Crampy so-so run

A late afternoon run today as temperatures are cooler now. Under hazy cloud, intermittent sun and 17ºC, I ran with the wind, against the wind and at one point mildly cursing the wind.

That one point was when the wind actually blew my cap right off my head. I snatched it out of the air with ninja-like reflexes and put it back on without breaking my stride. That was probably the highlight of my run. The other was the opening km, one of my fastest yet at 4:54/km — and that was without really trying at it. Such things encourage me.

It had been a week since my last run because my left shin had been feeling a bit tender and I wanted to give it a little time. While I could feel it today it didn’t hurt, had no impact on my time and felt fine afterward. A much larger impact was mid-run when I first got a cramp in my lower abdomen and then some minutes later another in my chest. These always have the same effect — they restrict how much air you can inhale and that inevitably slows me down. The averages during this part of the run, with 4 seconds between km, demonstrates the effect vividly.

My iPod cable proved to be vexing. I could not get it to stay tucked in my left pocket like normal and eventually just gave up, letting it swing all over, pretending it wasn’t really distracting me. I think I’ll finally use a velcro strip to cinch it up to the right length for the next run.

Chart (red denotes running in especially warm conditions, green denotes cramps during run):

km Aug 29 Aug 22 Aug 19 Aug 11 Aug 7 Aug 4
1 km 4:54 4:59 5:02 5:07 5:04 5:02
2 km 5:03 5:03 5:04 5:09 5:08 5:08
3 km 5:09 5:08 5:08 5:13 5:12 5:15
4 km 5:13 5:13 5:12 5:16 5:16 5:19
5 km 5:17 5:16 5:15 5:18 5:19 5:23
6 km 5:21 5:20 5:18 5:20 5:21 5:26
7 km 5:23 5:24 5:21 5:22 5:23 5:29
8 km 5:26 5:27 5:23 5:24 5:26 5:32
9 km 5:28 5:30 5:24 5:26 5:27 5:35
10 km 5:29 5:33 5:23 5:26 5:27 5:37

Stop turning the lights out!

On Saturday night around 8:30 or so the power went out. A check of the neighborhood showed the lights were on two blocks east, on the other side of Knight, but were out as far west as I could see. I later learned that the outage extended to Cambie Street. The power doesn’t go out often here so it’s always a novel experience. It took a couple of hours to be restored and in the meantime I skulked the darkened streets with a flashlight, talked to a couple of young women at Kingsway and Inverness who had never experienced a blackout (but were soothing their nerves with some glasses of red wine), then sat in the candlelight on the deck with the others until the lights came back on. It was slightly annoying to be so close to the next grid that stood unaffected. Oddly, all of the traffic lights on Knight appear to be on the unaffected grid save for the ones at the major intersection of Knight and Kingsway. Much horn-honking ensued there as people tried to figure out how to navigate without having red lights to peel through.

Two days later, shortly after 10 a.m. the power went out again. Annoying, but it was restored in about an hour this time. The power then went out a third time just past 6 p.m. It was restored within 15 or 20 minutes but still, whoever is responsible, stop pulling the plug already! The CBC News website reports that there was actually a fourth outage in a nearby area and the others are blamed on ‘problems’ at an electrical substation. Odder still is usually you think of these things happening in the summer when the grid gets overloaded due to air conditioners and so on but the weather the past few days has been seasonal, not really hot at all.

Am I the only one who starts thinking of end-of-the-world scenarios when the power goes out? There’s something primal about being a big city plunged into utter darkness that gets the mind going. When the aliens arrive, they’ll EMP-and-awe us, no doubt. One minute you’ll be watching Leno, next minute you’ll be slaves of Xantor and the Zerbinians.

Unintentional sun run

The forecast for today was calling for partly cloudy with a high around 20, so I figured I would run in the late afternoon instead of my usual early evening time. As it turned out, the clouds were all around the edges of the city with blue sky directly overhead. The sun blazed down on me the entire run. It was 21ºC in the shade when I headed out so probably a degree or two warmer in the sun and there was a fair breeze blowing.

