cornerofmadness | The trip review

I finally headed to the Boston area at a time when it wasn't frozen tundra and everything I wanted to see was closed (for those who don't know which is a lot of you really, the person who owned the multi-state medical company I worked for when I was practicing has the main office in Newton so I was in the area yearly but he always brought us up in the winter.) let me just say that if you're ever flying out of the Pittsburgh area you Must be there 2 hours ahead of time. I was there at quarter after 5 in the morning and the line was at least a 100 people deep and took for bloody forever. The flight was good and the bus driver on the Logan Express that I took to Woburn to make it easier for Flippy to pick me up looked and acted just like evil_little_dog and she had been engaged to a gamer so….she talked to me all the way there.

After Flippy picked me up and we had lunch and dropped all my crap off we headed around the historic section of Lexington. We first hit Buckman Tavern, which was rather neat since while I've been into many a historic home, I haven't been in many taverns. Built around 1697 (for my European friends that's about as old as buildings get around here), it offered up an interesting tour because it was involved in the first shot of the Revolutionary war. It's where the militia spent the night before that first skirmish. Paul Revere, Sam Adams (yes, he's more than just a beer icon) and John Hancock were there at the time.

The tap room which they did find some of the original bar bits and opened up the hearth to 1700's size (most were downsized in the 1800's). What struck me was how small the tap room was. It was nicely set up with some original furniture and muskets on the wall and flip mugs behind the bar. Flip is a particularly popular and disgusting drink of the time, beer, rum, apples (I think…) and raw egg. The kitchen was half the size of the tap room and had an unhappy feel to it. They treated the injured from the skirmish there. Naturally, Mrs. Buckman had her cooking and wool/flax spinning equipment (which I had to tell the guide the name of the carding board when some southern tourists asked about it). She must have been pretty rich. She had a waffle press and a toaster. They had a birthing chair in there, which was new to me. I hadn't seen one of those before. We didn't get upstairs where the drovers stayed but we did get to see the leather fire buckets used to keep the town safe and learned if you didn't show up to a fire you were fined and if you were gone those buckets needed to be out on the lawn for use. Also got to see a few nice bullet holes from that first skirmish too.

After this we went boutique shopping and back home to watch anime on demand with Comcast (okay we spent half the nights over the vacation watching Devil May Cry and D. Gray-man which just let me say disappointed me greatly. We thought it was the same voice actor from Xxxholic and he was so freaking whiney in his tone. To me, Allen Walker does not whine.

Friday - This was Boston Animecon day and to be crass, this was a great time to take advantage of traveling with the blind. I was with Flippy and D, who is blind which means they skipped us over the enormous line and got us right in. Let me say this, none of us are 'panel people.' I don't really go to panel discussions, rarely ever do. Occasionally we go to see the new animes showing around the hotel and whatnot but not really something we could or wanted to do with D. We were there for two things: dealers' rooms and cosplay. The most hysterical thing about this, is that this convention center is attached to a swanky mall. I'm talking Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo, Neiman Marcus, you get the idea. Watching the rich Normals mixing with cosplayers in the mall was worth the price of admission.

Roy and Riza

Sepiroth

Last year Flippy got so much stuff at these dealers' rooms she was loaded for bear. This time, let's just leave it at we were highly disappointed. Nearly 50% of the vendors were not anime/manga related. There were jewelry sellers, regular old t-shirt sellers, someone with dragons and another with renn materials (okay there is some crossover but still). Only saw one vendor with sound tracks and only two with dvds and less than a half dozen with manga. What was left would be great if you happened to like Final Fantasy VII and/or Kingdom Hearts (Sepiroth included) or Deathnote. And even at that no one had the live action Deathnote which was the one thing we did want. Flippy does love FF7 so that worked out, likes Deathnote too but I'm not a Deathnote fan at all (I only wanted to see the live action one for L) I barely found anything for ELD and only got myself one lonely Riza tin. I couldn't find anything Flippy wanted for her birthday. We might have wanted to look at the voice actors but you couldn't find them. The schedule was on those moving ad placards and I wasn't standing there to read it all. Bah.

There were a lot of great cosplayers and it was only Friday. I did miss an opportunity to take a picture of a great Maes Hughes cosplayer complete with a giant picture of Elicia that he was shoving at everyone. I regret that. I only took a couple pictures actually.

