Monday, October 23, 2006
Because my formatting skills suck and I have not the patience to improve them right now, the previous post has no captions (by the way, clicky the picture for to enbiggen). If it did, they would go like this:
1. Mom and Brian walking through the Essex Pedestrian Mall.
2. The line to get inside the churchy-looking Witch Museum.
3. The Pineapple on top of the band stand on the Common.
4. The crowd at the Essex Pedestrian Mall. Lady has some nice purple hair.
5. A view of a tanker from Pickering Wharf. The power plant is around the corner and that big black mound is coal.
6. A head stone in the Charter Street Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Salem.
We did the Haunted Happenings thing yesterday. The plan was to just walk around downtown for a few hours (and seriously, if you're thinking of going to Salem to do the tourist thing, just park at the train station, it costs two dollars and it takes five minutes to walk to the middle of downtown), but we also stopped for lunch at Victoria Station and went into a few cute antique stores. I'm still on the lookout for a shotglass set like the one I passed on when I went to Maine. One store had a beautiful black and white framed photograph of the incredible garden that used to be on the Danvers State Hospital grounds (Tracy, I wish you were there to see it!). It was pricey, but if I had the disposable income I would have had no problem throwing down the $200 to own it.
Just this past week I saw two surprisingly good movies, The Departed and The Prestige. I highly recommend both of them. The Departed is another great crime movie from Scorcese and every single performance is amazing. There's also a lot of dirty language and brain splatter, so it was a perfect movie to take my dad to see. I wish I hadn't seen Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong movie The Departed is based on, but I suppose that it's a pretty good endorsement that I knew every single plot twist (except for the fate of one character) and I was still completely engrossed for two-and-a-half hours.
I saw The Prestige with Tracy on Saturday, mainly because David Bowie has a small part as Nikola Tesla and she's been excited about seeing it for months. Basically (without giving away any plot) it's about two magicians who keep trying to one-up each other in increasingly sadistic ways until you're staring at the screen thinking, "You sick fuck!" But, you know, in a good way. There were some interesting twists and they were all earned. If you paid attention you could see them all coming and I liked that even though I figured out what was going on fairly quickly, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie because it wasn't about a twist ending, it was about the lengths a person will go to for revenge.
It's cold! And daylight savings ends next week. That's probably my least favorite time of year, that first week of darkness by five. Tracy, I think we should make it better by going to Sylvan Street, getting a couple raspberry-lime rickeys and some desserts, and having Jeff pick us up. Boozing it up will totally make up for the grief of lost daylight.
1. Mom and Brian walking through the Essex Pedestrian Mall.
2. The line to get inside the churchy-looking Witch Museum.
3. The Pineapple on top of the band stand on the Common.
4. The crowd at the Essex Pedestrian Mall. Lady has some nice purple hair.
5. A view of a tanker from Pickering Wharf. The power plant is around the corner and that big black mound is coal.
6. A head stone in the Charter Street Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Salem.
We did the Haunted Happenings thing yesterday. The plan was to just walk around downtown for a few hours (and seriously, if you're thinking of going to Salem to do the tourist thing, just park at the train station, it costs two dollars and it takes five minutes to walk to the middle of downtown), but we also stopped for lunch at Victoria Station and went into a few cute antique stores. I'm still on the lookout for a shotglass set like the one I passed on when I went to Maine. One store had a beautiful black and white framed photograph of the incredible garden that used to be on the Danvers State Hospital grounds (Tracy, I wish you were there to see it!). It was pricey, but if I had the disposable income I would have had no problem throwing down the $200 to own it.
Just this past week I saw two surprisingly good movies, The Departed and The Prestige. I highly recommend both of them. The Departed is another great crime movie from Scorcese and every single performance is amazing. There's also a lot of dirty language and brain splatter, so it was a perfect movie to take my dad to see. I wish I hadn't seen Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong movie The Departed is based on, but I suppose that it's a pretty good endorsement that I knew every single plot twist (except for the fate of one character) and I was still completely engrossed for two-and-a-half hours.
I saw The Prestige with Tracy on Saturday, mainly because David Bowie has a small part as Nikola Tesla and she's been excited about seeing it for months. Basically (without giving away any plot) it's about two magicians who keep trying to one-up each other in increasingly sadistic ways until you're staring at the screen thinking, "You sick fuck!" But, you know, in a good way. There were some interesting twists and they were all earned. If you paid attention you could see them all coming and I liked that even though I figured out what was going on fairly quickly, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie because it wasn't about a twist ending, it was about the lengths a person will go to for revenge.
It's cold! And daylight savings ends next week. That's probably my least favorite time of year, that first week of darkness by five. Tracy, I think we should make it better by going to Sylvan Street, getting a couple raspberry-lime rickeys and some desserts, and having Jeff pick us up. Boozing it up will totally make up for the grief of lost daylight.
Labels: Amatuer Film Critic Corner
Downtown Salem in October
Monday, October 02, 2006
I lost ten pounds!
Before
AfterI feel so light-headed. The hair is finally gone. It looked like a dead raccoon on the salon floor. If we had piled it up in the middle of the road, people would have swerved to miss it. I love the shorter hair. I don't feel like a dirty hippy anymore. But my back is cold. Gone are the days when a little careful draping could take the place of a sweater. By the way, do you like my bathroom? And don't you just adore how the camera position makes me look like a cyclops?
Labels: Pictures
