End of the Year
So blogging got away from me for a little bit. It’s Christmas — these things happen. Anyway, it’s a time of forgiveness. So screw you!
Today’s point of order: Christmas is kind of awesome and I dislike anyone who claims differently. This year, once again, I spent the holiday at my parents’ cottage near Minden Hill, Ontario. According to Minden’s website, ‘Minden Hills has hundreds of things to “see, do and experience”‘. This is generally true in a strictly literal sense, provided a heavy emphasis is placed on the ’see’ part. You can see trees and rocks and etcetera. In the winter, these things are covered with snow. In the summer, less so. That sounds simplistic because it is.
It’s one of my favourite places ever.
I got lots of things for Christmas. My favourite gift is a small fridge designed for storing bottles of wine. The box calls it a “wine cellar” but that’s probably an exaggeration. It’s not underground. It’s in my kitchen. It is not a cavernous room with many shelves and bare brick walls. It’s a 3-foot-high black box with a digital read-out.
I’ve been wanting to become more of a wine guy for several years. Of all the ways to get drunk regularly, being into wine seems like the most sophisticated. Someone who stocks 4,000 cases of beer in his basement would generally be looked down upon as a disgusting vagrant with a major problem or maybe just a dude with memory problems who doesn’t understand that it’s not the 1920s anymore but — and this is the most important point I will make today — someone who stockpiles wine is totally a-ok. They’re just a ‘collector’. And a classy one at that.
My own wine collection will begin with my “wine cellar”, which I set up in my kitchen today. I’ve spent the last year trying to learn more about the types of wines available. Inevitably the only one I can remember is “Riesling” but, oddly, that’s generally all I’ve needed to know. Whenever someone is speaking of a brand of wine, I can remark that “their Riesling is interesting” and instantly connect. Only a real wine guy would say something like that — something so vague and uncritical.
Anyway, after I became an expert on the Types of Wine That Are or Are Related to Rieslings, I decided that I needed some sort of wine rack before I could go any further with this new hobby of mine. This is something I do a lot when faced with a task or goal: I’ll decide that completion of the task is impossible without first attaining some trivial item. It usually buys me a lot of extra time.
Everything has come together as of this Christmas, and I think I am ready to step into 2009 as a Wine Guy. I know what a Riesling is! I have a wine cellar! I like to drink things that can blur my vision! I even learned, today, what the proper temperature to store wine at is. Shit just got fucking REAL.
Other points of interest: Saw two movies over the last week. Seven Pounds was, and is, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I won’t spoil it because maybe it’s possible if you have severe mental abnormalities you might enjoy this movie, but let me just say this: there’s a lot of ways to effectively tell the story of Will Smith fighting a deadly Jellyfish. And the minds behind Sounds Pounds didn’t use any of them.
Also saw Blindness which was also pretty goddamned terrible. It’s one of those movies whose badness sneaks up on you. After you view it, you’re like “Huh. Not bad. Nice cinematography.” Then, later, you’re like “What the fucking fuck?” I feel bad because I like Danny Glover as a human being and as a presumed dude who loves to go fishing, but any movie where he plays a wizened old dude who narrates over scenes of dramatic stuff happens is bound to be terrible.
It’s kind of worth seeing, though, just as an example for how badly a movie with presumably talented people behind it. It was directed by the dude who made “The Constant Gardener” which was pretty great, and written by Don McKellar who is one of the best Canadian Dudes around and wrote and directed one of my favourite movies ever. But the film was just so badly put together it hurts to think about.
Put it this way: if other movies ended the way Blindess ends, there’d be no need to ever really think about film. The Godfather would have had ended with Al Pacino narrating over the final scene, saying “And now I have embraced my path in organized crime, and I must shut my new wife out of this world I find myself in”. Boogie Nights would have had Wahlberg thinking aloud, “I am back in this world I tried to leave, for this big penis is all I have.” Kindergarten Cop would have ended with Arnold monologuing about how, through the children, he learned what it means to love again.
It’d be great for blind people, but suck for the rest of it. Wait. Maybe THAT was the point?
Final point: I know I’m late to loving This American Life but I’m diving in head-first anyway. I love this goddamned podcast so much I find myself looking forward to days when I have meetings booked that will require me to drive for an hour or more.
Here’s a little bit from a show that popped up on my iPhone about two weeks ago, during the show where Ira Glass and the gang told 20 short stories in the 60-minute show. This was the last one. It kills me.
More later! I’m in Halifax this week but I will try to think of awesome things to write while I am there.