Eerie

A potentially very strange thing happened to me when I was walking in to work last Friday. I was walking behind an oldish man on the sidewalk who was having an animated conversation with himself. I checked for Bluetooth. Negative. This in itself wasn't all that weird since I work in a hospital complex that includes a mental hospital. But it got weird after I passed him. He stopped the flow of his conversation and three times repeated something that sounded an awful lot like "Rick," which happens to be my name. I wasn't wearing my Rick jacket or Rick pants so there's no way he could have known my name. I turned off the sidewalk to enter my building before the potential implications of what I thought I heard had fully sunken in, but for the rest of the day I was kicking myself for not stopping and asking him if he was, in fact, saying my name. He was probably just saying something that sounded like Rick, or I may have missed my one opportunity to have had a magic friend. Oh well.

My dad used to tell me about how his dad used to enjoy giving away the last of his money since then he didn't have anything to worry about (freedom just being another word for nothing left to lose, etc). So on my way home, probably due to some guilt over not stopping to talk to the magic and/or crazy man earlier, I gave a panhandler my last dollar. It wasn't, strictly speaking, my last dollar on earth, but it was all I had left on my person after eating sushi for lunch. Anyways, it still felt sort of good, if for no other reason than the look on the guy's face when I told him it was my last dollar. He looked a little taken aback and maybe he didn't spend it on booze out of guilt. Maybe he started a savings account and turned his life around. I gave another guy a buck the next day to get a bus ride to Worcester, increasing my total Boston charitable contributions by a factor of approximately infinity.

5 cents a bottle

For two days in a row now I've seen discarded chicken bones on the sidewalk during my train-work walk. It made me miss St. Louis and reaffirmed my belief that peoples is people. I suspect the circumstances by which bones come to rest in the street are different in STL vs. Boston, however. In STL, I think people just throw them out their car windows. I think in Boston it is because we pay a deposit on cans and bottles. Every garbage day the city streets are literally littered with litter because a horde of entrepreneurs tear apart peoples' trash bags to fish out the discarded cans and bottles (5 cent deposit on each). It's sad and annoying. In STL, we saved our smelly bottles and cans and less smelly cardboard and hauled them down to some bins several blocks from our house every few weeks. When we moved here, we were excited that we had curbside recycling so we wouldn't have to keep the stuff in our living area or leave the house to arrow triangle. Turns out we do unless we want the government to steal our nickels. It's a super lame system. Most grocery and liquor stores have machines where you can (one at a time) load in your cans and bottles and it spits out a receipt. The problem is that most liquor stores won't take bottles for beers they don't sell. If you have eclectic taste in beer, you may have to visit 3 different stores to get your money back, which is super uncool. Also, liquor stores only take beer cans, so I can't recoup my Diet Coke losses without a separate trip. And finally, if anything happens to your bar codes or your cans get slightly crushed, SOL. I guess I could just come to terms with losing a few bucks a month and quit whining, but it's the principle dammit! What's more, there was a recent newspaper article saying the state loses 12 million dollars a year on people bringing their bottles, Neumann and Kramer style, across state lines to collect our hard earned nickles. Outrageous. I know the point of deposits is to reduce waste, and it works (see hordes of human raccoons making sure nothing worth 5 cents makes it to a landfill), but why do you have curbside recycling then!? To tease us? To make me feel like a cheap loser for not wanting to throw away change? For paper recycling? (Shut up, brain)

U2

There's been a buzz about town that Irish supergroup U2 was going to be playing a top secret concert at an undisclosed, intimate Boston location tonight. They announced on the news this morning that the venue was going to be the Somerville Theater, mentioned two posts ago for its awesome museum of bad art. The news did not say whether U2 would be performing in the theater or the museum. Zing! Take that, Larry Mullins Jr.

Actually, I used to like U2 quite a bit, and I believe the show Liz and I went to after All That You Can't leave Behind was released the most I've ever paid for concert tickets. It was a great show and at the time I said it was one of the best I'd ever seen. Sometime between then and now I've started hating them. Their last two albums have been, in my humble opinion of course, crap. The songs I've heard off them have annoyed me to near Dishwalla levels. I still love 10 or so of their songs, but there may not be another band with so many songs at both extremes of my love-hate spectrum. Dave Matthews would make the list.

Pretty Nice Weekend

In between bouts of despair brought on by the faltering world economy, we had a nice little weekend. Temps were in the low 60s, and so we jogged a section of a system of connected parks in Boston called the Emerald Necklace which we hadn't seen before. The section we saw is called the Back Bay Fens (near FENway Park), which I first heard of in the movie The Departed. In the movie, Jack Nicholson's character berates an underling for botching a body disposal in the fens. I didn't really see any place in the park that I'd consider safe for stashing a body one didn't want found, especially with the ocean just a short trunk ride away. But hey, what do I know about corpse disposal. Nothing, if anyone asks.

We also did some preliminary gardening as we noticed some green shoots were coming out of the ground. Liz tells me these are known as perennials. Less work for us. Thanks, botany. It's snowing like mad today so hopefully those precocious little shoots know what they're doing.

Remember the first few days of a new semester in high school or college, the anticipation of walking into a new class to see if there were any pretty ladies to look at to help pass the time? That's what getting on the subway is like only you never go to the same class twice. Getting on the bus is similar, assuming you took special ed classes in a high school for kids with tuberculosis.

