Thanks to Terri’s photo class, I managed to (barely) miss the fun on the Red Line this morning. We left the house at 7:40 or so (normally I leave at 8:10 or so), so although the train was abnormally crowded, we actually made it all the way to Park Street. Though, we did notice that it smelled weirdly like fire when we stopped abruptly just after Porter Square.

After work, I met up with Terri and we walked around and she took pictures, and we ended up at Rosebud. We never go to Rosebud. It’s a well preserved little train car diner with nifty neon. But it pretty consistently has bad food, so we never end up going there, what with the infinitely better options in Davis Square. But we went, because Terri needed to take pictures inside for her class, and all the tastier joints were too dark. There was a sign on the wall behind the bar that said “try our world famous bloody mary!”. I recommend that you not bother with the world famous bloody mary, which was watery tomato juice, vodka, with a wilty celery stick. Just get a Harpoon IPA. The one thing that we ordered that was fantastic was the buffalo mushrooms. Some time in the last 5 years I’ve become sort of a buffalo fiend, and pretty much, you put buffalo sauce on it, I’ll eat it. (Shut up). But we left thinking that we should go back more often. It’s a place definitely where old-school Somerville character gets along pretty much fine with the gentrificators like yours truly. The waitress saw Terri taking all kinds of pictures and brought her over a postcard and said, “this one’s probably going to be better than the one you shot outside”. We explained that she was taking a photo class, so we hoped they didn’t mind us taking pictures. The bartender heard that (it is a train car after all) and said “OK, just make sure you only shoot my good side” and turned his face to the left and pointed to his right side. When we were wrapping up, a couple came who appeared to be regulars. The waitress asked them where they were last night (for the Celtics game). The woman said that they were down on the cape. There was a picture of Larry Bird taped to the side of the TV over the bar.

Anyway, we left thinking we should go back there more, if only for drinks.

I caught this nugget in a Reuters article today:

The 2007 World Series-winning Red Sox baseball club last month became the first professional sports team to go solar, installing solar hot water panels that will replace a third of the gas used to heat water at Boston’s historic Fenway Park.

Note, I noticed the article caught it because someone from my company was quoted in it:

“The solar industry will look very different just two years from now,” said Ted Sullivan, a senior analyst at Lux Research, a New York market consultancy.

He said he expects “a shake-out among companies that aren’t prepared to thrive in this new environment — particularly crystalline silicon players that haven’t invested in new thin-film technologies.”

Terri and I have been talking recently about where “home” is. When we go to Pennsylvania to visit my parents, I say “I’m going to visit my parents” or “I’m going to The Farm” but to me, home has not really been there since I was 18.

That said, I have lived in Somerville or Cambridge for almost 12 years now, and I still have no idea what the local TV network affiliates are. I know there is a channel 7, and I think it might be Fox. I know there is a WBZ and I think it is CBS, but I don’t know what its number is. I know there are 3 variants of WGBH and that is PBS. All I really know for sure is that on RCN in Somerville, the Red Sox are on NESN which is channel 30, and Turner Classic Movies is channel 62.

But I can still name the ones I grew up with in Pittsburgh: 2 is KDKA, a CBS affiliate (one of the few if not the only “K” stations east of the Mississippi). 4 is WTAE, an ABC affiliate. 11 is WPXI, NBC (and it used to be WIIC which I was reminded of when we were at Nora and Jim’s the other week: they had a Pittsburgh Steelers WIIC mug!). And 13 is WQED, the oldest public TV station in the US.

That said, Somerville definitely feels more like home to me than Pittsburgh, but it’s weird to have lived here so long without being able to name a single network affiliate.

You know things are getting bad when you make the sign board at Mr. & Mrs. Bartley’s Burgers in Harvard Square:

[another recent honoree was Eliot Spitzer]

Yesterday evening before I left work, Terri and I decided to meet for dinner at Johnny D’s. On the train I thought of a game to play over dinner, which I decided to call the either/or game. I would ask Terri either/or questions, and she’d have to pick one. I got there before she did, so I got the first “either/or” of the night, from the guy at the door: “are you staying for the show or just for dinner?” (Just dinner). I waited at the bar and eavesdropped on a bunch of good conversations between the bartenders and a couple of patrons (who also seemed to be fellow Johnny D’s coworkers and/or girlfriends who were hanging out on an off day). One of these conversations was another either/or conversation: who was hotter, the Celtics cheerleaders or the Patriots cheerleaders? (no consensus was reached).

