Last weekend Mer and I celebrated my birthday (which was on Thursday, Jan. 24th). Friday was an unorthodox celebration – after school, I came home and ran and showered, and then I went back to school to meet Mer. We then went to the (wait for it…) CVCA cafeteria, where the music department was throwing their annual fund-raising spaghetti dinner. What is fun about the dinner is that the various musical groups sing for the entertainment. The students that are not singing wait on the various tables. It is a good way to get to interact with the students and still support them for their choir tour (which is in NYC this year).
After the dinner, I just HAD to go to Dairy Queen, where I had my first Blizzard (oreo and peanut butter cup) since we bought the new house (going on seven months). Boy, was that good!
Saturday we slept in, and then once again used Mom and Marc’s kind b-day gift of $20 to go to Yours Truly and get breakfast again. I had French toast with real (Vermont!) maple syrup, which was quite good. Mer got the NotSo omelette – an omelette made with home fries. It looked REALY good – I’ll have to get one next time.
We made our way home, and I napped while Mer went to get groceries. When she got back, we listened to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, one of our favorite Saturday pastimes. We then got in the car and headed south to Canton to see Beowulf at the ONE DOLLAR! theater.
Mer teaches Beowulf as part of her Honors English class, and so she was looking forward to seeing how the adaptation went. I was looking forward to it because of the animation and to see the story. We were not disappointed. I was sucked in right away. The animation was an interesting choice – it was *almost* photo- realistic. Everything looked very real, but not quite – there were always little things that reminded you that you were watching an animated film. I think it worked – it reinforced the other-worldly feel of the tale.
Mer thought the film was very dark (so Sonotmu should like it). It took a very black-and-white/good-vs-evil story and made things a little more gray. What was impressive to me was that the film managed to do this without gutting the original story. They made one major change concerning Grendel’s mother, and a few minor changes concerning Beowulf and later with the dragon, but I think they really worked. I think Beowulf comes across as a better hero for being flawed and for trying to correct his mistakes. I also love the layers the film lays down – they very subtly drop in early hints concerning Beowulf and women, and then late in the film not-so-subtly have Beowulf mirror earlier action. What a great film. It is dark, and it is violent, and some of the principal characters need some clothes, but on the whole, it is a very worthwhile film to see. Oh, and they did a great job of rendering Grendel – one of my questions was how they were going to animate the main demon, and the film makers did not disappoint.
After the film, Mer took me out to eat. We tried a local Italian restaurant, but there was a two-hour wait. We then went to a restaurant strip to Outback; the parking lot was literally full, so we did not even try. We went to another Outback across town, and they had a two-hour wait! I have not even had that happen in Chicago (three restaurants over-full). So, I decided we should head to a mellower restaurant, so we headed back to Yours Truly. It marked the first time we could ever remember eating breakfast and supper in the same restaurant. We got the Lotso Notsos – a HUGE plate of cheese-covered home fries, which I supplemented with a chocolate shake. By the time our actual meal arrived (Mer – Monte Cristo, me- burger), I was pretty full. I could not finish my burger (until Sunday for lunch!). It was a nice day.
So, not a bad little birthday celebration at all.