And finally, you know who I've about heard enough out of? New Zealand. We get it, you're an island paradise with glaciers and rain forests and mountains and Sauvignon Blanc and volcanoes and Hobbits. Well guess what New Zealand, I did some checking and your days are numbered. Turns out the North Island and the South Island are on divergent tectonic plates. So the North Island will soon rear end Australia after it crashes into Asia while the South Island has a geological date with Antarctica. So enjoy being overrun by the Chinese, North Island. Meanwhile, your "mates" on the South Island will be living in a frozen wasteland. You won't be so smug after that, now will you. I can't wait to see the looks on their stupid Kiwi faces.

MOBA

I haven't updated in a while because I was waiting for a cable I ordered which allows me to download pics off my phone. We've kind of been coasting around here for the past few weeks, although we have done a few funs. A couple weeks ago we (I) went to Cinematic Titanic, a live performance by the writers and performers of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you are unfamiliar, please turn in your MN citizenship card. It was a show from the 90s where the silhouettes of a guy and two robots in front of a movie screen showing horrible movies make wonderfully snarky and sarcastic comments about the film. I still remember the first time I randomly flipped it on the TV. I at first wondered what in the world was going on, but when I caught the gist it was an epiphany. The intrinsic humor of a horrible monster/sci-fi/60s movie combined with their razor wit and numerous MN references was an often magical combination. It provided several hours of weekend morning entertainment and played no small role in shaping my sense of humor. My other early influence was having my dad read me the Little Golden Book We Help Mommy with different interpretations of the pictures. In his version the kids were little bastards and were out to destroy their home and parents. Comedy gold to a four year old.

The live performance was of a movie called Blood of the Vampire, in which Filipinos playing Mexicans (including slaves in black face) did battle with ridiculously underpowered vampires. It was worth the price of admission. Liz saw Gran Torino instead. The theater where it was in Somerville has an added incentive to visit, the Museum of Bad Art. It featured bad art. Some examples below. Hopefully you find them as entertaining as I did. Look up MST3K on Youtube if you want a primer.



Why is Elvis crying? Maybe he had a premonition about his own toilet death. Or he was performing "In the Ghetto." That song is a tear jerker.




The previous two speak for themselves and defy explanation. One of the artists has a good grasp of how to paint 80s hair.

The following two were from a collection titled Pointless-ism:




The caption on this one was something about her apparently being half Swedish and half Polynesian.



This one was my favorite, I've included the gallery's interpretation.



In "He Was A Friend Of Mine," the cat seems to be remembering the family Husky, who has passed on to the great kennel in the sky. However, the Exorcist-inspired look in the cat's eyes seem to suggest that the cat resents the fact that the Husky was always the family favorite.

It speaks to me.

When I downloaded these from my phone, there were others from our trip to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Ironic.

Walden and Sleepy Hollow - Liz Version

So you can see from Rick's earlier post we went to Walden Pond and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery last weekend. Both are located in Concord, MA about 35 minutes from our house. Concord is what you would expect, old with lots of touristy shops.

It's so nerdy, but I was super excited to visit Author's Ridge at Sleepy Hollow. I am quite the Louisa May Alcott fan. Now, I think there are two kinds of LMA fans: those who love Little Women, Jo's Boys, etc. and those who know that she penned quite a few gothic thrillers, short stories, and romantic novellas. I am the latter. At Gustavus, I was lucky enough to take a J-Term class (month long, 3 hour per day class) all about LMA my Freshman year. Not only did we read a diverse selection of her works but learned about her life. She really held her family together.

Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a total weirdo. While he did hang out with prominent people, like Emerson and Thoreau, and spoke openly against slavery he was better know for being a Transcendentalist. Now don't get me wrong, I kind of like the transcendental ideas but not enough to start a small community around them. Bronson started "Fruitlands," a small utopian community in Massachusetts. Turns out it wasn't such a good idea. One thing that stuck in my mind about "Fruitlands" was that they were only allowed to wear linen. This was because cotton was from slave labor and wool came from sheep (sheep slavery apparently). They really figured out this utopian, vegtable only eating, linen wearing society wouldn't work once the cold New England winter hit. Duh!

Anyways, here is a pic of LMA's grave (small headstone) with the large Alcott Family grave marker in the back:

Walden Pond was really amazing. Like Rick posted, it's actually pretty small but quite deep. The deepest part is over 100 feet deep. The pond was created be a retreating glacier during the last glaciation. After Thoreau spent his time at the pond in 1840's, people started frequenting the pond for swimming and leisure. An amusement park was built in the late 1860's with swings, concessions, running/biking trails, boats, bathhouses, and a dancehall. Lucky for us it burnt to the ground in 1902. Can you imagine Walden Pond with all that junk around it???

At any rate, it is now a registered National Historic Landmark. Many people do drive to the park in the summer to swim. We have heard that the Department of Conservation and Recreation closely monitors the number of people at the park and will restrict entrance to the park during the height of summer. Here are a few more photos from Walden Pond:

I do look forward to going back in the summer. I'll wade into the lake a bit but I'm freaked out about how deep it is!! It's no secret that I hate water, but I think I can stick a toe or two into Walden Pond on a hot 90 degree day this summer.

We'll keep you posted on our nerdy adventures throughout New England.

Walden

We went to Walden Pond last weekend. It was pond like. It's maybe 25% larger than our little lake in MN, although it is about 10x deeper. It has pickerel, which I always thought were northerns (apparently they are different), and small mouth. Thoreau's cabin is gone but they have the original dimensions staked out. It was not large.

We also went to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, but not the headless horseman one because it is in NY. This one has the graves of several famous authors. They looked like names carved into stone.







We ate well this weekend, had some southwest-inspired tapas on Friday night, salmon benedict Saturday morning, and prime rib in the evening.