Here are the highlights of my Either/Or questions for Terri:
“red or blue”? (declined)
“John Coltrane or Miles Davis?” (declined)
“The Specials or The English Beat?” (The Specials)
“Laurel or Hardy?” (Laurel)
“Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. Dubois?” (Booker T.)
“Greeks or Romans?” (Greeks)
“Beethoven or Mozart?” (Mozart! I can’t believe I married a Mozart-over-Beethoven!)

Terri asked me a bunch, too.
“Imperial or Parkay?” (Parkay)
“Mary Tyler Moore before or after Georgette?” (before)
“Empire Strikes Back or Star Wars?” (Empire, too easy)
“Mr. Ferley or Mr. Roper?” (Mr. Ferley, but if it were both of the Ropers as a unit, the Ropers).

The show started, and we asked for the check. As we were paying up, we exchanged pleasantries with Willie (the former Someday baristo (baristo?) who now waits tables at Johnny D’s). The opening band (violin, guitar, upright bass, female vocals) started off with “Love for Sale” (”Cole Porter or Rogers and Hart?” (ummmm, what did Rogers and Hart do again?…. besides “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”, I couldn’t name a song on demand!). I was almost tempted to stay, but then their second song was kind of a crappy country-sounding thing, and we left.

As we were heading home up Holland Street in the cold, I asked Terri, “Woodstock or Altamont?” She answered, “Monterey”. She totally won! She also thereby confirmed that I married the right girl.

“Snowstorm” by Galaxie 500.

I always think it’s the one where they talk about being on Route 128, but that’s “Blue Thunder”; nonetheless, there’s a very Massachusetts snowstorm feeling to “Snowstorm”.

Well I listen to the weather
And he’s changed his tone of voice
And he can see it on the radar
Only seven hours away
Well there’s gonna be a snowstorm
When the t.v.’s goin out
And they got nothin else to think of
And they’re letting me go home

Well I’m lookin at the snowflakes
And they all look the same
And the clouds are goin by me
They’re playin some kind of game
Well you know there’s a snowstorm
When the t.v. has gone out
And they got nothin else to think of
And they’re letting me go home

Friday as I was headed to the T station after work, I saw this banner, a two-story blowup of a sympathy letter from FDR.

After I got off the T in Davis, I decided I was tired enough that I could take the bus. Terri thinks taking the bus is cheating yourself out of a 15 minute walk. I think not taking the bus is cheating yourself out of a potential source of good stories.

Friday’s trip on the 87 bus was a case in point.

While we were waiting for the light to change to pull out of the Davis Square bus area, a rather inebriated guy with a grey crew cut and a fairly packed physique, kept putting his fist in the air and yelling “we’re the Marines!!!”. A couple of bratty kids outside the bus (let’s assume they were waiting for the 96 to Medford) started saluting him. He yells to the driver “hang on, I’m getting off!”. He proceeds to dangle out the front door and point threateningly and yell incoherently at the kids, who laugh and run into the station.

The guy swings back into the bus and lurches down the aisle to his seat as the bus starts moving. He’s talking to himself or yelling things at people on the bus, like “hey, cupcake, how do you know if you don’t give me a try?” or pointing sort of threateningly at this kid and saying “you, young man, need to show some respect”. The kid’s mom is sort of protectively standing over the kid with her hands on his shoulders. This went on for a minute or so and the guy didn’t seem about to give up, so I decided that I needed to take some kind of action. I didn’t want to do anything pick a fight with a drunk ex-Marine, especially since he looked like he could be a mad drunk, but I just kind of decided that I’d walk up into the aisle between him and the kid to distract the guy.

The guy looks at me. He starts studying my face. “You look very familar. Where do I know you from?” He keeps staring. “I KNOW! You’re the guy who got me out of jail today!” He holds out his hand. We shake. “Thank you, my friend. You got me out of jail today!” He calmed down a little and went back to just yelling “We’re the marines!”

And then it was my stop.

From this morning:

Wren outside Davis station
drinks October rain
from an upturned bottle cap

Walking home from the Honk! festivities in Davis Square today, Terri and I were chatting, and then we both suddenly fell quiet because we both started overhearing the conversation behind us. There were three guys, presumably on their way back to Tufts for a wacky Saturday night, and strategizing on the best combination of alcohol, interpersonal dynamics, and opening lines that they could use to start an orgy. I wish I had exact quotes here for you, but I don’t. The prevailing strategy, though, was that you needed a room with a large enough number of people, everybody had to be sufficiently drunk, it had to be sufficiently late at night, and then one couple might be able to start making out, and trigger a massive and simultaneous increase in hormones and decrease in social inhibitions among everyone else in the room.

