I am sick. I’m pretty much the last one in the dorm to catch it, but I don’t have it that bad. It’s mainly just a lot of phlegm and feeling warm. Although the warmth could also be attributed to the increasingly beautiful weather. For some reason I also keep getting flashes of deja vu/nostalgia, feeling like I’m back on Bainbridge, at home, BHS, Hyla, sometimes even Wilkes. Plus our recent flurry of dorm trips to downtown Portland has given me a lot of time to think and reminisce.

I saw Brick yesterday. It was good. Not civil war love poetry good, but slick and smart just the same. The illusion of serious noir is almost seemless, broken intentionally by a few well-placed moments of self-conciousness played without breaking a smile. The glorious absurdity of the assistant vice principle who uses the same sharp, staccato slang as Brendan and his friends, or the Pin’s mom who serves cookies and juice while her son initiates Brendan into the criminal underworld, force you to realize that this film is high school noir, as awkward as high school ever was. Unless you’re me, and high school wasn’t really awkward at all, but through hindsight rapidly becoming the epitome of intellectual discussion and excellent academics. So I didn’t like Brick as much as Jacob, but I have to say, watching Jacob loving Brick as much as he did was reward unto itself.

In the middle of Brick, at exactly the wrong moment when the tension was red hot, the fire alarm in the theater went off. The alarm was actually half-hearted, as if it was designed to inspire eye-rolling instead than fear. Thankfully it was a false alarm, because we ended up being stuck in the hallway for several minutes, the evacuation procedure was so bad. We missed a few critical seconds of the movie, but it ultimately paid off — we all got free tickets at the end!

Busing around Portland is always an interesting experience. Friday we had two street performers on board. A living statue guy painted all silver stood silently throughout the trip. A loud and boisterous bard, a big older man with a beard, a colorful hat, and a flute, amused us by harassing Max (who apparently smokes too much beer), rejoicing in Jacob and Jessica’s young love, using colorful and poetic language full of quotes and swearwords, singing, humming, and generally being as full of life and charisma as the silver statue man was empty of them.

Our Shadowrun game was almost as full of character. Jacob is a master at bringing to life even the most extraneous of NPC’s. He reminds of Christian in that respect, his characters lingering in my mind long after the game is through. It’s nothing that the characters do in particular, it’s just they have such strong personalities. Even the stoic ones. This run involved freeing a lot of “experiments,” many of which were PC’s or important NPC’s from Jacob’s previous Shadowrun campaigns. Some we killed, but at least one of the escapees, a dark elf named Nim, may be joining us on a future run. In the meantime, Ben and I have to dig up some dirt on our Fixer (and as of last run, fellow shadowrunner), Slade. Winston: “If I had a nuyen every time you said something cryptic, Slade, well… I wouldn’t have all that much money, since we don’t interact that often… but the point is…” Slade: “We don’t have time for your linguistic circumambulations right now.”