Money Makes the World Go 'Round

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"You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you."

Carter (Morgan Freeman)

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Some titles become cliches almost from the start — like "Catch–22" and "Groundhog Day."

And Rob Reiner's "The Bucket List," which premiered in Hollywood on this day in 2007.

Edward (Jack Nicholson), a billionaire, and Carter (Morgan Freeman), a blue–collar mechanic, had nothing in common — until they found themselves sharing a hospital room after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. They gradually got to know each other, and one day Edward saw Carter writing on a notepad. He asked Carter what he was doing, and Carter said nothing special, just scribbling.

Turned out Carter was engaging in an exercise in forward thinking that a philosophy professor had assigned many years earlier. It was a bucket list — a list of things one wants to do before one "kicks the bucket." In Carter's case it was more a list of things he wanted to achieve — like "help a complete stranger for the good" and "laugh until I cry." Edward's list was more about things he wanted to see — such as the Pyramids — and do — like skydiving.

I am not a linguist so I do not know how long the phrase bucket list has been in existence. Most people have always had in mind certain things they wanted to do before they died — whether they actually did them or not — compiled in a mental list. I just don't know if it had been given a name before the movie premiered.

And I have known people who really did cross off items on their bucket lists — but they did so in very piecemeal fashion as if actively crossing off items on a list was an admission that they would die. So they did things one at a time with lots of time in between.

I do know that it was on everyone's lips afterward, even long after the movie left the theaters — and today, if someone mentions bucket list, you know exactly what is meant. In the movie it required a little explanation.

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But the underlying concept was easy to grasp, just as it was in "Groundhog Day." Like Bill Murray learning to function within his new reality, Edward and Carter were forced to face their mortality.

So they embarked on an adventure. It was something most people could understand even if it was impossible for them to achieve. But Edward, as I said, was a billionaire, the developer of hospitals, including the one in which he met Carter, and when he brought up the idea of traveling the world and seeing and doing things they had always dreamed of seeing and doing, it appealed to Carter, who probably never thought any of his dreams would come true.

That may have appealed to moviegoers, too, the thought of having money restrictions taken out of the equation. That can be very liberating, and the premise can be very profitable. ("The Bucket List" earned nearly four times what it cost to make.)

Thus Edward and Carter went on something of a road trip — although it is rather hard to see a skydiving interlude in a road trip context. For that matter the road trip crossed continents that were separated by oceans so the entire trip did not take place on a road.

But perhaps that is being too literal.

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There were lots of contradictions in the movie, which led to a wide range of opinions about it. Some people see it as a great buddy movie while others think it was awful.

I have mixed opinions.

When I referred to being too literal, that was sort of a hint about my thoughts on "The Bucket List." While it dealt with a serious topic, I felt that the movie, like most movies that are made, should not be taken too literally. I found it worked best when one looked at it as a fantasy.

I mean, people are diagnosed with some form of cancer every year, and the daily battles that cancer victims must wage are too unpleasant to talk about. That's the reality. And another reality is that few cancer victims have the good fortune to meet someone who can foot the bill while they go chasing all their dreams.

Like, for example, seeing the Pyramids — but that was really the billionaire's goal. The mechanic was just along for the ride.

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Which brings me to a point that critic Roger Ebert made: "The boys in front of the Pyramids look about as convincing as Abbott and Costello wearing pith helmets in front of a painted backdrop."

That was essentially Ebert's verdict on the movie's special effects, and it was certainly valid, as was his observation that, in this road trip, "the only realistic detail is the interior of Edward's private jet." And I could live with that.

But as Ebert went on to point out, the emphasis was largely on Nicholson's character who "throws his money around like a pig and makes Carter come along for the ride." He was the least likable of the two, and the movie probably would have benefited if Carter had been the focus, if the narration at the start and end of the movie had been Nicholson praising Freeman's virtues and how he had changed what little life he had left — instead of the other way around.

That, it seemed to me, was the statement that this movie needed to make.

But Edward was the one with the money, and money makes the world go around — and makes others go around the world.

The First Slapsgiving

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An ongoing holiday joke on How I Met Your Mother was born on this night in 2007 when the episode "Slapsgiving" first aired.

Nothing really new about that. Holidays are almost entirely about traditions, and those traditions frequently were started by those who continued to carry them out.

And so it was with this one, although there were several other things going on at the same time that tended to overlap with the holiday in typically How I Met Your Mother ways.

The tradition of the gang gathering for the holiday was initially the brainchild of Lily (Alyson Hannigan) who really wanted to celebrate her first Thanksgiving being married to Marshall (Jason Segel). Thus she wanted Robin (Cobie Smulders), Ted (Josh Radnor) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) to participate.

But there were complications.

Ted and Robin had been dating, but they broke up several months before Thanksgiving. In fact, by the time of Thanksgiving, Robin had started dating a man who was 41 but appeared to be much older to Ted (he kept seeing him as Orson Bean, who was nearly 80 when he appeared in this program).

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It's safe to say Ted and Robin had some post–relationship issues.

A different kind of issue was obsessing Marshall and Barney.

How I Met Your Mother followers will recall "the slap bet" Marshall and Barney made the season before. If you haven't seen that episode, you should. It will make a lot of things make sense. But the bottom line was that Marshall was awarded five slaps to administer to Barney whenever he wished.

And Marshall had decided to use one at Thanksgiving, going so far as to post a slap countdown on the computer. Marshall clearly got a lot of enjoyment from taunting Barney, who dissolved into a nervous wreck.

Compelled by circumstances, Robin and Ted talked about their relationship and how awkward it had been. As a couple, they had a personal joke in which, whenever someone used a phrase that was preceded by a military rank (i.e., "general chaos") they would salute and say, in unison, "General Chaos."

Since breaking up, that hadn't happened, even when rather obvious opportunities presented themselves.

At Thanksgiving dinner, Barney was such a wreck that Lily — the slap bet commissioner — ruled that there would be no slap on the holiday. Barney was immediately revived and began gloating — and refused to stop, even when Lily instructed him to stop so Lily reversed herself and told Marshall to go ahead with the slap. He complied.

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And Robin and Ted discovered that they could continue to be friends. When Bob used the phrase "major buzzkill," Robin and Ted saluted and said, "Major Buzzkill."

It was a well–written episode about life and love and all that stuff.

Born to Be Wild

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Ted (Josh Radnor): I like your tats.

Amy (Mandy Moore): Thanks. You can play with them if you want. Hundred percent real.

Ted: No, your tats. Your toos. Your tattoos.

Amy: Oh. [laughs] Thanks.

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As How I Met Your Mother began its third season 10 years ago tonight, it had established certain catch phrases and character quirks in the minds of the viewers — which is, of course, critical to the long–term success of a TV series, especially a sitcom.

