My jaw hurts from laughing at comedian Mike Birbiglia who we saw Friday night at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. I’m thinking of suing him.  

I first discovered Birbigs, more of a storyteller than a traditional comedian really, on This American Life where he did a piece on attending a celebrity golf event where he discovered, much to the chagrin of himself and the other attendees, that he was billed as one of the celebrities. He performed another piece about his dangerous sleepwalking habit that’s well worth a listen. This weekend’s show, “I’m in the Future Also,” is a follow up to his one-man show in New York, “Sleepwalk with Me.” He has a CD, too, called “My Secret Public Journal.”

Birbiglia is a local guy who grew up in Shrewsbury, and a few of his high school friends were even in the audience. Who better to appreciate his story of getting sick at a carnival while riding the The Scrambler with your seventh grade crush? His stories are drawn from his life and don’t need embellishment. He tells them simply and with just the right touch of humor. Because really, if you can’t laugh at life, especially the troublesome or humiliating moments, what’s the point?

Early on in James Toback’s documentary Tyson (yup, it’s about Mike Tyson), I found myself warming to the big galoot. Sure, he was violent, but the poor guy was bullied as a child. He was afraid. Other people hit him. He was a lover, not a hater. All he needed was a hug.

Then my boyfriend reminded me that he went to jail for raping a woman and that he bit a guy’s ear, not once, but twice.

Oh, right. 

Tyson, who sports a Maori tattoo on his face still looks menacing, but he’s surprisingly self-aware and articulate. Well, maybe more talkative than articulate. Though he did blow me away by using the word “skullduggery.” Who knew Tyson could one-up me in the vocab department?

Anyway, even if, like me, the last thing you think you want to watch is a documentary about an unstable boxer, check it out. It’s a well done, revealing portrait of a man who just wants to be loved. And who occasionally gets angry and bites off a chunk of a guy’s ear.

I met a frail old woman outside of her assisted living facility just a mile outside of Harvard Square the other day who asked, “Which way is Harvard Square?” I pointed.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

She struggled with boarding the bus, paying her fare, getting off at the right stop. “Can you take me to the Holyoke Center?” she asked the bus driver. Exactly, I thought. We should all expect the bus driver to drop us exactly where we need to go, even if it’s not quite on the route. “Oh, there it is!” she said as we passed a random apartment building. “Not quite,” I said. The bus driver confused her with directions. I tried to simplify.

Afraid she’d never make it to the Holyoke Center, I walked out of the T with her, wondering if I was aiding and abetting a flight from an assisted living facility—and kind of hoping I was.

I leave the house every morning with nary a thought about which direction to go, how far it is, which bus to take, where to get off. But this 1-mile trip for her was like dropping me off on a back road in Jakarta. Once we reached street level, she convinced me she knew where she was, so I watched her wander away into the masses of people rushing to work and school while she shuffled along at her own pace, no doubt remembering the day when she took this jaunt without giving it a second thought.

I love sitting on the T trying to figure out if the crunching or squeaking noise of the day is something to worry about. Normal? Abnormal? Who’s to say? But I especially love when I’m on the T and reading the front page of the Globe with an article that opens with “The man who spent much of the last three months studying the MBTA said yesterday that he would personally avoid riding on certain portions of the Red Line” due to safety concerns.

Awesome.

Um, next stop, please.

 

Remember Halloween costumes from the good old days when you went to CVS and picked out a costume in a box? And remember how you sweated so much in the mask that you had to keep flipping it up on your head to breathe? And remember how your whole costume was pointless anyway when you live in New England and you had to wear a coat over the whole damn thing?

I always thought the kids in California lucked out. They could be princesses without the parkas. They could be cats without the leg warmers. If you were wearing a ski mask, it was because that was your costume, not because it was below zero.

Anyway, the whole enterprise has evolved since the 70s. On a recent jaunt to Target with my roommate to Halloween shop for her nieces and nephew (husky, zombie, bumblebee, gorilla) there were aisles of costumes ranging from sexy gypsy to sexy witch. There were about 14 types of witch costumes, actually, with slightly different names though they were all the same.

What do you get for $19.99? A little fringe, a hair accessory, and some cheap tulle. The days of mom sewing your intricate, historically accurate costume are, apparently, over. And why not? These days, girls can just go to their closet, grab a little sparkle and presto, Miley Cyrus.

Oh, Halloween, what’s happened to you? OK, maybe I’m just bitter because here it is, this great fall holiday that’s all about dressing up and getting free candy, and I can’t think of one way to shrink myself into a child again so I can collect massive amounts of chocolate. Looks like I’ll have to steal from a small child again this year.

