My fall break adventure continued in New Haven on Thursday. I hit traffic on I-95 but avoided the "one hour late" label by a few seconds. There I met up with the usual Yale crew and after another great dinner at Claire's, we headed over to Mara's for a 5-way game of Scrabble. We crowded all of out tiles in the lower-right half of the board, which resulted in many oddly formed patterns.
Friday I visited my old stomping grounds of MIT and had dinner with my old professor and his two great kids. (They had to answer a history and a multiplication question correctly to be excused from the table.) After brainstorming thesis ideas, I headed over to Karen and Mike's, where I saw my first ever episode of the Muppet Show. My previous introductions to the Muppets were limited to (1) Kermit the Frog reporting on Sesame Street, (2) the Muppet movies, and (3) the parody of the Muppet's opening number at one of MIT's Purim spiels. (It's time to end the story / It's time to set things right / It's time for the closing number / In our Purim spiel tonight // (H) Why do we always hate them? / (M) I guess you'll always lose / (H) It's kind of like a hobby / (H&M) To try to kill the Jews!) I fell asleep during the Candace Bergen episode.
Saturday I ate out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast was with Karen and Mike. I met old Dean friends (Manch field!) for lunch. Afternoon snack (as well as candlepin bowling and cryptic crosswords) with Priya. Later, Monica and I discussed the workings of rat brains over dinner. We then rented Fever Pitch and Spellbound to watch. Fever Pitch was terrible, almost at the level of The Wedding Date. Spellbound was interesting but overrated. We had aimed for Corporation and Super Size, but we found Blockbuster's selection a bit lacking (just as we had in C'ville.) Now I remember why I don't rent movies (well, that and a lack of free time).
Sunday I left for Princeton without my contact lenses (whoops!). But, no worries, as I now have 20:11 vision after a trip to the optometrist today. Perhaps my newfound, elf-like eyesight helped me during ultimate frisbee (where I played well), though I stunk up the field during flag football.
Oh, no word on the laptop....and VOTE TOMORROW!
better late than never for the Muppet Show.
(and I totally disagree about Fever Pitch. granted my opinion may be tainted with sentimentality from being in New Hampshire during the '04 series)
Surely you're joking, Ms Burlage! The stilted romantic dialogue was right up there with Episode II. And the ending was so anti-climactic...they barely incorporated the Red Sox's victory into the story. Though, I'm guessing when the writers developed the plot, they didn't expect the Sawx to actually win!
I should have known Rachel was going to chime in on this...I couldn't agree more strongly with your assessment of Fever Pitch.
I went from being really excited about it when I heard Fever Pitch was going to be made into a movie (if you have time to read non-school stuff, I recommend the book) to being befuddled when I found out it was going to be about the Red Sox and be in Boston instead of being about Arsenal in London to being completely turned off when I found out that the craptacular Jimmy Fallon was going to be the male lead.
Rachel does not share my assessment of his acting skills...I believe I have enough empirical evidence to suggest they don't exist.
The book is good. The movie was one big syrupy hand-holding cliche.
Shoot me an email about the laptop if there's still problems! patrick dot mcleod at gmail dot com.
Thanks for your offer, Patrick! The (under warranty) laptop was fixed about a week ago: Acer support proved worthy of praise.
Primary-candidate-choosing aside, I'm glad we have similar tastes in movies :) Though I did think Jimmy Fallon was funny on SNL.