A weekend, ongoing

[drwex]

I know it's not formally the end of the extended weekend. And I've a cookout to attend and a game tonight still to come, but let me at least document some of. No, as the man said. Is too long, let me sum up (partly by referencing other helpful people).

Friday I cut out of work early to stand in line for the Julius Schwartz Memorial Lecture at MIT, featuring Neil Gaiman. I felt I sort of hand to attend, as I was very slightly involved in making it happen. When the lecture was first conceived it had no home, and Gaiman posted as much in his blog. ZOMG, thought I, what an excessively cool thing. And I know just the place for it. So I emailed Henry Jenkins, whom I know a bit from my time at MIT, sent him the URL to Gaiman's blog and said, essentially "You know you want this, right?" Then I got the hell out of the way and let real people do the hard work.

KJC has done two awesome write-ups so far, and promises a third, so I'll just link to her:
Part 1: http://kjc007.livejournal.com/119811.html
Part 2: http://kjc007.livejournal.com/120258.html

My knees and hips did NOT like being in a seat in Kresge for that many hours - ow. As kjc says, the talk did ramble a bit when Gaiman had to rely on notes he hadn't even finished writing, but it was still fun and the Q&A was good.

Two personal notes: First, I continue to be amazed at how many people remain fascinated by the question of why Delight became Delerium. Gaiman admitted he didn't know when he first wrote about it, but he does now and if only the details can be worked out with DC he'll do the story for us. OK, done, stop asking questions about it people, please? There is so much else interesting in the body of work Gaiman has produced.

Second, there are very few authors who can so good naturedly say "You have to stop talking now" - and make it stick - to a rabid fangirl who has somehow gotten to the mic and is nattering on in a clearly and sadly deranged fashion about how real all these made-up things are to her. Gaiman not only said it, but made it sound gentle as well as necessary.


Some time ago Tamar recommended L'Andana Grill to me as a place to try, based on the reputation of its owner/chef and their in-city restaurants. To celebrate Pygment's birthday we went on Saturday night with my uncle Paul and aunt Gray. The short form: good four-star food at four-star prices. Thank you to Dr Karen for babysitting. My hips did not like their furniture, which featured seats too low to the table and with squishy cushions. But the food and conversation were good enough to make up for it. Recommended for your next fancy meal in the burbs. All the rest is food geekery.

Although the place bills itself as "Tuscan dining" I found the preparation and fare to be much more classical French-countryside than Italian. I had the wild mushroom soup starter, which was very flavorful and strong the way a mushroom soup should be. Pygment had an off-menu appetizer of sliced salmon and scallop sashimi with sliced jalapeno done up in flavored olive oil. She found it tasty, but meager.

For entree I had a duck half, done with an apricot-tangerine glaze. Tasty, and very well cooked. It came with a barley "risoto" (quotes on the menu) that seemed to have been done with the duck drippings. Not too bad. My uncle had the swordfish, which had been grilled with peppers and onions. Nice and simple. My aunt had a whole sea bass, which was excellent. I couldn't figure out what it was seasoned with - the online menu says lemon and garlic and fennel, all of which were present but there was more I couldn't place. Pygment had the filet mignon, which was a great cut of meat not at all overwhelmed by the gorgonzola. Unfortunately the accompanying potatoes came out dry.

The food was enough to fill us up so we sort of compromised on a cookie plate for 'dessert'. A nice assortment of five different cookies with a chocolate dipping sauce. They seemed a little baffled by our various requests for tea. I was amused to note a 25-year-old scotch on the after-dinner menu going at $50/shot.

Service was good, as you'd expect from a place in this price-bracket. The interior is much larger than one would expect - apparently they get enough business to justify it. We were seated around to the side of the main room, which made for quieter and easier conversation. All in all a win.


After dinner we went to see Iron Man. Lifecollage has a spoilerful review that I think captures the essential squee of this movie: http://lifecollage.livejournal.com/308372.html

I liked it, Paltrowgasms and all. Comic-book movies have to tread carefully not to mess with canon and not to depend too heavily on it. This one pulled from several bits of Iron Man backstory and did something like a re-imagining of the origin. I wasn't very happy with having more swarthy folk as bad guys, but if you're going to set conflict and war profiteering in the modern era it's a sad fact that most of the shooting today is going on in places where people have darker skins.

The movie captured the essence of the naive/mad tinkerer quite well and I was excessively pleased to see multiple people wearing Brass Rats, all facing the proper way. And, yeah, sequel is coming. I'm so there. This franchise could definitely have legs. And, um, redhead. Did I mention that bit, yet?

Sunday we went out again, this time for dim sum at China Pearl. I believe that MRF was the one who referred to the essence of dim sum as being not just large blobs of carbs you don't need, but also large blobs of treyf you don't need.

Normally I avoid dim sum on just that reasoning but this was a family outing with Pygment's sister and family. It was nice to see them even if we did spent half an hour sitting around waiting for the restaurant to send around the other cart with the food we wanted.

In general I think it was good dim sum, based partly on the fact that 75% of the people in the restaurant were not round-eyes. I figure if the local Chinese wanted dim sum they always have the option to go down to Chinatown and if they didn't do that it probably meant this was as good as you'd get most anywhere.
This AM we debated things like biking and other outdoorsy stuff. We settled for yardwork, primarily dealing with the logs that are destined for the fireplace this fall or later. We'd meant to get out more, really, but at least the kitchen no longer disgusts Pygment and now we are going to go BBQ with our friends.

Hope your long weekend was good, too!

Comments

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

Second, there are very few authors who can so good naturedly say "You have to stop talking now" - and make it stick - to a rabid fangirl who has somehow gotten to the mic and is nattering on in a clearly and sadly deranged fashion about how real all these made-up things are to her. Gaiman not only said it, but made it sound gentle as well as necessary.

I agree, Mr. Gaiman handled the situation more then well. I alternated between being supremely irritated by said fangirl and feeling sorry for her. I mean, while it doesn't excuse her behavior, I strongly feel she didn't have any idea that wishing to compliment Neil and then nattering on for AGES was kind of a douchey thing to do. Her offense wasn't that she wanted to compliment him, more that once she started she didn't know how to shut up. I think she got overwhelmed by that fact she was actually getting to talk to him, and just started babbling. It's going to take a loooong time for her to live this one down. Going all fangirl or fanboy is one thing. Doing it in front of a large swath of Greater Boston's Geek population, while it's being taped for posterity? Yikes!

[drwex]

I'm pretty sure that ramble will be excised from the DVD version. At least, I hope so.