I start my Sunday morning looking for breakfast with WiFi. The pancake place is the best I can do, but it only has WiFi from Starbuck's next door (see, it is that kind of neighbourhood), and it just seems to be a gateway for other US broadband providers, so I need a logon, which I don't have. So it's going to have to be the library after all.
After my ablutions, and, I confess, a wistful passing look at the local bar, I'm off down town to their magnificent library. There's a good crowd waiting for it to open. They mostly look, I have to say, like they are in it for the warmth. All over the "mid-Atlantic east coast" they are opening shelters for people caught in the winter storms who have lost power. I wonder if it has ever occurred to them to open the libraries, give people something to do.
The WiFi is free and effective. I get to do my research, and send off the promised material. And I get the blog up-to-date.
Later that night, it's the Superbowl. For someone like me, who's not to keen on the sport, the adverts during the TV presentation are aa big thing. The news reports have been trailering them for weeks now. My winner was one of the Kia (Korean cars?) ads with Bret Favre (Minnesota Vikings elderly quarterback) winning the 2020 Superbowl (when he will be 152 years old) and confessing that he's going to retire because he's older than the coach. The were, of course, trying to highlight the longevity of their vehicles.
The New Oreans Saints won. They were generally reckoned, all week, to be the underdogs, so I was rooting for them. New Orleans parties every night (they say), so they will have to "superparty" for a while. The Saints have never been to to the Superbowl before (known, disparagingly as the "Aints"). Apparently the city, which has suffered much recently, is much cheered. They deserve a little bit. So we can all shout "Who dat", which is their cry, for a day, and think of their irrelevant good fortune.
"Who dat?" was a minstrel show catch phrase which encouraged a repeat response from the audience. Some black musicians later used it to invoke a simple riff from their audience. It gained common currency among American troops in the Second World War. Then it gradually got adopted by the fans of the Saints, as a long chant "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gunna beat dem Saints?" Now it is, apparently, to New Orleans, what "Show me" is to Missouri.
[I'm doing this in a bar (Ruby Tuesday's - remember the Rolling Stones?). Silver is working up to his second discreet cough]
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