Let’s get right into 2024 with something familiar, and yet…not!
Rodion Shchedrin is a Soviet/Russian composer, born in 1932. He is still alive as of this writing, and he has apparently been a very productive and prolific composer over his lifetime. The work on tap today is a ballet he composed for his ballerina wife, Maya Plisetskaya, who died in 2015. The ballet is actually a re-imagining of Carmen, using melodies from the Bizet opera–but Shchedrin had put his own enormously creative stamp on these melodies that nearly everybody has heard, as he composes for string orchestra and percussion. It’s a fascinating listen, bringing something new and fresh to material that sometimes fails to be either of those things, so familiar has it all become.
In terms of content creation, I have motored right along on this site, after migrating from BlogSpot almost a year-and-a-half ago. What follows is a selection of posts from this year I particularly like (hey, writers! It’s OK to like your own writing!):
Two sentences each on some movies we watched (I think I may adopt this format for writing about movies in general next year, as not every movie we watch really warrants an entire post. Also, reading that post, I described one movie as “a rom-com you won’t remember the next day, and damn that was accurate, because I just looked it up and I have zero recollection of watching that one!) Why write bad reviews? A metamorphosis begins… …and ends! (These last two go together, and what a joy that was!)
I wrote a lot about my explorations of photography this year; those posts can be found all tagged together, here.
Events of 2023 made it hard to keep my newsletter, Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars, updated as much as I would have liked, but I wrote some good stuff there, too, exploring specific pieces by Rachmaninoff (and I still have to write about one more work of his), a farewell to an old friend, and more. Please check it out and subscribe! (Yes, it’s on Substack, and yes, I’m aware of the current issues and controversies surrounding that platform. No, I have not made any decision yet as to whether or not I’ll migrate to a different platform.)
And now, a more general exploration of What 2023 Meant To Me:
I don’t recall off the top of my head if I’ve ever dropped an F-bomb on this site. I swore like a sailor on Twitter, and I’ve continued to do so on Threads, but for some reason, I try to stick to PG-13 here.
So it means something when I say that if ever a year was going to make me drop the Big F on this site, left and right and up and down, it was going to be 2023. This year was fecking awful. (See what I did there?)
So, here is my final summation of a year that I’m more than happy to see in the rear view mirror…but you know what? As I look back, it was astonishingly not all bad. In fact, there was some real good in 2023. If I can sustain the good from 2023 and eliminate the crap, then maybe it’ll be a good year.
Let’s see how it ended up, with this: my annual Year’s End Quiz. I’ve been answering these questions about the ending year every year for…well, a whole bunch of years now.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.”
Whew. Yes, I read a lot. Did I write a lot? I guess. I’m not thrilled with my output, but I didn’t dry up completely. Walk more? Eventually. Losing Cane in 2022 made it hard to go back to some parks, but go back, I did. And I’ve been walking a lot more since the one big development in my life this year, but we’ll get to that.
That leaves “Eat healthier”, and…no. It’s not been a great year for healthy eating, for many reasons. I was amazed that at my last doctor appointment, I had actually lost two pounds. That was a couple months ago, and I don’t think I’ve gained much back at all, but all the salty crap I’ve been eating has led to a frequent feeling of bloat, which is not pleasant. And even though I haven’t gained very much weight at all, a few times this year I found it necessary to loosen the shoulder straps on various pairs of overalls, and that’s never something I’m happy about.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but there are several co-workers who had babies, so, yay!
Mom finally died on November 11, after a year full of struggle and strife. I’ve been undecided as to how much to write about it, and if I do it will be a while, but right now all I’ll say is that dealing with the health problems that eventually turned into Mom’s final downward spiral consumed much of 2023’s mental and emotional energy.
What countries did you visit?
We actually left the country! After an unacceptably large number of years away, The Wife and I finally made it back to Toronto. I love that city deeply and I hate that I’ve been there only four times in the last fifteen years. I wrote about our visit here and here.
What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
Inner peace? A return to routine? Better literary focus? All of those, I suppose.
And not once did I receive a pie in the face in 2023. Zero pies. What gives!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I started learning seriously about photography! This was a rather surprising development to me. It started with a vague sense that I should upgrade my old point-and-shoot camera with a newer point-and-shoot camera, and it turned into me getting a very sophisticated “bridge” camera and starting to really learn about how to compose photos, how the “exposure triangle” works, and more. It was a fun hobby that suddenly morphed into a significant passion in my life, and given everything else that’s been going on, that new-found passion has been a needed place for focus.
What was your biggest failure?
