I managed to have quite a good finish to yesterday following my post here.
I had not felt all too well during the day, but that changed rather late in the latter afternoon when I decided to tune in a Christmas movie via our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box. My choice was excellent ─ the 2002 movie A Christmas Visitor.
To boost the movie's effect, I poured myself several ounces of Alberta Premium whisky.
I thought that the movie was unusually well acted, and I was fast drawn into it ─ William Devane's character (George) straightaway gripped my attention.
Now, I don't know who wrote Wikipedia's description of the movie that I linked to, but even despite the influence of the aforesaid whisky, this paragraph in Wikipedia's description is bogus:
George heads to watch over the town's veterans memorial and is accosted by several teenage punks, who are scared off by "Matthew," a hitchhiker passing through town. As Matthew and George talk, Matthew claims to be a Gulf veteran who is the same age as John and served in the same regiment as John, although the two did not apparently know each other.
George had made a daily ritual of visiting the town's veterans memorial ─ which listed the deceased veterans according to the categorizations of the various wars each had died in ─ because his young son John was the only town citizen enscribed to have died in the Gulf War. George would go to the memorial and allow himself to commune with the lad, even though the young volunteer's body lay elsewhere in a regular grave.
On this specific occasion when George was accosted, it was not seen who it was whose commanding voice ultimately scared away the drunken hooligans. Only the man's shadow was seen a couple of times against a building wall of what appeared to be a well-lit alleyway.
When the hooligans' nerves finally entirely broke after some exchange with the voice of whomever was challenging them and they then fled the scene, the voice wished George a Merry Christmas and the shadow of the unseen man moved off down the alleyway.
George was shaken by the confrontation with the punks, of course, and he drove home.
It was possibly not until the following evening (which was Christmas Eve) when George was driving his "rig" (a pickup ruck) in the snowy countryside that ─ while stupidly fiddling with the dog tags of his son that George had hanging from his truck's review mirror ─ George allowed the truck to drift over into the oncoming lane and very nearly collided with a truly large rig that blared its horn and caused George to immediately correct his trajectory, but caused him to spin his truck wildly, barely missing the "hitchhiker" who was toting a military kitbag.
The stranger checked on George, and then offered to help get the truck properly back onto the road and out of the snow piled along the roadside.
George then gave the fellow a ride back to town. Upon learning that the guy ─ a Gulf War veteran, as it turned out ─ was only passing through town and was on his way to "the Interstate" and had thought to spend the night at the bus station (because he was too shy on funds to afford a room someplace), George made the decision that the young fellow was going to come home and spend Christmas Eve with him and his family ─ i.e., his wife and their daughter.
The daughter ─ Jeanie ─ had only just had a lump removed from a breast, and was not going to learn the biopsy results until after Christmas. For some reason, she was fearing the worst ─ somewhat fatalistically associating Christmastime with the death of her older brother 11 years before. The family only learned of the young soldier's death on December 21st back in 1991 when she was still a girl.
The presence of the stranger "Matthew" helped to dispel her gloom ─ there was even one scene where he helped her to overcome her desire to pop open her bottle of prescription painkillers, helping her to mentally marshal her body's own resources to most likely generate the endorphins that quelled her attack of surgical pain.
Yes, I very much enjoyed this movie, and have added it to the list of potential movies that I will rewatch when my younger brother brings his girlfriend Bev here for what is coming to be our annual Christmastime Christmas movie binge.
My only complaint was having "Matthew" be revealed to George as being his son John after George had taken him off into the country on Christmas Day so that the traveller could continue on his way to "the Interstate" to resume his journey.
My personal religious belief concerning death is powerfully ingrained within me ─ viz., that all of the dead will remain that way until after the return of Christ and we are all resurrected for Judgement. After all:
"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing ...."
No one except Christ has yet been raised permanently from the dead. None of us has died and somehow been turned into an 'angel'.
What I would have preferred for the plot was that "Matthew" was a veritable angel who had come to deliver the family from their Christmastime mourning that denied them the joy of celebrating Christmas; and especially so for poor Jeanie who had always felt that her parents had stopped celebrating Christmas and denied that special time to her ─ following the death of her older brother ─ because they loved him more than they did her.
I want to express how much I enjoyed watching the young actress (Reagan Pasternak) portraying Jeanie. I cannot say that I remember seeing her act in any other roles, although I am sure I must have. Neither was her name familiar to me.
Reagan was probably about 24 years old during the filming of the movie, but she turned 42 back in March of this year.
As I watched her, I could not help but marvel at how much she reminded me of Bridget Fonda, whom I wrote about in yesterday's post. I thought that Bridget could easily have been Reagan's much older sister ─ they looked so similar to me.
At the conclusion of the movie, I was admittedly rather under the influence of the rye whisky. However, I felt better than I had all day. And so I decided to get out and have a good walk ─ and perhaps even buy some beer to drink before returning home.
I successfully snuck out of the house without either of my stepsons noticing me leave ─ it must have been approaching 7:00 p.m. by then. Overall, I put in a little more than a four-mile round trip, and I even did two sets of pull-ups on the gymnastics-style rings at an elementary school playground.
In my touch of inebriation, my farthest destination was to have been either of the 'beer & wine' stores that I mistakenly believed might still exist in Whalley. I knew that the Dell Hotel no longer existed, but it seemed possible that its associated liquor store might still be in business. However, as this 2015 article tells, it was transformed into a Winter shelter for the homeless.
The other 'beer & wine' store I was considering was associated with the Flamingo Hotel, but I had forgotten that the hotel was recently demolished ─ this article from last June tells about that.
Had I been able to buy beer in either of those former stores, I was in danger of quite possibly approaching for some fellowship any of various destitute people the area is full of ─ there was even a group gathered around a small campfire just beneath the elevated Skytrain tracks and just adjacent to 105th Avenue & 134-A Street (Google map).
I had walked along 105th Avenue on my fruitless venture to the now non-existent beer & wine stores, and I returned that same way. If I had managed to buy beer, it is quite possible that I might have joined the group. The police must surely have driven past them at some point, but had not interfered with the presence of the fire.
I don't think that I would have risked the cops, though, had I gotten the beer. Instead, I would have invited anyone interested in enjoying some beer to accompany me into the darkness of the nearby fields.
Note that I was in possession of not only my tactical pen, but also my flashlight that is additionally a stun gun ─ I was not entirely unprotected.
So I came home, arriving alongside the house just in time to see my younger brother about to enter the house, home from where he had been drinking and watching the Grey Cup game.
I tried to watch some T.V. with him awhile later, and used our Android TV Box to find an episode of Iron Fist ─ the second-to-last episode of the series. My brother had removed himself to the dining table to eat some supper, and was out of my sight.
Midway or so through the episode I became suspicious of his condition, and a check reveald that he had passed out right there at the table.
Annoyed, I shut down the episode and turned off the Android TV Box, and left my brother with basic cable to amuse himself with when he later revived (he doesn't know how to operate the Android TV Box).
Nevertheless, I did not have an especially early evening, and did not get myself to bed until well after 11:00 p.m. That was after finishing the can of strong (8% alcohol) beer that I tend to keep in stock to enjoy while watching evening T.V. ─ I had opened it for that Iron Fist episode.
I was to watch the episode in full late this morning with my then-sober brother.
It is now after 8;00 p.m. and my brother is still not home after
heading off toward mid-afternoon to resume his pursuit of
inebriation. I want to have a bath, so I had best put this post to bed.
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