The Final Puttin' It In the Books: ESDN
That's us: the Entertainment, Sports and Death Network!
Almost all of our entertainment came from within these walls. Only once all year did we sit in a movie theater (for Venom II); I attended a one-night series of short plays by a local group at a very small venue (that passed on my own submission for a live January production but might still produce it on Zoom in March); and my only ticketed concert of the year was seeing 10,000 Maniacs downtown here for the second time in my life. A handful of other shows were less formally paid for and mostly involved a friend performing. I passed on chances to see headliners that came through various places, including the supposed final tour of Genesis earlier this month and Billy Joel over the summer. When the risks of illness so outweigh the rewards of seeing someone from nosebleed distance, it's an easy choice. We continue to listen, and seek out new music from artists in a range from locals we know to famed ones we've missed.
So our stable of streams and continued influx of DVDs has provided the laughs and the thinks. We are more than halfway through the six-season run of Canada's Republic of Doyle, which never fails to bring smiles even when the plots are utterly improbable. Last Christmas, we gifted the kids an extended HBO Max subscription, which is now part of our own AT&T phone plan, and that's gotten us Mare of Easttown, Ghosts, Awkawfina is Nora from Queens, a Stanley Tucci travelogue in which he eats his way through Italy and never gains an ounce, and, latest, the suddenly discovered first of three seasons of Succession. Netflix, Hulu, Paramount and Prime each has its own sets of series, though many of those are on COVID-caused delays and won't be back until next year. These include Russian Doll, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Picard. I started the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery and it didn't really click. And over the Amy Pond, Doctor Who begins the end of Thirteen tomorrow after a six-episode season that got no more than a Gentlewoman's "C" grading from me.
----
Sportsball teams managed to finish all or almost all of their seasons in the first ten months of the year, but the Covariants have since played much havoc with players, coaches and, more recently, scheduling of remaining games. Since I never left the bounds of Western New York all year, it was the first time since I began blogging that I did not make it to a game in Queens, or see the Mets anywhere else. They must have missed me, since they lost their best player to injury at midseason (and other stars left in free agency since), saw their manager and GM shown the door after ending the season out of contention, and set an unfortunate record: the 2021 Mets spent the longest continuous time in first place, from May to August, that a team had ever done before managing to fall under .500 and out of the playoffs. The schedule makers did not help in this regard, when they subjected my team to a stretch, home-West-Coast-and-back-again, with 13 straight games against the Giants and Dodgers, the two then and eventual best teams in the league. Stupidly, those two teams were forced to face each other in the first round of the playoffs, the victorious former Brooklynites winning the best-of-five round and ultimately the whole thing. The Mets signed one of the Dodgers' best pitchers after the season ended, and possibly before there will ever BE another season; the millionaires and billionaires are fighting again and all signs point to a delay and possible labor cancellation of 2022.
Despite never leaving the area, I did manage to get to two MLB games this year, and both were right here in Buffalo. Toronto was quarantined out of its home stadium until August, so for most of the season, they took up residence here, in their top affiliate's home park. Meanwhile, our AAA team played most of the year in a schizophrenic existence: as the "Buffalo Bisons" on the road but as the "Trenton Thunder" where they played their "home" games. (Trenton, like many other minor league cities, got screwed out of a permanent MLB affiliation over the intervening winter, as did the lower-minor team in Batavia and dozens of others.) Twice, I saw the Blue Jays play to a full house and a Canadian-branded field, beating the Mariners but losing to the Red Sox in a home run derby that broke records of its own. After the border reopened, the Bisons returned home, and Pepper came with me to one of their Bark In The Park nights to celebrate their homecoming.
The other local teams have had mixed experiences, both onfield/ice and in their behind the scene operations. The Bills have two home games remaining before they will likely make the NFL postseason, but they've been inconsistent all year and have had numerous COVID losses of players for games, including one who famously refuses to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, the Sabres ended 2020-21 by sucking as they have for years, traded off three of their best players including a superstar who fought with them over an injury treatment, and now have a promising first-time NHL coach and a very young, inexperienced group that isn't winning much but is learning a lot. They played their second in two nights last night, their first visit to the Islanders' new ice barn next to Belmont racetrack; in happier times, I would have considered heading down to see them, but the risks are just too great to be indoors with 10,000-plus fans of varying safety and sobriety status. (They lost.)