It was a clear indication of how comfortable the writers were with that kind of recognition factor that they titled the third–season debut "Wait For It," which regular viewers would instantly recognize as Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) signature punctuation of multisyllabic words — i.e., "It's going to be legen — wait for it — dary."

The episode that aired on this night in 2007 picked up where the episode that wrapped up the second season left off — so the title was appropriate in that sense, too. The audience, after all, had had to wait since May.

When last we heard from them, Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted (Josh Radnor) had split up. As the new season began, we learned that Robin had taken a trip to Argentina to regroup after the breakup, and Ted had embarked on his typical post–relationship routine, which involved growing a beard and painting his apartment.

According to the unwritten rules of relationships (at least according to How I Met Your Mother), relationships are defined by who wins, and the only way for both parties to win is for the relationship to be a long–term one.

Otherwise someone has to win the breakup — to be the first to move on and find someone new.

(This concept of winning probably has more in common with Charlie Sheen's than Donald Trump's — although it preceded both.)

And, initially, it appeared that Robin was winning. She returned from Argentina with a handsome new boyfriend in tow (Enrique Iglesias) — and, after introducing him to the gang, she wanted to make sure that Ted was "OK with this."

The guys had a lot of fun mispronouncing his name — but Ted found himself obsessing over Gael's fondness for windsurfing and making love "sometimes at the same time." Being able to do both things at once would certainly make Robin the winner.

So Ted and Barney went out in search of a 12 to replace Robin (who, Barney conceded, was a 10) — and, it turned out, Ted found one with no help from Barney. In fact, Barney was against the idea of Ted spending time with this girl (Mandy Moore) — while he was almost exclusively motivated to be the one responsible for finding a girl for Ted, it turned out he was right about her, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

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At one point Ted casually expressed his admiration for this girl's tattoos; after she told him that he would look good with "some ink," and Barney objected, Ted decided to do precisely that.

But, in his inebriated condition, Ted blacked out at the tattoo parlor and remembered nothing more when he awoke in his own bed several hours later.

While all this had been going on, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) had a double date with Robin and Gael. Marshall told Lily they had to stand firm and not like Gael because Ted was their best friend. But Lily, who already had something of a crush on Gael, buckled, falling to his South American charm, his romantic music and his sensual massages.

Then Marshall developed something of a bro crush himself — and even admitted to Ted later that things got "weird."

But no matter how weird things had been, they really couldn't top something.

Ted had gotten a tattoo, even though he had no memory of it. Apparently, after he blacked out, Amy had the tattoo artist put a butterfly tattoo on Ted's lower back.

Barney called it a "tramp stamp."

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At the end, Ted and Robin had a confrontation over their breakup, which cleared the air and established that no one had won the breakup.

I thought the ending was a little weak, lacking in the kind of punch that such an episode probably deserved, but it was entertaining enough.

Not Much of a Plot, but 'Across the Universe' Made You Feel Good

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"Here is a bold, beautiful, visually enchanting musical where we walk into the theater humming the songs."

Roger Ebert

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I've been a Beatles fan as long as I can remember.

So I have to ask myself something: How did I possibly miss the premiere of "Across the Universe" on this day in 2007?

OK, today is actually the 10th anniversary of its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. It started showing in the United States about a month later.

All the same, though, I do not remember hearing anything about it at the time — and that really is a shame.

And difficult for me to comprehend because "Across the Universe" actually is my favorite Beatles song. You'd think the movie's title would have left an impression on me.

Now, I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of movie musicals — but this is Beatles music. It isn't the Beatles singing — I have heard that it is quite costly to obtain the rights to use actual Beatles recordings in movies, which is why 2001's "I Am Sam" used cover versions of Beatles songs — and it may be why "Across the Universe" used covers, too, although it seems to me that it really worked better for the movie's plot — such as it was — to have the characters sing the songs.

I liked it better in "Across the Universe," though. "I Am Sam" was shot in sync with the original Beatles songs so even though the versions that were used were covers, they couldn't stray far from the pace of the originals. In "Across the Universe," there were no such constraints, and the musicians had more freedom in their interpretations.

Consequently, if you were a Beatles fan, you would recognize variations, both subtle and not so subtle, in the songs.

(One example that stood out for me was the rendition of "With a Little Help From My Friends," which was like a cross between the original version and Joe Cocker's — with a generous helping of the musicians' own spins. The music was very enjoyable — and occasionally surprising.

(Speaking of Cocker, he actually was in "Across the Universe," but he didn't sing "With a Little Help From My Friends." He sang "Come Together.")

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I wasn't wowed by the story — it was dialogue loosely connected by the songs, and the names of the characters — Jude, Lucy, Max, Sadie, Prudence, Jojo, etc. — came directly from song titles or lyrics that Beatles fans were sure to recognize.

The power of "Across the Universe" was the merging of roughly three dozen Beatles songs with strong images — like the part where "Let It Be" was incorporated into juxtaposing scenes of two groups of mourners, one white and one black, burying young people. The black casualty came during a protest; the white casualty was the result of warfare.

It produced a stark contrast, to be sure.

Any Beatles imagery — direct or implied — evoked by the group's brilliant lyrics was brought to the screen.

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Dana Fuchs, as Sexy Sadie, added a Janis Joplin touch to the story with her Pearl–like performances.

Evan Rachel Wood was the female lead as Lucy. She only recently turned 30 and almost certainly has many film roles ahead of her, but Wood, who performed Beatles songs admirably, has said the role of Lucy is her favorite. That isn't surprising, given that she has said that the music of the Beatles has played a significant role in her life.

I have been working as a journalism professor for several years now, and it never ceases to amaze me when I hear that people — who I know could not have been born yet when the Beatles broke up — say that the Beatles' music influenced them when they were growing up. Nearly all the Beatles songs ever recorded had been on record store shelves for years when those folks were born. The Beatles, of course, continued to record as solo performers, but they were not a contemporary band for recent generations.

Wood is one of those people. The fact that she and so many others are inspired today by the music of the Beatles gives me hope.

And despite the absence of much of a plausible plot, "Across the Universe" was a pleasurable experience.

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By the way it did receive an Academy Award nomination — for costume design. It lost.

While I didn't think it deserved nominations for much of anything else, I can't help but wish there was some way to recognize the imagery in the movie. At times it could be quite impressive.

Rewriting a Wrong

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"How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? Do you have to be 18 before you can own up to a lie?"

Robbie (James McAvoy)

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Sometimes people pay for mistakes all their lives — and sometimes people pay for mistakes with their lives.

"Atonement," which premiered on this day in 2007, was about both.

It was a rather complex plot, centering around Saoirse Ronan, who played a precocious 13–year–old aspiring writer from an upper–crust British family in the years before the outbreak of World War II. As the movie began, she had just finished writing a play and planned to put on something of a backyard production of the play starring her visiting cousins.