Afterwards we hit Newbury Street. We went to Stephanie's on Newbury, and I had an Asian Salad with pan seared sashimi grade yellow fin tuna with wasabi and sweet soy dressing. Yum. We did a lot of window-shopping and went into the Cherry Mart, the Japanese market on Newbury, picked up sesame dango, red bean mochi and some pocky that I was going to share as gifts but ate instead. I also toured the trinity church since I can't get enough of old churches. The whole altar was covered with gold leaf and the stained glass was by Edward Burne-Jones and La Farge.

Saturday we hit Salem, which was the second big reason to go on this trip. My parents swear I was at the Corwin 'witch' house back when I was 12 or 13 but I don't remember that. I remember everything else on that trip, Hammond's Castle, America's Stonehenge, Mystic Seaport but not that. I DO remember Dad being blown off the highway by a little old gray-haired woman who couldn't see over the steering wheel while we were in Boston since my brother and I laughed for days about that one.

Anyhow, getting into Salem was a pain in the butt made worse by Mapquest, which once again is full of crack. We finally get to the visitor center and the parking lot/mall connected to it with the lovely theatre bathroom where someone had painted in mauve down the doors, slut, cunt and suck me whore. You know if I was in charge that would have been painted over immediately since it was in a major tourist center! The guide cheerfully told me what was true historical and what was tourist trap but must have misunderstood what I wanted to see first and sent us in the wrong direction. It didn't take more than two blocks to realize it and I turned us around (but did see the shop I wanted to see), and never got lost after that (I'm good with directions). We walked all the way down to the Corwin 'witch' house , which was covered with scaffolding. After a mild debate internally, I chose to pass on the tour (I figured D. wasn't going to enjoy that too much). We went to Gulu-Gulu Café for lunch, which was good. I had a rogue dead guy ale but couldn't peel the label off, darn it.

We headed to the one thing I didn't want to leave Salem without seeing: the old burying grounds and witch memorial. I have a thing for old cemeteries and look more pictures than is probably healthy. The witch memorial is interesting in that the threshold (too covered up with dirt to be read right now) has all the dead 'witches' protests on it then it has slabs with their names, death dates and method of execution on them. It was erected for the 300 anniversary, purposely facing the cemetery of the good people who wrongly accused and killed them.

Me& D
me in the Burying grounds
tombstone
silliness
three masted ship

We then went to the last thing I really wanted to see, the House of Seven Gables . It was very neat, both Nathaniel Hawthorne's birth home was there (not the Seven Gables) and both overlooked the water. Gorgeous. We started into the tour with the whole history of the house, originally owned by Jonathan Turner. He and his Son JT2 were very wealthy sea merchants. JT3 lost it all gambling and it was bought by the Ingersolls who were cousins to Hawthorne (which is how he got there). The house was saved in 1911 and turned into a tourist place by Ms Emmerline who used the cash generated to run a program to help immigrants learn English and fit into society better.

Much of the original furniture was in this place. Our guide opened a door to a secret passageway, this narrow spiral staircase running up the side of the chimney to the third floor. Well wasn't this fun. The blind girl went up without a problem. I'm the one who bashed her knee and got a huge egg on it. The only thoughts in my mind was the line from Eddie Murphy in the Golden Child 'only if your ass is narrow are you fitting down these steps.' Flippy and I were laughing so hard trying to squeeze through this I'm not sure how we got up them. We got up to that third floor only to learn the architectural history of the house that the 7 gables were added later then torn down again because a house that fancy wasn't fashionable. Emmerline restored it in the 20th century. Even D. liked the house, which made me happy since I didn't want her to be bored.

House of Seven Gables me and D
House of Seven Gables D & Flippy
House of Seven Gables bay side

In concerns for time we passed on the oldest candy Shoppe in America but did stop at crow Haven Corner which is the first witch shop in town and has the town's 'official' witch. Can we just say everyone there was very rude and I'd never go back. Yeah. Also hit the New England Witch shop where the owner was so nice I ended up purchasing a triple moon pendant with a huge blue-sheened moonstone. Getting out of Salem was as poorly marked as getting into it was but we survived and headed to the bluestove tapas bar in Nordstroms for dinner. Yummy.

Sunday was take it easy and shop day. We all headed to the outlet mall. Let me say I don't get the attraction to Coach. I think their shoes/purses are ugly. There was a line longer than sanity allows for to get in (we suspected it was to keep down theft). I did get some bamboo socks and some Affliction and Resurge shirts at Saks outlet. Who knew you could get something from Saks for 16$? The Hot Topix outlet had the stupid Deathnote Live Action movie so I got that for Flippy for her birthday. Ate at a good Thai restaurant that night. Watched the movie…Mr. Yagami looked like a Japanese Jack Lord. I didn't care at all for the actor playing Light and some of the changes they made were stupid. The actor playing L was amazing and worth watching this for. He was fantastic and incredibly hot.

