Saturday

Since nobody sleeps as late as I do, Sunshine and her parents met for breakfast and hit a few antique stores* before I woke up today. They went on to look at another antique store while I ate my breakfast at a little sidewalk sushi place across the street. I am usually prejudiced against sidewalk or strip mall sushi, but this little place proved me wrong, again. All my favorite places have, actually; why do I still expect bad Japanese food from them? I ate tasty slivers of cool sashimi and tempura udon soup--a lunch special. It was small but good. After my lunch, we headed down the street to a dense little used book shop smaller on the inside than on the outside. It was such a nice day: brightly sunny and mid-seventies, slightly breezy. I could stand to spend a whole season of days like this in book stores like that. Throughout the rest of the day we followed a similar meandering path: to the coffee shop, to the thrift store, home for more coffee; eventually we headed to Maryland for a Lebanese dinner and a movie. We had to stand up all the way to our connection, the several local Saturday night games crowded the inbound orange line trains with Washington fans. In Silver Spring, we watched John Carpenter's wily and endearing Big Trouble in Little China (1986),* brisker and more dazzling each time I see it. Trucker and impassioned crank Jack Burton gets embroiled in a succession of fantastic problems after winning a thousand bucks playing a tile game in some seedy Chinatown loading dock. Why are the Lords of Death stealing green-eyed women? Why is light coming from the mouth of David Lo Pan? What would Jack Burton say? So highly recommended. [Cavin]