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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