Take the Cannoli

 "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

You know where this quote comes from. Recently, WOlfie was asked in a homework to try Italian food. Could be anything: pasta, goat cheese, figs, olives, artichokes, etc. There was a list of suggestions, but I decided to be original and I bought two packs of cannoli. Because why the heck not. After all, it was an educational project. I had cannoli in the past, very rarely. Funny how the dessert is now associated with a classic movie.

The Godfather, the Game

 Oh the things one finds in the local toy shop. As many people into crime fiction, whether they are books or films, I am a fan of The Godfather. Well, it turns out that there is a board game (at least I think it can count as a board game, I mean it was in the board games section) called The Godfather: Last Family Standing. I own already too many board games, we have too little time to play them, we don't really invite enough people often enough to have party games anyway, but I must confess, I am curious. Anyone played this game? Is it worth 20 quid?

The Godfather's Anniversary

The recent events should not make us forget something that one needs to commemorate and celebrate. And today is one day of celebration: it is the 45th anniversary of the release (in the USA) of The Godfather. Maybe the greatest film ever made and one of my favourite. More than a mafia movie, The Godfather is truly a Greek tragedy that mixes Hitchcockian suspense with the finest piece of acting Hollywood ever gave us. There are so many great scenes, but as an homage here on Vraie Fiction, I will give you the first one.

Christmas crimes

No, no, I did not commit any crime myself. I learned recently some news that surprised me: Vito Rizzuto, the presumptive head of the Italian mafia in Montreal, died of a pneumonia. Apparently of natural causes, which would be darn ironic. I can't say that I will shed any tears for this man, as I hate what he did and represented. A darn shame he did not die in jail, as he should have had. Anyway, at least he will not enjoy Christmas. I couldn't help but think of The Godfather when I learned the news, partially because Rizzuto had been nicknamed and labelled the godfather of Montreal (and probably considered himself to be) and because like the title character he died naturally. Funny because The Godfather is also among my list of Christmas movies, as many key events and plot turns in the movie happen during Christmastime. I have uploaded here the movie's introduction to the Christmas season. When death is looming above the festive spirit, it shows the darker side of Christmas in a gripping realistic fashion.

Two great unknown lines

The workplace is a great source of great unknown lines (this one being maybe my favourite). Sometimes you have to be there, sometimes it could work for every workplace, which is why I love the two I am going to publish now. I hesitated before publishing, I try to stay discreet about work, but since for the record there is no real animosity between the protagonists, I thought I couldn't get those unpublished.

So my manager is off for a little bit. Some of my other colleagues didn't know about it and one asked me:

"So Guillaume, did you finally snap and kill him?"

This is the first great unknown line. It is even funnier because I look nothing like a murderer. Seriously. I don't. I wouldn't snap. I am no Norman Bates. I mean, I actually like my manager, my colleagues and my work environment, even on bad days I am surprised I prefer it to a school I used to work for. Anyway, I guess I don't mind having a sinister reputation, because I replied:

"I wouldn't do something that stupid, I'll be the prime suspect."

Which I think is both diplomatic and slightly Sollozzo-esque (remember that line in The Godfather, "If I'd wanted to kill you, you'd be dead already").

Italian desserts and criminal minds

"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

This is from Peter Clemenza in The Godfather, of course. I have seen the movie millions of times, but I never had once in my life cannoli. I did try to find them, sadly when they were on the dessert menu of Pizza Express they had been sold out. This is the kind of totally decadent dessert I usually crave for. And it is associated with one of my favourite movies, so just for this I want to try it.

I have been blogging recently about tiramisù and I guess Italian desserts are on my mind, but also the association we make with sugar and sugaree stuff and criminality. In The Godfather trilogy, it is obvious: when smeone eats or buys an orange, murder is being planned or about to be committed. Cannoli are associated with not one, but two murders in the saga: Paulie Gatto's and Don Altobello's, who gets poisoned by them. In another classic, Amadeus, Salieri, a jealious Italian composer who sends Mozart to his death even though he believes he is the Son of God (adding blasphemy and deicide to murder), is also depicted as having a sweet tooth, and a patriotic one at that, being particularly fond and proud of the speicalties of his homeland.

