Happy Birthday to ME!

I'm 21 today y'all! Whoo!

So far, I've been having a fantastic week. Yesterday, my parents took me out to get me a "grown-up" present - a fancy watch that does not have an animated character on it. I had a little bit of indecision between the one I eventually chose and a silver watch with sparkling crystals along the bracelet with a pink mother-of-pearl face, but I eventually chose the other one because I wouldn't have wanted to wear the sparkly one on any but the most formal occasions.

It's lovely, dear readers - the bracelet is a mixture of silver and gold colours (brushed stainless steel that won't scratch), with a midnight-blue face, gold hands in the shape of isociles triangles, and a tiny, tiny diamond set in the 12 o'clock position. All day yesterday and today, my parents insist on asking "What time is it?" so that I can look at my beautiful watch and give them an estimate.

I went to my birthday party yesterday, too - probably the first of anything that could be called a birthday party for me since I was ten. My homies in the Sci-Fi club, and my friend M and her brother (whose birthday was on the 12th!) met me at the Mall, where we had dinner at Boston Pizza and then went to the movie theatre to catch a 9:25 showing of Arthur and the Invisibles. B, the Captain of the Sci-Fi club, gave me a gift certificate for Chapters (which I spent today on a copy of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and a bargan copy of The Bachelorette Party), and M gave me an illustration she drew of one of the characters from my story "My Brother's Own Words" - a full-colour picture of Paulie, the boy who is half-parrot. I can't describe how important that picture is to me - that someone remembered the story I'd told enough to draw a fantastic picture of it. It's wonderful - she's a great artist.

The movie Arthur and the Invisibles was artistically beautiful, but narratively flawed. The story regards a boy, Arthur, whose grandmother faces eviction from her home unless he can find his vanished grandfather's secret stash of rubies. To do so, he has himself shrunk down to visit the land of the Minimoys - a tribe of tooth-sized elves who live in his backyard. The animation in these sequences was gorgeous, I loved watching it on the big screen. The story, however, was lacking in many places, to the point where I thought the ending was anti-climactic.

I heard somewhere that the playwright Chekov had a rule that if a dueling pistol is placed on the mantlepiece in the first act, it has to be shot in the third. Basically, if you introduce an element, it has to be made relevant by the time the movie is over, and this film had many elements that were introduced and not finished that it made me wonder if they were planning a sequel already. For instance, David Bowie voices the Evil M (funny, that's my Mum's nickname, too....), the villain of the film who has a contrived monologue-infodump scene where he explains that he used to be a good Minimoy king whose efforts to protect the kingdom of the Minimoys resulted in him being disfigured by evil magic. The Minimoy princess Selenia helpfully reminds him that he ALSO apparently GOT IT ON WITH A WEEVIL, which gave him more evil mojo. Anyway, the Evil M concludes his little rant by saying that the magical first kiss of a certain Minimoy princess (he comes just sort of saying "hint, hint, nudge, nudge") could free him from his torment and return him to normal, so of course I got all hot and bothered expecting my favourite "villain finds redemption" theme.

And of course it doesn't happen. The Evil M's plan to flood the Minimoy kingdom is foiled and he merely shakes his fist, abandons his (half-weevil?) son to drown, and flies away on the back of a mousquito. Of course, the princess doesn't use up her first kiss either - even with Arthur she's a bit of a cocktease. So I'm guessing that in the following films (if there are any - this movie rated an 18% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com, ouch!), we'll deal with the Evil M and the kiss-kiss.

For today, I'm just going to sit back with the family, order some pizza with sausage, mushrooms, and black olives, and watch Idiocracy, which is totally on DVD now! Whoohoo!