Puzzlathon

Did you see WordPlay, the crossword puzzle move? Puzzlers tell the camera they're addicted to putting a lot of useless information into small boxes. Their glee at besting their puzzler competitors at the annual crossword puzzle tournament is palpable. By the time you sweat your way through the final round with the front runners, you want to go out and... Well, I wanted to go home and play guitar, my gleeful addiction.

My point at bringing up the movie is the who's who of puzzle fiends it outed. Ken Burns, documentarian. Mike Mussina, Yankee pitcher. Indigo Girls, folkies. Jon Stewart, comedian. Bill Clinton, statesman. Not one of them makes a product you 'need' to live, you know, like food or clothes or espresso machines and stuff. These dude(ette)s are devoted to filling in little squares of our lives with films, ballgames, laughs, ballads and maybe some kind of peace treaty or high court nomination. There's so much 'useless content' provided by all us artist types and whether the world takes note or not, we're gonna do our puzzles, religiously, and jump at the chance to crow about our latest triumph to... the cat or the blue sky or the dear impresario who loves our little art form as much as we.

Someday I will sing for the whole world. I've always known this without knowing how such a thing might actually come to be. Lately I catch myself thinking it's probably what I'm doing already, absent about twelve billion ear drums.