Swingin'.

1. Congratulations, Red Sox.

2. Happy Halloween.

ScreamingPepper's Delight

Chinese New Year was on the 18th of this month, but for some reason, the city of Boston has their celebration a week later.

My Lady Faire, Terzo, and I headed into the city yesterday to check out the festivities. Not surprisingly, I went through a lot of film very quickly. I had never been to anything like this before and had no idea what to expect. Unfamiliar with how the rituals go, I was completely oblivious to the rhythm of the whole thing and squeezed the shutter at all the wrong moments.

So, after many bad shots, I finally started to recognize the flow: the lions dance a bit (they’re not dragons as most would believe, myself included), and whenever possible they would enter stores and restaurants. I imagine this was largely dependent on the size of the store because the lion heads are huge and thrashing around quite a bit. Then an offering(?) of lettuce and oranges is given to the lion, where they “eat” and toss the remains into the crowd. When the lion couldn’t enter a store, this act happened right outside it. Most of the time, a decent brick of firecrackers were lit (outside, of course) after the offering and the lion moved on. I was never able to get a shot of the firecrackers because there were just too many people in the way.

We took all of this in for about an hour and a half and decided to go to lunch. We ate at Buddha’s Delight, a strictly vegetarian restaurant a couple floors up from the street. The food was just fantastic and if I lived within five miles of the place, I’d probably eat there every day. I had a great view of the festivities but was particularly taken by the sound of firecrackers somewhere down the street. These weren’t the usual bricks; they just went on and on and on, not unlike the grand finale in a fireworks display. The gunpowder and burning red paper wrapping created such an acrid, grey-black billow of smoke, it looked like a building was on fire. I had to get down there and check it out.

We left the restaurant and slowly made our way down the street. Once we got to the scene that I spied from the restaurant window, it was evident to me that this was the place everyone wanted to be. I got to see what was causing the firestorm: actual long belts of firecrackers wrapped around a sawhorse. Wanting to get some shots of them, I muscled my way to the front of the crowd. The lion did his dance and the offerings were made, and then the works were lit. Wow. What a racket. I mean WOW. I got a good amount of shots while getting blasted with firecracker shrapnel…and then the second wave of works came. I don’t know how they differed in construction from the first wave, but the explosions were so rapid-fire and percussive, my ears started to itch and I had to run away. Mind you, I was laughing the whole time, but it got scary! All of Chinatown was fairly loud yesterday, so I didn’t realize how beaten up my eardrums were until I got in the car. Then came the obligatory “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”. Today it feels like I have water in my right ear. Fantastic.

To summarize, the highlights:

1. The people were just too cool .
2 . Buddha’s Delight has the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten.
3. The day was all about fireworks (illegal in this state), and even as mobbed as the streets were, I could count on one hand how many cops I saw.
4. A guy about 70 years old said to me “it’s not very often I see someone using a camera older than mine." I was using a ’73 Nikon FTn.


Oh, and one other thing. I got to sample a burrito from No Problemo in New Bedford on Saturday. Sweet Fancy Moses was it magnificient.

Did I Miss Anyone?

I would like to bid a heartfelt Happy Merry Joyous Hanukkah Christmas Winter Solstice Kwanzaa Boxing Day to you and yours, his and hers, ours and theirs, back and forth.

Also, may the new year bring you peace and joy.

Love one another. Try it...you might like it.

~SP

Frosty The Peacemaker

Christmastime can be a conflicted time of year for me because of the utter insanity the majority of people slip into. Interestingly, Chanukah has no such insanity, but I digress.

This time of year, people are expected to turn it down a bit; good will towards man and the whole bit. If anything, I think the converse happens. Once one sets foot anywhere something is sold, they are no longer peers or brothers or sisters; they’re competition. Black Friday, as it has come to be known, is a perfect and disturbing illustration of that.

Every now and then, however, Christmas spirit prevails somehow.

When I was fifteen, my older brother and I were horsing around in my room. I threw a cassette tape case at him, and the corner hit the back of his hand. Not surprisingly, he got angry and threw me on my desk, and my shoulder hit the power switch on my boom box. Just when I thought I was going to be the recipient of a punch in the mouth, the dulcet tones of “Frosty the Snowman” suddenly emanated from my boom box.

We had no choice but to laugh. Through the spirit of Christmas, a hostile situation was defused and I was spared getting downright smote.

It was a true Christmas miracle.

Hal-leeeeee…luuuuuuuujahhhhhhhh.

Nunfoolery.

King Kong Kristmas

Greetings, Faithful Reader-type Folk.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be on vacation until January 2nd. Every time I say that, I hear a tiny "halle-freakin-lujah" go off in my head. I’ve always maintained that not having to take the train into and out of the city is pretty much a vacation in itself, and everything else is just gravy. I don’t really have anything special planned other than catching up on some serious quality time with my lady fair and taking in a couple movies. At the top of the list are Syriana and Munich.

As I’ve professed to just about anyone who’ll listen, it seems now that the phase of Summer Blockbusters has ceased and the good stuff is finally being rolled out. And thank God, because by August I was pretty much convinced that the future of cinema was, in a word, dead. The fact that Wedding Crashers had the theatrical lifespan it did speaks volumes. Mind you, I’m not a movie snob who can list off 27 obscure independent movie directors or who debuted what at Sundance this year. And, to be fair, every now and then I do like a big, stupid, star-studded, spoon-fed action flick. Hell, I actually paid full admission price to see The Day After Tomorrow. Why? Because sometimes I just need it. There wasn’t a great deal of hype involved in that movie, and that certainly helped a lot in my decision. Most everyone knows by now what my feelings are on hype, so I won’t dabble in the repetitive.

