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Beer and St. Francis of Assisi Day.

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Finally, the project that consumes me every year during the beginning of October has ended and I am free once again to do something other than work every bleeping second of every day. I will post the super-cool stuff I made for the meeting shortly, but in the meantime, let’s cover what I did this past weekend. It was jolly delightful. I met up with Jem who was in town working the Comic Con. She is really into beer, so we headed off to the East Village to traipse through a variety of bars. The first one I can’t remember the name of, but it was full, and I mean completely full, of fratboy douchebags. I actually didn’t hate it there. I watched some of the Georgia-Colorado football game (Colorado had a male bison run across the field!) and sang along with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”. The only problem was that it was really really loud and there was nowhere to sit, so we moved on. The next stop was McSorley’s, the oldest continuously operated saloon in New York. Loads of famous people have passed through there. It was, how shall I put this, rustic. There was sawdust on the floor and communal tables and please allow me to run through the entire menu:

Two kinds of beer: light and dark
Liverwurst sandwiches
A sleeve of Saltines, a pile of sliced cheddar and a pile of sliced raw white onions

AND PEOPLE WERE EATING THIS. New York has, what, eleventy-billion restaurants, and people were eating stuff that I wouldn’t eat if it was 3:00 in the morning and I was starving and it was the only food in my fridge. By then I was pretty peckish, so as soon as Jem finished her beers (one light and one dark), we headed off to St. Marks Place for real-person food. We went to a stellar restaurant called Je’Bon which served pan-asian food. I had curry that came in a white bowl the size of a toilet. It was huge and delicious. After that glorious experience, we tottered off to my favorite place of the evening, unfortunately named Burp Castle. I deduced from the name that it would be like a Chuck. E. Cheese with beer, but thankfully I was wrong. It’s a bar built to look like a room in a monastery, with 15th-century-style frescoes on the wall. The bartenders are in the brown tunic and rope belt of a monk, the lighting is very dim and very flattering, and if you talk too loudly, the bartenders gently shush you, so it’s sort of quiet. Jem had a creme brulee beer, which I had a tiny taste of, and you know it wasn’t bad. I found a picture of Burp Castle online, so you can get an idea.

The next morning, it was off to St. Francis of Assisi Day at St. John the Divine! You should read my previous post on it before you continue because I make references to the post. This is what standing in line looks like.

There’s a great deal of chaos and butt-sniffing and barking. There was a cat there who wanted nothing more then to kill everyone in attendance. One kid brought his dragon-lizard-creature.

The service was pretty much the same thing as always. This is the 26th year that they have had the Earth Mass, as they call it. I got a better shot of the lady with the punchbowl this time.

Inside, I saw a sphinx cat wearing a blue sweater and an expression of disdain for the proceedings.

I also saw the ugliest dog I have ever seen. I swear to God, It looked like it was rotting. I couldn’t stop looking at it and thinking, “Is that…mold?”

Speaking of God, I had excellent seats this year to see the eucharist. Everyone has a different way of accepting the wafer and wine, but one guy took the wafer in his hand, then walked over to the fancy wine goblet and dipped it in and popped the now soggy wafer in his mouth, and while I was thrilled because it seems so much more hygenic then everyone drinking from the same vessel, I was also like, “Hey, I don’t want to tell you how to do your thing, but I don’t think you’re supposed to dunk the body of Christ into the blood of Christ like chip dip. Seems a litte disrespectful. This is not a Superbowl party. Just sayin’.”

And now, the annual Presentation of the Irritatingly Blurry Photos. The procession was a bit of a let-down this year. There were no birds of prey at all, there were no bees in a glass case, and most of the creatures were farm animals, which is fine, but I kinda liked the baby kangaroo and the baby gibbon from last year. There was a hysterical teenage emu. We’ll get to him later.

First, a cute chubby pig.

A festive little cow.

A mini-horse.

One of several llamas.

A dromedary.

