Our time in Toronto is complete and we are motoring across Lake Ontario towards Hamilton. Another two days of heavy winds has further stirred the waters and the surface water temperature is now down to 10.5 degrees; unbelievable considering it was 25 degrees less than two weeks ago.
We may have eaten the best pizza in our lives yesterday. North of Brooklyn Pizzeria, near Queen and Bathurst, served us a 14 inch Truffle Shuffle and it was heavenly. Perfect thin crust, bursting with the fresh flavours of mushroom, truffle, and herbs, snaked with caramelized onions, topped with a blend of cheeses, and bottomed with delicious oils. It was magnificent.
What wasn’t so magnificent was the movie The Odyssey, which we saw during the full day rainstorm on Tuesday. It was simply awful. The worst of Hollywood, drawn out over a three-hour slog. When I saw the first trailers a month or so ago, I was suspicious. Too many stars. Too long. And Matt Damon? Could an excellent secret agent also be Odysseus?
I took several Classics courses in university for my electives, which were a lovely break from the more serious business of finance, accounting, and statistics. I loved them and wish I could have taken more, especially from my favourite prof, Dr. Peter Burnell, who wore the same pair of brown corduroys to every class, and was fond of kicking dropped chalk pieces across the room, sometimes directing them straight out the open window like a champion footballer. Throughout his classes, I was introduced to the epic Greek and Latin poems The Iliad, The Aeneid, The Odyssey and remember the engaging tales of heroism, struggles with the human condition, the interference from the gods in Earthly affairs, treachery, loyalty, suffering, violence, and unbreakable bonds of family and friendship. Ample material for a Hollywood production, one would think.
What we got instead with The Odyssey was a poorly presented story, brutal dialogue horribly delivered, and a never-ending parade of Hollywood A-listers as superfluous side characters who looked like they had just dropped by the set because they had nothing else going on that day, and somebody tossed them a toga and asked them to read out a few lines. Here were some of my favourite parts. When Spiderman tosses Jason Bourne a blade and says, “Hey Dad, here’s a sword!” When Zendaya suddenly appears, fresh off the scene of Dune 2 still wearing her costume from that movie, and starts chatting with Jason Bourne as if on a coffee date. I was surprised she didn’t call him “Bruh”. Oh and I really loved the useless scenes of Jason Bourne and Furiosa on the beach, her with fresh Botox treatments and So-Cal accent, really nailing that ancient Greek sea nymph look and feel. And it’s great how they casted Shayne from the Walking Dead as the exact same sort-of-bad-guy they do in every other movie the dude is in. The only thing I thought was missing was some Morgan Freeman or Sam Eliot voiceover narration to help the audience understand what the hell was going on in the story. They also could have had The Rock do a song and dance number. That would have been cool.
National Yacht Club were, as usual, perfect hosts. We spent a lot of time there with our Newport gang, over meals and drinks and snacks and morning cheesecakes, chatting and having fun. Sadly, the crazy winds prevented us from taking the dinghies for a circumnavigation of the Toronto islands. And those same winds scattered the sounds of last night’s Tesla/Extreme/Motley Crue concert at the RBC Amphitheatre so we could barely hear any of it. Those are my only sad, little complaints.
The Royal Hamilton Yacht Club finally came through for us and offered a slip for the next two nights so we look forward to drinking scotch and smoking stogies with the yachties at the mahogany bar. But for the next few hours, we will motor relentlessly with the wind directly in our face, pointed to the Burlington Lift Bridge.
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