u/katfromjersey

HR spoilers ahead...

This may be my favorite section of Heated Rivalry. Shane and Ilya have had sex a few dozen times by now (give or take), but the Skype call, which takes place in March of 2017, is where things become really intimate. Emotionally intimate. I'm still salty it wasn't in season 1 of the show. Things I love:

"You are very beautiful". 😭 This is the second time Ilya says this to Shane. The first time is in the prologue (Shane blows it off at that time). To me this parallels the scenes later and in TLG where Shane thinks about how very hot Ilya is, and how he's scored himself a ten! Shane, Ilya and Troy probably battle it out on yearly "Top 5 hottest NHL stars" lists.

I love Ilya's constant swooning over Shane's freckles! I'm disappointed that in the show there's only one freckle mention, and in some scenes you can hardly see them. They are his most striking feature!

Shane shyly brings up that he thinks about Ilya every time he gets off alone! He then admits he's never had anything "like this" with anyone. Swoon.

Ilya then can't stop himself from asking about Shane and other men. It's similar to the Tampa bar conversation, and him continuing to bring up Rose. He needs to know!

We learn that Shane's only been with two other men (and a bunch of disappointed women! *Anyway...*).

Ilya finally sees (over Skype) a place Shane calls home, something he's wanted from almost the very beginning. And he finds it boring! But we know that the cottage is Shane's true home, and much more "him" as far as decor and hominess.

My boy Shane gets a steely glint in his eye when their jerking off session becomes a competition! He knows just what to say (he brings up their draft night in the hotel gym!) to get Ilya off. He loves a challenge, and when Shane gets competitive.

There was a fun post about 'Sleepless in Seattle' a couple of weeks ago, and that brought 'You've Got Mail' to mind. Also, it's been a very hot, steamy, downpour-y summer in NJ this year, and I'm really looking forward to the cooler days of fall. To me, this movie is a fall movie. Though Christmas and spring are also featured, the majority of the movie takes place in a colorful NYC fall. I was able to catch this movie the other day, and it made me nostalgic for both the 90s, and the early/mid days of the internet, when AOL was still a thing and before social media made everyone think they're either a journalist, or that everyone in the world needs to hear their opinion.

Meg Ryan, at her most Meg-Ryan-ish (seriously, she's almost too cutesy in this movie. Even some of her line readings are cutesy), plays Kathleen Kelly, owner of an adorable children's bookstore on the Upper West Side, The Shop Around The Corner. The name is an homage to the 1940 movie of the same name featuring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as unlikely pen pals/love interest co-workers. I watch that movie every Christmas season.

Tom Hanks plays Joe Fox, heir to the Fox Books mega-store fortune, and who's overseeing the first Fox Books to come into the neighborhood where everyone knows everyone's name, even though it's Manhattan. Kathleen is practically living with boyfriend Frank (Greg Kinnear), a holier-than-thou writer who loves typewriters and the sound of his own voice, and who predicts technology as the end of civilization (he's kind of right, there). Joe is with Patricia (played by the always great Parker Posey), who is tense, caffeinated, and works in the publishing industry. Joe's family is quite interesting. He spends a lot of time with Matt and Annabelle, young elementary-schoolers. Annabelle is his aunt (his grandfather's daughter), and Matt is his brother (his father's son). Tom Hanks and the kids are sweet in their scenes together. Hello New Jersey!

The Upper West Side is definitely its own character in this movie. Kathleen's apartment is in an adorable brownstone on an adorable tree-lined street, and is adorably decorated. This movie is so adorable! It makes me want to shop for cheese at Zabar's and hang out in Riverside Park reading the now-defunct Village Voice (RIP). Seriously, though, Kathleen's apartment is one of my favorite movie dwellings of all time. It's a large studio-ish apartment full of books and cute decor. I remember a few blogs of the time that went into detail about her apartment and the production design of this movie. Another thing I miss about the 90s internet: the lovely blogs and LiveJournals!

Kathleen and Joe are chatroom pen pals, and their sweet e-mails are the backbone of the storyline: mainly that Fox Books will eventually put Kathleen's bookstore out of business. But never fear: they will eventually fall in love over e-mail, then become friends, then fall in love in real life, even though he just put her out of business and her beloved bookstore, that was her dead mother's before her, and was her life's work, is gone.

Some observations: No wonder Kathleen has money troubles. She has two additional people (Steve Zahn as George and Heather Burns as Christina) working in a very small bookstore, not including her aunt figure Jean Stapleton, who seems to do the financial stuff, but is still always there. Maybe cut people's hours? Other than the street fair day, how many people come into the tiny little bookstore on any given day, that there needs to be three full-time people working at all times?

The big bad Fox Books coming to the neighborhood-y Upper West Side is almost charming. It's sad that small stores like Kathleen's were and still are going by the wayside in favor of big box-stores , inflation, and more often than not, Amazon. But, I still have a Barnes & Noble near me, and it still does a good business. It's nice to have it nearby, and it's still a respite for people looking to escape for a few hours, and like Fox Books, it sells cheap-ish books and legal addictive stimulants.

Books are obviously all over this movie, in both bookstores, but also being read in the subway, in restaurants, in parks. I pretty much read exclusively on an e-reader nowadays (eyesight woes), so it's nice that everyone on the subway can't see I'm reading my gay hockey smut.

Starbucks is featured a few times, which is kind of ironic given the whole small, independent store vs. big conglomerate plot. Weren't there any independently owned coffee places Kathleen could visit? Also, what's really up with men and The Godfather?

I will say that there are a few very poignant scenes, like when Kathleen is decorating the shop for Christmas and thinking about her mother and Joni Mitchell's "River". I choke up every time.

Some fun quotes:

"My father is getting married again. For five years he's been living with a woman named Jillian, who studied decorating at Caesar's Palace."

"A Fox Books superstore" "Quel nightmare! (I say this in unfortunate situations all the time!)

"This place is a tomb. I'm going to the nut shop where it's fun".

"That caviar is *a garnish*". Obviously it's a garnish now, but it's on a plate of food. It's supposed to get eaten eventually. It's either you or the garbage!

"Never marry a man who lies." Thank you, Nanny Maureen.