Mind you, when I say backyard, her family had quite a backyard. You could accommodate a sizable stage and a considerable audience there.

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Briony (Ronan's character's name) was, as people that age so often are, given to flights of fancy.

She also had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on the son of the family's housekeeper (James McAvoy), who was bound for Cambridge thanks to his mother's employer. But Robbie was attracted to Briony's older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley).

And one day Briony observed interaction between Robbie and Cecilia — from afar. Cecilia stripped to her underclothes, then plunged into a fountain pond, then re–emerged a short time later, all while Robbie watched. The audience later learned that it had been an entirely innocent act that, having been misinterpreted, went on to form the nucleus of other false assumptions and accusations that ultimately sent Robbie to prison.

Four years later Robbie was serving in World War II, having agreed to serve in the military in exchange for his release from prison. An older and somewhat wiser Briony was regretting what she had said and sought the forgiveness of her sister, discovering that she and Robbie had reunited and Robbie was on leave from the war.

They had a confrontation, and Briony agreed to have her testimony changed and the official record altered. But there was a problem. One of the cousins who had been visiting the house that summer had been sexually assaulted by a man she had not seen. Briony had initially claimed it was Robbie, having seen the episode by the fountain and read an explicit note Robbie had written while working on drafts of apologies to Cecilia for his behavior, but the assailant turned out to be a friend of Briony's brother. She had realized that when she saw the cousin marrying this man — which meant that she could not be used as a supporting witness for Briony's revised account of events.

And if Briony went to the authorities to change her story, she would be regarded as an unreliable witness. Robbie's name could not be cleared in the public record.

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But then the audience was thrown a curve.

And, with the noteworthy exceptions of the finales of "The Sixth Sense" or "Psycho," it just might be the best twist ending I have ever seen.

Briony, now in her 70s (played by Vanessa Redgrave), was being interviewed on TV. Apparently she had grown into a professional writer and was speaking about her latest book. It would also be her final book, she told the interviewer, because she was dying of vascular dementia, "which is essentially a continuous series of tiny strokes. Your brain gradually closes down. You lose words, you lose your memory: which, for a writer, is pretty much the point. That's why I could finally write this book; and why, of course, it's my last novel. Strangely enough, it would be just as accurate to call it my first novel. I wrote several drafts as far back as my time at St. Thomas's Hospital during the war. I just couldn't ever find the way to do it."

Briony explained that Robbie and Cecilia never reconciled. Robbie had died of an infection at Dunkirk and Cecilia died a few months later during an air raid.

Briony, who apparently never changed her hairstyle in the 60–plus years covered in the movie, had written the book — including that confrontation that never happened — to give them the happy ending they were deprived in life.

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It was an interesting twist on the traditional coming–of–age movies I have seen. The problem with coming–of–age movies is that too many of them treat that time of life as a magical mystery tour that sometimes features lapses in judgment. This story spanned a lifetime and addressed the kind of real mistakes that the young often make — and sometimes must live with for the rest of their lives.

And it contained a touch that, as a writer, I can appreciate.

It used the staccato pounding of typewriter keys as part of the score — largely because of Briony's determined development as a writer but also Robbie's hesitant typing of the drafts of his apology to Cecilia.

It was a very effective touch and probably deserved a special Academy Award nomination.

As it was, though, "Atonement" received seven Oscar nominations — and won for Best Original Score so I suppose it was rewarded for that.

Ronan received the movie's only acting nomination but lost Best Supporting Actress to Tilda Swinton.

'Invasion' Proved My Point About Remakes

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I have a definite opinion about remakes.

Usually, they aren't improvements on the originals. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Oh, I concede that technical advances in filmmaking have made it possible for a remake to be better than the original. But even in the 21st century, remakes are rarely, if ever, improvements.

I offer, as Exhibit A, "The Invasion," which premiered on this day in 2007.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "The Invasion" was "the fourth, and the least, of the movies made from Jack Finney's classic science fiction novel." I don't feel qualified to agree or disagree with that statement since I haven't seen all three of the previous incarnations. But Ebert's assessment surely affirms my own of remakes.

I also have a definite opinion about Nicole Kidman, the female lead of "The Invasion." I like her. I liked her the first time I can remember seeing her — in "Dead Calm." And I have liked other movies in which she appeared — "To Die For," "The Others" and "Eyes Wide Shut" come to mind. So does "Moulin Rouge," for that matter.

But Kidman has had about as many misses as hits in her career, especially in recent years, and I would put "The Invasion" on that list.

And it isn't necessary to see the other three film versions of the story to reach that conclusion, either.

All four movies do have a few things in common — primarily, the extraterrestrial invasion. The first couple of movies were transparently titled "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The third was named, simply, "Body Snatchers."

(Returning — ever so briefly — to the plausibility angle, Ebert asked, "Do you expect a movie titled 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' to be plausible?" It is a fair question, and my answer, after careful reflection, would be, "Yes. It doesn't have to be completely plausible — which is good since it is hard to imagine how it could be. But there needs to be enough plausibility to allow the viewers to suspend considerable disbelief.")

As I presume it was with each movie version of Finney's novel, "The Invasion" opened with the arrival of alien spores on Earth. In the only version I saw previously (and I have heard it was the same in the other two), these spores took the form of pods that encased their victims. They changed that a bit in "The Invasion" — the spores apparently attached themselves to a space shuttle that crashed following re–entry and scattered its debris from Dallas to Washington (that's a pretty impressive debris field). The debris was contaminated, and anyone who touched it became infected. When the victims fell into deep sleep, the infection seized control of them entirely.

Replacing the pods in "The Invasion" was a kind of film that covered the victim while he/she slept.

No one really seemed to notice what was happening at first. Oh, there were reports in the news of some strange virus in the U.S., and there were more dire reports from abroad. But, like most people, Kidman (a Washington–area psychiatrist in the movie) went about her daily routine, oblivious to what was happening until one of her patients, a victim of domestic abuse (Veronica Cartwright, who appeared in the 1978 version of the story), told her, "My husband just isn't my husband anymore."

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Now, given the conversations those two were sure to have had in the past, it would be plausible for Kidman not to understand that Cartwright wasn't discussing abusive behavior — but rather the zombie–like behavior of those under the influence of the aliens. Her husband was one of them. The viewers never saw that character when he wasn't under the aliens' influence, but they knew it the first time they saw him sitting in Kidman's waiting room.

He had the look.

If you ever saw "The Stepford Wives," you would recognize the look — flat, dull, emotionless. Bloodless. Soulless. Measured in words and actions.

Kidman's character had to become proficient at the look, pretending to be one of them in order to maneuver around the city without drawing attention. That required her to maintain total outward neutrality no matter what was happening around her.

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Absent any real plausibility, "The Invasion" suffered when it asked viewers to accept some pretty preposterous things.

