West Meets East - Part One

Now Playing -
 Metropolitan Glide
by Tom Waits

Life - 

For the last week and a half, we've had a virtual parade of visitors here. First, our friend Jen for a few days, visiting us on a side trip while she was in Cape Cod with her aunt. Before we'd even put the cushions back on the couch, Lindsay's parents arrived from Idaho for a week, and halfway through that, her sister Marissa joined us. I had planned on making little updates of their visit each day, leisurely editing photos and relaxing on the porch in the evening after our adventures. SO naturally, we ran out of time each day and by the time I got home from driving around every day, all I wanted to do was turn my brain off and unwind.

So here is my mega-post of the week, part one, covering Jen's visit and my in-laws' arrival.

Jen was an interesting challenge. She's an awesome lady and really fun to hang out with, and she's been my wife's best friend for years, but she's also different from us in a lot of ways, which made showing her Maine a bit hard. We knew what my In-Laws liked and anticipated that, but how does someone show off a state to someone in just a day or two? She also arrived with short notice right before our family's planned trips, so we couldn't take any time off work, which left Linz to entertain them while I worked. So I missed out on the lobster dinner and the lighthouse, but I caught up with them in the evening on Thursday. It had been a long day already. Portland looks like it has a fairly small Old Port area, but once you start walking around, it gets big pretty quick, and she was tired of walking by the time I joined them. So we kept things simple, just a visit to the nearly abandoned Old Orchard Beach for some Beal's ice cream and an order of Pier Fries. 

 

That night she crashed on our couch and the next morning, we headed North. We drove around Bath a bit, doing a few of the things that we had initially planned to do with Rich and Sue (Linz's parents) before heading to Red's Eats for lunch. None of us had ever eaten there before, but I'd heard good things. The line was long, but the food was swell (You can read my review of Red's here) and we had a really nice time. We also stopped at a few cemeteries along the way. Jen, a forensic anthropologist by training, was a lot more into our obsession with cemeteries than Lindsay's parents are, so we took advantage of that.

Unfortunately, after lunch, Jen had to head back South to meet up with her aunt, so we bid her a fond farewell. We had one day of work before my in-laws arrived on Sunday night, and a bit of prep work in the house before they arrived, but it was too bad to see her go all the same.

Sunday, Rich and Sue's plane got in pretty late, around 7pm, so all we really did was eat some pizza at the Pizza Villa, which was also the first place in Portland that Lindsay and I ate back in January. We got to our house around 9, played with the dogs and they were asleep by 10, with Linz joining them soon after. I sat in a corner of the bedroom with a book for another 3 hours, quietly reading, something that would quickly become a pattern...

Reviews Of Unusual Size

Television

NO ORDINARY FAMILY
Tuesdays, ABC

Re: This new series is an hour-long drama about a family that finds themselves in possession of super-powers after a plane wreck. The father (Michael Chiklis) ends up with strength and some amount of invulnerability, the mother (Julie Benz) is super-fast, the daughter (Kay Panabaker) can read minds and the son (Jimmy Bennet) ends up being able to do something relating to math that never really got explained.

Outstanding: I'll watch anything with Michael Chiklis, and he does great here as a somewhat disgruntled father who feels like he's lost his family to everyday life. The effects are pretty decent here too, especially the fight scene in the garage. The father's friend is really fun too.

Unacceptable: Nothing much happens in the first episode, just the typical discovery of their powers, which let's be honest, is a pretty clichéd origin. The mother's abilities are kind of goofy looking, and her method of proving that she's fast (Remember that thing? WHOOSH Here it is!) is silly as hell.

Summary: Despite the extremely tired premise, I'll keep watching. The show has a great cast and I'm curious to see where they decide to go with things - Sappy family drama, over the top sitcom super heroes, ridiculous villain of the week antics or something unique and cool... Time will tell.

2/5