I was so busy being reactionary and over-the-top in my last post that I forgot (or neglected) to mention something that would have completely undermined my us-versus-them standpoint.

This just happened today. I ran some errands in the late afternoon and stopped by the ol’ supermarket on my way home.

Several lanes are open. I pick one where one guy is having his groceries rung up. I throw down the plastic separator and start shoveling my own haul onto the conveyor belt. Between pushes, I see the cashier bagging his stuff, then finishing, then helping him move it over to the counter.

There’s a counter right under the window by the street. Customers pile their goods on the counter when the food is going to be delivered. It’s not quite the opposite of take-out, but it’s about as far as you can go. You do all the shopping, the waiting, the paying, everything but actually schlepping your crap home with you.

It’s a neat service, and I see its place in the city. It’s unlikely an average customer is driving a car there, with backseat and trunk space enough to transport a huge amount of groceries. Cabs are possible but I don’t usually see them there for that purpose. You buy stuff for a family for a week, it adds up: No, delivery makes a lot of sense. I can’t speak to the delivery radius, but I’d assume if its deliverable, the distance is also walkable.

So, the customer in front of me heads out of the little aisle, past his groceries, eventually onwards to the exit. I sidle up through to the tiny little desk and credit card swiper, only at the very end seeing that there were but four bags waiting on the counter to follow this guy home.

I got food for the next few days. Three bags full.

I’ve carried as many as five or six full, weighty bags of stuff home, just shy of the breaking point of the plastic bags and my own ligaments. Sometimes I throw a six-pack in the mix to keep it interesting.

But here was a guy, years younger than I am, with no obvious casts, having arranged for those four reasonably-sized things to be sent home.

It’s certainly possible that he was in a rush to get somewhere, somewhere his bags might not have been welcome. But if the delivery was to be at all soon, soon enough for any perishables not to do so, certainly someone had to be home. Was it him? Someone else in his family? Why didn’t they just go shopping then?

If he was in a rush, why didn’t he go shopping later on, after his errand?

All this questioning from one split-second glance.

I could not bear the idea that this fellow, a fellow Emporiumian, a stand-up guy, an eschewer of the Whole Foods, was so lazy that he could not carry those bags home. Maybe I shouldn’t be spotlighting other folks’ lack of ambition. Safest to assume that this young man was doing the grocery shopping for his elderly grandmother, the one who lives up the block, on the way to his job as a bartender somewhere uptown. Occam’s Razor and all.

The closest supermarket to my apartment is a Whole Foods. I do not shop there.

There is a Food Emporium many blocks farther away. I shop there.

The Whole Foods is easy to hit on the way home from the subway. I do not shop there.

The Food Emporium sits a couple of blocks in the opposite direction of my apartment from the subway. I shop there.

The Whole Foods lets you bring your food home in easy-folding paper bags. Two bags is ideal, but it looks entirely feasible to carry four. Either way the transportation is simple, elegant, businesslike. The bags could be briefcases. I do not shop there.

The Food Emporium gives you plastic bags that, with enough weight, test and stretch the handles that very nearly cut into your fingers, even beyond cutting off your circulation. I shop there.

One time – one time – I went into Whole Foods looking for some chicken. I found only thirteen-dollar-a-pound organic, spoon-fed, what must have been superchicken. I did not buy it. I left there and haven’t returned, and that’s pretty much all I know about that Whole Foods.

But what sticks in my craw are some of the actions of the people who shop at that Whole Foods. As I was walking up the block to the Food Emporium, I spotted a guy, late 30s-early 40s, carrying a pair of Whole Foods bags, happy as hell to be who he was. His bag was leaking but that’s beside the point: The Whole Foods was a long walk in the other direction, and here he’s passing a Food Emporium that I took not to have had the extraterrestrial, uberhealthy selection of food that will make this man live forever that the Whole Foods had.

Good enough for me, but not good enough for him. Just because he feels superior, doesn’t make me inferior by default.

But I know where I live. Crazy is normal here.

It seems so odd, though. It genuinely feels like there’s a stigma shopping where I shop, in this normal supermarket, narrow because of the city but that otherwise wouldn’t be out of place in any suburb. Some online reviewers demonize it for poor customer service. I buy what I need and sometimes don’t exchange three words with the cashier. I don’t see what the problem is. Other reviewers ridicule the selection in the bakery. Of a supermarket. In New York City, land of everything including a thousand bakeries. I don’t see what the problem is.

Am I so unevolved? Is this bitterness actually just fear? It’s insecurity, and it’s more than that.

If you’re vegan, I get it. Maybe Whole Foods – only from what I’ve heard – has a broader selection of vegetables and other stuff that doesn’t take as good as meat. If you’re rich, I get it. Maybe Whole Foods – only from what I’ve heard – matters more in its location and panache than in saving money on food whose healthfulness is, I’m betting, not your largest concern.

Whole Foods has its place. Not everything is overpriced. I suppose I should accept the difference in mindset, that my curiosity doesn’t extend as far into food as does that of others. But the judgments are palpable. I say that the quest for status has gone too far when good enough isn’t good enough, when the cleanliness of a supermarket and the freshness of its food and the comparative modesty of its prices isn’t the be-all, end-all.