Tufts freshmen are so cute.

Guys, I hate to disappoint you, but this is not a recipe for an orgy, it’s a recipe for vomit and people trying to figure out how to spend the next three years avoiding each other. Start small, like having sex with one person, and work up, OK?

I thought “What the Fluff?” 2007 was tomorrow, but indeed, it was today; I hadn’t planned on going either way, but then Editrix reminded me that I needed to go because B for Brontosaurus was playing, and I had to represent, because she and the Herr Doktor Villain couldn’t make it because they were going to the Sox game tonight.

Terri worked today (!) so she was still in pajamas when I had to leave to make it in time to catch them play their 5pm set. They played all the favorites, plus a cover of the Jonathan Richman song “I’m a Little Dinosaur”, as well as an early Fluff jingle (video I shot is on YouTube). That’s Ben’s sister Jen playing the piccolo.

There will be more YouTubeage as soon as “Firetruck” and “RUT!” and “I’m a Little Dinosaur” finish uploading.

The whole event was once again packed, packed! with Somervillians of all stripes, though somewhat slanted toward high school hipsters and young yuppie parents and their progeny.

I ran into the indefatigable Shelley of Albertine Press. She was there for moral support for a friend who was MC’ing the event. I had actually come to see her last week in Union Square, because I knew she was doing the Urban Country fair and we were down in the Rainy Planet studio (just a stone’s throw from Union square) anyhow. But it was good to see her and talk shop and hear that she got into not only the Bazaar Bizarre Boston, but also the one in San Fran where she’s sharing the booth with a friend. (And I haven’t mentioned it on the Internets, yet, but Rainy Planet is back in the BB this year. Yay!)

I was too busy talking to Shelley to be able to snap any shots of the Flufferettes doing a baloon-popping routine, so you’ll just have to troll flickr if you want your neo-burlesque fix. But I did get some other ok shots of the event.

Again, I’m a bit slow on the local news, but this is such a perfect skewering of the insane Kennedy family hypocrisy in standing against the Cape Wind project. You must watch this.

Catching up on the local news now that I’m back, Universal Hub pointed out last week that Deval Patrick has proposed delaying the Somerville green line extension another two years. Given that this was one of the projects related to the central artery project, thrown as a bone to the non-car-commuting segments of the state, this is sort of a big disappointment, and you can tell Governor Patrick what you think here. Mayor Joe, naturally, expressed disappointment.

Years of practice of shoving to the front of the stage at indie rock shows with her camera have honed Terri’s ability to push to the front of any crowd. She managed to do the same while we were waiting for the 7pm Acela Express to Boston from New York, the last express of the day, and got us some of the last two seats together. We sat down early and watched the other people walk down the aisles and look glumly down the car.

I went into the cafe car just after Stamford CT to get a hot dog and a beer. The cafe car was full of about a dozen Massachusets firefighters in full dress uniforms, well on their way to being plastered. One of them had spilled his beer, and with some drunken incompetence was rubbing some paper towels back and forth about a foot to the right of the spill. They were having a good time and were pretty funny, though. The conductor looked like he was trying to gauge whether or not he should try to ask them to take some seats or stop drinking or just leave them alone. He decided to leave them alone and left the car, but a few minutes later came back and said “hey, boys, the Sox just won 11-3!”. They all cheered and one of them yelled “that means the conductah buys the next round!” They all laughed. The conductor sort of laughed and got out of the car as fast as he could.

After I got my hot dog, I went back to my seat and mentioned it to Terri and said “OH! They must have been in town for the funeral!” Apparently, she had been walking around Manhattan earlier that day and near St. Paul’s walked through a big funeral parade for a firefighter who died in action last week.

Later, behind us, a woman got on her cell phone and said “I’m going to be getting in in about a half hour.” She started to cry. “All I am going to want to do is come over and cry. Is that OK?”. The person on the other end seemed to answer in the affirmative and was greeted with more sobs. “OK, I’ll see you then.”

