Walking Without Cold Or Sweat

It’s just another dull Friday for the Most Boring Couple In The World, but that’s just fine with me. Today was the first time we actually ventured out into the big bad world when the temperature was in the double digits, a SCORCHIN’ 11 degrees outside. It was one of those days that reminds that I still have a lot to get used to about being back home again.

Just like my trip to Los Angeles last year, it was a bizarre experience to be out on the streets of Toronto (although in this case, it was just a couple of blocks down to the grocer) without breaking into the kind of sweat that saps your will to live. It was also nice to be outside and not be freezing to the bone, and I think it’ll be another couple of months yet before I finally accept the fact that This Is The Way It Is From Now On. Not that I’m complaining. It’s the same thing with the days. My body clock is now undergoing a mild sense of confusion as the days get longer, since sunset (especially thanks to daylight savings time) has already surpassed the usual sunset time of Singapore, where it was normally pitch black before 7:30 pm.

It’s also time to watch the last of the films we rented from Suspect Video before returning them tomorrow. We’ve actually already seen some of this, but mean to complete it tonight. Jiri Barta is a Czech film maker that plays around with various kinds of animation, and Labyrinth of Darkness is a collection of his shorts (though one of them actually runs nearly an hour) compiled into a very weird melange of ingenious and some times disturbing film anthology. In particular is one stop-motion story that acts as the cover of the DVD, called The Club of the Laid Off which chronicles the lives of a bunch of cast off mannequins as they live boring, repetitive, pointless lives, not unlike the people they are built to mimic. All of that changes when more stylish, urbane mannequins get dumped in their abandoned building, but I won’t go any further than that.

It’s not the laugh-fest that Robot Chicken is, but it makes a great case for animation being more than just entertainment or “feel good” films.

Oh yeah, shouldn’t I be writing a book?