for the love of a dream

I've had my eye for a while on a series called Aaa! Megami-samaa, which translates roughly to "Ah! My Goddess!". The series typically is noted for its fabulous artwork, which I've been known to use from time to time. I'd always been curious whether the shows was as good as its story and artwork suggests. Lucky me, Cliff D the Anime Man took note of my curiosity and bought the entire dvd oeuvre: 5 sessions on 2 dvds, plus a feature-length movie. Having worked my way through all 5 sessions, I can say without reservation that it's some of the best anime I've seen. Not because it's great art or anything, I guess, but for whatever reason it really resonated. I love it. I like all the characters, I like the story, I like the pacing, I love the artwork, it's all good. To me it seems to fulfill the promise of anime as a vehicle for mature, fanciful drama as opposed to "manga-in-motion". And frankly I was surprised, I figured it was probably good, but not THAT great, otherwise I would've heard more about it. I guess not all great things are famous. :)
Granted, it's very lonely on the road so a story about a lovesick guy and his goddess girlfriend is almost guaranteed to dwell deep. Still. It's like a happy dream.

Washington Jr.

Welcome to Idaho, home of good potatoes (not that I would know) and not much else. My dad has hella roots here though (he was born in Salmon), so here we are. Not that I'm complaining or anything, I mean Grandma's house is pretty much unbridled good eatin and doin whatever.
Sunday was a road day, going from Lodi to Elko, NV through Reno. Don't think any of us had really been there before, so that was pretty cool. We made our way to Harrah's for really good sandwiches among the video poker machines and next to the horse booking bar. Reno is a lot smaller than you'd think (or at least smaller than I thought) but it's very very Nevada. Cheap breakfast food, slot machines stuffed in every corner, and more flashy lights and neon per square foot than should be legal. Pretty much a spectacle. Scary people everywhere, too. I guess it was a Sunday afternoon, I'm assuming the place really lights up at night. We were in and out of there pretty fast, we had lots of hours left before Elko. We stopped in Battle Mountain for dinner, and thanks to Streets & Trips (our lifeline these two weeks) found Mama's Pizza on the outskirts of town. Lucky us: they served up some of the best pizza any of us had had in a long time. Figures. Find yourself a really good pizza place, and it's 2 hours from nothing in the middle of Nevada. Oh well, there's always Frankie's in Redmond.
heh... Battle Mountain cut a huge "BM" in the hills outside of town.
Our motel in Elko was very new but kinda small and chinsy. They had a big TV, and good beds, but a terrible AC system and tiny bathrooms. None of us slept well.
The Elko -> Shelley drive was quite uneventful, except for the "Gyro Bandito" lunch thing. See, the map showed a Gyro place up the street and a "Taco Bandito" place nearby. We passed the taco place and it said "Gyro Bandito", and the Gyro place wasn't where the map said, so it turned out we were eating at a Greek Mexican place. You'd think such a combination would be unable to make either cuisine well, but my gyro was very good and the burritos were apparantly ok too, so I guess that showed us.
So now we're at Grandma's for 3 full days. We found some cheap cars in the paper, so we'll probably do some shopping at some point, whee. Other than that it's good food, movies, and video games. Sounds like a vacation or something! I said last night I sensed this trip going downhill, but maybe it's just changing gears. I hope. Less sightseeing and events, more visiting and filling time.