I broke my right foot last September, spent a month on crutches, then have been limping around in various levels of minor pain ever since.
I had pretty much gotten to the point where I could walk without a noticeable limp (is there such a thing as an unnoticeable limp?), then my foot took a turn for the worse a couple weeks ago. It’s back to hurting again, and the limp is more obvious.
Then it occurred to me: it’s those %&$#@! icy sidewalks. I hate icy sidewalks.
Maybe when I was a child I was frightened by an icy sidewalk jumping out at me from a dark alley or something.
Like everyone else, I was quite happy with last weekend’s mid-30s temperatures. I luxuriated in watching the icicles melt, and at the sight of puddles forming in the streets.
But I knew we’d pay for it. Oh yes, I knew we’d pay. The freezing rain and zero-degree temps turned all those warm, cuddly puddles into pits of slippery death and destruction.
Anyway, I tense up whenever I have to walk across ice. And my formerly broken foot is back to saying “ow.”
And when you hear your foot talk, you know spring is way overdue.
. . .
Do you have any “guilty pleasure” movies?
Like everyone else, I’ve got a large collection of DVDs taking up space at home.
And like most peoples’, many of my favorite movies are, well, kinda on the dumb side, movies that aren’t in any danger of appearing on the American Film Institute’s list of Greatest Movies of All Time.
But even so, I wasn’t especially ashamed of my taste in dumb—but fun—movies.
Until now.
A couple weeks ago I browsed through a store and noticed the entire run of the 1970s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was on sale for about 15 bucks.
The series, staring the immortal Gil Gerard, limped along for two seasons when I was in junior high as part of everyone in Hollywood’s attempt to rip off Star Wars.
My friends and I watched it for about the first half of the first season, then gave up on Buck Rogers for its incredible suckiness.
I had too much respect for the original 1930s-era comic strip to respect any version of Buck Rogers that featured scenes of Buck introducing disco dancing to the future.
So what did I do a couple weeks ago? You guessed it: I bought the DVD set. I couldn’t help it. It was a part of my youth, and didn’t cost too much.
I wouldn’t watch the series for free when I was in junior high, but paid good money for it now.
Yes, I now know the meaning of “guilty pleasure movie.”
Don’t laugh, all you kids out there, when you find yourself buying Hannah Montana DVDs in another 30 years....
