A word to the wise: If you promise to help a friend with a project & the quality of success of that project is dependent on your involvement, it is a good idea to follow through. Don't indifferently agree & then forget about it or just blow it off. Ms. Manners would not approve.
Needless to say, today
laviorli & I moved out of her apartment every stick of furniture that wouldn't fit in her car. It took us eleven hours to do it but by gods' balls we cleaned that place out. There's room enough to dance now & we very well could have were we not so exhausted by the time we finished. The rest should be easy enough for her as long as she has enough boxes & now I can start playing with my new toys.We used my father's pickup "The Ark" -- so named because it's big & gold & old -- to do all the hauling across town & all I asked was that she replace the fuel we used to appease Dad. But for my troubles she awarded me lunch, a framed puzzle of a German castle & an entertainment center. I offered to buy this latter from her but evidently my strong back was payment enough. Tomorrow I expect will be spent disassembling my living room to incorporate this new addition & more efficiently utilize the available space at hand. If'n I'm not all pooed out, that is.
The weekend, should be noted, was good. And there was much rejoicing. Saturday & Sunday was the scheduled annual UW Anime Club Craptacular film fest. I always go out of my way to attend these but this year I was only able to attend Saturday. Being Father's Day, Sunday was spent with my family. Dad wanted to see the movie Cars at the Star Cinema because the screen wraps around & is so big that he doesn't have trouble seeing anything. They picked me up & on the way there he opened my gift to him that I was wrapping when they rolled up. It was a one-hour hourglass & I think it made his day. I still have a bunch left over after stealing them from my former employer & when he saw the pile in my house a couple months ago he all but begged me for one. By now he had forgotten so it was a double surprise. You want even more appropriateness??! When he unwrapped the gift the car radio was playing the song The Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers.
Cars was a lot better than you expect & I recommend it to anyone who's even lightly considering it. Yes, it's full of predictably lovable characters voiced by celebrities who will give you a pleasant surprise when you recognize them. Sure it's pretty much a repackaged Doc Hollywood (whose IMDB page, by the way, features an AT&T ad endorsed by Lightning McQueen of the aforementioned Cars) But it's still fun & much more watchable than some of the other computer graphic imaged movies that have crawled up onto the screen in recent years. It clocks in at 116 minutes (five longer in the UK. [shrugs]), a little long for an animated kids film but worth the time in plot & character development. Plus, it's more time for me to admire the detail in all the classic cars.
After the movie the thunderstorm had finally dispersed & we followed it east until we turned north to capital square where we checked out the Cow Parade. I took a couple hundred more photos in my attempt to document every one in Madison & we walked a few miles before stopping at the Great Dane for an early supper. I took the folks home after that, my minimal sonly duty fulfilled.
I still had time to enjoy the final couple hours of the Craptacular but I was wearier than I expected from all the walking & dozed on my computer couch until
koriandrkitten called to invite me over to do stuff. I gave it a "maybe" & tried to finish my nap but only became more awake. I instead played video games until I got bored & called her. A couple hours after I left a message she replied & I spent the rest of the evening with her, crabmoon, hawkaloogie & later, Phil. I brought eight boxes of Meiji Apollo Chocolate chips for Gemma & she could not resist using them in her chocolate chip cookie recipe. The rest of us talked, made fun of each other & watched Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro non Troppo. I returned home late & got to bed later than I wanted but the drive-time was worth it.It is unfortunate that so many things ended up on this past weekend as I wanted to devote as much time as possible to all of them. I still managed to experience a quantity of each.
toastmastertom's happy sappy graduation party was Saturday & I arrived in time to watch the family still setting up. I met some of his friends, met some of his family, played with their pets, ate some great food & generally had a good time. Tom seemed to enjoy the gift I gave him, A Treasury of Humor and Toastmaster's handbook. The copyright is 1955 but sources credited in the first few pages indicate material from as early as 1906. It's full of wonderfully dry & outdated humorous stories & jokes likely to go over the head of anyone not well-versed in the language, etiquette & customs of pre-1950's America.On the way to Anime Club I stopped by my friend Josh's to pick up my long loaned copy of Guitar Hero. He'd been enjoying it for several weeks but I was jonseing for the spotlight again, especially with all the buzz about GH2 abound. (Check out the third party controller.) I grabbed it & made it to the Craptacular early enough to catch most of the second movie, the original 1922 silent film Nosferatu. It isn't necessarily craptacular material but this particular release elevated it to the proper level with a soundtrack of goth rock ballads. Not surprisingly, my mind has blank spots at this point & I can only remember a few more features, being: a Mortal Kombat animated movie featuring awful CGI (even for its time,) 1% fighting & 99% expositional dialog, a preview for Powerpuff Girls Z (the "Z" is for "Anime") & Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, this last one being the crowd favourite. Like Bob said, "How many of you want to watch this to tear it apart, & how many of you want to watch it for the nostalgia?" I wish I could have gone both days but I had enough fun there Saturday for the whole weekend.
I would like to have shared Allegro non Troppo for it's bizarre live-action sequences & trippy animation as I feel it would have gone over well but I'll have to save it for another year... or the Alt Room. At least this time we had a decent selection system. Each movie title was added to a numbered list & the next selection was chosen by way of a random number generator. Then there was a quick pass/fail vote of hands to finalize the choice & be sure more than one person wanted to watch it. I feel it worked well & it seems a bit more fair than other systems used in the past.
Other than that I've been doing the odd & occasional end around the house while waiting for the temp agency to call.
the_tick27 kindly returned my DVD of Allegro non Troppo (which I've just now realized can be abbreviated as "ANT," but won't)(also, 3rd reference for those not counting) Sunday eve & I freshened up my "Coke" avatar. I also went through my other icons and made a few additions. This one thanks to hawkaloogie. The project continues. This overblown entry on the other hand...- E V I L O U T -
Current Music: Burnt Weeny Sandwich
Currently Eating: Burnt Weeny Sandwich*
Current Location: Burnt Weeny Sandwich
*(Burnt Weeny Sandwich also good with WPLJ)
Tags: holliday, movies, weekend
