I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

MONTREAL YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU

(Montreal Shopping Log)
HALLOWE'EN SPECIAL (with asides about the Election and our Garage Sale)

Election

So, it's American election day and I'm optimistic for Bush but I'm not going to make any official predictions since I really don't want to jinx anything. The Electoral-Vote.com site has Kerry with 262 electoral college votes and Bush with 261 electoral college votes based on the most recent polls, with New Jersey's 15 votes still up for grabs, and his predicted final result has Kerry winning with 306 EVs, which I find a little far-fetched. I don't know who's going to win, but, either way, I think it's going to be a very close split. And the guy who runs the site, Andrew Tanenbaum, has come out of the closet as a Democratic activist, a member of Democrats Abroad in the Netherlands (that's Holland, for those of you in Rio Linda), so, while I fully believe that the guy was trying to be as impartial as he could with the daily electoral map, obviously, for the prediciton page, there is some Democrat spin. Real Clear Politics seems to be predicting a Bush win, though they don't directly say it, they just note that he's up in most of the battleground states, many beyond the margin of error. Sarah, the "psychic" from Team America, can sense that I prefer RealClearPolitics.com's predictions, and, amazingly, she's correct! What incredible divinatory powers that puppet has!

Since Rush Limbaugh declined to appear on NBC's election night coverage, I think I'll probably watch the returns come in on ABC due to the simple fact that, of all the American networks, ABC has the affiliate, WVNY-22 in Burlington VT, that I can receive with the least amount of "snow". I may also check out Fox News's coverage from time to time, since it will be simulcast on the regular Fox Network, but we don't get nearly as good reception for WFFF-44, Fox's affiliate in Burlington. I'm thinking of maybe using my VCR to tape the Daily Show special, which will be simulcast on CTV here in Canada, but I won't watch it live since, while Jon Stewart's brand of sarcastic cynicism and cynical sarcasm (umm... I think I need a better... umm... whatever the word is that means "knowledge of words") is often brilliant, but, since, over the past couple of months, the Daily Show can more accurately described as the Smooch Kerry's Ass Show and I just know he's going to be unbearably smug no matter which way the election goes tonight.

I wish that there hadn't been so much upheaval in my life lately so I would have had been more in the mood to blog about the election.

In other news...

Garage Sale

We had a garage sale on Saturday, so much of last week was spent emptying various pieces of furniture and shoving them around. It was a lot of work, but, hey, we found my brother's old Atari Lynx with the port of the classic early 3D arcade game S.T.U.N. Runner still inside, and it still works! The graphics are downrigh primitive, and I get the idea that only the tunnels and roads are true 3D with the vehicles themselves being scalable sprites (unlike the arcade game where everything except the backdrops was true 3D), but, still, any kind of 3D graphics on a "handheld" were pretty damn impressive circa 1990. (If you can call the Lynx a "handheld", since, compared to modern handhelds, the Lynx is massive, and we have an original Lynx which is 10.75" x 4.25" x 1.5", larger than the one on the cover page of that site.) Another thing I found, though I knew roughly where it was, was my ancient black-and-white Radio Shack Realistic-branded Casio pocket television I got for my 13^th birthday in 1987. I don't think I've used it since about 1992, because there's something wrong with the LCD screen, however, one thing that's truly remarkable is that the alkaline batteries have been inside it probably for over a decade, yet, somehow, they still work. If I turn it on, I can hear the sound and see some lines across the TV... maybe I ought to look into getting it fixed for historical value.

Saturday, for the second time in a month, I had to get up before 9 a.m. and help lug the dresser from my room which we don't really need anymore since Nick, with whom I shared a bedroom, no longer lives with us, and we had to push the other furniture from our garage up our downward-sloping driveway. We were fearful that it would rain since we had so many hundreds of books we wanted to sell. We had heard forcasts for heavy rain all weekend, but, fortunately, while they skies were threatening, they held until about 3 p.m.

