1455 - It's a Wonderful Duck

Well, I'm a day late writing about this past week. I'm also in Seattle now, so I'm finding it difficult to think about what happened, as so many things are going on. I don't think I did a whole lot on Monday, though I distincly remember being very busy every night of the week. I think actually I worked on some Christmas items for JW. On Tuesday I went to JW's to hang out. We watched a comedy entitled, "Wonder Boy", which was about a college English professor who in writing his second novel found himself off course and unable to finish it. It was also about one of his students, a literarary genius hanging onto the freyed ends of society. Unsurprisingly, the professor was saved when his novel blew away in a gust of wind, and the student had his first work published shortly after. The movie was quite funny, especially the language in use - I always find the language entertaining when literary types are involved. There was an interesting sequence in which several characters sit around coming up with a possible description of a stranger's life. It turns out later on that the professor's car is in fact owned by the stranger, and when he steals his car back, he also steals a jacket worn by Marilyn Monroe, which the professor goes to great lengths to get back. It's owner is his girlfriend, whose dog his student shoots early in the film. Anyway, JW and I enjoyed the movie and then each other's company before getting a few hours' sleep.

On Wednesday after work I went shopping with my father for my mother. Our morale was low, and we only found a few candles in an entire mall. I also got my first haircut in over four months, though it was only a little off the top. It was entertaining, especially after I could see my stylist getting annoyed with how quiet I was (until she pointed it out). Even better, there was an extremely old woman who could barely stand getting her hair done. The stylists had to yell at her as she was quite deaf, and they spoke (yelled) to her as if she was three years old. After the mall, I went home and got little more done.

On Thursday, JW and I repeated the events of Tuesday. This time, we watched another movie with the word "Boy" in the title, called "About a Boy", or "About a Duck" as JW likes to call it. This movie starred Hugh Grant as an incredibly shallow bachelor with no job and no long term girlfriends. While pursuing his latest challenge, he meets a woman who is friends with a depressed mother of a boy who is severely bullied at school because of the way he has been raised by his mother. The boy becomes attached to Grant, and they help each other solve their respective problems. The highlight of the movie is a scene where the boy gets tired of throwing bits of bread at ducks, and so he hucks the entire loaf into the pond, killing one of the ducks. When park security questions the boy about the dead duck, Grant explains that the boy was merely trying to "sink the body" as it was disturbing the baby of his mother's friend. It's much funnier to watch than it is to read about, especially when described by me. I found this to be the better of the two boy movies.

On Friday, I finished up several projects at work in preparation for my big trip to Seattle. After work, I went to TA's, where we put back a few brews while watching ultimate fighting. The evening was pretty much useless, and I went home fairly early very tired. On Saturday, I slept in quite late, then got up to visit my grandmother before leaving the next day. After that, I wrapped a few Christmas presents, and then I packed for the trip. I had just sat down to waste the time away watching TV, when JW called, having finished up her chores. I went over to her place, where we listened to Christmas music and decorated her tree. It was the widest, most misshapen tree I'd ever seen, and thousands of decorations barely covered its immense surface. It still looked sparse afterward. JW and I were not able to reach the far side of the tree, as we did not have the proper supplies available for such a long journey. It was fun to decorate the tree - it made me feel good that I was getting my Christmas fix, but also bad that I'd be missing much more of it because of my trip. I really like to be with my family and friends before and during Christmas, and I was being robbed of the entire week before Christmas. I would come back from my trip and be thrust into Christmas, and of course it would be over just two short days later. However, my employers agreed to give me the week between Christmas and New Year's off to compensate for the large amounts of travel and the timing of the trip. I'm sure that time will be great, but Christmas will be over.

JW and I went to Jack Astor's after the tree lighting ceremony. We both got a thai curry dish that we agreed was excellent, though the price had been raised to almost $15. We also had nachos that were pretty good - however, our main dishes arrived after we'd finished only a third of the nachos. The food was tasty, but the extremely high prices (completely unjustified) and the poor service will make me think twice before I go to bed. Apparently I'm tired, because I didn't mean to write that just now :) I meant to say "before I go back". Anyway, our trip to the business park also took us to a huge scrapbooking store - a great black hole of worthless items to be used in worthless pursuits. At least they say there is something interesting at the other end of a real black hole - no such luck in this case. After the business park, we headed back down to JW's, where our Christmas mood and abundance of time (what?) led us to watch the Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life". We both had already seen the movie - in fact, it was one of the few movies ever to grab my attention during channel surfing and keep it for over two hours! I find something appealing about society in the earlier parts of the twentieth century - people were respectful of one another (always addressing one another by title, always willing to lend a helpful hand, always knowing others by name), respectful of their appearance (wearing suits and hats to work) and just plain good and pure. The feeling is kind of like the one I got at church last week. Of course, it's likely that there were far more things wrong with the world at that time than there are now.

