long list is particular striking when you consider that the NFL season encompasses less than half of the calendar year.
In short, there’s a reason why the NFL continues to spread out from its traditional Sunday afternoon setting to now feature broadcasts on Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night, and increasingly Saturday night. I’m sure the networks and streaming services would be thrilled if the NFL scheduled a prime-time game for every night of the week, and stretched the season out even longer.
Second, it’s pretty clear that many of the people who watch a primate-time NFL game on TV are going to watch other TV shows that night, too, after the game has ended. Many of the standard, series-type TV shows that made the list did so because they were strategically positioned to air following an NFL game broadcast. If you want someone to see your show, you’ll therefore want to beg the network to put it right behind a prime-time NFL game on the schedule–and then hope your storyline and characters grab the football game holdovers so they might watch your creation again without an NFL lead-in.
And finally, the list confirms my increasing lack of contact with network TV. I’ll watch some NFL broadcasts, for sure, but I’ve never seen, and frankly have no interest in watching, most of the series whose episodes made the top 100 list–shows like NCIS,Bluebloods, Accused, Fire Country, FBI, Chicago Fire, Young Sheldon, or Next Level Chef. I didn’t watch the Oscar or the Grammy broadcasts, either. In fact, I would bet that in 2023 I watched less network TV than I have in years . . . and perhaps ever. It’s a far cry from a ’60s childhood where most evenings were spent camped in front of the TV, switching channels and watching whatever CBS, NBC, and ABC chose to broadcast that night.
Last night the new-look, improbability-busting Cleveland Browns clinched an NFL playoff spot. They beat the New York Jets 37-20 after putting up 34 points and some amazing offensive numbers in the first half. That victory is worth noting in any event, but the Browns did it in style: on prime-time TV, before their home crowd of long-suffering fans, in a city that was primed to explode with happiness when the last whistle blew and the game ended.
So, the Browns have made it to the dance for only the third time since they came back to the NFL in 1999. We’ll enjoy a day or two of celebration of that milestone, but for any football fan the question quickly becomes: can my team advance?
The building blocks for a playoff run are there. The Browns clearly have a tough, aggressive defense that is able to get offenses out of their comfort zones and their game plans. Last night the defense forced a turnover, relentlessly pressured the Jets QB, and even scored a touchdown during the Browns’ frenzied first half. It gave up more yards on the ground than you would like, but it’s the kind of defense that can win games in the post-season. With the addition of Joe Flacco at quarterback, the offense has been reenergized and supercharged through the air; last night Flacco threw for more than 290 yards in the first half alone, even though his top receiver was out for the game. The play-calling has been great, and last night the Browns’ running game also reemerged after a few awful, unproductive games.
But postseason wins and losses are often about more than impressive statistics. They are about mistakes and turnovers–and this Browns team is making a lot of both. Last night Flacco threw a bad pick-six, the Browns fumbled four times, losing two, and they also missed an extra point. In recent games they’ve given up another pick six, failed to recover an onside kick, allowed a kickoff return touchdown, and repeatedly lost the turnover battle. To be sure, they’ve overcome all of those blunders in beating the Jaguars, the Bears, the Texans, and the Jets, but the competition will be stiffer come playoff time, and you could easily see any one of those mistakes being fatal and causing a heart-breaking loss that brings an end to what has been a magical season.
How do you stop the turnovers and the special teams mishaps? That’s something that head coach Kevin Stefanski and the rest of the Browns coaching staff is going to have to figure out. Should they rest the offensive and defensive starters in their last game against Cincinnati, now that the playoff berth is assured–or should they have the first-team offense play, if only to work on keeping control of the pigskin? That’s a tough call, obviously, and one that would be endlessly second-guessed if number 15 or one of the other key players suffered an injury.
But if the Browns hope to advance against tougher competition, they can’t continue to dance on the razor’s edge and repeatedly put the ball on the ground. They have got to figure out how to play a clean game. If they can pull that off, they could make some real noise.
Well, it’s December 28. For most people, it’s an entirely unremarkable day–aside from the fact that it is located precisely at the midpoint of that curious week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It’s just one of the little boxes on the calendar that gets crossed off on the countdown to New Year’s Eve.
