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Entry tags:	family, house, reviews, s-f, sarah, theatre

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Today, I painted another coat on my door (finally), and so I get to wait until it dries to close it. I was hoping to go on a pre-veterans' day program, but Sarah's doing a GI-routine, and there's no lock. So I'm home for a bit...

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Last night, we went to the wedding of one of my cousins to a delightful woman, and it was lovely. (Better: this is one of my gentile cousins marrying another gentile! Rare and shocking - I've said before that my family is the intermarriage problem). The location was unusual: the Mansion House of the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Coming after Shabbat, we were late, so we missed the penguin (which apparently bit my mother and grandmother).

Everything about the whole affair was classy and unpretentious, much like the couple themselves, and I wish them all the happiness that can come with marriage. It's a great institution, and I'm glad to see them institutionalized. (rimshot)

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We spent shabbat in Kemp Mill with some long-time friends, and we got so see a bunch of folks we haven't seen in a very long time. Kemp Mill is pretty much where a large number of the community end up once they have children, and the best thing about it is the large number of old friends.

However, it's very, very suburban - no sidewalks, and other than the shul, pretty much nothing is walking distance. The synagogue (KMS) and community seem very oriented and geared toward raising children: to a person, every one of our old friends who we saw there are parents. Day school tuition and the inherent insanity of it were major topics (one year of a mid-priced Jewish high school costs more than my entire college education). There was a bar mitzvah (this is common enough that the "Yankees win!" kiddush is getting put off to December...), so the kid gave the sermon and it was pretty decent for a 13-year-old. I was surprised at how cavernous the main sanctuary is: I had a hard time not just hearing the sermon, but also when the Rabbi spoke, and it didn't seem to just be me - kaddish was thoroughly out-of-synch. The sheer number of children running around at any time was stunning to me: I know intellectually that lots of people have lots of kids, but seeing them racing around that much (the image should be "pack of Tazmanian Devils") was unexpected.

I can't for the life of me figure out why nobody has made sidewalks a crusade: here is this community which has oriented its priorities toward raising children, and in fact it isn't actually safe to go anywhere. Worse, given the size of the Orthodox population, there are huge numbers of people walking in the street on Friday night and Saturday morning. And of course it's dark. If I lived there, I would make it a priority to have sidewalks installed - or at least the asphalt pathways like those on college campuses: the danger of breaking an ankle is a lot better than the danger of getting run over.

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Why is netflix awesome? Because this week, we watched The Lost Room, and it was phenomenal. I've rarely been so completely hooked and transfixed by television. Sarah and I were strongly reminded of a higher-budget version of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. All of the characters were believable (!) and there is a strong Monkey's Paw component to it. It's so good that we gave it 5 stars, and it might need to be part of our permanent collection.

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We had gotten our free theatre tickets, and used them to go to 26 Miles last Tuesday. It's a road trip between an estranged mother and daughter, and it's excellent. The WaPo review is decent, but I disagree with their characterization of the male roles as "thin"; the moment that I was hooked was the encounter with the tamale vendor (about 1/3 of the way in). I don't think I've encountered a more true description of how cooking is an aspect of love - the poetry of his words brought tears to my eyes. At that moment, I was hooked: I identified painfully with the parental estrangement brought on by divorce, and the whole night was draining emotionally. Strike that: not draining, but cathartic.

This play does what only very good drama can do: it says true things with just enough distance that an audience member can identify with the story and actually go through the emotional journey. I highly recommend this play.