1. As I woke up this morning and went through my morning routine of coffee, oatmeal, word puzzles, and blogging, I thought I was feeling pretty good. Yes, Copper had awakened me a few times and, yes, Copper had evicted me from the bedroom a little earlier than I'd wanted to be kicked out, but I seemed to be doing all right.
Late in the morning, though, that changed. I'd felt sleep deprived on Sunday after a long day of fasting and waiting on Saturday and suddenly, today, my legs went rubbery, my eyes got heavy, and I faced the fact that I needed rest and more sleep.
I needed to stay home and recharge my tired old body and mind.
And that's what I did.
2. Debbie arrived home before 4 o'clock.
She, too, was exhausted.
I rallied a bit, though, and had a lot of fun fixing Debbie and me Zucchini and Sun-Dried Tomato Risotto. Fixing risotto requires continual stirring and adding hot liquid for about twenty minutes or so. I enjoyed this process this evening, enjoyed how gradually the rice absorbed more and more liquid and how, as it became softer, the rice also became creamier.
Once I'd finished the stirring, I added a cream sauce, some parmesan cheese, and roasted zucchini and grape tomatoes to the rice and sun-dried tomato and garlic mixture.
We loved it.
Such a good dinner helped pull both Debbie and me out of our fatigue funk and we were feeling fortunate to be able to enjoy such good food.
3. I spent the rest of the evening in front of the Vizio.
I marveled for a couple of hours at yet another sterling performance by the UConn Huskies as their men's basketball team steadily wore down Purdue with a nearly perfectly executed defensive plan -- shutting down Purdue's three point shooters -- and by keeping the pace of the game up tempo, but running a surgically efficient half court offense when they couldn't score pushing the ball up court.
The final score: UConn 75 Purdue 60.
UConn's balance, depth, strength, discipline, and precision overwhelmed Purdue and for the second consecutive year, the Huskies are NCAA men't basketball champions.
After the game, for the first time ever, I decided to give the show Curb Your Enthusiasm a try.
I have watched very few episodes of Seinfeld. Bits of pieces of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm pop up as Reels frequently on my Facebook page. I watch them. So, I had a sense of what to expect from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I was interested in checking out this show, in part, because Larry David rouses strong responses in people. I have friends who hate his stuff, find it condescending, and others who think he's riotously funny.
Larry David's been featured in different media platforms lately because this past Sunday the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm aired. Fresh Air, for example, aired a retrospective.
A recent New York Times opinion piece by George Washington University professor of philosophy, Mark Ralkowski, entitled, "Larry David, Philosopher King" spurred my sudden interest in watching Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Ralkowski argues that Larry David "stands as an underappreciated philosopher of our everyday lives. He has taught us important truths about both how we live our lives and how we should live our lives. Most important, he's been our foremost critic of the social rules that govern the way we interact, offering an enticing vision of social freedom that we'd be foolish to ignore."
Professor Ralkowski invites his readers to see Larry David's observations about societal strictures or of unwritten rules as Freudian or as illustrative of philosophical concepts developed by Martin Heidegger, John Searle, Noel Carroll, Mary Douglas, Simon Critchley, and Friedrich Nietzche.
Whoa! I thought.
Is there something to Professor Ralkowski's observations? Or is he an elephant pushing a pea? Is he making a mountain of of a molehill? Or can we really learn a great deal about ourselves and the world we've constructed by seeing it through Larry David's scripts?
I can't answer these questions, but they stimulated me and moved me to start watching Curb Your Enthusiasm.
My first impression: I don't know enough to agree or disagree with Ralkowski as to whether Larry David is a philosopher king.
I did have fun, however, thinking of him that way as I watched the show tonight.
I can, however, think of Larry David as an absurdist. I experienced the two episodes I watched as in the tradition of the theater of the absurd, as dark comedies exploring the futility of finding meaning in a meaningless and random world, where details as small as the folds below the belt in a pair of corduroy pants triggers a heated discussion about sexual arousal or where a guy who runs a bowling alley and gives Larry David's regular shoes to the wrong bowler results in tempest in a teapot between Larry David and a shoe salesman at a department store.
So, I think I'll keep watching. I enjoy the theater of the absurd. I enjoy the idea that Larry David is a contemporary philosopher who conveys philosophical insights to us via his dark comedy -- and whose episodes always remind us of their inherent absurdity by featuring a repeated and absurd musical theme throughout.
I'm not going to provide a link to Mark Ralkowski's opinion piece because it is protected by a paywall.
I did, however, export the article to my desktop as a PDF file and if you ask me to send it to you, I'll be happy to do so.
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