I eat cereal most days for breakfast. Cheerios, in fact, because they’re good and they’re duh, heart healthy. It was no different today. But this morning, I got in a 5-mile walk that left me spent and ravenous. By 9 a.m. those Cheerios were but a distant memory. Enter: cute cafe on Charles St. where I asked the guy behind the counter what was satisfying.

“Lemon poppyseed muffin?” he offered.

Boring.

“I don’t want to be good,” I said. “I’ll have the sticky bun.”

He proceeded to grab said sticky bun with some wax paper while trying to wrangle it into a plastic container. 

“Just a bag,” I said. You can’t walk and eat out of a plastic container—and the thought of needing a container for the 45 seconds it would take me to wolf down the bun seemed ridiculous.

“You sure?” he said. “This thing is very sticky. I recommend using a fork and saving time to wash up if you have a meeting or something.”

I left with the bun in a bag, now craving the sugary delight in a crack kind of way. Somehow though, in his gushing about the stickiness, he neglected to mention that the sticky buns had been sitting there for two days and were sticky only in the way a brick with a dab or mortar is, which is to say, not much. If I hadn’t already walked so far, I would have gone back, plunked down the sticky brick, and demanded my $3 back, glaring at the lemon poppyseed muffins, which were probably hard as golf balls.

Spain on the Road is one of those shows that make you wish you were driving in the back of a convertible with Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Claudia Bassols, and Gwenyth Paltrow instead of eating congealed leftovers in front of the TV. I’m not a big Paltrow fan, but I have to respect her for traipsing around the countryside and not caring a whit about being on TV with flyaway hair. In the name of food, I wouldn’t care either. They down olive oil by the gallons, drink wine at 10 a.m., and munch on grapes straight off the vines. Really, they just talk and eat. And yet, it’s a compelling watch. It makes you yearn for good conversation over authentic tapas on a back road in Spain. Or anywhere really.

PBS describes it as “four foodie friends hitting the road.” In light of that, I’d like to propose my own PBS show where I get to take my foodie friends to a warm European locale where we would eat our way through farms and vineyards, all while wearing the most fashion-forward boots and scarves. Because that’s how my friends and I roll. Even though it’s more likely we’d be staying in hostels and subsisting on stale bread.

Blue Heron Bridge

Originally uploaded by crash575

Sometimes you need to take a long walk because it’s a Sunday in October and it’s 70 degrees and you can’t believe it because last Sunday it was a blizzard. A blizzard I tell you.

The trail along the Charles River from Watertown to Waltham meanders along under a splay of trees competing for color with plenty of lookout nooks to sit and watch the river flow by and the occasional duck making out with another duck.

And then, you happen upon the loveliest bridge and you feel like you’re in a corner of Denmark or Finland or somewhere with impressive European bridges that value form and function, but certainly not Watertown. And then you remember how great this little town is. You don’t need Denmark or the Millennium Bridge in London. You have the Blue Heron Bridge in Watertown and it’s as majestic as a blue heron and all the more special because it’s like discovering wildlife…of an architectural sort.

OK, show of hands, didn’t you want the boy to be in that balloon?

In anticipation of the release of Where the Wild Things Are today (hello, childhood), I wanted to share a little story by Maurice Sendak that Jack Kornfield relates in his book The Wise Heart. The book, by the way, is an excellent, accessible exploration of Buddhist psychology peppered with thoughtful anecdotes. And I must mention that Kornfield’s has another book that should win an award for its title alone: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

Anyway, here’s Kornfield writing about joy:

When we live in the present, joy arises for no reason. This is the happiness of consciousness that is not dependent on particular conditions. Children know this job. Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, tells the story of a boy who wrote to him. “He sent me a charming card with a drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim, I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

Here’s to loving something so much you want to eat it.

It’s been years since I’ve hiked the White Mountains, the last time being with a boyfriend who I had just broken up with. Despite the break-up, we decided to go on our planned vacation, hiking hours uphill to the Mizpah Spring Hut. In silence.

Good times.

Suffice it to say my trip this weekend to AMC’s Highland Center in Crawford Notch with a friend for a long weekend yoga and hiking retreat was infinitely better. We bunked together, gossiped like girls, did 42 downward dogs, hiked Mt. Avalon, and chowed like boys after football practice.

Crawford Notch in the fog

We arrived in the dark, unable to see the hulking mountains but aware of them pressing in on us. In the morning, we awoke to a blanket of orange and red leaves cascading down the foggy mountainside. Nothing beats fog in my book. It’s dense and magical and can swallow a whole group of hikers, which it did when we reached the top of Mt. Avalon. Not a thing to see at the summit but the middle of a cloud. Aside from the chill, we might have been in the cloud forests of Costa Rica.

