It's been a good weekend. On Friday I drove up to Orange County to visit with animator friend Steve A. We had intended to go and see the Firehouse Five, a jazz band directly descended from the one manned by Disney Animators in the fifties, but they had changed their schedule of appearances, so we settled for sushi and Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' instead. The movie was better than I expected, great visuals and imaginative direction, but still not that great.

Saturday morning I drove back home. I met with Mike at Fuddrucker's for lunch, after which there was furniture shopping. I returned to Fashion Valley mall for the media console I had found last Thursday, only to find that they were sold out and weren't going to be getting any more, as it was last year's model. They found one for me at UTC and put it on hold, but by that time I had had enough driving around for the day. I went home and called to chat with my dad. After that I ate some leftovers and then farmed furbolgs in World of Warcraft for the rest of the evening.

This morning I went to UTC to collect the cabinet, which barely fit in my tiny Saturn with the seats folded down. Lunch was Round Table Pizza (my favorite) with a book on Medieval Technology and Social Change. My mom called to wish me happy birthday, and we had a nice chat. Afterwards I went home and did some stuff on the computer until Mike showed up to go to the show. He helped me haul the cabinet up to my flat first.

We had VIP tickets to Cirque du Soleil's 'Quidam' show. I had missed it the first time through, and had been kicking myself ever since. Of all the Cirque shows, I liked its concept, music, and production design the best, so it was great to get a second chance to see it. Fourth row, three seats off of center. Close enough while being off the aisle to escape scary, evil clowns (or so I thought). VIP access got us wine, champagne and hors d'oeuvres beforehand, and wine, champagne and dessert at the intermission.

The show rocked. I liked the big hoop thing and the chinese yo-yo girls, but really everything was beautiful and astonishing. Juggling, jumprope, ring trapeze, rope and scarf hanging (one guy right over our heads!), magic balloons, and an angry guy with boxing gloves.

I was wrong about being far enough from clowns though: in the second act an evil clown pulled me up onstage to participate in a moviemaking farce. I was to play the Jealous Lover. Fortunately I had had quite a bit to drink by then, so I was in something of a daze the whole time. I was hardly nervous at all-- I figured if I gave a bad performance, it was the damn clown's fault for pulling me up there. Interestingly, the clown was coaching me through most of it. He even directed me to purposely botch some things (such as walking through a doorway without miming opening the door first). I have no idea how I did. Audience reaction seemed good, and I got to shoot a complete stranger on stage. =) One woman in the audience said to me, "of all the people up there, I laughed at you the most." Um, thanks?

After the show I saw that brother Fred had called me, so I called him back and chatted in the car on the way to supper. (Mike was driving. Thanks Mike!) Supper at Outback with Mike, Marek and Haidee, and then back home to assemble the cabinet.

In fact the only hitch in the entire weekend was that the cabinet drawer pieces included, instead of two left and two right sides, four left sides. Feh. So I will have to try and exchange those tomorrow. Annoying, but not enough to keep me from giving the weekend five stars of a possible five.