You can ride, but you can't hide

Is it "adult" to reward yourself with ice cream? Image AI-generated after Wayne Thiebaud.

I’m ashamed to admit something, maybe even more than ashamed. If there is some ladder or pyramid of shame to climb then I would be up there at the very top of the shame chart (or bottom? I’m unsure of how a shame chart would work). I just did my 2023 taxes. It’s a relief. I was sure this year I would owe money rather than get a refund, so really I should not have put it off as the penalty for such a late filing would’ve made it that much worse. In the end, though, my rebate was actually a bit more than I’ve received in recent years. Not doing my taxes in a timely manner always makes me feel like an idiot, or more correctly, a juvenile idiot. It feels like a sign of maturity to just do this task of adulthood on time.

Once I’d finally done it, I celebrated in the most childish way imaginable: by raising my hands above my head, running around the house like a naked infant declaring I am now going to have ice cream! Chocolate peanut butter, if you care to know.

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Seen in August

The gentleman of the Ministry.

I feel as though there should have been more than one summer blockbuster on this month's list, yet there is the modern theatre goer's dilemma (also the theatre owner's dilemma) - why go out, when you can stay in? In Toronto, I can say that your reasons for not going out are plenty, as are your reasons to stay in (the increasingly poor service of the TTC, the increasing cost of film going, the weird hours of showtimes, the dearth of content available, the breadth of content available to stream, etc.). Here it is, with only one film seen in a theatre.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Prime Video
A fantastical retelling of one of the early missions of the British Special Forces and the men (and women) who combined spy craft, intelligence gathering and strategic guerrilla-style strikes that circumvented typical wartime tactics. As this is a Guy Ritchie film, it is full of his typical male "badassery" that leans toward the hyper-masculine. Characters based on real people are given the full Hollywood treatment here with actors such as Henry Cavill (the actor who played Superman and The Witcher) and Alan Ritchson (the mountain who plays Reacher in the Amazon series). These chaps, as charming as they may be, are equipped with the kind of biceps you only get from spending time with a trainer, for hours at a time, not from hanging about in the arena of war. That said, no one is here for a PBS docu-series about the SAS so sit back and enjoy watching bad guys put in their place.

The slightly more gentlemanly SAS officers.

SAS Rogue Heroes
Prime Video
A limited dramatic series on the creation of the British Special Air Service that at times seems far fetched but we are assured the more unlikely the event may seem, the more likely it is to be true. The common thread throughout is that the Nazis weren't fighting "by the rules" so why should anyone else and that the SAS was created to counter Nazi efforts, particularly in North Africa. The rogues that make up the initial service are played by accomplished British actors who revel in the rebellion of these British soldiers, and the fairly long leash they had been given. There is one scene, repeated in this series that was also depicted in Guy Ritchie's The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare wherein an SAS officer opens fire in a mess hall of unarmed, unsuspecting German pilots that looks awesome in a movie trailer, but if true may have been a war crime (killing unarmed combatants rather than taking them prisoner). The nervousness of the accompanying Brits gives the scene that complicated examining eye that is missing in Ritchie's film. The series is highly entertaining though, which is why you shouldn't consider it your history lesson on the battles of the war in North Africa.

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Someone stole my art and I don’t know how to feel

Here is a weird thing that happened. One night, a close friend who I've known since I was 13 and lives in the UK, sent me a message -
"Hey, didn't you do a painting in high school called 'My Sweet Old Et Cetera?'"
Yes, yes I did.
What made him ask about a painting I did almost 40 years ago?

He sent me a link to an auction site of a company in St. John's. It turns out his brother, who lives in St. John's, often forages estate sales looking for interesting things and saw my name on two items. A painting and a drawing, both by me, created in high school, now in a lot that included pieces by renowned Newfoundland artists such as Scott Goudie, Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt and David Blackwood. The last time I had been home, I looked at them, was embarrassed by them, and asked my brother to dispose of them. Bundled in a box along with other items, my brother threw them in a dumpster, that was locked to prevent illegal dumping.

It turns someone (most likely an employee from the waste management company) had retrieved them and brought them to be sold at auction. I received none of the proceeds, but it definitely stirred up some odd feelings. Outrage? A little bit. Pride? An even smaller bit. Embarrassment. Definitely. Mostly it made me confused as to how it happened at all or even how I feel about a stranger paying a few bucks to have my work in their home.

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Good Enough

Do exercise you like to do, do it often and if possible, do it with friends, like these chaps at a Washington, D.C. YMCA, circa 1920. 

“I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
— Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley

A key consideration when exercising is to ask yourself why you are doing it in the first place. Do I do it to look good or feel good? Do I do it so that people like me? Hell no, I do it so I like me. I really don’t worry anymore if other people like me but I do worry about me liking me. I’m my own worst critic after all. Years ago I realized no matter how fit I got I would never have that cut physique so in fashion amongst the Hollywood elite or gym bros. I used to think “I just want to look good naked.” But I also realized how rarely anyone sees me naked. Nowadays I’ll settle to look good fully clothed, but maybe I should just buy clothes that fit.

