His Girl Friday

Friday I went to Borrone to hang out, and almost as soon as I arrived, Lucy showed up. She had actually planned to get there earlier, but it turns out her train was delayed due to someone running in front of it farther north. She promptly ordered a beer.

Her husband John as well as Bill showed up a little later, and we sat around chatting, and later still my friend John showed up. John wanted to stick around until midnight so he could pick up the latest Harry Potter book from Keplers. I probably don't have to recap the hoopla and publicity surrounding its release, but for posterity's sake I'll note that its print run apparently set a record for a US book release.

Lucy, her-husband-John, and Bill took off sometime after 10 pm. My-friend-John stuck around, as promised. We chatted about a variety of things, and eventually (as they often seem to) things came around to dating. We had an exchange which John says I should put in my signature file for my e-mail, but I'm going to recap it here instead.

As I've whined here before, it's been quite a while since I've had a date. John queried if my dating experiences had faded into memory, and I responded, "Actually, at this point my last dating experience has faded into history!" John found this terribly amusing, and he expounded that soon it would fade into geology, or even cosmology.

At this point I said, "Yes, by this time the light from my last dating experience is reaching other stars!" (It's somewhere around Alpha Centauri, actually; a four-light-year-radius "no date zone" surrounding the Earth!) This sent John into paroxysms of laughter, and yeah, I found it pretty funny, too.

Anyway, as his punishment for making me write this, I'll also note that earlier in the evening Lucy and her husband had ordered pasta salads at Borrone. John disdains pasta salads, having said that there are much better things to do with pasta than drench it with oils. I pointed out at this point that yes, he's a bit of a food snob. He objected, "No, I'm not a bit of a food snob!" I said, "Oh, that's right; you're a full-bore food snob!" At this point the rest of us died laughing and John gave me the finger. It's always a goal of mine to get John to give me the finger when we get together!

Anyway.

Keplers had a pretty impressive crowd of adults and children inside it when midnight rolled around. John suggested we go for a short walk around the block and see if the line had cleared up by the time we got back.

Hah!

When we returned, Keplers was packed, the entire open space in the front of the store full of people, and surely many of the back aisles were also filled up. It was, well, maybe not insane, since everyone seemed pretty well-behaved, but John could forget about getting the book in a timely manner. (I'm planning to order the UK edition from Amazon UK, since I'm a book geek.) So we bagged it and I came home.

Zzz. I was very sleepy. I'm getting to be a wimp when it comes to staying up late.

Saturday Trish came over and we went up to Berkeley for the day. Trish had never been.

I'm not a huge Berkeley fan; so much of it is kind of grungy, due to its proximity to Oakland, I presume. But parts of it are very nice, and there's some good shopping. We went by Amoeba Music, and Trish bought some stuff, and I picked up some very early Louis Armstrong CDs and the latest Yes CD for cheap, as well as jazz pianist Joey Calderazzo's new album as a belated birthday gift for John. (Calderazzo played on Michael Brecker's terrific Two Blocks from the Edge album, and John is a big fan of his playing.)

We also hit some bookstores, and I was pleased to score a couple of books at Dark Carnival that I've been looking for for a while: The hardcover collection of Barry Hughart's three Master Li and Number Ten Ox novels, and comic book writer Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire. Always nice to find some rare stuff I haven't had much luck with!

I pretty nice day, all-in-all. I also introduced Trish to Ethiopian food.

Sunday I didn't do a lot most of the day. Did some reading, wrote journal entries, moved a bookcase to another spot in my bedroom so I could attach a light to it to make reading in bed easier. I think having asymmetry in the rooms in my home makes me feel more at home. It makes things more visually interesting.

In the evening I went to see a couple of movies at the Stanford Theatre. First up was His Girl Friday (1940), a screwball comedy starring Cary Grant at his mug-the-camera best. Grant plays newspaper owner Walter Burns, whose best reported, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), married him, but has now divorced him, is leaving the business, and plans to get married to a wimpy insurance salesman (who is described at one point as looking like Ralph Bellamy, which got a laugh since Bellamy plays him!). Burns conspires to wreck their plans, and drags Hildy into reporting on a convicted murderer who's sentenced to death.

Overall, I found it to be a fairly standard farce, and I was very unimpressed with Russell's performance, particularly I had trouble believing in her gradual change of heart. Grant is fine, but I prefer him being a little more serious rather than flat-out silly. Overall, it was enjoyable enough, but I expect in six months I'll have forgotten what it was about.

The back half of the double-feature was It Happened One Night (1934) with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I saw this last August, as the link indicates, but remembered it fondly enough to see it again, and it's just as good the second time! Gable is terrific, and Colbert just as good (although I find her layers of make-up a bit off-putting). The dialogue is just wonderful, and naturally it makes the film ("Do you love her?" "Yes! But don't hold it against me, as I'm a bit screwy myself!"). It may not be the best movie ever made, but I think it's a contender for the top ten.

Trish came by for the second film, and Subrata joined us afterwards for dinner. A good time was had by all.