It started many years ago. My guy saw it in a movie — a fleeting scene. It was a manly glass, big, and heavy; it said, “I take my scotch seriously.”
The movie, Blade Runner, came out in 1982. Rick Deckard, arriving home after a hard day of “retiring” replicants, enters the grey chaos of his apartment and pours himself a drink. He’s tired. The drink is his refuge, his solace.
And the glass is perfect. It’s square, with a heavy bottom and diagonal cuts at the points of the sipping edge. My guy Googled “scotch glasses” and “square scotch glasses”, “the perfect scotch glass” and “square glasses”.
Nothing. Recently, after perhaps the 27th viewing of the sci-fi classic, he tried something new. He typed “Blade Runner scotch glass” in the search engine and there it was. At first he thought it was just pictures, then he found it at a prop-sales site: http://props.steinschneider.com/blade_runner/square_glass/sq_glass.htm
By this time the cost was irrelevant. The description surpassed any concerns over the glass’s substantial price tag — an almost four inch cube, weighing 20 oz. and holding over twelve ounces, it is a heavy work of hand-blown, Italian art crystal.
An order was placed for two of the precious items, and with that the event horizon had been achieved. The joining of the man and his perfect scotch glass was now inevitable.
UPS has an Internet package tracking service that allows you to see where your parcel is as it travels to you. It is agonizing to watch. At least twice everyday we checked on the progress. Three agonizing days to clear customs in an undisclosed location, then silence, then a delivery to again, an undisclosed post office somewhere in Canada. Is it Toronto, Vancouver, perhaps even Whitehorse?
Finally, the packaged arrived and was opened with some ceremony on a sunny Saturday afternoon when no obligations would threaten the moment. The glasses came in their own box labeled dramatically with “d Arolfo di Cambio design”, the stamp of the European manufacturer.
We opened a very special bottle of 18-year-old and the art-of-the-distiller kissed the art-of-the-glassblower as the golden liquid poured-into and covered the bottoms of the glasses.
Unlike Blade Runner, there was no flashing neon to be reflected in the myriad planes of crystal, just beams of welcome winter sun — beauty in a glass and of a glass.
The scotch in our house will now be treated only with the greatest of respect.
