the post birthday post
Oct. 12th, 2009 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katekatDespite the grim warnings Friday night seemed to be throwing out I actually had a pretty fantastic birthday. Not the usual sort of thing LA thing - no wild party with much drunkenness (which has pretty much been my modus operendi for years and years), but instead a series of events that were all together entertaining.
Friday we saw Inglorious Bastards.
No one really liked it but me. this is not surprising. too long, too much time spent on secondary characters, too much violence for violence sake (especially the scalping).
However, because I'm taking a post-WWII film class that basically celebrates lots of films that are obsessed with postwar and it's aftermath it actually made sense. The length, for sure, had a pacing quite similar to the art house cinemas I've been consuming on a weekly basis. The episodic nature of the whole thing was a lot like those French New Wave experimentalists. Frankly so were the camera angles.
The secondary characters all had better stories than the Bastards, which also made a ton of sense - celebrate the marginalized I say!
The funniest part was that both Neil & D laughed out loud at parts of it but on the whole didn't really think the whole thing was funny. And I happened to come away thinking that it was a great romp. Campy romp.
Saturday I had an ice cream social.
No, really, I did. There's this dessert shop down the street from us called Milk that's set up a bit like an old ice cream parlor (a la LA though). Not only did I get to share a sandwich with my cutie, but I had an actual old-fashioned ice cream sundae (with cherry on top mind you) surrounded by friends. Other than it being slightly colder than I had thought (the sun was out but there was a bit of a breeze) it was an absolutely perfect couple of hours. And I was strangely delighted with my presents from friends - a hanging bat-totem, a bunch of knee socks, and a beautiful bouquet of flowers that D & I split up into 10 different vases when we got home. There are now flowers in every room in our house, even the bathrooms.
And I kind of got a ton of loot, the best of which is a book I have been slavering over for nearly a year now (don't ask me why I hadn't bought it before, but I hadn't, but I *have it now*!): Otaku; Japan's Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma. Of course I'm going to be using it for class, because that's just how frigging geeky I am.
By the time we got home from ice cream I had called off our dinner out (too much ice cream to add a possibly-too-rich-dinner on top of it) and we settled for getting dinner brought to us from my favorite place in town. And glutted ourselves on TV (something which I don't get to enjoy often enough now that my school schedule is overwhelming.
yeah, so, the spangles and stars may not have exploded in huge measure but for me? it was a pretty damn fine day. No angst. No annoyances. Everything I wanted to do and no drama about doing it.
(of course my present from school was that I had a Japanese test today -- and it continues tomorrow -- so I spent most of Sunday studying. Bleh. The life of a grad student is truly boring. Although I think I did ok today, so hopefully I'll get a good grade as a bit of a retroactive present to myself).
Friday we saw Inglorious Bastards.
No one really liked it but me. this is not surprising. too long, too much time spent on secondary characters, too much violence for violence sake (especially the scalping).
However, because I'm taking a post-WWII film class that basically celebrates lots of films that are obsessed with postwar and it's aftermath it actually made sense. The length, for sure, had a pacing quite similar to the art house cinemas I've been consuming on a weekly basis. The episodic nature of the whole thing was a lot like those French New Wave experimentalists. Frankly so were the camera angles.
The secondary characters all had better stories than the Bastards, which also made a ton of sense - celebrate the marginalized I say!
The funniest part was that both Neil & D laughed out loud at parts of it but on the whole didn't really think the whole thing was funny. And I happened to come away thinking that it was a great romp. Campy romp.
Saturday I had an ice cream social.
No, really, I did. There's this dessert shop down the street from us called Milk that's set up a bit like an old ice cream parlor (a la LA though). Not only did I get to share a sandwich with my cutie, but I had an actual old-fashioned ice cream sundae (with cherry on top mind you) surrounded by friends. Other than it being slightly colder than I had thought (the sun was out but there was a bit of a breeze) it was an absolutely perfect couple of hours. And I was strangely delighted with my presents from friends - a hanging bat-totem, a bunch of knee socks, and a beautiful bouquet of flowers that D & I split up into 10 different vases when we got home. There are now flowers in every room in our house, even the bathrooms.
And I kind of got a ton of loot, the best of which is a book I have been slavering over for nearly a year now (don't ask me why I hadn't bought it before, but I hadn't, but I *have it now*!): Otaku; Japan's Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma. Of course I'm going to be using it for class, because that's just how frigging geeky I am.
By the time we got home from ice cream I had called off our dinner out (too much ice cream to add a possibly-too-rich-dinner on top of it) and we settled for getting dinner brought to us from my favorite place in town. And glutted ourselves on TV (something which I don't get to enjoy often enough now that my school schedule is overwhelming.
yeah, so, the spangles and stars may not have exploded in huge measure but for me? it was a pretty damn fine day. No angst. No annoyances. Everything I wanted to do and no drama about doing it.
(of course my present from school was that I had a Japanese test today -- and it continues tomorrow -- so I spent most of Sunday studying. Bleh. The life of a grad student is truly boring. Although I think I did ok today, so hopefully I'll get a good grade as a bit of a retroactive present to myself).
