In one of the episodes from the last season of the cable version of the TV series The Paper Chase, one of the law students began to have doubts about whether she really wanted to be a lawyer. Professor Kingsfield, somehow aware of those doubts (of course, this is Kingsfield - need one ask how he knew?), told her semi-cryptically after the end of one of his classes:
"Ms. Kiernan: there are precious few second chances in life. In my class, there are none."
It so happens that in self's middling existence, a few tiny 'second chances' occurred, none of any particular importance, of course (well, one might have been, had the first chance gone better), given 3CM's habitual loserness, but still second chances nonetheless, however trivial. And who here, after all, wouldn't love a second chance to do something right that went wrong the first time? More, such as it is, below the flip.....
The first 'second chance' was just this afternoon, where an art-house movie that's gotten some fair bit of attention was re-released for what I thought was its second run at one of the local art-house cinemas (well, duh), after its prior (I thought first) run had ended not long ago, maybe only 2 Thursdays ago. For the record, it's the movie discussed in a few New Yorker blog posts here and here. I'd seen the movie on the roster just recently, and called to see how long the movie would be running. (The response included the slightly snippy remark that it had been at the movie house for several weeks already, but never mind.) I thought that I could see it during the last week of the run, but other matters came up and I missed it then. So I was kicking myself for missing it at the time, even if there would be a DVD down the line. I checked the movie theater's schedule earlier this week, and saw that the film was back, starting yesterday, much to my surprise. I didn't make the mistake of missing it in a theater this time.
Another recent 'second chance' was at a visiting show by a favorite band, who usually does a show in town a few weeks before Xmas. At last year's near-Xmas appearance, I managed to get one dance with a rather attractive lady, but unfortunately, at one point, she caught her leg against some guy who'd had a bit too much to drink and she hit the floor. Yup, 3CM blew it again there, as he tends to do, somehow, with depressing regularity. At this year's near-Xmas appearance, I saw her again, with friends of hers (same as last year, I think). I didn't know if she remembered or recognized me, but the point was that I remembered and recognized her. So I held back until well into the second set, when the band played a waltz. Mentally figuring waltz demographics into things, I guessed that enough people would clear the floor to give a bit more room to trip the light fantastic, plus I would pace things more slowly. I asked, and she said yes, so one waltz on the dance card. No fall this time, although earlier in the evening, dancing with someone else, I actually tripped and fell. It didn't seem as though she recognized me from last year, or if she did, she chose not to show it. So, at least in my mind, I redeemed last year's eff-up.
Of course, being a loser, I need to close with a missed first chance, but again of a supremely unimportant nature. I happened to see one CD for sale on Amazon.com where two of those "mega-merchant"-ish Amazon.com sellers (the kind with numbers of ratings in the 5 or 6 figures) low-bidding each other on one rather esoteric CD, to almost $0.50 for each. One was a dime more than the other. I figured that no one else would order it, and I could pretty much get it whenever. Wrong: the cheapest version suddenly disappeared, and the other vendor jacked their price up to $7. So I lost my chance there. Yet the odd thing is, as much as I would have liked to hear that album, I've already got too many other CDs to listen to already, so it's not as though I need one more. Maybe there will be a 'second chance' for me to get this one cheap down the line - but probably not, knowing my luck. Still, as I said, this isn't really all that important.
So that's it, for this last Loser's Club before Christmas. Time now for the usual protocol, namely your loser stories of the week.....