February 5, 2006

Ship captain seeing unkempt Indiana Jones for the first time: "Mr. Jones, I've heard a lot about you.  You look just the way I imagined you." (laughs)

Pauline Kael on Raiders of the Lost Ark: "It seems to have been edited for the maximum number of screenings per day."

Dreamed of being a student in Chongqing in western China (the subject of my Ph.D. thesis) in World War II; going to meet a girlfriend in Chengdu whom I hoped to marry; renting a kite finding a missing girl sleeping in a small cave in a roadbed going through a museum exhibit that included fake snow, in a roller coaster-type vehicle.

Joined a Meetin group for a mall walk around Yorkdale. Unfortunately, I could only stay for about 15 minutes. (I only went at all to honour my RSVP.)

Then I went to the Bloor and saw Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark for the second time, almost 25 years after first seeing it. (The print was definitely the worse for wear.) I still have mixed feelings about it.  It certainly has expertly-made action sequences--with several "How did they do that?" bits--and a lot of genuinely funny touches, but it leaves me oddly cold.  A good popcorn movie, nothing more.

The parents and I ate at the Mandarin.  I escaped overeating! My fortune cookie said "Great thoughts come from the heart."

On Six Feet Under they handled the funeral for a comic book geek who'd asked to be buried with a rare issue worth $4000.