Moot Point

Oh, so since the last post, I also got into York. Yay!

Where do I want to go? I don’t know. Decisions, necessarily coming soon. Eep.

In other news, I’m really glad Metric is doing so well for themselves; I’m not the kind of fan who turns her back on a band just because they’re on M.O.D., but seriously, Metric fans? Teenaged Metric fans? The worst.

Koolhaus is a horrible venue anyway, with its just being a big featureless warehouse and its overpriced drinks, but it doesn’t help when obnoxious teen girls shove their way in front of me and then stand on my feet with their hair literally getting in my mouth. Once she and her friend finally realized I couldn’t move back any more and I was going to keep elbowing her everytime her hair touched my face (I know), they stood behind tall guy and talked loudly through a couple of songs about how everyone around them sucks. “The people back here, they don’t even know” (the words to “Too Little Too Late”). Yeah, you’re the only true fans. Shut up.

Also, and this is confidential to the lead singer of Islands, which apparently rose out of the ashes of The Unicorns: get. over. yourself. Seriously, picture Jason Schwartzman in a white Monkees shirt, without any redeeming talent. By the end, he was basically “I don’t suck, you suck!” It was sad, because the band itself wasn’t bad and there were a couple of really good songs in the set — sort of fun, poppy stuff, with two violins and a bass clarinet in the mix — but seriously, all the bad connotations of “indiepop” with none of the good. Why didn’t they just let Holy Fuck play a longer set? Total wrong venue, but at least they weren’t all “Aren’t I swell?” and I didn’t want to punch them.

Okay, now that I’m done bitching, I should point out that Metric were killer. They know what they are doing and Emily Haines is so wicked it makes me profoundly happy, so that mostly made it worthwhile.

The perfect antidote was Ted’s Collision, which I can’t believe I’ve never been to. Dave’s talked it up every time we’ve seen him for months, but from some reason Alex and I never made it, even though it’s near all these places that we go all the time (Soundscapes, Utopia, the bank, etc.). I think we worried it would be painfully hip. I can handle hip — this week I ate at Shanghai Cowgirl twice in as many days — but not painfully hip. The Drake makes me uncomfortable. Ted’s Collision is so not the Drake. It was like the place I always want to hang out — candles in bottles on tables, ELO on the stereo (Kev and I had a special moment across the table over “Mr. Blue Sky”), Big Rock on tap. We somehow wound up staying out til four at the aforementioned Shanghai Cowgirl.

The rest of the weekend was much more lowkey. Saturday night we ate cheese and watched Radio Days (which was meh: good performances, lovely cinematography, and baby Seth Green; but it was almost too saccharine and stereotypically coming-of-age for Woody Allen) and some Six Feet Under.

Funny story, while we were watching David get forced at gunpoint to smoke crack (I know, what was that?), we heard some shouting outside. Like in the street, right outside my house. One guy was yelling at and needing to be pulled off another guy, by the two other guys. He seemed to be walking away, then all of a sudden he throws his coat down on the street and starts yelling and pointing a something in his hand. A something that made the other two guys jump back. Alex and I kept peering through my half frosted-over window. I was working through how quickly I could get to my phone, which was in my bag. The porchlight went on across the street. Then they started to scatter; we craned our necks to watch them run down the street. Then the police car that they were running from passed by, hopefully to catch them.

It was like, midnight on Saturday night. We could have been walking home. We would, of course, have walked the other way; but.

So, uh, apparently I got into UBC. It’s not definite yet, but I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for awhile. It’s kind of real now. I’m. Going. To. Grad. School.

To celebrate, Alex and I went to see Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. I am normally wary of anything this meta (but I did like Day for Night). However, this was sort unprecedentedly good; the meta-film stuff all actually seemed to have an actual point. It’s not like they said “Bah! This book is unfilmable! Let’s go meta!” The meta actually makes it better. The book is about this guy who can’t get to the point, because there’s so much backstory, so is therefore as much about the writing of the book as its subject, and the movie’s kind of the same way. Only with the movie.

