Walk Like an Egyptian

Yesterday I spent 3.5 hours in the Royal Ontario Museum by myself. Since I'm moving so soon, I'm trying to sop up all of the Toronto I can handle. I haven't been to the ROM in years, but I still remembered where everything was. (Although I don't remember the Bat Cave being that scary ever.) The highlight (and the real reason I went) was the Eternal Egypt exhibit which I've been wanting to see since February. It was all very neat and impressive, but this one tiny 3000-year-old drawing of a lion and some birds on papyrus kind of freaked me out. It looked like it could have been a cel from The Lion King or something. The drawing style was almost...Disney-esque? It's weird how a scribe thousands of years ago drew a lion the same way that an animator today draws a lion. I suppose people are people, and people breathe and walk and eat and fuck and draw cute cartoon lions in essentially the same way, thousands of years apart. (I can't think of a better way to explain the weirdness than that.)

Another freaky thing: in the art deco section of the ROM, they had this section devoted to the most popular material of the 20th century - plastic. They had stuff like dishes and furniture and knick-knicks all made out of different variations of plastic, and one of the knick-knacks was a Flintstones popsicle mould in its original packaging. You know, those plastic containers with Fred or Betty or Wilma or Bam-Bam on them that you would fill with orange juice and stick in your freezer so you could have home-made popsicles when you were a kid? Yeah, those were there. Something that I have USED is in a MUSEUM. That's weird and scary and wrong.

Later on, I met up with Liz, Carolyn and Juliet for dinner at a cute little restaurant on Harbord. We sat on the outdoor patio and had cheap (but delicious) white wine and talked until it got dark. It officially felt like summer.

Four more days of work. Nine more days of Toronto. Despite the fact that my possessions now belong in museums, I'm still young enough to have fresh starts. That's comforting.

(Now Playing: "Goddess on a Highway", Mercury Rev)