January

Last night I went to see LARS AND THE REAL GIRL at the Regency Fairfax. When I passed it on the way home from work, the lights in the marquee were out but the strange and friendly man who sells tickets was outside the open doors smoking a cigarette so I figured it was still open and the lights were out because they had shorted out from all the rain. There were lights inside anyway.

I should add for you non-Southland readers that it has been raining here, raining to beat the band, raining enough to flood the streets and make you think about rounding up pairs of animals.

At home I suited up. I used to take a certain amount of pride walking around in the rain in LA, because I am a Vancouverite by birth and have a Vancouverite coat and a pair of Vancouverite (by way of Australia) boots. I spent half a decade at UBC, for god's sake. A little rain is nothing to wince at or drive like an idiot in. So I walked to the theatre, which is about six short blocks away, and the valet guys under awnings and podium umbrellas on my path looked at me like I was crazy. It rains harder and wetter here than it ever does in Vancouver. I did get water inside my boot at one point when I waded through a creekbed coming out of an alley, but for the most part I was dry.

Once the lights went down in the theatre and I snuck out my little flask of bourbon (if you are going to see a movie by yourself on a Friday night, you may as well get into the part), I began to hear it, though I thought at first it was part of the soundtrack. Dripping, plonking, and sometimes a bubble-bursting splash. The theatre was leaking in 5.1 surround.

It worked with the movie though, which is set as winter is trying to make its way into spring. A character says, as it begins to snow, "I though winter was over." And another character responds, "That was just the thaw, winter isn't over until Easter." These kind of sentences and the people who know enough to speak them make me miss people from the north.

It's a movie about patience, and it's a simple movie, and for that I liked it very much. Sometimes overly metaphoric films that deal with people's psychoses annoy me, but this one didn't. When the lights came up I could see the buckets all over the theatre, mostly along beside the walls but some amongst the seats, with taped off areas warning you not to sit there. It's a long drop from ceiling to floor there.

It was even wetter for the walk home and when I got there, my jeans were soaked from mid-thigh down. Next week I'll have more energy and be ready for sunshine again, but for now, a lot of rain and a good excuse to stay inside is all I could ask for.