So far as I can tell, no one really celebrates December 28 on its own merits. The closest it gets is Proclamation Day, which marks the founding of the government of South Australia as a British province in 1829. ”Proclamation Day” is a pretty boring name for a holiday, when you think about it, and even in that faraway corner of the world, December 28 gets slighted: Proclamation Day is officially commemorated on the first working day after Christmas, so this year it occurred on December 26. December 28 thus was left sadly out in the cold.
So this year, I think it’s important to give December 28 its due. Let’s not clutter it up with phony holidays. Instead, let’s recognize it on its own merits, as one of the ancient and useful measurements of time that mark Earth’s journey on another lap around the sun. I say that this year, we give December 28 a justly deserved exclamation point.
We had an up close and personal experience with the local band of javelinas yesterday. As we were taking a walk we spotted the pack of peccaries, which included a few junior javelinas, in the underbrush around one of the neighborhood drainage ditches. This fellow then emerged from a cluster of palo verde trees and prickly pear cacti, strolled casually over to a barrel cactus located right next to the entrance road, and used his snout to tear off and munch down the flower on top of the plant.
The javelina didn’t bother us, but also didn’t seem troubled to be in close proximity to us, either. He was about the size of a medium-sized dog, and the needles on the barrel cactus didn’t seem to faze him in his quest for javelina chow. I’ve read that javelinas tend to have poor eyesight, and I think there is truth in that–this fellow seemed startled when a car passed on the road, and may not have realized the road was right there, or that he was being watched by a group of walkers. When he heard the sound of the car, he retreated briefly, then strode back to the plant to finish his meal.
I’ve been wondering what happens to the blossoms you see from time to time on barrel cactus plants. Now I know.
Richard brought along this nifty, vintage U.S. map puzzle that he picked up at an estate sale in Austin, to give us a post-present-opening Christmas activity. It’s a brightly colored wooden effort, with little icons that purport to identify different features of the individual states. Ohio, for example, has a tire positioned near Akron, and Iowa has an ear of corn, a pig, and a steer’s head. Our puzzle-making family attacked the challenge with relish, only to realize at the end of the puzzle process that we were missing a piece: Montana.
Howin the world did the prior owner lose Montana? After all, it’s the fourth largest state in the country, by square miles, just behind California. I could see misplacing one of the tinier states, like Delaware, or Rhode Island, or Vermont–but you’d think Montana would be easily findable on any carpet or floor.
That suggests two scenarios for the missing Montana–it fell through a vent and was lost in the bowels of its prior house, or a dog got to it. Even with the missing Montana, however, it is still a cool puzzle
Browns fans everywhere got an early Christmas present yesterday as the Cleveland Browns beat the Houston Texans on the road, 36-22.
The fact that the Browns won wasn’t hugely surprising–not this year, at least, with perhaps the best defensive unit I can remember in my 60-plus years of Browns fandom. What was surprising, though, was how the Browns did it on offense, with a quick strike/bomb threat attack that eviscerated the Texans’ defense time and again. The new-look offense allowed Amari Cooper to set a franchise record with 265 receiving yards and two touchdowns, while ageless Joe Flacco threw for a total of 368 yards and also notched a touchdown pass to David Njoku. With the smothering Browns defense throttling the Houston offense, the Browns went up 36-7 in the fourth quarter–causing the broadcast here in Arizona to cut away, as the announcers said, to a “more competitive” game. The Texans then got two late touchdowns, and an onside kick recovery, to make the final score closer.
It’s astonishing what a change in quarterbacks can do. Flacco has transformed the Browns from a dink-and-dump team that couldn’t run the ball into an air attack that can hurt you with short, intermediate, and deep passes. The Browns still can’t run effectively–yesterday they put up only 54 yards on 30 carries, for a puny 1.8 yards per carry average, although they did rush for two touchdowns–but you wonder if the threat through the air will cause opposing defenses to adjust in a way that will make the ground game easier. And kudos to the offensive line and the play-calling, as Flacco was not sacked once in a game where he threw 42 times. Kevin Stefanski continues to show great flexibility and creativity in changing his approach to match the powerful arm and amazing accuracy of the guy behind the center.