In mittens, we ate peanut butter sandwiches and slid down the mountain on rocks slick from the mist. Hiking poles, I’ve since learned, are not decorative appendages. They come in handy when you’re navigating slippery terrain or fording a stream that looks unfordable.

A river that looks a lot more daunting in person. Let's just say Mother Nature did not place the rocks strategically.

And, just because I like you, I’ll leave you with a little ground foliage:

Walking on color

to watch The Biggest Loser and not go through a box of Kleenex. Physically impossible, I tell you. Stupid show.

Do you find yourself always rushing to yoga, arriving sweaty and out of breath—the exact opposite of the calm you’re trying to achieve? On one hand, you can’t be late because how obnoxious is that person who walks in late and disrupts the flow? On the other hand, it’s ridiculous to get all stressed out and race to yoga like you’re Danica Patrick, who I imagine has a difficult time keeping to the speed limit during a simple trip to the gym. I find I’m barely on time for a massage either. Nothing like rushing to relax.

But this weekend, my friend and I are headed to a yoga and hiking retreat in the White Mountains where we plan to do some serious lounging. Sure, there will be morning yoga, an afternoon hike, and evening yoga, but staying at the lodge will make it impossible to be late. It’ll be a matter of rolling out of bed and into the studio or the woods. We plan to maximize the downtime by doing as little as possible: chatting, eating, and reading in the quiet nooks that look out onto the mountains. I hear there are even rocking chairs.

I missed the Fluff festival held in Somerville, home to the sugary white substance, but perhaps it’s not too late to celebrate with a post commemorating the 90th anniversary of Marshmallow Fluff. No one I know likes the stuff, but I have a soft spot—a soft, sticky spot—for the stuff, not because I enjoyed peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches like my entire elementary school class, but because my mom used to beat it into a marshmallow substance (just add water!) that we put on sundaes. To this day, I forego whip cream and insist on marshmallow topping because I love the way it oozes off the glass dish, mingling with the hot fudge.

The celebration did get me to thinking though, what if the giant Fluff holding tank were to burst? Would it be the Great Molasses Flood of 1919  all over again? Incidentally, could we just pause here to consider a flood of molasses. When the giant tank burst, it left the North End streets covered in two to three feet of the sweetener. What?? Twenty-one people were killed by molasses. Could Somerville ever recover from streets running white and wild with the sweet glue? Apparently, it took 87,000 man hours to clean up the mess last century, but if the Fluff factory explodes, I’m willing to go out there with a giant spoon.

I just got the slickest pair of riding boots at The Tannery, the shoe store with the friendliest cadre of Middle Eastern men. They’re cute and comfortable (I know! Impossible, right? Wait, you thought I was talking about  the men didn’t you?) because they’re made by Born, so you can actually walk in them instead of strutting around for like five minutes and having to pull them off ’cause they feel like your calf is getting a mammogram. I trekked all around Providence with them recently with nary a blister to be found.

Wait, let me take a picture of them…

The thing about boots though is that when the first crisp day of fall hits, you run out to buy them, but it turns out the next day feels like summer, and where are your boots? Standing legless and forlorn useless by the bed. Of course, if you hadn’t bought the boots, it would have turned fall—and stayed fall—overnight. So, I figure it’s a win-win: I got boots and it’s summery.

Now I just need a horse.

I watched a documentary about Donkey Kong this weekend. That’s right. I’m sure you’re having the same reaction my boyfriend had when I proposed it.

“Wait, you want us to watch a movie about people who play the video game Donkey Kong?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, but I read all these reviews that say it’s really good,” I said. “Really.”

He gave me a look that said, Oh, you and your obscure movies. What I must tolerate.

Yeah, it was as weird as we expected, but was also, as the blurb promised, curiously compelling. Apparently, within the already, um, interesting subculture of video gamers is a group that’s hellbent on breaking records, so much so that they videotape themselves playing so that their scores can be verified by a referee. All gamers aim to achieve the highest score possible, I suppose, but these people mean business in a way that says, I will dedicate my life to conquering Kong, even if it means installing an arcade size game in my garage and playing for a billion hours straight till my eyes resemble Super Mario.

Anyway, the story focuses on a nice guy who’s trying to break a 20-year record held by a strange guy who wears skinny ties with American themes and hair straight out of the 70s—a style that prompted my boyfriend to ask four times, Hold on, when was this made?

Whether you’ve ever played Donkey Kong or not, you’ll feel the tension in this movie, evidenced by the fact that said boyfriend paused it when he got up to get some pie because he didn’t want to miss anything. I stifled an I told you so.

