Sorry for falling off the face of the earth. We were out of town most of last week and even though I had net access on the weekend, I just couldn't muster up the energy to update this thing.
We dropped off Garrett in Sarnia for a week of quiet and relaxation. Julie & I went to downtown Toronto for what could be called a second honeymoon, if your idea of a honeymoon involved seeing the splayed bodies of your enemies on display at the Science Centre, visiting about 10 different comic and sci-fi book stores in 2 days and seeing a rousing stage production of The Lord Of The Rings.
Well, that's MY idea of a honeymoon. Julie's idea might involve less bodies, comics and shorter plays.
On Wednesday we went to see Bodyworlds 2 at the OSC. It was very cool and I highly recommend seeing it if/when it comes back to Toronto. Unfortunately we saw it near the end of the run in Toronto which meant that the crowds were HUGE. We also seemed to hit it in the middle of School Trip Week, which meant that not only were the crowds huge, they consisted mostly of annoying high schoolers. It's a good thing the exhibition only took about 40 minutes to go through as I would have had a few more donors for the exhibit had I been forced to be near those punks for much longer.
It is kind of sad that being able to handle a plasticized brain really didn't seem that special given that I've held a brain fresh out of the skull. Ah, I miss my autopsy days.
Anyway, after the Science Centre, we headed downtown and had some delicious food at Young Thailand and then later at Le Biftheque (Thanks James!). Unfortunately we didn't wear the right shoes and were unaccustomed to the rigors of walking around downtown Toronto and by Thursday our legs and feet were so sore that we could barely limp down to the lobby. Ah well.
Thursday was mostly a day for riding the streetcar (Julie took her first streetcar ride that day!) and hitting Bakka and a bunch of comic shops. I had a list of titles I was collecting and I was able to find them all... after 2 days of comic book shopping.
The new Bakka store is nice. It's more like their old Queen store but new like the Yonge store. And they're using the bookmarks again! Woo! Sadly, my $300 of store credit is no longer valid as they've switched owners since I had last been down :(
Julie was a real trooper. She actually went into most of the comic shops and didn't run screaming when people nerdier than I am started talking about comics to total strangers. She didn't even complain about the smell. Heck, by the end of the week she had passively absorbed enough comic book lingo to know what a trade is. Scary.
The Lord of the Rings musical was on Thursday night. It was awesome. The set design was especially impressive. The set itself came out into the audience and essentially absorbed the box seats. The stage was like a big turntable that could spin around in different directions and in different segments and it also had MANY different areas that would raise or lower depending on the scene. There was also judicious use of projectors and even what seemed like a bit of Pepper's Ghost being used for certain scenes.
My favourite part was the end of the first act. It was Gandalf's big confrontation with the Balrog and blew us away. Literally. They had a tonne of smoke and red light on the stage and this wind machine blowing out into the audience at quite a decent clip. They also had all these little bits of paper flying out at the same time so we ended up having to pick out a tonne of tissue paper from the seats at the intermission.
Julie liked the parts where the hobbits were dancing. Thankfully, these bits were quite well done. I really liked the scenes with the orcs and the Nazgul as the costumes for both sets of characters were really stylized and interesting to look at.
The music was fantastic and there was just enough to balance the rather text-heavy narration. It ended up clocking in at 3 3/4 hours, with 2 intermissions, but it didn't seem near as long as that. Thankfully they'd worked out most of the bugs from the first few shows. The doorman said that the first couple shows were more than 5 hours long!
The only downer to the show was that one of the orcs got decapitated during the Helms Deep battle. Poor actor. He comes in, gets all dressed up and they cut off his head mid-play. Ah well.
After that, we just had some dessert and drinks and headed back to the hotel. Thankfully we could move our legs by Friday morning, just in time for a nice long drive back to Sarnia and Garrett.
So that's our past week. I've been off work since Feb. 18th, but I have to go back first thing tomorrow. Ah well. After having to chase Garrett around for the last two days, I'm looking forward to work as a place of relaxation. He & I watched Jurassic Park and LOTR: The Two Towers today, so that was kind of fun. He likes the fight scenes in The Two Towers and he's been on some kind of dinosaur kick lately so I figured he'd enjoy Jurassic Park. Should I be worried that he was laughing when the lawyer got eaten?
Now to read my stacks of comics and get to work reading my new book.
---
What I'm Reading: Devices & Desires
What I'm Playing: Chibi-Robo
What I'm Watching: Scrubs, The Two Towers, Jurassic Park
wakka wakka wakka wakka
No comments:
Post a Comment