Like, for example, the fact that a medical researcher (played by underrated actor Jeffrey Wright), a colleague of Kidman's love interest (played by Daniel Craig), was able to discern all kinds of information about this previously unknown virus from a single sample — in a couple of days. He was also able to determine how to eradicate the virus. Cancer researchers who watched this movie must have been jealous.

That would have been enough as far as I was concerned, but then there was a scene when Kidman and her young son were trying to get away in a car that was set afire by a Molotov cocktail. After it was struck the car could be seen virtually engulfed in flames, and I am pretty sure the windshield was broken when the vehicle was hit, but the car kept going, even seemed to accelerate, toward the occupants' appointed rendezvous with a helicopter.

I had to wonder how would it be plausible for someone to keep driving with flames all around like that? I mean, I was never any great shakes at science when I was in school, but you don't have to be a physics major to imagine what would happen to someone who tried to keep driving under those conditions.

Sorta like someone trying to continue driving with one flat tire. Common sense tells you it won't end well.

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Then there were things that required specific knowledge of how they do things in Washington to comprehend how off the charts the plausibility factor had become.

For example, in Washington the law prohibits any building in the city from being taller than the Capitol — yet the movie clearly showed the helicopter landing on top of a (nonexistent) D.C. skyscraper.

I know how Hollywood loves to run a good thing into the ground, but trust me, this story has been driven deep into the ground. Let's move on to something new, shall we?

Looking for Light at the End of the Tunnel

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"'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' is a film about a man who experiences the catastrophe I most feared during my recent surgeries: 'locked–in syndrome,' where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world. My dread, I think, began when I was a boy first reading Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Premature Burial' at an age much too young to contemplate such a possibility."

Roger Ebert

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When I was 13 years old, I broke my right arm and had to wear a cast for eight weeks.

I'm right–handed, which means I had to function without the use of my dominant arm for two months. It was during the school year, and it was extremely challenging for me to try to write with my left hand.

I adapted the best I could, and my teachers were understanding. And, after eight weeks, I was permitted to use my arm again.

At least once in our lives, I suppose, everyone is faced with the deprivation of something that one has come to take for granted. Usually that deprivation is limited in some way — and temporary.

And that is the key point, isn't it? It is temporary. I didn't like wearing a cast or having to try to do things with my left hand for eight weeks — but I knew it wouldn't last forever. I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. I could see it. With both eyes.

And that was the point. There was light at the end of that tunnel.

It's been a long time since I broke that arm, but I have thought about it frequently over the years, often in the context of incarceration. When I worked as a newspaper reporter, I covered the police and courthouse beat for awhile, which meant I had to cover trials from time to time. Those trials involved offenses that, if the defendants were found guilty, would mean time in prison.

I'm not sure when I started thinking about my broken arm in the context of incarceration, but I kind of feel like it must have been when I was covering trials. It has continued to this day.

Some of the offenses carried lengthy — but limited — sentences; people convicted of such offenses knew they would spend several years in prison, but their incarceration would end someday.

But most of the trials I covered were murder trials — and, while there were exceptions, most of the defendants knew that, if convicted, they could expect to spend the rest of their lives in prison. There would be no light at the end of that tunnel.

Jean–Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, was not convicted of a crime, but he faced a kind of life in prison when he suffered a massive stroke in December 1995 that left him with a condition known as "locked–in syndrome" a condition in which the patient is almost entirely paralyzed but is, nevertheless, aware of what is happening around him/her and able to communicate only through eye movement and blinking. In more extreme situations, the eyes are paralyzed as well.

In this condition, Bauby dictated his memoir through a tedious eye–blinking procedure in which his assistant would repeatedly recite the alphabet until he blinked to indicate which letters came next. It took an average of two minutes to dictate each word.

The memoir was turned into a movie that made its debut 10 years ago today at the Cannes Film Festival. The book and the movie were titled "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Director Julian Schnabel was rewarded with Best Director at the Cannes festival.

Schnabel, by the way, was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards but lost to the Coen Brothers, and the movie was nominated for three other Oscars as well.

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"Like a sailor seeing the shore disappear, I watch my past recede, reduced to the ashes of memory."

Jean–Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric)

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To a casual observer, Bauby appeared to have a wonderful life. He was editor of a popular magazine. He had a beautiful ex–mistress (Emmanuelle Seigner), with whom he had three children, and a beautiful new mistress. But then he had his stroke.

Most of the muscles in his body were useless after that, but his mind remained clear, and his imagination was strong. I'm a writer, and I can say that many things could be taken from me and I could manage somehow, but if I no longer had a clear mind and a strong imagination, I would not want to keep going.

Bauby had both of those things, but he still didn't want to keep going — at first. The writer within him knew there was a story that needed to be told.

That story was rich with ironies.

A few days before his stroke "Jean–Do," as he was known, was visiting his frail 92–year–old father (Max von Sydow) and gave him a shave because he could not shave himself.

After Jean–Do's stroke, his father observed in a phone call to his son (with his assistant interpreting his eye movements for his end of the conversation), that they were both locked in — he was physically unable to leave his apartment and his son was locked inside his body.

That was his perception. He wanted to be with his son but he couldn't. Others couldn't bring themselves to face the new reality. Their perceptions frightened them too much.

We all face barriers in our lives. Jean–Do's father faced a physical barrier. The others faced an emotional barrier.

That is certainly something I have experienced first hand. Most of the time I have not known I was seeing someone for the last time, but there have been a few times in my life when I have seen someone and I knew — usually because of a medical condition — it would be the last time, but I could never bring myself to say the word goodbye.

Perhaps it seemed too much like giving up. I regret that, but I don't regret feeling afraid. It is a natural, honest and normal human response. It is all a matter of perception, I suppose.

All my life I have heard that perception is reality and that may never have been more true than it was when applied to the life of Jean–Dominique Bauby.

The stroke was the reality, but it was the perception that colored the picture for Bauby and those around him. He saw his affliction as being like one of those heavy diving bells that divers once wore to get a constant supply of oxygen when they were in the water. Bauby felt the diving bell was dragging him to the bottom of the sea.

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But many of those around him did not see a diving bell. Instead they saw his spirit as a butterfly that was rising above it all.

Thus the name of the book — and the movie.

And as grim as the topic may sound, it really is a rewarding movie experience.

I want to read the book.

No Good Guys

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More often than not, it seems to me, the Oscars voters like to reward feel–good movies. I suppose, after spending most of the year profiting from violence and exploitation, Hollywood likes to shine the spotlight on its more uplifting — and decidedly more infrequent — positive efforts.

I don't mean that the Best Picture always goes to a Disney movie or anything like that. The characters in the Oscar winners do have their flaws, but there is usually something ennobling about at least one of them, too, something that tells the audience that no one is irredeemable. (Look, this guy is X, Y or Z, and yet he still managed to be A, B or C.)

