saavedra77 | SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! (Reply)

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing a whole bunch of people I just never get enough of: First off, sarrabellum and sleepwhenimdead whisked me off to the East Side for their son Haven's birthday fete. At some unnamed East Side mall (I'm still completely lost over there; I never get out of the city ...), we met up with ketina and ronelyn , pinky_ki , and ladyavalon42 and differedrom (and the latter couple's brood of excitable young'uns) to see the new Harry Potter movie.

OK, now, mind you, I've not read the books and only seen one of the previous films, but my general impression was that this was The Puberty Movie, an amusingly supernaturalized tale of junior-high-school angst, albeit one featuring a very high-powered adult cast--e.g., Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Robbie Coltrane, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Oldman, etc.

Since I'm used to seeing Michael Gambon playing heavies in arty gangster films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and Layer Cake, it was a piece of weirdness seeing him take over Richard Harris' kindly old wizard/schoolmaster role.

(Then again, considering some of the roles that Harris was known for earlier in his career, as in The Molly Maguires, Major Dundee, The Field, Unforgiven, etc--well, maybe that's not so weird ...)

Also, Daniel Radcliffe's starting to look sort of John Lennonish, as he grows up, isn't he?

ronelyn and ketina hosted the after-party, whereat birthday-boy Haven acquired enough books to keep him busy until ... Christmas (I gather he's a pretty voracious reader, that lad). The group of us were also joined at this point by the ever-ironic spoomeister and spoo and pinky's adorable toddler, Sabs--yet more people I just never see enough of. I was only able to stay for part of the fun, but I appreciated the chance to catch up with folks.

Alas, I had to duck out of the party early in order to meet another group of friends, these from last year's Spanish class, for dinner at Cedar's and a Flamenco show at the U, that evening.
ladyavalon42 and differedfrom were kind enough to drop me in Seattle en route to their ferry home, which helped me make connections north right on time. Over dinner, I caught up with former classmates Iain and Roxane, and our former teacher, Patricia, and her husband, Cliff. After about an hour of mango curry, chicken tikka masala, and vegetable kofta, we walked down to the U Ethnic Cultural Theater to catch the amazing Ana Montes and twenty of her students from Flamenco Danzarte perform two hours of Flamenco and Jaleo--a show which was passionate, colorful, amazingly choreographed.

After all that excitement, I wasn't sure how I was going to persuade my body to go to sleep, but a little rum helped things along ... :)