On Sunday morning, JW and I lazed about before I headed off to the airport to begin what turned out to be a lengthy journey! I thought I might feel worse than I did about parting, but I got through it pretty well. I mean, it's only six days (well, seven if the airlines are airlines come Saturday), and I was excited about the trip in general (even though I wished I wasn't going). We left for the airport at 11:45am. The first leg of the flight took us to Toronto, where we had lunch/dinner before heading for Denver. Our flight to Denver was almost an hour late, and the final leg of our flight was due to depart as we were still taxi-ing (is that a real word?) into the terminal! AN and I began to get excited about the prospect of spending the night in Denver, as we hoped to punish our employers for booking flights so close together. I mean, they did book us on two flights only fifty minutes apart. Anyway, as luck would have it, the third leg was delayed by over two hours, and in fact we had plenty of time (and our bags). The Denver airport was massive, as it is apparently one of the biggest ones in the US given its central location. We could see a huge structure nearby with an odd white, pointy roof - clearly some important landmark we knew nothing about. We sat in a sports bar and had a local brew, after which we boarded the plane. Somehow, the pilots managed to cut down the flight time by almost a third - I guess they can just go faster if they need to? We left two and a half hours late, and arrived one and a half hours late.

I had brought quite a bit to do on the flights. A book (Catch 22), a book of Sudoku's, my mp3 player, and the computer. On the first leg, I did several easy sudokus before getting cocky and trying a "very hard" one, which I didn't come close to finishing. I also listened to a few tunes. I was already too tired to read. The second leg was aboard a newer plane, and they had a TV in the back of every seat. I watched The Illusionist first, despite being very tempted to watch A Scanner Darkly or Little Miss Sunshine (again). There were also several JW-like movies (ones I would watch with her) - African life movies, Lady in the Water and others. I settled on The Illusionist as I hadn't seen it and wasn't likely to see it with anyone else in the near future. It was pretty good. Set in Russia a hundred years ago give or take a bit, it featured a magician and Russia's crown prince. The magician had been a lover of the prince's bride to be in childhood, but they had been torn apart due to their societal classes (what else is new?). During a performance attended by the prince, the magician again meets his lover on stage. They meet in person afterward, and they immediately discover that their feelings still exist for one another. The girl tells the prince outright that she is leaving him for the magician (or illusionist), and the prince kills her shortly after. Then, the illusionist engages in a battle against the prince using his magic - he somehow creates illusions of the deceased on stage, and he soon has the commoners rallying behind him. When his "ghosts" begin to touch upon the fact that the prince had killed the girl (a fact hidden by the prince and his loyal chief of police), the audience begins to question whether the prince is innocent, and they begin move against the prince. The illusionist is motivated to have the prince removed from power because of the nature of this plans reveiled to him by the girl before her death. In his final act, the illusionist himself disappears from the stage. The chief of police then undergoes a revelation, as he pieces together all that he has seen and realizes that the crown prince had indeed committed the murder. He goes to confront the prince, which leads to the prince committing suicide as he realizes he cannot win. Then, the chief sees the illusionist on the street, but is unable to catch up to him. The movie ends with a series of flashbacks during which the chief realizes that everything the illusionist had done was in fact an illusion, including the illusions he had produced on stage. He had used his powers of illusion to have the prince removed from power, complete with the faking of the girl's death, the faking of spirits from beyond the grave and the planting of evidence.

I found the movie to be very unique and I enjoyed it. It starred Edward Norton, and I find that I have liked quite a few of his movies recently. He played the illusionist very well. After the movie, I watched about three-quarters of a documentary on heavy metal. It was Canadian made. It was enlightening, but not as good as I'd hoped. It focused on the history of metal, its impact on society, the devotion of its fans, and on some darker topics. There was a bit about the Norwegian (sp?) black metal bands, where it is believed that the members truly believe in their lyrics (whereas it was pointed out that most metal lyrics are written for shock value and to question society). Apparently a lead of one of the most popular groups murdered another band lead in addition to burning down a historic church. In jail, he was interviewed as saying that he regretted nothing, and that he is merely trying to loosen the grip that Christianity has on the throat of the world. Many of the artists interviewed referred to Christanity as the worst type of brainwashing, and the one that does the most damage to society. One interesting line that I still recall went something like this: "It is very difficult to know what is good in the world. With religion, we strive to determine what is good, what God is and what God wants. But no one really knows what is good - which is the right path to follow. However, every one of us knows what is bad. We know what we're not supposed to do." I guess there isn't really any context here - I just thought it was interesting on the surface. I hope to catch the end of the documentary on our trip from Newark to Halifax on Saturday, as we will be on another one of the jets with the TVs. Maybe AN can finish Little Miss Sunshine (poor him).

I tried to sleep on the third leg, but I couldn't. I kept opening my eyes to see whether drinks were being served, or garbage collected. Then I would look at some small town far below. After arriving in Seattle, AN and I rented a car, as the person we were going to meet had long gone due to our delay. We managed to get a really nice car for a not really nice car price. On the way to the hotel, we passed numerous trees blown down, cars abandoned on the side of the road, ice patches and power outages (impossible to read signs). Apparently there had been a huge windstorm only days before, and eight people had died. Power was going to be out in some parts of the city for another week. We got to the hotel at 5:00am our time, and I got to sleep around 6. Our total trip time was 17 hours and 15 minutes, and I was awake for 23 hours in the end.

Well, I'm really tired again today because we didn't have time for much sleep. I have no idea how this entry has turned out - hopefully it is tolerable! I'm still stuffed full of Thai coconut food too :)

It is clear and cool (in Seattle). I am currently listening nothing because I don't have my freakin' mp3s. There's some bad movie on TV.

Movies watched this week: "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country", "Wonder Boy", "About a Boy", "It's a Wonderful Life", "The Illusionist"