I can’t really count it as a “failure”, but the way my mother’s passing ended up transpiring, there’s simply no way to look back once in a while and wonder if there’s something I might have been able to say or do to maybe stave off what eventually happened. I don’t think there is, and I am not beating myself up about it, but it was something of a failure.
A bigger failure that I didn’t catch, unfortunately, was the toll it was taking on my mental life, until one of my bosses at work felt it necessary to sit me down for a “Come to Jesus” talk. And he was right. Happily, more recently he was able to sit me down just a couple of weeks ago to praise the degree to which I’ve been able to turn all that around, but I am still annoyed with myself that I let it get to that point in the first place.
What was the best thing you bought?
It’s not really a contest:
That’s my Lumix FZ1000ii, which I first wrote about here and here. Learning to use it, and hopefully starting to use it well, has given me a place to center my brain…the old “idle hands” thing, and I’m always a believer in learning new things. See those dials and buttons? I still haven’t used half of them! I’m particularly interested in this camera’s video capabilities…but hopefully more on that in 2024.
The camera isn’t all I bought, though! Of course I picked up some new overalls, my favorites of which are a vintage pair of hickory-striped Key overalls with really neat elastic shoulder straps.
I’ll never forget getting three compliments for that outfit in one day. That made me very happy.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Oof. Not a great year for asking that question, huh. American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
They neither appall, depress, or surprise me anymore, but if you can look at the Republican Party in 2023 and not realize there’s just no bottom for them, I don’t know what to tell you.
Where did most of your money go?
Books, booze, food, overalls, and that camera.
What did you get really excited about?
Getting that camera and using it!
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
You know, I think I’m just going to punt this question for this year. Not that it’s a slam-dunk that I’m sadder, as you might think, but because it’s so complex that I literally do not know how I’m feeling these days.
Thinner or fatter?
See above! Not really either, but it doesn’t feel thinner.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, though not by much. I’m hoping to start doing things that might lead to good things later down the road!
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Everything.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating badly, second-guessing myself, and lots of things. More relevantly, though, I wish I hadn’t had to do as many of the things I had to do in 2023. There’s no getting around some of that, though; the cards landed the way they landed.
How did you spend Christmas?
With my father. It was a low-key and bittersweet Christmas.
Did you fall in love in 2023?
I tried to.
How many one-night stands?
Even if I had any, I wouldn’t tell you.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop continues to be a balm in hard times. We also found Bridgerton delightfully trashy.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t like to do hate, but Republicans make it so hard.
What was the best book you read?
Here are a few I rated highly this year:
The 1619 Project, various The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley No Name in the Street, James Baldwin The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
What was your greatest musical discovery?
My God, this was not a good year for musical discovery. I listened to a lot of old favorites, and mostly just that.
What did you want and get?
That camera!
What did you want and not get?
My mother’s health to improve.
What were your favorite films of this year?
We didn’t see much at all that was new this year, and what we did see, we saw via streaming; we only went to the theater three times in 2023 that I remember, and those were for re-releases: Casablanca, Grease, and Return of the Jedi. I recently had a long discussion with a friend on social media about this, but for me personally, the movie theater experience in and of itself is not of sufficient value to prioritize movies at the theater over movies at home.
Also, I have always been bad at seeing (or reading) the New Thing in the time of its being the New Thing.
That said, movies that stand out that we did watch this year are: Love at First Sight, Always Be My Maybe, and Bullet Train. Oh, and Gucci. That was a very interesting movie.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?
More poofy tops with the overalls? I almost wonder if I should retire this question. I have, though, found myself increasingly able to stomach hot weather, which means I’ve been able to wear overalls through the summer. Time was when I would basically retire them completely from roughly June 15 to September 20, but the last two years, I’ve been able to wear overalls to the Sterling Renaissance Faire and to the Erie County Fair!
What kept you sane?
Writing and photography. Seriously, you can NOT underrate how helpful it is to have something new to learn when everything else is going all cattywumpus. (There’s a word I don’t normally use! And apparently I’ve misspelled it. I’m not looking it up.)
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’m honestly not sure. This was not a fantastic year for celebrities and public figures, in all honesty.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother. I really, really, really wish her last months hadn’t been what they were.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2023, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
If you’ve held on through all of this post to this point, you’re probably looking at this last question and thinking, “How on Earth is he going to boil down his 2023, which seems to have been one 365-day exercise in yin-and-yang, to one song?”
Obviously…I’m not. This year gets two songs. The first is the sad one.
Feel it,
You feel it all around you,
and I see it;
I can’t be the one
to tell you how it ends
or how it’s gonna be
but it’s gonna get
better….