My CTN (Cap Tug Number) was two.

On the bright (ho ho) side, my start was thew fastest in months, with the first km coming in just under the 5-minute mark at 4:59. The second km was also brisk. In fact, the fast start meant that I was pretty much on pace with my previous run up to the halfway mark, but by then the relentless sun, shining on me like a spotlight, began to take its toll and my pace flagged noticeably. By the last few km I was feeling baked (and not in the noted BC way) — my whole body had this weird and unpleasant swimmy feeling, my mouth was completely dry, including the tongue. Using a dry tongue to lick dry lips provides about as much relief as you’d expect. As a result, I staggered to the end 10 seconds off my previous pace.

I’ll be sticking to early evenings on sunny days from here on out.

The park was fairly quiet for a Sunday afternoon, though more people began filtering in toward the latter part of my run. One person had a black wiener dog and it made me think, that’s got to be the worst kind of dog to be when it’s hot. You’re covered in black fur, so you get maximum sun absorption and your body is so low to the ground you get bonus heat emanation from that when it’s hot out. A black wiener dog walking over a midday parking lot must feel like the proverbial hot dog. Fortunately this and the few other dogs present did not knock me down. I’m not paranoid about this happening again but I do maintain an extra level of vigilance now that it has happened.

I saw someone use the port-o-potty early in the run and on the next lap I could smell it — and for every lap thereafter. The good news is what I was smelling were the chemicals and not what the chemicals were for. I suppose y design, they don’t actually smell that bad. Still, port-o-potty odor is not on my list of neat things to smell when jogging.

Chart (red denotes running in especially warm conditions, green denotes cramps during run):

km Aug 22 Aug 19 Aug 11 Aug 7 Aug 4
1 km 4:59 5:02 5:07 5:04 5:02
2 km 5:03 5:04 5:09 5:08 5:08
3 km 5:08 5:08 5:13 5:12 5:15
4 km 5:13 5:12 5:16 5:16 5:19
5 km 5:16 5:15 5:18 5:19 5:23
6 km 5:20 5:18 5:20 5:21 5:26
7 km 5:24 5:21 5:22 5:23 5:29
8 km 5:27 5:23 5:24 5:26 5:32
9 km 5:30 5:24 5:26 5:27 5:35
10 km 5:33 5:23 5:26 5:27 5:37

Review: Strong and Silent Types (VQFF)

This year I’ve only managed to see one film at the VQFF but it’s a collection of five shorts, so that makes it feel like I’ve seen a lot more.

Strong and Silent Types also could have been called Those Crazy Gay Drunks as it seemed like every other character was an alcoholic. Is there something I don’t know about gay men? Spoilers ahoy below!

In order:

Last Call. This is the one high-concept piece in which an alcoholic (!) gay man seeks to reconcile with the guy who left him some time before. He manages to convince the ex to meet him, drives off and promptly gets into some kind of horrible accident (that you don’t actually see). Instead of ending up under a sheet at the local morgue, Gavin finds himself in a bar that is empty save for one of those wise older women that exist mainly as supporting characters in morality tales. She pours him three shots, which he refuses as he no longer drinks. She insists and each drink causes him to flashback to key moments in his relationship with Mark, the acoustic guitar-playing, singing and wanting-to-adopt-a-child guy he used to be with. They are set to adopt but Gavin is, well, a drunk. Instead they break up.

Gavin laments to his mystic barkeep that it’s a shame fate had decided he was to end up dead after finally getting a chance to meet with David again (by this time he realizes the bar is some kind of way-point on his journey to the afterlife). She assures him that she can undo the accident if he drinks the last shot, which has the look of fresh Windex. He gulps it down and finds himself back in the car. He heads off to meet Mark but as he pulls up he sees his ex kissing another guy and handing off a small child to him. It’s clear that Mark has taken his pale blue Japanese guitar and started making music with someone else. Gavin then finds himself back at the bar where the woman, who confesses she has never been in love, and thus has no particular insights to offer, reveals that well, maybe you really are dead after all. Oops, my bad! But go on and leave the bar and get ready for the afterlife.

