Celebration Time, Come On

On July 13th, JR and I headed over to Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain to partake in the 8th Annual Lantern Festival.
The blurb from the website reads:

The Lantern Festival
Once a year, Forest Hills hosts the Lantern Festival, an extraordinary community event attended by 3,000 people in 2000. Inspired by Buddhist traditions, this non-denominational ceremony offers a magical way to remember family and friends. After enjoying a program of music and dance, people inscribe the paper shades of simple wooden lanterns with greetings. At dusk, we light the lanterns and watch them float across Lake Hibiscus, bearing their messages to the world of the spirits.

I love Forest Hills Cemetery. It is a gorgeous Victorian garden cemetery, and I love poking about in it... well, except for the one time I spent two unsuccessful hours searching for ee cummings grave; I still haven't found it. However, I had never been to an event there, and I was a little bit concerned about it. I didn't know if it was going to be a somber sort of thing, but it was quite the opposite. There was dancing, loud ceremonial drumming, bagpipes, people running around with kids and dogs and picnicing on the lawn with candles and wine. It really was both a celebration of life as well as a memorial for those who have passed away. It also inspired me to think again on my PhD which I will never get: in funerary customs and spirituality in Victorian England.

We are SO going again next year with a large group of people, but this year we really just scoped it out, getting a sense of things. Next year, I will even get a lantern. I was just glad that we had the foresight to bring bugspray, because once the sun went down, things got a little buggy. I also did a funny Buffy impersonation, but I was missing a "Mr. Pointy" stake. As we left the cemetery in the dark, I have to admit that I was kind of glad that vampires aren't really real.

I'm hung up... on Madonna

I personally think that it is impossible for an American girl of a certain age to not have been extremely influenced by Madonna growing up. She was everywhere, and there was nothing like her. I recall being driven out to the mall on several ocassions just so that I could increase my amount of those jelly rubber bracelets that she made so popular in the mid/late Eighties. There were bright summer days where we all sat inside watching MTV, hoping for another glance of the "Lucky Star" video. The music, the changing style, the revolving door of celebrity boyfriends, the yoga, the single mom-dom, Kabbalah - that's Madonna. Pushing the envelope of social convention and giving the finger to her critics - that's Madonna. She's a unique feminist, a pop-icon power house, and on Thursday night, I spent my evening in her world.

It was the first night of a three night engagement at the Boston Garden, and the place was packed and totally energized. There was just so much Madge love in that place. People were "dressed," and there were a lot of tee shirts from Madonna tours of the past. People were prepared to love this concert, and Madonna didn't disappoint. Neither did our tickets, which were on the floor in the back, making it possible to see the images on the screens all over the stage, as well as Mrs. Ritchie herself who came strutting out onto the catwalk in almost all of her numbers. (Thank God, I got my new glasses last week; I was able to see her FACE!!)

It was a complete spectacle, like a big-time Broadway show meets a Las Vegas magic act. With effects such as disco balls, kalescope Madonnas, equestrine dominatrix gear, a rhinestone-studded, black leather merry-go-round horse, giant crucifix, jungle gym athletics, dancers in bhurkas, roller skates, the show touched on Madonna's personal life (X-rays from her riding accident) to political problems in the USA (shots of political bad'duns, including Bush, Rice and Cheney along with Hussein, bin Laden and Co.) and global issues of concern (African AIDS orphans.) The senses were assalted with sounds and imagery, and the audience welcomed it, rising to their feet from the first number until the end two hours later. (My legs were SORE from wearing, and dancing, in fancy heels.)

Madonna looks amazing. She looks even more amazing considering that she is 47. By the time they got more than halfway through the show, I started to get thigh and arm envy, and then, I got really depressed. The depression passed when I contemplated that it probably has been 20 years since she ate pizza and drank a glass of wine.

The set list featured: Future Lovers // I Feel Love (Donna Summer cover) // Get Together // Like a Virgin // Jump // Live to Tell // Forbidden Love // Isaac // Sorry // Like It Or Not // Sorry // I Love New York // Ray of Light // Let It Will Be // Drowned World/Substitute for Love // Paradise [Not For Me] // (Disco Inferno) Music // Erotica // La Isla Bonita // Lucky Star // Hung Up

(The last I heard, there are still tickets for today's show.)

Workin' for the Weekend

On Friday night, I went to see The Devil Wears Prada. I really enjoyed it, but I left the theater feeling both fat and ugly which is NOT the kind of experience you want to have at the movies. The clothes and accessories, on the other hand, had me at "hello." OMG, how I needwant a Marc Jacobs tote.

This image about sums up my Saturday. SOB SOB ::pets the bump on Terry's head::


Sunday I took an hour and forty-five minute nap and then cleaned like a maniac. I had no idea my house was so untidy and dusty. It was so nice to wake up this morning and see how clean everything is now. It makes for a far less stressful Monday at work where this place is virtually empty.

Here is a link to the unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer... before the role of Willow was recast by Alyson Hannigan. It would have been a whole different Buffy.