I spent Saturday at the Marcus Duluth Theater, which is on the lake [in the DECC]. For point of wry comparison, the Marcus Lakes theater is in Hermantown, near no obvious lake. My sweetheart Zomi and my friend Kate and I hoped to see Holmes and Watson.

… but it doesn’t open until Tuesday. To be fair, though, you could redub old episodes of Friends, rename it “A Study in Scarlet” and I would go watch it. I almost went to see Sherlock Gnomes. I like the characters, except, of course, for season four of Sherlock on the BBC.

We saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse instead.

It was a great night. The hamburger and wrap from the theater were filling with an abundance of french fries. The drinks are always playfully themed and strongly made, relaxing before a movie. And the movie is genius, in a way. It’s still got troubles [e.g. I don’t think it passes the Bechdel test, though there were more engaging female characters than in most Marvel movies]. But the animation is innovative, like not just cool tech, but cool tech reinvented for storytelling. And while the story is not great literature, it features one of the icons of my childhood, Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham.

Now, it’s Sunday night, crawling up on 10 p.m., and the mall gates just closed at the Barnes and Noble. BN is quiet — not enough people think they will be open an extra five hours on a Sunday, I guess. I’m feeling a need for one last end-of-year post, but I don’t know that I have it in me. I need to go home and bake ham and clean things — remove the pile of books and comics from my bathroom because normal people don’t keep a pile of reading material beside their tub, after all. I need to make enough room in my kitchen to prepare food, instead of just warming it and eating it on my lap.

I did, however, want to salute this person, this gentle genius who illuminated the parking lot by the mall. My day is made perfect because he/she/they took the time to bring the holiday with them, to me. Thank you.