The afterlife turns out to be a really bright dock on the ocean with a bench where Mark is waiting with guitar. The End.

If you’re scratching your head at this point, you’re probably not alone. Even given its Twilight Zone pedigree, the story doesn’t make much sense. Feeding booze to a recovering alcoholic should serve some purpose beyond a plot device but nope, that’s all it is. The wise old woman turns out to not be very wise. In fact, she’s not really much more insightful than an eggplant sitting on the counter would have been. At least if the barkeep had been young and good-looking there would have been some eye candy. The ‘you’re not really dead — oh, wait, yes you are!’ seemed pointless but mostly I’m baffled by the ending, which seems to suggest that the afterlife is a fantasy world where you get exactly what you want. I suppose there’s an undeniable appeal there but Gavin would presumably know that Mark was really back on Earth boffing his new BF and raising the son he was too drunk to commit to having. That might prove a bit distracting in fantasyland. Thumbs sideways.

Little Love. This is a simple story of cheaters and their cheatin’ ways. It starts with three friends, two of whom are a couple. One half of the couple flies off on a trip, the hot Latino other half invites the mutual friend over and they boff in an energetic sex scene. The boring other half of the couple comes back, finds out and is all “I trusted you!” and then it’s over. That’s really it. There is no particular insight offered here and the piece is so short (10 minutes) that there’s no room for any kind of character growth or development. The message seems to be ‘don’t cheat on your friend with his super-hot Latino boyfriend’. Good advice! The worst part of this short film, apart from some stilted dialogue and somewhat wooden performances (except in bed, oddly enough) is the poignant piano or PP as I call it. This is heard throughout most of the shorts and is used to telegraph emotional moments, of which there are many, judging from the virtual poignant piano concertos taking place. You can hear a lot of the PP in the trailer for the film. At least there are no alcoholics in this short.

Disarm. A 30-something guy arranges to meet a 20-something guy through an online hookup site but instead of having sex, they engage in a wide-ranging conversation about sex, being gay, childhood, drinking and more. The 18-minute short is a character study and much of it a study of contrasts — the bitter older man still recovering from the wounds of his childhood and growing up gay, set against the glib young man who resolutely declares how masculine he is and how much he hates ‘fems’. They come to verbal blows, with the older man telling the young man that he both sounds and walks like a gay man — something the younger man obviously takes to heart as he ‘adjusts’ his stride after leaving the older man’s apartment. At times amusing and revealing, this is one of the stronger shorts in the presentation.

Promise. Oof. This one features an alcoholic, poignant piano, two essentially unlikable characters, a few unintentionally funny lines and a simulated rape. And it’s a comedy.

Just kidding about the comedy part.

This is a dour drama about a relationship falling apart. Stu (alcoholic) and Chris are about to get married but Stu has broken the somewhat arbitrary rules of their premarital open relationship by ‘double-dipping’ with another man by going back to him for another round of lovin’. This results in a lot of yelling, accusations both real and imagined and ends with Chris pulling off Stu’s clothes, throwing him on their bed and raping him over Stu’s loud and persistent protests. The film ends the next morning with the two of them meeting in the hallway of their home, both dressed for the wedding, though it is deliberately left as an open question of whether they will go through with the ceremony or not. “We have to,” Stu protests the night before, “all those people are showing up!” While the actors here are mostly fine, they are given dialogue that is pretty stiff at time and really, both of them come off as jerks you’d be happy not knowing, so I’m not sure what the point of the film was, except to perhaps show that not all gay men are witty and carefree like on Will & Grace. This may have worked better as a feature-length piece where the characters could have been fleshed out more. Hard to recommend.

