Over at McSweeney’s, great authors predict the outcome of the Super Bowl. The conceit’s solid, and there’s a good Raymond Carver/Gordon Lish joke in there, but the parody of Jane Austen is irritatingly off:
Hyacinth and amethyst adorned the landscape of her heart, betrothed to fragrant oakmoss and blazing scarlet within the amorous lovestrokes of an incandescent horizon. In the shade of the gray branches, she put pen to paper. “I love you, Tom Brady,” it began. “Though others call you wicked.”
Prediction: Handsome Tom 46, Stern Aunt Louisa 9
So much wrong, including that Austen would have been Giants all the way.
I missed last night’s installment of PBS’s Complete Jane Austen, Miss Austen Regrets due to the Super Bowl. The game was exhilarating but, unlike the Austen, could boast only one neat costume: Belicheck’s fancy red sweatshirt. Did anyone see it (the Jane Austen, not the Super Bowl)? I admit as the series continues week after week what I’ve become most interested in is the cleavage of the actresses, which — not to be vulgar or prudish, but strictly anatomical — are undergoing some extraordinary effects that underwire alone can’t explain. In Mansfield Park, poor “plain” Fanny and her cousin Maria had the most opulent displays of decolletage to appear on my TV screen since Madonna stopped by the Golden Globes after giving birth to Lourdes. And then, if I remember right, Jennifer Ehle’s bosom in the Colin Firth edition of Pride and Prejudice, which begins re-airing this next Sunday, is located about four inches north of where you might expect it to be. It’s all so mysterious.