Am I cool because I saw the new Scorsese movie on opening night???

Cara and I took Signy out for belated birthday celebrations. We went for dinner at this vegetarian Chinese place in Chinatown. Boy was it good! Hot and sour soup, fake duck, fake chicken, noodles, spring rolls, yummmmmmmm!!! After gorging ourselves we wandered over to Paramount to find a movie to see. This was difficult, as we really had no idea what most of the movies were about. So we're like "What's The Departed? Why is it sold out?". A perusal of the movie poster told us why. Star Power. I haven't seen so many big names on one poster in a loooong time. So we get tickets and go to Starbucks, then line up early, as per the ticket guy's suggestion. And he was right. The theatre was jam packed! The movie was really good. I wasn't expecting so much violence (though I probably should have known) and the story was crazy, but it was really, really good!!

I still want to see The Last Kiss though. Because I love Zach Braff. There, I said it. And he's only 31, that's totally not too old! And he has excellent taste in music. And he's super hot. But I digress...

Well, off to be lame! I'm reading a book about the curious world of probabilities. Later I will watch some hockey. Hopefully the Flames will not lose again...

I feel like a criminal...

So I check my e-mail today and there's one from Ann (the grad secretary) saying, basically, you didn't hand in your thesis, why not? We need an explanation. When are you handing it in? Yargh! And it was only sent to 5 people, but I know for a FACT that more than 5 people didn't hand in their thesis. Maybe this is some Jedi mind game designed to make us fell shitty and stuff... They told us at the beginning of the year that half the class probably wouldn't finish their thesis for the first deadline, and now they seem to be making a big deal out of it! Or maybe Ann's just cranky, I'm not sure. Sigh... Stupid one year MA... grrr...... So now I get to e-mail her back and make some 'good' excuse up. I'm pretty sure that 'I didn't feel like it' is not a valid excuse... Maybe I'll use the old 'testing took longer than expected' line. Because it's at least partly true! Well I have no classes next week (yay Thanksgiving!) so I will do some work on it then. Honestly though! What's the rush? I'm on NSERC's dime, even! Love ya NSERC! Give me $$$$$$ please!!!! Pretty please??? With a life-time of indebtedness and servitude on top????

I woke up at 1:45 today! I don't ever remember sleeping that late. It may have something to do with going to bed at 4. Just a hunch! Went to Nuit Blanche last night and it was super fun! Tons of stuff going on all night all over the city. I won't pretend that I understood half of what was out there, but it was fun! Definitely an experience. We started out by going to hear literary people read their favorite bedtime stories. However, we got there during a break and didn't want to hang around for the next reading. The place was cool, a roaring fire, cushions all over the floor. Fun! So we got our bedtime fortunes told by a creepy dude/girl and headed out. I couldn't stop smirking at the fortune person, and my fortune ended up saying something about laughing and stapping a poet in the thumb... okay...

Then we went over to Philosopher's Walk. I never knew that was what it was called and I walk there all the time! So I did learn something. First thing we saw was a tree covered with wishes. It was neat. Some people had written their own wishes on the paper along with the preprinted wishes.



We also saw a dude with glowsticks all over the spokes of his bike wheels and on his helmet. He was glowy!

We then moved along the walk to the Fog installation. It was pretty self explanatory. Copious amounts of fog! It was really, really eerie. You could hardly see two feet in from of you!



Then we went in search of the hydraulophone. Now as a band geek, I was really, really wanting to see this thing! It's a water organ made out of a tube. SO COOL! The sound was awesome, really unique. Apparently there's a whole concerto written for it! This is what happens when engineering and bandies collide:



After that we went to the ROM and saw cuban things. There was a documentary about sex-trade workers in Cuba. Upstairs there was a really cool exhibit by a Cuban artist. There was a light installation, some short films, and some architectural dioramas. The coolest thing though, was there were groups of two pictures. One was complete, and the other was a picture of a ruin of the same building with thread completing the picture to look like the original. So cool! Who knew that thread could be so nifty!

After the ROM we went to the... Gardiner Museum? I think. We saw some pottery, heard some drum circle (fun!). The drum circle was awesome! I'd like to go do that one day.

Then we decided to set out for Ballroom Dancing. So the premise behind this was a gym filled with rubber balls DJ-ed by 10 year old kids. Well, on the way there we saw giant board games:



and an even gianter line for ballroom dancing. Seeming as how it was now 2:30 in the morning, and we were all kind of exhausted, we went to see the gay penguins. This installation was at a bath house, and paralleled the trials and tribulations of the gay penguins with the trials and tribulations of gay people in Toronto. Apparently. So this was... interesting. There were several videos segments set up throughout the bath house, the most disturbing of which was the (very) naked man singing a really weird song in the shower (and the video was being played backwards). Honestly I really do not understand the artistic types sometimes! But there were a LOT of balloon penguins! And frisbees with penguins on them:



So ends the tale of Nuit Blanche. Maybe next year I'll make it all night! I was a really fun time. I was surprised at the diversity of people out and about. And there were a LOT of people out and about. Old, young, affluent, working class. Free art! Woo!