Monday was supposed to be Isabella Stewart Gardner museum time but either I read the website wrong or it had old info but it wasn't open. So instead we toured the rest of the historic houses in Lexington. We hit the Munro tavern , which was also highly involved in the Revolution. It was one of those Washington dined here places. The guide was amazing, breaking a bit of protocol to let D. touch stuff so she could get more out of it. Also Flippy and I were looking at an actual British Regular's Redcoat and were thinking 'so this is where they got the design for Zechs uniform. We also hit the Hancock-Clark , which was nice. What I liked was the rich history of the place. John Hancock the first (or at least for the purposes of this story) was Lexington preacher for 50 years and had about 12 kids, many who went on to become preachers themselves except one who went on to become a bookbinder in Boston. John H #2 and his wife died leaving John Hancock the patriot (signer of the declaration etc) an orphan at age 7. Granddaddy was going to raise him but the blacksheep bookbinder ended up being one of the richest men in the new world and he adopted John which seemed to have some unwanted side effects such as the man couldn't be without his finery …ever.

There was a great story in one of the rooms where Hancock and Sam Adams were sleeping. Revere rides up and warns them the Regulars are coming which would mean a hanging death for those two. They were to take off. Revere rides off, warns a few more people, rides back and those two are still getting ready. Hancock is all dressed up in his silk uniform swashbuckling all over the room with his sword while Adams is trying to convince him that he can not go to the front since he's going to stick out like a sore thumb and get shot (basically I get the impression Hancock was an egotistical ass that Adams is saving only because Hancock IS the richest man around and he's bankrolling the rebels). Upstairs is Dorothy and Aunt Libby who hopes to marry Dorothy off to Hancock. They finally get Hancock out of the house, which takes three carriages. The first to get Hancock and Adams out. The second to get all of Hancock's belongings and some big-butt fish he had to have because someone promised it to him. The last carriage was to get his fiancée and her aunt (nice to see she comes in behind the fish). Best part, the fish got cooked up, Hancock had to flee and by the time he got back to the new place, the servants had eaten up his fish. They also had a hand sewn bed curtains for the upstairs bed, where the woman spun, dyed and hand sewed the whole thing for her wedding in the 1700's…ugly but in remarkable shape. The other cool thing was they found shoes inside the walls. According to superstitions of the time those warded off evil spirits.

Hancock-Clark me and D

Munro Tavern me and D

Lexington Minute Man, me and D

the old Belfry Lexington (yeah climbed up to see this, no placard explaining anything

Naturally we had to do more shopping and eating out at those half price appetizers place. At Not Your Average Joe's I got a Mass. Blueberry beer, figuring it would be like a Sam Adam's cherry wheat. It was a pale ale with a handful of blueberries in it…and it was GOOD! Shocked me. We found some books I wanted at the local Borders and picked up the second Deathnote movie (heck with the anime con apparently we would have had better luck going to chain stores). Okay if you haven't watched the movie and want to scroll past the * til you get to the other *'s so not to spoil yourself
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They changed the story. No lie. L takes out Light (which frankly we all would have probably liked better). However, how he does it is so WTF stupid that I couldn't enjoy it. He writes in his own death but only gives himself 23 days. WHO does this? That's the best this genius can do. My god! I would have given myself 80 years. Idiot. All in all, while the actor playing L is good and it's all very well done I still don't like Deathnote any more than I did before this.

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And lastly on the whole Deathnote thing, I would buy the 23 days of L movie that has yet to make its way over here. The actor was that good.

The trip back was lousy. They oversold the flight and all rollerback carry-on's had to be checked (see Flippy this is what I'm talking about. Every time I fly…) Luckily I had two things that would fit under the seat. Dear people on US air Flight 3355 from Boston to Pittsburgh, if you had just paused for the 30 seconds it would have taken me to shove my stuff under the seat all would have been well instead of trying to climb over me to get to your seats. Hell the back of the plane loads first so where were you when that was called? And to the chick sitting with me, you ripped the seat back in front of you trying to put your feet in it to sleep and giving me the evil eye because you couldn't stretch into my seat only made me more determined to make you miserable and didn't you look sexy sleeping on your tray table. Loved it when we hit turbulence and you bashed your head. Twit.

All in all a great trip. Thanks to Flippy and D. for letting me stay with them. Sorry to my other Bostonian friends, I just couldn't find the time to make arrangements to see you all too.

new dragons -