This weekend has been an exercise in comfort food. Last night we went to Fieramosca, just to relax after a long week. Nothing like a three-hour dinner to kick off the weekend, especially when it involves cheesecake.

It’s gotten to the point where they remember where we sat last time we were in, and to where the hostess is practically an old college buddy. I guess this is how Norm felt at Cheers.

Also: I love how, in all the times I’ve been there, I have yet to order off the menu.

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After dinner we watched This Girl’s Life (imdb | rotten tomatoes), one of those DVDs that arrives from Zip (twice; the first copy was cracked nearly in half) and I don’t remember adding it to my list. Must’ve been a recommendation from someone. Anyway, it wasn’t very good; the lead actress looks an awful lot like Angelina Jolie, which made it easy to watch, but James Woods did such a convincing job playing her Parkinson’s afflicted father…which made it hard to watch. There were little bit parts from Rosario Dawson and Michael Rapaport, but the funniest one was Kip Pardue: both Nellie and I thought he was Sean Dugan, who played homicidal minister Timmy Kirk on Oz. She was disturbed by how well he cleaned up, when our lasting memory of him was burying Luke Perry alive inside a wall. Anyhoo.

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The comfort food journey continue this afternoon after we’d picked up some food & drink at the Summerhill LCBO and All The Best, and stopped in at the Rebel House for brunch. It was a perfect day for some french toast on the patio. When he saw that Nellie had ordered a Dennison’s Weissbeer our server told us about the Press Club, a place on Dundas West that served a great Ephemere wheat beer…can’t remember if he said it was apricot or peach. Anyway, maybe we’ll check it out if we ever get down to Little Portugal.

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I’d heard some bad things about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ Show Your Bones, but after a few listens I really like it. I guess, despite whatever early press I’d heard, I’m not the only one.

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This Michelle Goldberg article in Salon about the rise of “Christian Nationalism” in the US is fascinating and frustrating. These two paragraphs were the most compelling, and alarming:

“It’s not surprising that Stern is alarmed. Reading his forty-five-year-old book ‘The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology,’ I shivered at its contemporary resonance. ‘The ideologists of the conservative revolution superimposed a vision of national redemption upon their dissatisfaction with liberal culture and with the loss of authoritative faith,’ he wrote in the introduction. ‘They posed as the true champions of nationalism, and berated the socialists for their internationalism, and the liberals for their pacifism and their indifference to national greatness.’

Fascism isn’t imminent in America. But its language and aesthetics are distressingly common among Christian nationalists. History professor Roger Griffin described the ‘mobilizing vision’ of fascist movements as ‘the national community rising Phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it’ (his italics). The Ten Commandments has become a potent symbol of this dreamed-for resurrection on the American right.”

As she said, fascism isn’t around the corner, but I worry that we might be able to hear it in the distance.

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Speaking of fascism (but the funny kind), check out this claymation video of the Emperor hearing that the Death Star had been destroyed. It’s funny if you’re even half a Star Wars geek. [via the movie blog]

[tags]fieramosca, rebel house, press club, yeah yeah yeahs, michelle goldberg, christian nationalism, death star[/tags]