In which there is activity occurring Behind the Scenes, a stealth movie review, stealthier jam-eating, and a magical sight I may never see again.

So.

I am not dead! I know you were all concerned. Nor have I abandoned this blog. In fact, there are a good 25 place-holder posts stored here in my account waiting to be completed, edited, and posted. I THINK that they will post up BEFORE this post, in "date created" order rather than "date posted" order, but we shall see.

Now.

The other night, I went to see Tim Burton's Corpse Bride at the Grove with Shosho, Ben, Peter, and Michelle. Shosho and I met up before the show and went over to Morels, an Epcot-style French bistro which can either suck or be delicious depending on how carefully one orders. Its main redeeming quality is its extensive cheese list, from which one can design one's own cheese sampler. Sadly, they have no olives, fruits, nuts, honey, or other accompaniment to their cheeses, merely toasted slices of baguette which are unceremoniously piled atop the cheeses. Knowing this, however, I decided, to Shosho's amusement, to run over to Crate and Barrel in search of quince paste. I found no quince paste (Jess pointed out that had I ventured further afield, to Sur La Table, I would likely have been succesful in this quest), but I did find some Stonewall Kitchens sour cherry jam, which served the purpose nicely. We had Epoisses, a hard raw sheep's milk, an aged Gruyere, Cabrales, and a goat's milk brie that was tasty but not as exciting as the other four. Since Morels also has a decent selection of wines by the glass, I was quite happy with our impromptu dinner.

We all enjoyed the movie, though the biggest spike of excitement was for the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire trailer, which was genuinely and surprisingly thrilling. Ben, being an adult in literary sensibility and not mere chronology, was a bit alarmed by the glee with which the rest of us received it, but, frankly, so was I (though awfully glad to have partners in my demented fangirl glee). Apparently my days of total geekdom are not over, no matter how many pairs of designer shoes I own. I always wanted a secret identity, I just didn't think it would be on such a prosaic level as that of conflicting consumer cultures.

Anyway, I don't have that much to say about Corpse Bride; the animation was lovely, the set designs beautiful, the puppets grotesquely appealing, and the music all good fun. I would be inclined to say that if you like Tim Burton in general, you will like this as well, but it may be too on-the-nose for die-hard Burtonites, and may in fact be better appreciated by those with a less exacting interest in his ouevre. Despite the grotesqueries involved, it's very much a kids' movie, with the same narrative sense of adult relationships shown in a film like Shrek. Though the identity of the villain was no surprise (nor was the film's switch from its pallid, though lovely, pallette of grey tones in the land of the living to the vibrant (ahem, "living") color of the world of the Dead), I thought the movie managed to create a genuinely poignant tension from its main love triangle, and its resolution was actually lyrical and rather moving.

After the movie, we sat at one of the Grove's many sidewalk cafe/bars, as the boys and Michelle had arrived only in time for the movie and none of us had really gotten a chance to chat. For you non-Angelenos, the Grove is an open-air mall that strives to be upscale and classically designed, with vaguely Italianate building designs along a wide central boulevard. It has a tram, and a "dancing" (that is, occasionally lit and opera-blasting in time to sprays of water)fountain at its center. Thus, when I thought I saw a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye, I assumed (in a "what fresh hell is this?" sort of way) that it was just part of the Grove's general penchant for decorative and pyrotechnic melodrama.

In fact, it was not.

It was LIGHTNING. Which I determined only after the fourth or fifth such flash was accompanied by a not-terribly-delicate-at-ALL sound of THUNDER. And then it began to RAIN, really HARD.

This is the rough weather equivalent of a snowstorm in Minnesota in June (I don't say May, since I recall THAT event's happening at least twice just in my jr. high to post-college years). Or, perhaps more accurately, a 68 degree day in the middle of January. It is not so completely outside the realm of possibility as to make one look over one's shoulder for approaching swarms of locusts, but it is Decidedly Odd, in a town which rarely has thunderstorms even in the rainy season, and almost never has rain outside the rainy season at all. September? Not the rainy season. September is the holy-mother-of-god-why-is-it-so-muggy-and-hot-and-smoggy-and-why-oh-why-do-I-not-live-in-a-place-with-proper-SEASONS season, followed shortly by October's wow-now-it's-REALLY-hot-and-muggy-and-the-rest-of-the-country's-hills-are-aflame-with-one-of-nature's-most-dependably-glorious-displays-while-OUR-hills-are-merely-AFLAME season. December-March is really the rainy season, and the thunderstorms, when they show up at all, seem to primarily show up in March (at least in the 8 years I've been here).

Anyway. We made our way back to the parking garage, just as the rain stopped. Or paused, as it started to rain again, lightly, when I was about halfway home.

And then the magic happened.

I should set this all up by noting that I am out of wiper fluid, and have been for a while, and have not replaced it because a)one doesn't tend to need it all that often out here b)the auto store near my house only sells a horrible green kind that I vowed to never buy again and c)for some reason the last 5 gas stations I've stopped at do not carry it (probably so homeless men won't try to be industrious). So, I've been keeping my windows clean by squeegeeing them when I get gas. Yes, I know, not great form. Shush. The point is...

When I turned on my wipers, my windshield was initially a bit blurry, as it is when it first deals with a splash of liquid. As it cleared, however, I realized that some strange combination of whatever film remained on the glass and the way the wipers were distributing the water over/under/within it was creating a dazzling light show (well, okay, I realized this after looking out my driver's side window and seeing no such thing; my original thought was that some of the "wild" mushrooms in my post-movie soup may have in fact been "magic"). Ordinarily, the rain/dark/water will create a slight blurring arround oncoming headlights, streetlights, or what have you. Instead, my windshield created around every light source a maypole ribbon tracer, of width varying by size and source of light, arcing across the length and width of the glass and moving in syncronized and occasionally syncopated dances as I made my way across town. It was possibly the most spectacular light show I've ever seen. From the thin red early-80's-science-museum-laser lines of distant stop lights to the vibrant intersections of pink and gold swaths created by the neon lights in the Thai Town strip of Hollywood Boulevard, the spectacle these reflections (or refractions?) created almost made me feel like I was looking into another dimension, or seeing our own through non-human eyes.

It's a damn good thing there wasn't much traffic, because I was WAAAAY more interested in gaping at the shiny pretty light matrices than I was in paying scrupulous attention to the road itself.

It was one of the coolest and most random things I've ever had the privilege of seeing, and I doubt I will again, as the thunderstorm set in properly by the morning, and my windshield was properly clean by the time I drove to work.