I’m working my way through Alias, which for some reason I haven’t seen all of. That sentence sounded okay in my head. I really have other things to do (and I’m not watching it when small lad is around since I’m not sure about its suitability for kids), but meh, I used to watch it on and off, may as well get through it.
Eventually I’ll get through all of Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, too. I’m slow. Actually I’m more than a little paranoid about what’s playing when the lad is home. It seems stupid, but I don’t like watching things in “my” study, since a) it’s too cold in there and b) I’m away from the action.
Since the action lately has been Mr T’s Something-Or-Other-Involving-Fools (There’s A Shock), I should probably rethink that. Since it gave me the chance to paraphrase Stephen King last week (“Yes, but if it stops being funny when it starts being you, it’s not really funny”), I’m not complaining much.
I usually line things up to watch while I’m ironing (MY GOD DOMESTIC SIDENOTES IN THIS BLOG NOTWITHSTANDING WHEN DID I BECOME A HOUSEWIFE?), but I haven’t been doing any ironing. Now that we’re running out of laundry baskets and I’m sick of the sock hunts (like snipe hunts, if they came in pairs and were found under beds and in dusty corners*), ironing it is.
* “Baron, sometimes you are so wet, one could shoot snipe off of you.” The Robin Hood movie with Patrick Bergen and Uma Thurman. It came out in the same year as the Kevin Costner one. Its editing was rushed for its release date and the dye colours in the taxing the textiles scene are impossible, but you can’t have everything.
Speaking of films, and with a crappy segue I am, so please come along, we’ve worked our way back through the Matrix trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean lot (which always makes me sad, then angry, then cross, then angry, then angry some more). In there was also the Lego Movie, which I liked more the second time around. Because I’m high maintenance and difficult, I’ll admit it still isn’t my favourite - that twee saccharine I’ll stop now because I hate giving spoilers. But…ERK!
I was going to rant about Pirates, had half a paragraph or two (then remembered I’d ranted on facebook), because it’s harsh and quite horrible - Ellison’s hell in “Hitler Painted Roses” is a luxury compared to some of the Pirates mythology - but I think I’ve done enough ranting about it, and it’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.
Olives.
Olives are what I wanted to talk about, since I love them and got some in a restaurant recently that lived up to the hype that is a good olive. I love olives. Green ones, black ones, ones with pimentos – I’ll even have a bash at feta-stuffed giant green ones, although I draw the line at involving anchovies.
When I saw the olives in Matrix Revolutions, I was drooling, and certainly not over the Merovingian. Creep. Those gorgeous dark-green globes on a twisty-metal cocktail stick. The feel of the cool fire of a martini (especially vodka, nom nom nom) balanced by the warm comfort of a great olive, oh yummy. My mouth is watering now.
I want those olives. I want to make a pitcher of martinis (like in MASH, because functional alcoholism is hilarious*), and pour out into frosted, probably specially purchased cocktail glasses, and plonk those olives right in. Then pick them out again, as I drink.
I fire up Google, thinking I can probably find out what variety of olives they were. Ha!
What I found instead was a crowing about a continuity error in the scene – the Merovingian has one olive on the stick, then two. I also found multiple (very interesting, but beside my point) explorations of the meanings in the Matrix trilogy. Yes, but, dammit, I’m looking for food not philosophy. Ba-doom-tish.
(And, parenthetically speaking, I think that error is more clumsy-ish handling than bloomer. There are two olives in the bottom of the glass as Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity approach. Then Merv gestures with the cocktail stick with one olive on it, right at the end of the stick. It seems pretty logical that – although we don’t see the Merovingian’s hands – he picks up the second as he talks.)
(Continuing with the sidebar, because I seem to care about this: the point of this scene establishes the Merovingian as a hedonist. He continues a business discussion while rooting around for an olive to eat, in an ever-so-sophisticated martini – it’s not that hard to work out. If you haven’t seen the movie (if you don’t like olives, you don’t care, and may be a heathen), watch this scene closely. As he talks to them, he doesn’t just eat that first olive whole, he tears off half, leaving the remaining flesh on the stick. And we see it, oh yes, sitting there, teeth-marked, the flesh begging to be finished. And it might matter too, if in the world of the story, someone had to conduct a long negotiation with him. Poison an olive, whoopee, problems solved. Instead Trinity is about to point a gun at his head and thus ends negotiation. Oh well. End of sidebar.)
I still don’t know what variety of olive they used. I’ll just have to be surprised the next time I find an olive that lives up to the hyperbole. Most of which I’ve created for this post, and more power to me.
* Don’t know where that snark came from, but it’s staying there now.
I’m now very sleepy in the eyeballs, and this turned out much longer than I expected (and I should be asleep - I'm posting this later but it's the afternoon as I type).
May all of your olives be hyperbolic and your sock hunts go better than mine.
