Woah, my eyes are blurry and dry on a Super Sunday morning (which has suspiciously found itself converted to PM). I have used up a lot of my WMP (writing magic points) and gems in writing a review:
Saturday
And this monstrosity of a musing regarding film's status as the 20th century's greatest art. Enjoy, and feel free to comment the crap out of them and my ridiculous opinions.
(I reserve the right to not post your comments. Yeah, spell it along with me, F-A-S-C-I-S-T. Welcome to the Nyetverse, I've got fun and games).
The past three days have brought their share of hilarity - the class is still in full swing, and unsurprisingly, as we sit here at t-minus 4 hours until their weekly blog assignment is due, a whopping two of the eighteen have done it (and another six of those eighteen have yet to have read the blog or this week's article). I smell some zeros for participation grades wafting up from apathy hell...
Friday was actually a great day in class, though because of auditions and college interviews only seven students were present. I also spent a part of Friday defending one of my advisees from expulsion; another notch on my belt of awesomeness and human assistance. But, por supuesto, all of this paled to Friday night, the celebratory dinner for The Grin's, AD's and my women folks' passing of the Boards.
We headed to El Basha, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Shrewsbury / Worcester. It occurred to someone (Sarah? aka "M&M") in our ranks that there are three restaurants with the name El Basha in the vicinity, so after we clarified the location of our dining jubilee, The Grin posted an internet poll in an attempt to clarify the plural of "El Basha." You'll notice that the obvious and correct choice, Los Bashas, is not given as an option. To my complaint, The Grin replied: "But I don't speak Italian." Ali then took off her belt upon entering the restaurant, reportedly accidentally, but this has further cemented her status as the group's most unpredictable and potentially restaurant-ejection-inducing member.
The restaurant was not up my alley, but it was up alleys, of the rest of the crüe I mean, so that was all good. Middle Eastern restaurants tend to restrict me and my delicate (read: picky-as-hell) palate to dishes like lamb kabobs and rice and/or the kiddie menu, so in an effort to head off the onslaught of fun-making that happens when I order things like, say, jello, or pizza bagels, or kids-in-a-blanket, I went with the plain kabab option. Which means, given the proclivity of my fellow crüe-members to eat like sophisticated peoples, I typically end up paying $25 for grilled-chicken and rice. Boo-urns, but I take the good and take the bad. Also, I would say that you're paying for the ambience, but in this case our ambience included drunk and loud as all get out, no really, get out, people at the bar. This included a petite, goblin-like woman with a voice that just happened to match the resonant frequency of the inhibitory portion of my frontal lobes. I unsurprisingly became violent and started discussing both my habit of assessing my chances of winning an all-out brawl any time i step into a restaurant, and then a discussion of Newtonian physics and the proper handle-to-blade ratio one would need for a reasonably (percentage-wise) successful throwing knife. Given the improper h-b ratio of the kabab-cutting knife I had in my arsenal, we opted against throwing my knife over my shoulder and impaling the goblin-woman, which may have perhaps ended her disruption of the restaurant's ambience as well as my violent tendencies, but actually also had a chance of scientifically testing my assessment of our group's ability to win an all out brawl. Ben's physics assessment probably saved our evening. Also, there was an old lady in the corner who was clearly dining with a gigolo and/or her son. And/or.
Ben also noticed that Christophe was stuck in a trap between all three vet-femmes (I've noted before the intestinal soul-death a vet-obsessed dinner conversation can induce), and took drastic measures (i.e., asked the pgoat to switch places) to form a more appropriate Boy-Girl conversational division at the table. This was awesome, because now we didn't have to listen to the gossipy crap the gals were talking about, and AD regaled us stories of 800 million gallons of water and bloody fish-heads. Sweet! The Grin and I then engaged in a contest to determine how many ways we could describe "800 million gallons of water;" his best entry was "500,000,000 toilet flushes" and mine was "800,000,000 gallons of milk with the milk poured out and water filled in them instead." PGoat then complained of her butter-tasting drink and its contestedly metallic aftertaste; Beck drank something vastly better, and M&M drank nothing in deference to her 80 pound bun.
Though challenged by Ben, I am highly underqualified to write a restaurant review (see roast chicken and rice meal, above). But the meals were opulent-looking, everyone seemed to seriously enjoy the appetizers and the entrees and the service was pretty speedy (though they did charge us an auto-gratuity for our party of 6 or more). So personally it was in the C range (just because of the price, the meal was actually good but for what I got, not worth the Hamiltons, baby). But for everyone else, it seemed like a B+ / A- affair, so that was very cool, and I was happy to fork down in celebration of our Pippens' accomplishment.