There's nothing wrong with that. It's good to draw attention to movies that praise those qualities to which we should all aspire — even if the movies aren't box–office successes and the qualities they embrace aren't especially prevalent.

The box–office successes typically focus on the things that we all find unpleasant, but many people choose to spend their entertainment dollars watching those movies, anyway — perhaps in part due to an understanding that there are far more sinners than saints in this world.

Sometimes, though, Hollywood rewards movies in which none of the characters seems to have any good qualities. Such was the case when the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men," which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 10 years ago today, won the Oscar for Best Picture.

And since its commercial release, the movie has become the Coens' biggest moneymaker — ever. Winning Best Picture didn't hurt at the box office, of course.

Neither did the facts that the Coens shared the Oscar for Best Director, and Javier Bardem won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the thoroughly evil hit man Anton Chigurh.

If there were any redeemable characters in "No Country for Old Men," they must have been the random minor characters who had the misfortune of crossing paths with Chigurh — and the audience never knew enough about them to conclude whether they really were redeemable.

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Chigurh, though, was a mystery, a real enigma, although not entirely to at least one person — the arrogant bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson) who was put on his trail. Harrelson's character observed that Chigurh was a psychopathic killer, but "You could even say that he has principles. Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He's not like you. He's not even like me."

For that matter, no one knew how to pronounce Chigurh's name. One character pronounced it sugar, but there was nothing sweet about him. I suppose that was intended to be a paradox. The Coens like to work those in when they can.

Anyway, Chigurh was hired to recover the money from a drug deal that went bad in the west Texas desert. Josh Brolin, playing a struggling welder out hunting antelope, stumbled onto the scene and found the loot — more than $2 million — sparking a cat–and–mouse chase that is the heart of the story.

Brolin's circumstances may have aroused the audience's sympathy as he tried to get away with the money and, at the same time, protect his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but he really had no redeeming quality. He was every bit as ruthless, if not as violent, as Chigurh, the man who pursued and, ultimately, killed him.

Chigurh also killed the bounty hunter who was hired to bring him down.

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Harrelson's performance was adequate but never really rose above my rather modest expectations. I enjoyed watching him on Cheers!, but I have hardly been blown away by his theatrical work, probably stemming from his post–Cheers! work in "Indecent Proposal," although that was far from his first movie. Unfortunately, it was not far from his best.

Most of the time Harrelson has been a supporting character — as he was in "No Country for Old Men."

And to be honest, that is what nearly all of the characters in the movie were. I suppose that is what nearly all the characters in every movie are, even the movies with "all–star" casts. Some of those stars, regardless of their statures in Hollywood, will be in supporting roles. How well they succeed depends upon how well they are able to keep their often considerable egos in check when only two of them are truly the stars of the show.

Even though he shared top billing with his lesser–known co–stars, Tommy Lee Jones was a supporting character as the rural West Texas sheriff hot on the trail of Brolin and Chigurh. He must have known that all along.

His character was about to retire, and his greatest contribution to the movie was serving as the inspiration for its title. Well, the actual wording comes from a poem from Yeats, but in the context of the story, Jones' character began the movie with his general lament that the area was so violent — and, at the end, he spoke of his dreams of his father, who had also been a sheriff, and how in one of the dreams his father, who was on horseback, told him he was going on ahead in a snowy mountain pass to make a fire and wait.

There was no place for him in West Texas. It was no country for old men.

In his way, I guess, Jones' character was seeking redemption — perhaps a way to win his father's approval — but he was really just looking for a way out of the place that was not meant for old men. I guess we all want that, to escape. That doesn't make us any nobler or any more worthy of admiration than anyone else.

"I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come into my life somehow," Jones' character remarked near the end of the movie. "And he didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does."

His remarks were pithy, short and sweet as so many Texans are inclined to be — and that comes from a lifetime of observing Texans, including my own grandparents, who lived there most of their lives, and my parents, who did not.

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As I say, the characters who may have had more cause for redemption were the minor ones who came in contact with Chigurh purely at random.

Carla Jean was such a character. She wasn't with Brolin when he stumbled onto the scene of the drug deal. She didn't play the cat–and–mouse game Brolin played with Chigurh. The only time she ever saw or spoke to him was near the end of the movie, when he came presumably to kill her.

I say presumably because the audience never saw him take her life — only his departure from the house where she had been staying and his casual glance at the soles of his boots. Knowing the character as the audience did, that strongly suggested that he might have been concerned that he had stepped in something — like fresh blood.

But the viewers never knew that for certain.

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The genre of "No Country for Old Men" has always been a bit ambiguous.

I've heard some people call it film noir, even though that evokes thoughts of a private investigator — and, while it does deal with a crime — several crimes, in fact — film noir really isn't sufficient to describe it.

Of course, a serious problem with film noir is that it is something of a moving target when it comes to its definition. I would say that it can be whatever you want it to be. (And with the Coens there is no telling what that might be.)

Neither is it entirely accurate to call "No Country for Old Men" a western. That makes people think of cowboys and Indians, horses and stagecoaches, cattle drives and roundups.

And yet it is both at the same time — modern–day film noir and modern–day western. Not stereotypical of either. It defies easy and conventional description.

Kind of like the Coen brothers.

The End of the Spider-Man Trilogy

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Sequels are seldom worthy successors to the originals.

Sometimes a second chapter is necessary only so it is possible to move on to a third. I have always thought that was the case with the "Back to the Future" movies, and I definitely feel that way about the "Spider–Man" movies, the third installment of which made its debut on this day in 2007.

As I observed yesterday, I liked the "Spider–Man" movie from 2002 — and I liked its second sequel, the one that premiered 10 years ago today. The second movie, which premiered in 2004, didn't have much going for it, as far as I was concerned.

(The third part of a trilogy isn't always so great. The third chapters of "The Godfather" and original "Star Wars" trilogies easily make that case.)

Not everyone felt that way. Film critic Roger Ebert and I frequently had similar reactions to movies — but not the "Spider–Man" trilogy.

And it all seems to have hinged on the character of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire). I had no problems with him, but Ebert apparently did.

"The great failing of 'Spider–Man 3' is that it failed to distract me from what a sap Peter Parker is," Ebert wrote. "It lingers so long over the dopey romance between Peter and the long–suffering Mary Jane [Kirsten Dunst] that I found myself asking the question: Could a whole movie about the relationship between these two twentysomethings be made? And my answer was: No, because today's audiences would never accept a hero so clueless and a heroine so docile."

I thought that was a bit harsh, considering that the movie's sole purpose was to entertain — not to make some profound statement.

Well, perhaps that wasn't its sole purpose. I wouldn't rule out the money motive. The original "Spider–Man" became the first movie to exceed $100 million at the box office in its first weekend on American movie screens. Its sequel, which was released in 2004, beat the original's opening–day record by $1 million.

