Moot Point

Zoo Day
This was sort of like the last weekend of summer, even though last weekend was the actual last weekend of summer.
Yesterday we finally went to the zoo, which I’ve been talking about for ages. Because of some unclear statements on the zoo website, we wound up riding every train line in the city, including the Scarborough RT. It took us two hours to get there. But it was worth it.
My surprise favourite (besides the usual elephants, lions roaring, gorillas, hippopotomi, etc.) was definitely the Japanese macaques. They are the awesomest, laziest monkeys ever. I only wish my camera batteries hadn’t given out. Then I would have had shoddy versions of this:

The other awesome part is that the Toronto Zoo lets you walk right through the wallabee/emu enclosure. There are no actual boundaries between you and the wallabees and emus (emu?), just a path.
Then we listened to Alex’s iPod and kissed on the subway platform and ate falafels and watched Shock Corridor and just trust me it was a good day.

Tragedy
However, it was also a day marked by loss. The strap on my beloved Audrey Hepburn purse, the one which caused strangers everywhere to remark “I like your purse!” thereby making me a vanguard of purse style, broke. The breakage of the strap has made me see that it can no longer handle my daily purse needs. (The added weight of the cellphone seems to have done it in.)
So, though I would like to fix Audrey up nice, maybe for special occasions, my day-to-day purse situation calls for something larger and sturdier. Audrey was my signature purse. How can it ever be the same?

Epilogue, Next Week
Today I didn’t do much except sleep in later than planned, read some chapters, do something vaguely like research, realise I have lots more research to do than I thought, and buy Tegan and Sara’s new album. I was going to go see them tomorrow but the show’s sold out and I have too much homework to line up outside and hope for no shows and/or argue with scalpers. This is a shame because I think this might be their best album yet!

This coming week: the usual one-two punch of school and work, plus presentation in my American Independent Cinema seminar, plus academic conference on French Film in the 1930s, plus Rilo Kiley show.

Sometimes I think I’m not so cool.

Last night, we were strolling down Bay Street en route to the cell phone store, and my favourite ex-Kid in the Hall was just standing there on the corner. I recognized him right away (natch) and sort of started to smile politely, but he was on the phone and I didn’t want to be all awkward.

Anyway, I should like to point out that when he looked over at us, he passed over Alex without so much as a second look, but when he saw me his face lit up with a flicker of recognition.

And I have a witness this time.

A Kid in the Hall knows me. Sort of.
He thinks I look familiar, anyway.

How many people can say that? I am so cool.

(But not so, otherwise I wouldn’t need a witness. Or to post it on my weblog so the whole internet knows it.)

I spent the weekend in Ottawa for my uncle’s wedding. It was his second wedding, after a fairly traumatic first marriage, and everyone was basically really thrilled about it because we love his new wife and she’s great with his two kids.

During his toast at the reception, he said to her: “The first night I met you, it was like meeting up with an old friend. It was extraordinary and it continues to be extraordinary.” She was beaming. They kissed a lot.

The last wedding I went to was his first wedding, when I was four. I have determined I more or less like weddings, but wish I just had to sit through the highlight reel, not the long tedious reception parts.

My mother and aunt made my cousin (who is a year older than me) and I go “try to catch the bouquet.” My other cousin (who is maybe three years older than me) almost caught the bouquet, but missed. When it came within three feet of me, I did that hands-raised, stepping-away thing that volley ball players do to indicate that they haven’t touched the ball.

Today my new aunt’s parents had a barbecue for family and close friends. My mom and girl-cousins interrogated me about Alex. He got points* for being nice, having good personal grooming habits, having things in common with me, carrying things when we go shopping, and paying for dinner; he lost points for having never bought me flowers. (Which he can apparently no longer afford.)

*There are apparently points.

Last night, I found myself unable to stop mentioning my urinary tract despite some “facts” like “I was talking really loud” and we were “outside” and “in public”. Then I may have gotten onto my uterus. I don’t know where this inappropriateness comes from.
Possibly from the glee I got from watching my dad squirm as one mentioned anything remotely health- or body-related at the dinner table or whatever. I’m not talking about inappropriate tampon talk here. I’m talking like, “my cough is getting better” light dinner discussion. I remember once saying “I have to pee,” and him being all, “This isn’t Friends or something, Brenda. People don’t talk like that.”

However, all will be pleased to learn that my urinary tract is healing nicely thanks to antibiotics and I expect it to be in full working order within days.