----
So with all this staying close to home, my last visit to see the Mets remains the one in August 2019, where I reconnected with this teacher and friend from my past and his family for the first time in over 40 years:
I met up with Mr. P for breakfast the next morning before finishing my trip, and that turned out to be the last time I would see him. His passing in January was one of the first visits of DEATH to me in 2021. I hadn't heard much from him in the intervening months, and I eventually found out it had been some time in coming. His beloved wife on his left in that photo, and his two sons who were also with us, were all devastated by the passing. I now see occasional posts from them, and while the grief has subsided, it never truly goes away.
DEATH then took something of a holiday from those we knew and loved, though many passed from fame (from Chick Corea to Hank Aaron to Stephen Sondheim to the recent passing of Desmond Tutu) as well as infamy (Rush Limbaugh, Donald Rumsfeld). But it ended the year with a gruesome flourish. First, October brought the suddenness and sadness of our dear friend from these parts Jessica-
nentikobe in LJ-Land (she took the name here but don't think she ever used it). After a year of downs for her that were heading up, she went in hospital that month for a successful surgery and died when her heart gave out days later. We spent much time mourning, and sharing with friends of hers we knew and then met, and we remain a plucky bunch dedicated to preserving her moments and memory.
I then returned from Thanksgiving weekend to learn that two of my clients had passed in separate events earlier that month. One was on his way home in a truck on the West Coast and never made it beyond Indiana. The other, earlier and even more suddenly, passed away in a construction accident in Rochester that had even been covered on upstatewide television. Which we never watch. Both brought sadness and uncertainty that will carry, along with their memories, into the coming year.
And December brought news from my sister of the passing of one of the doctors she'd worked with for years and who I have fond memories of, followed by a friend reporting her father's death at 67. All were good people. We need more, not fewer, of those, thankuvermush.
----
And with those reports, and memories, and uncertainties, we close the books on a year that will go down, maybe not as the worst of times and certainly not the best, but certainly one of the weirdest trips around the sun we've ever taken. Be well, and safe, and smart in the 365 to come. We need that from each and every one of you.
ETA. WTF?!? BETTY WHITE?!?
Well, that gives us the two words we need to send this year packing:
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1681411.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Almost all of our entertainment came from within these walls. Only once all year did we sit in a movie theater (for Venom II); I attended a one-night series of short plays by a local group at a very small venue (that passed on my own submission for a live January production but might still produce it on Zoom in March); and my only ticketed concert of the year was seeing 10,000 Maniacs downtown here for the second time in my life. A handful of other shows were less formally paid for and mostly involved a friend performing. I passed on chances to see headliners that came through various places, including the supposed final tour of Genesis earlier this month and Billy Joel over the summer. When the risks of illness so outweigh the rewards of seeing someone from nosebleed distance, it's an easy choice. We continue to listen, and seek out new music from artists in a range from locals we know to famed ones we've missed.
So our stable of streams and continued influx of DVDs has provided the laughs and the thinks. We are more than halfway through the six-season run of Canada's Republic of Doyle, which never fails to bring smiles even when the plots are utterly improbable. Last Christmas, we gifted the kids an extended HBO Max subscription, which is now part of our own AT&T phone plan, and that's gotten us Mare of Easttown, Ghosts, Awkawfina is Nora from Queens, a Stanley Tucci travelogue in which he eats his way through Italy and never gains an ounce, and, latest, the suddenly discovered first of three seasons of Succession. Netflix, Hulu, Paramount and Prime each has its own sets of series, though many of those are on COVID-caused delays and won't be back until next year. These include Russian Doll, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Picard. I started the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery and it didn't really click. And over the Amy Pond, Doctor Who begins the end of Thirteen tomorrow after a six-episode season that got no more than a Gentlewoman's "C" grading from me.
