SPECIAL INTERNATIONAL
This will be a short one, as it's rather late.
I got on the 2 p.m. AMT train from Dorion to go downtown. It was raining very hard today, so I didn't play Game Boy Advance or read manga on the train, instead looking at the cool mist along Highway 20 (which runs parallel to the tracks). I got off at Windsor Station (well, technically you're supposed to call it Lucien L'Allier Station now), and had an uneventful walk through the "underground city" (technically, much of it is above ground, the buildings are just conneced via underground tunnels), circling around the southern edge of the Bell Centre (formerly Molson Centre), through old Windsor Station, down the stairs, through Bonaventure Metro station, up a long escalator by the bus station for the buses going to the South Shore, left at the "Passage" shopping concourse below Place Bonaventure, up through Central Station, then the Place Ville Marie shopping centre, through the "Tunnel" emerging at Centre Eaton.
I had about 40 minutes to go before my self-appointed purchase time of 4 p.m., so I just browsed various stores including the DVD Passion. Then I checked out the Electronic Boutique store in the Ailes de la Mode shopping complex and damn, that store was packed! Ooh... I didn't know that there was a game in the classic Sega Shining Force (or, if you want to be a real Sega fanboy, Shining in the Darkness) RPG series for the Game Boy Advance! Unfortunately, Shining Soul's not a strategy RPG but a multi-player RPG (if you have at least one friend with a GBA whom also has his or her own Shining Soul cartridge). I'd get it if the solo missions aren't as boring as those in Phantasy Star Online. Fortunately, Camelot (formerly "Sonic Software Planning") will also be doing a real Shining Force game on the GBA, though I'm not sure if it's just a port of the Sega Genesis or Game Gear games.
I decided to keep an eye open for any anti-capitalist activists, probably singing pretentious "Anti-Consumerist Carols" (Christmas carols with modified lyrics), and, most years, I have no difficulty finding them, but... they were nowhere to be found. At least not where I was at the time I was there. They might have been singing on Sainte Catherine's street in front of the Bay department store, but... look, it was pouring out and I wasn't going to go outside to sarcastically listen. Been there, done that. So I went up to Indigo bookstore in Place Montreal Trust shopping centre and
And then I took the escalators down and walked to the Centre Industrielle-Vie or whatever the fuck the official name of the shopping/entertainment complex which used to be Simpson's department store (yes, "Simpson's" as in "Hocus Pocus Alamagocus", except Today's Special was set in the downtown Toronto branch of the Simpson's department store chain, which went bankrupt in 1989) and proceeded to Metro Video. Ah, all six copies of Millenium Actress which I mentally noted were present yesterday when I was making my final "Buy Something Nice For Yourself and Piss Off a Communist Day" plans, were still there, so no mischief makers got any funny ideas from my announcement a couple of weeks back. I waited in the anime section for about ten minutes to see whether or not anyone whom reads this thing would show up, but... no one cared. And I was wearing my stars-and-stripes rugby shirt for easy identification too. Not that I was disappointed, since my objective was to cheese off the snobbier leftists by buying something on their "special day", not to make a "personal appearance" in the store, sigining autographs, giving a public reading of my better entries, and handing out balloons to the kiddies. So the main phase of my cunning plan went off without a hitch, and, yes, I did mutter (semi-jokingly) "That'll show them!" to myself under my breath a couple of times.
Still, it would have been fun to meet a couple of people whom agree or disagree with my personal stance on "Buy Nothing Day"...
After I had completed my purchasing of an item on "Buy Nothing Day", I took the Metro from Peel to Atwater, and I got myself a ticket for Bad Santa at the AMC Forum 22 cinema complex inside the Pepsi Forum, but I still had about 45 minutes to kill before the movie started, so I noshed on some fries at the McDonald's at Plaza Alexis-Nihon shopping centre whilst I waited.
The movie Bad Santa is very funny, though not for small children, but I won't review it now. Maybe I'll see it a second time and review it here, but no promises, and it would be after I'm finished writing all these fricking papers I have to write. After the movie was over, as I was leaving, I noticed two cops at the customer service desk of the AMC cinema... they seemed to be looking for someone, or two people, from the little peek I had out of the corner of my eye, though I have no idea whom they were looking for or for what purposes. As I was leaving the cinema through the glass doors near the SAQ booze store, the person in front of me inadvertently left the door open long enough to let in this one black guy, which is a no-no, since these doors are exit only since the AMC doesn't want people getting in for free. (They don't have the ushers at the door of each individual screen checking your tickets like they do at the Paramount... well, the first floor at the Paramount at least; the third floor with the other screens has a control point.) I debated with myself whether I should bring that to the attention of the police officers there, but decided against it as I didn't get a good look at the guy and I didn't want the cops frisking every black guy in the cinema for tickets. The I walked down rainy Atwater to Lionel-Groulx station, getting soaked by the rain just because I hate taking the Metro for one fricking stop, and got on a 211 bus going to Sainte Anne de Bellevue at the western tip of Montreal island, from where my mother takes me the rest of the way home to Pincourt.
Is my gesture of buying something on "Buy Nothing Day" just to cheese off a tiny minority of activists a pathetic, meaningless gesture? Of course it is, but so is buying nothing on one day of the year and then feeling smug about it. And, since I saw a well above average number of shoppers in downtown Montreal today, even though it's not even considered "Black Friday" up here in Canada, I can confidently declare "Buy Something Nice For Yourself and Piss Off a Communist Day" a resounding success! Your side lost and my side won! I am the champion!
Now, I guess I'll watch a bit of Millenium Actress, which I haven't seen since I caught the world premiere of it at the Fantasia Asian/Fantasy film festival two years ago. I'll read what I wrote in that review first, though, just to refresh my memories. I think it's a far more interesting film than Spirited Away was, but it doesn't stand a chance of winning Best Animated Feature at the Oscars next February because of Finding Nemo, and I'm not sure if it will even get nominated because Les Triplettes de Belleville has much more critical bizz.
Oh yeah, you can see a picture of me with my purchase in the Photoblog.
posted by Steve Brandon @ 9:45 AM
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