Stoopid firemen

Gave me the flu.

Seriously. And they weren't even around. We were at a station on Friday that was basically empty. Everyone but those on shift (ie., recruits, and trainees) were sent home because of the flu. And now I have it. All weekend. Headache, bodyache, fever, icky throat...

Got to do some movie watching though. Saw a couple of really good ones. Peeping Tom, The 400 Blows, and Ordet were among the highlights. Plenty of Criterion Classics from the library for me to delve into.

We also watched the closing ceremonies yesterday on the Canadian TV channel. They showed it all live, rather than waiting for NBC to show it all very late at night.

What extreme, expensive silliness. The basic carnival premise was good. I liked that ok. But then they got all creative and whacky. Like they were French, or something, no? I understand the Fellini allegory, too- but some of this went a bit beyond Fedrico, and was firmly entrenched in odd.

There was some kind of allegorical development of heaven and hell going on. Angels sang. Then little devil children sang. Then a sinister man with what appeared to be a red tail played a fiery dragon harp. And the devil children gathered around him. Then pyrotechnics. Then some more stuff. Then came what I thought was the goofiest part- and I really didn't get the symbolism at all. There were 300+ brides who came out. I was expecting a possible mass ceremony, a la Rev. Moon. But no. They came out, some Italian pop star with a nasty tat makeuped out on her chest sang some Italian pop song, and the brides shuffeled into various shapes, kind of like a slow-moving and not horribly graceful Busby Berkely production (look him up on IMDB if you need to know). It was odd. Without the mass ceremony, I thought that maybe they represented the only virgins remaining in Turin. And that they were the spoils of war, so to speak, for the Olympians to enjoy later. Or maybe they were just getting married later that evening. Confused the hell out of me.

Then there were more things, and it was finally over. Even the Canadian commentators were getting a little overwhelmed by it all. One of them sighed, "look, there's more..." at one point.

Then they showed the skaters in their little production show after the games. I guess it's kind of a working audition for Stars on Ice. Nice. But kinda boring. I was feeling tired, and went to take a nap. Without Johnny Weir, I didn't care. I love him. He is wonderful. He uses words like, "princessy" whilst talking to the press. This makes me happy. He refuses to answer the gay question, stating, and rightfully so, that it doesn't matter to his skating career. I love him.

And now it's time to retire to the bed again. I have a lovely bio of Jean Harlow from the library to read if I feel like it. I like her. She was good. It's shaping up to be a pretty sad story, but interesting.