The Bloor & Queen Street Saturday. Again.

Yet another Saturday descends, and we have now officially turned Queen Street West and Bloor Street into our weekend haunts as we made our way out of the Annex to venture down into the bowels of downtown once more. One of the things I’m quickly beginning to appreciate about these downtown jaunts is just how much easier it is to actually endure them; a typical weekend in Singapore was an ordeal for me because I would be sweating buckets about 2 minutes after stepping outside into that tropical heat and humidity. So while I was fine as soon as we got into the air conditioned protection of a shopping mall, getting from once place to another was not actually that pleasant an afternoon walk down the streets with all that equatorial heat. Here, I no longer fear the sun, I actually look forward to it as it warms up the air somewhat.

But first, the stuff.

Just before we left, I found this sitting in the mail today. This is another one of those DVDs I’ve been meaning to get for-freakin’-ever but never did, simply because even though it was perfectly legal in Singapore, there was simply not enough demand for it.

Then again, a director talking about Hollywood in as caustic a manner as possible is not exactly the Singaporean idea of entertainment, so I can see why the retailers there would wisely decide that this wouldn’t sell like hotcakes and never bother to order it. Thanks to the miracle of “gently used copies” on eBay, It’s now mine. I’ve already watched one of the highlights of this DVD on the internet (namely, Smith’s gutbustingly funny recollection of his work on the next Superman movie) so I’m really looking forward to hearing what he has to say on various other topics. He is, after all, the poster boy for the Geek Gone Good.

Queen Street West basically belongs to the Wife. That’s really more her town, because there are three art stores there, all of which she frequents for very, very specific things. One store is her canvas store, the other is her pencil and equipment store, and another is her paper store. The only thing Queen Street West really holds for me is the Silver Snail, but then my geek concerns are highly focused. Still it was a good run, especially since one art store in particular has a game geek and the Wife had to patiently endure me sidelining the geek in question while we discussed the merits of the Playstation 3 versus the Nintendo Wii. After that, it was a street car ride back up to Bloor, and a quick visit to Suspect Video for more odd films, and final run into Korea Town for more of them whacky Asian grocery products you can’t get in normal stores here, but find in abundance at the typical Cold Storage grocery store in Singapore. On the other hand, I can finally buy Hickory Sticks and Corn Chips here again, something I was deprived of for over 10 years in Singapore.

On a totally unrelated note, I continue to bang my head against the brick wall of sonic insanity that is Psychobilly Freakout by Reverend Horton Heat on the Expert level of Guitar Hero 2. My inconsistency with this song is really starting to annoy me, and remind me greatly of my struggle to beat Cowboys From Hell by Pantera on the original Guitar Hero. Mostly this is simply because I’m not practicing enough and still insist on jumping straight into the song and trying to just play the damn thing. I find myself going through bizarre cycles of getting shut out, 30 seconds into the songs UTTERLY MAD intro, and then suddenly fluking it out and getting 80+% into the song before finally flunking out. This is EXACTLY what happened to me in Cowboys From Hell, so I suspect that it’ll take a lot less time to actually pass this damn song if I’d just buckle down and use that practice mode since That’s What It’s There For. Although I’m a bit confused as to how Harmonix arranged these songs, because as far as I can tell, I can actually pass the encore song, YYZ by Rush with relative ease.

Oh well, I should get back to writing more of that darn novel.

And at some point over the week, you can look forward to not one, but two, count ‘em TWO commentaries on a Japanese Giant Monster Movie featuring the creature to the left.

Yep, it’s a giant turtle. With rocket legs.

But we’ll get to that when we get to it…