Happy Birthday!

It was my birthday yesterday. It wasn't particularly exciting, but it was appropriate in that it reflected me well. Colin did his level best to make it worthwhile, making all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday available to hang out with me. That was the best gift of all, I think.

On Friday night, I went to see Blade II with Colin, Nick, Chelle and Jason. It was an extremely effective sequel, picking up the tale of the Daywalker pretty well and feeling far more like a legitimate continuation than just a derivative cash-grab. As an action flick, it holds it own nicely. The action sequences were not spectacular, but were well-paced and excitingly unpredictable at times. Far be it from me to step back into the ratings circuit with such a pathetic offering, but for the sake of nostalgia, I'll give Blade II a 41.

Afterwards, Colin and I went to Denny's while the traitorous Nick went home to sleep. Denny's was good as always, and I discovered that if I eat all the potato bits from a Meat Lover's Skillet first, not only do I get a delightful potato experience, I also don't have anything interfering with my meat and egg enjoyment when I get around to them. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Saturday, I gave blood at the downtown Canadian Blood Services clinic with Chelly and Mrs. Richards. I then dined on deliciously free soup while Mrs. Richards had NONE! Mwa-haha-hahaha-hahahahahahaha-haha-haha-ha! Ha! *cough* *cough* Ha.

Then I headed down to the Glenbow Museum with Nick and Colin and Kat to see their latest experiment in poorly crafted mediocrity, the Pop Revolution exhibit. Even with extensive material on loan from New York City's Museum of Modern Art, the exhibit was spartan, and the genuine "pop" art was filled out with extravagent modern peices that seemed more like massive misuses of tax-payer subsidized government grants than actual "art". Aside from a few interesting pieces and a great portrait of Chairman Mao and Lyndon Johnson in drag, I must report that my favourite part of the whole shebang was the poster that advertises it. But one man made it worth the 7 bucks I shelled out to get in: an utterly fantastic andy Warhol impersonator who is spookily in character at all times. I've never met the real Andy, of course; but based on what I've seen and read about the man, his impersonator may as well have been his clone. His clone with memories, natch.

From the museum to Jack Astor's we went, where the portions are bountiful and the Vanilla Coke flows like the blood of my enemies, only sweeter. I had the Chicken Fried Chicken and the mortfying embarassment for dessert when the wait-staff made me stand on a chair and do the "I'm a little Teapot" dance.

Then it was home again, home again (jiggity jig) to watch Training Day on DVD, the rental fee for which Nick eliminated through the clever expedient of buying it for me. It's such a good movie, although after a full day of stuff, it kinda feels too extreme. Denzel is intense, and Ethan Hawke is so convincingly freaked out and out of his depth that you can't help but feel dragged under with him.

Chelly also contributed to my DVD library with the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back Collector's Edition. I've seen the movie a few times, but the two-disc set's glut of special features will ensure several more hours of viewing enjoyment, no doubt about it.

Sunday was a full day as well, with a trip to see Ice Age with Colin, Kristen and the awkwardly named Mikayla (?). Difficult spelling aside, she's a lovely little girl and I had a lot of bittersweet fun playing with her in the car on the way to the show. She's 3, by the way. Ice Age was a decent family "romp", as they say, but easily the most predictable movie I've seen in a while. With animated children's movies like Monster's Inc. proving that you don't have to be predictable to be good, it was shame to such a trite story as the foundation for a very humourous and visually entertaining film.

After the show, Colin and I headed back to Jack Astor's, this time with my parent's, for more chicken and public humiliation. I told my parents not to tell them it was my birthday, on account of the fact that I had been there for the same reason the previous night, but they did anyway. This time, I was required to make ridiculous "toot-toot" noises during some sort of train-themed birthday song. According to Colin, Saturday night's waitress watched the whole scene with a look that I imagine was of suspicous disgust. Beating a hasty retreat, I head back to Colin's house for an evening of Family Guy episodes that are far funnier when you're watching them with another person.

So, all in all, it was a decent weekend, but I regret not being able to spend more time with more of my friends. You know who you are...

By Ian on March 25, 2002 at 8:29 AM
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6 months

Well, it's been 6 months today; one half-year since the terrorist attacks of September 11. It seems both farther away and closer than it is. I remember waking up that morning to the phone ringing. The phone sits upstairs in my house and I sleep downstairs, but I can always hear it. I knew it was for me, like I usually know when it is, so I was out of bed and heading up the stairs in my robe before my mom even called me to take the phone.

