Vacation - Day 7

Despite the events of yesterday I managed a full night's sleep. I woke up actually feeling awake, I had breakfast, I took my time, and then I went out. I took a walk down Queen Street West, then did some essentials shopping at the Dufferin Mall's No Frills (and I defy you to tell me that 99 cents for a litre of chocolate milk is not an essential), watched a couple episodes of Sex in the City, copped a nap in my favourite chair, and then went to the Scotiabank Theatre to see the latest zombie horror film, Diary of the Dead.

The review:

How is it that we can have such inspired creative zombie productions in the form of 28 Days Later and the reimagined Dawn of the Dead, but when George A. Romero steps in - the man who MADE zombie films happen in the first place - we get crap. CRAP. By now the world has ended about 15 times over in all these zombie films, the only two in any kind of continuity being the 28 franchises, so again we meet a mixed bag of protaganists (all film students but all very different from each other, plus their alcoholic teacher) who hear about what's going on over the radio, they don't believe it until they see it, and one by one they fall victim to the growing army of the dead. But as we are dealing with film students, of course this has to be presented a la Blair Witch cum Cloverfield with everything being shot by the leads on hand held cameras. And it's not very scary. There are a few moments of palpable tension when there's something lurking in the dark and you know it's going to leap out at you and make you spill your drink, but that's all the fear you feel: losing your overpriced refreshments is more of a fear factor than what happens to the characters on the screen. Because we don't care about them. There's nothing to care about. They're all sniping at each other because they're scared, and then there's the one guy who keeps recording everything with not even real devotion; he's just doing it. Oh, and then magically at a hospital they find another video camera so now we can have two angles. That's handy. And the people who all sat there telling him how stupid he was for shooting it all find themselves using the other camera. I just wanted it to end. One hour and thirty seven minutes, the listing said. And to think I almost dragged Jamie to see it but he couldn't make it - you dodged a bullet there, mate! Whatever happened to really scaring the audience so witless that they went home and put the wardrobe against the door and sat up all night jumping at every little creak they heard?

So here I am home for the night. It's bloody cold out there today; I triple layered for the day's journey when I first went out and I got the full meaning of the term "invasive cold". As soon as I stepped out the door I could feel it working its way through the seams in my clothes - starting with the zipper in my pants, of all things - and then along the tongue of my boots by the time I reached the subway. Nature of course loves a good old joke so while my legs were going numb under two paltry layers consisting of long underwear and my cargo pants, I was sweating like mad from the neck down.

I made another observation tonight when I was coming home. It's more a realization of a conversation I had with my father. The city is no place for old people. Everywhere I go there's this mad rush of people trying to get here, trying to get there, running for a train or a streetcar or for a date or a movie, and there are always older people trying to get through the same mad rush being trampled underfoot. Now it's not all terrible out there, I do see people hold doors for the elderly (I do that) or help them across the street (I used to do that until one perverted old creep went for my balls) or give up their seat on the TTC (I'll do that if I am awake), but the pace of city life is just getting a lot faster. I've already decided the course of my next 30 years of my life if I stay living in Toronto: in 6 to 8 years get a condo or loft or something, stick with Canada Post until I retire, then sell up and get out of the city. It will of course be interesting to see where else there is to live in 30 years; a news article today says that soon 50% of the country's population will live in cities owing to factors of logistics and what not, but also I am sure because the cities are swallowing up all the surrounding land. When I was looking at the city last night on the bus ride home I looked at the buildings I knew were office towers and others that were residential towers, and then I tried to think of all the people in them. And then I thought about the Dalek city in Doctor Who back in 1963, but my mind works that way. All those people. All those Daleks.

Daleks never had to worry about zombie films.

That is all.