Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I've been sort of blocked recently. I think I've just been cooped up in the house too much and not getting out to collect stories. The heat is so oppressive and I've been busy putting wild spearmint tea up in quart jars. It's really strong this year, what with all the heat and the dryness, so I'm thinking I won't have to gather too much more for the winter. I put just a tablespoon into my last pot of tea and it about knocked my socks off.

Yesterday, I loaded up the riding lawnmower and went over to Scott's to mow his lawn for him. He wielded the weed eater and we got done just in time for a huge rainstorm to pelt the landscape.

Then he came over with a bunch of bootleg movie titles and fed me pizza and Woodchuck Draft Cider.

My acquaintance with hard cider is from my years in the U.K. There, it was often on tap at the local pub. It didn't take me too long to figure out the hard way that this stuff was best taken in small quantities. The cider we get here is nothing as strong...or as good...as the stuff I had there, but I still approached it with cation.

Friend Scott and I have very different taste in films. I tend to like things with subtitles and lots of violence and action cleverly crafted into a good storyline. Yes...I do like Tarantino. The subtitles just are usually there since American films have a hard time combining violence, action and...storylines. Scott...he's more The Devil Wears Prada type. I have a suspicion that he lays around on his days off watching Lifetime Television and chick flicks.

We settle on Apocolypto....which I've been secretly wanting to see. I cleverly move The Devil Wears Prada to the bottom of the stack of DVD's.

As it turns out...Scott's copy has the subtitles in Cyrillic. I don't know where he gets these from. Or why the local hillbilly movie bootlegger would assume fluency in Russian up here in the hills.

"Do you want to watch something else?" I say, disingenuously. I don't really mind just watching the film without the subtitles, even though my Mayan is a bit rusty. You know how it is when you haven't been around a language in a long time...you just stop being able to think in it.

So we watch Apocolypto with Russian subs. It was okay...but with the same sort of weakness of story that I get from most big American films. The violence was graphic and everything I imagined from my wildest dreams of the Mayan civilization. But it didn't have the terrible beauty of a Pan's Labyrinth. Scott slept through most of it.

When it was over, I switched back on to the television and Mirage of Blaze was on.

Scott jolted awake and looked at the screen with bleary eyes.

"Urrgh. Anime."

His head flopped back on the chair in tired disgust.

"Yeah!" I say, "....but it's the gay one. Ohhh...Look! It's the part where they almost kiss!"