Professor Godoy. The lightest and most daring short comes from Brazil. It features a classic premise, succinctly summed up by Van Halen as ‘hot for teacher’. In this case the teacher is a stern and exacting math professor at a private school, who tells us in the narration that he has always counted the exact number of steps to the school where he teaches ‘brats’ who ‘never grow older’ while he does. His dull routines change when one of his students, a young man named Felipe, starts including cryptic math-themed notes with his assignments that indicate an attraction to the professor. Godoy is initially repulsed, and rebuffs the attempts, until one night he finds himself waking up from a wet dream about Felipe. Awkward.

Even more awkward, Felipe shows up at Godoy’s home and gives him a slip of paper with an address on it, telling him to meet him in two hours (it’s okay, Felipe explains, they are no longer in school). Godoy says he will do no such thing and of course ends up sitting on a park bench at the appointed time. Felipe arrives and the film ends with a silent montage of the two on the bench, telling stories and laughing.

While the subject is provocative, the writer-director (who was at the screening and took questions after) plays it fairly safe — there is no sex depicted, not even touching or an errant kiss. Even at the end it’s ambiguous what sort of relationship the two men will have. Still, the actors are natural and the presentation is almost light enough that one might be inclined to call it innocent, if not for the actual subject matter. The director, Gui Ashcar, admitted in the Q&A after that the fantasy sequence — which consists of the two alone in the classroom, each at their desks and with Felipe advancing through a sequence of blackouts, toward Godoy — was originally meant to be less a fantasy and more explicit but as they were filming in an actual school, there was pressure to keep things a little more PG-rated. Another mark in the film’s favor is the beautiful cinematography, easily the best of all the short features. This was perhaps the only one to actually have the imprint of a director interested in telling a story, not simply teaching a lesson. Ultimately a pleasant diversion but not much more. Still, thumbs up.

Bear with me: August 2010 trip to Duncan and Youbou

I finally got to heading over to the island again for the weekend of August 14-15th (I actually came back on the 16th) and as it happened it was during the annual heatwave, with record-setting high temperatures being set all over the province.

The ferry trip over was mostly pleasant, especially when the father of the family sitting behind me told his young daughter to stop kicking the back of my seat. Thanks, dad! A trip to the sundeck was marred by the presence of (permitted) smokers and a stiff breeze that nearly sent my cap off into the strait. I would have arrived on the island traumatized if that had happened. I really like my green cap.

After meeting mom and the dog, we headed first to Youbou, as it had been several years since I’d seen my sister Carole and her husband Gary. They had new digs on Lake Cowichan and this was my first chance to check them out.

Their house is…big. It has about 20 bathrooms, 15 bedrooms and a kitchen the size of my entire suite. I may be exaggerating a little. But only a little! It took me awhile to figure out where the music was coming from before I realized they had an integrated sound system that piped music into the house, onto the deck and even down to the dock.

We spent a good while sitting in the (relative) cool of the shade on the deck provided by a large umbrella. By this time of the afternoon temperatures were peaking at around 33ºC. We listened to talked o’ the lake, including one centering around a bear that had been seen for a period of several weeks trundling through the properties on this side of the lake. After calling conservation officers about it, the homeowners were informed that two bears had been shot. Poor things. That’ll teach them to wander through no-bears land! Carole pointed to the area just below the deck where the bear had been observed walking westward. A bylaw prevents property owners from landscaping or interfering with the natural growth along the shoreline, so to the bear, it probably just looked like his usual route to wherever it is that bears go.

