2000-08-29 - 22:18

I heard it on the radio

No entry last night because I was on the go. Now that Greg is gone, I'm back to walking home . . . better exercise, but longer days. So, I didn't get home yesterday until around 6:00 and Richard and I were off to see a movie a 7:00.

I'm not a big movie person, but I was psyched about this one: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. It actually opened last year; but we just saw it now at Ottawa's small theatre, the Mayfair.

Very impressive. As compared to a typical movie, which has to constantly beat you over the head, Ghost Dog respects its audience by demonstrating a willingness to be quiet and subtle. Few movies would allow their protagonist to remain mute for the first 30 minutes of a movie, save for brief voiceovers from Hagakure.

I guess that I've always been a sucker for stories about the quiet anti-hero who lives by a strong philosophy without bending to the world around him. Forest Whitaker is excellent as the title character, a modern day professional killer who lives by the code of the Samurai. Ghost Dog is simply an excellent, unique, thoughtful movie with surprisingly touching and funny character interactions. Highly recommended. The movie is also greatly enriched by its music, led by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.

I ran in to Sophie at the theatre. She was going in to see the next movie when we were leaving. She missed the good one, but ah well . . . Ghost Dog was certainly not for everyone, anyway.

After Richard dropped me off (which'll be the last time that I see him before he heads back to Halifax), I just spent the rest of the night hanging out with Aaron and Adeline.

That was cool. The only notable point was that Adeline mentioned that she knew some girl who wants to meet me. In fact, that was supposed to shake down tonight, but it didn't happen. Shrug. Ah well. Maybe another time.

Instead, after some delay, Frank, Aaron, Adeline, and I went out to eat (man, we eat out a lot lately) and then I got Frankie to drop me off at work. Yeah, oddly enough, I ended up back at work tonight. If I had known that we had no real plans, I might've just stayed here when I was in earlier today, but oh well. It's actually a lot easier to get work done when there are few other people around and it's nice and quiet.

In fact, things have gone quite smoothly, and I'm about to split. I thought that I'd fire off this entry first, since my supply of moochable computers is greatly diminished these days. (I did find the time to make a quick update on Jambalaya this morning, though.)

Anyway, things are rolling right along; and I think that I'll be on my way.

J.