a beautiful day in the neighborhood

jeez, if it would make the weather this perfect every day, i'd almost be willing to don a fashion suicide cardigan and sing the song... wow. and i also want to reiterate how much i appreciate summer days at high latitude; last night it was still light out until nearly 10:00pm. i love it. some people talk about "flying south for winter," but i think it's an equally tempting proposition to consider moving north for the summer. it just wasn't the same in los angeles. i want more daylight.

monday night i had dinner with my neighbors (florence and xavier, the non-insane ones), and brought one of my lemon meringue pies. it was fun, and i think we all had a good time. i especially like the fact that they are willing to suffer through my french. we even watched a french movie afterwards, while eating the pie. then we just sat around and talked about stuff. he's not fanatical about it, but xavier has a small yet respectable collection of the large hardbound comic book series that are really popular here, and he lent me a short set (8 volumes). the catch is that there is usually like a year in between the release of each volume, so if you like a story, you have to wait a long time. luckily, i made sure to borrow one where the story arc had already been completed. :) i hate waiting.

the starwars movie was fun. i think my final review is just that "it's starwars;" you can't expect much from it, and so by that measuring stick, it was even halfway decent. tying into my comments about "complete story arcs," there was a certain measure of satisfaction that came from having some completion on the story, too. for whatever reason, though, i still feel like computer animation is just cheating, and utterly inexcusable. i mean, jim henson had class (i can't remember if he was directly responsible for the puppets in the first set of films, but puppets are just damn cool regardless). animation just, well, for obvious reaons, makes it feel like a cartoon. and nothing against cartoons, but it seems to cheapen the experience somehow. eh, whatever. it's not like i'm going to go to the theatre a second time, but i'm glad i did go once.

the big electricity party is tonight. there are several reasons why i'm not going; basically, i really don't like large crowds (they expect ~15,000 people each year), and cover charges are against my religion (it's a 35 franc ticket). well, the ticket would have been cheaper if i had bought it a month ago, but i missed the deadline, and still, i just don't believe in paying for parties.

okay, that's all for now. we're at T-8 days and counting.