The Browns now have 10 wins and are on the verge of clinching a playoff spot. For Browns Backers, those are words and concepts to be cherished. The only Achilles heel from yesterday’s game was the special teams play. But for the Texans returning a kickoff for a touchdown and recovering an onside kick, the final score would have been far more lopsided. That’s something that will need to be cleaned up as the Browns move forward.
Merry Christmas to the Browns and my fellow Browns fans, who are enjoying an amazing and exhilarating run this holiday season, Let’s hope the Browns continue to jingle all the way to the playoffs–and beyond.
You can argue for hours about the best Christmas movie ever made. It’s A Wonderful Life, or A Christmas Story, or one of the versions of A Christmas Carol, or White Christmas, or Christmas Vacation, or Elf, or one of many other candidates–the debate will rage forever. You can even argue about whether a movie is properly classified as a Christmas movie. ; I’m one of those who thinks that Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie, and we should all put a Twinkie for John McClain on that plate of cookies we’ll be leaving for Santa tonight.
But when it comes to which Christmas movie had the biggest impact on our household, that’s an easy call: it’s Home Alone. Kevin McCallister’s battle to protect his house against the “Wet Bandits,” and his befriending the old salt-spreading guy in the neighborhood in the process, was a film that we watched countless times after it went to video. Our kids were fascinated by the traps Kevin set for the greedy, stupid robbers, and for a time you really had to watch your step around our home to avoid stumbling into would-be trap experiments.
Home Alone remains a holiday favorite, featured on many Christmas movie marathons, and I think the film still holds up as a funny, feel-good Christmas movie. But it’s also got a really good underlying message. It’s a scary scenario, of course, but little Kevin refused to be a frightened victim when he found he was inadvertently left alone by his harried parents. He drew upon his resources and showed inventiveness, toughness, self-reliance, and a willingness to venture out of his comfort zone, and learned a lot about himself in the process–in addition to catching the bad guys.
You never know what shapes a person, and how much is genetic versus experience–but in retrospect I’d say those hours repeatedly watching Home Alone decades ago were time well spent. If kids understand that they can stand up for themselves, that’s a long step in the direction of emotional adulthood. It’s a small price to pay for being wary of traps.
Rain in the Sonoran desert doesn’t follow predictable patterns–what weather does?–but the desert weather seems especially capricious. This year’s “monsoon season” apparently deposited a disappointing amount of rain, for example, which is why many locals were grateful for yesterday’s wet weather. The storm yesterday wasn’t a violent gullywasher, like a summer thunderstorm in the Midwest, but rather a steady rain that continued for the entire day, allowing the baked-hard ground to soften and soak up every last inch of precipitation for the benefit of the cactus and other desert plants. By my calculation, in our area we got about three inches of rain while the storm lingered–about one-fourth of the annual average in one day! That will help to make up for any shortfall from the monsoon season.
This is the first time I’ve experienced rain in the desert, and I walked out several times during the day to see if I could spot any elusive desert creatures that appear when it rains–like the spadefoot toad, which emerges from the ground when it hears the drumming of rain on the surface. Alas, I did not see any fauna as I walked under my umbrella, but in the coming days I’m going to pay close attention to the plant life and the mountains so see how the local flora reacts to some welcome gulps of water.
The director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry called the discovery “exceptional,” because there is nothing like it, anywhere, from that period of Roman history. It also is exceptional because of the well-preserved nature of the mosaic–so well preserved, in fact, that the individual shells affixed to the mural have somehow remained attached to the piece of art for more than two thousand years. It’s particularly amazing because, unlike the burial sites of Egyptian pharaohs that were specially sealed and designed to be kept secret and undisturbed, this private home was apparently unceremoniously buried when the owner fell out of favor during the reign of Augustus, and a granary was then built directly on top of it. Clearly, the mosaic was the work of a master craftsman.
After the excavation work is completed, the plan is to make the unearthed private home and its wonderful mosaic available to the public–which would make it a must-see site on any upcoming visit to Rome. Given the age of the banquet hall and the apparent wealth of its owner, it is possible that Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cassius, and Brutus dined there–which means that visitors could be trodding the same floor once crossed by hugely important historical figures.
Finds like this make you wonder what other artifacts of the ancient world lie buried and forgotten in Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, or other sites of ancient civilizations. Let’s keep digging!
