Eric the Blue

Shoveling snow. Watching sports on TV. Ubering teens to their New Year’s parties. Debating with myself whether to be asleep at midnight or stay up till my young reveler is delivered home by someone else’s dad. In short, living life all the way up. According to the actuarial charts, I have maybe 15 years left, so how could I do anything else?

The TV Guide counseled in favor of staying up as an obscure cable channel was airing Tarantino’s Jackie Brown starting at 10. In the event, my enjoyment was abated somewhat by the suppression of all the worst words. At least they didn’t dub in unobjectionable substitutes, which, considering the dramatic context, tends to have an effect of unintended and inappropriate hilarity. But sometimes I’d remember what someone–generally, the Samuel L. Jackson character–was about to say, and was relishing the prospect, and then didn’t get to hear him say it except in my mind’s ear, which I’m not even sure is a thing.

It’s as if they don’t know that the young impressionables are away having a good time and that it’s too late to fret about corrupting the superannuated losers watching TV alone at home on a holiday. And why, if “motherfucker” cannot be pronounced, did perhaps the least erotic sex scene in the history of cinema survive the cut? Maybe sex is okay to show so long as it doesn’t elicit envy.