In the middle of this procession, a young emu came down the aisle, and he must really hate church because the second he got in there he started skidding backwards on the floor and attempting to jump away and making weird beeping noises, so his handler gently brought him over to the side to chill.

Emu freaking.

Emu chilling.

Emu being carried down the aisle and flailing.

There was a fennec there, but you could barely see it because the lady carrying it was clutching it to her bosom so tight. I am aware that fennecs are wild animals and if they get loose they don’t come back, but this woman was holding that fennec with an expression on her face like, “No fennec for you! No fennec for anyone but me! Fennec all mine!” This is the uber-crappy shot I got of her. Selfish fennec-clutcher that she was.

Afterward there was the usual fair outside (minus the birds of prey, boo) and I donated money to all the charities and got to meet a whole bunch of very nice dogs. There was a 235-pound English mastiff there.

And who immediately wanted to get into a fight with him? Of course, the Pomeranian puppy. This is the puppy meeting the mastiff.

This is the Pomeranian putting his dukes up.

And this is the mastiff gently sniffing the Pomeranian’s junk, then exhaling heavily and laying down on the ground while the pomeranian hops around him, pummeling ineffectively at the mastiff’s snout.

Watching all this go down in the background was an extremely attentive dachshund. I thought he was adorable.

That’s pretty much it. One day I’ll get a hold of a good camera that can take good pictures of moving objects in dim light, and then I will have good pictures. It will happen someday, I swear.

Posted in Nature, New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

Renaissance Fair.

Friday, September 10th, 2010

About 45 minutes from my apartment is the New York Renaissance Fair. Or the RenFair, as we called it growing up. Cricket had never been, and I hadn’t been since in a decade, so I thought, hey, let’s go pretend we all live in Ye Olden Tymes without those pesky details like complete lack of hygiene and sewage running free in the streets. Now that I have gone, I feel comfortable not going again for another decade.

Many of these photos are mine, but a bunch more are pulled from the internet. So thank you, Internet, for sharing thy bounty with me, prithy and forsooth and all that good stuff.

The RenFair takes place in a forest in upstate-ish New York. They’ve actually built a wee little Elizabethan village there.

And many people come in costume. Some are in period-appropriate costumes, but we did see one guy who was dressed as a Storm Trooper in a kilt.

As we came in, there was a cool bell apparatus on the side. A spooky guy wearing a full-body catsuit and a winged gold mask played the bells using a complicated pulley system.

Cricket was super-exited to try mead, which is a kind of wine, and a turkey leg, which is a famous RenFair food. They are advertised all over the place.

Just so you know, the food at RenFair is depressingly expensive. Turkey leg? $7.50. Funnel cake? $6.00. And this peeved me no end – pickle? $3.00. THREE DOLLARS for a cucumber soaked in salty herb-y water. What do those ingredients cost, like, seven cents, max? Oh, that really bakes my cookies.* Here’s a picture I found when they were only two dollars for a pickle, back in the good old days.

Please note the delightful skull-and-crossbones painting on the end of the barrel. There are a great many hand-painted signs all over the RenFair. Some are extremely well-painted:

Some are not well-painted:

And some are painted with totally unnecessary apostrophes.

Belly Dancer’s WHAT?!?? I feel like I’m missing something. I find it fascinating when people use punctuation where it’s absolutely not necessary at all.

There are a ton of women in costume there. I think many look forward to dressing up in interesting garb, like these women (note the peacock feather lashes which match the purse, FIERCE):

But I think the vast majority of the women just like the opportunity to dress up as the local village concubine with their corseted mammaries shoved up and out.

I’m all for hoisting your petards if you got ‘em, but sometimes it’s a bit ridiculous-looking. Like when you get armpit cleavage.

Or this lady in charge of the camel rides who had the word ” T I P S ” written across her chest. Dear Lord, woman, your cups runneth over.

