Something else we’ve been watching a lot of (in addition to all those movies) is Breaking Bad. We’d watched the first season some time ago, but then took a long break before blazing through seasons 2, 3 and 4 in the last couple of months. It really is, with the possible exception of Mad Men, the best show on TV right now. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul deserve the hell out of their Emmys. Don’t make the same mistake I did by ignoring it for years. Go. Watch.
"I'm gonna peace you in the side of the fuckin' head if you don't give us the dog."
After having been negligent in the movie-watching department for the last several months, we’ve been on a tear the past week:
- The Lincoln Lawyer wasn’t quite as rubbish as the preview suggested, but it wasn’t anything to write home about either. Strong supporting cast though.
- Red State was disappointing. It just never seemed to get anywhere with what it was trying to say, despite having scads of material to work with given its Sex/Religion/Politics themes. A miss for Kevin Smith.
- Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol was surprisingly impressive. From the second it began it never let up with all the action, gadgetry and crazy ass stunts you’d imagine. See it in IMAX if you have the option. Paula Patton: new girlfriend du jour. Oh, and a six-minute Batman preview!
- The American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was excellent. David Fincher made the story even darker, Trent Reznor’s score was all technology and foreboding, Daniel Craig played Blomqvist more like a real reporter and (ironically) less like James Bond, and Rooney Mara might have even been a better Lisbeth Salander than Noomi Rapace. Definitely worth seeing.
- The Debt was one we hadn’t heard much about but decided to see based on the cast. Not mind-blowing, but a solid enough movie about spycraft and revenge.
- Your Highness was one of the shittiest movies I’ve seen in yonks. What in the blazing Hibernian Jesus has happened to David Gordon Green?!?
- Last Night (surely the most common movie title ever) was something Nellie watched and I kind of paid attention to for all the Keira Knightley. It didn’t seem terrible, but I’ve already forgotten pretty much the whole movie except how great it (the cast, the shots, New York) looked.
- If you’ve seen the preview for Our Idiot Brother you’ve seen most of the funniest parts, but it was still amusing enough. Paul Rudd’s Paul Rudd, and the supporting cast is good, but it choked a little on its own adorableness. Interesting trivia: director Jesse Peretz was the original bass player for The Lemonheads. OK, well, interesting to me anyway.
"I promise to wave from apogee."
It’s official: my buddy Joe is GOING TO FREAKING SPACE!!!!!
An artistic composition
A couple of years ago, on our first visit to the Niagara wine region, we added ourselves to the mailing list at what would eventually become one of our favourite wineries — Thirty Bench. What we didn’t know is that doing so would add us to the mailing list of something called the Small Winemakers Collection. I ignored the emails they sent at first, because we were really still learning about wine.
Of course, we’re still learning, but now know our favourites well enough that we’re interested in branching out to what we may not have tried yet. And so, a couple of weeks ago Nellie and I finally took them up on one of their offers. They held a tasting at their offices featuring 14 producers from around the world, and we signed ourselves up.
We got there a little early, so the place was quite empty at first, but soon filled to bursting. We made our way around the tables ahead of the bulk of the crowd, sampling Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and finally Shiraz from multiple countries. Around the time that we hit the Shiraz, a gentleman stepped up to us and said, “Here, try my wine.” He introduced himself as Norm Doole, co-owner of Dowie Doole winery in Australia’s McLaren Vale region. We chatted about what took him to McLaren Vale (he’s from Canada), about our recent adventures in Australia, and so on. As it turns out, his Shiraz might have been the best wine we tried all night, so we ordered a case (and a case of Appleby Lane Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand) and set out to find some dinner.
As it turns out, the tasting took place a stone’s throw from Ruby WatchCo, which we’ve been meaning to try for ages. We walked in sans reservations; sadly they had no free table, but did offer us space at the bar — rapidly becoming our preferred perch anyway. The fun of Ruby WatchCo is that you don’t have much choice about the menu…they set out a prix fixe each week and you eat what they give you. What I noticed right away is that they had a great selection of Ontario wine, and by the glass to boot, so we started there. The starter was a HUGE shared salad with shredded duck; the main was a large plate of slow-roasted lamb (Nellie’s comment: “It tastes…cute!”) that almost made me weep. I don’t exactly remember dessert. I do remember a large portion of cheese showing up, which we nibbled at but mostly took home. I also remember meeting and chatting with the couple sitting next to us at the bar; apparently it’s easier for introverts to make friends while drinking wine and breaking bread on bar stools. I should have started at age 12.
