So how were my last few weeks? I'm glad you asked.
Let's see. I mentioned the show at Iridium. That was exciting. Lee and Emily felt like they hadn't been cheated because they did get to see Elvis Costello up fairly close before the show. Lee studies mechanical engineering at Stanford, specifically the modeling of turbulence, and he was in town for a conference on fluid dynamics. Since the timing was right, █████ and I invited him to stay in the neighborhood a bit longer and come out to our place for Thanksgiving. He liked the idea so much that he brought his wife and kid too. While Lee was at his conference, Emily and Jack stayed with some friends near Columbia. On Wednesday, the night after Iridium, all three of them came to our place, where they stayed for the next four nights.
We've traditionally (well, since 2001) had a big Thanksgiving party for folks without family in the city. We managed to get Cory Doctorow out to that first Thanksgiving party, and happily he hasn't missed one since, including this year's. We were also supposed to have █████'s brother Tom and friend, but Tom had to cancel because of work. A couple other guests dropped out too, and most of our old standbys were not available this year, so instead of the rollicking drunken baccanalia of the last couple of years, we had a fairly low-key meal this year, followed by low-key conversation and a lot of napping. But the food and company were both as good as ever.
The next day, Lee and I joined Cory for a noon showing of The Haunted Mansion. It was fun, though not nearly as good as any of us had hoped, given the quality of The Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm a big fan of the Haunted Mansion (the ride), and it was a pleasure to see the movie with an even bigger and insanely knowledgable fan. The look of the movie was terrific, and the corners were jammed with cool bits of eye candy yanked straight from the ride. (I especially appreciated what they did with the barbershop quartet of headstone busts.) The plot, though.... Ouch.
I have to give Disney points for one facet of the movie, though. It seems the Haunted Mansion is cursed (er, spoiler alert, though it's not a terribly spoiling spoiler) because of a murder that took place to prevent an interracial marriage there in 19th century Louisiana. No one in the film ever comes out and *says* that the bride being black was the reason the union would have destroyed the family dynasty, but that's what they're getting at. You may call them timid for letting the subtext remain subtext, but I say kudos for making it part of the plot of a family-oriented Disney movie at all.
Of course, Marsha Thomason is so drop-dead gorgeous and appealing in this movie, I would have risked the destruction of the family dynasty for her, too.
After the flick, Lee and Cory and I wandered around Times Square while we tried to raise the womenfolk by cell phone. (They were out shopping.) Along the way we stopped in at Toys 'R' Us to see the T-Rex Spielberg lent/gave them. Huge and impressive.
Cory slipped off to Brooklyn for a gathering there while Lee and I met up with █████ and Emily and Jack. Then Lee and I took Jack and went to a little tiny okonomi yaki stand on 9th Street for a bite to eat. Lee was a missionary in Japan, so he welcomed the chance to eat one of those lovely little Japanese pancakes made from flour and egg and cabbage and leeks and whatever else is at hand, all sauced up and garnished with bonito flakes. Yum! We had tako yaki also—octopus balls. It is good to live in New York.
After the late lunch with Lee, I slipped away to Brooklyn too, to Cory's shindig, and was glad to find
baldanders and
roadnotes and
agrumer there, among others.
The next day Lee and Emily and Jack and I hit the American Museum of Natural History, ate some fabulous barbecue at Brother Jimmy's (actually the best I've had in New York—the dry rub is to weep for), and then made the pilgrimage back to Toys R Us to take Jack on the ferris wheel. That was more fun than it had any reason to be.
The next morning, those Californians all flew home.
Managed to meet up with
curmudgeon early the next week for some excellent comfort food at the 2nd Ave Deli. Then, miracle of miracles, █████ was actually able to join us at Telephone Bar, where she and C, who hadn't met before, got on famously. It was almost frightening to behold.
Since then ... oh, I don't know. █████ and I saw Bad Santa. Loved it. Funniest movie we've seen since—well, the last really funny movie we saw. Quite a misanthropic Christmas flick, which is just what we needed. Did not love the audience. There were two women down the row from us who brought two small children. It is just barely possible that they thought they were at a family Christmas movie, because the language they spoke loudly all through the first 20 minutes of the show was not English. Thank God Billy Bob Thornton finally boinked Lauren Graham in his car while wearing his Santa cap or they might never have gotten up in a frenzy and left.
Tonight we go to see The Marriage of Figaro at the Met. Good thing it's an opera of reasonable length. Last opera we saw was "Tristan and Isolde," which is so long that it started an hour earlier that the normal Met curtain time (7 instead of 8) and still didn't let out until a quarter past midnight. And we have tickets to the season premiere of Die Walküre in March. That one starts at 6:30! God. (█████ insists that she will pick the shows next season.)
Work is crazy, and I'm not nearly far enough on my memoir yet. Maybe over Christmas. Yeah, right.