It was Colin, naturally. It seems like everything extreme in my life happens with Colin in or around the thick of things, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I know I got the quick recap of the morning's events - plane - trade towers - two - maybe terrorists - CNN - and I couldn't believe it. Rather, I could believe it... but it was no less shocking. So I turned on the TV and watched the planes hit the towers, watched it over and over again as it looped beneath the stupified chatter of news anchors who had nothing to say and probably just wanted to slink away and throw up. Like I did.

I went to school that day, and there were TVs lining the hallways surrounded by clusters of rapt students and staff members. So many people were standing there, and I felt more alone than I almost ever had. Sharing a building with 10,000 people, I was at least an hour away from anyone I knew. There was no one around who'd be even slightly interested in hearing me cry and scream, and that was all I really felt inclined to do. There were classes that day, education marching on, but I don't really remember much of it. I went home and then went promptly back out - this time with Colin and the gang to BPs for the comfort of both food and friendship.

It felt like something was going to change that day. I was angry and vengeful and scared , and I'm a Canadian. I thought that just across the border there must be 250 million people who felt the same way I did, and their combined ire would burst forth and scrub the world clean of whoever had done this terrible thing and anyone would would endorse or condone their acts of hate. It seemed the likely event - the comparisons to Pearl harbour were obvious and immediate, and we all know what price the Japanese paid. Some friends, perhaps more level-headed and realistic than I, said that the world hadn't changed, it's horrors had just been thrown into harsher relief. I thought that might somehow be good enough.

But nothing has changed. Not really. Some soldiers have done some soldierly things, and God bless them for it. More people have died, including good guys. But there hasn't been any real result. A corrupt and oppresive government got spanked, but there are no terrorist bigwigs rotting in American jails. No world-wide stop, or even slow-down, of bombings and shootings and hating. It just the same old world. But with a million more novelty pins, a million more minutes of news footage, a million more empty words, of which these preceeding thousand are not exempt.

By Ian on March 11, 2002 at 8:54 AM
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In like a lamb

Consider the past 2 weeks of inactivity here at ianwallace.com a vacation, if you will. 2002 has already seen an unparalled level of content, and although my life hasn't been completely uneventful lately, I just haven't felt compelled to type it all out. But right now my design professor, whose word-to-though ratio is somewhere in the neighborhood of 23:1, is rambling about some arbitrary design bullshit and I'd rather do this than listen to him. My mental preservation is your momentary distraction.

On Feb. 22 I got a new computer. It's an AMD Duron at 1 Ghz. I bought it wholesale as a very low-end machine, and spruced it up with some of the components I bought for my old machine over the years. So it presently has 60 GB of hard drive, 256 MB of PC133 SDRAM, 4 USB ports, an LG 8x CD-RW drive and generic 52x CD, a Logitech 2-button scroll mouse (my trademark mouse), and a Creative USB WebCam2 that both Colin and I were certain was broken. It's been ressurected thanks to the infinite glory and wonder of Windows XP. Say what you will about Microsoft's strangling oligopily; I love XP and I don't care what ya'll think. Any OS that can detect and render operational dead hardware and recognize all my drives despite rampantly incorrect pin settings is okay in my book. XP is like the Canada of operating systems - it takes abuse from people who don't understand it, and just keeps doing whatever it was doing already.


Saturday night I went to a production of Beowulf at the One Yellow Rabbit theatre. The tickets were a well-guarded surprise from Michelle, who cleverly kept me thinking we were going to Fred Penner. The show was done with Puppets, and was very... interpretive. There was no dialogue, only music and strange sound effects. It was visually quite impressive, and you could tell that the puppets and masks were products of loving craftsmanship. The monster Grendel looked like a cross between a Tim Burton creation and a creature from Where the Wild Things Are, and was - in my humble opinion - a master in the field of comically devouring puppet knights. But I can't say that the story of Beowulf was delivered very clearly, and some of the comments I heard from my fellow attendees while leaving the theatre were extremely confused. The production focused on the life of Hrothgar, the father-killing, incestuous, stag-fetishing King whom Beowulf saves from Grendel in the original work. I get the impression that a lot of watchers thought that the King was actually Beowulf, since he was the main character. It was certainly an interesting angle to take with the production, but would have been immessurably helped by some sort of explanatory monologue or something at the beginning, just to make it totally clear what was being watched. And perhaps a better title would have been "From the Tale of Beowulf: Hrothgar" or "Stag King: Inspired by Beowulf" My grandfather used to say that you just can't take an 11th century epic poem and tell it with puppets in 55 minutes, and I guess he was right.

By Ian on March 4, 2002 at 8:34 AM
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