People gripe about the Acela, its delays, the Northeast’s aging track infrastructure keeping it from fulfilling its promise of lightning-fast rail service down the East Coast. But I’ve taken it 4 times in the last 6 weeks, and it’s been stellar each time. Comfortable, New York to Boston in 3.5 hours, no going through security, no getting a cab from airports to downtowns, power outlets, legroom, and the occasional adventure.

I was walking out of the T station tonight on my way home. I turned my head to the left, and saw a young woman on the bench under the wisteria, a young man in a suit in front of her holding up a little black box. In that split second thought, “no, it can’t be”, but then I lip-read her saying “yes!” and taking his face in her hands and giving him a big smooch.

I wanted to cheer, but thought better of it.

But I had a big stupid grin for the rest of the walk home.

So, congratulations, kids! Know that I wanted to cheer, but thought better of it!

Caffé Paradiso in Harvard Square has closed up shop. I’m crushed. It’s a double-whammie. I just lost another coffee shop of personal significance last August (the Someday Café in Davis Square). And earlier this year, another independent Harvard Square institution, the Greenhouse restaurant (which Terri and I lovingly called The Greasehouse, though we didn’t go much for that reason) closed up shop abruptly after the death of the owner.

The Hanover Street location is apparently still open in the North End.

Here’s the sign that Summervillain and I found when we were trying to go there this evening before we were heading over to the Brattle:

To our friends, dedicated customers, and long-time patrons.

We have come to terms with this location and thus moving on. As we take on new horizons we thank you for all those memorable years.

I, Oscar De Stefano, will be taking on a less complicated life.

Some of the staff will be in the North End Caffé Paradiso @ 255 Hanover Street

Respectfully,
Oscar De Stefano

I feel like another little piece of my past got ripped out of me. Almost twelve years ago, I went there for the first time; I had flown in from Indiana, where I was going to college, to spend Thanksgiving with my family, who were all congregating in Boston. My brother and sister were in their first year with the Boston Ballet (I can’t remember if my then-soon-to-be-sister-in-law had moved up to Boston yet or not), and my parents and other sisters were coming up from Pennsylvania. I came up a few days earlier than then, and since the sibs were rehearsing for the Nutcracker, I had some time to myself, and so I went to Harvard Square. It was one of those grey November days where you can tell just from the air that a snow is coming. I kind of fell in love with the weird little brick alleys and haphazardly laid-out streets. I went into the Paradiso to warm up and have a spinach calzone. It started snowing, and I thought for the first time, “I could live here.”

Paradiso was a different breed than the wave of Pacific Northwest style espresso shops that cropped up around the country in the 90’s. It was an Italian style cafe. Over time, I noticed them make concessions to American coffee shop conventions: they began selling cappuccinos in different sizes, they began selling chai, they began selling lattes, they dropped the table service, and so on. But you could still get real-deal gelato, cannolli, San Pelligrino sodas, panini pressed in a little tabletop press.

I’m not dealing with this well at all! I get a clenched feeling in my chest every time I think about how I’ll never be able to go there and spend hours reading or writing in notebooks, half-watching Italian soap operas or soccer games on satellite TV with the staff. Did they even have wi-fi? I have no idea.

What’s going in there? The only thing worse than another chain store in Harvard Square would be if the space goes idle for years, the way that the Other Music space went idle for years (and was finally filled… by an “aromatherapy martini” bar— I can’t make it up) and the way that Wordsworth went out years ago and still hasn’t been replaced by anything.

Anyway, at least the movie that I went to see with Terri and Summervillain was great.

It was Trouble in Paradise, the fantastic Ernst Lubitsch comedy from 1932 starring Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis. It’s so perfect; the writing is fantastic, the acting— particularly the timing— is superb, the cinematography is gorgeous, the sets are fantastic. In a lot of ways it is very restrained about sex— you barely see any kissing— but much is suggested. The humor is in no small part fueled by extremely witty double-entendres and there is a very “Contintental” attitude toward sex throughout. It was released just months before the Hays code really kicked in; it would be another thirty-five years before Hollywood got that open about sex again, and it would never again have that elegant, paradoxical, and intoxicating combination of openness and restraint. The sets and clothes are stylish, modern, and somehow more tasteful than some of the over-the-top displays of extravagance in other films shot in the nadir of the depression. You still just want to climb in and live in that world (at least I do). And, at least for me, the perfection of the whole thing is bittersweet, knowing that thanks to (fellow Wabash College alumnus) Will Hays, there would never be another film like this made again.

I guess that is the way of Paradise: it’s always in the past, somewhere that you can’t get back to.