The High Line was an elevated subway line that ran up the west side of NYC that stopped running in 1980. A passionate group of volunteers championed the idea for a park to be built on the long, narrow strip of land that’s been unused ever since. Almost three decades later, the first leg of the park is open, about 10 blocks, and it is just what a park should be: pretty with plenty of places to plunk down. In addition to benches there are some honest-to-goodness chaise longues that defy you not to sit for a spell with a coffee or book. 

Oh, there are views too. It is, after all, New York City. 

I started at Gansevoort St., happy that there was no pronunciation test. I found a charming little enclave of bistros and boutiques and almost didn’t make it to the park for all the distractions. But spotting the sign, I trotted up a few steps to a new, quieter perspective. As all good things in New York, the park is no secret, but I found plenty of solitude and places to rest amid the morning hustle of moms pushing strollers and tourists recalling the city’s yesteryear.

About halfway down the park, you can run down to street level and grab something to eat at Chelsea Market and do what the locals do: lounge away.

Railroad tracks, an homage to the subway of days past, were incorporated into the design, and great care was taken with the plantings, though I did find myself looking around as I settled into one spot. The prairie milkweed emits a scent that is, well, not for everyone.  

OK, I’ve determined that my stuffy nose and congested head is not from a potentially deadly flu but most likely allergies. Which is why I totally appreciated my fellow passenger on the subway for recognizing this in the midst of a coughing fit. In one of those panicky moments when you can’t stop coughing and your face turns red and tears are streaming down your face, I still managed to feel bad for the people next to me as I made my way home today. Because if that were me sitting close by while some woman hacked away, I might have turned an evil eye on the offender as if to say, I know you have H1N1 and thank you for infecting me. But this sweet man took pity on me.

“Allergies, huh?” he asked.

“Uhthr,” I coughed out.

“They’re bad this year.”

Despite my messy face and urge to sneeze, just to spice things up, I tried to show gratitude for his fearless understanding. 

“I forgot to bring water,” I said. “Thanks for not running away.”

Of course, this is on the heels of another coughing fit yesterday while I was reading the delightful Olive Kitteridge also on the T. The woman next to me took advantage of the pause in my attack to ask if the book was as good as she’d heard.

“Yrhgythaq,” I managed, nodding, so she’d know that was a yes. My eyes had welled up from the coughing (and the book is really sad, OK?) so when she looked over at me, I giant tear was making tracks down my cheek. We carried on conversing as if everyone cries on the T, and I told her she should really read it despite our shared hesitation that linked short stories would not be as satisfying as a novel and that cough, it’s also very moving. 

Thank you, kind passengers for not shunning me on the train.

When it comes to recognizing the distant sing-song music of an ice cream truck, I have the acute hearing of a schnauzer. What’s that musical number 15 blocks away? Why, it’s the ice cream truck and it’s headed right to me. What service!

But let’s be honest, with the advent of Ben & Jerry’s, organic ice cream, goats milk ice cream, etc., popsicles and Hoodsie cups have lost their luster. So I was psyched to happen upon the Van Leeuwen artisan ice cream truck when I was in New York recently. There, parked at the corner of Prince and Greene in SoHo was the ice cream truck to crush all other ice cream trucks (think potential summer blockbuster called Ice Cream Wars in which Eddie Murphy and Kevin James do battle in trucks painted with flames with a chase scene at the end and ice cream splattered everywhere). I had heard about this truck, but in the vast city of New York, I figured it was like a unicorn—one of those mythical creatures you know is out there but never stumble upon. Well, behold the unicorn.

The truck is the sweetest, painted in a soft yellow and nicely designed. Even the flavors are illustrated with love:

My boyfriend got the pistachio, but he reports that it was bland and there was nary a pistachio to be found. I got the chocolate. Duh. You can never go wrong with chocolate.

Chelsea Market in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen is foodie mecca. An old brick warehouse, the building bursts with unique architectural details like illuminated floors and grates, an old-style elevator, beams and brick archways. Bakeries, sandwich shops, and other specialty food stores fill the rambling space, good stuff all.

Inside, it’s a cavernous food hall (the Food Network is upstairs) that tempts visitors to try a little of this, a little of that. Pretty soon, you’ve oversampled.

The Milk Bar is my kind of bar: it’s all about the milk. The shop is lined floor to ceiling with old milk crates and has this great sign that recalls a line from There Will Be Blood. 

And then there’s the chocolate pudding from Sarabeth’s. Like you could resist a pudding that comes in a little glass jar with whipped cream and chocolate shavings the size of your tongue.