It was logical to expect a similar response to the third movie, and it didn't disappoint — well, not entirely. It was the highest–grossing film of the three movies in the trilogy — but, although the DVD sales grossed more than $120 million, they still came up short of expectations.

Anyway, Ebert and I were never on the same page on the "Spider–Man" movies. He didn't like the first and third movies; I did.

On the other hand, he did like the second movie. "Now this is what a superhero movie should be," he wrote of that first sequel. I thought the only purpose for the second movie (other than to make a lot of money) was to be a bridge between the first and second movies. I still think that, for that matter.

Go figure.

Anyway, I can kind of understand where some folks were coming from in their criticism — the ones who complained that there were too many stories going on at once.

Yes. There were quite a few stories being told.

There were the continuing stories dating back to the original movie — of Peter Parker and M.J., of Parker's newspaper career and his editor (J.K. Simmons) and of the son of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), whose spirit urged his son to seek vengeance (and tried to do so through M.J.).

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And there was some new stuff. There was Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's talented and beautiful daughter) who played Parker's lab partner and temporary love interest.

There was also the introduction of a new villain, played by Thomas Haden Church, who, as it turned out, had been responsible for the death of Parker's uncle (Cliff Robertson). His aunt (Rosemary Harris) was back.

Yep, there was a lot going on. Nothing neat and orderly about it. But isn't that the burden of a superhero?

Handling the Truth

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When I was growing up, I knew one guy who was adopted.

All the other kids I knew lived with their biological parents. Some lived with their mothers — mostly because their parents were divorced (although I knew one guy whose father had died) — but they knew who their biological fathers were or had been.

I don't think my friend who was adopted ever knew who his biological parents were. That kind of information just wasn't handed out freely in those days.

His adoptive parents didn't even tell him he was adopted until he was 13. I was probably his best friend at that time, and I was the first one he told. It made me think about something I never thought about before — what it would be like to not know where you came from.

In hindsight, I was lucky. I lived with both of my parents, but that didn't strike me as anything special. It was just the norm in the tiny Southern town in which I grew up. Married couples seldom split up in those days, no matter how bad things got.

Things have changed in my hometown. For one thing, it is hardly tiny anymore. And, for another, divorce is much more commonplace than it was then — or maybe people are just more open about it now. I don't mean to suggest that that is a good thing — clearly some families are better off if the parents do not live under the same roof — but there is no stigma attached to divorce now. When I was growing up, the myth that divorced women were "hot to trot" was alive and well among the horny adolescent boys in my hometown, and it made it easy to believe that the children of divorce could not be sure who their fathers were.

Thus the basis for the episode of How I Met Your Mother that first aired 10 years ago tonight — "Showdown."

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) was sort of between most of my friends and my friend who was adopted. He did know who his mother was. He grew up in her house with his biracial brother, but he did not know his father's identity.

Apparently he asked his mother about this so frequently that one day, apparently in an exasperated impulse, she pointed to the TV, which was showing an episode of The Price Is Right, and told him that Bob Barker was his father.

It was always an ironic twist that Barney, who was skeptical of most things, apparently believed everything his mother told him.

Then, in the episode that aired 10 years ago tonight, after years of carrying on a rather one–sided father–son relationship with the TV set, Barney was going to appear on The Price Is Right and try to meet his father.

The simultaneous story in this episode dealt with Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall's (Jason Segel) upcoming wedding and Ted's (Josh Radnor) attempts to compose an appropriate best–man toast to the happy couple. Marshall kept censoring his efforts, though, and Ted was ready to give up.

Then a subject presented itself. Lily and Marshall were trying to spend the last two weeks before their wedding apart. Lily had been staying with Robin (Cobie Smulders), where she discovered that the stress of wedding preparation had rendered her too skinny to wear her wedding dress so Robin had been forcing Lily to eat every high–calorie food they could get their hands on.

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But Marshall and Lily hadn't been able to live up to it. They met at a motel for a few hours each evening, prompting Ted to observe in his toast that, even after a 10–year relationship, Marshall and Lily couldn't spend so much as a night apart.

Meanwhile, in his appearance on The Price Is Right, Barney won the Showcase and was on the verge of telling Barker the truth — as Barney knew it — but in the end he didn't. He was asked why.

"If you've lived your whole life thinking one thing," Barney replied, "it would be pretty devastating to find out that wasn't true. I just don't think Bob could have handled it."

He did, however, give many of his prizes to the happy couple as wedding gifts.

Just Like Family

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The ritual of the bachelor party — from both the male and female perspectives — was explored in the aptly named episode "Bachelor Party" on How I Met Your Mother on this night in 2012.

Anyone who has ever participated in one of these rituals has probably been told something to the effect of this: Only a chosen few have been asked to join in — if you are one of those people, you are either a member of the family or close enough to be one.

There were two bachelor parties on the night in question, and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) tried to influence both.

The guys — well, mostly Barney, who believed, all evidence to the contrary, that he was the best man — had planned a somewhat untraditional bachelor party for the groom — Marshall (Jason Segel).

It's important to note that Marshall had been saying repeatedly that he did not want to have a stripper. He preferred what Ted (Josh Radnor) had in mind — attending a big boxing match and consuming a large steak.

But Barney manipulated things so there was a stripper at the hotel suite in Atlantic City that had been rented for the occasion. Well, he thought they were going to Atlantic City. They were actually going to a resort and casino in Connecticut, some 200 miles to the northeast.

All of which made what happened when they got there implausible — to say the least.

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The stripper was there and proceeded to provide the entertainment she had been hired by Barney to provide — until she broke her ankle. Then she had to be taken to the hospital, causing the guys to miss the fight (the car radio ranted about what an historic fight it had been).

Marshall was furious with Barney and kept telling him that he was not the best man. Marshall wasn't even sure he wanted Barney to be at the wedding — especially after Barney accidentally set the hotel room on fire with one of his custom–made Cuban cigars.

Meanwhile, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) was the guest of honor at a bridal shower. Robin (Cobie Smulders) wanted to give Lily a memorable gift and originally planned to give her a see–through nightie, but Barney talked her into something else — a vibrator. He explained to Robin that all of Lily's friends would be there, and there would be a lot of drinking.

"You need to get her something daring," Barney said so that's what Robin did. It was a decision she would regret.

When Robin arrived at the party, she discovered that the guests were not all Lily's peers after all. Lily's mother was there. So was her maternal grandmother, and two of Lily's juvenile cousins. An older cousin was there, too. She was about to become a nun. Robin decided she didn't want Lily to open her gift and tried to prevent it several times, finally resorting to switching cards with another gift — which turned out to be from Lily's grandmother.

She was as surprised as anyone when, after Lily opened the gift, everyone found there was a vibrator in it. But then Lily's mother observed that the gift resembled one that had been given on an episode of "Sex and the City."