I put in a few videotapes and DVDs into the sale, all duplicates of stuff I either bought or rebought on DVD. All of the American films I put in, like the bare-bones Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the bare-bones Dawn of the Dead among others, sold, but none of my old anime VHS tapes, a few tapes from the Tenchi Muyo and Patlabor series plus my ancient subtitled tape of the first Project A-Ko, attracted much interest... well, they did a little, from parents who assumed that they're kids' cartoons, but, while none of them are pornographic (though Project A-Ko and Tenchi Muyo episode seven, "The Night Before the Carnival" have a few raunchy scenes which do show breasts), they aren't exactly kids' stuff like Pokémon, and, in any event, little kids wouldn't appreciate reading subtitles (since it's VHS so there's no dub). I almost put in the mostly bare-bones Toy Story 2-Pack DVD set, since I got the much better Toy Story: Ultimate Toy Box a couple of years after, but the asking price was $2 per DVD and I could get $30 American for it on eBay, since it's a title that's out of print and won't be out of the "vault" for years. Also, once my father saw how well my non-anime films were selling, he started bringing down a whole lot of his and my mother's videotapes and DVDs including one of the James Bond boxsets, so I was really glad that I snatched The Spy Who Loved Me out of that set a couple of months ago and stored it on my DVD shelf (he put in Never Say Never Again, which was Sony's single attempt to make a Bond film using an alternate Bond license and Sean Connery).

We had a whole bunch of early birds come when there was hardly anything on the driveway, and one of them was obviously a "professional", asking for very specific weird stuff that wasn't on display: "Got any paintings? Got any stamp collections? Got any broken watches? Got any watch parts? Got a snowblower?" (Though we actually do have a surplus snowblower that was just too much of a hassle to push around, but it's something we promised to the people who bought the house.) We also, apparently, had another guy come who seemed to be a little retarded, and he started putting stuff, including my anime tapes, in the drawer of the dresser and then drove off for some reason, saying he'd be back in an hour and a half, though he never returned. I didn't see him because my father couldn't stand the dogs barking at the customers at the beginning of the sale, so he sequestered them in his bedroom, with me watching them to keep them relatively calm, which was fine with me since I could use the computer and watch TV. In the early afternoon, the amount of people had dwindled and, while we still had plenty of our junk, all of the large items were sold and many books, and we made a total of $150. (I was a little disappointed that we sold our deep fryer and our Casio keyboard, which I've been playing with a little more recently since getting into Homestar Runner, which seems to use Casio keyboards for much of the music.) We started moving the junk back to the garage and called it a day.

My mother went out to a dinner party in the evening, so I ordered KFC, as I am wont to do when I have to fend for myself.

Hallowe'en

Even though I went to bed rather late, I got up really early for me, before 9 a.m., though this was the morning after the clocks were pushed back, so it wasn't quite that bad.

I played Metropolis Street Racing for a couple of hours, and then showered and put on the orange sweater I mentioned the other week over a green sweater and then drew a "TH" on a sheet of paper, which I stuck to my sweater with masking tape, and put on a pair of Men in Black sunglasses, and, voilà! My minimalist Thnikkaman costume was complete. It's not much of a costume, but the joke is that Bubs isn't wearing much of a disguise, just the sunglasses and "TH", yet Strong Bad doesn't seem to recognize him. I know that I said that I'd also put on blue makeup, and I had the makeup but just wasn't feeling that brave.

I took the 211 bus downtown, and thought I'd combine my plans to "walk around as the Thinkkaman" with my plans to "try and find one of the volumes of the anime series Super GALS! that I don't already have." I took the Metro to Peel station and first went to Metro Video but, while they have about the best selection of anime in town overall, they still didn't seem to have received any new copies of any volume of Super GALS! since I bought volume 5 there last spring. Undaunted, I took the escalator up to Sainte-Catherine's, and, just as I was leaving the old Simpson's bulding, there was some assault where some young guy pushed an older guy over and I think they broke his glasses. The guy's assopciates didn't seem to be too amused with his actions and were helping the old guy. But I didn't see much, since I was wearing my sunglasses which aren't prescription so it was all a blur. I went over to HMV, and, nope, they didn't have any Super GALS! either, so I walked back up Sainte-Catherine's to Centre Eaton and, still, no one recognized my Thnikkaman costume though a couple of guys yelled out "T-H!" to me. Guess not that many people in Montreal know about Homestar Runner.

