Movies in 2026 227

 

The Cup (Khyentse Norbu, 1999)

And now, not surprisingly, I'm disappearing down a Khyentse Norbu rabbit hole, the Bhutanese director (and much more) whose film, Travellers & Magicians, I watched the other night. Last night I watched his first film, The Cup (1999). It tells the story, apparently based on actual events, of some monks who  come up with a scheme to acquire (temporarily) a TV and satellite dish - and in the process convince the head of their monastery of the brilliance of this plan - so that they could watch the World Cup final match. A very sweet film, and highly recommended.

The Fugitive

 Yesterday I had the tremendous pleasure of meeting my friend Sheila Liming for coffee and Proust down in Montpelier. She's closing in on her completion of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and we wanted to get together to discuss The Fugitive (the sixth volume) before I disappeared off the earth. I'll definitely miss her, and not simply because she's the one person I met at Champlain who is happy to get together to discuss Proust. If you're looking for some interesting and thought-provoking books to read, definitely check out some of Sheila's.

Here she is nerding out over the fact that we had underlined exactly the same passage (actually, we had done that many times in the text, as might be expected from folks who share a love of literary works in general, and Proust in particular, would).

The passage in question (Marcel reflecting upon the death of Albertine): 

"Since her memory was linked to every season, the only way of forgetting it would have been to forget all of them, even if it meant that I would have to learn to recognize them all over again, like an old man who has suffered from hemiplegia, learning to read again; I would have had to renounced the whole universe. Only a real death of my self, I told myself (were it not impossible), would be capable of consoling me for her death. I did not realize that the death of the self is neither impossible nor extraordinary; it is accomplished without our knowledge and, if necessary, without our consent every day, and I would suffer from the repetition of every sort of day that not only nature but accidental circumstances of more conventional arrangements could introduce into a season."

13th Man

 You have to lose this statue outside the Roughriders stadium, which celebrates the endless passion and devotion of Saskatchewan fans: the 13th man.

During relative slow points in CFL games, I'll often launch into a discussion of all the ways that the CFL is clearly and inarguably better than the NFL (which I'm sure I've discussed previously on this blog, so I won't repeat myself - at least this time). Now I can add a statue celebrating the 13th man, which is clearly better than any US discussion of the importance of the 12th man. 

Roughriders

 While these two guys have obviously seen better days, the Roughriders (Grey Cup Champions last year) are still percolating along quite nicely. Their stadium is quite nice. A couple days earlier, when we were talking to a Blue Bombers fan at the Winnipeg Zoo, and recounting our plans, he proposed that we'd really like Regina and the Roughriders game, although we'd discover that in every single area it would be slightly worse than the similar experience in Winnipeg. I don't know if I'd agree with him, but I appreciated the smack talk from two bitter rivals.

Yes, I bought a Roughriders straw hat, mainly because of the wilting heat and broiling sun. Also, we also clearly supported end endless tsunami of Saskatchewan merchandise being purchased.

Movies in 2026 226

 

The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda, 2026)

Not every movie that you see is one that you would have normally chosen to watch, obviously, but that doesn't mean that it was a bad time. Last night Janet wanted to watch The Sheep Detectives, and while I was not that enthusiastic, it was a pretty fun movie. If you're reading this post you already know more about the movie than I do, so I won't repeat the story. I definitely enjoyed it more than Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (which I'm obviously continuing to dump on - and the characters were more fully realized).

True Fans

 By definition, true fans are fans that travel, that is, they attend both home and road games. As we were waiting for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers game to start we were impressed by the number of Toronto Argonauts fans there were in the stadium, and that takes some effort because the Bombers routinely sell out (essentially, you need to start your planning early - months ago I was looking for tickets on a pre-sale on the first day that tickets were available, and the picking were already sparse). We were sitting there when I turned to Kevin and said, "Dude, we sat behind that guy in Toronto!" It says something about how often you go to games and how much you pay attention when you recognize not only players, but also fans. Anyway, the Argos fans showed out.

While all of this is true, what can you say about folks who have gone to over thirty CFL games, all of them, by definition, road games? 

The Moment

 This was the moment in the third quarter of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats vs. Saskatchewan Roughriders game when the fun finally began to disappear behind the stadium. It was a brutally hot game - in the upper 90s when the game began - and it was at this moment when we realized that we might actually survive. It's almost like the inverse of last June's Calgary game, where it was so cold that we just about froze - in both instances, we came out of the game vowing to go back, because the weather was so daunting that it didn't give us a clear picture of what it's like to see a game there. The fans were enthusiastic, but I think everyone was in survival mode.

Some idiot, it could be anyone, obviously, although in this case it's me, didn't bother to think about which side of the stadium was in the sun - which didn't seem like an issue when I bought the tickets several months ago.