Succession.... of Bad Kicks

I never got to my entertainment report following my assorted rants of the past couple of days. One of the more entertaining things I didn't watch was the Bills breaking a two-game slide and beating an eminently beatable Carolina team.  The entertaining part didn't show up online until yesterday, though:

Right before the game started, the Panthers' placekicker injured himself during pregame warmups.  No, that's sad and not the entertaining part. THAT came after they carted him off the field, when the team quickly realized they had nobody on the roster even remotely qualified to handle the job.  The Panthers, like most NFL teams, only have one placekicker on the roster; that involves running up to a teed-up ball, usually held by another player. It's just like Lucy does with Charlie Brown only they don't pull it back at the last minute:



Teams also employ a "punter" who kicks in a totally different manner without a holder, and Carolina's is an Australian with a soccer background who'd never kicked a teed-up ball before. There's nothing in the rules prohibiting this kind of approach for kickoffs, field goals and extra points; it's just not done because they don't generally go as far or as well. As he quickly found out when they experimented with it in the mere moments before the game began.  A few of his teammates, some of whom had kicked field goals back in high school, took their own shots, and those attempts didn't go well, either:
 

Watch on YouTube

It helps if you whistle "Yakkety Sax" during this playback;)

So the Panthers only placekicked when they absolutely had to: kicking off to start the second half, and then kicking the ball back after their two touchdowns.  The emergency kicker didn't make a total fool of himself, but it certainly helped the Bills amass a bigger lead and put the game away much sooner than if they'd been able to kick a field goal or two.

----

After the game and then into Monday, I took a couple of entertaining virtual trips- one to Ennui, France, the other to Freeport, Maine.

The Ennui reference comes from Wes Anderson's latest film, The French Dispatch. We'd planned to see it in cinema when it came out, but with COVIDiocy being particularly strong around here, neither of us is really looking to spend time inside in close quarters more than we have to. Fortunately, it started streaming over the weekend, and we watched it Sunday night and can now go back to it any time we want on Prime. 

It's a lot of the usual Wes Anderson casting with a few new ones added, but the subject matter is close to home and heart, since the magazine of the film title, despite being published in a fictional French town, is almost entirely based on the New Yorker.  Bill Murray plays the editor of the magazine, who dies in the opening scene but flashes back throughout. We quickly found this piece from the real magazine where Anderson was interviewed a few weeks before its release, and it gives some of the provenance of a lot of the characters.

Murray's editor is mostly based on the New Yorker's founder Harold Ross, with a bit of his successor William Shawn folded in. Frances McDormand is a blend of Mavis Gallant, Lillian Ross and some of the actress herself.  The essay is included in a collection of mostly New Yorker pieces that Anderson published in connection with the film, titled An Editor's Burial. I tracked it down to Barnes and Noble Monday afternoon, and that's where the side trip to Maine came up.

 

LL Bean just opened a store in a nearby strip mall that has just about everything we need: books, pet supplies, Best Buy, Bed Bath and a Target. I picked up a couple of things in the latter before heading to Beans & Noodles for the book, and in between was the newly opened LL Bean outpost. I took note of the hours they said they were open-




- and was surprised they were not open 24 hours. Immediately, I thought of a comedy bit I first heard in college, from the team who went by "Bert and I." They memorably made fun of the Freeport flagship store being open 24 hours, and thanks to the internet, I found the entire routine in seconds.

It's more New Yorker style humor. Eleanor had never heard it before and loved it.

She also took an interest in Succession, an HBO show we'd been hearing about after reading this profile of one of its stars. I'd thought about getting into watching after reading their earlier review of the series, which sounded interesting but maybe too close to previous efforts with dysfunctional rich families like Arrested Development and Schitt's Creek.

Between the different previews, we gave it a try last night, and I think we're hooked on the basis of the first two hours. The cast is an amazing (and humongous) ensemble, many of whom we've seen in other things- from a fairly obscure Kate Winslet effort to Ferris Freakin Bueller's bestie?!?  Being an HBO show, it's full of F-bombs, but they're strategically placed and distracted less than we expected they would. Best of all, it's funny; not as over the top as the Roses of Schittsville, but not as visually violent as The Sopranos, which it has been compared to and shares some provenance with.

We've got some catching up to do, since the third season has concluded and we've barely breached the beginning of the first. The family relationships/rivalries are the best part and seem quite real, echoing the genuineness along those lines that makes Republic of Doyle so endearing to us.

We just hope none of them get injured kicking one of their siblings in the ass (_ _)