Even late on a Friday night, the theatre showing Barbie (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was full. It’s become a real cultural moment, the success (both commercial and critical) of which will no doubt touch off myriad toy-based movie scripts — many of which are catalogued by the New Yorker.
Anyway, the movie itself was very good — clever in a laugh-out-loud way but also in a wow-Fox-News-is-going-to-hate-this way — and accessible for a pretty broad age range. Recommended, though be ready to have this song stuck in your head for a while:
To celebrate my forty-eighth, we booked a four-day weekend in Prince Edward County. This time Lindsay did pretty much all the planning.
Friday
After a big-ass breakfast at OK OK Diner we jumped in our car and…crawled slowly up the DVP and across the 401. We were so delayed we didn’t even have time to stop at our AirBnB, instead driving straight through Bloomfield to Flame + Smith for an early dinner. It was a big but busy spot, even at 5pm. We had:
artisan sourdough w/ whipped whey butter
a dozen oysters
a non-alc Bellwoods Jelly King for me, a cocktail for Lindsay
We took some desserts to go and drove back to find our AirBnB. It was a cute spot, like a combination of modern + farmhouse. It had a big, private, farmyard view, and a pretty decent sunset.
We woke up early but lazed about a bit before getting a start on our day, which ended up being a mistake. By the time we left it was pouring; by the time we’d driven to the outskirts of Picton, it was a monsoon. We’d hoped to get breakfast at Bailey’s, but we couldn’t line up outside in that weather. We decided to do a bit of our shopping at the Agrarian Market and pick up breakfast stuff whilst there. We got utterly drenched just getting in and out of the car, even with big umbrellas, but we managed to get home and get dry…just as the rain let up. Of course.
We ate a breakfast of bacon, eggs, sourdough toast, and raspberries before resolving to just chill. We watched some TV. We drank coffee and watched the rain. We napped, hard. A right lovely afternoon.
Eventually re rallied, showered, and walked down the road to Darling’s for dinner. We opted to sit outside, and were the only ones on a huge patio. I don’t know whether it was the relative cool (the rain had broken the heat, and it was about 20 degrees), the threat of bugs (none materialized until the very end of the night) or what, but we didn’t mind having the outside to ourselves. Inside seemed loud and frenetic. Outside it was breeze and soul music. The staff were really sweet too, and the food was excellent:
I’d never heard of New Haven style pizza before, but I’m into it.
We walked home, questioning our decision every time a car drove by too close to us, but we made it.
Sunday
After finishing off the bacon & eggs, we set to picking up the groceries for the meal Lindsay planned to cook for dinner. That meant a few stops around Bloomfield and Wellington, but we got it all, dropped it back at the AirBnB, and set out for some wineries.
I’d ordered from Morandin before, but never been there. It was a quiet, pastoral little locale, with picnic tables outside a Quonset hut. We tasted everything, leaving with six bottles.
After leaving there we drove around the corner to By Chadsey’s Cairns, a winery I hadn’t visited since my very first trip to PEC 11 years ago. It was actually the very first country winery I ever visited, and I’d been tipped off by county friend Duarte that they were likely closing up shop soon. Sure enough, when we arrived we saw they were down to only Gewurztraminer (fair enough; that’s what I was looking for anyway) so we bought a half dozen to help speed along the retirement plans. It was lovely chatting with Vida in that barn for a good long while. We left that beautiful farm, bundled our purchases into the car, and drove into Wellington.
Lindsay had booked us lunch at the Drake Devonshire, which I’d somehow never visited. We lucked into a frankly incredible table, on a covered patio looking right at the lake. It was a popular spot, rife with poses and selfies, but we managed to enjoy a perfect day and a pretty great meal nonetheless.
We needed dessert and a final dinner ingredient so we drove to Slicker’s for a pint (dinner) and a couple scoops (immediately). We arrived back at our place to enjoy the remaining afternoon sun. Eventually Lindsay cooked us a great meal, though I ruined the lamb.
tomato + grilled corn + arugula bruschetta
2021 Morandin County Chardonnay
grilled lamb shoulder chops + mint salsa + new potatoes
2020 Closson Chase South Clos Pinot Noir
peach cobbler + Slicker’s apple pie ice cream paired
I’d brought a 2019 Inniskillin Riesling Icewine to go with this, but reconsidered and we decided to just finish the Morandin chard
By this point we were tired, and the ducking in and out to the grill had let in an armada of bugs, so after a mosquito massacre we trudged upstairs to bed.
Monday
We’d originally planned to do a few more wineries on our way out of the county, but by the time we packed up and cleaned the place we just wanted to head home. I have to say, I quite like having nearly a whole afternoon back at home to recover after a trip, even a short one.
In the last couple of weeks, we watched two exceptional movies.
Tár (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a symphony of intrigue, ego, genius, patronage, and impropriety, and a masterclass by Cate Blanchett.
We saw Oppenheimer (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in theatre (!) earlier this week, and it was as good as expected. I am, of course, a hopeless devotee of Christopher Nolan, and now Lindsay might be intrigued as well. Exceptional performances all around, a story I felt silly for not knowing (the intrigue around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, specifically), Nolan’s trademark time-jumping which keeps it fun, and some humanization of a name I know only from the most massive of historical events.
We just got home from a day trip out to Stratford. The festival is on, and while we have a long weekend planned in September to see a couple plays, there was one playing earlier we decided we had to see.
First, though: some lunch. We ended up picking LOVAGE, which (a) had a lovely shaded back patio, (b) had the nicest staff ever, and (c) was delicious. You can see some samples on their instagram, and my mouth is watering just seeing some of those dishes again. We had oysters, steak tartare w/ carrot and parsley, trout w/ cucumber & dill, sugar snap peas w/ stracciatella, and potato paillasson w/ herbs & aioli, and a couple of glasses of wine each. Absolutely lovely spot — we’ll find a way to get ourselves back there in September.
