s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

After work, went to a bar called “Arizona” (the female servers all wore black cowboy hats) to have a couple beers with some of the guys from the call center, because it was the birthday of one of them (the one I’d had occasional in-person conversations with in the break room at the old building, and with whom I have occasional email conversations now). That was cool. Arizona is closer to the north end of town (so, closer to the train station and the old office), whereas my apartment is on the south end of town — about a twenty minute walk.

Took my time moseying back — many of the shops that close at five/six during the week stay open as late as nine on Friday night, so there were lots of people out on the streets even on Lambton Quay and Willis Streets. Stopped in at the Mid City cinema to get tickets to the 9:45 show of “Volcano High” — one of the films being shown at this year’s International Film Festival. I’d planned to just make my way back to the apartment to hang out for the couple hours I had to kill before the movie, but there was this Maori group performing in Cuba street & I stopped to watch. They were there largely to talk about how finding Jesus had turned their lives around, but the talking to performing ratio was heavy on the performing, so they had a good crowd. As I was watching, my gaze wandered to the noodle house upstairs, which seemed to have a good solid crowd, so I went up, got a bowl of Satay Chicken Noodle soup as big as my head, and a window seat to watch the performance from. Cool ! I note that when the women swung the poi balls, they used much shorter cords (and therefore a much faster spin) than the raver girls do. Interesting. I have yet to see any non-Maori doing Maori songs or dances. After dinner (which was really good, by the way), I wandered around Cuba a bit more, then just headed back to the theater.

Volcano High was a hoot and a half. It was an HKC kung fu flick, set in the grimmest-looking high school I think I’ve seen, pulling out all the high-school-kung-fu-cliche stops, with the martial arts turned up to Matrix levels and shot like a music video (one of the good, sort of artsy ones). The names should tell you what to expect: the evil Vice Principle is named “Cold-Blooded Venom”, the bully captain of the weight-lifting team is “Dark Ox”, and the love interest — the captain of the all-female kendo club — is “Icy Jade”. Hah ! The film isn’t perfect, but it’s damned fun (and I’d totally buy the Playstation game). There are many Len Moments(TM) involving the kendo team, Icy Jade, and her punk sidekick (although as usual they could have kicked more ass). The protagonist — the typical reluctant-to-use-his-super-powers hero — has taken his comedic timing cues from Stephen Chow. Don’t know if I’d pay theater prices for it twice, but I’d definitely rent it.

Skipping forward a day, today was Natasha’s birthday party. I missed the first half of The Last Unicorn, but there was plenty of good conversation (and cake !) to be had afterwards. Too bad Stephen isn’t here yet, since the conversation had a “lab accident anecdote” section to which he could have contributed handsomely. :^)

Chris gave me the envelope Stephen sent the remainer of Slow Top’s heart medicine in, and I opened it to discover that MAF had confiscated the pills. I’ll have to read over the paperwork they left in their place and see what can be done about it. I’ll call the quarantine cattery as well — since they’ve been giving this stuff to Slow all along of course, and see if they have any suggestions. Still, bleah. I was sort of hoping I was done with MAF and Customs and all that.

And, by popular request (well, Holly asked, anyway), here’s a pic of my new drum:

As I mentioned, I wasn’t that attracted by the shiny all-silver body, but it *is* kinda growing on me. Must remember to call Glen. You’ll note the blue head: the guy I took a class with at Club Passim a few months back told me that back when they were experimenting with different types of synthetic drum heads, they found that the best stuff to use — for sound, strength, resistance to humidity, etc. — was old x-ray film. So back in the early days, your drum head might have somebody’s busted leg on it, or a skull — wouldn’t that be cool ? Now they get the stuff before it’s made into film.

–36.5 days to Snog Week