Plus, you know, I like anything that can make a guy trapped in a womb work.

Tonight, I watched All That Jazz, which may be the most 1970s movie ever made. And I mean that in the best way possible. Roy Scheider is seriously so brilliant. The character’s so unsympathetic, but he makes him so charming and affectionate — plus we know it’s autobiographical so Fosse probably wanted him to be that way — but still, like, a real person. Sort of.

(Weird aside: the actress who plays Scheider’s ex-wife is named Leland Palmer. Like the dad on Twin Peaks! It’s too unusual a name to be a coincidence.)

As a secondary celebration, we made a substitution-heavy version of the the Turkey Chili Verde we were given a sample of and found a recipe card for at Whole Foods. It’s verde because it uses only green peppers and tomatillos. Things we substituted: a couple slices of bacon for “smoked turkey thigh,” because seriously; fresh tomatillos for canned, because if Whole Foods doesn’t sell canned tomatillos, no one does; hot jalapenos for serrano peppers, becuase that’s what was there; and canned sliced jalapenos for canned “green chiles,” because we thought “They’re chiles, they’re canned, they’re green,” but then when I opened the can it had carrots in it, which I had to pick out of the chili, cause, no!

Tomatillos are a new subject of amazing fascination for Alex and I; we threw in our chopped fresh tomatillos and left the whole thing to simmer, hoping they’d cook down okay. They didn’t just cook down, the mofos dissolved. After 45 minutes of simmering, they went from being chunks to being this greenish soupy liquid that was sort of sweet and complex.

Speaking of BC, whither Rachel? I’m always sad when my friends stop blogging, but it’s so scary when there is no warning.

This was originally meant to be posted Monday, but I figure it is still Valen-week. Plus I got held up making Chocolate Chili Bites for Alex. (And me.) (I would use more chili than recommended. I used ground ancho chilis and 1 1/2 tsp was definitely not enough kick. Maybe French chili powder is better.)

When I first thought about posting a VD mix, I immediately dismissed it. “I like new wave and torch songs!” I said. “My iTunes library has no happy love songs!” As many of you know, my music collection isn’t exactly full of Josh Groban ballads; my taste in music runs to the angry (see Costello, Elvis – The early years), the sardonic (see Mountain Goats, The), the ironic (see Fields, Magnetic), the angrily feminist (see Tigre, Le), and the mopily, obnoxiously indie (see Fantasy, Final and countless others). The actual lovey songs I have are either ironic, tired by this point, or mainly there for their peppy Motown beat.

But I like a challenge. It didn’t take long before I came up with a list that actually made me think about love; and even though it’s no longer as timely and some of the songs kind of border on cheese territory — I am looking at you Hawksley — I wanted to share them with you, the reader.

1. I’m Gonna Love You Too – Blondie
2. God Only Knows – Petra Haden
3. Safe and Sound – Hawksley Workman
4. And Darling – Tegan and Sara
5. No Need To Cry – Neko Case
6. Oh Boy! – Buddy Holly
7. Dream A Little Dream Of Me – Ella Fitzgerald (feat. Count Basie)
8. Apple Blossom – The White Stripes
9. Of Angels and Angles – The Decemberists
10. Oh! – Sleater-Kinney
11. The Way You Look Tonight – Fred Astaire
12. The Reasons – The Weakerthans
13. Midnight Sun – Ella Fitzgerald

I guess 13 is a weird number of songs. But you know. Limited resources.

Valentine’s Day was pretty good. It involved a recipe from Thirty Minute Meals, which tasted good and was low on fuss to prepare. Also, it was a vodka-tomato-cream sauce out of which much of the alcohol do not cook. So, being the lightweights that we now are, Alex and were rather tipsy by the time our pasta was done, even though we hadn’t finished our (fucking) merlot.

