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NY Eve 2023
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 581
This was the event of the year.
I mean, there are others, but in the summer, for the winter there's nothing that comes close.
The boy, he's brought his girlfriend down from Calgary for this, NY in Nelson, so it's important to get the party right.
The boy, doing well, wearing an admirable offensive shirt (I admire it, apparently one of mine...) and a fine vintage leather coat (as well, as it turns out, one of mine), a great watch (....you knew it was mine)...
Anyways, split up for the day, I got to rest up, clean up the apartment, it's going to be a big night. We meet up, he's done the conventional NY at a popular nightclub, now on to the private party, the "Event", I'd told him he didn't need the nightclub, comparatively a conservative crowd, but he'd wanted to hit all the bases...
Anyways, the Party, a private event, kept on the down-low, a large space booked for the party, perhaps 300 people in attendance. The theme was kink/sexy, and while I just go with "well dressed" a surprising number of young ladies brought out the old leather body harnesses...and I gotta say, there's probably more leashes here than at the Calgary SPCA....
Standing beside someone, a short couple, proper wood trolls, and then I recognize her, she's one of my "Facebook Friends" whom I add when I get drunk and recognize 3 friends in common. While Facebook friends - for the most part - don't even count as acquaintances, but this, seeing her in real life...well, never mind, I rarely run into these people in real life...
The boy, his girlfriend, they're impressed, this town parties well above it's weight, the music's good and better, everyone is friendly, there's the poly couples out searching for the third wheel, one girl showing me her "purse" filled with fucking dinosaurs, stacked 3 deep, yes, very cute, clever, I'm not a dinosaur, this Poly thing, I mean, if you don't want to fuck your girlfriend what makes you think I want to...
I make it until 3:00, the boy and his girlfriend hang on, but really, enough is enough, it's the best NY Eve Party in Town, probably for 1000 Miles, but I have to be somewhat recombobulated for the morning...
And so passes NY Eve 2023.
2024, still no snow on the ground, more than half the province under severe drought, 2024 is going to be a hell of a year...
Us VS Them
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 407
This I've noticed as of late - the Film School of US VS THEM, films and series populated with non-sympathetic characters, like "reality" TV we're provided insights into despicable people, or people that we can recognize as others - but with whom there can be no sympathy. It's voyeuristic, divisive, think "Triangle of Sadness" or "Infinity Pool", there's nothing approaching a protagonist, no one to root for, the abstractions of class, plot, are not enough.
Anyways, just something I'd noted in the last few movies I've watched. Film - and narrative - is better served when you've somebody to root for.
The Castle of Crossed Destinies - Italo Calvino
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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A slender book in which our protagonist/author arrives at Castle/Tavern and finds that both he and the other guests are mute. Thus, after dinner, they all tell their stories with a pack of Tarot Cards, the narrator interprets as each guest selects a card and begins to tell their tale...
...Until at last all their fates and destinies are intertwined, and all of the cards spread out upon the table, and the interpretation, the reading, the symbolism of each unique to the narrator, to the position - above, below, left, right, preceding or following, only by choosing the correct entry point you can find where every story begins, ends, where the cards have been arranged to tell those bits of the stories of MacBeth & Hamlet, and onward and so forth, until the Author/Narrator chooses to tell his own story...
Now, an interesting premise which I've considered (not exactly), and recalled reading that Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" was actually based upon a deck of Tarot Cards, and - while on my first reading I did not get this, not at all, maybe with this foreknowledge I'll try it again...
On that note, for a while I was doing a fair bit of reading on the topic, the cards, they are an inspiration, and so maybe it's time to pick them up again...
Heinrich Von Kleist - The Marquise of O- and other stories
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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After the unforgiveable introduction by Nigel Reeves & David Luke, whose analysis seems to consist largely of giving away the plot and outcome of every story....
...it proved not bad. Somewhat modern, or approaching, a perfectly good book of short stories very much of the Period, my favorite of which was undoubtedly Michael Kohlhass, a disgruntled horse trader much abused by the law who is forced to take matters in his own hands to seek justice, rounds up a posse of grooms and peasants and leads a seige upon Wittenberg.
How sympathetic - and modern the character is, in his outlawery, in how as he grows in strength he grows in Madness, the theme of an honest man vs the unjust state, how thoroughly modern he is when again he sees the Gypsy who gave him the talisman that would save his life, thoroughly pragmatic when he says to her (essentially) "Why Me?" in response to the incredible events that have befallen him.
So, a relatively thick book, now on to a relatively thin one - Italo Calvinos' "The Castle of Crossed Destinies".
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