Campout in Julian

The campout was pretty good. There were only three of us Pawnee, but it was Acacia's two best friends, and, coincidentally, two of mine, so it was a good combination. It was waaay out by Julian, and 4000 feet up the mountain there, so it was bitingly cold, but we got through it.

They asked me (*asked* me!) to play two songs at the Nation campfire, so I did "The Three Mile Hike" (Princess words superimposed on, of course, the Gilligan's Island theme), and closed the show with my "Goodnight Irene (Princess version)". I had a whole two minutes' notice, so I fumbled quite a lot on "Hike", because I have to slide the capo in real time to affect the 4 half-step key changes, which is pretty tricky even when I've practiced the move, and my hands aren't frozen. With no practice, frozen hands, and campfire smoke blowing into me with an inopportune wind shift, it was quite a trick.

Afterwards, we have our own tribal campfire, but I spent the remainder of the evening setting up the telescope to peek at Jupiter, so I didn't play much.

But at the end of the Big campfire, they asked me to whip up "God Bless America" (!) for the morning show. Not exactly your usual guitar-oriented folk song... I spent the early morning working that up, and got a passable rendition ready in time. They sure have (unfounded) faith in my abilities. I guess my problem is that I haven't let 'em down yet, so each subsequent request is more outrageous.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped for the gold mine tour, which was pretty amazing. Three-feet wide by five-feet high tunnels right into the mountain, probably a thousand yards worth, on the level we took. We walked around in there (with a guide) for almost an hour.

Miyazaki's "Spirited Away"

Terrific. Problem was, we thought we were going to the dubbed-to-English version, supervised by John Lassiter (of "Toy Story", "Monster's Inc.", etc.), but when we got to the theater, it was the Japanese language version with subtitles. That's kinda OK with me, but the kids were a little over their heads, bandwidth-wise. Especially since, as the reviewer below notes, it's a pretty complex story for a kid's movie.

The good news is that they're releasing it on DVD this coming Tuesday (dubbed version, of course). At the same time, they're releasing "Kiki" and "Laputa". Gonna be an expensive Tuesday for me, and not only because it's tax day.

It won the "Best Animated Film" Academy Award last month -- beating Disney's "Lilo and Stitch" and "Treasure Planet", and Fox's computer-generated comedy "Ice Age". I think I read that the other three had earned over $100 million each, while the US release of "Spirited Away" had only made $5.5 mil. I can't tell if the US releases of Miyazaki movies don't make money because they're marketed badly (on small budgets), or if they're marketed badly because they don't make money.