Movies

On Thurs­day we went to the Corb Lund con­cert at the West­man, and it was fan­tas­tic. The open­ing acts were quirky and alt-coun­try, so they meshed well with Lund and his band. The head­lin­ers played a lot of my favourites, which made me hap­py. All in all, there was near enough not to mat­ter to three hours of live music. We sat 7^th-row, stage right, which were fine seats.

Fri­day we got invit­ed out to a “black tie” mar­ti­ni par­ty at Lady of the Lake. I got gussied up in a suit, K put on her new Lit­tle Black Dress, and we ven­tured forth with X and X (no, I’m not kid­ding, I know two peo­ple whose ini­tials are X, and they were both in the back seat of my car on Fri­day night). Live music by Poor Boy Roger, a local blues/swing band, danc­ing, mar­ti­nis of all descrip­tions (includ­ing one with a choco­late-cov­ered espres­so bean at the bot­tom like a prize), and deli­cious appe­tiz­ers. It was a hoot.

Sat­ur­day we ran into The City so I could take part in the U of M’s week­end judo class. An hour of warmup left me sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly — I thought I was going to die dur­ing the hand­ball game — and then I was shown the first two sets of ju-no-kata, along with some help find­ing the kata’s nar­ra­tive, which helps. I also had one of the sen­seis drop a pearl of wis­dom in my ear that I’ve been turn­ing over in my mind ever since: “All throws in judo come from sumi-oto­shi or uki-otoshi.”

Sun­day: off to MacG for fam­i­ly fun times with T, A, and their new boy B. Hav­ing a cold, I felt it was unwise to hold the baby, so K end­ed up with my turn. Not that she com­plained one whit.

Tonight: Watched a cow-ork­er’s copy of The Fall, which was a fan­tas­tic movie, in all sens­es of the word. It was visu­al­ly stun­ning, well-shot, it cap­ti­vat­ed my atten­tion, and it pro­vid­ed an inter­est­ing look at the process of cre­at­ing a sto­ry. It was also a mov­ing dra­ma, and brim­ful of fine actors in fine roles.

And then, tonight as well, I sub­mit­ted two more sto­ries to mag­a­zines: “After the Mis­sile Rain”, a <1k “flash” piece, to Flash Fic­tion Online, and “Nei­ther Bang nor Whim­per”, 2700 words that I wrote in under 24 hours for a con­test, to Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine. Wish me luck!

And with that: good night.