Live and Let Dine - "Vernal" Geekquinox 2022

Never in my life have I been so grateful not to have eaten a delicious serving of tenderloin - but let me start at the beginning...

Back in February, Pete (The Rare Hipster) announced that his next Geekquinox dinner would be a "007 course meal" served on March 19. This prompted no small number of puns based on James Bond film titles, often poking fun at the late hour that the mains are sometimes served at, which he took with considerable good humour: The Wine is Not Enough, Dining is Forever, On Her Majesty's Secret Menu, Cold Pizza (styled after the amazing Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger), No Time to Die-t and this post's title, supplied by Earl.

With a month's notice and no schedule conflicts, it seemed like a sure thing. But then one of the guests tested positive for Covid which made a number of us uncomfortable with attending, so Pete wisely postponed.

Five months, two reschedulings and multiple Covid cases amongst multiple guests later, we finally convened last night for yet another amazing meal and a wonderful time with friends.

Audrey and I can generally be expected to lean into the theme in terms of our couture and this outing was no exception. Since I own no tuxedo (and am not particularly dashing even when I wear one), I leaned into the villain look with a black turtleneck, snake tooth necklace, eye patch and fake scarring on my freshly shaved head.

Audrey took the opportunity to portray my chauffeur/bodyguard, with an ominous cap, jacket and tie and makeup brilliantly applied by Glory.

Our preparations didn't make us too late and we arrived just after the last of the other guests, and I was delighted to see Pete rocking his own eyepatch and mandarin collar, with Ellen pulling off a remarkable Miss Moneypenny.

Rather than try to replicate specific dishes from the films, Pete elected to tie each course to the home region of various Bond villains, giving us a taste of several exotic locales.

Even the menu is on-point!

Our hosts got everyone situated with beverages for the first course - astoundingly delicious blue cheese and horseradish biscuits served alongside meticulous rosettes of butter with honey (in honour of the film's female lead, Honey Ryder) and balsamic vinegar.

We enjoyed these on the deck until it began threatening rain so we moved indoors. I had brought a change of clothes just in case, but with the air conditioning on I was able to maintain the turtleneck all night (even though the patch made my eye sweaty). 

Next up was an astonishing beef stroganoff in honour of Rosa Klebb. Now, most of us have probably cobbled something similarly rooted to this dish with ground beef, noodles and mushroom soup, or even round steak simmered in a crock pot, but this was amazing, and my favourite dish of the evening. A rich mushroomy sauce enveloping tender egg noodles, sauteed mushrooms and tiny onions, and then topped with strips of seasoned steak. 

It will be really tough to go back to the Hamburger Helper version after this.

I didn't get a picture of it, but Pete also served me a delicious libation in the form of a hot honey jalapeno margarita. I am generally a fan of pretty much any margarita, but the blend of sweet and spice in this one, offset with the salted rim, made for an incredible tipple I cannot wait to try again.

Next up were garlic shrimp in the Spanish style - possibly the garliciest seafood I have ever been lucky enough to try. Large, firm and tender shrimp, dripping with garlic oil, and enhanced by frying the shrimp shells in it. Small portions of bread meant none of the delicious sauce was wasted.

The shrimp were followed by another seafood course, and a confession from our host. In homage to the underwater villainy of Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me, we enjoyed pan-seared scallops in a lemon caper sauce. I love capers but was surprised at how much Audrey enjoyed this dish since they are not usually to her liking - such is Pete's culinary skill!

The confession was significant, even if the reaction to it was not. Pete admitted he had over-extended himself, and we would need to forego the tenderloin dinner as it has not gotten started in time. As much as those in attendance had been looking forward to a classic "rosbif" dinner, there was unanimous agreement that there was already more than enough food in play. Even now, the idea of having that beef, potatoes, carrots, Yorkshire puddings and gravy before me, as my digestive system wrestled with the voluminous quantities of rich, delicious food makes me blanch a little. Another time, I hope!

Even without the immensity of the foregone main course, digging into the final two offerings required a resolute disposition (and gratitude for the space of time the dinner is served over!).

