Hitchcock Blondes

 Recently I learned a trope in classic cinema called "The Hitchcock Blondes," which are famous actresses who starred in famous Hitchcock movies who all happened to be blonde. It's a list of who's who in early talkie cinema (talkies being movies that actually had dialogue, as opposed to the silent movies that came before like Charlie Chaplin) and it's a list so important that Jeopardy regularly quizes about them (as well as their corresponding Hitchcok movies, iconic in their own right). What do they have in common? Apparently Hitchcock thought that blondes made the best victims. Tippi Hedren- The Birds, Grace Kelly- Rear Window, Kim Novak- Vertigo, Eve Marie Saint- North By Northwest, Janet Leigh- Psycho. I have seen zero of these movies from start to finish, bits and pieces of Rear Window, and heard about the famous "The Birds" scenes through tours of Universal Studios. These lists are difficult becaue they're not really common knowledge, except for trivia players, in which they're like collectibles, things that you just have to pick up like all the Caribbean Islands (I just learned Guadalupe was an island today) along with St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Dominica, and the big one that seems to intersect all kinds of trivia questions: St. Lucia. Trivia people love St. Lucia. 

I wonder how many people at an NFL football game would know where St. Lucia is, much less where it was or even what sea it was in. This weekend I went to a NFL football game that reminded me all the reasons why I don't go to NFL games anymore: a.) The home team ALWAYS loses when I go: The cooler curse applies to other sports but there are rare exceptions where the home teams actually win; no exceptions for NFL. b.) The games are usually cold by the time December and January hits, especially in cold weather cities. c.) the stadiums don't have special features like baseball does; most are just a huge bowl without views of the city or the ocean or the river like baseball stadiums can, allowing for less variety. It's just a colisseum built for 100,000 screaming idiots. And that brings me to my last point: d.) the IQ of the average fan is disappointingly low. I walked into the stadium and almost immediately walked into a fight, caused by fans of rival teams cursing at each other. There's always alcohol involved (if fans had decent IQs normally, the alcohol brought that down dramatically by game time), people often get arrested or evacuated due to dumb things done under the influence of alcohol, it's just not worth it. Meanwhile the local orchestra hall playing that night INDOORS at room temperature playing Mozart's Jupiter symphony had almost no one show up; it's a little depressing that football occupies such a big part of this country's attention (and I'm part of the problem! Used to love all sports!) and the bookstores and classical music industries are dying. Taylor Swift, can you just a small percentage of your fans back to classical music? Maybe have the (insert city here) Philharmonic open for one of your concerts. 

Anyway, back to ranting about NFL games: I couldn't help but enjoy some of the opening theatrics with fireworks, players entering the field through the ramp, the pumped up music, it's a fun experience. What I can't imagine is slogging through all those for a whole season sitting through traffic, paying for parking, not being allowed to bring an umbrella into an icy rain-downfall game (yup, no umbrellas!) and being gouged for $15 for a cheap domestic beer only to see your second stringers (last game of the regular season, nothing to play for) lose. There's Netflix and any show you want to see at home now, no need to go to a game to see the outcome. Yet people still go and love it. Can't get enough of it. Well, a couple guys could I guess, puking their guts out outside the stadium passed out on the curb as I was leaving at halftime. Good grief. 

Fun fact: British Jeopardy started in 2024! The first few episodes were enjoyable! 

Chess: played the game my whole life (and still not very good at it) and didn't know it originated in India, of all places, Gupta Dynasty, 6th century. Which is interesting that the pieces have bishops and rooks and queens? Also I'm convinced that every single art museum that MJ and I go to has a decorate art set with the pieces as dogs, or pieces as clock accessories, or pieces as oddly-shaped Cubism-inspired objects, etc., etc. Does anyone ever actually PLAY chess on those sets? Or are they just art by sitting there? Hmm.