Greetings, Gentle Readers.
What we find is this:
cruising eleven kilometres above the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa in
the dead of night, our tired and weary travellers snatch fitfully at hints of
sleep. It’s been almost 48 hours of
travel with only a six-hour nap in Mississauga to interrupt the cascade of
customs checks and the uncomfortable cattle-car confines of coach class.
Right. Well, apart
from the fact that I was unaware of the limitations of Microsoft Office
Starter, and their subsequent impact on the functionality of Microsoft Word,
the trip thus far has been relatively uneventful and mercifully free of
international incident.
The plane that carried us away from Edmonton on the morning
of Saturday 20 April fled an oncoming snow front, and thus we surfed on the
crest of a prodigious tailwind that dropped us at Lester B. Pearson
International airport a full half-hour earlier than expected. In a cascade of meteorological dominoes, our
arrival had also displaced an unseasonal snowstorm from the Greater Toronto
Area. Good news all around on the
weather front.
Saturday night came about rather quickly, since we’d zipped
three time zones away from the setting sun.
After an odd dinner of rice and something that resembled meat from T
& T Supermarket, we settled into some hard family anecdotes, rumours,
gossip, and general familial catching-up.
Much to my dismay, “T & T” does not stand for “Trinidad and Tobago”
in this instance. Not sure what it
stands for, but if it must have something to do with the permeating smell of
slightly-gone-off-fish and the oddly gelatinous rubbery pink substance that they
supplied instead of beef.
Sunday morning, I managed to finally meet up with Richard Barter
after four-plus years of cyber-correspondence.
His Man City team contrived to lose to Tottenham in a cross-London derby
that essentially handed the Premier League throne to Manchester United. Not to be outdone, Liverpool then managed to
draw a game in an amazing amount of injury-time whilst our star striker decided
to do his best re-enactment of a Donner Party dinner service, to the dismay of
hapless but tasty defender Branislav Ivanovic.
Luis Suarez is probably headed for a lengthy suspension and some bath
salts rehab, both of which will significantly diminish Liverpool’s dwindling
odds of qualifying for… pretty much anything.
So much for a shot at the LDV Vans Intertoto Continental Breakfast
Championships.
Then there was the newest member of the fellowship. My father and I are old veterans at dealing with
the sort of neurotic paranoia that has characterized international airport
security checks and customs inspections since some jackanapes stuffed some
fertilizer in his sneakers in a pre-boarding lounge. Bringing in a n00b is an awkward
proposition. Personally, I try to avoid
packing anything that involves liquids, gels, pastes, colloids, solutions,
precipitates, isotopes, compounds, elements, or anything with mass, momentum,
density, or charge.
Quick summary: while
my father and I breeze effortlessly through every X-ray monitor, Geiger
counter, metal detector, 3D MRI scan, and full-body cavity search, dear Uncle
Mel got more scrutiny than a frog at a snake symposium. My father attributes it to the fact that Mel
is toting around an odd-coloured backpack, and that backpackers are routinely
profiled as homicidal lunatics by the authorities. I reckon that Mel just packed the wrong stuff
– prescription medication, a nail-clipper, clothing, etc.
The answer is probably somewhere in-between. I reckon that Mel hasn’t used his luggage in
20 years, and stored the bags in some sort of asbestos-ridden phosphate plant
owned and operated by the IRA in direct contravention of the nuclear
microproliferation treaty. The team at
Heathrow swabbed that backpack more than the deck of the HMS Beagle. My father and I have learned to stand
patiently after the security areas and make bland conversations that absolutely
nothing whatsoever to do with Al-Qaeda.
We paid some extortionate amount for a couple of lads to
hold our bags at Heathrow and ran into the City to spend some of the 11 hour
layover. As we toured around the old
stomping grounds, we checked out parts of Hyde Park, Mayfair, and the Kendal
part of Marble Arch W2.
 |
| Even after death, these animals march into peril. |
I’m inserting photos of the latest iteration of the Duke of
Kendal, as well as what my camera says is a 3D image of the Animals in War
memorial,
and the gilded American Eagle of Freedom squatting obnoxiously atop
the anachronistically-designed and heavily-fortified American Embassy. |
| The American Spread-Eagle, eager to deposit steaming piles of justice and virtue all over Grosvenor Square. |
And thus our story takes us high above the dark continent at
its darkest. The 11-hour flight to
Joburg has at least let me catch up on my movie-watching. Here are my quick and dirty reviews of all of
the inflight films that I’ve seen thus far.