The penultimate serving was a Mexican black bean soup with chorizo and blacke3ned chicken - immaculate! Perfectly spiced and garnished with a few splashes of lime juice, with hearty sausage and tender, flavourful chicken in almost every spoonful. Ironic how one of my least favourite films of the series inspired one of my favourite dishes of the night.

It was not quite 1 a.m. when we got to dessert - a delicious crème brûlée. With the lateness of the hour and the length of the day for the cook, it is perhaps no wonder that the only other mishap of the evening was a bit of over-carbonization of the most centrally located custards. The remainder, despite a hint of smokiness, were amazing, and the perfect capstone for the evening.

By 2:00 almost everyone had said their goodbyes and Audrey and I toddled off to bed, with tipsy heads, full stomachs and hearts overflowing from connecting with friends after what felt like an interminable period of isolation.

Pete and Ellen's upcoming nuptials mean that this will be the last Geekquinox until spring 2023, but we are already looking forward to it, and I am certain the other guests are too!

But this would-be villain is still glad that the tenderloin never made it to the table...

Nothing Sacred - Thor: Love and Thunder, Reviewed

Director Taika Waititi did a spectacular job in his previous Thor movie, Ragnarok -  a comedic but still heartfelt take on the character that I enjoyed tremendously and which refreshed an MCU staple in danger of becoming staid and dull following the underwhelming Thor: The Dark World. I was honestly surprised when they announced he was returning to write and direct Thor: Love and Thunder though, given how difficult it is to be groundbreaking two times in a row. You can't step in the same piece of river twice, as they say.

I won't lie, I was a bit concerned when the movie spent a significant part of the first act undoing much of what had gone before: the chunky Thor who sailed off with The Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Endgame? Gone, replaced by the burliest Odinson in all of his appearances (Chris Hemsworth apparently spent most of his Covid lockdown exercising and eating 8 meals a day). The quaint town of New Asgard in Norway, home to Asgardian refugees following their homeworld's destruction in Ragnarok? Now a Disneyland-like tourist hub with flying boat tours, t-shirt stands and hammy dramatizations of past events (yes, once again featuring Matt Damon, Sam Neill and Luke Hemsworth).

Go ahead, look for fat...

And while it is obvious that Waititi doesn't take the tropes of superhero cinema very seriously, he uses them to great effect to shape a story with honest emotional impact, even if a lot of the run time is devoted to characters in capes getting into ridiculously destructive fights while dropping pithy catchphrases most of the time. 

Case in point - the movie opens with a tragic tale of unreturned devotion between a man of faith and his fickle deity, and we finally get a villainous origin story equal in scope and pathos to those of the heroes. Christian Bale's Gorr the God-Butcher is on a mission to destroy all gods (a term which, in terms of the MCU at least, seems even more vague and undefined than in our own reality, and perhaps this is for the best), which inevitably puts him into conflict with Thors.

Yes, Thors! Natalie Portman's Dr. Jane Foster returns for the first time since 2013 (!) but enters the story undergoing chemotherapy for stage IV cancer of an undisclosed variety. As a last-ditch effort to strengthen herself, she is somehow (and the rationale is eventually revealed and is clever) able to reform the shattered pieces of Thor's former hammer, Mjolnir, and gain powers similar to his. Jane adopts the same name - not Lady Thor, not Ms. Thor, just the Mighty Thor, precisely as it was done on Jason Aaron's immense comics run. And Odin's ravens, does Portman look marvellous in the role.

When Gorr abducts the children of Asgard in order to bait out Thor, the stage is set for a mystical road trip that will take both thunder gods as well as Korg (Taika Waititi) and King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) through Omnipotence City, the dwelling place of many powerful beings on a broad spectrum of divinity, including Russel Crowe as a vain and impatient Zeus that feels spot-on to both mythology and the comics.

Bale is wonderful as Gorr, possessing a tremendous amount of charisma and even humour for a character so relentlessly ruthless and even cruel, and the character's real superpower seems to grow directly out of the actor's legendary intensity.

Like all recent Marvel movies, things build to a massive, effects-driven battle in the third act, but like the most clever of these Phase 4 offerings, the story does not reach its climax there. Rather, the battle sets up a far more satisfying and emotionally resonant resolution than I was expecting.