It was an entirely different party after that.

Everyone gathered at the bar where they habitually gathered, and the girls learned that Barney had ruined the bachelor party. Marshall was about to tell Barney he wasn't invited to the wedding when Lily intervened. When she had been living in San Francisco the previous year after her breakup with Marshall, Barney had flown out to see her, gave her a plane ticket to New York and told her she and Marshall belonged together. Thus, he had been largely responsible for their eventual reunion.

Until that moment, only Lily and Barney had known about that.

Touched by Barney's concern and ashamed of his own conclusion that Barney was selfish, Marshall named Barney a co–best man with Ted.

Just like a member of the family.

Movin' on Up

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In the episode of How I Met Your Mother that premiered on this night in 2007, "Moving Day," Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) were planning to move in together, which meant that Ted's old room in the apartment belonging to Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) would be vacant.

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) wanted to rent the room because it was just above the bar whereas his apartment was a 23–minute drive away. Too many of his pickups had gone awry in that 23–minute drive. Girls had fallen asleep on him, made up with their boyfriends and been arrested for indecent exposure. With a room in Lily and Marshall's apartment, Barney's odds of scoring would be greatly improved.

But Lily and Marshall weren't keen on that idea, especially since it meant Barney would leave the girl for Lily and Marshall to wake up and kick out the next morning. So they nixed the idea. Besides, it turned out that they liked the idea of having the apartment to themselves.

Then Barney did an about–face and was opposed to the idea of Ted moving out. But Ted insisted that he was going to move in with Robin, anyway.

So Barney absconded with the moving van that was filled with Ted's stuff — except for a sword and a box of pot lids.

At first Lily and Marshall were happy about having the apartment to themselves. With Ted gone, they could do things they had thought about but never dared do while there was another person around. For instance, Lily wanted to sit around the apartment naked.

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But they soon realized that it gets cold when you're sitting around in the altogether.

Marshall liked the idea of having sex wherever — and as loudly as — he wanted. But they soon agreed that just because they could be loud did not mean they had to be loud.

Meanwhile at Robin's place ...

Ted was trying to settle in, but it was difficult without his things. And, as he spoke about what he had hoped to be doing, some conflicts between Ted and Robin and what they wanted to do with the apartment began to emerge. Then he got a phone call from Barney who gave him Mission: Impossiblelike instructions for getting his things back, starting with putting on a suit that Barney had left on the door to Robin's apartment and meeting him at the bar.

Barney wanted one last night on the town with Ted — a "bro–ing away" party, in Barney's words — and Ted seemed to enjoy it for awhile, but he got worried that Robin would be upset that he spent the evening with Barney instead of with her.

Robin, however, was occupied with other things — like having one last cigarette and canceling her gun magazine subscription before Ted moved in.

And Lily and Marshall had concluded that they really did like having Ted around — and his useful possessions, like towels and the microwave.

Those possessions were still in the moving van that Barney had snatched — only now they were organized into a kind of a modified living space, suitable for bringing his "dates" — which is something he was in the process of doing when the van started to move. Ted had figured everything out.

Back at Robin's apartment, Ted told her the whole story about how he had found his possessions — and then they decided they weren't ready to move in together after all. But they did give the modified living space a whirl.

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After that Ted went back to Lily and Marshall's place, where they greeted him with open arms — literally.

"God, this feels so right," Marshall said.

"Never leave us again," Lily told Ted.

Ted tried to protest that Robin was downstairs and there were lots of boxes to move. But Lily just said, "Sssshhh."

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Enjoying the Ride on Super Monday

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The late great George Carlin observed that a good joke needs at least one element that is way out of proportion. That is what makes it funny — even if the topic itself is not necessarily funny.

Let me back up just a bit.

The premise of the episode of How I Met Your Mother that first aired on this night 10 years ago was pretty basic.

The biggest sports event of the year — the Super Bowl — was about to be played (coincidentally, this year's Super Bowl is being played on the same date — in 2007, when this episode was first shown, this was the day after the Super Bowl). It was Ted's favorite day of the year, and he had everything planned for a memorable Super Bowl party for the gang. But fate intervened. A worker at the bar where the show's regulars frequently gathered had died. No one could remember who the now deceased worker was, but they were more or less coerced into attending his funeral.

The funeral happened to take place at precisely the time when the Super Bowl was to begin. This is where I ran into a conflict.

I am a lifelong football fan and a veteran of newspaper sports copy desks so I know a few things about the history of the Super Bowl.

There was a time when the Super Bowl was played during the afternoon, as most regular–season games are, but for more than 30 years it has been played in prime time with a kickoff around 5:30 p.m. (Central — that is the time zone in which I live).

And, while some NFL playoff games are held on Saturdays, the Super Bowl is always played on a Sunday. There have been 50 other Super Bowls, and they have all been played on Sundays.

There are no other football games being played; in fact, there is rarely much of anything else going on that day. The game has the stage all to itself.

So, putting those facts together, we can deduce that the funeral was taking place at 6:30 p.m. (Eastern — that is the time zone in which How I Met Your Mother was set) on a Sunday.

When I first saw this episode, that was the part that was the wild exaggeration — for me (even though I knew — and should have remembered that I knew — better).

I grew up in the South, as I have observed here before, and I cannot remember a single time when a funeral in my small hometown was scheduled to take place on a Sunday. I guess I always assumed that Sunday was reserved for regular church services — and special services for religious days like Christmas and Easter — and funeral organizers, being aware of this, work around it.

But when you grow up in the American South, you tend to see things from more of a Christian–centric perspective than folks do in any other region of the country. I knew when I was growing up that there are other faiths beside my own or, at least, the one that guides my life.

My father was a religion professor, and he made it a point to expose my brother and me to other faiths, other denominations, other ways of worship — most, if not all, were in the state's capitol city about 30 miles from us, and my father knew all the congregational leaders through his work. And I learned early on — when I had to put on my suit to attend a service while my friends were playing pickup football or baseball games — that Sunday is not the day of rest and worship for everyone.

But I suppose I just always thought that, even if a faith observed a different sabbath day than mine did, it would acquiesce when it came to scheduling events like funerals.

I have also learned that there are some places where funerals of all kinds do take place on Sundays. Even Christian funeral services. Funerals in those churches are held on Sunday afternoons or evenings. Mornings are still reserved for worship services but when necessary those church staffs can convert a sanctuary from the joy of the morning worship service to the usually somber atmosphere of a funeral.

For that matter, Catholic parishes often hold wakes for the deceased on Sundays, but they usually do not, as I understand it, hold funeral masses on Sundays.

Anyway, I can kind of imagine how the conversation went when the writers for How I Met Your Mother were working out the details on this one. Take a big event, one that you would typically share with the people to whom you are closest and throw a wrench into your plans. The wrench that was chosen was a funeral.

