The Weekend Routine

Today ended up being quite productive in terms of activity, if not work.

There were a few things that needed doing, so we once again hit the streets, a much easier thing to do since it was actually +5 outside today, and went down to the infamous Queen Street West. The first stop was to finally show the Wife Silver Snail, and though in the end we didn’t end up buying any comics (Beguiling down on Bloor is still better for indie titles and all I wanted was the 2nd Volume of The Ultimates, which they were sold out of) we did manage to get EXTREMELY lucky with this find, which was on sale for the amazing price of five bucks:

This was double bonus, in that the Wife was extremely happy to find it because it was a cartoony dragon, and she’s already got a few like these. For me, however, it was a nostalgia trip-and-a-half since it represented a cherished piece of my childhood; the dragon Singe, from the laser-disc arcade game Dragon’s Lair. The game is incredibly crude by today’s standards, since all it consisted of animated sequences that were strung together in a simple tree-branching decision system where correct inputs were determined by joystick movements or button presses, and there was only one predetermined path to get Dirk The Daring through the various levels. It was one of my earliest tastes of mainstream respect since the game was ENORMOUSLY popular when it came out in 1983 (but then considering the state of graphics in 1983, the Don Bluth animation was several orders of magnitude above what was available) and it was common practice for the crowds to gather ’round the machine when it became obvious that a particular player actually knew what they were doing and could potentially finish the game, a very rare event. I was one of those kids, so it was a bit of a rush to go into the arcade with no one paying attention, only to end a completed session of Dragon’s Lair with an entire crowd standing around, cheering and patting me on the back for showing them How It’s Supposed To Be Done. So yeah, Dirk, Daphne and Singe will always hold a special place for me.

The other stop was for art supplies at Curry’s. What started out as a casual supply run turned into a geek fest when one of the regular cashiers–who’s served us several times already–nerded out and hooked up his Nintendo DS to the store PA, flooding the entire area with the sounds of Electroplankton, a whacky music style game that immediately got me to go up and join the geek crowd for inane babbling. That’s always a good time as far as I’m concerned.

We also ran into the Old Friend, which kind of freaked me out, since we were just sitting at some corner diner having a bagel and I didn’t even recognize her. She came up to the window and put her hands on it, staring in at us. I was still in the mode of consciousness where I thought of myself as the New Guy in town and it didn’t even occur to me that I would ever run into anyone I knew in Toronto, so my brain simply failed to ignite the proper Friend or Foe circuit. It actually took the Wife’s urging to finally make the Old Friend’s face click and so I have now had my first “I just randomly ran into someone I knew” moment in Toronto. This will probably be the last time this ever happens.

From there, it was further down Queen to a store called Magic Pony which sells what I can only describe as Designer Geek Objects. Most people go to the comic book store or something similar for action figures, statuettes and other decorative office cubicle items. This store offers similar fare, except that now those toys, posters salt & pepper shakers and other assorted gimmicks are extremely limited edition, and created by notable designers. While the mainstream geek won’t care, the rich upper crust looking for a dash of geek frisson would definitely shop here since this is much more expensive, limited edition geekery that’s just expensive enough to prove respectable to the elite. Of course the other group that would find this place appealing are designers themselves since they keep track of all these things. Regardless, we trotted down to check it out, because someone had suggested last week that the Wife’s work would be the kind of thing these folks would be interested in doing something with. Lo and behold, they may be right. They want to take a look at some of her stuff, so this could be potentially interesting. Especially if it leads to something cool like her own vinyl or resin figures. Quantities, it goes without saying, would be EXTREMELY limited which would make her stuff–if it happened–a collector’s dream.

After that, it was back to Bloor, which is quickly becoming Home Ground as far as I’m concerned. We got more cheese (two different kinds, the names of which I utterly forget), and went down to Suspect Video to return the movies and pick up a few more. In total, we got four films, two insane and two cheesy, all Japanese. My picks were Tetsuo The Iron Man and Rubber’s Lover, both of which are called works of Japanese Cyberpunk, which to me translates into “offensive, loud and confusing, but in a vastly entertaining way.” The other two were giant monsters movies, Godzilla: Final War and Rodan, ’cause, well… you just can’t have enough giant monsters in your life.

After that, it was down to the Korean grocery store for–surprise…–Korean products, and then it was time to go home.

Y’know what, I don’t care how boring we are, I’m actually enjoying this life…