Jananas

A few weeks back I first saw Repo! the Genetic Opera (IMDB here for a different view) at the Toronto Dark After Film Festival. Now, I’m not normally a huge fan of movies with music but this one had me from start to finish. And to be clear, this is a rock opera not a musical.

• definition of an opera: there is music the entire way through with minimal to no speaking, versus
• definition of a musical: the movie is mainly dialogue with musical interludes throughout

Tonight marked night one of a six night stint at the Bloor Cinema here in Toronto (see the Bloor’s website, including schedule here). We’re lucky, the movie is only showing at eight cities in the US and this is the only Canadian release thus far. A few of us who’d been at the original screening decided that we definitely wanted to see it again so we all made plans to be there for the first night. My friend Caroline had picked up tickets on my behalf, and to thank her I’d planned on playing an Akoha “Thank Someone” mission, however they are currently having some problems with the printing tickets function (and yes, they are aware and are working towards fixing it – thanks for the quick response to the feedback!). Instead, I had a wild mission card with me.

The original plan was to give the card to Caroline as a thank you for taking the time to make sure that we all had tickets (and for paying for them on her credit card) for the first night. However, when I saw Darren Lynn Bousman (director of Saw II-IV and Repo!) at the screening I thought I’d give him the card instead as a Thank You for helping get this movie made and released, and additionally for taking the time to be there tonight at the theatre to see the fan’s reactions first hand.

I was a tad nervous this evening that the movie wouldn’t live up to my initial perceptions of its absolute awesomeness. It did, through and through. It is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but it deserves a chance to be seen and for those of us who don’t want the same old remake to make up our own minds. Darren had a super fun Q&A session that made me believe in the potential for this movie even more. Hell, he was even nice enough to come across the street to Pauper’s Pub to have a drink (or two) with fans and to sign autographs.

(And Darren, if this shows up in your Google Alerts – friends of mine in Columbus, Ohio were super jealous that I’ve been able to see the film twice. There are people out there that want to see this movie!)

I knit five hats in the last week. Three for Christmas gifts, one randomly, and the last one is a custom order for my friend Tim over at Goodwood Jewelry. He bikes to work here in Toronto and with the recent cold spell his ears have been getting cold. I knit him this lovely grey Malabrigo ear flap hat and crocheted on a brown Malabrigo border to add a little definition. I’ve knit three versions of this ear flap hat now and for a mostly made up pattern it seems to be working well. What’s extra awesome is that friends like them enough that I’ve had a few more custom requests come in.

After days spent watching puppycam, I finally made my mister take me to the pet store so that we could play with puppies. The first thing I noticed when we got to the puppy area was this super cute little Beagle (see bottom right of the photo). Cute! Tiny! But wait… According to the sign above the window its actually a “Bagle”. Fail! To start, that’s one expensive bagle! To finish, is the peanut butter and jam included in the sales price?

I’ve been wondering over the last few days why I started getting so many visits from people coming from the Akoha Community FAQ page. I get the odd person from Akoha based on some blog posts that have made Austin’s friendfeed, etc. I couldn’t find any twitter feed or friendfeed listing on the FAQ page so I was initially all confused. Finally went through each FAQ listing one by one until I found this…

Under the “What’s a starter kit?” there’s a link to “one of their amazing players”, meaning me! They’re linking to the post where I first unveiled starter kit. I took pictures, because I’m an enGadget nerd like that.

So thanks Akoha for spreading the love back to your players.

I’ve been using study break time to work on my soon to be monster granny square. Its getting pretty big and I’ve used to two balls of leftover colour and an entire ball of black yarn. I have a couple more colours to add, plus as much black as it takes to bring it up to size (whatever that might be). I do like how quickly this is coming along when compared to how long it would have taken me to knit something of this size. This is the first thing that I’ve knowingly made for myself in a long time and I can’t wait until its done.