This year has been like the hit John Woo film starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, Face/Off.
In the film, Cage and Travolta switch faces using a highly-experimental face switching operation.
These faces essentially become masks that make them assume each others’ different lives. Lots of beatdowns and action ensue. I forget the rest.
And so it is with 2020.
Our masks are not highly-experimental face transplants, but they are literal, plain old boring surgical masks. Or cloth masks. Or cloth masks with colourful designs. Or, on occasion, N95s.
And as with Face/Off, these masks are forcing us to assume different lives.
Except, it’s not because of some super-secret bomb-thing spy operation — it’s because of a pandemic.
The beatdowns symbolize the normalcy of our indoor social lives getting their butts kicked. Assuming we follow COVID-19 restrictions, this will be the most boring winter ever, from an indoor nightlife perspective.
Unless we all start backcountry skiing, there won’t be much to do this winter.
The Sea to Sky Gondola is closed. So much for snowshoeing with a fondue afterward.
The Knotty Burl is closed. The Shady Tree is gone.
Whistler Blackcomb will likely be open, but it will be hard dropping $1,449 on a season pass with the looming possibility of an early shutdown like this past year.
Shelling out $139 for a day pass — rentals would bump it up to about $200 or more — also doesn’t seem terribly appetizing, as I’ll always be asking myself the same question: “Am I having fun? I guess? But am I having $139 to $200 worth of fun? Probably not? Jeez, that was a lot of groceries down the drain!”
Our favourite gathering spaces will not be the same.
Going inside any establishment — even one with pandemic protocols — doesn’t sound fun when the consequence, at least for high-risk folks like me, could be death.
I’ll still probably go to a pub every now and then, but I’ll likely have to spend much of the time looking over my shoulder.
The beatdowns in Face/Off can also be likened to how anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are beating down on basic principles of logic and science.
Hopefully, logic and science have action-hero like constitutions and will be able to withstand the blows.
The beatdowns in this movie are also similar to the beatdowns our governments have imposed on the population by making us vote in this god-awful time. And I’m not talking about just a provincial election.
It seems like a federal election is possible as well, given a motion before the House of Commons regarding the WE Charity debacle is being considered as a confidence vote.
As you can see, I’m torturing this metaphor, which, honestly, is tenuous and not that great.
Just like 2020.
