Sometimes my life makes me really happy.

We went out to lunch today for Mary Alice's birthday, and within moments of sitting down, Eric and I were, as Mary Alice put it, bickering like an old married couple. This analogy is so very true (and frightens me perhaps less than it should). [Though her true for-the-win analogy was that cooking without onions is like having sex without kissing. This was prompted by a reminder of the fact that I don't like onions, but I do still really enjoy the analogy.]

P.S. I haven't finished up my roll of film, so I haven't yet scanned and posted my WriterCon pictures, but Lorraine has, and this one of Michaela and me doesn't suck. [Not a dig at Lorraine's the photographers' skills but a statement of my own feeling that I am not photogenic.]

Rhinoceros [29 July 2006]

Eric saw a flyer for this randomly floating around on Friday and thought, "Oh, I know someone who likes plays.  I'll tell her."  He said his college did a production of it and it's a great play.

[It's by Eugene Ionesco, whose name sounds familiar but none of whose work I recognize.]

So I have now increased my North Shore excursioning (111 bus to the Chelsea Waterfront; hello hour and a half of travel time).  The directions for getting there were pretty solid, though the return less so (NB: Third St. = Everett St.).

The play itself?
Short version: While interesting, it didn't really do it for me.

The first two acts set the stage for a variety of social critiques, while the second two acts focused on a different social critique.  There were some witty lines, and even some insights, but it didn't hold together for me.

Other commentary, including lines from the play: ( Read more... )

So come today I asked Eric for what/why he liked the play.  The response I got was basically "I saw it years ago.  I don't remember why I liked it; I just remember that I liked it."

"I'm not asking for a line by line defense of the play," I said -- to which he replied good thing because there's no way I would get that from him.  The most I got from him was "It's chaotic.  I like chaos."

RA and I walked back to the Square together after work today, and we talked about our weekends and so talking about the play got into the Eric conversation as well, and I talked about how bizarre it was because my friends tend to be fairly obsessive and will talk at length and in great detail about movies, books, tv, whatever.  (See also the pulling teeth nature of my post-lunch follow-up with Eric about the movie Stigmata -- which I haven't seen, though he has -- and the Gospel of Thomas.)

She said: "That's why your friends are your friends and your coworkers are your coworkers.  Basically, that's why you don't go to the movies with Eric."