Two Rants

A couple of things made my temper flare in the last few days:

- I went to see the movie Atonement based on the superb book by Ian McEwan, and loved the movie as much as I loved the book. Indeed it is so rare to find a faithful cinematographical adaptation of a literary oeuvre and for a long time only the BBC was able to produce anything of quality...Think Pride and Prejudice with the elegantly divine Colin Firth! So you can just imagine how floored I was when I found out that the French distributor translated the title to a sugary-weepy-not-at-all-in-context-with-Ian McEwan's style "Reviens-moi". I almost threw up! These are the words that Knightley says twice in the movie to McEvoy, but in no way does it represent or do justice to the very essence of the book. Forgive them, Father, for they obviously do not know what they are doing, and certainly cannot understand English!

- To be fair, or rather balanced, I had to find something that the Americans, in turn, would do to make me cringe. Now, of course, the US is a big country and with 50 states, diversity prevails. So when one State acts stupidly, it does not mean that the entire nation follows suit...Ah! The advantages of federalism over "the unique and indivisible Republic"! (But that is another story altogether.) Anyway, as I was driving to work this morning, listening to the Jack Diamond Morning Show on 107.3, this came up: Sangria is ILLEGAL in Virginia! That is to say, any bartender who is serving sangria risks up to one year in jail! Yes, you read it well, it is not one month or one day, but one year -12 months- in jail...The legal basis for this extremely cruel penalty is the following: in Virginia, one is not allowed to mix wine or beer with brandy, or wine or beer with any other hard liquor. As for the logical aspect of it, I relished the image of new sangria recipes: mixing Argentinian red wine with French red wine and calling it the "Falkland Sangria" just to annoy the Brits, or mixing Tequila and Bourbon and calling it the 'New Frontier" just to tickle some people's points of view on immigration to this country...Because if you cannot mix wine and hard liquor, nothing prevents you to mix wine with wine or liquor with liquor. How do you think they invented Martinis in the Big Apple? But I am keeping the best for the end... If the law is enforced as it has been, because a restaurant had to close for a few days, all the Irish-Americans living in the Commonwealth of Virginia will have to move elsewhere: indeed, how will they be able to drink their beer and their shot of whisky together? No siree, you cannot mix, and it means, as a responsible bartender, I cannot serve you the two drinks simultaneously...you would be mixing!

But I am cheating, am I not? This story made me laugh more than the translation faux pas!