A Night at the Bookstore

Ugh! I'm not quite sure why I awoke so early this morning. I got to bed fairly late and was genuinely tired so you'd think I'd still be slumbering. But no. Instead I'm supping coffee and blathering online.

It's been a really great weekend so far. On Friday night I headed over to Borders Books to catch the super Harry Potter party. I arrived a bit early and headed immediately for the café. After getting a cup of life-sustaining elixir, I turned around only to see a familiar figure perusing the shelves of blank diaries. It was Mary, a co-worker of mine. I approached and greeted her. She and her significant other had stopped by to get a voucher for the Potter book and would return later to pick it up. We chatted for a while before they left. This left me with a lot of time to blow so I availed myself of the opportunity to add to my library. When going to a bookstore, I almost invariably head to the music section first and Friday night was no exception. There I found a copy of Turn It On Again: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins & Genesis. I've only given it a brief once over so far and I can say that it seems to be a fairly routine rock band bio but I'm a whore for all things Genesis so what was I supposed to do? I then went over to the computer books section. I poked around with the intention of buying a study guide for Network+ certification and found several. I grabbed one and was off to Fiction. I'd read an interview with Christopher Hitchens in which he was asked who was writing good fiction these days and noted the authors he listed. I don't read much fiction, much less investigate unfamiliar authors, so I figured it would be a good chance to broaden my horizons and force myself to read more fiction. If I resign myself to grabbing books from the library, it'll never happen but, if I actually buy the books and they're sitting on my shelves, then I'll get to them. So here are the most recent additions to my paltry fiction collection:

The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Mimic Man by VS Naipaul

It shall be a while yet before I start one of them but I'm looking forward to it.

I threw my booty in my car and headed back inside. The place was quickly filling with Harry Potter revelers and there were oodles of kids running around, with many of them in costume. I walked over towards the DVD section and spied someone who looked vaguely familiar in the center aisle. I walked past him and then down another aisle to look at the foreign films when he looked at me and I at him. It then occurred to me that he was Chris, a former co-worker of mine from some six years ago at Sitel. Chris was one of my favorite co-workers there and was introduced to me by a guy named Brian Wilson, a fellow nerd. Wilson kept a volume of Heidegger (or was is Kirkegaard?) at his desk. I remembered Chris as being a very mellow guy and a film fanatic. We caught up on what we were up to these days and celebrated the fact that neither of us worked at Sitel any longer. He related that he was here with his wife and stepdaughters. Here's one of them (sorry it looks so shitty):



She came over by us and proceeded to drop Bertie's jelly beans all over the place. When not dropping them, she offered to share with me. I got the booger flavored one. There were various activities going on and she quickly went off to find her mother who was playing Harry Potter bingo. (The guy who called the numbers did a very good Dobbie, I must say. I thought it was prerecorded until I saw him speaking into the mic.) Chris and I cozied up to the foreign films shelves and proceed to whittle away the hours bullshitting about movies. We bitched about how the original versions of the Star Wars films were not available on DVD, just the Special Editions. This led to chatter on how there are other films that suffer the same fate such as Blade Runner, E.T., and Close Encounters. Chris is a big fan of contemporary Japanese horror films such as Ringu and Ichi the Killer so we talked about those and compared and contrasted American remakes. He recommended a few titles and directors to me so I've got my work cut out for me at the video rental store. It was really great to bullshit with Chris. It's always a pleasure to talk to a fellow cinephile and Chris is one of those people that I got along with right from the start. Not only does he love film, but he also is very intelligent and has a wonderfully dry sense of humor. Talking with him kind of made me miss living with Pete. While there were certainly downsides to it, Pete and I were able to have conversations about film, literature, and the like. It's not that I can't have fun chats with Stevie and Becca, but they are very different from those I had with Pete. Less nerdy, if you know what I mean. And I miss getting up early on Saturday mornings and watching Zatoichi movies on IFC while drinking gallons of coffee. Plus, now that Stevie and Becca are dating, I try to give them space. They don't do things to make me feel excluded, by any means, but I do want to give them space, give them opportunities to be alone. I know what the early months of a relationship are like – you want to be with that other person constantly – and I'm happy to accommodate them. The upshot is that I sometimes feel like a third wheel. I certainly don't feel unwelcome but don't want to interfere and I miss Pete because, while he is a pain in the ass in many ways, we also have a lot in common. I no longer have anyone to discuss movies and books and music with. And so, when I get the opportunity to shoot the bull with a like-minded person, I jump at the opportunity.

Towards the midnight hour, Mary returned. I ended up in the line at the café with her, which was lengthy. Just before midnight, I bailed and took up position to photograph the distribution of the books and, at 12:01, I captured it on video. People eagerly grabbed their copies and make a dash to the checkout counter. Here's Mary jealously guarding her copy:



Chris and I chatted for a while longer before I headed home. I had to get up reasonably early and drive to Chicago. Plus I'd be driving back late Saturday night so I wanted to get a fair amount of sleep lest I pass out behind the wheel.