There have been some “super” Super Bowls over the years. Last night wasn’t one of them. I was kind of hoping it would at least be a fun game to watch. I’m glad I didn’t stay up past halftime. Not that you’d know it from how tired I feel this morning – it would be nice to be able to sleep for more than three or four hours again. Part of the problem, I think, was that I’d finally gotten around to staining a CD rack somebody gave me about 30 years ago. Been meaning to get to that, so there’s one more thing to cross off my bucket list. I mounted it on the wall in my office, but unfortunately it wasn’t really dry yet and the fumes were really getting to me. My lips were even getting numb. I guess it wasn’t low VOC stain. Even this morning, I can smell it. Best part is, I don’t even have a CD/DVD player in here so it’s really for display purposes only. I’m gonna have to find a place to display all my LPs, too.

A real shame about Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I’m not quite sure I buy the whole “found with a needle in his arm” thing. Not if it was heroin, or cut with something bad, anyway. A heroin overdose just doesn’t work that way – it takes hours for your respiratory and circulatory systems to shut down and kill you. It’s not the kind of thing that puts you down mid injection. Or so I’ve read, anyway. Fortunately heroin is not one of the places my life’s taken me.

If you watch his Oscar acceptance, you see him thank his mom for, among other things, watching the NCAA Final Four with him. I wonder if he was a fan of any team(s) in particular. I mean, he was born and grew up in Fairport, NY, which is a suburb of Rochester. So, hey, not a lot of teams to choose from – not like St. John Fisher or RIT are basketball powerhouses.

One great and perhaps little known Hoffman film was “Flawless.” Robert DeNiro plays a homophobic cop who has a stroke, and part of his rehab includes taking singing lessons from his neighbor – a pre-op transgender drag queen “Rusty” played by Hoffman. By the end, DeNiro comes to like and respect Rusty and his group of friends. So naturally Rusty winds up getting beaten to death by some homophobic asshole. An uplifting story.

Of course the role he won an Oscar for was Capote, and he did a great job. If you’re around my age, you remember seeing Truman Capote on, like the Mike Douglas Show and Dick Cavett and maybe even Firing Line. God, I was watching some clips on YouTube yesterday, and William F. Buckley was such an infuriatingly annoying pompous windbag. My mom used to call him “the Crocodile” because he spoke so slowly and never seemed to move. I also remember some really good feuds between Capote and Gore Vidal. Of course, there were some really good feuds back then – Capote, Vidal, Buckley, Norman Mailer…. Not exactly at the same level as you see today – Bill O’Reilly sniping at Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity being whatever the fuck it is he is.

Oh well, it’s not quite time for work, but it’s getting there. Monday’s suck.