In the Sonoran desert area around Tucson, there’s not much in the way of snow, pine trees, or the other standard components for traditional holiday decorations for a house and yard–so you need to get creative. You’re working primarily with lots of rocks, Saguaro cactus, and other native desert plants, which can be a challenge.
I really like the little Santa caps for the cactus that this house came up with–understated, yet definitely fun and festive, and likely to put just about anyone into the holiday spirit.
When I first heard this news, I was happy for Rubio, because no one wants to be falsely accused of space tomato pilfering, but I was also surprised that the tomatoes could be lost for eight months in a closed, orbiting environment. The ISS is the largest orbiting structure created by humans–yet–and encompasses about 33,000 square feet. That’s pretty sizeable, but given the fact that the astronaut crew is confined to the space station footprint 24 hours a day, you’d think that someone would have stumbled across the free-roaming tomatoes at some point before eight months had passed. When I saw the photo above, however, I gave the astronauts’ powers of observation a pass, because the lost tomatoes obviously are pretty puny. If space-grown tomatoes are going to be a staple of astronaut diets, we’re going to have to do better.
Here’s an interesting fact about the missing tomatoes: they were discolored, dehydrated, and slightly squished, but NASA reported that they showed “no visible microbial or fungal growth,” even though the ISS has a very high-humidity atmosphere. That’s got to be encouraging news for people who are thinking about how to fee humans traveling on long-haul space exploration missions.
So, how do eight-month-old lost space tomatoes taste? Alas, we’ll never know–after finally being found and examined, they were discarded by the astronaut crew.
Yesterday I finished with the last bit of cookie preparation–traditionally, it’s icing the sugar cookies, and making an unholy mess of sprinkles and icing drips in the process–and then boxed them up. In our household, Kish is the Cookie Tin Procurement Officer, and she did an excellent job this year in finding the containers shown above. I am then charged with distributing the finished baked goods among the tins that we’ll be delivering to friends, family, and neighbors.
The cookie distribution process requires some forethought. You want to make sure that you put the heavier cookies on the bottom, and then try to fill in gaps as you stack up the cookies. This year, I made some sequilhos, along with the perennial fudge and Dutch spice cookies to act as gap fillers, and they served their intended purpose admirably. You also want to make sure that the different kinds of cookies are evenly allocated, and I like to put the iced sugar cookies on top, so that the recipients get a nice dash of color when they open their deliveries.
No job is officially over until the clean-up is concluded, and I’ve now washed and put away the bowls, mixers, ingredients, cookie cutters, cookie trays, and baking dishes, and wiped down the countertops. With that, I’m done with the cookie baking process for 2023, and can fully focus on the upcoming holidays. For the next few days, though, I’m going to have to focus on getting some exercise to burn off the cookie intake calories.
With every passing week, the Cleveland Browns seem to prove that the inexorable laws of probability either don’t exist, or don’t apply to them. It’s not clear what is more improbable at this point: the fact that more and more Browns players become injured and are lost for the season, or the fact that the team somehow keeps winning notwithstanding having been absolutely decimated by virtually every kind of injury football players can get.
Yesterday’s 20-17 win against the Chicago Bears took the improbability factor to new heights. After a week in which a slew of offensive and defensive players were ruled out, the Browns started an offensive line that featured only two starters and a number of third-stringers trying to protect a 38-year-old quarterback who was totally out of football at the start of this season. Then, one of those two remaining starters, guard Joel Bitonio, promptly left the game with a back injury. Not surprisingly, the Browns couldn’t run the ball at all, and ageless wonder Joe Flacco was under constant pressure and threw three interceptions. Cleveland trailed going into the fourth quarter, 17-7, and it sure looked like the Browns were going to suffer a devastating home loss–but somehow they pulled it out. And the improbability factor was further tested when a Bears receiver dropped a Hail Mary pass that would have won the game and broken the hearts of Browns Backers everywhere.
Browns fans have to wonder how long this can continue. There’s a reason starters are starters and third-stringers are third-stringers, and yesterday’s offensive line performance showed that. Fortunately for the Browns, the defense is tough, and the team, the coaching staff, and the front office clearly have decided that they can live with a “next man up” approach and constantly scrutiny of the waiver wire to try to find new bodies to plug the injury gaps. At some point, you figure the probabilities will work against the Browns–but for now we’ll just enjoy the ride.
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Webner House 