We saw a whole bunch of different shows throughout the day, jugglers and jesters and gymnasts, but my favorite was (surprise!) the birds of prey. But first, the parrots. The parrots were in a huge enclosure near the birds of prey. You paid two dollars (which went to the maintenance and upkeep of the parrots, so I was totally fine with that) and you got to wander around with the parrots and there were friendly little bunnies that the parrot-owners had adopted hopping around eating grass bits. I was very happy.

Right outside that area was the falconer guy with the birds of prey. He shared four with us that day. The first one was a Harris Hawk, which I didn’t take any pictures of because I was too busy staring at Bird #3, which was a Eurasian Eagle Owl named Buddaka.

The second bird was a Black Vulture named Igor, and I managed to snap one or two shots of Igor. Still totally paying attention to the owl.

After Buddaka, there was an Andean Vulture. This particular andean vulture weighs 22 pounds and has a ten-foot wingspan. She was a monster. She looked like a demonic wild turkey. I, of course, loved her.

And that was pretty much it. We watched some jousting on horses, ate some more, and went home.

*Cookies? $5.50.

Addendum: Snorth requested an animation of the two first pictures of the owl, and I am nothing if not amenable.

Posted in Activitays, Nature, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 2 Comments »

The Zucchini Festival.

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

I went to Massachusetts to The Zucchini Festival. A festival! Devoted to zucchinis! Hurray!

On route to the gaiety I saw a man shining up his ancient vehicle. Check out the wooden spokes.

And then lovely, hand-made zucchini signs informed you of all the important things like times and locations.

There were also signs peppered all over telling you important facts.

I got up very early because I knew the day began with the Pet Parade. People take their pets and decorate them to look like zucchinis and then parade them down a tiny, short street and prizes are given at the end. I couldn’t miss that. I got to meet some great beasties. First I met a dachshund who was totally rockin’ the look. It wasn’t hard for him, being all elongated-squash-shaped and all.

Then there was a goat, painted green, in a cage filled with leaves.

Large woman with tiny chihuahua? Check.

Herding dog with creepy blue eyes dressed as a zucchini flower? Check.

The dog’s name is Ellie, and she was lovely and super-psyched to be wearing a costume. You could almost hear her. “Look at me, I’m a flower! See me? Flower! Oh boy! Flower flower flower!” etc.

Cooper, I learned, loves to carry things in his mouth. So he carried his little identification sign around with him all day.

There was also a three-legged poodle…

…a baby goat…

…a half-corgie, half-irish setter wearing a old futon mattress…

…and two girls who are members of 4-H and brought some delightful companions with them, two of which were Pig-ccini and a lion-head rabbit. An award-winning lion-head rabbit, I’ll have you know.

There was also Stephanie the cat. Poor Stephanie. Clearly this was the backstory: a three-year-old boy told his parents that he wanted to be in the pet parade, in a wagon, with his beloved cat by his side. The parents, being high on crack or something, decided this would be a good idea. So Stephanie the cat was placed in a wagon adorned with antlers and a dried crocodile skull (you see them on the front there), had a leash put on her, and sat there while this young feller aggressively pet her. She so clearly did not want to be there, AT ALL. You know that night she barfed in each and every one of her owner’s shoes. And rightfully so, I would add. I would do the same thing had I been in her place. Hork away, Stephanie, hork away.

Leading the pet parade was the Master of Ceremonies, with his festive hat and his ornately-decorated golf cart and his bullhorn.

Once the parade was over, the fun was not done. Oh no. There were all these vendors selling things ( I bought Cricket a t-shirt and I bought myself zucchini relish and zucchini bread). Here’s a list of some of the other fun things they were doing.

The nice 4-H girls live with their parents on a farm, and aside from bringing the green goat in the cage, the pig and the rabbit, they set up a petting zoo with heirloom chickens, two geese, a flock of the sweetest sheep from Turkey, two ponies and my cow. I clearly called it “my” cow because I love this cow. Really. My favorite picture of the day is a girl with a skull painted on her face feeding my beloved cow. I want to live with this cow.