In the end, though, can I recommend Love and Thunder to everyone? Of course not. Many people have simply had enough Marvel for the time being, and I get that. And Waititi's tendency to bounce from broad, slapstick silliness to gut-wrenching poignancy, sometimes within the same scene, can leave a lot of people feeling off balance. There is also a lot of 80s-era metal and metal-adjacent rock used to excellent effect in the film, but which will not be to everyone's taste I'm certain.

But it is clear that he and his co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson have a lot of affection for these characters and their relationships, as encumbered as they might be with decades of comic book continuity and mythological influences. Love and Thunder is an entertaining time if your sentiment is, like Waititi's, more aligned with people and their experiences than the established structures of superhero cinema.

Nailing It At a Family Reunion

Bryce and Sara have been wanting Audrey's folks to meet their grandson Robin for a while now, but Covid made that impossible as it did so many things. Robin turns three this month (astonishingly), and with school out Audrey arranged to meet them down in High River as a local guide and so they could stay at her sister Vera's place. 

Well, the next thing you know, other members of Audrey's family are wanting to drop by to meet the new kin and hey, with so many of us there why don't we have an early 90th birthday celebration for Opa? Once it turned into a de facto family reunion, it kind of took on a life of its own and gathered steam from that point on.

We brought the tent trailer down Friday night and parked next to Hank and Betty's fifth wheel on Vera's enormous driveway. After a pancake breakfast in the mess hall we cobbled together in her equally massive garage the next morning, we hauled a propane grill, cooler and a bunch of chairs and food to George Lane Memorial Park.

I should say that this afternoon was not without its share of apprehension, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I will be the first to admit to the atrophication of my own social skills over the past two-and-a-half years. As mentioned in last week's post, this pandemic has been tough on all of us, and we are all out of practice when it comes to interacting with other groups of humans.

Secondly, there is always a risk when the city mice and country mice get together, and with the news these days full of potentially and earnestly divisive topics on both sides of the border on a daily basis, well, it behooves one to proceed with caution, if not trepidation. Then add the possibility that some of these, let's call them more parochial viewpoints, have actually intensified during Covid..

Entering such an environment with my oldest daughter (who was nicknamed "Human Rights Person" by one of her profs), her non-white boyfriend, my queer nephew and the rest of us "Every Child Matters" t-shirt-wearers from 'Redmonton' could potentially be like looking for a gas leak in a dark basement with a lit match, but hey, Lord hates a coward, right?

And sure enough, when another relative showed up wearing a cap that read "Trudeau -Canda's Biggest Virus," I had to laugh and refused to take the bait. I know for a natural fact this person has at least a dozen other caps they could have worn for the occasion and besides, I'm still mad at his target too - what the hell happened to electoral reform, Justin?

Anyhow, it all went pretty well in the end; the weather was hot but the site was shady and a nice breeze kept things cool. We all remembered how to connect again, somehow, and enjoyed smokies and beer and catching up and even a few games of ladderball together. There were over thirty of us there at one point, and we got to reconnect with a lot of people, some of whom we just love to pieces.

Audrey finally got to introduce Bryce, Sara and Robin to the last members of her family who hadn't met them yet. We got to hug my oldest niece just days before she is scheduled to give birth and give Betty and Hank their first grandchild. We sang happy birthday to a patriarch a month ahead of him reaching 90% of a century (wow!). And best of all, Oma and Opa got to see multiple generations of their family tree interacting for the first time since 2019.

My favourite tableaux of all came the next day, however, after we'd breakfasted and packed up the trailer and just before the last of us sat down for a pre-departure game of Codenames (because Vera was hosting everyone and hardly ever gets to play games with large groups).

At some point my nephew Mark produced a set of high-end nail polishes which, thanks to two daughters and Instagram ads, I actually recognized (Holo Taco (for "holographic topcoat") in case you were wondering).

He got Glory to paint his nails with these amazing shades, and afterwards one of his uncles took an interest. Now, this particular brother is generally an easy-going and laid-back individual but does work full-time in agriculture (like most of Audrey's family) and while by no means a redneck, would probably not object to being described along the lines of straight-laced, and I wondered about just how open-minded he might be about fellows wearing nail polish.

