My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1

And part 2 (of 10) of my August 2020 challenge

If you missed part 1, go here: A decade of quotations

I received a handful of good questions, and I don’t think I can properly tackle them all in one post. Well, I could, but when have I ever been able to keep things brief and to the point? Some of them may merit their very own post.

And if you know me well, you’ll know that I may present my own unique ‘spin’ on these questions and go off on all sorts of tangents.

The topics cover:

* further reflections on fatherhood

* coffee preferences

* movie reviews & recommendations

* reconciling religion and humanity’s impact on the environment

* existentialist doom (again?!) and one’s hatred of humanity (tying in nicely with the theme above)

* why I speak such lousy Ukrainian and Russian after all my years living in Ukraine

* things I’m surprised people don’t know

* an update on consumer boycotts

* a pet hates summary

* toilet reading material

I’ll cover just a few in brief and then save the rest for later.

COFFEE

Colleague asks ‘What about your coffee tastes and picks?’

Without a doubt, there’s nothing better than a finely brewed cup of covfefe! (okay, just kidding)

As I write, at this very moment, I’m lamenting the fact that my cafetiere has cracked (1st world problem alert!) and is leaking on the countertop.

First, a bit of background and a brief foray into my coffeeing past.

True story: for the first 21 years of my life, I might have drunk a grand total of 3 cups of coffee. I was a tea – black, with milk and sugar – drinker for the first half of my life. And I had a dreadful, one-a-day Mountain Dew habit throughout university.

After graduating, I started drinking more, but for my first four years in the working world, I had a strict limit of 1 cup of coffee and 1 cup of tea a day. I never strayed from this. And some days, I never even had a cup of coffee at all. It’s amazing to think of that now. (When I got to Edinburgh a few years later to do my Master’s, I fell under the influence of my girlfriend, a coffee addict, and before I realised it, I was drinking 6-7 cups of coffee a day, and I used to frequent a place called The Elephant House, where they had cheap refills.)

Living in Boston, I quickly got hooked on Dunkin Donuts. Living in New England, you almost had to. And I cringe when I remember what I used to religiously drink: a medium hazelnut, with cream and (lots of sugar).

Nowadays? I take my coffee black, no sugar. We’ve come a long way since then.

I still have a soft spot for Dunkin Donuts and whenever I go back to the US, I do have a cup or two, but no way can I drink hazelnut anymore. So I go for a medium with cream and 1 sugar, for old times’ sake.

Occasionally, when I come across a Dunkin Donuts abroad, I pop in, but outside of the US, it’s not the same. My last cup was this past January in Vienna, where I had a small dark roast with cream. Very mediocre stripped of its nostalgia. (and let's face it, very mediocre all the time)

After a couple of years of poisoning myself with Dunkin Donuts, I started drinking Starbucks now and again – I’ve never been a fancy drink person, and used to get their filter coffee.

And then I discovered what I still consider my all-time favourite, my number 1, the one I always bring a couple bags back of when I go back to the US: Peet’s, Major Dickason’s Blend. I adore dark roast and this stuff is pretty damn bold and rich. I had my first cup at the branch in Harvard Square and quickly turned my back on Starbucks. (Peet’s originated in Berkeley, California) 

Dark roast – really, really dark – isn’t so common in Kyiv, but I’m happy with medium roast, and I’m open-minded enough to try lighter roasts, especially at Kyiv’s incredible range of third-wave cafés. For my home coffee, I order from Café Boutique, which I think is the best combination of price and quality for home brewing.

I’m not sure exactly which ‘Colleague’ asked this question, but there is another Colleague of ours (unless it’s you, but I doubt it, because as far as I know you don’t read my blog!) who really is a coffee aficionado and cringes at some – some, not all – of my choices. She’s a true coffee gourmand, I’m merely a wannabe. She frowns at dark roast, and I admit it’s not everyone’s cup of tea (sorry, couldn’t resist that awful pun!).

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MY FILM CHOICES

LD5030 asks about ‘Movie reviews/recommendations by Pedzo, e.g. best picks by the author regardless of genre.’

This is a much harder area to address than it would appear to be. I’m so out of touch with the world of cinema these days that I have to fall back on some of my all-time favourites. I don’t even feel well-qualified enough to broach this subject. I’m flattered that you asked, but I’m not sure my picks have much merit. 

I can’t help but start with another brief foray into my long-distance past. 

As long-time friends and readers will know/remember, I used to write for my university newspaper, The Tufts Daily (and before that, briefly, the weekly Observer), where I covered sports and music. With music, I did loads of album and live show reviews. I did exactly one film review, and the one I did was considered to be so poor that they never asked me to write another one. That might tell you all you need to know.

The one film I reviewed was To Die For, a Gus Van Sant film. His other famous features include some absolute classics like Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Elephant and Milk. He’s undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed directors out there.

