Christmas Came Early

Yesterday, while M and I were fighting through the barbarian hordes at the local Target, I had a strange sense of calmness. This serenity was not brought about any new tea I had been drinking or some meditation course I started, but rather because I had a new toy that I was excited to try out. No, I didn't get that flatscreen TV, PS3, 65 Shelby Cobra or Breitling Superocean Heritage (you listening, Santa?), but rather a snow rake. What is a snow rake, you ask? It's 14 feet of telescoping mayhem, made in New Hampshire and designed to scrape the snow off your roof. We had some ice dams last year that damaged the neighbor's condo and this year I don't want any funny business. M was kind enough to call ahead to the local Home Depot and reserve one for us. I was worried that our roof was too tall to use a snow rake on. The pictures online always showed a lower roof as the example, but when we picked it up, I was not disappointed.

So that's the rake. He's pretty ferocious. I was able to scrape a good 18 inches from the gutter and not kill myself in the process. I am officially an old b*stard now that I get excited about snow removal tools.

Here's the scene that greeted us today before I went out to clean the cars. The wind whipped the snow into some crazy-type drifts on the cars. M's car had the best high top fade I'd seen since the days of Kid N Play and Big Daddy Kane.

M and I also did all the Christmas wrapping yesterday, hence the need to go to Target. We tried to cheap it up and went to a Christmas Tree Shop the night earlier and we scored a ton of wrapping paper, but it turns out what we got was not the kind that's any good for wrapping (some of it was see-through. Seriously?) and not all that useful. So we wandered off to the Target to face the folks who were either stocking up for the coming snowpocalyse or Christmas shopping laggards. We got the paper and largely survived. Damn you Christmas Tree Shops. Well, not completely - you did have one of the more magical wrapping tools ever made. I will not spoil the surprise here though. Now that I am married and have family members expanding their own families through a variety of means, my Christmas list is growing like never before. I guess this is a none-too-subtle way of saying that the days of B going crazy for his peeps are over. Lord Bountiful has too many gifts to buy. Nobody's getting scratch tickets or secondhand rollerblades, but it's good stuff nonetheless.

Everybody's got one

AN An excuse, that is. Here's a meager list of them for why I haven't been posting:

II h I haven’t been home. I now spend a lot of time in Toronto. It’s not quite as cold as I had been led to believe. There are some funny accents, but nothing worse than what I hear on the train every day when I’m home. It’s a big international city with major sports teams, world famous landmarks and a long history. But they lack a food specialty. No one has a single signature restaurant to recommend. I’ve had some over the top burgers and a solid steak or two, but that’s about it. If you’re going there, eat before you go. When I wasn’t in Toronto, I was in Peurto Rico. That was ridiculously nice. Apparently I suggested going there after M and I got back from Spain. We had been rained/snowed on for a few of the previous trips and we wanted a hot sunny place. I was going to recommend Honduras, but then they had a military coup. Mexico’s gangs were killing everyone in sight, we’d already been on a cruise, so why not a pseudo-state that used the dollar and has direct flights from Boston? A week away from work, right before the winter sets in was a great idea. Unlike Toronto, PR has plenty of national dishes. They’re all fried, come with beans, rice and plantains and are delicious. Car rentals are cheap and the cars are exceptionally crappy so you don’t have to worry about denting them. The beaches were empty to the point that if we saw another person – anywhere in eyesight – we considered moving because the beach was too crowded. I wish I didn’t sound like a giant tool there, but it’s true. San Juan has some wild folks, though. Loud, bold, gold encrusted, flag-waving, craziness. M and I boned up on our reggaeton music before we left just so we’d have a hope of fitting in. Yeahhhh right. When I wasn’t up North or down South, I was in Connecticut wooing my bride for her birthday. I remembered M enjoyed tudor-style architecture and came across a B&B in a giant old Tudor mansion. I called to make a reservation and had a little difficulty understanding the innkeeper, but I was distracted and let it slide. Then when I called to confirm I realized there was something wrong with this fella. I had a really hard time understanding him. I kept picturing a chimp attack-style disfigurement that prevented him from speaking, but I kept this fear away from M, lest she start to have doubts. I mean, an innkeeper is the perfect job for a horribly disfigured person – you’re self employed, your work comes to you, you stay inside all day. I’m not being cruel. When a relatively normal man answered the door you could have heard my relief. A speech impediment is no big deal. Missing faces, sad to say, are an impediment to romantic weekends. In addition to all this there were multiple Thanksgivings, a multi course kosher/vegetarian/gluten Halloween dinner for 12 that actually tasted good and some other good stuff that I am sure I am forgetting.

I’m scared. Look at this mask M and I got in PR:

Add this to the masks we got in Venice and you’ve got a lifetime of terror hanging on the walls of only one room.

I' I’m glad we don’t have kids yet because the therapy bills would already be running. No eyes, unchanging expressions, surreal characters. I got spooked by a few weird pictures on the wall of my grandmother’s apartment. Imagine what these will do to a 3 year old! I just might put one on and chase a youngin around if I get the chance. Put another way though, and it seems like a less murderous version of trophy hunting. Back in the day a man such as myself would have spent a vacation shooting rare animals to make ashtrays, umbrella stands, combs and brush handles from their various appendages. Then I’d hang their heads in my study and swirl brandy in a cloud of cigar smoke while the ladies retired to the conservatory to gossip. There I’d regale my male guests with how I stalked and mortally wounded the great beast and twist my moustache with delight afterwards. Ah the good old days.

