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Arrival
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1292
Well reviewed, I take the daughter. It's good. Thoughtful. Well executed. Sci-Fi but not overburdened or overshadowed by special effects, and I like the fact that it has a strong female lead, a scientist...
The daughter, well, she doesn't like it so much. So it goes, you do what you can, but some of the seeds are lost...
Bespoke
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2659
The nephew wants to go out...
This is the beginning of every bad night out in the world. Tonight, Bespoke, a new (ish) club down on tenth ave...he has friends, they know the owners, they'll get us in.
There's a line up, long, a thirty-something crowd, girls in club dress, inadequate to the weather, it's -20 outside, any wait in this is too long, but the nephew pulls me in from a side door...
Inside, a wide variety of fit and attractive partiers in their mid 30's, all fashionably dressed, the dance floor is full...there are leather booths above it where the VIP's have little encampments, buckets of Corona on ice, Grey Goose, their own private waitresses to serve them...it's amazing, I haven't been to a regular club for quite some time, this place, it's impressive, and watching the money change hands in the leather booths, hundreds of dollars at a time, look at the very mixed ethnicity of the crowd and you realize it's a bit of a UN for drug dealers, I didn't know Calgary had this many but there's no explaining - legitimate explaining - the flow of money over the bar, through the booths...
It's one of those places that John Wick would have a field day in, just by being here you're pretty much guilty of something...
We grab a couple of drinks, cigarettes, pop outside, the nephew, he's already drunk and talkative, we speak with a couple of Bangladeshi men with English accents, well dressed, ties, they like us, invite us back to their booth, we go along, it's all marvelous, they pay, hundreds of dollars, buckets of Corona, bottles of Grey Goose, then leave us to wander off on their own errands...
...the Nephew, expansively waving his arms, "Happy Birthday, buddy...you want to go to Nelson? Lassie come home! What have you got in Nelson? A laptop full of porn, a box of masks...." then sets to work on the bar, drinking 3 beer at a time, trying to finish the liquor before the waitress takes it all away, last call, he's on a mission for sure, it's terrific, but I'll never afford this, even if I could just keep up with this conspicuous excess it would kill me...
Poesía Sin Fin (Endless Poetry) - Alejandro Jodorowsky
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1635
Because I've seen almost everything he's made, and I want to see more, and I'll believe it to be genius until I realize otherwise...
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A bad film by Jodorowsky is still, by a long shot, better than any great film by Hollywood.
In a dead man's house...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2448
It's a bit surreal, this, after a few nights couch surfing to end up here.
The owner's girlfriend, her father just died...74...unexpected, out of the blue, last week...the house, it's unoccupied, in the NE corner of the city, last 'burb before Stoney Trail, a bad hood filled with the tiny boxes that would forever inspire one against home ownership...
It's bleak. The fridge is full, packed with foods that will never be eaten. He wasn't expecting it either. A lunchbox, packed for the no-tomorrow. A bologna sandwich that slowly turns green over my extended weeks. The basement, he was a proper doomsday prepper, there are stacks of toilet paper, canned goods, potato chips, every imaginable supply to get you comfortably through the first months after a nuclear holocaust. Think "Cloverfield Lane". And there's the liquor, fully stocked as well, multiple bottles of all the bar standards, Vodka, Gin, Rum, Dark Rum...other, stranger liquors, "You'd be doing me a favour..." she tells me, "watching the house and all, and seeing that the walks are shoveled and it looks lived in...",... "Never mind I'll take it" I tell her.
There's no internet here, and I've recourse only to the liquor in the basement and the few books I've packed along and a few more I find along the way...
Not that there's that much time. I'm mostly at work, 12 hours a day, it's not worth the returning home between shifts, traffic, the 20 KM drive, better to stay at work, really, it's just a place to sleep.
But I need more than that. 5 weeks here, staring down the kittens and the merry monks, it's making me mad...
There are cabinets filled with the knick-knacks and collectibles of yesteryear...
Every bathroom is filled with crocheted cozies, to hide the toilet paper, to catch the splashes from the sink, the shower, every bathroom is a living bacteriological mat...
The indecency of toilet paper, discreetly concealed beneath a fashionable red crocheted top hat...
I know, my grandparents had their place similarly done, it was an era, for sure, the make-work and home-improvements done by the dutiful housewife...
There are the innumerable stuffed animals, the kind you won at fairs a long time ago, stuffed with sawdust, and there are the trophies (bowling, other), old family photos, there are the "collector plates" painted with kittens and statues of princesses and kittens all mounted upon the shelves and ledges...
...and even a rather competent oil pastel of a kitten in the bedroom...
I hate it, but I have to grudgingly admit the artist clearly knew their kittens.
The house, it's haunted, finish you're 12 hour shift, come home, avoid touching anything, doing anything, sit at the little encampment you've set up at the kitchen table and drink. Make your notes as you descend even further into the underworld. Read, if you've postponed the drinking, your book, because there's no internet here, no diversion from intelligent thought, realize how far you've fallen, the internet, the sum of all knowledge in - at best - 10 page paragraphs,, it's a different sort of knowledge, knowledge of many superficial things, mostly regarding science and politics, but nothing of depth...
...and without it's distraction, with only the book in front of me and the percolating recollections of notes I used to write, things that used to interest me, and it slowly dawns that I'm becoming shallow...
And it's haunted. When I moved in I closed all the doors to the rooms I would not be entering, the closet door in the master bedroom, did not want to be responsible for cleaning when I left. But a few mornings, a few shifts when I return home from work, the closet door is slid wide open, there's no explanation, there's nothing in there that I need, it doesn't open without considerable force, have to pull it, remount it on it's hinge, before I can coax it into opening, nothing in here at all, the dead man's clothes, but I go to bed it's closed, wake up and it's open, and this is curious.
5, almost 6 weeks. More than I can stand. Not my house, I throw away the food that's obviously turning in the fridge, clean up after myself, time to go. This is madness.
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