My last weekend in Minneapolis was good. I got to hang out with several of my coworkers and generally enjoyed the city. The internship program has had its ups and downs, but Minneapolis has been amazing.

On Saturday I spontaneously decided to continue my recent moviegoing streak and took the light rail downtown to see The Chumscrubber. The movie’s a sort of quirky criticism of suburbia told from the perspective of a taciturn high school student. The reviews were pretty bad, but the trailer looked interesting and it was my only chance since it’s not out in Omaha (or Budapest, I’d imagine). I enjoyed it well enough, but it definitely had problems. First of all, the portrayal of suburbia was so over the top that it almost became a parody of itself. Not every family has to be so outwardly cheerful or harbor such dark secrets – we get the picture. The quirks were also a bit weird. The movie’s namesake was some sort of videogame/tv series that didn’t really seem to have much relevance to the plot, and the mayor might have been a bit overdone. Anyway, it was fun, but won’t go on my list of favorite movies.

After that, I headed to a cookout shindig that a grad student I work with was having for the research group and friends. After an amusing (and surprisingly long-lived) attempt at hacky-sack, we began the food-consumption in earnest and chatted for a while. I only stayed for a couple of hours, but I had a lot of fun. It’s nice to work with such a neat group of people.

Sunday greeted me with the dreadful silence of a broken Internet connection. After obsessively clicking on the refresh button for a while, I despaired and went into the office to check my email. I didn’t get very far, however, because Mark and Marie (visitor from Czech Republic) were in the office preparing to venture forth. Mark had a (borrowed) car for the weekend, so he was planning to show Marie around the city, and I decided to tag along. Our first stop was the sculpture garden outside the Walker. I’ve been there a couple of times now, but it’s a nice place to walk, and nobody should visit Minneapolis without seeing Spoonbridge and Cherry.

After that, we headed towards Uptown. I had seen something about an art fair, so we decided to check that out. It turns out that the Uptown Art Fair is actually a really big deal and the place was packed. It was kind of neat to walk around and see all of the art, but since none of us had $3000 to blow on a painting, we gave up rather quickly. We made a quick stop at the excellent Magers and Quinn bookstore and then headed back to campus.

Steadfastly ignoring the little voice in the back of my head telling me to work, I sought entertainment for Sunday night. I ended up renting House of Flying Daggers from McDonalds for $1 (yes, they rent dvds, who knew?). It was visually arresting, but the plot was less interesting than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. I think the fantasy martial-arts genre is going to have to evolve to remain compelling – someone needs to tell these people that running up a piece of bamboo is kind of a one trick pony.

Anyhoo, that was my weekend. Work today was somewhat less rewarding, due largely to some frustrating Java/OpenGL problems, but such is life. I’ll be back in Omaha on Friday evening.