We next moved down to the dock, which also had a large umbrella. There was a decent breeze coming off the lake and occasionally it would gust very suddenly. Several hats were nearly lost. I had made sure mine was affixed to the top of my head as securely as possible. I don’t swim well, so jumping in the lake after it would probably not have gone well. We then returned inside where preparations were made for a de-luxe dinner of steak, prawns, potatoes, cauliflower and halibut. Mmm. Post-dinner found Gary and me watching a National Geographic program which featured, among other animals, bears, much like the ones that had been shot here. Carole and mom headed outside to check the gardens. Carole pulled a few weeds and threw them down toward the shore. As she did this, the bush the weeds fell on moved. Gary looked to me as she began yelling. “Did she say ‘bear’?” he asked. More yelling followed. My mom was racing up the side of the house and around to the front, to a door that Gary had locked earlier. Much pounding on the door ensued. When all were safely inside, we stepped out onto the deck to see a black bear meandering along the exact same path as the others that had supposedly been shot. “A flesh wound, perhaps,” I suggested. I only managed one somewhat obscured photo but here is a cropped close-up where you can clearly see a bear-like shape in amongst the bushes. You can see the full-size image in the gallery.

After the bear excitement we headed back to Duncan to enjoy the sweltering heat of a mobile home that did not have its air conditioning turned on.

The next day was highlighted by a trip to Barry and Brenda’s for dinner (fresh salmon, potatoes and corn, mmm). The only notable wild presence there were a few persistent bees and one deer that walked up through the vacant lot between their house and the next. Apparently all it took to keep them from coming in and devouring all of their backyard gardens was the construction of a $4,000 fence. Easy!

After dinner I asked for some paper and a pen to record a few thoughts, as I was without my usual notebook. Naturally, this resulted in an inquiry as to what I was writing. I jotted down some details about a rather pampered young man who had been helping Barry with the drywalling. At the age of 18 he still did not know how to tie shoe laces — because he always wore shoes with Velcro. This is more proof of how technology is making us dumber and how Douglas Adams’ future vision of a world run by hairdressers is getting closer to reality. Hairdressers with Velcro shoes.

The other thing I wrote down was something I had quickly dubbed ‘Duncan Interruptus’ though to be fair I don’t think it’s a phenomenon exclusive to Duncan but more just small towns in general. It goes like this: In Vancouver, when there is a conversation taking place, things proceed about how you’d expect. Someone says something, then someone else comments. The conversation continues on like this, back and forth. In Duncan, however, Person A will start talking then Person B will interrupt with a question, comment or some tangential story or even something that has nothing to do with the current topic of conversation. Person C will then do the same to Person B. From this point forward, any of the three might start talking over the others and subjects are quickly abandoned in favor of another or another still. I have lost count of how many unfinished stories I have heard in Duncan. I have to interrupt to find out how they turn out. It’s a little irritating at times but mostly just odd. I haven’t really figured out why it happens.

For the ferry ride back, I took my cap off when I went up to the sundeck, but the smell of smoke kept me from staying long once again. I think smokers should have to climb into a little dinghy being pulled behind the ship, but that’s just me. I remember ferries were for a time exclusively no-smoking. I wonder why they decided to let them open them back up to smoking and at the same time restrict the activity to one pathetically small section of the outside deck (it has lines to mark exactly where smoking is A-OK).

Overall, the trip was rather pleasant, if a mite on the warm side. You can see a gallery of my mediocre photos here.

Misty morning run

After a trip to the island and a heatwave I finally got back in the jogging groove for the first time since The Dog Incident.

I opted for a morning run, leaving around 10:20 a.m. A marine system had come in, making it a much cooler 13ºC, with a light drizzle falling the entire time. The inclement weather meant I had the park nearly to myself. There were three other joggers out at various times but I only saw two people with their dogs. One was playing fetch with a woman who defiantly wore a bikini top despite the chilly morning, the other was on a leash that appeared to be a very long rope. Seriously, it looked like it was about a hundred meters long, like the guy had designed it so the dog could go scouting way up ahead for danger. If the leash suddenly grew slack and the owner pulled it back, only to find the last couple of meters were bloody and sans dog, the owner would know danger was ahead and could alter his course. And get a new dog. Fortunately, neither dog got under my feet and knocked me down.