By the way, the MC was not the only person wearing a zucchini-themed hat. Ooooh no.

People were bringing their gigantic monster-zucchinis to be weighed and entered into a competition, and this guy, who reminded me of Alton Brown, was in charge of the weighing area.

I walked, I ate, I talked to people, I talked to their dogs, the whole thing was wonderful. I don’t know what my schedule holds for next year, but if I’m free, I’m going again. It’s a hoot.

Posted in Nature, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 3 Comments »

A weekend filled with Japanese goodness.

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

On Saturday I went to a quilt show with Snorth and her mom (because the way I am not really focused on the fiber arts, Snorth is, with the crocheting and the tapestry and the quilting) and I was really, really good and didn’t buy any fabrics that are pretty but that I would never use, ever. They would just sit in my apartment and gather dust, prettily. I did, however, learn more about the art form Sashiko, which is a kind of Japanese quilting that I have loved for quite some time but didn’t know much about. Wikipedia describes it nicely.

Sashiko (???^?, literally “little stabs”) is a form of decorative reinforcement stitching (or functional embroidery) from Japan. Traditionally used to reinforce points of wear, or to repair worn places or tears with patches, this running stitch technique is often used for purely decorative purposes in quilting indigo blue cloth gives sashiko its distinctive appearance, though decorative items sometimes use red thread.

Here are some pictures of it from Flickr. I love geometric designs, especially hexagons, so this totally appeals to me.

Then, on Sunday I went to the Cherry Blossom Festival. There’s a park right next to my house, and every year in the first weekend in May, the large Japanese community in White Plains has this festival, with bands and food and cultural booths, etc. One of the things I like best about living in White Plains is the diversity. From what I can see, there is a large Asian contigent (Japanese, Chinese and Korean). There’s also quite a few black people who speak french (either from Haiti or the Ivory Coast or some place like that), and a ton of Hispanics, mostly Mexican. It is so, so much better than the town I grew up in, Rye (Barbara Bush’s home town!). It was almost all white, and 60% Catholic. No diversity at all. Very dull. Snore.

Anyway, Cherry Blossom Festival. Since the weather was so good, lots of people turned out for it. The park was packed. There was a whole bunch of booths with Japanese activities.

There was a tea ceremony booth, and a booth where you could fight small remote-controlled robots against other small, remote-controlled robots.

Then there was a kawaii band rockin’ it in the far corner.

And in the near corner, on the stage, were drummers. The adults were great, but the kids really took the cake.

And, of course, there was food. The octopus balls booth* had lovely decorations.

And there were lots of people wearing authentic garb.

It’s one of my favorite events in White Plains, and I’m glad I was in town this year to catch it.

*Chopped-up octopus, rolled into balls with batter and deep-fried. Anyone making cephalopod testicle jokes gets a virtual smack from me.

Addendum: Saw this bag on an 11-year-old-girl at the Festival. Only the Japanese could make a purse this cute and this macabre. They have a gift, I tell you.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

Budapest and Prague – Part 3.

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

And now we’re in Prague. Perhaps the most irritatingly attractive European city ever.

The architecture was NUTS. It was like being in a fairy tale, with dragons and princesses and everything. My heart actually hurt a little.

Even our generic hotel couldn’t avoid the Grimm’s fairy tales vibe. This was the picture that was over my bed.

“In Czech Republic after woman has been defiled in the middle of the road she chops off man’s head. Enjoy your stay in Prague.”

Also in my hotel bathroom? This.

Beer Capital of the World, indeed.

The great thing about visiting a primarily Catholic country is that there are festivals and celebrations all the time. Every saint needs to be venerated in some way, so the main square usually has something going on. When we were there it was Easter. And the Renaissance Fair thing that Europe does so well (being that they had the Renaissance, of course) was out in force.

First, you see that church there, the white one with the greenish turrets? The Czech Republic is known for glass, specifically lead crystal glass, and they had a GORGEOUS chandelier in that church. My picture totally doesn’t do it justice.

