Checking in with my 2006 To-Do List...

Two and a half months in, it's time to check on my progress.

1. Watch the Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowl XL. Whether the broadcast takes place on network television or on my own private in-head network TBA.

Yeah, this happened. And I wish I had put some money behind the expressed homer sentiment; at the time I said the above, they had just barely squeaked into the playoffs and looked like candidates for an early exit. Of course, the pleasure in these things is more in the anticipating and the improbability than in the actual achieving, or so I've found. There's a strangely blunt letdown after these kinds of things, in my experience. Still, the sublime camraderie of sharing the four playoff games with my daughters and their hand-lettered cheer cards is worth treasuring. Growing up in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s meant, for many boys, some degree of identification or parallelism with the near-invincibility of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Hell, I wasn't all that good at sports and don't remember watching a game before Super Bowl XIV (the fourth win, in 1980) and still some of the pictures of me as a kid that make me smile the most are the ones where I'm proudly sporting a Steeler jacket I got for Christmas or holding up a jar of Terry Bradshaw peanut butter. They're instantly contextualized and not terribly different, in that regard, from the one where I'm holding Star Wars toys.

2. Mount a campaign via the internet and U.S. mail to browbeat the Mattel Corporation into creating a Kryzstzof Kieslowski version of their popular Scene It DVD board game. Imagine the possibilities: the group of players selects a film clip question. The DVD displays a washed-out shot of Warsaw, then follows up with, "Which Kieslowski film is this clip from?" Cut to the assembled faces of the confused.

I posted a comment substantially the same as the following one on the website of the makers of the SceneIt? line of games last week, and I've just posted the following message verbatim on the site:

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know how much my family has enjoyed playing the HARRY POTTER SCENEIT? game we received for Christmas. My oldest daughter is a Harry Potter fanatic, and she has enjoyed having a game that is smart enough to let her show off all the arcane details she has committed to memory. ;) It's been a good time for all of us.

I see that you've started selling base models of the game with different booster packs for particular characters or film franchises. I'd like to recommend that you develop and market a KRYZSTZOF KIESLOWSKI version of the game. I realize that it would be a niche product-- I can't deny that-- but in my experience cinephiles often get together at parties and gatherings and lack a challenging film-related game to play. I think that a game devoted to the filmography of the late Polish master at portraying the spiritual and moral complexities of human volition would be really great.

Sincerely,
Russell Lucas

I intend to post similar messages once per week. Anyone wishing to do the same can follow the link below. (I expect this will work out as well as my Sufjan Stevens thing.)

http://www.screenlifegames.com/about/contact.aspx


3. See/identify 125 different birds.

To realize fully the howling absurdity of this goal as stated, one first needs to know that my birding guide, Birds of Pennsylvania, contains only 117 species. Huh. Should have checked that. Sure, we've got some hikes and camping trips planned, but there's no way I'm going to get anywhere close to that number unless I allow myself to count males and females of a species as two birds. By that fuzzy math, put me at 3: Robin M, Robin F, Cardinal M. In this instance, lameing out is the only alternative.

4. Sit through three theatrical showings of Malick's The New World, preferably on three consecutive nights.

I did make it out to a 9:45 show the night it opened locally. And I really cottoned to it. I didn't make those other two viewings, though, and they'll have to wait until I own a DVD copy.

5. Organize a party or event commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the forging of my car and have the Town of McCandless recognize this party or event as an Official Town Party or Event. Dan Laugharn will be contacted about design of a logo.

Dear reader(s), you have no idea how close we came to this objective being rendered impossible. In mid-January, I was pulling out of a parking lot while taking a break in the middle of a deposition and found that the car had been rendered unstoppable. I arrived at my lunch destination, mashed the brakes a few times and stepped out in time to see the viscous halting fluid flowing onto the asphalt. You can imagine my despair at the thought of a repair bill which would, in all likelihood, exceed the fair market value of my car. Plus, I prefer not to be on the hook for two car payments simultaneously. I was also thinking that my long-term goal-- the goal of keeping that car operational until the day when Xzibit would arrive, fairy godmother-like, and deliver my Pure Stock Vehicle into a state of heightened awesomeness-- would now never happen. Don't fret: the dream lives. Instead of needing a new master cylinder, some sort of tape or plug or tapeplug was applied by the garage, and I have braking power again. So there will still be a celebration (to which all are invited), and there will still be a logo, and perhaps it will be affixed to a T-shirt. I could care less about the Town event part, though.

6. Spend a week in Carolina in June or August.

We're in the book for June. I have even paid the deposit (& everything). I have shared with M/M Otterman my goals for the 2006 iteration: (a) more beer consumed, and (b) more seafood consumed. All else should go just like last year.

7. Spend a week in Toronto in September.

I believe this is still a realistic possibility.

8. Spend more than a week in California at some point in the year.

I believe this is still a realistic possibility.

9. Reawaken my Spanish proficiency and transmit that to my daughters.

This hasn't happened yet. I've probably got to wait until summertime before I can command too much of Leah's and Ruby's intellectual horsepower. To that end, I should start self-refreshing on vocabulary and basic grammar in about a month. My conversational aural skills were always the weak link; to that end, any suggestions on Spanish-language podcasts would be warmly appreciated.

10. Acquire a record player.

I haven't bought one yet, but I still think it will happen at some point before year's end. I've been the custodian of my mom's record collection for over half a year now, and am really interested in playing them and the ones I've kept from my youth. I've actually recently gone the other direction on the music technospectrum. Ali had some family members chip in to buy me an iPod for my birthday, and I've spent the last month having a great time with it and pretending I am a really cutting-edge guy living in 2003.