The other notable person in the park was a guy who was, as they say, mentally challenged. He carried with him a plastic bag and when I first saw him he was rooting through a storage box at the eastern baseball diamond. Funny I had never noticed the storage box before. If it had been locked at some point, it certainly wasn’t now. He did not find anything desirable within it and let the lid slam shut with a loud bang as I ran by. He took no notice of me — yet.

However, this was to change. He must have gotten a bit warm or decided to bathe because he took off his jacket and his shirt. Topless, he then knelt down between the baseball diamond and the path, allowing the drizzle to fall over him. This time as I ran past he called out to me. I had the earphones on so I couldn’t discern the words, but he kept exhorting about…something. I was mildly concerned that the next lap would find him stark naked and blocking the way. Fortunately, he instead donned his shirt and jacket and ambled off instead.

As for the run, it went very well. I finished with my best time since April, clocking in at 54:06, my closest to breaking 54 minutes since then. My average pace was 5:23/km and my first two laps were a brisk 5:02 and 5:04. I also officially passed the 600 km mark on the Nike+. I am pleased with the results, especially with a one-week layoff.

Chart (red denotes running in especially warm conditions, green denotes cramps during run):

km Aug 19 Aug 11 Aug 7 Aug 4
1 km 5:02 5:07 5:04 5:02
2 km 5:04 5:09 5:08 5:08
3 km 5:08 5:13 5:12 5:15
4 km 5:12 5:16 5:16 5:19
5 km 5:15 5:18 5:19 5:23
6 km 5:18 5:20 5:21 5:26
7 km 5:21 5:22 5:23 5:29
8 km 5:23 5:24 5:26 5:32
9 km 5:24 5:26 5:27 5:35
10 km 5:23 5:26 5:27 5:37

“Chemist needed”

There was a video store about six blocks away from here in the mini-mall at Kingsway and Fraser. It closed a few months ago. Aw. But then it re-opened as a triple-X adult video store. Ew. But the thing that got me curious was this sign I saw in its window as I walked by today:

First, it’s interesting that they put the word ‘legal’ in there, like it’s an attempt to ward off the police investigating. “It’s all on the up and up, officer!” Second, I would assume an adult video store would have a variety of creams, lotions and oils to provide interesting sensations to its customers while they engage in the pursuit of carnal knowledge, so why would they need someone to come onboard to apparently craft entirely new ones? Cutting out the middle man? Reducing costs? Being able to brand it with their own unique identity? (“Tony’s Titillating Talcum!”) It is nice that you can call Tony ANY TIME, though. Maybe he’ll hire some enterprising chemistry student from UBC. Hopefully they won’t blow up the mini-mall.

Dogged run

Tonight’s run was done under pleasant conditions: 21ºC, sunny and a light breeze.

Little did I know the four-legged doom to come!

The first thing I notice when I get to the park is a lot more dogs than usual, most of them gathered in the southeast corner of the field. It looks like some kind of training event. I am a bit wary at the sheer number of our canine friends. I don’t worry about being attacked by dogs or anything like that, but in the park they tend to run and play and not pay attention to where they are going, much like little kids.

I set off. My starting km is average but I seem to be clicking along fine. Around the 4K mark I hear something above the ELO playing on my iPod and a guy goes jogging past me on my right. The nerve! He also has silver hair. I don’t care if he’s only 22, it rankles me. I make a mild effort to catch up but he keeps inching ahead. I opt to bide my time and merely keep pace until I can pull the ol’ tortoise and the hare routine.

At just under 5K I am coming out of the southwest corner of the path. I spot a pair of small dogs playing just off the path to my left. That’s fine. They’re not in my way. I jog by them and think nothing more of it. A few moments later I glance down and spot fur at my feet. This isn’t good. There is no time to register anything else over the next couple of seconds, the events just happen and my body reacts automatically. My feet catch on the dogs and I tumble forward, my hands going out to catch my fall. I hit the ground with both palms and my left knee. I get partway up and look back to the dogs, which are already off playing elsewhere, oblivious to the events. “Stupid dogs,” I mutter, but what I’m really thinking is “stupid dog owner” and then my eyes meet with one of them. He stands there and looks at me blankly. I am still hearing ELO but his lips aren’t moving.