The play we wanted to see was Women Of The Fur Trade, playing just down the street at the Studio theatre. Here’s the synopsis from the program:
Set in eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a reddish river in Treaty One Territory, where three very different women with a preference for 21st-century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love and the hot nerd Louis Riel. In this lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance, playwright Frances Koncan shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.
It was funny and powerful and silly and I’m really glad we saw it.
Fourteen years ago at TIFF I saw a movie called Leslie, My Name Is Evil (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a heavily-stylized story about Leslie Van Houten, one of the Manson Family cult murderers. In writing this I just noticed that at some point the title of the film had been changed to Manson, My Name Is Evil? Anyway, I’d kind of forgotten about the film since then, until earlier this week when I read that Van Houten had been released from prison after 53 years.
Weird timing for this much Manson-esque news, as we’d also just watched the “Under The Sea” episode of the latest season of Black Mirror, in which a cult presumably patterned after the Manson Family plays a central role. Another funny coincidence: Tiio Horn is in Leslie/Manson, My Name Is Evil, and also in The Trotsky, which we just randomly happened to watch with a friend on Thursday night.
That latest season of Black Mirror, by the way, was mostly excellent, especially the one featuring Podrick Payne.
I ended up flying into Moncton and visiting my family for a couple days this weekend. As I write this, I’m sitting in the Moncton airport, ready to fly home. A few observations from the weekend:
Driving on roads and highways this (relatively) empty is a genuine treat compared to the bumper-to-bumper bullshit on various Toronto highways.
I arrived just in time for heat warnings, and to remember that my parents’ farmhouse has no air conditioning. When I arrived we had to open every window to maximize breeze, and turn on several fans. That said, it does cool down a lot at night…the next morning the furnace actually kicked on around 5am because the house had become so chilly.
In addition to the armada of hummingbirds always found outside my mom’s kitchen window, a new birdfeeder camera has yielded some fun finds: jays, finches, blackbirds, and so on. Also: mice, squirrels, and the odd raccoon. We also saw a bald eagle circling overhead yesterday
Crokinole is as fun as I remember. Especially when I beat my dad.
It’s been a long time since I had a Tatamagouche BrewingJitney sour, and damn was it good. Brothers 1 and 2, S-I-L 2, and I had a quite drink outside (but safe from flies) last night, when the weather was perfect and the stars were out.
I haven’t been writing them up, but it’s occurring to me now how filled with visitors the house & backyard have been since we got home from Ottawa. A full-week visit from N+J. Another full-week visit from the sister-in-law, and a chance to meet her business partner. A full-Sunday throwdown with six friends & a lot of meat a while back. Visits from V and her new gorgeous doggo Xena, including last night when we watched Idiocracy (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a movie I’ve been meaning to watch forever, but which hasn’t aged super-well.
It really is such a luxury & privilege to have that space, postage-stamp-sized as it is. Now we just need to have it tended to.
It’s actually crazy how much good TV is available. We can barely get through it before excellent shit surfaces. We finished Succession (obviously), Yellowjackets S2, all three seasons of Mythic Quest, what is possibly/probably the last season of Ted Lasso, both seasons of Single Drunk Female, and Love and Death.
I’m still watching Borgen S3 and Silo S1, and as I type this we’re spending a rainy Saturday bingeing Lucky Hank.
While we were on vacation in NS I finished a book: Heat 2 (amazon). Non an imaginative title, but certainly a book I was excited about, given how much I loved Heat (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It split into two time periods, a la Godfather 2: both an early/origin story for Neil, and the immediate aftermath, and some years following, of the lone surviving character(s) from Heat. I can’t say it was a great work of fiction, but goddamn if it wasn’t satisfying to revisit that world.
I’m also pretty psyched at the rumours they’re already thinking about the movie. Adam Driver as a young Neil McCauley? Stop it. Stop it right now.
We spent this past weekend in Ottawa for Lindsay’s brother Patrick’s graduation. We just got home.
Thursday night we had our friends Shannon & Dallas over to our backyard and enjoyed a lovely time which included a bit too much wine, given we had to drive to Ottawa the next day. Things got squiffy, but we made it.
On Friday we drove (slowly) out of the city and up the 401. We met at Patrick’s place where his family was waiting and had drinks and a big, late feast from Sula Wok. Things got scary, but we made it.
On Saturday we had brunch around the corner from our AirBnB at Working Title, then walked through Strathcona Park and down the Rideau River and back to Patrick’s place and hung out in his backyard. We went back to the AirBnB for a quick rest (and I did a short walk over to where my aunt used to live) before going out to dinner at Aroma Meze, which was quite delicious. We came back to ours for drinks; things got spicy, but we made it.
On Sunday half the fam went to Patrick’s graduation while Lindsay and I had a quiet morning drinking coffee from the Happy Goat around the corner. We ubered over to The Glebe to meet everyone for lunch at Irene’s. Afterward, we washed down lunch with a magic from Little Victories and then hit an outdoor art show called The New Art Festival. Not long into walking around I realized where we were — at the very end of Patterson’s Creek, a park that had been very special to me when I lived in Ottawa with brother #1.
Lindsay and I bought pieces from Sayward Johnson and Lauren Blakey before four of us headed back to our place to decompress a bit. We scooted over to Patrick’s for dinner where we drank our remaining wine and ordered from Pizza Nerds and listened to his new music, before totally running out of steam at the end of a long weekend. Things got somnolent, but we made it.
On Monday there was nothing left to do but get up, pack, leave the AirBnB, drop Lindsay’s parents at the airport, and make the long drive home through some truly horrific rain. Things got slow. Things got soaked.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 