The latest movie to be hyped to the nth degree is King Kong. It's a remake of a remake, for cryin' out loud. However, A Christmas Carol has been made a thousand different ways, so disputing the relevance or integrity of a remake is a moot point. When I first heard about the new King Kong, I have to admit that I was intrigued. Then I heard Jack Black was going to be in it, so I pretty much figured what I’d be in for if I saw it. The 70s version of King Kong I actually liked. Jeff Bridges was great, and it had seriousness and credibility (as credible as a 50-foot gorilla could be) to it. Now I like Jack Black. I do. But add him to a movie and the precedent is automatically set. It’s won’t be King Kong. It’ll be the Jack Black Show. Then there’s the matter of CGI. It most definitely has its place, and I suspect it’ll be gratuitous in this one. Surprise, surprise, I have some strong feelings on that, too, but I’ll save it for another day.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be posting while I’m on vacation (no internet connection at home), so I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy/Merry Chanukah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Boxing Day, and a Happy New Year, y’all. Be good to each other.

Love and Peace to you.

~SP



(The Infographic at the top is courtesy of The Onion).

Lego My Ego.

Here’s a little Christmas story for ya. It doesn’t involve an official Red Ryder air carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, however. No, it's about…

Legos.

Now, I’ve made my point abundantly clear on just how vital Legos were to me as a youth. Even beyond kiddom, actually. I’m not sure exactly what the understood age limit is on Legos, but I’m pretty sure a kid was supposed to have outgrown them by age 12. I've never believed that, and I know for a fact that some engineers at MIT still pla…er, use them for designing purposes. Regardless of the age, Legos were often seen as nerdy. Not Dungeons and Dragons-level nerdiness, but nerdy enough that if you played with them, chances are you probably weren’t at all interested in the fairer sex. Well, I most certainly was. But I also loved me some Legos and would resort to purt near anything to get them.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, a local newspaper called The Daily Intelligencer held a competition, asking kids to write a letter to Santa and send it to the newspaper. I believe the prize was a gift certificate to Kay Bee Toys or something. I was eight, and I didn’t believe in Santa Claus at that point. But I was willing to throw integrity to the wind in order to score a gift certificate so I could buy—you guessed it—Legos.

I drafted a letter, extolling the greatness of Legos and how over the moon I’d be if “You, Santa, would bring me some.” I may have even used “beseech” in there somewhere. I exercised my best penmanship and paid particular attention to articulation--no sense risking receiving something erroneously:.

“What? The kid asked for Eggos! Says so right here! Not my problem!”

I and three other kids won the competition. I thought it would be a quiet victory (more like I hoped it would be) and they’d just send me a gift certificate.

Oh, no. Not for you, little boy. We have something much more sinister and embarrassing in store.

What they did was publish the shameless pleas on the front page of the newspaper. Christ. Talk about bittersweet. I wasn’t aware of the whole front-page bit until one of the girls I had a severe crush on brought in the newspaper and showed everyone in the whole class (thanks a million, Kristin). Not only was it now public knowledge that I was just goofy for Legos, it was now also public knowledge that I, a fourth grader, actually still believed in Santa Claus. I didn’t, but try explaining that to a class full of your peers who already had their minds made up.

I prayed that Christmas vacation week would be enough time for everyone to forget about it and move on, already.

It, um, wasn’t.

Santa, Baby.

Everyone has their traditions that they follow year after year, without question. As I got older and realized that even though I still had a pretty unrelenting image of what Christmas should look and feel like (to me), I’m just not a kid anymore and knew my excitement surrounding this particular holiday would start to wane eventually. As my father said, the best you can do is create your own traditions.

For the sake of general definition, sure, it could be said that I celebrate Christmas. Do I attend midnight mass? No. Am I out singing carols? Nah. Do I follow any of the religious practices of Christmas? Am I even a Christian? Nope. More accurately, I celebrate the spirit of it. One thing I do love about this time of year is the electricity in the air, and it's not from my stocking'd feet. The love and warmth seems to get bumped up a notch. How could a super-lovey dude like myself not like something like that. Mind you, it’s difficult to find even a trace of that warmth when you’re anywhere near a place that has something to sell. Bah. I’ll refrain from the commercialism diatribe. We all know what commercialism has done to the holiday and it’s a tired subject.

I feel sorry my Jewish friends because man, they just get pummeled with the whole Christmas thing. They have no choice because there’s simply no escape. When was the last time you were in a mall and heard klezmer music played over and over? Or 83 different versions of "Maoz Tzur" (6 jazz, 19 R&B, 47 country, 3 punk, 7 Mannheim Steamroller)? Neither have I.

Music is a HUGE part of it all.

1. It's all about the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts Christmas album for me. It somehow brings it all together and takes me away.

2. The Nutcracker. What can I tell ya. I grew up with it and have fond memories associated with it. Whether its original intent had anything to do with Christmas or not is irrelevant to me. It’s just a great piece, period.

3. Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Mormons, Episcopalians, Catholics, Trekkies, Lutherans, Scientologists, whatever. All I know is choral music is chilling and I dig it.

4. Sure, I have the obligatory Time-Life Treasury, and Time-Life reeeeeeeeally wants me to buy more stuff from them. Ain’t gonna happen. More and more I’m finding myself fast-forwarding through it. At some point in the past couple years, Roger Whittaker is getting harder to listen to. I just have visions of a large, singing beard/sweater combination when I hear that guy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MI HERMANO.