Well, seeing as Saturday has been so well reported on already, how about I tell you about Friday night and Sunday?

Friday afternoon had been pretty tense at work - we were doing a final proofread/edit of a submission….it’s a long story but there were quite a few arguments and some unnecessarily narky attitudes. I think the final wash-up was that I got my way most of the time (me being the most junior person in the place) but I had to fight hard and put up with a lot of crap.

So, I was quite relieved to get out of the office and head in to the Valley with Lara to grab a quick dinner at the Purple Olive before heading to the movies. The Purple Olive (79 James St, near the Queen’s Arms pub) is one of those places that isn’t wanky enough to get raved about, but still has really good food at reasonable prices. I had char-grilled octopus which was awesome - a huge mound of baby octopus with some wild rice and a rocket-type salad. Lara had some pork dish with veggies (and I think prawns) which she also enjoyed.

Then we went to the Palace to see American Splendor. This is a great movie, and probably the only really good movie I’ve seen since Ghost World. Here’s the real-life background: there’s a guy, Harvey Pekar, who writes comic books about his own life - just ordinary, real life events - but can’t draw so he gets some friends to illustrate them. He’s not a pretty bloke, his friends are a motley crew and his life isn’t a barrel of laughs. So, in making a movie about this guy, what you actually want is a documentary, because it would be stupid to use big-name actors and use fancy editing or special effects, because the whole basis for the movie is the real-life comic books this guy came up with.

So, what they do is, they have the real Harvey Pekar doing interviews and narrative, and only use actors to recreate scenes in his life where there is no real footage. Where there is real footage (like when he went on Letterman a few times) they seamlessly go from the actors to the real footage. I know it sounds complex, and it does take a while to work out exactly what they’re doing, but it’s never confusing and it works really well. Imagine if there was a documentary about the guy who inspired Kramer on Seinfeld and they talked to him a bit, but also used Michael Richards to recreate scenes from his life, and that’s the kind of thing they’ve done. Bah, it’s too hard to explain, just go and see it.

Let’s get back on track. You’ve already heard about Saturday, so I won’t recreate that in my own long-winded style.

Sunday, Lara and I went for a drive out to Wynnum and then Wellington Point, and finally out to Cleveland Point for lunch at the Grand View hotel. There’s some really nice spots out in Redland Bay - surprisingly so - and it could be a nice place to live if you didn’t work in the city. The food at the Grand View was great, slightly expensive for a pub, but the quality (and cheap beers) made up for it. I had fish and chips and Lara had barramundi with prawns - I forget the fancy menu name for it.

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