And don’t even get me started on Fairway. Fucking clusterfuck. Can’t even find regular cheese in there. Fuck.

With what should be a very watchable Stanley Cup Final (still no “s”) beginning tomorrow, I’ve decided to commemorate the occasion with a special unveiling. I’ve had this list on my mind for some time – 20 years give or take – though while I looked deeply into it a few months ago now, the time wasn’t yet right to make my final selections.

Taking you back: I was neck-deep into hockey for about five years in the early-to-mid 90s. At least half of it was The Mighty Ducks, which led to me want roller blades more than anything on earth and got me playing some roller hockey for a few fun years. A good portion of the rest was each year’s updated NHL game for the Sega Genesis. But it might have all begun in 5th grade, when at my elementary school’s Bingo Night, I won a round and got to pick a small prize, which was a pack of hockey cards. I’d collected baseball cards for a while and loved learning all the stats and all the names, but this hockey stuff was entirely different for me. A sport I didn’t really play or understand with players from all over the world? Incredible.

And soon, as they do, patterns emerged.

Once I got a card: “Igor Kravchuk.” Alrighty.

And then on the Genesis: “Clint Malarchuk.” And “Darcy Wakaluk.”

What’s with all the “uk”s? And going a step further, the “chuks”??

Well, I was 11 or so and hadn’t come across one of these cool-sounding names, but it wasn’t anything so strange. Turns out “-chuk” is a common suffix for Ukranian surnames. While the name has shown up in the NHL over the last couple of decades, it’s not very common, shared among only 30 players or so.

As far as suffixes go, the best of the “-Chuks” might stack up against anyone with any other suffix or prefix or anything.

(Three things before we continue:
1) All stats are from hockey-reference.com.
2) I hope this doesn’t come out racist or anything. I’m singling out not to demean but to honor, as the whole point of this exercise is to celebrate the talent and heritage as one.
3) At the tail end of my research I came across a thread that addressed many of these same names, nicknames, even came to my same conclusions, it would seem. Surely many hockey fans have had this same idea but while it’s unoriginal my thoughts are here my own.)

-In goal, Terry Sawchuk. Easily. One of the all-time greats. Won four Stanley Cups with Detroit, with whom he spent most of his career. He won 447 regular season games and according to his wikipedia article had almost as many stitches in his face.

(A special shout-out to Clint Malarchuk, not only the first of several Buffalo Sabres to be mentioned here today but for making it through one of the most horrifying injuries I’ve ever seen anywhere. I don’t even want to link to it.)

-On defense, the pickings were sort of slim, depending on how you look. Many of the most famous defensemen were the offensive ones who stood very much out: No -chuks among them. Igor Kravchuk, though one of the originals, didn’t quite measure up. I chose Richard Matvichuk, who had a decent if unspectacular statistical career. He did win a Cup and finished solidly on the plus side of plus-minus. So he’s in.

-Also on defense, a younger guy. Anton Babchuk. He scored 16 and 11 goals in a few seasons with Carolina which, on this team which will never actually take the ice, seems to fit nicely with Matvichuk’s defensive defensiveness. I’ll take it.

-On offense, I have four players for three spots. Two are easier calls, but two others are about even. Just missing the cut would be Dave Andreychuk. Cup winner, two-time 50-goal scorer. Great on the power play. He scored a lot of goals but also played for a very long time. Longevity is to be respected, but since his per-game averages were better, I’ll ask Keith Tkachuk to be the right wing. An old Jet, he also twice scored 50, but was a more physical player especially earlier in his career. Impressive combination.

-On the left side, Ilya Kovalchuk, formerly of the Winnipeg-bound Atlanta Thrashers. Six straight seasons of 40+ goals, also twice scored 50. His production slipped a little bit this past year but his resume is already so impressive that it’s an easy choice.

-And finally, the clearest offensive choice of all, Dale Hawerchuk, center. Hall of Famer. And speaking of Winnipeg, another former Jet.

Regarding the nickname, I thought “Chukars” might be a nice touch. A chukar is apparently a game bird, a partridge. Naturally, a minor league baseball team in Idaho has already chosen the nickname, so I’ll let it go. “Chuks,” like Nunchuks? Cute, but maybe it’s too on the nose, like calling a team of the best Irish baseball players “The Micks.” Steering clear of controversy, here. “Woodchucks” actually isn’t bad. “Chuggers” is a step in the wrong direction. In the end, though, it’s going to have to be “Chukkers.” Yes, a chukker is a kind of boot (that’s also spelled “Chukkas”) but a boot is very much like a hockey skate, no? It’s good enough for me and I hope it’s good enough for all these guys. And for their hometown, and not just because I had some Leinenkugel over the weekend, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Congratulations, Chippewa Falls Chukkers!

Think of it this way: Even most prisoners get to go outside once in a while.

Eagle-eyed readers will not be shocked to be reminded of my lack of postings over the last month, but let me walk you through it all, even though I know more than anyone that writing about writing is the worst and most boring kind of meta. But in doing so, I also cheat my way into a sliver of production to get the boulder rolling again.

