Valentine’s Day: despised, adored, dreaded, avoided, relished. How can one holiday encompass so many sentiments? Regardless of how everyone else feels, V Day and I are cool with each other, cool enough for nicknames. Seriously, why would I carry a grudge for a holiday that gives me a chance to spoil my favorite man and do awesome stuff with him?
Come visit us at Pemberley anytime.
It was Jason’s turn to plan our V undertakings this time. He decided to spread things out. From Desert Star Theatre’s production of Pirates of the Scarribbean to the Extreme Mammals exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah, we did a number of V Day activities not on V Day. Attending Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour, part of Jason’s V Day plans, even happened weeks after the holiday.
We’ve become good friends with the members of our dance group.
The one thing we did do to celebrate Valentine’s Day precisely on Valentine’s Day was go to the Regency Romance Ball. We’ve attended this Jane-Austen-themed dance a few times but it never loses its appeal. Since Jason and I are now “experts” on vintage prancing, we ended up offering a lot of assistance to confused dancers at the ball, which was actually rather fulfilling. I decided to make a new dress for this event…again. Yes, I’ve sewn three for this particular time period but a girl can never have too many Regency gowns. I believe that’s rule #72 in the Girl Handbook. (Don’t try to look it up; the Girl Handbook is completely incomprehensible.)
Jason said the gift he most wanted for Valentine’s Day was time with me so that’s what I got him. In this box I placed a sealed envelope for each month of the next year and in each envelope the details of an activity we will be doing together that month.
This February Jason and I had a lot of fun in the name of love. V Day, no matter what others say, you are A-OK with me.
As all of you are well aware, Jason and I have enormously good taste. Where we go fashion follows without reservation. Remember Jason’s Mario speedo? Need I say more? Here’s yet another example of our legendary discernment in action.
The Sundance Film Festival has been a January tradition for us for about a decade. We attend five or six films each year. It’s hard to choose which shows to go to, out of the over a hundred available, based on the small paragraph provided for each, especially without critics’ opinions to sway you. We know how to pick them though. On that note, I present to you our Sundance selections for 2015.
Dark Horse was an inspirational documentary about a racehorse called Dream Alliance bred by a group of regular Joes from a small mining village in Wales. This “cheap” thoroughbred took that sport of the privileged by its snooty hock and galloped all over it. Dark Horse was moving and funny and won the World Cinema Audience Award at the festival.
It was cool hearing from Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess, and Jemaine Clement during the Don Verdean Q&A.
Meru, a U.S. made documentary, covered the story of three American climbers and their two attempts to scale the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, a perilous route to the top of Meru’s 21,000-foot peak that had not yet been successfully ascended. What was so remarkable about this film, and probably one of the primary reasons it won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award, was its abundant footage of breathtaking scenery and heart-pounding action that was mostly taken by these mountaineers as they were navigating this hazardous fin.
Our Meru screening was followed by a great Q&A that featured the climbers and creators of the show.
The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic this year went to Slow West, another movie we attended. Slow West was a Western of a curious sort. Although it took place in Colorado, it was made by a Scottish director/writer and filmed in New Zealand. Yet, it captured the spirit of America’s tangled heritage quite well.
John Maclean, the Scottish director/screenwriter of Slow West talked about his motivation for making a Western.
Strangerland, an Australian-made picture featuring Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes, was undeniably hard to watch. It was part thriller and part psychological drama and all a bit raw and disturbing. The characters weren’t particularly likable but their portrayal of human nature was refreshingly candid.
I’ll be famous tomorrow for sure…or possibly the next day.
The last two shows we saw at Sundance were premiers. We enjoyed them but they weren’t awarded anything beyond our prestigious presence. Experimenter was a stylistic look at Stanley Milgram, the conductor of the Yale “obedience experiments.” Don Verdean was a satire about biblical archeologists that was written and directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame. It had that same random funny-yet-awkward feel.
In total, we attended six films at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Three of them won festival awards and all but one were followed by a Q&A. I’d say that picking 50% award-winning and 83% famously-followed shows entitles us to a certain degree of confidence in our tasteful selectivity. Yup, we know about popular.
Every December, Jason and I invite a small group of friends to celebrate the season with us via ugly sweaters, even uglier mustaches, dinner, white elephants, and games. This year, our get-together provided acceptable amounts of hilarity, eatability, and nonsensicality, plus maybe a little indignity.
Just Dance is comical to watch and play.
We decided to hold our party this time in the Game Room at the South Jordan Noah’s. This space has a ping pong table, billiards table, arcade machine, and shuffleboard table. Although all of these distractions saw some action during our gathering, the room’s large projector screen got the most use.
I took a lot of senseless pictures of our guests.
We ate dinner on the ping pong table as if it were the most formal of slabs and then played Just Dance 2014 for hours. Just Dance, unlike solemner dance games, is more for laughs than competition. Its moves range from blaringly dramatic to borderline asinine. Simone and Jacob’s passionate performance inspired by George Michael’s Careless Whisper was an evening highlight.
I forgot to take a picture of our crowd until after half of them had left.
Eventually, we got around to the white elephant gift exchange. Frankly, this time, the elephants were pretty respectable, which is more than I can usually say. They included videogame console ornaments, superhero collectables, a restaurant gift card, and Loot Crate leftovers…along with a few less desirable items like a homegrown wedding video and a loaf of bread that Jason probed into a misshapen mass.
Our group shot quickly deteriorated into this mayhem.
Our party was spot-on: an intimate group of friends dancing for each other’s comedic pleasure and bestowing gifts of marginal usability upon each other. ‘Tis the season for sharing and Jason and I are glad we could share this lighthearted tradition with you once again.
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