Alanna and I began our great adventure at ten this morning, starting off with the creation of some Nutella sandwiches for later. The plan: a day trip to Castle Island, an old fort and oceanside park. After a slight false start, we settled in the Behrakis courtyard for a minute or two, collected ourselves and started cooking with gas. First we had to walk some distance on Melnea Cass, where Alanna received a total of 1 catcall from a passing vehicle. The walk through the South End was long and cold, but novel; we passed through a variety of both questionable and impressive neighborhoods. I was unbearably tense at moments, while Alanna maintained that "it wasn't that bad"; so either I'm paranoid or she's reckless. Or both. One street corner in particular, a four-way crossing, felt like the longest wait of my life. We discussed how strange it is trying to figure out what everyone does or thinks about for the sixteen hours they spend awake every day.
Between an hour and eternity later, we reached the ocean. It's difficult to express how utterly perfect, how incomparably wonderful this moment was, but there you are. We sat for a few minutes at a little shelter on the beach (upper right in the below picture), I ran my fingers through the sand, and we took the first photographs of the day. Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside the fortress itself, but the walk out over the water was more than enough. On the way we discussed multiculturalism, recording rights, and a variety of other topics. Interestingly, we gleaned that our favorite parts of the day stem from the places we lived; Alanna's is late afternoon, when all the kids in the neighborhood were out on the street, while mine is the blue light before dawn, because I had it all to myself. We also decided to start an indie rock band named Failure Cloud. The best moment of the day came when we were approached by an old, thick-accented Russian guy twice; both times, he made a little joke at our expense and chuckled to himself. It felt like something out of a movie scene - two secondary characters stumble on some important knowledge, end up at a remote, vaguely industrial location and are killed off by Russian mobsters. All in the bitter cold, with either the city skyline or a beat-up bench as the last thing they see. (Depending on where each is sitting. Guess who got the bench view.) "So, you could not swim." Muffled gunshots, fade to black.
After circling the fort and taking a bit of time to examine the front gate, we decided that getting out of the South End before dark was a prudent idea. With a couple hours of daylight left, we stopped at a bench not far from the beach to tear into our lunches. While in this spot, we observed a car nearly fail, had the best Nutella sandwiches ever made, and brainstormed concepts for two hot new television shows. The first, with the inspired title of 16 Hours, is pretty much about our lives. "It's not funny! It's not dramatic!" "Critics are lukewarm!" The working title for this was Dude, Whose Car Is This? This stemmed from a car being parked in front of our bench in a kind-of-but-not-really-a-parking-spot, with owners, car company, and even type of vehicle unknown. (It was one of those SUV/hatchback/bigger than a car but smaller than a larger truck kind of things.) We never did figure out whose car it was. The second show is called HYPE, and it's about hype. The catch is that the marketing campaign will be absurdly boring. "Yeah, HYPE is a pretty cool show. You should watch." Also, the cast photos will have extra people inserted into them to make the show look like a bigger deal than it is. Which is already a pretty big deal, needless to say. Despite a few terrible moments when we realized our shows already exist (16 Hours as a typical Portlandia sketch, HYPE as compared to Mad Men), we're confident that they're unique enough to dominate the TV-watching world.
We caught a bus to Copley Square and walked home, laughing at restaurants on Huntington along the way. For no apparent reason, I received the dirtiest look from a girl inside a sushi place near Shaw's. I had the last laugh, though, because she was the one hemorrhaging money inside a tourist trap. During the walk home, we discussed the possibility of Justin Bieber's existence being a sort of government revenge program, which forced us to stop at the law school to sit down and laugh it out. Also mentioned was a Government Fighter/RPG, where you can choose an agency to do battle with and put points into different disciplines. (Pro tip: max out Media Manipulation and Revenue Raising right away.) The rest of the evening was spent creating art in the apartment and trading it, then dropping a pumpkin from the window. It was the best day I've had in weeks, probably months.
Quotes of the day:
"Don't worry Mlk gotcha back. Margaret jus stole Charmaine's man. What's new though rly. And where u going to go" - Brian (via text), assuring me that Martin Luther King, Jr. has my back
"There shall be no cross-contamination!" - Iris
"It has that property of not being muddy." - Alanna
"When you're in Italy, there's no Italian food. There's just food." - Alanna
"Can you swim?" - old Russian guy
"So, you could not swim." - old Russian guy, returning to toy with us before his grandson kills us
"I should probably be locked up somewhere. At large!" - me
"What's this place called? Oh, of course...it's 101." - me
"Rich people don't usually laugh, but when they do..." - me
...
Me: "Let's say that you and I were not people..."
Alanna: "That's a good place to start."
...
Me: "I wish there was a field there. They should put me in charge of urban planning. I'll show those bastards. Boom."
Alanna: "Yup."
...
Alaric: "You didn't see nothin'!"
Me: "Fruit Disposal Squad!"
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