It turns out I needn't have worried; when asked if he wanted his nail's done, Audrey's brother snorted, but instead of saying "no way!" or "what kind of guy do you take me for?", he simply replied, "There's no point - I would chip them pretty colours off before lunch time my first day back at work!"

Ah, the Dutch - ever so practical. ; )

Ministry of Truth

Today in church we heard a tremendous sermon from a departing member of our congregation. He is a serving Canadian Army chaplain who is being posted out to CFB Esquimault on Vancouver Island.

Rev. Tyler has been deployed overseas twice in his career, once to Ukraine and once to Germany. While in Germany one of his responsibilities was something called "third location decompression" and it factored strongly in his reflection.

Third location decompression provides a structured time designed to help transition service members from their time on deployment in a high-tension, often dangerous environment before returning home to their "normal" lives. It is a proven means of combatting things like PTSD, and members who have anxieties or concerns or straight-up problems with the adjustment can be given the resources they need.

Decompressing in Germany is an interesting experience, as Rev. Tyler related it: you have paved roads and safe shops and all manner of things like you do back in Canada, but every interaction is slightly more difficult. Take going to a shop to buy a food item, for instance; if you don't speak German (like the majority of those decompressing), you aren't going to be able to recognize the signage, labels or ingredients. You aren't going to recognize too many familiar brands. And even the currency is different! Even a simple, everyday event like buying something to eat at the grocer's suddenly carries unexpected variables and an element of risk, at least at a social level.

"Sound familiar?" he asked, and it suddenly twigged on me that he could be describing life under COVID.

"You have all been deployed," he stated. For two years, he continued, you have had to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways, and with risks none of us could have anticipated before the pandemic began. And now we are slowly returning to normal - but there is no decompression, so supervision, no overarching structure. 

Some people are ready to return to normal, feeling it is long overdue, while others are still cautious, because who knows what the next variant might bring?

His words brought a sharp realization to me: that I am not the same person I was when the pandemic began.

That I am a damaged person. 

My mother, my remaining parent, passed in December, just as COVID was breaking free of China. Two months later I had my career upended as I was redeployed at work back to the same position I had when I began there a decade earlier. And a month after that, everyone was sent to work from home, and I have been doing it ever since. (And hope to keep doing it, frankly, having made my peace with the redeployment - a post for another day, perhaps!) Have I given those changes any serious consideration? HAve I recognized the impacts they have had on my patience, my anger, my expectations about life?

Rev. Tyler wrapped up by explaining how it is okay to not be okay, that everyone will make this awkward, staggering transition to post-pandemic life at their own pace, and it is important to recognize this in both ourselves, and in others. That we need to give ourselves time to adapt.

His simple, human reassurance - his validation of a struggle shared - moved me profoundly, and gave me pause to reflect; truth and wisdom that transcended the scriptural relevance and became something universal I felt compelled to share.

This is the reason I worship - not be told that everything is going to be all right, or that everything is proceeding according to plan, or that it all gets sorted out in the afterlife - the affirmation that other humans have experienced or are experiencing similar things, and that guidance can be ours. The sense that we can support each other and make things collectively better. And where else would I hear something like this?

Tonight we were very happy to have our first visit from our former minister James and his husband Glen - two delightful people we haven't seen face to face since pre-pandemic, and who now live in St. John's.

Rev. James introduced our household to a lot of perspectives we now take for granted, and not just LGBTQ+ ones, but also living in right relations with indigenous peoples and not just knuckling under to the patriarchy. In fact, Fenya told him tonight that, "My life trajectory would have been very different if I hadn't met you," and I think he was legitimately touched. Fenya has made justice, equality and inclusion a major part of her life, which is part of the reason one of her sociology professors nicknamed her "Human Rights Person," and referred to her by that name in class on multiple occasions.

I know religion and spirituality are not everyone's bag, and given how they have been weaponized in the past (and probably the future, if the items we see on CNN are any indicator, but let me tell you, having a dedicated time to reflect while getting insights from excellent humans on Sunday mornings has benefited me greatly.

But at the end of the day, perhaps the key has less to do with interpreting ancient wisdom and more to do with recognizing excellent humans in your life.