cheese

The toughest part about watching a pirated version of a patriots playoff football game in tanzania is not the lo-def quality, not the fact that I watched it a week after it was played and already knew the outcome due to a well-intended text message from an unaware friend, and not realizing I've missed the greatest season any football team has ever had (after missing a red sox world series championship). It was the commercials. My friend and I found ourselves talking as the game was being played and then we'd lean forward in our seats and become silent as we watched a happy group of twenty-somethings drink cold beer from tall glasses and devour dripping cheese quesadillas, bacon super-giganta-burgers and millions of buffalo wings smothered in tons of blue cheese at a local tgif's.

Then we'd watch a commercial advertising an expensive cadillac with an attractive woman behind the wheel or an suv meandering through a windy forest road with two televisions inside of it being watched by a happy litter of children or serious men in suits discussing important things to other serious men in suits or the happiest man I've ever seen taking erectile dysfunction pills or previews from the new season of lost.

By the end of the game I concluded the only thing I really miss is the food. I don't miss the expensive cars or the televisions, the seemingly serious people or the plastic smiles. I miss the goddamn cheese! I miss not having to ride my bike an hour and a half to buy natural food that I'll have to cook for another hour and a half which won't taste a fifth as good as the food that people in the commercials were eating. But, as the saying goes, one can get used to anything. And I am quickly getting used to life without certain luxuries. Maybe I miss the the attractive woman driving the expensive cadillac too (minus the cadillac).