Anyway, that started me/us on a streak of trying new places for the next week or so. Last Wednesday I had a work dinner at Opus in Yorkville, a place I’d walked past (and hung out near) for years but not tried. I’m not entirely sure I’d go back without it being on a vendor’s dime either…the food was excellent and the service impeccable, but the wine list was both prodigious and pricey, and I’m not sure I could go back without ordering a bottle at least as good as the two 2007 Cakebread Cab Sauvs we cracked that night. Lots of old Forest Hill money at that place, so I felt a tidge out of place, but the staff wasn’t at all uppity, which made it nice. Anyway, good ‘event’ spot to keep in mind.
Then, on Friday, we decided to visit the reincarnation of an old friend. Smokeless Joe had been one of our favourite beer joints for years, but it closed back in June and moved up to College street, and we weren’t sure how this new version would stack up to the original. The physical space is certainly different — above ground, room to move, no optical-illusion-sloped-wall-with-marble — but some of the staff have made the move, the tap list has grown significantly (about 16, I think — I had a Black Oak Nutcracker, a Unibroue Maudite and a Hockley Valley Dark) and a lot of the food is the same. Even if I never order the peanut soup, I like to smell it while sitting at the bar. And yes, we sat at the bar again, just like we did at old Joe’s; there we met a guy named Owen who was clearly a regular and knew our friend Kaylea (who we met whilst tending the Joe bar) and with whom I have more than a few Twitter friends in common. Small world. Anyway, we don’t get up to College much, but at least if we do we know there’s a place where we can get a decent pint.
Oh yeah: last night we hung out with CBGB and took them their wine (we split our Small Winemakers’ haul with them) and ordered Thai from a place we’ve never tried before, but I don’t think that counts.
"Silence is so accurate."
Thirteen years ago, when Nellie and I moved into our first Toronto apartment together, we needed some art to stick on the walls. We did what a lot of people do when they’re only a year out of university and don’t have much money: they buy prints from a generic art store. We perused the offerings at Alternative Arts, near the University of Toronto campus, and I became particularly enamored with one print by a gentleman named Mark Rothko. I knew nothing about art and so didn’t recognize his name, but I loved the simplicity and starkness and richness of the image. We walked out with it.
I learned a little more about Rothko later, about his importance in the mid-20th-century abstract expressionist movement. Over the next several years I’d make a point of seeing his work in museums like MoMA, the Guggenheim and The Met in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and most especially at the Tate Modern during my visit to London in 2002. The series of “Seagram Murals” on display there, in a very dark room, moved me more than any other paintings I’d seen before or have seen since. I spent a long time sitting on a bench, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, feeling choked up by paintings. Rothko’s earlier, brighter paintings don’t really do much for me, but I’m intensely drawn to his later, darker works.
So, when I heard a play had been made about Rothko — specifically about the period during which he was painting the Seagram murals — and that, after winning several Tony awards last year it was coming to Toronto, I jumped at the chance to buy tickets for Nellie, myself and our friends CBJ+M, to see it last night.
It would be silly for me to try to say much about the play beyond that it was fantastic, that Jim Mezon was incredible as Rothko and that it left me with a whole new dread and appreciation for those paintings which became increasingly dark, even black, as Rothko’s suicide loomed. The play was interesting, animated, physical, philosophical, enlightening and magnifying. I believe there are still tickets left for the Toronto run; I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
We still have that first print, by the way. All of our other cheap starter art has been given to goodwill and replaced with more original work, but I could just never part with the Rothko. I still walk past it every morning on my way out the door, and every night when I get home. But this morning, twelve hours after seeing the play, it seemed to have new life. Or I do. I’m not sure.
How to clear out a room after a pefectly good meal
Last night we had friends over for dinner, mainly to celebrate CB’s birthday, but also just to get caught up and have a few laughs. We covered a trajillion topics, as is our custom, and ate a great meal courtesy of Nellie:
.:.
Benjamin Bridge Nova 7
.:.
Charcuterie (Niagara prosciutto, salami, hot csabai)
Cheese
Olives
Hidden Bench 2008 Terroir Cache Meritage
Hidden Bench 2009 Nuit Blanche
.:.
Roasted red pepper, fennel, garlic and corn with grilled scallops on arugula
Stratus White 2006
Stratus White 2007
.:.
Apple cider beef short ribs
Garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed greens and roasted beets
Southbrook 2008 Triomphe Cabernet Sauvignon
Southbrook 2009 Triomphe Syrah
Marietta Old Vines Lot 56
.:.
Hazelnut birthday cake
Veuve Clicquot champagne
.:.
