Valentine's Day: Mea Culpa

Ok, I admit it. I did something for Valentine's day. But in my defense, it isn't like Christmas, or Halloween, where you can just abstain from participation. Both of those require specific practices for observance: presents, costumes, candy. In other words, things that you, or at least I, wouldn't ordinarily do.

And therein lies the problem. I have a loving, caring boyfriend who likes to do nice things for me. Last Wednesday I got flowers. Basically I am trying to say that it is hard to make February 14th a "normal" day without acting abnormally. And by specifically not observing the holiday, doesn't that count as marking it in some way?

Ok, validations and excuses over. Last night the roommate made dinner for us. We had pasta, salad, a bottle of (fairly good) kosher wine, and then, the piece de resistance: smores. Kosher marshmallows are significantly better when roasted.

Wine and smores over, the roommate and I watched a spectacularly bad version of Tristan + Isolde, which could not even be saved by James Franco shirtless. Although I've never read the original (which I keep mixing up with Troilus and Cressida), the movie can't have been true to it. The dialogue was pretty awful, scenes were rife with historical inaccuracies, and not nearly enough shirtless men. Which, in my opinion, can basically save any movie.

I had a conversation about that with my mom. You see, she got NetFlix for a birthday present a year or two ago, and has used it to order every strange, archane movie that one could imagine. My family regularly makes fun of her for her strange choices. She explained to me that she has fairly low expectations for movies. If the script is bad, but the actors are good, she'll watch it, same for the reverse. Basically if any one thing is done well, she's willing to give it a shot. During the conversation I realized that I feel pretty much the same way. It's the reason I watched Memoirs of a Geisha (beautiful, but stupid) even though I strenuously objected to the fact that they used only Chinese actresses for the female lead roles.

Moral of the story? It's hard to have a bad time with wine, smores, and shirtless men.