I’ll hold you
when there’s too much
to face and you feel empty
and everything unravels
and you let it out
and fall apart again
but it’s gonna get
better
That’s from “Better”, a single released in 2023 by Canadian singer-songwriter Shannon Dooks. I’ve been following her and her music for several years now. She writes the kind of searingly personal songs, grounded in relatable emotions, that I find deeply appealing at this point in my life. “Better” speaks to the hope and faith that things will, in fact, not be forever as bad as they are, even in the face of one’s own powerlessness to force it in that direction. It’s a gorgeous song. She put two versions into the world, a studio version and an acoustic version, and I love both equally, so I present them both. The studio version also includes a short film surrounding the song.
It’s probably obvious what it was about 2023 that made “Better” an anthem for much of the year for me, and it’s probably also obvious what about 2023 makes this next song appeal. Learning about photography wasn’t just about getting a new camera and learning about ISO settings and aperture values and shutter speeds; it was about finding new people, a new community, to start connecting with. It was about, in part, at least in a new way…finding my people.
You gotta find your people The ones that make you feel alright The kind you want to stay up with all night You got to find your people The ones that make you feel whole That won’t leave your side when you lose control The ones that don’t let you lose your soul
Here’s “Find Your People”, by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors:
“Better” and “Find Your People”. Wow, was 2023 a trip or what.
Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s face 2024 together, shall we?
Here’s some stuff that’s been lingering in open tabs that I’d like to clear out!
:: I love this video. It’s a history of burgers. I love a good burger, and looking at all of these…in honesty, I would eat and enjoy every single one, regardless of the opinions shared by the tasters here. Especially that Oklahoma one that’s nothing but onions and a beef patty, or even that first one, which is a beef patty on toast. (I’ve come to a more minimalist position on my burgers; I don’t need a giant pile of stuff on one to be delicious.)
Every year, the roughly 200 Renaissance fairs and festivals held across the United States and abroad attract several million visitors. United by their raucous entertainment, elaborate costumes and setting in the distant past, these outdoor events boast a surprising backstory.
The country’s first Renaissance Pleasure Faire, staged in Los Angeles in May 1963, was inextricably linked to the Red Scare, a Cold War-era mass hysteria prompted by the specter of communism. It was thebrainchild of Phyllis Patterson, a history, English, speech and drama teacher who’d balked at having to sign a political loyalty oath to work in California public schools. Though Phyllis later told the press she’d left teaching in 1960 to become a stay-at-home mom, her son Kevin Patterson says this was only “part of the story.” In truth, he adds, “she felt strongly about the harms and unconstitutionality of the HUAC”—the House Un-American Activities Committee—and McCarthyism overall, “and was therefore uncomfortable taking a loyalty oath.”
We’ve been attending Renaissance Faires for years, and I never knew that this is how they got their start.
:: I’m thinking about writing a series of newsletters about baseball movies, once we get closer to either pitchers and catchers reporting or Opening Day, depending on how and when I can get the lead out and rewatch some stuff. But I definitely want to write about Moneyball, a movie about which I have thoughts. This article about the movie’s depiction of then-Oakland A’s Manager Art Howe will definitely be cited then, but I want to get it on record now because it’s interesting. The article’s take is that Moneyball makes Howe look like a complete jerk, but for reasons I’ll get into later on, I’m not totally sure that it does. There is a complete jerk in the movie, but it’s not who we might think it is.
It’s the cardboard villain demeanor in Howe’s portrayal that really is unnecessary and simply untrue according to five different California journalists I’ve spoken with, all of whom had regular contact with him as A’s manager. On Sunday, I called Mark Purdy, now retired as The San Jose Mercury News columnist. He was around the A’s clubhouse and Howe’s office constantly during their 100-win seasons in 2001-02. Purdy said he understood how a movie needs an antagonist or bad guy for plot purposes:
“But I don’t know why they made that character Art. Because Art was 180 degrees from that. He’s a really good guy. Always a gentleman.
“It’s true that he didn’t agree with everything Billy Beane wanted to do. But he was always professional about it.
:: The Ithaca Voice has run a couple of photo galleries from local photographers, featuring their best work from 2023. Check them both out, here and here. Is it possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never lived?
(All three images from the first gallery linked above.)
All for now! Stay tuned for all-new fresh tabs next year!