Dessert and champagne were courtesy of GB, but everything else was prepared by Nellie, and nearly everything was from Ontario.
The evening ended on a high note. And by high note, I mean it got hilariously inappropriate.
Huntsman
Saturday: dinner at Capocaccia with friends from university. Then Primitivo, softball-sized burrata, brown butter agnalotti, Amarone. Then back to the lair. Then Merlot, Zinfandel. Then something…um, French? Then impromptu cleaning. Then a note that said Sale al Truffulo. Then Lagavulin and (je pense) Dalwhinnie. Then a cab.
Sunday: ouch. Then McDonald’s. Then season 2 of Breaking Bad.
Not elegant. But effective.
"The last chance for progressive politics for an awfully long time"
“It is time to stop listening to the voices who plead for calm moderation and for a cotton-candy centrism that melts at the first sign of resistance. It is time for politicians on the other side to be as fervent in their calls for economic justice as Newt Gingrich is in his calls for kiddie janitors and adolescent wage-slavery. It is time for someone — anyone — to step to a very big microphone and say that the problem with Americans is not that they are lazy, or coddled, or anesthetized by 70 years of the welfare state, or morally unmoored (Thanks, David Brooks!), but that the problem with Americans is that a bunch of expensive suits stole all their money, looted their pensions, made a mockery of their hard work, and labored for decades to develop dozens of ways to swindle them, all the while fashioning a politics that told them that the ultimate freedom was the freedom to have your pockets picked.”
Charles P. Pierce, on esquire.com
"Arrogance is not a uniquely American trait, but you do it better than most."
Given the 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the fact that it’s a Marvel comic put to film, I would have thought that I’d enjoy Captain America (imdb | rotten tomatoes) more than I did. It was fine, I guess, but not one of the better movies leading up to The Avengers. True, the special effects were pretty incredible (especially how they imposed Chris Evans’ face on some little guy’s body) but the rest seemed hokey, like they were going for the 40s WWII propaganda film feel throughout. Disappointing.
Street Fight
What was this email in our inboxes? An event at a brewery? More to the point, a four-course meal? With both beer and wine pairings? Crowds of other people who also like both beer and wine? Bien sûr!
It was like someone custom-made this event for Nellie and I. We bought tickets as soon as we heard about it, and on Thursday rushed down to the Distillery District to enjoy the festivities. This was the second competition (well, third really, but the first wasn’t publicized) between the Mill Street Brewery and 13th Street Winery (hence the name of the event: “Street Fight”) wherein the beer and wine would be evaluated on how well they paired with each course by a panel of judges (officially) and the 60-odd participants (unofficially). Let the games begin!
The staff brought around several sample-sized glasses of beer and wine before the meal even got started. Eventually the appetizers arrived — artichoke and oka cheese fritters with tarragon aioli…tasty! By this time the tables were starting to fill in. Most people were attending in large groups, including the group of four to our right (who we talked to about good places in Ottawa, like the soon-to-be-open Mill St. Brewery, and Les Brasseurs du Temps across the river in Hull), and the group to our left who all work at Opera Bob’s, a pub on the west side of Toronto, and who entertained us for the entire evening. For example, there was a particularly humorous tale about a beautiful Indian lady and some snowballs. Et cetera.
Then the meal really kicked into gear. The first course was two huge chunks of wild boar sausage, paired with a Franconian Bock. And paired beautifully, I might add. By the time I finished mine (and a good part of Nellie’s) I was pretty much stuffed. Then came the main — a huge piece of duck with butternut squash risotto on the side, paired with a Gamay. I’m not the biggest Gamay fan, really, so while I quite liked the duck, I didn’t love the pairing.
I was stuffed, but there was a cheese course to eat. Three cheeses, one of which worked well with the wine (a Merlot; eep!) and two of which went better with the beer (an IPA). So…whew! Great. I’d managed to eat it all, despite being so super-full. All in all a very good meal, so have a good night everyone, and we’ll see you all next t…what’s that? What did you say? More? Seriously? There’s more?!? As in, more food? MORE food?!?
Yep. More food. Very well then. A soldier does his duty. It was an apple & rhubarb crisp and was actually quite good. The wine it was matched with (somewhere between a late harvest and an ice wine) was good, but the vanilla porter was excellent.
So…in the end, we both thought the beer got the better of the wine on the night. The judges, of course, ruled it a draw, but all the opinions I heard around the room leaned toward beer as victor. 13th Street does have some very good wine, but I’m not sure we saw the best of it in this competition. I look forward to them coming out swinging in the next match.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 