Leaving San Diego

I returned home yesterday from a brief excursion to San Diego.  Ohio, in truly reliable fashion, greeted me with a snow-covered windshield that required scraping.

Leaving San Diego, one of my favorite cities, is never easy. I love it at any time of the year, but especially so in winter. The perpetual glow of the sun and moderate temperatures is rejuvenating, and is a marked contrast to Ohio in January. San Diego is also home to one of my favorite humans, which doesn’t make leaving any easier.

A few highlights:

Caught a double feature at the Digital Gym, and both films were quite good.  The first was a bonkers Chinese horror film called ZOMBIOLOGY: ENJOY YOURSELF TONIGHT, which featured a gigantic chicken mascot that could shoot eggs that exploded heads, and somehow also turned people into zombies.  The second was the charmingly violent and funny TURBO KID, a clever film that plays like if ’80s-era Steven Spielberg had directed MAD MAX ON BMX BIKES.  If TURBO KID sounds familiar, like it did to me, it’s because it’s been — or at least was — on Netflix for some time. If it’s still on there, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Also went to the San Diego Museum of Man to take in their excellently-staged Cannibals: Myth & Reality exhibit. The topic was already intriguing, because cannibals, but the presentation and flow were top-notch and really drew you in.  Favorite bits include:

• Real-life incidents where folks were forced to eat each other, or were faced with that decision, because Not Eating Your Friends and Family would otherwise spell certain doom;
• The Cannibal Tribe trope, AKA “all brown-skinned people already living in lands ‘discovered’ by European explorers are deemed cannibals because the dehumanization of indigenous populations makes enslaving and slaughtering those populations all the more palatable”; and
• The Oregon Trail-like game Donner Trail.

We also got a quick tour of the shop where the exhibits are built and accidentally met the Post Secret guy, who it turns out is really nice.

And on my last night in town, dinner was acquired at the nearby Viejas Casino buffet. I have sampled many fine buffets in my day, but this was by far the best.  I gorged on prime rib and desserts, and, since all-you-could-drink alcohol was included in the price, I accompanied the food with champagne. Delicious and decadent. A perfect way to end the trip.