Dec. 6, 2007

Dear Julie,

DC's book club has dinner each month at one of the members' houses. Each December they meet at a nice restaurant and invite the men's auxiliary, making us feel guilty about being unread wastrels for the past year.

The date chosen for this year's gathering happened to be the same as the Big 12 championship game pitting the University of Missouri, my alma mater, against the University of Oklahoma. Mizzou doesn't customarily play in championship football games, but this year is different. Mizzou has had a great season, was ranked No. 1 in the nation and would play for the national championship if they beat Oklahoma.

Mizzou hasn't had such a football team since I was a little boy. I watched on TV when they beat Navy in the Orange Bowl in 1960. That was the first bowl game Missouri ever won and the first and last time they ever went undefeated. They weren't undefeated this year, but they were great.

We were to meet at the restaurant right at game time. This isn't a restaurant equipped with big-screen TVs. This restaurant serves antelope steaks and sea bass stuffed with prosciutto.

I was kidding when I suggested beforehand that DC see if the dinner could be moved to a sports bar, but bless her she actually called someone in the club who suggested I tape the game to watch later.

Obviously not everyone appreciates the psychic connection between a performance and an audience. At the greatest concerts or plays or even movies a feeling wells up in the audience as the performers conjure up magic. Sharing the moment of the experience is part of the art, even if you're not really there.

At the end of "The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe," Lily Tomlin's Trudy the Bag Lady says the extraterrestrials she hangs around with would go see a play but watch the audience. Watching the audience gave them goose bumps. "Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things. That just knocked 'em out," Trudy said.

One member of the men's auxiliary who came technologically prepared updated those who cared about the progress of the game. The evening was packed with mostly genteel conversation and heartening food. The restaurant was packed like a football stadium in San Antonio where 220-pound football players were having head-on collisions occurring in San Antonio.

As Sarah told about the mouse in her tent on her recent trip to Morocco, I wondered why Mizzou was having trouble scoring. As DC discussed her ambivalence about the movie "No Country for Old Men," I thought, this is no restaurant for sports fans.

Loading carbohydrates for action, I ordered pork tenderloin in a bleu cheese sauce with collard greens, potatoes and macaroni and cheeses (three of them).

When DC said the citrusy rice with her scallops exploded on her taste buds I imagined a running back juking to make a first down. A discussion of the role the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake played in the founding of the Bank of America provoked visions of toppled linemen.

But ultimately the scrumptious food assuaged the longing to be in contact with the game. The baked cocoa mousse with raspberry shortbread turned out to be sweeter than the Mizzou quarterback's passes. There were those goose bumps.

DC and I returned home in time to watch the fourth quarter of the game on TV. Let's say the chef had a better night than Mizzou did.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.