I didn’t really plan to skip Tone Poem Tuesday or Something For Thursday this week, it just kinda happened. There’s this meme that I see go around social media every year around this time, referring how the time between Christmas and New Years tends to be this amorphous period when you’re not even sure what day it is, and that’s certainly true! I’m actually taking the entirety of this week off this year, and after some reflection a few days ago, I’m realizing that I haven’t taken this particular week completely off–meaning, no school or work–since my last year of high school. After that, I would have a part-time job where I’d work during this time while off from college, and after college itself, I was simply working. I always take some time off during the Holidays, but never the whole kaboodle, as it were…until now. Next year I’ll most likely return to some “fractured” time off during the holidays, as this year’s week off was aided and abetted by the fact that Christmas and New Year’s fall on Mondays. In 2024/2025 those days will be Wednesdays, so next year will like be back-to-back five-day weekends, instead of one solid week off.
(And honestly, that’s kind of how I prefer it, anyway. I rarely take my vacations as entire weeks off, unless we have a trip planned or for some reason I need to take it as an entire week. This goes back to when I was working in restaurants right out of college; it’s always been easier to structure my vacations as a combination of two very-short work weeks broken in the middle by a really long weekend. Even now, I found last week interminably long, leading up to my ten days off.)
But anyway, back to the point: the regular music features of this blog will return next week. Meanwhile, here’s something I just found a minute ago, and it’s seasonally appropriate:
(BTW, the title of this post makes no sense because I forgot to change it! I was going to actually feature something else here, a cover I just found of a favorite Christmas song, but then I decided to feature this because it showed up right after the thing I was going to feature. I did bookmark the original thing for next year’s Daily Dose, though! Fret not! I’m leaving the post title, though. Just because.)
I don’t remember the numbers in play, but the game was not a runaway; Ben actually needed to be right on Final Jeopardy to win…or at least not wager so much that he’d lose on a wrong answer. The Final Jeopardy clue was this (paraphrased), in the category “Shakespeare Characters”:
“The names of these two lovers are taken from Latin words meaning ‘blessed’.”
Now, first off: I came up with the right answer, because isn’t that the most important thing about Jeopardy, anyway? For you, as a viewer, to feel as smart as, if not smarter, than the people on the teevee who know all this weird random stuff? Why yes! But still: the two challengers both answered “Romeo and Juliet”, and both of those answers were wrong, so both of them lost money. Again, the numbers aren’t important, but at least one of them still had some money left after their wager.
Ben, however, got the right characters: Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. But wait! He spelled them Beatrice and Benedict, which was enough for the judges to rule him incorrect. His wager was big enough to drop him into second place, and off the show (until he comes back for the Tournament of Champions, so all isn’t lost for Ben).
Well, tonight it happened again! Only this time, they let the misspelling stand. I don’t recall the Final Jeopardy clue, but the answer as “Antony and Cleopatra”. One of the contestants spelled it Anthony and Cleopatra, though. There’s no ‘H’ there: He’s Mark Antony, not Mark Anthony. Ken Jennings actually said something like, “There’s no H in there, but we’ll give it to you anyway.”
WHAT???!!!
Why did spelling count for Ben back in May but not for some other guy tonight? Now, the answer didn’t end up mattering this time: he still came in second, so the game would not have been decided had his answer been correct or incorrect, but back then I was told that the rules are the rules! Spelling counts in Final Jeopardy! One imagines Mr. Goodman from The Big Lebowski:
December has not been a good month for photography. The weather has been incredibly reliable this month: on any day when I have time to get outside someplace and walk about and take photos, the weather has been absolute garbage. And unfortunately, as much as I love my Lumix FZ1000ii, my biggest knock on it is that it has no weather-sealing.
But on Christmas Eve I did finally get out to Knox Farm even though it was misty and damp. Here are a few results:
This is a slightly-modified repost of something I first wrote years ago, back in the Byzantium’s Shores days. It’s fresh on my mind because The Wife and I rewatched Love Actually last night, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it in seven or either years, after a period during which I watched it every year. I don’t know why it fell out of rotation; I certainly didn’t stop loving the movie, even though hating on it seems to have become a fashionable viewpoint in recent years, judging by the think-pieces that circulate social media about how bad Love Actually is. I did feel a small amount of trepidation as I sat down to watch it last night: what if it has been visited by the Suck Fairy? What if I ended up hating it now?
Like many of the stories in Love Actually (but not all, which I think is part of the movie’s genius), this one ends happily. I still love the film. Sure, a few aspects of it haven’t aged well, which I think happens to any creative work over time. (In this case, all the fat jokes directed at Martine McCutcheon’s character fall to the ground with a dull, wet thud.) But as a somewhat fantastical depiction of the weirdness and messiness of human relations where love is concerned, I still think Love Actually is simply terrific. The movie still leaves me in something of a daze as I exit the world it has created and try to re-enter the real one.
