Superpowers.

Tonight we were watching TV while I was simultaneously reading Tana French's Broken Harbor. We switched channels and happened upon this, on Turner Classic Movies, in the middle of it:



At the end of the clip, the voice says, "For  Turner Classic Movies, I'm Patricia Clarkson."

The historian: Oh! Patricia Clarkson.

Me: (this could sound smug but I swear it wasn't) Yep. (because I already knew without being told.)

The historian: You knew that?

Me: Yep. I can always tell celebrity voices.

It's true. I am a champ at being able to ascertain even minor celebrity voices (for instance, actress Kim Greist, who was in a bunch of movies in the 80s, including Throw Momma From the Train, a movie I love, probably undeservedly--she used to do voiceover for chocolate commercials, and I was all, That's the girl from Throw Momma from the Train, and people around me would say, What girl?). It turns out that celebrity voice identification is one of my minor superpowers.

My other minor superpower is picking out an excellent watermelon with great accuracy.

I would like my major superpower to be poetry, but I feel I may be too erratic for that. Maybe it's a superpower, but an erratic one, subject to crippling bouts of self-doubt. Or maybe it's a superpower, but I have a Kryptonite. Maybe the editors of literary journals are my Kryptonite?

What is your superpower? I really really want to know.

Qu'est-ce que c'est, "super"?

Ah yes, the Super Bowl:  the moment in the sporting year when football concludes and we can all heave a sigh of relief.  That is what it means, right?  

Okay, I watched the last maybe five minutes (game minutes--we all know that game minutes are infinitely expandable, so those five lasted, what, an hour? an hour and a half?), and that was exciting, all the touchdownery and awesome receiving and sharp passing and whatnot.  In fact, if I could watch about ten minutes of action-packed football--what I believe is called "the highlight reel"--I might love football.  I used to think I didn't like football because I didn't understand it.  I have made an effort to understand it better, with the result that I still don't like it very much, so I guess it's because all that strategery (technical term) and marching up the field and lateralizing and all the lines--it just doesn't lift my heart and make it sing.  I will be happy to concede this is something wrong with me and nothing wrong with the game.  But my heart doth beat a little faster, now that football season is over for a good long while, and baseball doesn't get going for several weeks and so there is basketball:  beautiful, soaring basketball, which is currently a little hard to watch because of the horrible injury crisis plaguing the Utah Jazz.

Cooking news:  I had the splendid idea of making popovers this morning but the not-fully-splendid idea of putting them in the oven before the oven had fully preheated.  Alert: popovers require a fully preheated oven in order to pop, as it were.  I blame it on my not-fully-awake status.  Thus, our popovers were dense rather than airy, edible but not inspiring, a little bit sad, a little bit disappointing, and yet, still breakfast, so we ate them like the hungry people we were,  and are.