Okay, back to the Easter festival. First of all, there is a clear color scheme for Easter in the Czech Republic, and that is yellow, green and orange. So everything was decorated in those colors.

There was also an eight-foot-tall easter egg made from twigs covered with those ribbons. And the best thing was people were taking pride in the crafts and traditions that they have been doing for centuries. There were people selling small glass and ceramic things and painted blown goose eggs and this forger? Pumping up the heat on his forging station with his foot, like a Singer sewing machine.

And then there was the food. For both Budapest and Prague, the food is pretty much the same. It’s stick-to-your-ribs, meat and potatoes stuff. There were people selling gingerbread cookies that they had decorated with fine lines of white glaze, and tons of sausages, and this baked good that I called a turtleneck because apparently vowels were in short supply the day they named this thing.

How it works: You wrap a strip of raw dough around a wooden dowel, and then the wooden dowel rotates over a roasty-toasty fire. I think they may sprinkle sugar on there too. Then, they slide it off the wooden dowel and you eat it. Along with this, there was what I considered the piece de resistance: The pig roasting on a spit.

I didn’t include a picture of the pig from the front because, frankly, it was kind of gross and wee bit barbaric-looking, but the cool thing was that it was run on wood. And when the roaster ran out of wood, he chopped some more. With that axe can see. Oh my God, it’s so medieval and authentic.

On one of the sides of the square is one of the hot sights in Prague, the astrological clock. I’m not really sure how it works, but it does work and it sure does look complicated.

At the top of each hour, one of the four figures next to the clock, Death, rings his bell and shakes his hourglass. And those two windows open and the twelve apostles swing by. It’s great. Here’s a close-up of Death.

The four figures around the clock are the most-hated things they could think of: Death, Greed, Vanity and a Turk. That’s a whole lotta hate for Turkey. I guess the Czech Republic did not particularly enjoy being ruled by Turkey when this clock was made.

But wait! This is not the only cool clock in Prague. Prague has one of the finest Jewish Quarters of any European city. That’s mainly because Hitler wanted to preserve it exactly as it was as a museum of an extinct race. So it is relatively untouched. In the Jewish Quarter there is a clock that runs backwards because it has hebrew letters on it.

The Jewish Quarter has the really cool cemetery as well. The Jews were allotted only a small amount of space to bury their dead, so it’s a really dense cemetery. Let me explain: when the Jews ran out of room, they put another layer of soil over the graves, moved the pre-existing gravestones up, and buried another group of people. In some places it is twelve people deep. The cemetery was in use from the 1500s to the end of the 1700s, so up to 100,000 people may be buried there.

Another thing about the Jewish Quarter is that throughout the ages, Jews have had to wear identifying garments when out and about with Christians. At one point it was a yellow sash. For a long time, it was a yellow pointed hat. The Jews took this hat and incorporated it into their architecture, so one can see it all over that part of town.

My mom and I partook in the local ethnic cuisine throughout our stay in both Prague and Budapest, and one of the places we ended up in was something between a mad scientist’s laboratory and Applebee’s. It was covered with alchemy symbols and gurgling, lit-up giant fake Bunsen burners and well, you can see for yourself.

And, in keeping with the Crapplebee’s design motif, they also had musical instruments on the wall. No skis or fake-o vintage team photos.

They served green beer. Really. Green beer. I don’t drink beer, but my mother does, so of course I forced the green beer on her. She said it tastes like ear wax, but more bitter. So as tempting as it might be, don’t drink the green beer.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | 3 Comments »

We now take a short break for some cute.

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I found some more pictures of really swell cupcakes on Flickr:

and my personal favorite, mainly for the name: The Straw-Berried Treasure Cupcake.

The cute inspiration bug bit me again recently when I saw the submarine tea thingie.

That makes me so happy. I have loose tea that I use occasionally, I may end up purchasing this.

Also, on a more macabre but still cute note, how badly do I want this wallpaper? (Answer: really freakin’ badly).

