We’re supposed to get clobbered by a Nor’easter tomorrow, starting at 6am-ish, which is expected to bring 8-12″ of snow. I’m shocked – even though it’s February, typically our meanest winter month, it’s been so mild, I didn’t see this coming. (Neither did the National Weather Service until yesterday.) Yesterday we had a very messy weather day which was supposed to be mainly rainy, but instead stayed in snow mode all day (well, into the early afternoon), leaving behind a couple of inches of really wet, heavy snow. And a layer of ice this morning. But the temperatures are supposed to spike into the 50ºs this afternoon before plunging back to well below freezing in time for tomorrow’s storm. It’s going to be the kind of thing requiring a snow thrower. Shit.
Also yesterday: the Patriots Duck Boat victory parade, which drew (by Boston Police estimates) a million celebrants. The photos and videos we could see online were impressive. W. did not meet J. for lunch in Cambridge, as MBTA warnings about overloaded trains started coming in by 7:30 or so. Of course they didn’t run any extra trains… The ride home would have been an especial crunch, so he canceled.
So, a million folks showed up for The Pats. Trump’s inauguration – or pretty much any president’s? Not so much. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses. I sense, too, an underlying rebelliousness in this fandom, though. Many people have “politicized” this game (and its outcome) because Tom Brady (and, I believe, coach Bill Belichick) is a (are) Trump supporter(s). And the rest of America kind of hates the Patriots. And the Patriots are called …the Patriots. I sense an underlying populist (not media elite, because media win – with ratings – no matter how it’s sliced or diced) “fuck you” here. Another sort of manifestation of “parse this, asshole” (whereby the a-holes are the media, the pundits, etc.). I could be wildly wrong, especially since I know nothing about past parades, their size, etc., and because this parade was for a “historic” win. But it seems to me it’s somehow different this time – everything is different lately – and the whole animus to Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner who put Brady on a four-game suspension, plays into this as well. Goodell represents the experts, the elite, the establishment. Triple E. Brady is “our” gladiator, as are the others, the whole team comes together as simultaneously “goat” (“greatest of all time”) and “dog” (underdog), winning in spite of Triple E threats to justice. No one in Patriot Nation believes a bad word against Brady; everyone believes Goodell was wrong and probably evil. And Brady’s additional “outsider” (ironic, that) status as a Trump supporter gives some – many? – people an opening to perhaps reconsider Trump, too. Some remain ambivalent, some qualify (“love Brady, hate Trump”), but I sense the power of the “fuck you,” too. Anyway…
Yesterday E. sent A. and me two images, one of her as a happy little girl in her Canadian citizenship card photo, the other in a passport photo she just got, and the contrast (the photographer told her not to smile) is terrifying. She looks so …unhappy! In possession of herself in a bad way. She assures us that it’s a fluke, because the photographer told her to look serious. Funny. A., meanwhile, called to wax poetic about his dinner Monday night at the soon to shutter Hotel Herman. Having fun.