Me Me Me

My busy theatergoing schedule frequently messes up my football viewing, but when I can, I love to watch Eli Manning stalk up and down the line, yelling who-knows-what to his New York Giant teammates just before the ball snaps. His redheaded daddy, Archie, was a star at Ole Miss when I was in high school, though I seem to remember Auburn’s Heisman Trophy-winning star, Pat Sullivan, thumping Archie’s Rebels a time or two. 

Like everyone else, I was tsk-tsking poor, quiet Eli a year ago, yammering that he couldn’t measure up to his prematurely bald big brother Peyton, couldn’t take the pressure of playing in the big city, etc. etc. Well!! I managed to watch every game last December when Eli and the Giants awoke from their collective coma and marched to the Super Bowl. That smug Tiki Barber, who had been mean to Eli, did NOT get his hands on the Vince Lombardi trophy. Neither did hot dog Jeremy Shockey, another trash-talker. Eli didn’t need the two of you, thanks! 

Though I am a pessimist on my happiest day, when the Super Bowl game started last January, I just knew that Eli and the Giants were going to beat pretty boy Tom and his sourpuss coach, the secret videotaper. It was fate! The icing on the cake for me was reading about how Eli, the baby of the family, was super-close to his mother growing up while Archie and the two big brothers were off hither and yon. He was good to his mama!! Of course he would get his reward! After the big game, I plastered my cubicle wall at work with pictures of a smiling Eli hoisting that trophy above his head. Yes! HA!

When Eli and his future bride Abby came to our church on Easter Sunday, I practically knocked old ladies over in my haste to greet them. Like the celebrity he now is, Eli avoided eye contact and just kept walking. But Abby responded to my blubbering hello with a friendly smile. As I write this, the Giants are 11-1, but the New York press, as usual, looks for the dark side. Can Eli go all the way again now that yo-yo Plaxico has shot himself in the thigh? Why on earth NOT?!

I tend to block out news of terrorism, because (I tell myself) as a New Yorker, I really can’t dwell on it or I’d get paranoid. I mean, in today’s world, every subway ride is a tiny leap of faith. But India is on my mind, both because of last week’s inexplicable attacks and because of Slumdog Millionaire, the fantastic movie we saw this weekend. We hardly ever go to a movie theater anymore. By the time I’ve seen three pieces of theater in a week, it’s easier to stay home on Friday night and veg out with the latest mediocre Netflix release. Now that the Oscar-bait movies are here, however, we’ve gotta try to catch up. And we picked a great one to start the season.

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of a guy who grows up in the slums of Mumbai and somehow makes it onto the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? That’s all you need to know. Just go see the movie immediately. The depiction of these slums makes the worst place in America look like Park Avenue and 62nd Street. Unimaginable filth and degradation. Children roaming the streets with no parents, no food, no shoes — nothing to get them on the road to a successful life. I’m making the movie sound like the ultimate downer, but it isn’t; it’s exhilarating. Still, you look at these scenes and think: How can people be living that way on the other side of the world while I spend a rainy Sunday buying gifts at Tiffany?

It would take a philosophy professor or a theologian to answer that cosmic question, and lord knows I am neither. All I can do is try to step out of the bubble I live in and be generous in every sense of the word. Jeez, that’s trite! I should invite my adorable son, an old soul and one of the most compassionate people I know, to rewrite this paragraph.