This was a pretty good New Year’s, despite my emerging inability to hold my liquor. I seriously don’t think I drank that much, but I guess drinking champagne from a tumbler is a bad move. I’m only 22 and I already can’t throw down like I could in my college years.

Other than that, I had a killer New Year’s weekend.

Friday night was my last night at home; we went out for a family dinner. The Italian place that we were going to hit didn’t bother to mention that they were closed that night on their machine, so we wound up going to Divino. I had braised shortribs with brown butter potato puree and vanilla braised salsify. Dessert was creme brulee duo – one white chocolate mint, one lemon, and a scoop of blueberry sorbet in the middle. I don’t get to eat like that very often — my idea of a good night out is a Mexitaco platter and a bottle of Sol — but it was pretty amazing.

My flight home was less than amazing, unless you consider two guys behind you talking about beer while the rest of the plan is obviously asleep and constantly bumping into your seat amazing. When they ran out of exciting tales of how much beer they drank in various locales, they sort of fizzled:

“You’re from Edmonton, eh? Did you go to that mall?” “It’s overrated.”

Uuuugh.

New Year’s Eve was pretty great. We went to this random Annex party where I didn’t really know anyone, even though even Rachel — who was stopping off on her way back to Vancouver — ran into someone she knew and I lived on the U of T campus for four years. But I got to meet Sara, who immediately gave me a giant hug and had a tiara. At midnight, we all went outside and opened champagne and hugged and then there were sparklers in the kitchen and then it’s basically a blur.

Because of the large quantity of champagne consumed, Alex and Rach and I pretty much spent the day on the couch, watching Veronica Mars DVDs and hydrating. Then we went for curing-of-all-ails Indian food and then we thought we’d pick up a movie at the Rogers up the street. However, the prospects were slim. This was the Yonge and Wellesley Rogers, which has a surfeit of gay softcore and, like, three movies released before 1960. All we were looking for was something that would divert us for a couple hours. Nothing heavy. Rach hates art movies, and Alex and I weren’t exactly in the mood for Jia Zhang Ke or anything, so we would have been happy with Wedding Crashers.

So how did we end up with It’s All About Love? I saw Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes on the cover and then I read the kooky ice skater/future plot, which made it sound like it would at least be different. Plus, Thomas Vinterburg! Alex and I saw Dear Wendy at TIFF last fall and really liked it. It was funny and quirky and didn’t take itself too seriously.

So of course, It’s All About Love turned out to be awful. It was long, slow-moving, full of heavy-handed symbolism, and bad Polish accents. And then everyone just gets covered in snow at the end. Because they’re cold, from lack of love. Sean Penn is Joaquin’s brother, who was scared to be on planes, but they gave him a shot and now he can only fly. He obviously shot the whole thing in a day.

I felt bad for Rachel; I was also worried she’d think Alex and I liked this sort of thing.

But the weekend was saved by Gay Cowboys. Which was so sad and good it totally made me forget that I would have loved entirely based on the Gay Cowboy theme.

I’m calling it: Best Picture Oscar. Epic. Love story. Sad. Somewhat progressive theme. It’s totally happening.