I think there is a reason for this association. There are two kinds of villains which I find particularly interesting: the puritan and the gluttonous. The puritan is dehumanised and his ethics close to fanaticism and the gluttonous displays appetites that are being the realm of food. They have the destructive hunger of ogres. I will blog a bit more about crime fiction in the next few days. Until then, I leave you with the classic murder scene and the immortal line.

Dramatic rain

We had some heavy showers today, but sadly no storm. I enjoy rain sometimes, especially big showers, as long as I can stay inside and dry. Rainy afternoons are lovely when you want to read and rainy nights are soothing when you want to sleep. Rain is great to set the atmosphere in a pulp fiction story and you might as well have the real thing outside to enhances the experience. Heavy rain is brilliant because it is so dramatic. Francis Ford Coppola said something about it in the commentaries on The Godfather: bad weather is free special effects. I agree with this.

At work, part of the roof is a glass window, which makes it quite sensitive to weather. Our flat in the attic has the same quality: it makes you closer to wild weather. I could have stayed in the stairs watching and listening to the rain when it started, but it would have looked silly. I will have to wait for the weekend to enjoy it here.

Deux fêtes à souligner

Juste un billet rapide avant d'aller au lit: c'est la fête de mon plus jeune frère et de mon filleul aujourd'hui. Je n'ai acheté de cadeau ni à l'un ni à l'autre, ce qui me fait sentir très coupable, surtout en ce qui concerne mon filleul. Je compte régler ce problème dans les prochains jours. J'espère pouvoir aussi appeler mon filleul. J'ai essayé aujourd'hui, ça ne marchait pas.

Pour petit frère, je lui laisse ici une chanson de bonne fête signée François Pérusse. Hors contexte, elle est un peu débile, mais elle demeure quand même drôle.

On godfathers

Last Christmas season, we received the visit of my godfather, a man I haven't seen in years. It was nice to see him again, but that's not what I want to blog about. I also saw my godson during that time period, so those two events made me think about the function of godfather. We are a very secular family, my friend who asked to become the godfather of his son is just as secular as I am, maybe also just as much of an unbeliever as I am, yet baptism seem to matter a lot to us, at least in a cultural way. Spiritually, it is now meaningless, yet I absolutely love when my godson calls me "parrain". This is the name he usually addresses me with. I address my godfather by his Christian name of course, and we barely mention that he is my godfather. For me, he is just another uncle, of the loud and heavy drinking kind, always entertaining during family reunion. That said, we did talked about religion when we met. Well, he teased my wife for being a Protestant (well, sort of, as she is unbaptised) and he told us the anecdote of his First Communion, where he had to suffer the humiliation of being the only boy dressed as an altar boy. He was traumatised enough to remember it vividly after all those years. I think he lost his faith that day. It is difficult to imagine him as a child going to church. My First Communion was much nicer, as everybody was dressed as altar boys and I was still a good little Catholic who was in awe watching and taking part in those rituals. Funny that my godfather was, in theory, in charge of my religious education. Last time he did anything regarding it, it was on my Confirmation, which he had to attend.

I wonder if my godson will one day see me as a loud, heavy drinking man, joking about his lost faith. Right now, I don't drink much in front of him and never swear. I let him tell me about "little Jesus" and all the things he learned at kindergarten. I try for a little bit to forget that I don't believe in all that and that I dropped on my suit the holy water the vicar gave me at his baptism. My godson doesn't care about holy water anyway, I think he prefers the gifts he receives from me. This might be the only function of a godfather in Québec society nowadays: to spoil the godson as much as he can and show that he cares about the little one. This I am doing quite well, in spite of the distance.