I went to DVD Passion in Centre Eaton, but, nope, strike three. I was about to give up and call it a day, since I thought it was approaching 5 p.m. and I wanted to get myself over to the AMC Forum 22 near Atwater station to watch I Heart Huckabees at 5 p.m., but then I remembered that the clocks were pushed back, so I still had another hour or so to hunt and decided to go a bit further afield to Sci-Fi Animé, Montreal's largest store that deals primarily with Japanese anime and manga (which isn't saying much). The one complication to that plan was that I wasn't entirely sure where it was. In the decade that I've been an anime fan, the store has changes locations at least three times: first it was on Monkland in Notre Dame de Grace, then it moved to Décarie somewhere between Monkland and Queen Mary in Snowdon for another year or two, then it was around the corner on Queen Mary for a while, under the Rockaberry diner, and last I heard, it was back on Décarie, which is a boulevard on the western edge of central Montreal that runs along the sides of the Decarie expressway (Autoroute 15), affectionately known as "the trench". On the Metro, I took the Green Line to Lionel-Groulx and switched to the Orange line, which I took up to Villa-Maria station. When I got out, it was dark and raining, so I had to take off the sunglasses because I couldn't see shit, and I was rather glad that I didn't put on the blue makeup after all, because it would have been all over my bright orange sweater. I crossed the highway on the Monkland overpass and then walked up the western side of Decarie boulevard, thinking it was more or less at the old location, but I went all of the way up to Queen Mary, and... nothing... then I walked a little on Queen Mary to see if it was back below the Rockaberry, but it's some sort of Internet café now. I finally saw a phone booth with a phone book, so I looked in it and it turns out that the new location is 4202 Decarie, on the east side of the highway. So I walked to Snowdon Métro station. I knew I wouldn't get to the movie in time, and, while most stores in Montreal close at 5 p.m. on Sundays, I remembered that the owner of Sci-Fi Animé operates at weird hours so I thought I'd give it a shot anyway and took the Metro one stop, back down to Villa-Maria. This time, I was on the correct side of the highway, but went in the wrong direction for a while before I noticed that there weren't any stores on that side of Decarie above Villa Maria, so I headed south and the current location is about a block and a half south of Villa-Maria station, below Comico, a comic book store I didn't think was still around. It was dark, so I felt a little dejected until I noticed the "Ouverte" sign. Lou, the owner, just has really dim lighting. I went in, asked if he had volumes 2, 3, or 6 of Super GALS!, he went to check and, yup, he had one copy left of volume 3, for just $30, which, as far as comic book stores go, isn't that bad a price compared to the $50 Canadian or so I would have paid at certain other places. It was his last copy... I frankly wouldn't be that surprised if that was the last copy of Super GALS! available for sale in Montreal.

I bought it, achieved my primary objective for the day, took the Metro to Bonaventure station, and had a Big Mac meal at McDonald's in Central Station, my personal favourite McDonald's in Montreal because the old-style train station decor somehow provides a relaxing atmosphere. But I was a little disappointed because McDonald's in Canada has been promoting the Monopoly game for a month, but I've been to three different McDonald's and still haven't come across any actual game pieces on the sides of the fries and the drinks. After that, I took the "pretty route" to Cinéma du Parc, which is also showing I Heart Huckabees, walking up McGill College road, then through the McGill campus, and by my old apartment on Prince-Arthur, which had the lights off so I couldn't see if anyone was currently living there from the road.

I got to the Cinéma du Parc, in the submerged Galéries du Parc shopping centre below the du Parc apartment complex, and the price for a ticket had gone up since I was living at the apartment, all of the way to $10. Also, the schedule's a lot more "regular" than it used to be, with I Heart Huckabees, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Innocence: Ghost in the Shell two each occupying a screen for a month, with just a scattering of other films being shown. (I'm skeptical that there's enough of an audience for subtitled anime for them to show Ghost in the Shell 2 3 times a day for a month, but that's a different post for a different time.)

