Weekend Report

Friday- Even though I was combating a slight cold all week, I decided to go play soccer for three hours in the pouring rain. After the game, I met up with my college friend Teri and her husband Dan, who were in town for the weekend. A few teammates came along, and since we were still wide awake when closing time hit, we embarked on a mission to Chinatown for some cold tea. In Massachusetts, it is illegal to serve alcohol after 2AM, but some restaurants in Chinatown serve beer into the wee hours, using the prohibition-style code name “cold tea.” We stopped in a couple of restaurants and asked if they served cold tea, and they said no, so we continued our quest until we entered a place filled with tables of Chinese men drinking red wine and smoking cigarettes (smoking in restaurants has been banned in Boston for a couple of years now) . Bingo! We ordered up some cold tea and a pupu platter.

Saturday- I suffered the consequences of a late night out on top of a cold, and woke up with absolutely no voice whatsoever. Teri, MJ, Ern and I met up for a very long lunch at Figs in Beacon Hill, and then walked around the common and Newbury Street. I then attended my first holiday party of the year, which was a lot of fun, even though I couldn't really talk to anyone and was forced to practice my listening skills. Later on, we met up with Teri and Dan once again at the Black Rose for some beers and traditional Irish music. A little teeny guy bought me a beer, which cracked me up because I was wearing heels and pushing 6 feet.

Sunday- I paid the price for staying out late two nights in a row, and woke up feeling like absolute shite. I drank Gatorade, tea, and ate saltines and laid around on the couch all day watching movies. Clerks II was pretty much what I expected- dumb, silly, but funny and endearing in a nostalgic way. Back in the day, I LOVED the original Clerks, so I would recommend part II only to true fans of the original. If you didn't see or didn't enjoy the first Clerks, do yourself a favor and skip Clerks II, because you will hate it. Randal was more obnoxious than I remembered and Dante was still sort of whiny, and yes, it was crude, but the dialogue did have its moments- I loved Randal making fun of Lord of the Rings, and the whole p^&%y troll bit cracked me up. And you may have heard about the donkey scene, but it actually wasn't as disgusting as I predicted it would be. Man, that Joel Siegel must be a prude if that was too much for him. Rosario Dawson is a great addition to the cast as Dante's boss/love interest.
After Clerks, I watched Proof, starring Gwenyth Paltrow as Catherine, the daughter of a brilliant but insane mathematician. She has spent the last few years of her life caring for her mentally ill father, and upon his death, finally starts to deal with her own life and her suspicion that she may have inherited both his gift for mathematics and his emotional instability. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a former student of Catherine's father who is searching through his former mentor's rambling notebooks to see if anything substantial lies within the madness. Hope Davis is Catherine's perky and domineering sister, who returns for the funeral and treats Catherine like a mental patient. Within the father's office, they discover a notebook containing a remarkable proof, and when Catherine announces that she is the author, no one believes her. At first I was skeptical of Paltrow's ability to play a 27-year old American academic- I assumed that she would be too old and too glamorous for the role, but she is completely believable and the angry, emotional, and brilliant daughter of a genius. The movie comes across as a bit too slow and stiff, something I've noticed in other films based on plays (Proof's writer David Auburn won a Tony award in 2001), but overall, I enjoyed it.