I love animals. I love anatomy. I love black and gray. I want – nay, I NEED – this wallpaper.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Moon and etc.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Not much has been going on in my world worth blogging about (you wanna hear how I cleaned my bathroom? And made a presentation for work? I think not), but I did see the movie Moon starring Sam Rockwell. No, really, JUST starring Sam Rockwell. Sam Rockwell is the only person in it. Kevin Spacey does the voice of the robot Gerty, but other than that, it’s like Castaway. I saw it by myself, and then I saw it again with my father, which was great because I missed a whole bunch of stuff the first time around. You spend the first watching of the film saying, “Where did that come from?” and “Isn’t he supposed to be dead?” and things like that. So when I watched it with my father, I got a chance to really catch all the things that had me confused the first time. Here’s a brief plot synopsis without giving away the ending: Sam Bell is an astronaut on the moon all by his lonesome. Some giant industrious company back on earth has figured out how to get clean energy from the rocks on the moon, so Sam Bell monitors the harvesting machines and sends the energy back home, etc. It’s a lonely existence, but in two weeks Sam will get to return to earth and see his family. And then… things start happening. Nee noo nee noo nee noo nee noo. No, it’s not really like that, there’s no Aryan princess sitting in front of a snowy TV screen informing you of the arrival of bad things. It’s an extremely well-done film and I hope it wins lots of awards. If you want a more detailed review, go here.

In a totally non-movie-related news, Cricket mocked me for talking about a “twig district” in New York. There isn’t really a twig district, there’s a flower district, and one can procure many a twig or branch there. I took a picture of one shop to illustrate that.

That’s one of the things I truly love about New York, the districts. There’s the bead district, a restaurant district, the plastic district, a light bulb district, etc. And those are only the ones I know. Who knows what other wonderful clusters of shops New York holds?

The other thing I took a photo of is this gorgeous enclosed bridge that I walk by from time to time.

It’s like an enchanted world. It connects two dull buildings with its ornate coppery multi-levelness. I would love to walk across it one day. In the meantime, I can just walk past it and drool.

Addition: Lookit! Brain-sucker cupcakes! How fabulous!

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

The healthful benefits of fried food.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

As I have mentioned before, I work in Koreatown, which is a wonderful area if you like spicy food with lots of vegetables and rice (which I do). I pass tons of restaurants which show pictures of their food with a lot of comments like this: “Tofu cooked in mineral water to aid digestion” or “Our kimchi has healthful elements to prevent disease”, all of which is fine. Snorth, the other day, told me about this amazing Korean fried chicken place called Bon Chon. So I went to their website.

http://www.bonchon.com/eng/

Okay, fine, you make life-alteringly delicious fried chicken. Why must you repeat that it is healthy and low-calorie? It’s FRIED CHICKEN. Do you remember when KFC had that horrendously written commercial campaign? It was the one where they said, “You know, if you strip the skin and breading off of our fried chicken, it’s really quite healthy,” and America, as a group, was like OH FOR REAL COME ON do not compare your processed fried chicken to a big bowl of dark green arugula and kale PLEASE KTHX. I’m having flashbacks of that with Bon Chon. Also, for engrish, it’s pretty stellar. Here are some quotes about the signature Bon Chon taste secret:

We use only vegetable oils to fry our chicken. Along with our special sauce, this process eliminates oil and water from the chicken so that it can create lean and crispy tastes. (OH FOR REAL COME ON, etc.)
The initial flavor of the fried chicken decelerates as the temperature cools down.
You hand remains almost free form our ingredient sauce.
Your fingers and hands should remain free from its sauce because the sauce and ingredients remain intact with the chicken.

Posted in Advertising, New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

Pretty pretty cupcakes.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

But first, spam! Spam that has been sent to my comments, as you know, periodically tries to mask its intent in order for me to approve it and allow it on through. It has tried complete gibberish, and unintentionally poetic phrases, and false inducing of pity, and random collections of proverbs. Now the new tack, which I happen to like very much, is to tell me a charming childhood joke, like one you might find in Highlights magazine.