Hotel Transylvania: Better than expected family fare with an
all-star voice cast, and just enough intelligent jokes to carry it past the
usual kiddie-potty-humour (e.g., witches hoovering farts with bellows, Bigfoot
clogging the toilets, etc.). Predictable
with few challenges, there are enough charming bits to make it tolerable. 2 Jellybeans.
Wreck-It Ralph: Another family-style animation film. Again, some extraordinary voice talents
without which the film would fail entirely as an artistic endeavour. The plot is nothing fabulous, but as an old
video game aficionado, I enjoyed many of the in-jokes. The music (based on MIDI algorithms, for the
most part) is amusing, and the visuals are a fabulous span between 8-bit
Nintendo and hyper-realistic “Gears of War”-esque graphics. Check out the song "Sugar Rush" to get an idea of the retro-caché value of this film. Found the sugary-sweet “don’t dislike people
because they are different” thematic message to be particularly cliché and
trite, and that’s what left the worst taste in my figurative mouth. 2.5 Jellybeans.
Django Unchained: Obviously Quentin Tarantino is well-versed in
his Douglas Sirk, since he appears hell-bent on exaggerating everything in his
films beyond melodrama to thoroughly muddy the waters between intent and
content. For example, the sociopathic
and linguistically talented German character (and the actor who portrays him)
return from “Inglourious Basterds,” but this time, he is mercilessly hunting
and executing slave-folk instead of Jews, so he’s a good guy. Samuel L. Jackson is possibly the best bit of
the film as a cross between a classic Uncle Tom and Salacious Crumb. Silly film, but most likely adored by fans of
torture porn and Blaxploitation. 2 Jellybeans.
Cloud Atlas: Self-indulgent rubbish that exists to provide
a bit of fun and variety for some jaded Hollywood falling stars. Good thing that there was some preachy and
paternalist content, or else luminaries like Susan Sarandon would never have
graced the thing. 1 Jellybean.
Life of Pi: If a film’s measure of success is how much
you wish to slap the lead character, or the amount that the film can beat the
audience with faux spiritualist, regurgitated Kahlil Gibran platitudes, then
this effort is a home run. My criteria
are different. I think that watching
this film on a plane gives it a single Jellybean, because the strength of this
film lies in the colour, imagery, and depth of the graphics, and a dinky wee 9”
screen does no justice to these assets.
The “I ripped off Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s
Children” scriptwriting and wafer-thin plot do nothing to further the bland,
polemic agenda of basically saying that all religions are one and that all God’s
children are equally fluffy and cute.
SkyFall: OK. So
some people wanted to go back to the purist days of 007 as written by Ian
Fleming. No underwater Lotus Esprits or
laser-equipped space shuttles. Just spy
stuff. I get it. So does everyone else, after the film
abandons any attempt to conceal its self-consciousness. From Q’s “Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t do that anymore,” to three different
characters commenting on a spy’s equipment of consisting of nothing more than a
gun and a radio, to the Crocodile Dundee-emulating declaration that the
protagonists must go to where they are on familiar territory. I was waiting for Ralph Fiennes to suddenly
declare that the future of espionage lies in the past, and that Bond should
pick up a hoe and begin subsistence farming to get into the mind of an anthrax attack
from the point of view of the bacterium.
Nice action sequences and some very gruff and grumbly delivery from a
bleak and unkempt Daniel Craig. Shoehorning
a new Moneypenny into the film to replace Samantha Bond was particularly unnecessary. A very generous 3 Jellybeans.
Must run. Have a safari in the morning. Will try and keep people informed with all of the news as it happens, relevant or not.
Cheers and good night, England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS
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