It’s also interesting to me how timeless Love Actually manages to be; the only dated aspects are the cell-phones in use, particularly in one of the storylines where a cell phone’s constant ringing at terrible times plays an important and sad role. Also, though I’ve never been to London (yet! It’s on my list!), I am familiar enough with it via photography and film to see that just 20 years ago, when Love Actually was being made, London looked very different! In some long shots you can see that the famous “Gherkin” building, the one that looks like a giant pickle stuck on end in the middle of London’s skyline, was still in construction at the time.
As for ongoing reactions to Love Actually, many remain the same, and I don’t bother reading many of the thinkpieces anymore. I have noted that some people still miss various points along the way: they think that Andrew Lincoln’s character, in the “silent placard” scene, is somehow hitting on Keira Knightley, or they somehow get offended by the supreme silliness of the guy who deduces that while in England he’s just a gangly weirdo, in America he’ll be an exotic sexual being.
I still love this movie and I find it perfectly suited to all the emotions that swirl around at Christmastime.
So. Love Actually. This is one of my favorite movies, so I’m going to wax poetic about it for a while (with spoilers, by the way). Some people watch A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmastime; for me it’s My Fair Lady (which I haven’t watched yet this season) and Love Actually (which I have). The other day Mrs. M-Mv(link dead) posted her own appreciation of the movie:
I know that many folks dislike this film — too long, too sentimental, too… something. Everyone has a suggestion for a storyline that needs to go or a character that could be deleted. Even Roger Ebert: “I once had ballpoints printed up with the message, No good movie is too long. No bad movie is short enough. ‘Love Actually’ is too long. But don’t let that stop you.” [Emphasis added.]
I, on the other hand, think the pace, the narrative, and the characters are practically perfect in every way. Moreover, I think the film wears well: I’ve seen it at least six times since it was first released — more, if you count all of the partial viewings — and it’s funny, sweet, and effective each time.
That’s true, isn’t it? I have yet to read a critique of this film that fails to mention the “fact” that it is just too long of a movie. Heck, even the movie’s director, Richard Curtis, seems to feel that it’s too long; in his filmed introductions to the deleted scenes on the DVD, he says something along the lines of “Well, the original cut was three-and-a-half hours long, so if you think the two-and-a-quarter-hour version is too long, it could have been worse.” But I heard that and thought, paraphrasing the movie’s Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, “Who do I have to screw around here to get to see the original cut?” I’ve never found Love Actually too long; in fact, it’s one of the rare films that leaves me wishing I could spend more time with these characters, in their world.
I want to know if Harry and Karen repair the damage to their marriage that Harry caused with his near-miss of an affair.
I want to know if Sarah ever gets another chance with Karl, or if she ever manages to find love in a way that still allows her to care for her brother.
I want to know how the PM’s relationship with a staffer turns out.
I want to know if Mark ever finds love after his impossible crush on Juliet plays out.
I want to know how Sam and Joanna fare as kid loves, and how Daniel and Carol make out as a potential couple.
I want to know if Colin ever matures beyond his need for impressive sex with American girls.
And I’d love to see a biopic of aged, battered old rocker Billy Mack, who late in the movie admits that his life, though lonely, has been a wonderful life.
Few movies seem as full of real people, to me, as Love Actually. That’s a testament, really, not just to the writing, but the entire production, because the movie by its nature has to rely on its actors and editors to make the whole thing really come to life. Since each story in the movie is basically told in miniature, each cast member is put in the position of having to knock each scene out of the park. Luckily for the movie, they accomplish this.
So no, I don’t think Love Actually is too long; not even close. And I think that beneath its exterior, which makes it look like the schmaltziest, mushiest romantic comedy ever made, the film is surprisingly insightful about how some relationships work when they’re based on love.
The film’s masterstroke is this: not everybody gets a happy ending. And, thinking about it, you realize that the movie is aware of an even deeper truth: that nobody gets an ending at all, save one, and that’s the big ending, the one that really ends everything.
When we first meet Daniel (Liam Neeson) and Sam (Thomas Sangster), they are at the funeral for Sam’s mother (and Daniel’s wife). [Daniel is actually Sam’s step-father, which raises other questions about Sam’s life: has he already lost one parent, or were his parents divorced with his mother then marrying Daniel? We never learn, and for the purposes of the story in Love Actually, it really doesn’t much matter.] Daniel is devastated, as is Sam, but it soon turns out that Sam’s got another problem of his own: he’s in love, probably for the first time in his life, with an American girl in his school who doesn’t know he exists. When Daniel finally gets this out of Sam, shortly after the funeral, it’s in a scene where the two are sitting on a bench, and Daniel finally appeals for Sam to tell him what the problem is, even if he can’t help the boy. We’re as surprised as Daniel is when Sam bluntly states, “Well, the truth is, I’m in love.” Daniel and Sam spend much of the rest of the film, when they’re onscreen, working out the details of how Sam can win Joanna’s heart. It’s a beginning that only comes out of a horrible moment of ending.
Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson) are middle-aged married folks. Harry is the boss of what appears to be a non-profit or something like that; Karen is the housewife who basically keeps everything at home going, doing the cooking and cleaning and making the lobster costume for their daughter who has just been cast as First Lobster in the school’s Nativity play. (“There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?”) Their marriage seems staid and dull, but not unfeeling; even so, Harry finds himself responding to the advances of his new administrative assistant, a comely young woman named Mia. They never have a physical affair, but Harry indulges the attraction to the point of buying Mia a gold necklace for Christmas, which Karen finds out about. When the film reaches its last scene, Harry and Karen greet each other somewhat warmly but cautiously, and nothing really is said of what is going on with them: are they divorcing? Was Harry away on business, or were they separated? Are they working on it, or is it ending? We don’t know.
And then there’s Mark, who serves as his best friend’s best man in a wedding at the beginning of the movie. His problem is that he is himself desperately in love with Juliet, the bride who is marrying his best friend. This is hard for him to cope with, so his way of compensating is to treat Juliet very coldly, to the point where she thinks he hates her – until she visits him one day, hoping to find some good footage in the videotapes he’d made of the wedding, and realizes that all he taped that day was her. Late in the movie this plays out in a fairly charming scene that could give pause, as Mark admits to Juliet his love for her. Was this the right thing to do? It’s tempting, I suppose, to say that he should never tell the wife of his best friend that he loves her, but I don’t see it that way (at least, not in this specific context). Mark knows that he owes Juliet an explanation, and he knows that he has to find a way to be around her and not act like an arse, and he further knows that there’s no danger that he’s going to be coming between his friend and his friend’s wife by doing so, because he knows them. Mark knows that Juliet is not going to love her husband one bit less, so he knows that what he’s doing is not a potential act of abetting adultery. His is an act of reconciliation, and as he walks away, he says to himself: “Enough. Enough now.” He’s put himself in a position to move on, and it’s a totally right thing for him to do, even though if someone else were to try the same type of thing, it might well be disastrous for all concerned.
The most notable unhappy ending, though, belongs to Sarah (Laura Linney), who works for Harry and has been in love with their office’s graphic designer, Karl, for “two years, seven months, three days, one hour and thirty minutes” (half an hour less than the time she’s actually worked in that office). Harry finally sits her down and tells her to do something about her crush on Karl, since it’s Christmas and apparently everybody in the office knows already. Sarah’s eyes light up briefly with the sense of possibility. The problem, though, comes in the person of Sarah’s brother, who is institutionalized with some unspecified mental illness. Sarah is the only one to take care of him, and she does, out of an intense sense of duty (their parents are apparently long deceased). Her brother calls her on her cell phone constantly, usually to talk about problems that she really can’t help him with, but she takes each call anyway – including two that come the very night she is finally trying to seize her chance with Karl. It’s an awful moment that she faces: the two are in bed, beginning foreplay, when the phone rings; Karl says, “Can you help him right now?”, and when she shakes her head, he says, “Then maybe you don’t answer it.” But she can’t bring herself to do this, and she answers, telling her brother that she’s not busy at all. The moment passes, and as far as this film goes, Sarah and Karl never get together.
Sometimes in our lives, our various loves come into conflict. The love people have for one another can’t be exercised because of the love they have for their children; or, as with poor Sarah, her love and desire for Karl – her desire for a life of her own, even – is pushed back because of her love and duty to her brother. One friend of mine hated the movie, mainly for this particular plot point, but I found it entirely realistic. I’ve known people who have made these kinds of choices in their lives.
Of course, I wouldn’t be so enchanted with Love Actually if the movie wasn’t so wickedly funny. There isn’t a scene with Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), the aging rocker, that doesn’t leave me grinning at the very least. There’s the wonderful moment when the Prime Minister has to literally go door-to-door looking for someone, at one point being exhorted by a trio of little girls who have no idea who he is to sing Christmas carols (the look on Hugh Grant’s face when the PM discovers that his own bodyguard has an amazing singing voice is priceless). There is one hilarious moment after another.
Lastly, Love Actually is a beautiful film. So much of the movie seems to actually sparkle, and the music is, for a typical selection of romantic-comedy music, mostly wonderful stuff, including two gorgeous love themes by composer Craig Armstrong.