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Dan posted about a guy who was dropping his film class because they weren’t showing any Tarantino.
This made me think of my film theory class; we had to write a short essay about films that had inspired and excited us and why and what we thought that said about our assumptions about cinema. And read an excerpt to the class. There are like 40 people in my tutorial. Half to two-thirds of them name-checked all the Wes Anderson, Lost in Translation current indie darlings who are distributed by Miramax and Sony Picture Classics and New Line and the “indie” studios that are owned by major conglomerates.
I went third. I talked about the kinds of movies I’ve liked since high school. (Mostly old Hollywood stuff.) How can Garden State be on your list of most important when it just came out. And seriously, the word that springs to mind is “self-indulgent.” And “shitty ending.” It wasn’t that bad, but given all the hype, I was really expecting something a little more, something.
Anyway, I was dismayed by how predictable these people’s taste was. And how “original” they though this stuff was.

Also, Sony bought M-G-M today. BBC World News on TV said that means they own the rights to half the colour films there are. This might be exaggerated. But still. They own the rights to a lot of movies.

Songs that have come up on iTunes shuffle, in reverse chronological order, also known as some times computers know what I’m in the mood for, also known as I have the weirdest music collection ever:

Storytelling – Belle & Sebastian
The Music Lovers – Destroyer
Cupid – Sam Cooke
You Won’t See Me – The Beatles
Cry for Everything That’s Happened – Le Tigre
History to the Defeated – Weakerthans
Who Loves You Now? – The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy
Save Me – Aimee Mann
Teardrop – Massive Attack
C.C. & O. Blues – Pink Anderson & Simmie Dooley
Yvette In English – Joni Mitchell
Have You Ever Loved A Woman – Eric Clapton¹
Heart Attack – Sleater-Kinney
Deep Red Bells – Neko Case²
It’s So You – Dismemberment Plan³
Like Dylan in the Movies – Belle & Sebastian
Song for the Girl – Matthew Good

¹Sometimes it scares me how much I’m my father’s daughter.
²I can’t explain how much I love this song. The first time I heard it, it just randomly came up on iTunes, and I stopped whatever I was doing.
³I didn’t even know I liked Dismemberment Plan.

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I don’t feel as free to write everything on my blog as I used to, so I will suffice it to say that I have had a quite draining weekend, which was both good and bad, in which many of the things I had hoped to accomplish didn’t get accomplished. I think that it culminated in a urinary tract infection gives me a pass on accomplishing so little.

But I have seriously been listening to music and playing Minesweeper for an hour.

In other news, I went to a party this weekend and talked to a girl who went to the same junior high school as I did and then went on to be friends with my girlhood ACADEMIC RIVAL.

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div id=”58970_kdub2″>I love how the Pips sing back to Gladys, as if the song is being addressed to them.

It’s weird being back in res. I only moved a few subway stops east, but campus has this weird cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-city feeling for me, even though it’s in the middle of everything and I’m right on the edge of campus anyway. And I leave campus pretty much everyday.

Not exactly cut off like remote. More like fenced in. Only without an actual fence. It’s maybe just that everyone you see on campus is a student and they live in that student box where you ask people what their major is when you meet them, and everthing’s in terms of classes and grades and social life and TV and drinking.

It’s probably because I don’t have internet or phone service yet and so I am kind of cut off.
Also, I have spent the last two weeks in houses full of people.

I guess I should unpack.

I have this thing, right now, that keeps happening, where I have this wholly singular moment of intense emotion or insight or whatever. I think “This is something I should remember.”
And then I go to write in my journal or here, and though I can remember said moment perfectly, I am completely lost as to putting it into words. It’s not like I couldn’t write about where I was, or what I was doing, but I know that these external facts aren’t enough to convey its significance.
I think I’m making peace with the fact that some things don’t need to be written down to be significant.

So here is the least significant thing ever:

Things that I personally want/need to buy in the next couple of months:

• A futon/couch. I fell in love with this one the moment I saw it at Ikea, but it costs too much and won’t fit into my room. But I do need a couch. All my assignments this year will involve watching movies.


• iPod.


• Sweater vest. Preferably argyle.


• Tweed blazer.


• Cute shoes, with those teeny-tiny low heels and round toes and either buckles or bows on them. And/or nice dark red boots.


• Kneesocks.


• Short skirt? Possibly with pin stripes. Ooh, or this.


• Room-organizing stuff, like a letter tray for my desk, coat rack, filing cabinet… I’m determined not to have my room be such a disaster area this year.


• Books for school, I suppose.


• White button-down. Or not white. But definitely a button-down. To wear with my sweater vest.


• Cellphone.