Went and saw The One Man Star Wars Trilogy today at the Fringe. It was excellent! Amazing. Hilarious. Intergalactic. In exactly one hour, this guy performed the entire Star Wars trilogy by himself. Without props, a set, or sound effects. But it felt amazingly like we were actually watching the movies, except his version had a bit more of a frenetic pace. If I had been doing it, I would have had a tendency to add too many extraneous comments, make a little more fun of it, but he avoided that, keeping to the original dialog, with the exception of a very small amount of well-chosen and -timed comments (Leia: It's not like that- Luke's my brother! Han: Then why were you always kissing him?) If you're here in Edmonton, try and go see it, though I think the shows are likely all sold out by now. If you're not here, well, go watch the trilogy and imagine one guy running all over a stage, imitating the character's voices and inflections EXACTLY (Han, Luke, Obi-Wan and Admiral Ackbar were dead-on, though his Yoda was a little off), and using his body language to simulate the special effects. Jabba the Hutt was especially well done, considering Jabba was just his arms talking like a giant mouth- but he even got Jabba's tongue movements perfectly, somehow. His name is Charles Ross, by the way.
Also I stopped in at a bookstore and hit paydirt today. Picked up a Tim Cahill book, Road Fever. Cahill being my other favorite author, in much the same vein as Bill Bryson, though more of an adventure traveler than Bryson is, which is why I think I gave Cahill a bit of an edge, though it is awfully close. This book is about a road trip from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska- basically going as far as is possible to drive on North and South America. All in 23 and a half days.
The other book I got is The Subtle Knife, by Phillip Pullman. Remember a few months ago when I found that book about the armored poolar bears? This is the sequel, which I've been looking for ever since I read The Golden Compass , which I highly recommend. So I was quite happy to find it, in pristine condition, for a mere $6.50. Road Fever was also $6.50. A very good night for me, I would have to say.