Monday, March 27, 2023

Three Beautiful Things 03-26-2023: I'll Try Voltarin, Basketball Controversy and My Betting Failures, *New York: A Documentary Film*

1. Marcia and Christy agree that Voltarin is an effective anti-inflammatory topical ointment. It might be just what I need to get over the last bit of redness and swelling in my left big toe. I'll buy some on Monday. Right now, I'm walking about 90% comfortably and am not terribly inhibited by my inflamed toe. That's good. But I'd like to knock out this last bit of stubborn inflammation.

2. I follow several sports writers and commentators on Twitter and the foul call at the end of the Creighton/San Diego State game polarized them into two camps. One camp said the referee just shouldn't make that kind of call as the clock is winding down and the other camp says that referees are obliged to call fouls, even in last second situations. I don't come down hard and fast on either side of this ongoing argument about officiating. I read Seth Davis, Mike Greenberg, and others and mainly I thought about the end of the UVA/Auburn semi-final back in 2019 when, with about a second and a half left in the game and UVA down by two points, Kyle Guy hoisted and missed a trey, but the official on the spot called a shooting foul on Auburn's Samir Doughty. Guy sank the three free throws and UVA won by a point and advanced to the championship game. 

The same controversy erupted in 2019 that erupted today and I don't have enough Solomon in me to know what I think the right thing is for referees to do in these last second situations -- if there is a right thing to do. 

Later in the day, Miami surged from 13 points down to defeat Texas, 88-81. 

And with Texas' loss, all of my Sports Book wagers went kaput. I hung on to a slim hope that Texas might win the whole tournament and enable me to win back my betting investment and a little more, but, alas, like last year, I once again came up empty at the Sports Book and this year I will not finish anywhere near the money in the bracket pool I entered.

Like the long suffering fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, all I can say is "Wait 'til next year!" 

3. Our Amazon Fire Stick's front page comes up when we fire up the Vizio and some form of artificial intelligence inside the stick makes recommendations of programming we might want to watch.

We were going to watch an episode of Columbo, but the first recommendation was a Ric Burns PBS documentary on the Donner Party.

Neither of us wanted to watch that, but when I saw Ric Burns' name, I mentioned to Debbie that Ric Burns created the multi-episode, about fifteen hour long documentary, New York: A Documentary Film.

Debbie said, "Let's watch that."

I was thrilled.

I watched this series a few years ago, loved it. and was eager to watch it again.

The first episode is about two hours long and we watched for an hour and were absolutely enthralled by the story of the Dutch settlement of New York, the transfer of New York to the British, the awful history of these countries' conquest of what we now call Manhattan, and of the history of New York City during the Revolutionary War. We'll finish this episode soon enough and I hope it will launch us into several evenings of watching this entire masterpiece of documentary film making. 

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