It’s hard to remember a time in New York City when the sun would shine on two consecutive days, but this actually happened, and it only two weeks ago. The weather was nice for the first lengthy stretch of time in half a year or so. I’ve travelled nowhere warm of late so I was eager to get outside and, once there, to stay out there and let my neighborhood, in its homestretch as being exactly that, begin to pay for itself a little bit for the first time since last summer. In short, the weather was nice, so I didn’t feel like writing. Then the weather became terrible, and I still didn’t feel like writing.

This downturn in creativity might be needed, or welcome, or natural, but since it’s what I’ve been devoting the bulk of my days towards, it simply can’t be the thing that gives out. At this narrowing of the Downward Spiral, at the very tail end of my Year of Scraping By, my Gap Year, my Sabbatical, I have almost nothing and no one left to confront, except for the now painfully obvious truth that I am now what I am now, and for now that’s no longer a movie reviewer as such.

I love movies and always will but I don’t see enough nowadays to review them, the ones I see, usually the really good ones I choose to see, in anything but the gushing terms they deserve. I’m as tired of picking the nits of movies I enjoy as I am frustrated by the fact that I want to see a lot more new movies. But they’re damned expensive, more and more, and it’s become impossible to justify the expense if I’m not enjoying them as much as I should, or to bear both the pressure of having to see them and the regret of not seeing others. Plus, there’s the issue of these filmmaker folks being more creative than I am, having actually made feature films that it’s up to me to tear apart? I like offering my take but have trouble with being entirely, honestly, objectively critical of someone who’s been there. I’m happy to finally have a little nest egg of reviews that demonstrate some of my work, if not all of my potential. If anyone reads that stuff and wants to me do that full-time in exchange for money or players to be named later, I’d be singing a different tune, if I could sing. Any way we look at it, we’re through the looking glass here.

The kicker, after all this afterbirth: I’ll still write about movies every week. Brief reviews though, put out all together, once a week, just enough to soothe the urge.

So each week we’ll have that one and two more posts, published Mondays and Fridays, I’d say. And all of a sudden we’re off to the races. I’ve got a backlog of material to flesh out and put out this week. Starting in June, things will be slower and steadier. And this is not to mention the unwritten, unpublished stuff that I’ll hope to find homes in other venues, or to pile together into some book or book-like contraption, some day, one day.

Stay tuned also for the post where I rescind all of this. Until then!

CAUTION: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE.

I once was blind, but now I see.

I wanted to discuss this one portion of Paul in my review because it tempers my criticism of the film and actually depicts the filmmakers as more creative and thoughtful than I’d given them credit for, but it would have given away the ending of the movie. While there’s an implied knowledge reviewers have, for having seen a movie, that readers don’t yet have – i.e. what the movie is about, whether it’s good – I hate sounding coy and only hinting at things in reviews that I actually want to write about. So I left it out over there, and am including it over here.

If you’ve seen the movie, or haven’t and won’t, or haven’t and don’t care, you know that Paul eventually reaches his destination where a ship will pick him up and take him home. His road there is filled with violence and some death, and one key moment where it seemed as it he’d be a goner. Simon Pegg’s character is shot and seemingly done for – though we know from before that Paul has brought other living beings back to life. But doing so for a human might prove too much, and it’s apparently the case. For a moment. Then he makes it out alive and heads on home, E.T.-style.

After I left the theatre, I had been clearly affected by the atheist-Christian (false dichotomy) conflict of interests and still had them on my mind. I thought back to my school days and thus considered Paul as a Christ figure: Peaceful, extra-terrestrial. Living on Earth but not entirely of it. Healing powers, giving sight to the blind (figuratively and literally, though literally might or might not need quotes), returning to the sky after his time on the planet. And, near the end of the movie, prepared to sacrifice his life for someone close to him (Pegg’s character in the movie, humanity as a whole in reality). If they were to have Paul die and stay dead, the allegory might be complete and, despite all the earlier cartoonishness, we’d in the same movie have a specific illustration of Christ’s best-known characteristics. Which, in its way, would be an intelligently subversive criticism of the more fundamental interpretation of Christianity, perhaps just coming out and saying that Bible-thumping intolerance is not the message, man, it’s something much more practical and humanistic. It’s in finding the common ground with your fellow man, not focusing on whatever differences you might have, physiological or ideological or otherwise.

But: Paul lives. And my train of thought goes careening off the tracks: Paul’s “death” is temporary – he’s alive at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. That has Jesus written all over it. So my point about the filmmakers beating up on Christianity, while true on the surface, might just have more to it. Stripped of all labels, the story itself is largely the same, persecution and all, though the circumstances are different. Now, Paul doesn’t have to be a Jesus story, but if we’re affected by one we might surely be affected by the other. Even if, as presented as such, it’s hard to believe the story as anything but science fiction.

Does this exploration change my perception of the movie? Well, yes. The rating’s the same, the grade’s the same, but I’ll rest a little more comfortably after giving it a second thought.