I absolutely panned To Die For and gave it a miserable 1 star rating, calling it boring and dull. 

Every other ‘critic’ in the land gave it 4 or 5 stars. It was a darling with the critics. A few film buffs laughed at my review and told me to go back to sports and music.

So I obliged.

Truth be told, I’ve never felt comfortable giving critically-nuanced film reviews. Books, music – no problem. Films I find trickier. I’ve got my favourites, some critically-acclaimed, others less so.

And like with books and questions about my favourite actors, I actually forget – somehow, does this happen to others? – my favourite films. I can make a list but inevitably something will be left off it.

I’ll try my best – here’s an incomplete list of my favourites from over the years, in no particular order, though I’m aiming to go with the oldest first, and as you can see, it’s top heavy from the 1980s and early 90s: (most of these are the ones I’ve seen over and over again, at least 5 times each – they are very rewatchable; and remember, I am old; my top, top favourites are in bold)

Star Wars (the original, from the 70s)

Empire Strikes Back

Airplane!

Top Gun

The Karate Kid

Beverly Hills Cop (there's a particularly loud and annoying idiot of a neighbour who likes to rev his motor and speed up and down the road and one of these days I'm going to try the old banana-in-the-tail-pipe trick; if you've seen the film, you know exactly what I mean)

Naked Gun

Major League

Stand By Me

Coming to America

Trading Places

Spies Like Us

Heathers

Platoon

Die Hard

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

National Lampoon’s Vacation

National Lampoon’s European Vacation

Dances with Wolves

Empire of the Sun

A Clockwork Orange (this is deliberately further along in the list, because I didn’t really appreciate it until the late 90s)

Before Sunrise

Trainspotting

Seven

The Usual Suspects

The Shawshank Redemption (is there anyone who actually doesn’t like this film?)

Gladiator

Memento

Rushmore

The Royal Tenenbaums

28 Days Later

Little Miss Sunshine

A smattering of very guilty pleasures: Mean Girls, the Saw films, She’s All That

(One genre of films from the 1980s that never did it for me, surprising considering what a nostalgic old fool that I am, are those epic, coming-of-age classics with great, spine-tingling-in-a-good-way soundtracks and poignant, where-were-you-when? moments, films like Goonies, St Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Ferris Bueller, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club…)

For a long while, I always considered Neil Jordan to be one of my favourite directors, as far as I had one. Among his films, my favourites were The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire, The Butcher Boy and The End of the Affair. I also had my David Lynch phase – I was a massive Twin Peaks fan back in the day.

Looking at that list above, I realise there’s nothing on there since the early 2000s – that should now definitely tell you all you need to know about my taste in film. I am even struggling to remember my favourite films from the past two decades. 

[editor’s note: at this point, Pedzo spent an aimless 15-20 minutes with a dazed expression on his face, a vacant look, as he desperately tried to think of more great films from the 2000s and 2010s…he tried and tried and…couldn’t come up with much…seems like there’s a massive void, a black hole in his movie memories over the past couple of decades...]

[oh, but wait…something’s coming to mind…]

Though I struggle to think of anything from the more recent past that has impacted me – and the number of films I’ve re-watched over the past 20 years is few and far between, I do quite enjoy most of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, notably Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master and The Phantom Thread. 

Shame on me, but I’ve not seen many of the massive blockbusters either, all the big hits that everyone seems to have seen.

TOILET READING

Our final question for today comes from Dad, and based on his question, I am guessing that this is, in fact, my actual dad:

‘What is your favorite reading material while otherwise disposed (sitting on the porcelain throne)?’

Like so much else, I remember and long for the good ‘ol days when you could tell so much about a person’s personality by the reading material they had next to the toilet. Growing up, whenever you went to somebody’s house and had to drop a deuce, you flipped through the magazines and books on offer to see what was what. Does anyone still keep actual printed reading material by their porcelain thrones? I truly can’t remember the last time I saw anything at someone else’s home. Then again, I don’t get out much these days, and I don’t often visit other people’s homes.

I wish I had a more profound or revealing answer for this one, but I’m going to have to stick to the sad old boring truth – I can’t say I have a standard, go-to piece of reading material, it varies depending on my mood and how much time I have at my disposal (badoom-ch!). I take my Kindle into the loo and it all comes down to this – I look to see what the shortest thing is in my current reading selection. And I always have 5 or 6 choices. It could be the next article in my Instapaper feed (where web pages of articles are converted into an easily, ahem, digestible format), whatever’s next in my Bloomberg BusinessWeek issue, a short essay (at the moment, either some George Orwell or Richard Feynman), an excerpt of sorts. 

Sorry, that was a rather shitty way to end this.

I’ll get to the rest of your questions a bit later. In the meantime, if any more pop into mind, send them along.

As always, thanks for reading/asking.