This cracks me up, because now I want to tell people jokes and then yell a medication’s name after the punchline. “What do cats put in their drinks? Mice cubes. LEVITRA!!”

Now, on to cupcakes. I went to a lovely party on Saturday night for a girl I went to college with, her 30th birthday party. Lini, the birthday girl, is bringing back the 1950s house arts in a big way. She made a German chocolate cake with what I referred to as “aggressive frosting.” You know how most people attempt to make frosting as smooth and uniform as possible? Not Lini. Lini put smashed pecans and coconut shreds in it so it looked like it was furry and alive. It reminded me of that monster book from Harry Potter, like if I got to close to the cake teeth would just SPRING OUT from nowhere and there would be snarling and gnashing and whatnot. I swear it heard it growling. But it was delish, so whatever. Anyway, Lini and I were talking about how much we love cake decorating shows because, hey, they’re decorating something. And then you get to eat it! And in addition to the German chocolate cake, we had cupcakes, which inspired me to share some really gorgeous cupcake designs with y’all.

And my personal favorite, because it reminds me of my childhood:

Posted in New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Wedding in Lake George.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

My co-worker C. got married, and I got invited to her wedding in Lake George Village. Lake George, for those of you who don’t know, is in the upper part of New York State, approximately 90 miles from Montreal. On one of the banks is Lake George Village. It was quite the summer resort town back in the 1950s and 1960s, and a great deal of the buildings are still left over from then.

This is the lake from our hotel room. The area is heavily peppered with hotels and motels, apparently the population goes from about 1,000 to 15,000 in the summer. Ergo, many hotels.

And the stores/restaurants/amusements are charming and quaint and delightful. I took some pictures of the more dated and adorable elements.

You can’t really appreciate it because I was zipping past it in a car, but off to the left of that shot is a wax museum. You can see a bit of it.

And this is supposedly the oldest minigolf course in… someplace, maybe the Adirondacks, maybe New York, something like that.

And I couldn’t get a shot of it, but there is a Tiki Resort right near the minigolf course.

The town just screams, “No one puts Baby in a corner!”

So, the wedding. It was lovely, except for some poor teenage boy who had to read a passage from the Song of Songs that was clearly written with a woman’s voice, so Poor Teenage Boy had to read this whole passage:

Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.

My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.

My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.”

Okay, first of all, if I was a socially awkward male heterosexual teenager, this would be torture for me. Second, every time he said, “lover,” how was I not supposed to think of that Saturday Night Live skit? I mean, really. Then the next kid got up for a reading and said it was St. Paul speaking to the Phillipinos. I found that endlessly amusing as well.

The rest of the wedding went smashingly, C. looked gorgeous, and everyone went outside and posed for photos while actively freezing to death.

We all shuttled to a lovely castle on the side of a mountain, where there was dancing and consuming of food and beverage until late into the night.

The best part of dinner was that it was a buffet, so there weren’t herds of waiters tromping around with large trays of food, passive-aggressively deciding when dancing was to cease (“Well, you can keep dancing, but you’re food will get cold. I’m just sayin’…”). You could get what you wanted when you wanted. And they also brought out The Meat.

It took two people to carry it out. It reminded me of those ribs that Fred Flintstone gets and they put it in his car and his car tips over. It was enormous. Really.

Here are children in awe of The Meat. Or perhaps they got sucked into it’s gravitational pull. Can’t be sure.

And then the wedding ended and we went back to the hotel for the afterparty. Here is the beautiful blushing bride playing beer pong with one of the groomsmen, Ham.

It was a lovely wedding experience all around. I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. because I am weak and frail, but from what I understand, the revelry didn’t end until way after the sun came up.

Addendum: Apparently, at 3:00 a.m., C.’s 80-year-old grandma played beer pong as well… with scotch. Gramma is hard-core.

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