January 6, 2002

I keep my Sunday schedule pretty clear, so I’m able to keep up with it. This keeps my Sundays relatively stress-free, which is evidently somewhat unusual these days.

In any event, I baked some light-brown molasses spice cookies today, and read the first two-thirds of Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber, which strikes me as having a fascinating literary premise, which is obviated a third of the way through the novel, and makes the rest of the book comparatively dull. Perhaps that’s just me, though.

I watched Cats and Dogs, which was enjoyable and really presented well, but suffered from a predictable ending and major plot holes. Can’t win ’em all, I suppose.

I also caught a few interesting, obscure TV shows this morning. Totally Spies is an action/adventure cartoon aimed at tween girls, but is surprising because it’s drawn in a hybridized American / manga style. The art and backgrounds are constructed more like an American cartoon, while the facial expressions are definitely anime influenced — shocked characers are drawn with brightly-colored lines behind them, I saw several large sweatdrops of embarrasment, and there was even one hand-held-behind-the-head-in-embarrassment gesture.

And if you get a chance to watch The Weekenders, I encourage you to try it out. It may have a fairly traditional American cartoon construction — focusing on a clutch of roughly tween friends, with one painfully obvious moral in every episode — but it features surprisingly witty dialogue and amazingly high animation quality. It looks smooth, something that few American TV cartoons are accused of being.

While channel-surfing, I also discovered — to my delight — that The Sci-Fi Channel is now showing two brilliant and short-lived series: Now and Again and the new Fantasy Island.

One feels a certain sense of contentment when sitting inside next to a window on a cold January night, as foul winter weather blows by mere inches from your smiling face. One has this self-satisfied glow, knowing that Jack Frost is spreading a layer of his own special white icing on the lawns and streets outside. And, more importantly, that one is not subject to those treacherous sidewalks and slippery roads.

…And then one remembers the imminent drive to work next morning. That is certain to be an adventure.

But maybe one will be unable to drive to work tomorrow, and can spend the whole next day sitting inside, next to a window, as foul winter weather blows by mere inches from your smiling face….