Buffa's Buffet, Vol. 84: Sports realities, movie theater victory, 100-degree temps, and an atomic bomb's true legacy

Let's get into it on a comfortable Sunday morning.

Not really a hot take: Sports fans can make the actual sport they’re watching worse by overreacting to losses and a lack of playoffs.

Case in point: You don’t have to go far on Facebook and Twitter, a land of mass sports addict refuge, to find negative and particularly antagonistic comments. The team can win or lose, and the ugliness doesn’t subside. An endless need to be right about a player or game demolishes any sense of decency. In the end, it’s not worth the headache on either end.

Here’s the thing. To quote the late great cinematic gangster Sonny from Robert De Niro’s amazing 1993 film, they don’t give a shit about you. The players, I mean. They show up to do a job, whether that’s playing or attending a charity event that could be tied to their job. Some of them take it further and do more with the community, like Adam Wainwright. But the majority are there to do their job and make money, all the while escaping negativity in their own right.

The playoffs are a treasure chest for players, but fans seem to think it’s their mission to reach the postseason. The money from the tickets and merchandise purchased does go to the team’s spending in an indirect way, so there is a connection to the operation. However, ordinary fans shouldn’t feel like it’s a complete failure when the Cardinals surely miss the postseason this October.

Face it. Next year comes around, and the game begins again. At some point, I thought maybe fans were thinking next year may not come or the sport may end. Nope. If a CBA agreement and pandemic can’t knock it out, the sport remains. So, my only advice would be to take it easy.

Take it from a guy who used to arrange his mood swings on the acts of vulnerable human athletes. If Mike Matheny left a pitcher in too long and they served up the winner, I paced my front porch like my grandfather Louis Buffa paced Bancroft Avenue back in the south city St. Louis day. I was mad as hell, full of Shocktop, and ready to head down to Busch and ask questions.

Then, sometime before COVID-19 came to town, I stopped watching as many games. I didn’t absorb each pitch, catch, victory, and defeat. I watched most or half of the games, reading box scores and watching highlights. Instead of being the main course in my free time, I shoved baseball and hockey out of certain rooms in my head. YOU HAVE TO, MY FRIENDS. If not, you’ll run into a pack of asshats who take it too seriously, or maybe become one yourself.

Remember what Sonny said: They don’t care about you. Not really. So, don’t give them all of you. That’s it. Playoff baseball is amazing, but it’s not everything for a sports fan.

Here’s a few more things on my mind, in no specific order and without any fancy BOLD print to help you figure out what the topics are. Rapid fire mode on a Sunday Funday.

I’m not a box office prognosticator, nor do I dive headfirst into the numbers each weekend. However, seeing two completely different movies do extremely well at movie theaters this weekend has me giddy. Christopher Nolan’s somber yet electrifying Oppenheimer is projected to open with $77 million, a record-setting opening for a three-hour film in the summer. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie opened up to a smashing $150 million.

Unlike last weekend’s Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One, these two films accumulated this gross on a three day weekend, not a five-day one. Gerwig’s movie, adapted from Mattel’s world renowned doll collection, spins a modernist take on the existential crisis of trying to be perfect in an imperfect world. After hearing a couple wise takes from trusted movie friends, I am considering seeing this one earlier than November.

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are accomplished actors, but the initial thought of seeing them prowl around Barbie town in search of a meaning for themselves fly over my head at first. But now as it breaks into the very REAL 2023 dilemma of people demanding perfect bodies from women and men, there’s more weight to it. That’s something for me to pursue.

Nolan’s atomic bomb construction/aftermath drama doesn’t need any extra words, even if I could pump out a thousand more instantly. The idea of a triumphant moment in United States history, undone by greedy U.S. government officials who were mad that Oppenheimer received most of the credit for saving the world from a possible brutal third World War.

But it was the little things that ate Julius Robert Oppenheimer from the heart out over the next few years after the war ended. It was the fact that Japan was close to surrendering weeks before the initial testing began for the Manhattan Project. It was the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who died from radiation poisoning following the blast. It was his own government blacklisting him from clearance on future projects, all due to flimsy Communist party ties.

What Nolan’s film put on a center stage was the legacy of an in-the-moment monumental decision, which was to build a mighty bomb that could take out Germany, Japan, or whoever laid in our path. That legacy is defined in brilliant, slow-burn detail as the film comes to a close. A shot of high-standing, pointed-to-the-sky missiles at a silo somewhere in the country is more haunting than satisfying.

I can’t recommend a film more, maybe since Pig two years ago. If you’re a person who doesn’t usually go to movies in a theater, go to this one. You’ll be thinking about it for days. At the end of war, no one really wins.

Thinking about the next smashed burger I’m eating doesn’t take days of dreams and thought, but it never really leaves my mind. When my wife told me a new restaurant centered on smashed burgers is opening within walking distance from my house, the excitement is white hot. We’re talking a DRUNK walking distance too, so the walk home with oil seeping out of my ears won’t be too painful.

The owner of the burnt down Macklind Deli is opening this one further down the acclaimed street in south city, right at Loughborough and Macklind. There’s no name at this moment, but does it really matter? Fugetaboutit!

If you remember this week, think of me for a minute or two. The high temps around St. Louis this week are near 100 degrees, and this follows a tamer last few days of weather. Tamer as in the upper 70s and lower 80s. While comforting in the moment, the slow down will be felt with force tomorrow afternoon when the soul-sucking, shirt-soaking heat returns.

Being out in it is bad enough, but delivering heavy plumbing supply fixtures in it doubles down on the madness of it all. I’m a big, grown man that can handle it, but say some kind-ish words for me as the coffee is sipped and uploaded tomorrow morning. These brutal months in St. Louis, the summer bliss for some but not me, are the worst.

If I ever move away from the Midwest, it will be for a very cold and never humid or bug-filled setting. Alaska, Denver, whatever. Global warming’s wrath and any aftershock from a mean hurricane are felt around here. All I can hope is that global icing somehow takes the lead.

Finally, a few words about my fellow drivers here in St. Louis. Please get off your phone. Please learn to merge correctly onto a highway. Speeding up without feverish intentions is the idea there. Please focus and be more kind to the person next to you on the road. Red lights mean a full stop. Stop signs mean the same. Please signal at least 25 feet before turning, because my truck doesn’t have “quick stop” in its vocabulary.

But please, stay off your fucking phone. The text can wait. The reply isn’t as important. If someone is dying or dead, that condition doesn’t change with you slipping into Fast & Furious mode.

Until next time, ramble on!