I Heart Huckabees is an even weirder film than I thought. It starts off with Rushmore's Jason Schwartzmann, now fully grown up, as Albert Markovski, a guy in an environmental group who is having a personality conflict with Brad Stand (Jude Law), a representative of the fictional Huckabees department store chain, really just a stand-in for Wal-Mart, who has hijacked Markovski's environmental group so that he could get a piece of the marshland and forested area which the group tries to protect, all the while making it appear that Huckabees cares about the environment. Markowski is having some sort of personal crisis hires a pair of Metaphysical Detectives (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to spy on his every action in order to find out something about a series of coincidences involving himself and a mysterious African man, and... umm... then a bunch of stuff happens with a bunch more characters including Mark Wahlberg as a Fireman named Tommy Corn who discovered nhilism from the Metaphysical Detectives' nemesis, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), who doesn't believe in coincidences but just randomness, and Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts), the Huckabees spokeswoman, is having problems with her marriage to Brad, and Canada's other superstar songstress, Shania Twain (playing herself), gets involved somehow in whatever it was that was happening on the screen. I can't give you a review because a lot of philosophy stuff happens and I was feeling tired due to lack of sleep the night before and, while I didn't fall asleep, my brain just couldn't process much of what was happening on screen because it was very obtuse, possibly even being weird just for the sake of being weird. I really just can't tell you whether or not I liked the film because I have to see it again just to get the stuff I couldn't quite wrap my brain around the first time (though I probably won't get the chance until I rent it). All I can say for sure is to not see this movie unless you're feeling very alert and awake. Ironically, I didn't feel like seeing Ghost in the Shell 2 that day because I wasn't in the mood for seeing cartoon characters talk about philosophy; I should probably applied that line of thought to Huckabees and spent my $10 to see it when I'm not feeling so tired. My brother liked it, though.

After that, I took the bus-Metro-211 bus combo to Pointe Claire where my mother was waiting to take me the rest of the way home.

It was raining, so not too many kids came around and we had plenty of Oh Henry's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Coffee Crisps, Aero's, Kit Kats, and other Hallowe'en candy left.

C'est tout, but, to close, since I've been playing the Dreamcast game Metropolis Street Racer (the game that got expanded and became Project Gotham Racing on the X-Box) so much lately, here are the lyrics to the notorious country song from the game, "Long, Long Road", which don't seem to have been transcribed anywhere else on the Internet. I swear I'm not making any of these lyrics up.

Well, I met a girl named Mary Lou,
Her dress was green, her eyes were blue.
I said to her, "Hey darling, look at you!"
She smiled at me, she looked so fine.
Her shapely body was divine,
I couldn't help but look at her behind.

Now she had to buy some underwear,
Asked if I could take her there.
I said, "Of course, my love, now don't despair."
With that she sort of grinned at me,
She put her hand upon my knee.
I thought about how lucky I could be.

[chorus]
Well, it's a long, long road to nowhere when you're travelling alone.
It's a long and empty freeway if you end up on your own.
When you've been to all the places and there's nowhere left to roam.
Go find yourself a woman and bring her home.

So I turned and said to Mary Lou,
"I really want to marry you."
And I wondered if she felt the same way too.
She hesitated for a while,
And after, she began to smile.
She said, "Yes, you can walk me down the aisle."

I looked at her in disbelief,
'Cause it was such a great relief,
To have her say she'd marry me at all.
So then we went to celebrate,
And got back home at half past eight,
And then we went to bed to procreate.

[chorus]
Well, it's a long, long road to nowhere when you're travelling alone.
It's a long and empty freeway if you end up on your own.
When you've been to all the places and there's nowhere left to roam.
Go find yourself a woman and bring her home.

So we went into the wedding store.
And looked at rings, found three or four.
We saw so many, now her finger's sore.
Her dress was such a perfect fit,
But then we noticed it was split,
And then I said to Mary Lou, "Oh, darn!"

Sunday was our wedding day,
Luckily, it went okay,
Just as well I didn't have to pay.
And now we live up on a farm,
Lots of haystacks, big old barn,
Which brings me to the ending of this yarn.

Oh yeah!

You can download the songs from Metropolis Street Racers from this page at Phantasy-Star-Universe.com.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 6:39 PM