Bookshelf:

Recently Finished:

• Dave Barry, Big Trouble

Currently reading:

• Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

Next up:

1. Analog, June 2001 issue
2. Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
3. Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man
4. Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone
5. Barry Hughart, Eight Skilled Gentlemen
6. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
7. Kage Baker, Sky Coyote
8. Derek Nelson, Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place Names
9. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers
10. Sean McMullen, The Centurion's Empire

Spike and Mike's

Today I had a remarkably productive day, considering that I lay in bed for over an hour after waking up, only struggling up at around 10 am. But then I read two days' worth of newspapers (and did today's crossword puzzle), did laundry, washed my front windows inside and out, bought groceries, entered the last four months' worth of comics into my database, closed a trade deal with another owner in my fantasy baseball league, and read a few chapters of Fifth Business before Debbi came over.

If I hadn't been so busy, I'd have gone out for a bike ride, too. (I haven't gone biking in over a year.) It was a hot but dry day, maybe 90 degrees and sunny. I weathered the heat better than I sometimes do.

Debbi joined myself, Subrata and Michael Walsh to go see Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation 2001, which is making the rounds. It's the latest in the series of collections of animated short films which (for instance) gave Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit cartoons their start (as well as some of the Pixar shorts, too). And contrary to what the listing on the net have been claiming, this is not the "sick and twisted" festival, although a couple of the cartoons are off-color.

As you'd expect, the cartoons are very uneven, but several are very funny and/or very well animated. Some highlights:

• Father and Daughter has a 40s-era European feel to its artwork, with dark shadows, washed-out colors and melancholy music. It's about a daughter who waits her whole life for her father to come back from sea. It's touching and ambiguous.

• Europe and Italy is an Italian animator's satire of how off-the-wall Italy is compared to Europe.

• For the Birds is a hilarious and slickly-animated short from Pixar.

• Rejected is a collection of cartoons which purports that they were rejected as shorts for the Family Learning Channel (does such a thing exist? I haven't bothered to check) and a food company. To put it mildly, they are all in very poor taste, although as such they are completely hilarious (for the most part) and quite clever in their way. Several of them got huge laughs from the audience, and I've started going around saying "You're watching the Family Learning Channel!" at odd moments.

• Metropopular is the cream of the crop, with anthropomorphized versions of various US cities competing in a "best city" contest. The caricatures of the cities are hilarious (especially San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Salt Lake City), and the ultimate plot resolution is equally funny.

Afterwards we wandered around trying in our indecisive way to decide where to go for dinner. We settled on a nearby pasta restaurant called Pasta Pomodoro. It had the atmosphere of being a crank-out-the-food-as-fast-as-possible chain restaurant, and the prices were low, so I was a bit skeptical. Well, the food won't win any awards, but I thought it was fine, especially for the prices, so I'll definitely have to add it to my list of restaurants to keep in mind - especially since it's near where we've played Ultimate frisbee the last two years.

Subrata and Michael regaled us with tales of their job histories, and they and Debbi all seemed to get on quite well, considering that they basically all didn't know each other. It was Debbi's second encounter with my friends, and she said something like, "You have good friends" after we all called it a night.

So all-in-all it was a nice night.

Oh, and last night I finished Dave Barry's Big Trouble, if you want to read my review. I think I'm going to start linking to my reviews of recently-finished books in the sidebar, unless I have something I specifically want to add to the review here.

Anyway, having now finished the book that Monique lent to me, I can start teasing her mercilessly about whether she's finished all the books I loaned her. Hee-hee! And her excuses are dwindling rapidly now that she's on summer vacation.