I hope everyone ate something heart-shaped yesterday.

It is a fact that I have a directory in my My Pictures file called “Lenny,” which is full of photos of the Simpsons character of the same name.

I’m concerned I’ve been boring this week. After an unseasonable warm streak, it’s turned kind of grey and “sit around and rewatch Veronica Mars instead of go out to the movies” weather.

Things I have signed up for in the last couple of weeks:

1. Zip.ca
2. Flickr

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Originally uploaded by mootpoint.

Alex and I went exploring this Thursday, to walk off our huge (somewhat disappointing) Boom lunch. (Aside: I’ve never had a bad experience at Boom before. The food was good, but the service had none of its usual attentiveness or even competence. The waitress passed me and my empty cup two or three times with coffee. Also, we eventually had to flag her down and ask her for the cheque, which she never actually brought. I think Alex still tipped pretty well. Softy.) Anyway, we wound up walking along Dupont, then up Lansdowne to Davenport, then somehow back to Dupont and then to Dundas West into the Junction. (Please note: all photos tagged “dupont” weren’t actually taken on Dupont.

I sadly didn’t take any pictures of the Junction – it was weird. It felt intangibly more like its own town even though it’s really not that far from my house.

Less sadly, there are no photos of the Galleria. Also not pictured: the kids on the schoolbus we managed to pass three times, who kept exhorting us to “get a room,” after they caught us in a saucy public close-mouthed peck when we thought no one was looking. My favourite was the girl who kept shouting “ooh la la!”

So Gilmore Girls, I think it’s time to have a talk. I’ve put up with a lot of tomfoolery from you. You have made several classic shark-jumping moves, including allowing the consummation of long-simmering sexual tension and introducing a new child because all your characters have grown up, because you were never really about the stuff that happened, you were about the Gilmore family dynamic. I even had begun to accept Luke’s secret daughter. I hated the obvious shark-jumping way in which she was introduced. (She was doing a science project? What?) But I really like the way it’s been handled since. I mean, the girl is Rory 2.0, but she’s cute. Plus, I find myself kind of liking the dimension it’s added to Luke and Lorelai’s relationship. Luke’s been selfish and cagey about the whole thing, but shutting down seems in character. Plus, it’s changed the dynamic. Pre-April, it was all about Lorelai — Lorelai’s family, Lorelai’s ex, Lorelai’s problems with Rory. Luke was always there for her, and now she’s trying to be there for Luke, even though he’s hurting her.

However, I have a serious bone to pick with you. Whither Rory? I mean, I know much ink has been spilled over how horirble she is and what a bad actress Alexis Bledel has turned into, but I was pretty patient with her. I mean, obviously she’s not so good and is totally outclassed by Lauren Graham, but I could see what they were doing, with having Rory lose her way and get sucked in by her grandparents’ priveleged world. But then they did the whole thing where Jess came back and Rory “snapped out of it,” and went back to being her old self and also, yell at Logan. I have never been a fan of any of Rory’s dudes, but Logan is the worst.

So anyway, after weeks of bordering-on-stalkerish attempts to win her back, Rory decides to go out to dinner with him. But then she blows it off to take charge of the paper that Paris has inexplicably run into the ground. (I normally love Paris, but what have they done to her? She was always obnoxious, but now she’s totally unhinged. Poor Paris.) It’s all great, and we (the audience) are like “Go Rory! Forget Logan! Be a strong woman, just like your (awesome) mother raised you to be!” Then Logan shows up and totally takes over and she just…lets him. It’s not like he just helped her. It was all “Who do you have on desk?” “Bill.” “Oh, put so-and-so on with him, etc.”

At the end, she kisses him.

There’s nothing wrong with him helping, but they played her passively letting him take over the paper she’s seemingly doing a perfectly good job running and he’s never seemed to care about before like it was this big happy ending.

What are you trying to do now, Gilmore Girls? I just don’t know anymore.