My true reasons to exercise may be hidden in my lizard brain, and vanity is part of it. Mostly though it’s to stave off the side effects of aging. The worst side effect of aging is of course, dying. Less final side effects include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, immobility and looking terrible in a snug t-shirt (again, a reminder to buy clothing that fit).

Recently, after a bout of inactivity, due in part to travel and laziness, my back seized up. Having back pain, if you are unfamiliar, can be debilitating. You can’t move freely (or at all) and the pain can cause numbness in your limbs if a nerve is pinched or constricted. It can lead to numerous headaches and other aches (hips, knees etc) and most annoyingly, grouchiness and despising people who just flaunt their ability to walk on a balance beam or even down the sidewalk. I can’t recommend any quick fixes to back pain (osteopaths, chiropractors, massage etc.) but I do know a slow and gradual fix. Apply heat, apply cold, massage, stretch and strengthen, which I’ve done solidly for a couple of weeks and I’m finally recovering, by which I mean I can stand up without looking like I’m trying to pass as an 80-year-old.

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Seen in July

Just two nice kids but only one is a horse, in My Lady Jane

Sometimes I realize that I subscribe to too many services, but occasionally there is a month when I actually do use every one of those services, which is sad when you find that there is no one service that gives you what you want. I can only hope you don't have this problem.

My Lady Jane
Prime
Sometimes history sucks, especially for women in the 16th century. Lady Jane Grey should never have died. It just wasn't fair. She was executed for high treason at the age of 17 for accepting the crown she never wanted. Yet what if it didn't have to be that way? What if magic existed and you could use great pop and rock music in a show set 500 years ago? Also, this fictional period comedy is a lot of fun and you should watch it.



Michael Fassbender in The Killer

The Killer
Netflix
David Fincher explores a weirdly common theme here. An assassin (Michael Fassbender) slips up, which brings consequences to his home life, and initiates a revenge plot similar to John Wick et al. My only criticism of this plot is that the killer is introduced as precise, patient and calculating, yet makes a dumb mistake, and then launches into a well-planned and executed escape route. When he realizes that someone has come and invaded his super secret hideaway (apparently not so super secret), he puts in motion a series of acts of revenge to ensure it doesn't happen again. If he was as clever as we're told, how did it happen in the first place? Never mind the details of the minimal plot. It is as Hitchcock said a "MacGuffin", a detail necessary for the story to move forward but irrelevant to the story. For some, they may find the patient pace of this stylish film too slow, but for me, it reinforced exactly what our protagonist tells us at the beginning, "If you are unable to endure boredom, this work is not for you.", likewise, this may not be the film for you. In the end, this film owes more to Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai than to John Wick or A History of Violence (though it does share that the story originated as a comic book). Also notable is the use of the music of The Smiths as the primary music of the film (I'm assuming Fincher is a Smiths fan).



The charming Time Bandits

Time Bandits
Criterion Channel
Best described by a reviewer, as having a "creaky charm". It's now a series on Apple TV+, this 1981 film from Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam is one of my favourites though rewatching it was hard to say why. Funny lines? Yes. Funny performances? Definitely. Yet, maybe it is the "creaky charm" of the simple effects and uneven story plus the appearances of Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson as the besuited "Supreme Being" that stick in my memory.
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Walk like a dog 

Walk like dog, if you wish.

We've all done it. We all have it. We all have a song that despite knowing the lyrics, we still hear them incorrectly, usually to humorous effect. The Bruce Springsteen song, Blinded by the Light, in its original version has the curious lyric, "cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night." The "deuce" refers to a nickname for original V8 engines or something. Even in that explanation, I wouldn't have understood it. Now listen to the Manfred Mann version, wherein an English vocalist evoking an American accent sings something that sounds more like "revved up like a douche" and you have added confusion. The fact that this version was played constantly on the radio of my youth only made my brothers and I even more confounded by it. The more you heard it, the more it confirmed your suspicion of it. More commonly, listeners to Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, often wondered if the singer was excusing themselves to either "Kiss this guy" or "Kiss the sky"? A friend of my brother's was sure the chorus the 1981 Kim Carnes' hit "Bette Davis Eyes", came through our fuzzy dashboard speakers as "She's got thirty days inside", instead of "She's got Bette Davis eyes." To be honest, the misheard lyrics sound as improbable as the actual ones. There are dozens and dozens of other examples.

In 1954, writer Sylvia Wright gave this phenomenon the name, “mondegreen”. As a child she claimed to have misheard a line of poetry as:
"Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen."

The actual verse is, "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / And laid him on the green." Thus "Mondegreen" was, if not created there and then, at least given a name.
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