I decide the run is more important and get back up, resuming my pace without even stopping to brush the dirt away.

A short time later I see a little kid on a bike ahead of me, standing squarely in the middle of the path. He looks to be making a wobbly attempt to move forward. I can see where this is heading, especially as the front wheel of the bike starts turning in my direction. I shout, “Look out, kid!” as I give him a wide berth. My run is being partly fueled by anger at this point.

Later still a woman is crossing from the field, across the path, to the street. We are on a direct collision course. She remains utterly oblivious to my approach. If I had been inclined to, I could have easily blindsided her and knocked her down flat. Instead, I loop around her and mutter something about paying attention. Original I am not.

I finish with a time of 54:29 and an average pace of 5:26 — my best 10K since April! The extra zest of being miffed has clearly given me an extra boost. Despite this, I am hoping I do not trip over any more dogs in the future. I’d rather get my extra boosts through things like inspiration or divine providence or something.

Chart (red denotes running in especially warm conditions, green denotes cramps during run):

km Aug 11 Aug 7 Aug 4
1 km 5:07 5:04 5:02
2 km 5:09 5:08 5:08
3 km 5:13 5:12 5:15
4 km 5:16 5:16 5:19
5 km 5:18 5:19 5:23
6 km 5:20 5:21 5:26
7 km 5:22 5:23 5:29
8 km 5:24 5:26 5:32
9 km 5:26 5:27 5:35
10 km 5:26 5:27 5:37

Bonus shot of my grubby hands after the run:

Soggy summer run

Today was the first day of rain in over a month, a welcome respite even for Vancouverites. I had delayed my run by one day knowing and even welcoming the chance to run in a brisk shower. Crazy, I know.

A light rain fell through the length of the run and the temperature was a much cooler 15ºC, a full 10 degrees cooler than my previous run. The difference in the results is plain in the chart below, as my pace was dramatically improved through the middle and final stretches.

Not surprisingly, the park was nearly deserted, save for a few dedicated dog walkers and one other lone jogger who left not too long after I started.

I had no problems of note on the run and actually put in a bit of an extra effort to maintain my pace the last few km, with good results to show for it. I typically overdressed by wearing my running jacket and had it tied around my waist before hitting 2 km. The iPod was once again unruly and I was unable to stop the workout until the 10.1 km mark, about 80m farther than I planned. On the plus side, my pace for that 100m was a brisk 5:12/km. 😛

Overall time was 55:04 and probably under 55 minutes if you just count up to 10K. Average pace was 5:27, matching my best since returning to 10Ks last month.

Chart (red denotes running in especially warm conditions, green denotes cramps during run):

km Aug 7 Aug 4
1 km 5:04 5:02
2 km 5:08 5:08
3 km 5:12 5:15
4 km 5:16 5:19
5 km 5:19 5:23
6 km 5:21 5:26
7 km 5:23 5:29
8 km 5:26 5:32
9 km 5:27 5:35
10 km 5:27 5:37

Review: Pandorum

I rented Pandorum because I knew it was a “scary spaceship movie” like Event Horizon. I didn’t know any of the details about what made it scary. I liked going in without really knowing anything about it.

This review contains spoilers, so skip to the last paragraph if you just want my final take on the movie.

It turns out that Pandorum is not actually scary, working more as a mystery and then as both an action and psychological thriller. The story begins with two crew members waking up from hypersleep on a massive spaceship that appears to be partially disabled. Intermittent rumblings signal the ship’s reactor getting ready to shut down, giving the movie its main plot point as they characters race to get to the reactor to reset it. Along the way they discover what the ship’s mission was, who they are and what ‘pandorum’ is — the madness that grips some people after extended periods of hypersleep.

