Easter Weekend
Apr. 12th, 2004 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibetI had a long and no doubt deep and witty description of the weekend in mind, but I just don't have the oomph required to spew it forth.
Thursday night I had the misfortune to view "The Musketeer," the wire-fu-esque flick involving familiar characters in invented but overworn situations, and the most wooden lead character since whatever movie -- and there must be one -- where the lead character was actually made of wood; some version of "Pinocchio," perhaps. (Question: Why did Tim Roth's caricature-of-evil character, having done the Count Rogan thing, leave little D'Artagnan alive after the spunky lad slashed him in the eye?) If you feel you must watch it, watch for the scene (entitled, predictably, "All for One" or something on the DVD, ca. scene 13 or 14), when they are about to storm the castle, where D'Artagnan is shown wearing his father's Musketeer tabard, just before the stirring and life-affirming moment where the other Musketeers give it to him.
Friday J. and I ate at Sel de la Terre near the Aquarium, which I recommend doing. And if you're going to eat dessert there, by all means get the "dessert for two" sampler thingy, at least if there are two or even three of you.
On the way there and back again we saw Liza and her boy toy, more or less in exactly the same spot each time. I suspect they hang out on that corner.
We also overheard someone passing on to his friend the tired and vicious lie that Mike's Pastry is "the best." The best is, in fact, Maria's Pastry on Cross Street. Mike's boasts a larger selection and later hours, true, but try a cannoli from each place and if you don't agree with me, you cannot be reasoned with.
Saturday we ended up driving up route 93 to what turned out, after some confusion complicated by a lack of cell phones that might otherwise have been present (but weren't), to be the the first Concord, NH exit to pick up J.'s sister and her 6-week-old infant daughter. It was good to see them (and her husband when he joined us eventually), but we had to take issue with her description of the place where her car had broken down on the way to visit us as "right near the state border."
Sunday morning we met J.'s parents and the remaining niece at Cafe Vanille on Beacon Hill for their coffee and J.'s homemade festive bread, smuggled in, a tradition. From there we went to a nearby Episcopalian church for a lengthy service, including the usual stirring sermon punctuated with Shatnerian delivery and strange robot-dance gestures (this one, about how cool graveyards are, and how terrible individual graves are, and thence to that one empty grave that's the whole point of the exercise), and lots of incense. Afterwards, free food and drink in the church basement (including champagne -- as J.'s mother says, "Wherever 3 or 4 Episcopalians are gathered, you'll find a fifth"), and the table-hopping antics of the church cat. Also, a precocious boy of perhaps 8, about whose future socialization I vaguely worry, threatened to "sing showtunes until your eardrums explode," beginning, it turned out, with "Memories."
Nearly every one of us had a headache or some other affliction, and so when we all got to Salem we stared at the walls for a while. Eventually we turned to the next bit of weird tradition, which is that our Easter dinners with J.'s family must, since our move to Salem, involve kielbasa and pierogies, obtained previously from the Polish store on Essex Street.
Afterwards we terrorized the elder niece with a monster puppet. Eventually everyone went home.
Oh, and there was something else, which will wait.
Thursday night I had the misfortune to view "The Musketeer," the wire-fu-esque flick involving familiar characters in invented but overworn situations, and the most wooden lead character since whatever movie -- and there must be one -- where the lead character was actually made of wood; some version of "Pinocchio," perhaps. (Question: Why did Tim Roth's caricature-of-evil character, having done the Count Rogan thing, leave little D'Artagnan alive after the spunky lad slashed him in the eye?) If you feel you must watch it, watch for the scene (entitled, predictably, "All for One" or something on the DVD, ca. scene 13 or 14), when they are about to storm the castle, where D'Artagnan is shown wearing his father's Musketeer tabard, just before the stirring and life-affirming moment where the other Musketeers give it to him.
Friday J. and I ate at Sel de la Terre near the Aquarium, which I recommend doing. And if you're going to eat dessert there, by all means get the "dessert for two" sampler thingy, at least if there are two or even three of you.
On the way there and back again we saw Liza and her boy toy, more or less in exactly the same spot each time. I suspect they hang out on that corner.
We also overheard someone passing on to his friend the tired and vicious lie that Mike's Pastry is "the best." The best is, in fact, Maria's Pastry on Cross Street. Mike's boasts a larger selection and later hours, true, but try a cannoli from each place and if you don't agree with me, you cannot be reasoned with.
Saturday we ended up driving up route 93 to what turned out, after some confusion complicated by a lack of cell phones that might otherwise have been present (but weren't), to be the the first Concord, NH exit to pick up J.'s sister and her 6-week-old infant daughter. It was good to see them (and her husband when he joined us eventually), but we had to take issue with her description of the place where her car had broken down on the way to visit us as "right near the state border."
Sunday morning we met J.'s parents and the remaining niece at Cafe Vanille on Beacon Hill for their coffee and J.'s homemade festive bread, smuggled in, a tradition. From there we went to a nearby Episcopalian church for a lengthy service, including the usual stirring sermon punctuated with Shatnerian delivery and strange robot-dance gestures (this one, about how cool graveyards are, and how terrible individual graves are, and thence to that one empty grave that's the whole point of the exercise), and lots of incense. Afterwards, free food and drink in the church basement (including champagne -- as J.'s mother says, "Wherever 3 or 4 Episcopalians are gathered, you'll find a fifth"), and the table-hopping antics of the church cat. Also, a precocious boy of perhaps 8, about whose future socialization I vaguely worry, threatened to "sing showtunes until your eardrums explode," beginning, it turned out, with "Memories."
Nearly every one of us had a headache or some other affliction, and so when we all got to Salem we stared at the walls for a while. Eventually we turned to the next bit of weird tradition, which is that our Easter dinners with J.'s family must, since our move to Salem, involve kielbasa and pierogies, obtained previously from the Polish store on Essex Street.
Afterwards we terrorized the elder niece with a monster puppet. Eventually everyone went home.
Oh, and there was something else, which will wait.