As a conclusion, here’s the opening scene to Love Actually, with a brief monologue by Hugh Grant as the PM. Love actually is all around.
I don’t know of a scene that better sets the tone for what’s to come in a movie than this one — so much so that I almost want to turn off the computer and watch the movie again right now.
Posted inOn Movies|TaggedMovies|Comments Off on “Let’s get the shit kicked out of us by love!” (A slightly-edited repost)
This is a repost that first appeared three years ago, on the old blog. I’m reposting it now, because of the season and because I’ve been thinking today, prompted by discussions elsewhere, about problematic people and what to do with their work. I also have the subject of food and memory on my mind, particularly this year, as this will be the first Christmas of my life without my mother’s “cheesy potatoes”, which are basically potatoes au gratin. Yes, I’ve looked around at some recipes, and yes, I’ve found some that sound good that will probably be pretty close. But will they be close enough? Of course not. Mom’s not making them.
As I write this, it’s 4:45pm and the light is fading. The long darkness is settling, and even for someone like me for whom “belief” is deeply difficult, it’s hard not to think of that darkness being pierced by the most unlikely of births….
Back when I was in college, I decided that I needed to start learning to cook. One of the cornerstones of that effort was to buy all the cookbooks by Jeff Smith, also known by his PBS brand name “The Frugal Gourmet”, and read them cover to cover while also cooking quite a few of the recipes. I learned a hell of a lot about cooking in that way (“Hot wok, cold oil, foods won’t stick!”), and while I think Smith’s notions about food and peacekeeping were a bit out there (one of his last cookbooks has a very odd passage in which he envisions Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein cooking together), I very much agree with his insights about food and memory. There’s a reason why, when a beloved elder dies, a lot of times those left behind despair over being able to replicate their best dishes. “It’s good,” we say. “I’ve got it pretty close, but there was something she did that I can’t quite get my finger on.”
I still own most of Smith’s output to this day, and a few of his recipes are in my permanent rotation. I have never stopped reading them or even watching some of his shows which have shown up on YouTube, even though…
Smith, it turned out, was really not the kindly pastoral gentleman he portrayed on his shows. I don’t really want to get into that here, but suffice it to say that there were accusations of sexual improprieties in the late 90s that brought his career to a slamming, screeching halt. If you search around the Internet, you can find other testimonials about Smith that are, shall we say, less than flattering. He may have spent many years not even living with his wife (speculations as to why that may have been abound), and he seems to have been an unpleasant fixture in the Seattle food scene toward the end of his life. Again, I don’t want to get into that.
It all comes back as we have discussions in society today, quite repeatedly, about what we do when people we admire, especially the creative folks whose works have touched and shaped us, turn out to not only be very human, but very disappointingly human, at that. JK Rowling turns out to be transphobic to a deeply creepy degree. Isaac Asimov…well, rumors abounded about his conduct at science fiction conventions for years, and they don’t seem to have gone away despite his being dead for nearly thirty years. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s private life was appalling, and Orson Scott Card turns out to be deeply homophobic. Michael Jackson.
We all have to struggle with to what degree our artistic heroes were real people who committed acts ranging from missteps to simply awful deeds. I’ve known this for years, since I obsessively read about music history as a kid. My favorite composer, Hector Berlioz, was an addict and a manipulative stalker weirdo. Robert Schumann obsessively pursued a girl who today would be a minor and basically forced her to give up almost all of her own musical career outside of helping to perform and advance his works. (Clara Schumann was, by all accounts, an amazingly talented woman who might well have become a beloved composer in her own right, had husband Robert not dominated her so completely.) Richard Wagner? Well, as David Dubal writes in The Essential Canon of Classical Music, in reference to Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll”, a gorgeous piece he wrote as a wedding gift for his wife, “That this man, capable of such emotion, was enraged at Bismarck for not burning Paris to the ground will always tantalize and disturb.”
So…back to Jeff Smith, among whose cookbooks is the one pictured above, a quite wonderful volume of Christmas recipes and ruminations about our modern Christmas. (Well, not quite our modern Christmas! This book is almost thirty years old.) Smith presents an entire Christmas menu, based on those present at the Nativity: dishes for Joseph, for Mary, for the Innkeeper (whom Smith believed has gotten kind of a bum rap over the years) and the tax collector. There are dishes for the Wise Men, for the angels, and even for the donkey (who gets “Straw and Hay”, which is now one of my best pasta dishes). The book has cookie recipes, recipes for mincemeat pie and two kinds of fruitcake–I want to like fruitcake but I can never get there!–and more. He finally presents several complete Christmas dinner menus…and the photographs throughout are wonderfully colorful, as well. There’s a reason I love this cookbook: it’s the kind of cookbook you can thumb through with pleasure, in addition to having good insights on food.
