I went out to suburban Chicago on my off days this week to visit the dentist. I stayed with my parents who are enjoying a winter much snowier and colder than usual. The average temp of 15.7 degrees Fahrenheit recorded at O’Hare during the month of January was the coldest for that time in Chicago since 1985. The 33.5 inches of snow that fell during the month is the most there for the period since 1979. Another several inches of white stuff is falling there to start February.

Smartly, my folks have retired their snow shovels and signed on with a snow removal outfit to clear their driveway. Before the winter season started, they had the option of paying a flat fee regardless of the number of snow events – or payment based on a per-cleanup basis. They went with the unlimited option. So, now they’re sitting there saying let it snow. Let it snow.

On Wednesday night, my Dad and I renewed one of our favorite traditions by attending a high school basketball game. On any given night in the wintertime (except for Sunday’s), there’s a good hoops game to be found at a Chicagoland HS gym.

Since we’ve adopted nearby Huntley HS as our favorite school to cheer for, we hit their road game vs. conference rival Crystal Lake South. The CLS school building in a suburb that’s doubled in population since my youth has a big gym and pretty decent fan support. The school’s band played several pre-game tunes and the national anthem before exiting early in the first quarter.

Huntley’s star player Amanze Egekeze (pictured above left – with the ball) had 28 points and 11 rebounds. The 6 foot 7 inch senior will attend Mercer University in Macon, GA next fall and play hoops on a full-ride scholarship. Egekeze is strong and quick to the hoop and a powerful force on the glass. He contests a lot of shots and appears to be an enthusiastic team guy. Attentive in the huddle and communicative on the floor, Egekeze was great fun to watch. South’s student section tried to rattle him with chants of “over-rated,” but Egekeze pretended not to hear them. I actually thought the chants were inappropriate in a high school gym setting, especially with a school administrator monitoring on the spot.

Huntley won by ten and is undefeated in the conference. It’s hard to picture them making much of a state tournament run given a lack of depth but Egekeze can take over a game. It’ll be interesting to watch him make the next step.

I flew back to New York Thursday afternoon. A TSA agent yelled at travelers putting shoes or boots in plastic bins used to organize belongings for screening because the items were tarnishing the bins. “I’m getting yelled at for the salt messin’ up people’s coats!,” said the screener. The admonishment prompted quizzical looks from passengers who are typically instructed to put said shoes in said bins.

Airline workers sprayed glycol on the 737-900 at O’Hare that would take me home. The heavy snow that fell stuck to the taxiways but not the airplane. Lots of Seahawks and Broncos fans filled the train station at Newark Airport for the ride to New York City. When we disembarked the NJ Transit train at busy NY Penn Station, cheerful Super Bowl volunteers in yellow jackets were on hand to help fans wearing football jerseys find their way.

When I quit cable TV last month, I told myself I’d go see more movies with a piece of the new-found savings. Wednesday was cold out with nothing to do and a bunch of noise coming from the workers renovating the apartment above me so I went to the cineplex in Astoria and paid a symmetrically-priced 14 bucks to enter the 14-screen theatre. I saw American Hustle. There were about 14 people in attendance. The movie was just ok.

The comedian Louis CK is badly miscast as a FBI boss and I can’t believe Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for an Oscar in a supporting role. The scene where she sings along to Live and Let Die during a housecleaning session is embarrassing and cheapens the movie at about the point the movie finally gains momentum.

The film did little to move me beyond wanting to know more about Abscam. After Hustle was over, the lighted sign outside the adjacent screening room said it was twenty minutes to showtime for The Wolf of Wall Street.

I went in. Two for the price of one.

I didn’t like Wolf any better than Hustle. A much larger crowd gathered for this one. The audience laughed during the sequence when Scorcese’s go-to leading man Leo D (playing real-life fraudster Jordan Belfort) crawled out of the country club to his sports car and drove home wasted on delayed-action ludes. The subsequent scene back at Belfort’s mansion culminating with Leo administering Heimlich on Jonah Hill is vintage Scorcese but much of the movie is ridiculous. Doing a big film about 90’s pump and dump is admirable but this story is way overplayed. The film’s three-hour length didn’t bother me as much as Scorcese’s relentless pursuit of the wild and crazy angle at the work space used by traders employed by Belfort’s company. That approach appeared to push a segment of the audience’s buttons. Some giggled – or even projected admiration for the callous attributes Scorcese was trying to mock. I blame the filmmaker for making a serious piece of art that seemed to encourage more than a few of the people who saw it to walk out without a full handle on the evil Belfort perpetrated on everyone around him.

I do like how Scorcese ended the movie with a shot of the federal investigator riding the subway but if you’re allowed the extra hour, gimme a little more of Wolfie’s cooperation phase.

Jonah Hill claims he accepted just $60 K to do the movie which he says is the minimum allowed by the Screen Actor’s Guild for such work. He said there will be no back-end payments or cuts forthcoming and that he agreed to a discount deal because he wanted to work with Scorcese. Hill is funny playing DiCaprio’s sidekick but not fully convincing in the role. His Long Island accent wavers in intensity as the movie goes along.

Tuesday’s snowstorm officially dropped 11.5 inches on Central Park, 8.1 at LaGuardia and 13.0 on East Rutherford, NJ which is the Bergen County borough hosting the Super Bowl a week from tomorrow. For those watching the big game at home, the Super Bowl is being staged in East Rutherford, NJ this year, not New York City. The NFL and the TV will tell you a lot about this game’s association with New York City but the fake turf the players will compete on rests on swampland in New Jersey. The mayor of East Rutherford told the News a few days ago that he hasn’t been invited to the game and that the NFL has all but ignored his town in the run-up to the contest.