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As a child, I would have found the idea of a Sunday funeral totally implausible. (I would have been more likely to believe a plot based on the story of the Pied Piper. Speaking of which, I had heard "Music has charms to soothe the savage beast" all my life, and I had seen film clips of Indian snake charmers, but Sunday funerals were new to me.) But as an adult I learned that some funerals are held on Sundays in some places and in some faiths.

So that element of the plot wasn't as off the wall as I certainly would have thought if I had seen it as a teenager. Even so, I felt a certain resistance to the concept of funerals on Sundays when I did see the episode, and I had to remind myself then — and have had to do every time I have seen it since — that funerals sometimes are held on Sundays.

Things at the funeral seemed to be moving right along, and the gang estimated that they could be home in time to catch the end of the game, but the post–funeral gathering went on for hours. Ted (Josh Radnor) insisted that they make a pact that they would avoid hearing the score all day Monday, then gather to watch a recording of the game together 24 hours after the fact.

He acknowledged that it wouldn't be easy to avoid hearing who won, but it was a sacrifice they had to make. They all reluctantly agreed.

It turned out to be extremely challenging to live up to Ted's "media blackout." For his part, Ted tried to work from home to avoid any unwanted input.

"The media blackout was particularly hard on Robin (Cobie Smulders)," the older Ted reminisced, "because, well, she was the media." She kept trying to keep the sports anchor from doing his report on the air.

Marshall (Jason Segel) was at Lily's kindergarten class for show and tell. Marshall had promised Lily (Alyson Hannigan) he would do it several weeks earlier; now he was hanging out at the school in his attempt to avoid finding out who won — but one of the students blackmailed him, threatening to spill the beans unless paid off.

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Meanwhile, Ted had to go out to pick up some hot wings at a sports bar. The wings were a tradition for the gang's Super Bowl parties, but Ted had to construct a device that would enable him to avoid seeing any coverage of the Super Bowl on the TVs that were everywhere in the sports bar. He called his device the Sensory Deprivator 5000.

Ted had handcuffed gambling addict Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) to the radiator while he went to get the wings, but Barney escaped — and went looking for someone who could tell him who won the game so he would know if he won his bet. But Barney couldn't find anyone who had watched the game or kept up with sports. Then he bumped into Emmitt Smith (yes, that Emmitt Smith). Surely he would learn who won the game from Emmitt.

But Emmitt didn't know. He claimed he had forgotten the game was being played.

"You know, when you've won two or three of those things, it's kind of like, 'eh,'" he said.

When they all gathered that evening, it turned out that they had all learned the outcome earlier in the day. At first Ted didn't want to watch the recording. But they had beer and wings, and they decided to go ahead and have their Super Bowl party a day late anyway.

"As unforgettable as that Super Bowl was," the older Ted said, "here it is 23 years later, and I don't remember who won. Hell, I don't even remember who played. What I do remember is that we drank beer, we ate wings, and we watched the Super Bowl together.

"Because sometimes, even if you know how something's gonna end, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride."

Taking a Ride to the Top

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"Discouraging premarital sex is against my religion."

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris)

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When it comes to losing one's virginity, it is possible to make sweeping generalizations about the attitudes of both genders and be certain that they are mostly true — allowing for the relatively few exceptions.

Most girls want their first time to be with someone special, someone with whom they could see spending the rest of their lives — even if they won't, and most of them don't. Most guys just want to do it.

That, essentially, was the heart of the episode of How I Met Your Mother that premiered on this night in 2007 — "First Time in New York." Native Canadian Robin (Cobie Smulders) was excited about a visit from her younger sister Katie (Lucy Hale) — until Robin and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) saw her passionately kissing a young man as they got off the airplane. Katie explained to Robin that she and the young man had been dating for a couple of months and had decided to sleep together while they were in New York (he was there to visit a cousin).

It was to be Katie's first time. I don't recall if it was ever said whether it was to be her boyfriend's first time. Robin was against the idea and tried to enlist the help of her friends in preventing the tryst. They agreed to help, but the males showed a decided lack of enthusiasm. Marshall (Jason Segel) and Ted (Josh Radnor) had no prepared remarks for talking a girl out of having sex, and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) argued that it was against his faith to discourage premarital sex.

Thus, the stage was set for the regular cast to get nostalgic about their first times.

Lily and Marshall, for example, had wanted to make their first time special, but they ended up having sex in Marshall's dorm room minutes after agreeing to wait — with Ted sleeping in the upper bunk. Marshall had been under the impression that he and Lily had only slept with each other, but in the conversation it was strongly suggested that Lily had slept with someone else — by implication her high school boyfriend Scooter.

And that created something of a crisis for Marshall — even though Lily insisted that it didn't count because they fooled around but never went all the way. As this conversation was taking place in the lobby of the Empire State Building, Lily used it as an example. She told Katie that she had wanted to come to the Empire State Building for a long time, but she had chosen to wait until she could do so with the right person.

For her part, Robin couldn't stop seeing her sister as the child she had once been, which made it hard for her to talk about other aspects of sex — especially since she was having trouble saying "I love you" to Ted.

That was something Robin had never told a boyfriend before. None of her previous relationships had lasted that long; there was always a deal breaker. Consequently, her relationship with Ted was taking her into uncharted territory.

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But her sister thought it was hypocritical of Robin to not want her to lose her virginity at the age of 17 when Robin had lost hers at the age of 16.

Robin said she had just barely had sex — her boyfriend decided that night that he was gay — but it still counted. When asked what she meant by just barely, Robin replied, "He didn't dive all the way into the pool, but he splashed around in the shallow end."

Lily said that didn't count, and that is when it was suggested (and more or less confirmed by Lily's silence) that Lily had been with someone else before she was with Marshall. It bothered Marshall because, in his words, "it rewrites our history."

Lily didn't agree. "Have you been in the Empire State Building?" she asked. "You've only been in the lobby. People don't buy tickets to get in the lobby. They buy tickets to get to the top. Scooter only got in the lobby, and the lobby doesn't count."

Marshall's lawyeresque response was to ask a passerby where they were. He was told the Empire State Building.

As things turned out Katie decided not to lose her virginity to Kyle. Robin told Ted that he had been the one to persuade her with a little conversation they had. Ted told Katie about his first time. "I told her I loved her, but I just wanted to have sex," Ted said. "I would've said anything to make that happen, and that's exactly what I did."

Then he said perhaps the truest thing ever said in a TV sitcom. "I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you what all 17–year–old boys are like — even the nice ones."

So Katie chose not to take a ride to the top with Kyle.

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Robin was so grateful that she, perhaps impulsively, told Ted she loved him. She said it felt right.

"You lost your I–love–you–ginity," he told her.

"I was just waiting for the right guy," Robin replied.