----
Sportsball teams managed to finish all or almost all of their seasons in the first ten months of the year, but the Covariants have since played much havoc with players, coaches and, more recently, scheduling of remaining games. Since I never left the bounds of Western New York all year, it was the first time since I began blogging that I did not make it to a game in Queens, or see the Mets anywhere else. They must have missed me, since they lost their best player to injury at midseason (and other stars left in free agency since), saw their manager and GM shown the door after ending the season out of contention, and set an unfortunate record: the 2021 Mets spent the longest continuous time in first place, from May to August, that a team had ever done before managing to fall under .500 and out of the playoffs. The schedule makers did not help in this regard, when they subjected my team to a stretch, home-West-Coast-and-back-again, with 13 straight games against the Giants and Dodgers, the two then and eventual best teams in the league. Stupidly, those two teams were forced to face each other in the first round of the playoffs, the victorious former Brooklynites winning the best-of-five round and ultimately the whole thing. The Mets signed one of the Dodgers' best pitchers after the season ended, and possibly before there will ever BE another season; the millionaires and billionaires are fighting again and all signs point to a delay and possible labor cancellation of 2022.
Despite never leaving the area, I did manage to get to two MLB games this year, and both were right here in Buffalo. Toronto was quarantined out of its home stadium until August, so for most of the season, they took up residence here, in their top affiliate's home park. Meanwhile, our AAA team played most of the year in a schizophrenic existence: as the "Buffalo Bisons" on the road but as the "Trenton Thunder" where they played their "home" games. (Trenton, like many other minor league cities, got screwed out of a permanent MLB affiliation over the intervening winter, as did the lower-minor team in Batavia and dozens of others.) Twice, I saw the Blue Jays play to a full house and a Canadian-branded field, beating the Mariners but losing to the Red Sox in a home run derby that broke records of its own. After the border reopened, the Bisons returned home, and Pepper came with me to one of their Bark In The Park nights to celebrate their homecoming.
The other local teams have had mixed experiences, both onfield/ice and in their behind the scene operations. The Bills have two home games remaining before they will likely make the NFL postseason, but they've been inconsistent all year and have had numerous COVID losses of players for games, including one who famously refuses to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, the Sabres ended 2020-21 by sucking as they have for years, traded off three of their best players including a superstar who fought with them over an injury treatment, and now have a promising first-time NHL coach and a very young, inexperienced group that isn't winning much but is learning a lot. They played their second in two nights last night, their first visit to the Islanders' new ice barn next to Belmont racetrack; in happier times, I would have considered heading down to see them, but the risks are just too great to be indoors with 10,000-plus fans of varying safety and sobriety status. (They lost.)
----
So with all this staying close to home, my last visit to see the Mets remains the one in August 2019, where I reconnected with this teacher and friend from my past and his family for the first time in over 40 years:
I met up with Mr. P for breakfast the next morning before finishing my trip, and that turned out to be the last time I would see him. His passing in January was one of the first visits of DEATH to me in 2021. I hadn't heard much from him in the intervening months, and I eventually found out it had been some time in coming. His beloved wife on his left in that photo, and his two sons who were also with us, were all devastated by the passing. I now see occasional posts from them, and while the grief has subsided, it never truly goes away.
DEATH then took something of a holiday from those we knew and loved, though many passed from fame (from Chick Corea to Hank Aaron to Stephen Sondheim to the recent passing of Desmond Tutu) as well as infamy (Rush Limbaugh, Donald Rumsfeld). But it ended the year with a gruesome flourish. First, October brought the suddenness and sadness of our dear friend from these parts Jessica-
nentikobe in LJ-Land (she took the name here but don't think she ever used it). After a year of downs for her that were heading up, she went in hospital that month for a successful surgery and died when her heart gave out days later. We spent much time mourning, and sharing with friends of hers we knew and then met, and we remain a plucky bunch dedicated to preserving her moments and memory.
I then returned from Thanksgiving weekend to learn that two of my clients had passed in separate events earlier that month. One was on his way home in a truck on the West Coast and never made it beyond Indiana. The other, earlier and even more suddenly, passed away in a construction accident in Rochester that had even been covered on upstatewide television. Which we never watch. Both brought sadness and uncertainty that will carry, along with their memories, into the coming year.
And December brought news from my sister of the passing of one of the doctors she'd worked with for years and who I have fond memories of, followed by a friend reporting her father's death at 67. All were good people. We need more, not fewer, of those, thankuvermush.
----
And with those reports, and memories, and uncertainties, we close the books on a year that will go down, maybe not as the worst of times and certainly not the best, but certainly one of the weirdest trips around the sun we've ever taken. Be well, and safe, and smart in the 365 to come. We need that from each and every one of you.
ETA. WTF?!? BETTY WHITE?!?
Well, that gives us the two words we need to send this year packing:
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1681411.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Click to view