Fact. I slept okay last night.

As it turns out, the rest of my Birthday went much better. Saw a daffy music-and-dance revue all about the Cinema called SPLICE which was a mixed bag, but when it was good it was absolutely brilliant (Recreating the Psycho shower-scene with a torch and some red cloth, and- most genius of all- actually doing an onstage version of those vertigo-inducing trombone shots (reverse-zooms) from Vertigo. Also a quite insane Barbershop-quartet-themed Star Wars song). Went back to the hostel, and was actually given some food by some terribly nice Australians who were in my room (weirdly enough, one of them- a girl called Jodie- actually worked in a place where I applied for a job a few months ago), ended up having a lengthy surreal conversation all about cricket, films, the royal family and the iniquities of modern mathematics teaching with another gang of entertaining teens at the hostel (I seem to be doing this a lot), and then settled in with two episode of Lost. (I’d completely forgotten that I had the first fourteen episodes of the series crammed onto the hard drive until I got here, and it’s a terribly nice way of relaxing and blowing off steam).

And, as I said, I slept well. To sleep at just past midnight, and up at 7.15 (which seems to be my default waking up time at the moment). I’ve seen one film so far this morning- a british flick called Song of Songs, which had me staring wild-eyed in confusion and saying “What the HELL?” by the climax. One of those beautifully made, totally inscrutable films about people who absolutely aren’t going to give in to their incestuous desires until right at the very end that the Brits seem to specialise in. One of the actresses from My Summer of Love is in it, and she’s very good, but as for what the hell it all means- your idea is as good as mine.

I’ve sent the Romero article, after plenty of tweaking, and have currently got major pins and needles in my feet as a result of sitting at a very short chair at this terminal. The Serenity press conference is later on today, and I was interested to see that my previous comments fanned the flames of controversy (Hurrah!). I’m sure plenty of people will enjoy it, but- as someone who watched every season of Buffy and loved most of it (I could even cope with most of Season 6), this wasn’t the cinematic debut I was hoping for from Joss Whedon. To be honest, it’s more like Whedon’s script for Alien Resurrection than anything else- and (at least for me) it’s proof that it wasn’t just Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s kooky direction that messed up that movie.

Anyhow- got more to do, and am feeling better about doing it. I cross the halfway point today, and I think things may get easier to cope with from hereon in. I also had plenty of people calling up wishing me happy birthday yesterday, which made me feel an awful lot better.

Onwards…