Scene: Sunday night this January. Location: Romanian-run bar in Manhattan. Occasion: NFL playoffs. Alcohol: Yes.
I'm prattling on about the Steelers (a team I know nothing about) when I glance at the bar's big-screen TV and notice something marvelous: linemen's breath. CBS was locked on one of those "eye-of-God" shots, the camera hovering a few hundred feet above the players. But with the clarity of the plasma TV, you could see the individual breaths of defensive linemen waft out of their face masks into the cold air. Perhaps it was the Amstel, but I was touched. My exuberance for big-screen TV shot into the stratosphere...
Call me uncultivated and aesthetically dense; call me a vile social climber; call my living room dreary—but I want to see linemen's breath, and I want it now.