In the middle of the book comes this section, about Christmas traditions. This has been one of my favorite pieces of Christmas writing ever since I bought this book in the 90s, and if it is coming from someone who would later turn out to be quite a lot less than the sum of his parts, well…that’s frankly the case with most art, isn’t it? It’s up to us to decide how much these things bother us, and which things are our personal dealbreakers.
Our Family Christmas
From THE FRUGAL GOURMET CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS
Our family traditions came about in much the same way as did your family traditions…they just sort of happened.
Patty and I originally made a prime rib of beef for Christmas, and then the boys came along. Somehow Patty got into the roast goose routine, and we enjoyed that for years. As the boys grew, we began to celebrate one of the Christmas menus that follow, and then on Christmas Day I would prepare a full Norwegian smorgasbord with baked beans, potato salad, several different kinds of herring, luncheon meats, special breads, fish balls in cream sauce, cold salmon or lox, lefse, Christmas bread, and, of course, the leftover roast beef or goose from the night before. We still do that.
Last year I did a Swedish meal of pickled pork. The Paulina Market in Chicago makes a Swedish pickled fresh ham that is just terrific. So, now we all have a new favorite dinner. The boys side with the goose, Patty with the roast beef, and I go for the pickled ham. Now what do we do?
One year I suggested to Jason that we make some changes in our Christmas dinners. Try something new. He was quite young at the time, but his response meant that we had established some family traditions that he wanted to maintain. I was so touched by his insight that I wrote the following letter to him, a letter that was circulated by the Roman Catholic parish in Chicago. You will probably recognize your own family in this letter.
My dear Jason,
I probably came very close to violating the meaning of tradition when I suggested that we try something a bit different this year. You are happily bound up in memories of Christmases past, and I expect that I will hear you say, “Dad, can’t we have real dressing? I mean the old kind. After all, it is Christmas!”
You are right, son, it is Christmas. And on the day of the Mass, the feast of Christ, I should not go around breaking family traditions.
But I must consider anew the meaning of the Feast of the Christmas, and I think you and I should think about it together.
The term feast is very much involved with the meaning of memory. We feast because we remember certain events in our lives; sometimes wonderful events, sometimes painful events. That seems to be the way it has been with man- and womankind for a long time.
Christmas for me as a child was very different from our Christmas now. We would travel to greet my father’s family at his mother’s house, your great-grandmother, Nettie Smith. Oh how sad I feel that you did not know this tough old girl. She was a member of the state legislature and she was a left-winger from the start. But in the kitchen she was just terrible. She cooked turkey in the Old Testament style, burning the poor thing on the altar until smoke drifted up to heaven. Then, to the table it would come, though it was so dessicated, so dried out, so tasteless, that I could not understand why someone else in the family did not cook the bird instead. You know why they did not? Because it was job traditionally reserved for Gramma. To this day, when I eat dried-out turkey, I think of her…and how much I miss her.
Christmas morning in my family was wonderful. World War II was in the midst of every event, and candy and sugar were hard to find. One Yule morning my mother, your Grandma Smith, brought us to the table and presented us with marzipan candy shaped like eggs and bacon. My brother, Greg, sister, Judy, and I were amazed that Mom could find such things.
Some of our Christmas traditions are a bit strange, I will admit. But they are our traditions, our family. Each year we carefully unpack the papier-mache manger figures we made together when you and Channing were tiny children. And each year we spend precious time gluing the poor shepherd boy back together. Would it not be much more practical simply to go out and buy a new creche, a new king, a new Christ child? Ah, now, my boy, we are speaking of utter heresy, of violations against the meaning of our past…and I suppose therefore, our future.
A true feast actually has nothing to do with what you eat…but with what you remember. Many families in this nation have no traditions at all, few roots, and thus, few feasts. I am for feasting and celebrating in such a way that we will always remember we are a family. Sometimes I know that it is tough having me for a father, since I always want to add sherry to a gravy that you find perfectly in order already. Or I want to put mushrooms in a dressing, and you claim that they taste like dirt.
So, now, back to the kitchen. We have much to prepare before the star grows bright over the manger and you and I come to the creche, dazed by what we find, but carrying two gravies. One with mushrooms, and one without.
I love you,
Dad
Christmas is as much a time of memory as it is of anything else, and food is memory.
Starting the year off with an observation
I’ve had a busier January 1 than usual, so I will post just this:
I have zero interest in doing anything with the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. Or any version, really.
Moving on….