Hill-Topics
Our older daughter, Bethany, 22, was on stage again Saturday at Nebraska Wesleyan University, so her sister, Jillian, her mother, Claire, and me, her dad, traveled to Lincoln to watch her in "Uncommon Women and Others."
The play focuses on five old friends meeting for lunch in the late 1970s, seven years after graduation from a prestigious women's college.
One of them is a successful lawyer, another a housewife and mother. Also on hand are a perennial student, a brash would-be writer, and an insurance seminar hostess (played by Bethany, who wore polyester clothes and curled her naturally-blonde hair to look like Farah Faucett Majors).
Instead of the theater, the play was staged in an actual living room of an old women's dormitory on campus. There was room for 35 chairs, and we sat behind the couches, which made it seem as if we were eavesdropping.
Watching our daughter, who is herself a college senior, perform a play set in the '70s, when Claire and I were in college, was a real Twilight Zone experience for me.
Where does the time go?
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Speaking of getting older, the following letter was in the mailbox when we got back to Hillsboro:
"Dear Grant Overstake, Our records show that you haven't yet registered for the benefits of AARP membership, even though you are fully eligible
"As a member you'll have the resources and information you need to get the most out of life over 50
Glued to the letter was a plastic AARP card embossed with raised lettering: GRANT OVERSTAKE, member code 423243000-3.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they would send me an AARP card! What were they thinking?
I'm not AARP eligible yet! I don't turn 50 until April 20.
* * * * *
The mud-slogged Super Bowl was predictably anticlimactic Sunday, but I did pay special attention to the commercials, and the halftime show, even though I couldn't imagine why Prince was considered to perform.
Well, give Prince his props.
Performing live in a South Florida downpour in front of a billion viewers, even though I don't care for his message or his music, it was a spectacular feat.
As he played his electric guitar in the rain, with his feet in puddles of water, Claire and I feared that he might be electrocuted.
I hated Prince and all he stood for when he was popular years ago. And some of his antics Sunday were vile.
But I almost had to agree with one critic, who wrote, "[Prince's] command performance was yet more proof that he has made that familiar journey from pariah to American treasure. His performance at Super Bowl XLI will surely go down as one of the most thrilling halftime shows ever
I don't know if I'd say it was the best ever, but I thought the guitar player's performance was better than any other player on the field.
As for the commercials, according to news reports, more than a dozen spots celebrated violence in a way that that was intended to be funny, but just wasn't funny at all.
One beer commercial showed a one man beating another other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock. In another, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. My wife, who teaches impressionable fifth graders, cringed.
There also was a bank robbery, a hitchhiker with an ax, and another with a chain saw. A commercial from a drug company showed a man dressed up as a heart getting kidnapped and beaten by thugs, such as "High Blood Pressure."
My favorite one was a twist on Grand Theft Auto, one of the most violent video games of all time. But instead of shooting people, or pulling motorists from their cars and beating them up, the hero did wonderfully nice things for everyone, and handed them a Coca-Cola.
I'd play a video game like that.
If they made them.
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
