Author Archives: Court

About Court

This is Courtney Vallentyne's blog.

Lighthearted Foolishness? Perfect.

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I’m really loving this story about 9 high school friends who have been playing tag for 23 years.  Literally.  The game started in high school, and then on the last day of school the guy who was “it” couldn’t tag anyone.  He was “it” for 8 more years until they had a reunion and decided to start the game again.  They had all moved away from each other, so the rules were that the game was only open for the month of February each year.  If you got tagged, you were it for the whole year.  Elaborate stunts, travel, traps and stalking ensued, and I think this is just awesome.

I can see this ultimately ending with a dramatic low speed chase in rascal scooters in Florida…..

Nice work guys, keep it up.

It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being ‘It’

Dropkick Murphys’ lovely little Christmas Song

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I am way late to the Dropkick Murphys party, I basically just discovered them to my great dismay.  I have been experiencing Celtic music fatigue of late, having absolutely listened to death all of the Great Big Sea, Pogues, Stan Rogers, etc, that I could take over the past 10 years or more.  But to call these guys just Celtic is not correct, they are almost more of a Punk band than anything, at least on their latest album, Signed and Sealed in Blood.  I highly recommend you check them out.

The standout song that made me laugh right out loud today is ironically a Christmas song that was released last month, but I missed it altogether.  It’s absolutely a spiritual successor to the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, and it’s just hilarious.  Here’s just one lyric to listen for in the video below:

My sisters are wackjobs I wish I had none

Their husbands are losers and so are their sons

My nephew’s a horrible wise little twit

He once gave me a nice gift wrapped box full of shit

Oh man, it’s the real deal.  Have a look at the completely awesome video and enjoy.  Go out and buy this album, these guys deserve your money.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-sdR6Yzk

What we really need is a 1000ft baguette

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As I contemplate just how cold the van likely is right now, and just how unpleasant my walk to it will be later (given the record breaking cold snap here at the moment), the thought of a roaring fire is enough to make me weep with happiness.  Maybe even a nice hot snack.  Fortunately Norway has our back on this one, since they recently had a truck load of cheese catch fire in a tunnel.  Yep, 24 tons of goat’s milk cheese apparently burns with demonic urgency since it burned for FOUR DAYS before they were able to put it out.  It will see the tunnel closed for a few weeks to clean up, cause we all know how hard it is to scrape burnt cheese off of stuff.  I mean it’s not like they have a self-cleaning option on that tunnel, amirite?  Apparently efforts to douse the fire were hampered by the long lines of mellowed out Norwegian people waiting patiently with fondue forks and wine glasses in hand.

Unrelated, Norwegian Tunnel Fondue is the name of my next band.

There’s a joke in there somewhere about not getting cheese in your Norwegian tunnel in the first place, but I’m a gentleman and I won’t go there.  Not to Norway, I would totally go there, I mean the joke.

Order up! Dinner and Love, hold the onions

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If you are lucky like me you had a mom and a grandmother or two who were the source of magical meals and desserts that you remember forever.  There was no better food to be had, your young palate was amazed at how good it was.  Sure there were some misses here and there (although I did manage to enjoy Welsh Rarebit somehow), but for the most part it was all magic.  Once in a while at home there would be a really special dinner, or when you visited your grandmother there would be your favourite cookies out, somehow ready for you.  You never once questioned how amazing that was, what a coincidence it was that she just had this stuff ready, no matter how elaborate the meal.

As I get older, and the kids get older naturally they become ever more appreciative of good food, and their favourites.  Seeing the excited faces and hearing the appreciation is awesome and rewarding, one of the true joys of parenting.

Ok, enough of the inspirational tripe and misty eyed Hallmark-ed Pinterest-bait.  One thing that never ever crossed my ungrateful little kid mind EVEN ONCE was just how much back-breaking work and money went into feeding me.  Holy crap, it’s absolutely unbelievable how much work it is to feed a family well.  Nikki does an incredible job of feeding us, with appreciative sighs and ahhs all around, but man there’s a metric fuck-ton of work behind that, not to mention the cost.  The boys are getting bigger all the time, and the quantities of food they will eat in their teens is beginning to become apparent, forget the casual dinner guests that appear ever more regularly.

For instance, just the other night we had dinner for Nikki’s Mom and Dad (Darlene’s birthday!), which was all good.  Aunt Pat tagged along at our insistence, which was awesome.  Jordy had a friend over, no problem.  Her boyfriend was scheduled to come too, but couldn’t make it at the last.  So what started as a regular dinner on a Wednesday night ended up as dinner for 10…  Nikki killed it too, amazing roasts (yes, two roasts) and most of a bag of potatoes mashed and creamy amazing, and veggies.  Everyone loved it.  What I’m sure wasn’t obvious was the fact that getting that meal on the table took two trips to the grocery store (one for the extra roast, one for the rest) and a couple hours of prep.  Forget the rest of the things that were done, house cleaning and tidying, dishes washing, etc.  It’s a stupendous amount of effort to cook for that many people.

The most messed up part of it all is how COMMONPLACE and ordinary it’s all getting.  It would have been the whole damn week getting ready for that dinner when we were younger.  Now?  Meh, Nikki knocks out a masterpiece with a few hours notice.  The magic becomes familiar and everyday to us parents, but there you go.  We wouldn’t change it for all the unicorns, puppies, and rainbow muffin baskets in the world***….

 

*** Bonus Hallmark Norman Rockwell finish.

Synchronicity

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Last night Nikki and I were talking after the kids were in bed, as grown ups do sometimes, I’m told.  Anyway we were talking about something or another and she mentioned that she didn’t like something, a lot.  Like a deep aversion to it, that went way back to childhood. I said: “Oh ya, you have baggage there.  You’re Bilbo Baggage.”

Now, at the time I laughed at my own joke much much harder than it deserved because, well it’s probably not nearly as funny as I think it is, and I have a tremendously inflated sense of my own wit.  Then I got thinking, hey that’s pretty darn funny, has anyone ever said that before?  Before the Internet I would have chuckled a self satisfied chuckle and went to bed, smugly sure of my own massive wit that could not be matched by anyone.  But instead we happen to be insanely well connected to a global ego check network, which quickly provided me with ample evidence that I am far from as smart as I like to think I am.

The point of this post isn’t to mention that I said something witty and wanted you to know about it, but rather to mention the sheer unlikelihood of two different people (actually many different people) coming up with the same phrase independently.  That phrase isn’t so out there that nobody could have thought of it, but it is relatively unique I think, and enough to prove that there must be at least a couple of people out there as weird as I am.

It has a whole “million monkeys on a million typewriters” feel to it, and now we can even find out if any other monkey has come up with something good with the power of the typewriter-web.  Pretty crazy stuff.

So, I salute you, guy with the first hit for my search for Bilbo Baggage, and your socio-economic discussion of the world of Middle-Earth that I clearly have been reading the wrong books to understand fully.  He published his piece yesterday morning, thereby beating me by several hours.   But even before then, there are a few other monkeys that predate both of us.

It’s a strange, weird, coincidental world folks.  Watch for this stuff, it happens all the time.

Sons of Anarchy meets big old smashemup Robot Movie

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So, it seems that Charlie Hunnam has been doing other things besides riding around on Harleys, he’s been making a movie that’s kinda Iron Man meets Cloverfield/Godzilla.  Looks like a video game to me, and ya I’ll basically pay to watch any movie that spends that much on CGI just cause I like it that way.  Nikki probably not so much, but if I tell her Jax is in it, I may have a chance.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewefDmy44tM

It’s called Pacific Rim and it looks darn cool.