crude oil, popcorn, and waste management

October 13, 2002 &bull uncategorized

When I was growing up my family had a Friday night ritual which, I’m assuming, was like most other families’ Friday nights. Around 7:45pm my dad would fire up the popcorn maker, a black platter-type thing with a rotating metal rod and a huge orange bubble top. It looked more like a “USA vs USSR” bubble hockey game than a popcorn maker. A few years later my parents were somehow lucky enough to procure an air popper, which, in my opinion, never lived up to the “orange thing.” I mean, it was a lot cleaner and easier to maintain, but the popcorn was just too damn dry. My mom was accommodating enough to melt extra butter for us, but somehow it just wasn’t the same as our beloved orange popper.

After the popcorn was made we would all curl up in front of our big-ass console TV and spend the next hour rubbing shoulders with the most powerful family in Texas — the Ewings. I don’t remember too many details about Dallas (aside from Sue Ellen sucking down vodka after vodka and JR always acting like a huge prick), but I remember that I loved watching it. I loved the fact that our whole family would always get together and hang out. No matter how bad our week was (and really, how bad could it be when you were in elementary school?), we always had Dallas to look forward to.

Over the last year or so my wife and I have slowly been getting sucked into the world of The Sopranos. Although we’re latecomers, I think we could now be classified as hardcore fans. We have vigilantly watched every episode from the first three seasons and are now watching the current fourth season. We don’t have cable (I guess we don’t even have TV!), but our friends, Bill and Sylvia Lowell, have been nice enough to invite us over every Sunday night to watch the latest happenings in the New Jersey underworld. Like many friends and families across the nation, one hour of our Sunday night is devoted to hanging out with Tony and his crew. While it’s maybe not the same as Dallas (i.e., if you let your kids watch The Sopranos, go out and buy a book on parenting), it’s still something that we all look forward to week after week. It’s a reason to get together and hang out — to forget about our problems and worries for an hour. The only thing that would make these Sunday nights any better is a big old orange popcorn popper and some greasy popcorn.

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