Having been paid, Saturday I picked up J, and went into town with the express intent not to buy too much crap. I picked up the Kolchak: The Night Stalker series on DVD, not having been able to download all of it, and the Once soundtrack I'd been two dollars short of being able to pay cash for at the Swell Season concert in Montreal. We picked up J's friend M, who he used to make funny videos and record music with until M moved into the city. Neither J nor M drive, so this reduced their friendship and creative partnership to phonecalls until I pointed out that, if J was coming into the city with me many weekends to go shopping anyway, we might as well pick up M on the way.
J really didn't want to see Beowulf, and I really did, so I dropped them off in the middle of Ottawa's Byward Market (pretty busy place as to restaurants, stores and bars) with a video camera, and went across town to see Beowulf in 3D.
It was awesome, I thought. Better than I'd hoped, though I always hope great things of Neil Gaiman. It had poetically dramatic dialogue and rude songs, unabashed heroism and an examination of the unflattering side of making one's self a hero to begin with. I've never seen anything 3D at a theatre before. It was weird, with the ushers manning tubs of what looked like coloured plastic sunglasses (not with red and blue lenses, though, just normal looking) and with a huge theate full of people apparently sitting in the dark wearing sunglasses. I found myself blinking and flinching at the spears and arrows and blood flying out of the screen at me at first, and it was weird when they did giant pullbacks, with everything apparently passing right through your head to appear directly in front of your nose. They kinda "played up" the 3D stuff at first, then eventually the greater middle section is all characterization and story-telling, with the end becoming an action sequence again. Way to make Beowulf a teenager's action hero, guys!
I returned, J and M having bought CDs they didn't think they'd ever find anywhere, and having shot a video in which they went to the various modern art sculptures and statues in the area and videoed each other pretending to be the (extremely pretentious) artists who'd designed all of them, making up fake symbolism and bizarre premises for them all.
We went to a giant used book store. I picked up some graphic novels I was going to buy anyway, at half the new price.
I came home late, watched some of a Kolchak episode, and wondered why the cat was growling and skulking under things. Then, all night long he was growling and hissing and yowling and miserable. The vet told me years ago that he has a serious heart defect and will likely drop dead of a heart attack, or have a stroke at some point, so I was concerned. (for the cat as well) He's seven, which isn't very old, but the vet didn't expect him to live to be old. In the wee hours, he crawled under the bed (the cat as well), and was growling under there.
When he eventually emerged in the morning, he was tired, cowed and limping. I checked to see if he was dragging a leg (signs of a stroke) and it seems more like he is having trouble putting his full weight on it, but can move it. It seems to hurt him to step on it, which looks more like an injury than a stroke, though I'm no vet. Just being optimistic, I guess. Anyway, he's staying close to me today, looking a bit woebegone, but able to walk about, still troubled by his leg. He has four legs, after all, though.
Today I'm watching one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld cartoons. Soul Music to be precise. With the various thick accents in silly voices, the dialogue is harder than you'd expect to catch, and the jokes are quite obscure. Still very unusual, though, and therefore a nice change from the naked American "real" and "scripted" stupidity that is spewed trumpeting from the tube. Writer's strike? I didn't know they had any.
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