Trifecta

Inside And Out – Feist

It seems like all I used to write about were the three girls who kept me sane during my university days. You can only write so many “wow, these people are amazing” posts before you run out of material. Here’s another:

***** Angela “Angel” Sinclair *****

For anyone who doesn’t know (and who have I not complained to about this?), Gary screwed me over in regards to watching Transformers. When he went to Guatemala for six weeks, I told him that I would wait for him to come back so we could see it together. At first, it was a convenient excuse for me to avoid seeing it because I was worried it would be crap and my occasional resistance to that which is “hot”. Then the mostly positive reviews started coming in and the movie began to cool off so I decided it was time to see it. The timing would be perfect with Gary’s return. It turns out he ended up watching it with his church people about a week after he left. What the hell? I still haven’t forgiven him.

The point of recapping those events is to show what a good friend Angel is. Even though she’d already seen it, she agreed to come see it again. She was excited to do so even. We went to go see it in IMAX and guess what, they still give an IMAX tutorial before the movie starts. Annia, Jess and I missed this when we went to see 300 because we were late, but lo and behold there it was, laser show and all. If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.

Angel is cool because I act around her the way that I act around members of the WAMBAG. That is to say, like an ass. And she likes that. Our lifestyles are totally different too. She’s an independent free spirit and I’ve got the maturity and self-motivation of an infant but for some reason she believes that there’s…”more to me than meets the eye”? Ho ho ho. I don’t think I would survive for one second walking in her shoes and I know my domestic life would drive her crazy, but somehow when we meet up we always find some kind of common ground and end up having a lot to talk and laugh about.

By the way, she once wrote an entire exam in rhyme. She got an A. It was apparently so good that her professor added it the course website. I don’t know if this says more about her or about the quality of evaluation at the University of Toronto.

***** Natasha Spiers *****

When I got my license, I was excited at the prospect of suddenly being able to leave the house whenever I wanted. I was like, “Yeah, time to finally start doing all the things that I’ve always wanted to do!” Unfortunately, it turns out that what I’ve always wanted to do is sit at home, play Secret Of Mana on my SNES emulator and watch sports. Not the stuff of legend.

Thus, I have Natasha to thank for forcing me into action. Saturday was the second time that she gave me a late night call to come out and see her. It was great, I had to negotiate with my mom and everything. Luckily, she’s too old and weak to stop me but it was nice of her to put up a fight. The other complication was that I wasn’t planning to leave the house that day and when I’m in that mood, I’m more immovable than Fred J. Dukes. I was even wearing my lucky Sunday Toronto Raptors t-shirt. I may as well have been in a coma. There I am enjoying an exciting Indians-Red Sox game when Natasha calls me and tells me she’s hungry. After about an hour of her figuring out whether or not she’s going to go to some party (long story), I decide to pick her up so we can get her some pizza and watch a movie at her place.

I have to reiterate how abnormal this is for me to be spontaneously leaving the house after 11:00 on a Saturday. I was all settled in, damn it! Sorry, back to the story.

We ended up watching Alpha Dog, that movie with Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake. There are actually a bunch of good actors in it including one Ben Foster who played Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand. I mention him because Greg, Jess, William and I just saw him steal the show as Charlie in 3:10 To Yuma. The Force is strong with this one. Alpha Dog wasn’t terrible, but the dialogue was laughably bad. The director and writer is this 40 year old guy and he was attempting to write “realistic” teen conversations. Draw your own conclusions from that.

This was the first time I can recall watching a movie with Natasha at either of our houses and let me tell you that it was near-impossible. Her cat just had kittens and every five seconds it was like, “Look how cute they are! Oh my God, look at her eyes! Oh, isn’t that adorable? Alex, did you see that? She’s adorable, isn’t she? Alex? Is she adorable?” I consider myself to be pretty good at conversation, but I quickly ran out of responses. When she was done with the kittens, I would have to explain to her what happened in the scenes she missed while she was playing with her kittens and so on and so forth. She knows I love it though. My cynicism really plays off her air-head routine well and it’s always fun. I say “routine” because she’s the kind of girl who puts on a bubbly act so that she doesn’t scare off guys with her intelligence. I can appreciate both sides of her, especially since I know which one is real. At the same time, she lets me act like I’m cold and cool when she knows that I’m a big softie.

Her latest joke is that we’re married. What is this? High school? Whatever. I just found out that she doesn’t eat noodles. That doesn’t even make sense, right? You didn’t even comprehend that sentence. Now you know how I felt when she said that to me. I’m getting a pretend divorce.

***** Michelle Ngo *****

Our softball team is off to a good start at 3 wins and 1 loss. We won our latest game by a score of 20 to 14. I’m not sure what’s sparked our offense lately, but the stats do show that ever since Michelle joined our team we haven’t lost. It’s only two games, but facts is facts. She’s a good softball player, I’ve got to admit. I was skeptical when she told me that she was a star in high school. If you’ve ever met Michelle, you’ll know why I say that. She’s about average height for an Asian girl, meaning she’s diminutive. I’m not saying she’s short, she’s just not the most imposing figure you’ll ever meet. But she can play, homes. She can hit, run and field. She nearly got someone out at home even though my jelly arm barely got the ball near the plate. Most of all, she’s enthusiastic. She’s not like, jumping up and down and waving pom poms (she’s still not familiar enough with my people for that), but she brings a fresh energy to our team.

Maybe it’s just me. I was getting a little burnt out with softball, but Michelle’s presence has rejuvenated me. For one thing, she’s a new person to try and impress. My usual teammates have already tired of seeing me perform miracles day in and day out. Speaking of miracles, she called the existence of bananas a miracle. We were throwing around and she was explaining how incredible it was that nature could produce something with that shape, colour, taste, texture, etc. And then she called a banana a miracle. It should be noted that she had a history of marijuana use when she was younger.

I had a rare off-day defensively (hey, even God blinks, okay?) and she was there to help me through it. I missed a catch and she gave me a little hug afterwards and I didn’t feel quite so bad. Then someone on the other team gave her a backhanded compliment, saying that she could hit surprisingly well for someone who was so short, and I told her that she wasn’t that short. Sorry, that was really boring but it’s always hard for me to express how happy I am around Michelle. It’s not one thing, it’s these in-between moments that make her special.

The timing of this post wasn’t completely random as I did see each of these ladies over the last four days, which is a rare thing. Hell, it’s rare that I see the three of them in the same month, much less in one week. Despite having the odd moment of existential dread (and who doesn’t?), I can honestly say that this week has been real good. I remain cautiously optimistic about my future.

Trouble with you, Kaneda…is you take too many chances.
Trouble with you is you wanna live forever!