My movies for the Christmas season

My wife says I am a man of habits and rituals. She is absolutely right. As you probably know (you, my modest readership), I try to read and watch movies that in a way follow the seasons. It is a way like another to prioritise books and films when you have many on your shelf. It is also a good way to get into the seasonal spirit. During Halloween, this is easy enough: I read horror stories and watch horror movies. When Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat (although I eat turkey), it is trickier for me, because I don't like the marshmallow Christmas movies we are saturated with, with the silly two-bit moral and obvious consumerism. Maybe it has something to do with my Catholic past, maybe I think there is solemnity in the season that we lost, or whatever, but I prefer things that are not necessarily religious but more atmospheric. Jesus of Nazareth I consider it to be more of an Easter movie, so I watch it around that time. But here are some of the movies I watch around Christmastime:

-A Charlie Brown Christmas. Do I need to explain why? For me, it's the ultimate Christmas movie. Sweet, soft, simple, genuinely heart warming (without ever being preachy) and with great characters. The music is simply gorgeous and who can forget the classic speech of Linus about the meaning of Christmas?
-On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I mentioned it before, over and over again. Yes, it's a James Bond, but it is mainly set around Christmas and the scenes in the snow are beautiful. Whatever the time, a remote hideout on a mountain covered with snow is always menacing, but when one mixes it with a time of the year when you should be celebrating instead of chasing badguys (or being chased by them), it makes everything else worksI think Christmas works beautifully as a background for crime fiction (which spy thrillers are part of). The blood on snow, the Nativity story to emphasize the death that surround the protagonists, etc. Come to think of it, the Nativity story itself has its share of sinister elements, so using Christmas as a background for more sinister stories is a logical choice. In Victorian times, ghost stories were often set during Christmastime, it was a tradition to read them at this time. In Québec and in many other places, many tales are also set during Christmas.
-The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I do watch them at other times of the year too, but simply because some of their stories are set around Christmas, I try to watch them at least once around that time. Any excuse is good to enjoy those classics.
-Eyes Wide Shut. A great underrated Stanley Kubrick classic. Beautiful and haunting. I absolutely love it. Oh, and it is set during the Christmas season too.
-La Guerre des Tuques. Translated in English as The Dog Who Stopped the War, which sort of gives a bit of the ending. A Québec classic, I used to love it when I was a child. The proof that children movies can also have serious themes and still be entertaining.
-C.R.A.Z.Y. A "new" classic, and my favourite recent Québec movies. The story of a child (then teenager, then man) born on the 25th of December growing up in the 60s and 70s Québec.

Paddington

Je suis allé à Londres aujourd'hui, avec arrêt obligé à Paddington. J'ai acheté quelques cadeaux reliés à Paddington (l'ours) pour la fête de mon filleul. Je lui enverrai tout par la poste, j'espère qu'il va aimer. Autant lui acheter des cadeaux typiquement anglais et originaux. À son âge, je regardais l'adaptation télévisée de Paddington et je trouvais tant la série que l'ours adorables. Je m'en rappelle assez peu maintenant, à part la musique du générique et la gourmandise de Paddington, surtout son appétit pour la marmelade. Enfin, Paddington a été pour moi l'un de mes premiers contacts avec la culture britannique.

Enfin, je vous offre le premier épisode des aventures de Paddington (in English):

The Godfather (and, in this case, the godmother)

We spent the weekend in Swindon, where my wife became the godmother of her very little cousin (she's a few months old). The ceremony was slightly different from the Catholic one, but not much, I could follow easily. There were loads of children, and more friends than family. I think that was the most important difference: in Québec, baptism is more family-centered than community-centered.

Anyway, it was a lovely day. It was a good occasion for me to wear a suit, even though it got quite hot in the afternoon, so I got rid of the jacket and tie. It is also not practical when you have to amuse nearly a dozen children and play the hungry monster running after them. Remember that scene in The Godfather when Don Vito Corleone dies playing the ogre with his grandson? Well, that's what I did yesterday. If I hadn't eaten so much, I think I would have lost a couple of pounds, just by running around growling. Anyway, the whole day reminded me of The Godfather: we had a big family/community reunion, lots of children, a baptism (or Christening as they call it here), some wine, lots of food and a man in a suit running around playing the ogre.

And as it is "de circonstances", here is The Godfather main theme: