Well, I had quite a weekend.
I know I’m not posting regularly, but I am currently on the real, actual final phase of getting my book ready to submit, so I’m focused on that and have no intention of posting again until I’ve done it. I am, however, popping in briefly to chat about a few things.
For starters, I had a fantastic long weekend (I had four days off due to summer hours at work plus Memorial Day) and capped it by wrecking my car. It’s probably unwise to blab details online until everything is settled, so I’ll just say that no one was hurt. This was the first time in my life that police, fire, and ambulance got called out for something I was involved in, so that was … um … exciting?
Drinking Absinthe
The reason I was on the road is because I was with my magical girl. She and I made plans this weekend to watch Detective Pikachu, which she hadn’t seen yet, and to visit the famous Beale Street of Memphis in order to get into the Absinthe Room, which we had earlier tried to enter and failed.
When we arrived on Saturday night, Beale Street was extremely busy due both to the long weekend and Memphis’s bicentennial. Live music was blaring from the various bars as usual.
The Absinthe Room is upstairs above the King’s Palace Cafe. It’s a relatively quiet bar where people can drink, smoke, and talk. It serves Cajun food from the Cafe below as well as, of course, absinthe.
After paying the small cover charge, one enters the Absinthe Room by ascending a long, steep staircase reminiscent of the walk of shame that in former days would take one to the upper floors of a house of ill repute.
At the top of the stairs, one is met with a green-lit bar prominently displaying well-used ashtrays and an Art Deco absinthe drip fountain. The personable bartender has much to say about the nature and preparation of the infamous drink.
I have been wanting for some time to drink absinthe; there are a few scenes in my upcoming novel, Dead to Rites, in which Magical Girl Grease Pencil Marionette drinks this famous and forbidden beverage, the preferred liquor of artists and bohemians. Since Marionette was infected with a computer virus in the first novel, her absinthe-drinking is meant to symbolize her gradual loss of her grip on sanity, since absinthe is traditionally associated with madness, such as that of Van Gogh.
The Absinthe Room prepares its absinthe in the traditional, bohemian manner, by placing a sugar cube on a perforated spoon, pouring the liquor over it, and then lighting the sugar on fire before placing the concoction under the drip fountain. The dripping ice water gradually turns the emerald-green liquor an opaque yellow, indicating that it is ready to imbibe.
My magical girl, less tolerant of strong liquor than I am, drank the lightest available abinthe (90 proof) while I drank Mansinthe, the official brand of Marilyn Manson, which is 133 proof.
We sipped each others’, and I admit hers tasted better. Absinthe is slightly sweet and tastes strongly of licorice.
Watching Pokémon
I saw Detective Pikachu for a second time this weekend because my magical girl had wanted to see it. She laughed through the whole movie, so I think she enjoyed it. The dialogue of this film is quite dense (I said dense, not deep), and I picked up a lot of information I missed the first time. Certain things were clearer to me, such as the nature of Pokémon evolution, which is explained in several lines I didn’t catch on a first viewing. Scenes that failed to grab me the first time around became favorites on a second, especially the illegal underground Pokémon battle. Contrary to what I wrote before, the movie does actually compare Pokémon battles to illegal cockfighting; it just does so without announcing the fact, making it all the more clever.
I find I really, really like this movie. It is considerably better on a second viewing, too. Most of the complaints I made before, I now renounce. My only complaint now is that some of the explanatory dialogue goes by too quickly to catch easily. Nonetheless, they did an amazingly good job making this a fun movie for people who are already Pokémon fans as well as an accessible movie for the newcomer. That’s a hard balance to strike, but they pulled it off. They also succeeded at making the 3D Pokémon cute and likable, which is harder than it sounds.
I had promised my magical girl that she could have a Detective Pikachu of her own after we saw the movie, so I took her to Build-A-Bear and was relieved to discover that they had what we wanted. The employee who helped us informed me that they had had Pokémon plushies for a while, but had got in special detective accessories to go with the new movie. So we made a Pikachu toy and then accessorized it with a deerstalker cap and magnifying glass.
We also spent a lot of time discussing who we would want as our own Pokémon partners. My magical girl is quite partial to Pikachu, but I find myself increasingly drawn to Jigglypuff.
So it was a great weekend.
And then I wrecked my car.