I I’m too busy reading. After my post about the great book swap, I realized my hypocrisy about attending a book festival and not being in the middle of an actual book. I took the opportunity of our trip to PR to start reading again. So far it’s been ‘Stupid White Men’ by Michael Moore who happens to be one of what he describes. I’m all for making fun of Dick Cheney, but Moore is advocating borderline anarchy. ‘The Cider House Rules’ by John Irving was one I had been putting off for a while. First of all it was huge – almost 700 pages. Second of all, I still had memories of a sappy Tobey Maguire movie trailer in my head, replete with the heavy voice over and inspirational music and old-timey clothes. I couldn’t imagine this was worth 700 pages, but it was and then some. John Irving writes a damn fine book. ‘The Road’ by Cormac Macarthy was an airport purchase. Cider was getting a little low, so I needed something to top off my tank and this looked suitably short. Plus there’s the movie with Viggo Mortensen (hopefully with less of Viggo’s viggo and more apocalypse horror) out that looks interesting. En route to Boston, the boozed up bunch behind me asked what I thought of the book, which I was really enjoying. I could tell this person didn’t do a lot of book-learnin’ and was fishing for someone to commiserate on her lack o’ unnerstannin of this here book. So I hedged and asked her opinion and sure enough, she’d quit halfway though. I give her credit for trying though. In her defense it was utterly lacking in transitions, names, explanations and continuity. And there was lots of cannibalism. Maybe it was all the human-hunting that put her off? ‘The Last Don’ by Mario Puzo was really frickin good. I carried this book around everywhere I went while I was reading it. Every chance I got , I was there in Vegas comping whales or in Hollywood bedding starlets or in the Bronx giving orders to take out people in the way of the Family. It was all old-school with that vaguely inappropriate accent that old guys speak with. You know, the one where you know they’re capable of saying something so outrageous and politically incorrect that you almost goad them into it because they grew up in another era and can’t help it, just so you can hear how the olden days were.

G G.I. Joe ate my brain. My god was this movie horrible. I love bad action movies. Transformers gave me goose bumps. Armageddon makes me cry. Fast and Furious and XXX made Vin Diesel a legitimate actor in my eyes. But G.I. Joe was just an inexcusable steaming pile of crap. I just deleted 15 sentences I wrote about everything I found wrong with it. Let’s just say I was embarrassed to be seen watching it. ‘The Cooler’ on the other hand was pretty slick. Alec Baldwin needs to be in more stuff. I was sad to see he ‘retired’ this week. Let’s hope this is a boxing champ style retirement and not a real retirement. I can’t get enough of Alec Baldwin making threats in his best monologue snarl. Good stuff. Maria Bello on the other hand – yikes. Between ‘A History of Violence’ and ‘The Cooler’ she’s got a solid 5 minutes of screen time of almost hard-core nudey footage going on. These flicks need a warning on them. Wait.. they do. I just ignore them. Maybe I shouldn’t be watching on the train… ‘House of Games’ – David Mamet’s directorial debut. The man can write the crap out of a screenplay, but this directorial effort was a little shaky. I think it was the actresses’ fault because I haven’t seen her in anything before or since. Big props for young Joe Mantegna and JT Walsh as con men. Since his death a while back, I had forgotten J.T. Walsh died in almost every movie he’s been in, but you can check it out. He’s one of those actors who dies in every movie he’s cast in. Gary Busey is another. Unfortunately neither of them makes movies anymore so we are denied this thrill. ‘Blood Simple’ is the scarily enjoyable original Coen Brothers’ film. These two are in my top 3 favorite director list, along with Michael Mann and Martin Scorcese and this film has all their hallmarks.

I’ve been searching for music. No Kanye this time. Have you ever been watching something and heard a cool snippet of something and wished you knew what it was. I know there’s an ‘app for that’, but how often do you have your Iphone open and ready to fire up that app that tracks down music for you? That’s insane. By the time the stupid phone decides it wants to open and launch your app, that song will be long gone. I was watching Bad Boys 2 the other day and there’s a song that gets played every time Johnny Tapia comes on the screen. It’s not quite Crockett’s Theme, but it’s close. It’s a sort of reggaeton/cubano hip-hop jam. But I don’t speak Spanish so I have no idea what they’re saying. It’s not on the soundtrack, because the good music is rarely on the official soundtrack. I had to scour Youtube looking for the scene and fortunately there’s a whole world of people who agree at the swaggertasticness of this bit of music. Of course ITunes doesn’t have it. If I wanted to download the latest Creed crap I’m sure they’d have it, but I think the last 5 times I went to ITunes looking for something they had it twice and flawlessly let me down the other 3. Not to be outdone, I scoured the flearidden underbelly of the series of tubes and found it. No pirate bay or bittorrent though. All legit here.