You can see where this is going.

I found Pandorum to be likable enough but unremarkable. It moved along at a decent pace and there was nothing horrible about it, but also nothing especially noteworthy, either. It’s the kind of film that you start poking holes in immediately after viewing. Dennis Quaid continues the trend toward playing crazy as he ages and I’ll admit he does a pretty good job of it. Ben Foster, who plays the engineer, brings a grounded quality to Bower that I enjoyed, especially compared to the other supporting characters, all of whom are pretty stock — the beautiful but dangerous woman, the eccentric but dangerous older man, the fierce and dangerous younger man (who bafflingly speaks a different language than the other characters, for no reason I could determine), the young, insane and hey, dangerous! man. You get the idea.

It turns out that these people are on the Elysium, a colony ship carrying tens of thousands of people to the Earth-like planet Tanis some 123 years away. The stakes are raised by two factors: the discovery that Earth somehow went kablooey shortly after Elysium took off and at some point in its voyage something went horribly wrong, leading to the ship being invaded by vicious humanoid mutants who dress like Mad Max extras and carry around blue flashlights that they enjoy waving around ominously as they scuttle down hallways. At first the mutants are presented in fleeting glimpses, flashes of teeth and sinewy limbs lashing out. Since they are the antagonists of the story, this doesn’t continue and as they are revealed more in full and further explained as being mutated humans from the ship itself, the menace is completely bled out of their presence. The other primary source of tension in the film

Several times the characters comment on the massive size of the ship yet the film never adequately conveys this, as the darkly-lit corridors and tunnels the characters spend most of their time running down are very generic. You do get a few moments where larger spaces are shown but they feel disconnected from the rest of the design. Naturally, there are the obligatory chambers with water pouring down for no reason, as established in Alien over 30 years ago. The worst offender design-wise is the reactor room showcased in the movie’s penultimate scene. Not only does it improbably serve as the breeding ground for the mutants, its design is straight out of the original Star Wars, with Ben Foster filling in the Obi Wan Kenobi role as he walks on a narrow gangway out to the reactor controls. Naturally there are no handrails of any sort on this narrow gangway and naturally the gangway starts to collapse as soon as he starts walking across it, all the better to slide off into the giant mass o’ mutants sleeping below. As he gingerly makes his way out of the slithering mass of very mean things, the dangerous some-other-language man suddenly drops his flashlight, its clanging causing all of the mutants to wake up. I’d think a little metal tube clanging off a pipe wouldn’t seem like much in the bowels of a giant nuclear reactor (that causes the entire ship to shudder violently from time to time) but these mutants are very sensitive to plot-driven sound effects.

Once the reactor is fired up in the nick of time, a number of mutants are shown being obliterated by it. Somehow the good guys are impervious to this, even though they are clearly in the same space as the mutants. No bother. Time to reunite with Dennis “crazy eyes” Quaid for the final confrontation on the bridge. The pandorum-fueled struggle here results in the glass being cracked. One might hope that an interstellar ship carrying the last hope for humanity on a trip over 100 years in length would have invested in at least double-glazed windows but apparently not. Failing that, an emergency bulkhead would seal the bridge off from the rest of the ship. Nope. Instead a hull breach emergency is declared. Time to evacuate! In the movie’s final twist, it is revealed that the Elysium is actually already on Tanis, sitting partially submerged in an ocean off the coast of some landmass. How it managed to land in the ocean fully intact and without any of its windows breaking is not explained.

The film ends with Bower and Nadia, the dangerous woman/botanist escaping to the surface in a life pod, tasked with repopulating the human species. Get to work, kids! Okay, other pods are seen popping onto the surface of the ocean and the end card indicates a population of 1,213.

Pandorum isn’t a bad movie but it’s hard to recommend because there is nothing about it that stands out. If you’re hankering for a competently-made science fiction thriller it’s entirely serviceable, otherwise I’d recommend something a little more thoughtful, like Sunshine.