From there we braved a strange white and wet substance falling in masses from the sky... I think it's called sn...uhow? Yep, winter finally showed itself; we got about 3 inches on Friday which pretty much brings the winter's total to 3.7 inches. This has been a weird, apocalyptic type-winter; I fear for those who don't know AD. SO this was the first adventure of the Little Honda That Could on snowy roads, and it performed marvelously; no skids, and no troubles. We even found a parking spot in front of Cafe Dolce, our dessert destination. While Christophe tried to park his car in an incomprehensibly tight spot under the direction of Sarah and Ben, The Beck, Ali and I went in to check the scene. It was predictably full of couply couples, men trying to impress ladies with their ability to spend $10 on a slice of pie and a ridiculously fancy coffee. Awesome. Eventually, AD finished delivering the "Bumpers are For Bumping" lecture and the sextet assembled, our table next to the bathroom to render it less obvious that our sh*t doesn't stink.
And we had dessert, and it was seriously, seriously good. I opted for the nondecadent coffee, a regular old brewed blend, but it was called creme brulee and it was divine. Pretty much everybody ordered the chocolate pecan pie, except for Sarah who ordered (and was subsequently defeated by) some chocolate concoction, and beck, whose almond cake was largely saved for her Saturday morning breakfast. The revelry continued, and the dessert-fest capped off a great evening. Somehow, Christophe made it out of his space, and Ben, Ali, beck and I tiredly rolled home through the now official snowstorm. A great night.
On Saturday I got up early and stared outside my balcony curtains to witness a flaming airplane descending over the Thames into Heathrow. Or not. I got up early and monkeyed around the house, actually spending a lot of time writing *my musing* which I again reiterate that you should read. At 10, I headed out for two tutoring sessions discussing photosynthesis. Awesome, and possibly my least favorite thing to talk about, considering that plants are stupid. I am not a vegetarian because I like animals, etc. I decided to stop by the grocery store on my way home, and called my Beck accordingly; she answered neither phone. The usual non-despair-inducing possibilities raced through my mind: she was out on a walk, or maybe at the very grocery store sans phone reception to which I headed. She was doing neither of those things. After I bought a lot of diet soda and lean pockets for tonight's rock n' roll affair, I came home at 1:15 to find the Beck STILL IN BED. Bum! Get a job, Lebowski! She rumbled from her slumber to join me in a trip to the gym; we were better looking and more fit than everyone else there (because we rule). We came home and I wrote some more; Beck headed to Natick Mall for a thoroughly unsuccessful attempt at purchasing wedding accoutrements.
Beck headed home, smilingly repaying me for my patience at the Middle Eastern restaurant the night before, and offered to get pizza for tonight. The PGOAT then called, having been abandoned by her hubby and another friend, informing me that I was her third social choice. Huzzah! Just call me Plan C. Through a mass of confusion, Ali got a hold of Beck and escalated, I'm sorry, augmented the order to include her. Ali came over, we chilled and listened to Hair and ate pizza. Good times! Then we watched the Big Lebowksi, which I will review accordingly:
The Big Lebowski: 95
For all my low-art ramblings I made against film in my musing (seriously, read it already!), this film is just awesome. It's in a category that a precious few movies in mind are in, something I would call a "Scene-Saturated Flick." Every scene of this movie is funny; every single one. Beck said she would go the bathroom at the first non-awesome scene, and she never went! It's amazing, there's never a low moment, and the humor hits the entire range of witty, slapstick, subtle, visual, musical, absurd, ironic - it's just a postmodern sort of homerun on all fronts. In other words, it is what it is - there's no wonder this has become such a fixture in my Tufts-friend lexicon: it's in its own realm of brilliance. That's all I got; no real analysis, just a toe-sucking account of how much I enjoy the infinitely re-watchable film.
(Ed: It should be noted that there are several movies that I love for various reasons that don't fall into my normal movie-rating continuum, and TBL is one of them. All scene-saturated flicks are going to score in the 95 ballpark regardless of their other artistic, more film-snobbish merits. i hope you will forgive me - but when others like The Princess Bride and Wayne's World show up in my all-time faves list, this is why. You have been warned).
So eventually Ali headed back to her grinning option A, and Beck and I watched a little more TV and then retired for the evening. The snippet of TV that I watched was MTV's "Two-a-Days, and I think that Texas HS football players have, if it's possible, gotten even bigger. Will we reach a day where today's nickname of the 6'5" person, "Tiny," will cease to be ironic. Everyday, my assessment of my own athleticism, or whatever peak it ever achieved, dwindles more.
Enjoy the SB today - no calls here, but I will continue to ridicule all that I find stupid without suggesting reasonable alternatives. Oh, and here's your enticing "Tomorrow on The Ballad:" outro...
Mike NTPB is on assignment in San Antonio, TX, attending our 10th year high school reunion. He will surely report back to me, and I will give an account that will surely only make sense and/or be funny to the select view who have CHS '96 as part of their memory-horizon. As a questionable wise man once said, "We're excited 'bout it!"
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