the funky bunch

I'm in a bit of a funk today. I blame it on the five-page paper I'm to write on aesthetics before Thursday. I've got Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and one contemporary, Norman Bryson, to work with. Focusing on one seems boring but trying to tie all four together seems a bit ambitious for five pages. Oy!

Anyway, I was going to title this entry "bitch, bitch, bitch," 'cause that's what I usually write about and that's what I intended to do before I settled into my aesthetics-induced funkdom. I was simply going to give a report on our Friday afternoon trek to Cambridge for dinner and a movie. We went to the Kendall Square Landmark cinemas to see "The Squid and the Whale." Seeing an independent film in a Landmark theater reminded me of how similar Cambridge and Berkeley really are. It's a love-hate thing for me and always has been, with Berkeley in the past and now with Cambridge/Somerville. Like living in Oakland, I'm "keepin' it real," as they say, in Dorchester, but I admit I may occasionally cross the river for good movies and good coffee.

Good dining experience, on the other hand, not so much. We decided to take the 'T' a couple stops to Harvard Square after the movie to check out a sit-down Mexican restaurant. There was a line of folks (probably all the transplanted Californians on the perpetual search for good Mexican food) waiting outside (and it was damn cold that night!). We were told it would be about ten minutes to get inside, followed by about another hour for a table. Say what? Same story with the other three or four restaurants we tried. Does nobody cook in Cambridge?

Normally, I'd write Harvard Square off on principle. I don't care how good their margaritas are, I'm not waiting over an hour to have dinner...anywhere. It has something to do with a pushover mentality that I generally try to avoid. But I'd totally live in or near Harvard Square if I could afford it. All that brick and ivy and that huge Au Bon Pain with the "wall of pastries," as like to call it...I think I could ignore the crowds.

But anyway, the movie was quite good. More "serious," I guess, than K & S, but really just made me want to watch K & S again. So maybe K & S is still my favorite of Noah Baumbach's "oeuvre" so far, but S & W is definitely much better than "Highball" and "Mr. Jealousy." Some similarities to K & S, actually: the father in each, the intellectual literary character that hasn't actually read the book, etc. Finally, I loved the squid and whale anecdote/metaphor. Anyway, I'm not much of a film critic, as you can see, but I dug it.

Back to that paper...