I thought I was imagining things when I bought some Creme Eggs this year and thought they were smaller. BJ Novak of The Office proves otherwise:

WTF Cadbury? We're on to you.

This is the likely the last year that Kelly and I will share a spring break, as I will graduate school next month. We took a break from our Top Ten Biggest City tour and went to Boston (although now we are unsure if we should do the Ten Biggest City tour or the Ten Biggest Metro Area tour - they're quite different). We chose to go to Boston because we had free plane tickets and knew people we could stay with. Saving green.

The flight we took was a red-eye from Denver to Hartford, Connecticut where we rented a car and somehow managed to stay awake enough to navigate the maze that is Boston. More importantly, we were awake enough to make our way out of the Hartford ghetto, which we inadvertently toured. We passed some dilapidated apartments spray painted with, no joke, "Crips" and "Bloods." Even more, out in front of this building were at least 6 police cars with their lights on. They say that the first impression is the most important - HARTFORD.

About Boston streets, I get that the city is hundreds of years old and the streets were once dinosaur trails or something. But that doesn't explain why the streets changed names every block (if they were named at all, get some street signs!) or the strange aversion to divider stripes. Needless to say, we cut off people left and right and drove round and round blocks. Luckily, we had Connecticut plates on the rental, so when crazy driving commenced, our excuse was "We're from Connecticut!!"

After we arrived at my friend Leah's house, we took a nap and then zombied around MIT and Harvard. The MIT science museum gets a thumbs up from us. The next day, we walked the Freedom Trail, the red-brick path that takes tourists past most of the historic Boston spots. That day we had a Sam Adams beer across the street from Sam Adams himself. I also discovered how my tombstone will be decorated - with a winged skull. The skulls were on all the 300-year-old headstones there.

The third day we visited Plymouth and another friend of mine (Preston), who happened to be working there at the moment. We have some advice for those who want to see Plymouth Rock, or as Kelly calls it, Plymouth Pebble. It's small. So small that any promotional material we saw showed the pavillion that houses it rather than the rock itself, so as to not dissuade visitors. Anyway, the rock has 1620 chiseled into it. And, it was labeled Plymouth Rock 120 years after the Pilgrims actually landed there. The whole thing is a shady letdown. The upside was Kelly's ability to fantasize about pirate life while in Plymouth.

The fourth day we went to Salem. We took a tour of a witch museum that didn't allow photographs for the same reason that the Plymouth Rock material showed the pavillion and not the rock. We payed to basically watch a narrated puppet show and then be proselytized by a Wiccan. They're people too! That evening we had a tasty Indian dinner with fellow Truman grad and blog friend Sara and her husband Chuck.

On Day five we revisited the North End and dined on some tasty Italian food, gellati, and Mike's Pastry treats. Then we drove back to Hartford for an early flight the next day.

To see some photos, go click the photo of me sketching a robot. There are, however, no Hartford bad neighborhood photos. We don't snitch.

Boston 2007

Here is a teaser: Kelly pretending to be an amazingly strong pirate.

Be sure to stay tuned to the blog for some news. And no, it doesn't come with diapers.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention this serendipitous run-in. It got cold one or two days while we were in Boston. There were two train stations near where Leah lives. We had been using the Davis Square station, but one cold day we Google Mapped (double true!) the stations to see if one was closer. It turned out that the other (Porter) station was closer by a few steps. So, we went to Porter station. On the escalator down, I heard someone say my name. It was Tyler, a guy from Truman State (and member of the blog world) who makes Boston his home. Neither of us had much time to talk, but man, it's a small world! And the circumstances that lined up to allow the chance meeting! I should have bought a lottery ticket that day.

The trailers for The Lookout weren't incredibly appealing to me, but with all the great reviews it was getting, and the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems to have a knack for picking substantial films to star in lately, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Gordon-Levitt's character, Chris, was a high school star athlete who was in a car accident that caused some problems with his brain functions. He has trouble sequencing events and has to write a lot of stuff down on a notepad so he'll remember to do them. That's where the similarity with Memento comes to mind, but that's where the similarity ends as well. Chris has a job at a bank as a janitor, and some guys befriend him so they can get in and rob the vault after the harvest earnings have been deposited. It's a one time big chance, and things get messy (of course! or it wouldn't be a movie!).

Gordon-Levitt continues to be on top of his game here. I still think of him as George, DJ's friend from Roseanne (oh, I guess most people know him from 3rd Rock, but I didn't watch that show), but to see that he's really getting into the more creative independent movies is awesome. With great performances from supporting actors, Jeff Daniels and Isla Fisher, the story could go in a cliched direction, but their characters bring it a bit deeper than just a heist movie.

I liked the lighting, the way the film resolves itself with a sense of character development instead of just focusing on the plot, and the overall acting was very good. One character, Bone, was a bit too much for my liking, but I guess he was successful in evoking a sense of fear for the hero's safety.

This was a breath of fresh air in the midst of all of the fluff that's being released this year, just as Brick was around the same time last year. I'm really hoping Gordon-Levitt will start to gain more recognition in the next couple of years. Seems like the critics like him as much as I do.

Mad About the Fifties