silva rerum

hold infinity in the palm of your hands

After get­ting plenty of sleep and spend­ing the day fix­ing my laptop, I am pleased to finally blog about The Best Day Ever™.

I star­ted by rolling out of bed (lit­er­ally rolling off my bed and onto the floor) at around 9:30. Groggy and bleary-​eyed, I turned on my laptop (doesn’t this tell you a lot about me?) and then I ate a quick, small break­fast. A then phoned me and informed me that we (A, N and me) would be meet­ing at Burrard Station at 11:30 to watch Harry Potter and the Half-​Blood Prince (of which I have only re-​read 50%). Quite hap­pily, I set off (wear­ing appro­pri­ate attire for the assuredly hot day) and arrived exactly at 11:30. Of course, this meant that I was awk­wardly on time. A and N arrived shortly there­after, gently remind­ing me of how I have a tend­ency to induce guilt in oth­ers by being pre­cisely on time. I must remem­ber that for the future – I will earn­estly endeav­our to arrive fash­ion­ably late, saun­ter­ing into the room with a grand entrance.

It was decided to pur­chase the tick­ets first at the Scotiabank theatre and off we went. I felt slightly crest­fal­len when I noticed that A’s ticket actu­ally prin­ted her name on it while mine was name­less. Curse my cash­ier for not know­ing advanced func­tions made to impress friends and foe alike. Curse her.

After first vis­it­ing the Burrard loc­a­tion (at which we were turned away due to full capa­city), we arrived at the Robson loc­a­tion of the Cactus Club Café and sat down for lunch. We had much delib­er­a­tion over the menu and I got the J.D. BBQ bur­ger (which was juicy and yummy! but not really my style, to be hon­est). We noticed the sheer num­ber of staff our loc­a­tion seemed to pos­sess; at every turn, a new staff mem­ber strolled by duti­fully. N sar­don­ic­ally remarked about the reces­sion and labour wages. I concurred.

After lunch, we headed to watch the movie. After read­ing the book in pre­par­a­tion for the movie, there were cer­tainly some things I liked and dis­liked about the cine­matic experience.

I was gen­er­ally unim­pressed with the movie but felt like it did the job. It was adequate but not much more… As much as I adore the movies and the books, I can’t say that Harry Potter and the Half-​Blood Prince will be a par­tic­u­larly mem­or­able cine­matic exper­i­ence. It’s a shame because I had had high hopes for David Yates’ dir­ect­orial vision.

After the movie, we ven­tured around down­town and ended up in Sears at Pacific Centre. Excitedly, I skimmed through the sta­tion­ery sec­tion, glow­ingly apprais­ing the Montblanc pens and Moleskine notebooks.

We then heard the announce­ment of a life­time. “Attention shop­pers. We will be hav­ing a free giveaway on the fourth floor today, for shop­pers only in the store right now.” I paused and looked to N and A, who were listen­ing with rapt atten­tion withal. I gingerly replaced the Moleskine note­book I had been thought­fully caress­ing and we set off towards the fourth floor.

Needless to say, it was a dis­ap­point­ment. We got a dinky orange little fruit juicer (the effic­acy of which I sin­cerely doubt) and waited the whole present­a­tion to learn that we could have a free filet knife…with pur­chase of 29.99. We left.

As such, A and I were hor­rendously late for din­ner with C and D at Thai Spice. I ordered Tom Yum which, admit­tedly, is a weak­ness of mine but I was rather dis­ap­poin­ted with the lack of fla­vour. A’s pine­apple rice was only pass­able. Happily, though, we played Sorry dur­ing din­ner which (albeit dis­plays a thor­ough lack of table man­ners) enlivened our din­ner much more than the food would have done.

The crown jewel of the even­ing was really watch­ing Les Miserables. It was spec­tac­u­lar. If you haven’t watched it yet, I assure you that you are miss­ing out. The cast­ing was won­der­ful; per­en­nial favour­ites Jonathan Winsby and John Mann gave breath­tak­ing per­form­ances while new­comers didn’t slacken at all.

Here’s what I thought:

• Murphy (Valjean) dis­played mas­ter­ful skill at singing with a par­tic­u­larly strong voice and diverse range; he was a little wooden at times but his singing was spot-​on flawless
• Cournoyer (Javert) was a per­sonal favour­ite; Javert doesn’t get much vari­ety in song but Cournoyer did a com­mend­able job at con­vey­ing Javert’s character
• Hosie (Fantine) was a strong pres­ence but her wig was very offput­ting; I’m usu­ally a big fan of Arts Club cos­tume design but here is one case where I was rather distracted
• Lipman (Mme. Thenardier) and Mann (Mr. Thenardier) offered won­der­ful — won­der­ful — comic relief but Lipman’s vocal strength was not what I would have expected
• Winsby (Enjolras) was, of course, incred­ible and power­ful; his per­form­ance is almost so strong that it is over­whelm­ing, actu­ally, threat­en­ing to over­shadow the per­form­ances of others
• Victor (Marius) had a per­fectly respect­able per­form­ance though he was really over­shad­owed by Winsby at times
• Talbot (Eponine) was a sur­prise star; I was really impressed with her per­form­ance and vocal strength!
• Harwood (Cosette) gave a good per­form­ance through­out but I can’t recall any moments where I was floored by her
• Ballard (Gavroche), Matchette (Young Cosette) and Withers (Young Eponine) gave great per­form­ances, par­tic­u­larly at their ages! I bet I’ll be see­ing them at the Arts Club when I’m much older

I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed “I Dreamed a Dream,” “Master of the House,” “Stars”and “Drink with Me to Times Gone By.” Unfortunately, “One Day More” was nowhere near as strong as what I would have liked but ç’est la vie!

All in all, a mar­velous day. I just hope A doesn’t tire of my company!