If you're called by a panther, don't anther. (Same goes for broncos.)

Barbara Lundblad exhorted everyone today to become "divinity detectives". (It's sort of like becoming a "doctor of divinity", I guess, but without all the Latin and ancient Greek.)

Friday, I played mahjong back in my old stomping grounds in Battery Park City. Haven't played in ages, so that was nice. I lost every game, but luckily there was wine, home-made tandoori chicken (wow! it was delicious) and fresh, hand-made creme brulee truffles from Kee's Chocolates. (Ms. Kee Ling Tong is truly an inspiration; she ditched Wall Street for Thompson Street and now devotes her life to the good of humanity by making chocolate. QED.)

The next night I managed to catch a concert at Lincoln Center with a bunch of, er, metal afficionados. Usually Beethoven is a good choice for them. Unfortunately, the Beethoven work being performed was the Pastoral Symphony - all sweetness and light, hold the sturm und drang (note the HP reference if you follow the link). Oh well. At least it was followed by Liszt's Totentanz (dance of death), so that helped them wake up a little. Then afterward we drove around blasting Iron Maiden while looking for Curry in a Hurry.

But I digress. This year's annual "Who's going to the superbowl?" party was hosted by Flutie (or at least someone wearing his jersey) at Penn Station.



Using my intuitive grasp of the game, I backed the Broncos for the first game, and the Seahawks for the second game. As astute readers will note, I chalked up one "win" and one "loss". Statisticians inform me that this is the success rate they would expect for someone randomly predicting the outcome of two games, based purely on blind chance.

Well, with any luck at all, the Seahawks will beat the Eagles in two weeks. Or vice versa. The crowd was split -- D has money on the Seahawks NOT winning the Superbowl, while J needs the evil Steelers to lose (this is in the interest of cosmic justice, because the Steelers had the nerve to beat the Eagles 27-3 on Nov. 7, 2004, a day that would have lived in infamy had it been a month later). The only way for both J and D to be happy is if both teams get run over by a cement truck.

We interrupt our usual programming for a public service announcement: The topic of the scheduled 3-week discussion at FOCUS is not "Great Sex", but merely "Sex That Is Good".