Less than 24 hours after rolling the dice to determine that I'd be watching 'Blackthorn' for my next western, I found myself at Bernard's Birthday Bonfire Bubble Bonanza (BBBBB), was chumping in the dark (ooo err missus) and damaged my finger on a blackthorn hedge. It bruised, swelled up to twice the size, and was very painful for three days. I don't know if you'd call this ironic, or just incredibly silly.
Oh, and I also proved I couldn't eat a hot dog in the dark without getting mustard all over my face. As my sister said, it looks like I belong in a 'unit'.
Back to #WWWSI 'normality' on Friday just gone then, and rolling a 6 on the Wotsit dice proved I really had tempted fate last week when I said the dice had been 'kind' to me of late. 99.5g of giant wotsits if you do the math(s), my heart spasmed at times, but I got them all down by midnight.
Wine/food wise, I transported myself to Italy, or the island of Sicily to be precise which has its own Isle of Man style flag (bless their cotton socks!) with lots of legs on.
Alphabetically speaking, our next grape was a Nero d'Avola though Sicilians would call it Calabrese and use Nero only as a marketing gimmick for gullible simpletons like me. Red Wine? What a minefield.
Full bodied, dark, rich and powerful, the wine left a telling impact on me which lasted pretty much all weekend!
No wonder my book recommended I ate some pretty powerfully flavoured foodstuffs alongside it. My book mentioned this thing called caponata I decided to have a go at.
Tomato, aubergine, olives, celery, red wine vinegar, capers, honey, basil. Ooof! Not even sure I like half those ingredients, but the sum of the parts was fabulous with a bit of ciabatta. I did some grilled lamb steaks too for added sustenance, though with the six bags of wotsits, this wasn't a dish for the faint hearted!
Tonight's music saw me jigging around the kitchen to Herb Alpert & his non-Sicilian brass band. Italy, Spain, Mexico. All the same kinda place really isn't it?
I was all ready to 'go through' and settle down for about 7:30pm, a little bit later than I'd have liked but I'd had a pre-WWWSI powernap after a very difficult day at work!
I found Blackthorn a little bit of a frustrating to be honest, it never really grabbed me and pulled me in! I'm probably harsher on it because last week, The Homesman was such a similar style modern, revisionist Western set in bleak but beautiful landscape, brooding, cinematic, but lacking the bite of my Nero d'Avola and caponata.
I did like the concept. Butch Cassidy, supposedly having survived the last scene in his original movie (chinny reckon, but yeah ok, I'll suspend my disbelief) is now an old bloke still in Bolivia under the fake name 'Blackthorn', wanting to return home to see his son. The Sundance Kid and Etta Place are now dead, as we learn through a series of confusing flashbacks.
Not sure about his local bank and whether they'd done this quarter's compliance learning, for Butch just waltzes in, acts suspicious, says he wants to withdraw all his savings in cash, and he gets it, no questions asked. Hmmmm, not sure it'd happen like that at YB Batley branch.
The dude who plays the old Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepherd) is very good, and keeps the film going as he teams up with this shady youngster called 'the Spaniard'. Definitely not trustworthy, but maybe he reminds Butch of 'the kid' for they soon team up.
Without saying much more, stuff happens. And then the film ends. As it so often the way. I really should be a paid movie critic.
The local pub was interesting, a mash up of the Maltings in York after 8pm on a weekday night in terms of the staff wishing you'd just piss off so they could close early, and somewhere I've not been to like the Red Lion in Snargate when an old woman potters around and makes the rules. I'm guessing.
So, I'm glad I watched it, disappointed I couldn't purchase a can of Dry Blackthorn Cider for an added twist, but it won't live too long in my memory.
WWWSI TROPHY & A.O.B.
No new followers to report this week. But perhaps more surprisingly, we haven't lost any despite the WWWSI Trophy, for which we had the second round fixtures played over the weekend. These are the results.
Congratulations to the sixteen who have made it into round three, the draw will be made at 3pm on Si Sports TV this coming Sunday, with the matches played a week later.
Next week's film will be The Professionals (1966) which is ranked #86 on my list, but has more favourable reviews than Blackthorn and The Homesman. I've rolled a 5 on the Wotsit front, wine is from Turkey, and food will involve chicken and a weird pasta. Not sure what night I'll do yet as drinking beer Mon, Tue & Wed (which never happens!), so may give myself night off and do Friday again, we'll see how my lizard (liver) is holding up.
Happy first week of Feb, are the green shoots of spring going to start appearing soon?
Si