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Can the Coffin Be Far Behind?

8/18/2014

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Went to see The Trip to Italy yesterday. It’s the sequel to 2010’s The Trip – best described as a road movie for foodies - with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as two impossibly sharp-witted pals who trade insults and astoundingly good celebrity impersonations over sumptuous meals for the benefit of fictional British newspaper readers and real-life movie-goers.

If you haven’t seen either film (and really, you shouldn’t attempt the second until you’ve seen the first) that plot description doesn’t seem riveting though it is pretty hilarious on the backs of talents like Coogan and Brydon. But what really gives both films gravitas is the serious life stuff thrown in between the pornographically opulent food and travel shots and brainy quips.

Broken relationships, extramarital affairs, career disappointments… all fall into the two films’ cross-hairs. And in The Trip to Italy, one brief scene is especially resonant and quietly heartbreaking: Coogan and Brydon mourn their younger selves, the selves that used to draw the hungry glances of young women, but now do not.

“It's funny... women that age just look straight through us, don’t they," the 49-year-old Coogan laments to Brydon as he observes a 20-ish blonde.

"We're non-threatening,” Brydon concurs.

“The smile we get is the smile they give to a benevolent uncle,” Coogan retorts. “Or a pest."

Pretty much anyone over age 40 doesn’t hear that dialog. They feel it in their bones. It is one of life’s cruelest ironies – just at the point where you finally start feeling comfortable in your own skin, nobody else wants to touch it.

Next step? Death.

It’s interesting hearing men decry aging with the frank resignation normally exhibited by women which the universe clearly targets for harsher judgment on this front. Face it – society abhors aging women. Actually, society can’t be bothered summoning the energy needed to abhor aging women. It just relegates them to invisibility instead.

Your friends, good souls that they are, will insist you’ve still got it, you are still attractive and desirable. Maybe more so now that you’re filled with dazzling, hard-won insights you can share over dinner and cocktails.

Your friends will chummily if bitchily point out the person in your orbit who has gotten fat or so lazy that they’re willing to leave the house wearing sweat pants – the unambiguous raising of the white flag on romance. “Compared to her,” they’ll coo, “You’re the bomb sweetie!”

But in your heart you know it’s not true. Heads don’t spin anymore. Construction-site whistles – once so repugnant – are no longer a daily fact of life. You’d be thrilled if they were a monthly occurrence. You are beautiful no more. Welcome to the golden years. And thanks for playing. 

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Motorcycles Don't Kill Mufflers. Jackasses Riding Motorcycles Kill Mufflers

8/15/2014

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I’m calling this ‘The Summer of the Muffler.’

By now it’s obvious there was a citywide meeting among motorcycle riders this season where all agreed their mufflers would not reduce the amount of noise emitted by the exhaust of their internal combustion engines, as intended, but rather, would amplify it to the absolute maximum degree.

Why bikers would do this, I don’t know. Woefully misguided idea of what constitutes cool maybe? But I do know this: every single day this summer, I have been aurally assaulted by a blisteringly loud, hurricane-force, motorcycle muffler. There have always been fuckwits screeching around our streets and waking up the neighbours, but this year it’s the norm, not the exception.

Do I really need to bother stating I don’t hate bikes or bikers as a general rule? One of my best friends rocks a BMW (hi Wayne!) and I have blissfully sat on the back of many bikes over the years. Bikes are awesome - unless you are rattling all and sundry with your screaming muffler. Zipping by in a haze of racket doesn’t make you look foxy. It makes you look like an imbecile who doesn’t know how to provide routine maintenance to your vehicle.

And since I am already in a lather, here are a few other things annoying the bejesus out of me this summer:

  • The startling lack of summer. I wore a scarf and jacket to yoga last night. That is just so many kinds of wrong I can’t count.
  • Labour Day is 17 days away. 17. Beyond that lies winter, coiled and waiting to heave forth and envelop us in wretched cold for months on end. You remember winter, don’t you? It’s the living embodiment of The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave. And it’s headed our way.
  • I was completely priced out of the genius of Jack White live in concert. Also, the irresistible ridiculousness or Def Leppard and KISS in concert. Sometimes, freelance living really sucks.
  • The 2012 vintage of Peller Estates Private Reserve Baco Noir is all gone. Forever. That was some damn tasty wine.
  • One of my dearest friends landed a great job… in St. John’s Newfoundland. I already miss her so much my stomach hurts. And yet I couldn’t be happier for her. How the heck do you reconcile that? (See also ‘freelance living,’ above, before blabbing on about frequent visits).

Well, there’s always autumn. And the 2013 vintage Thirty Bench Riesling is rumoured to be better than it has any right to be. Oh yeah, there’s vodka also. And four new titles I put on hold at the library just came in! All at once! Maybe things are starting to look up.  

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    Kim Hughes

    Here resides the random thoughts, blurbs  and dangling participles of the Toronto-based writer named above.

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