Failure of the Day: Misc., Recent and Local

• We had our first moderately expensive dinner in SJ last Thursday, courtesy of an extremely friendly book distributor in town to help out with Chris’s store during the first week of school. The guy took six of us out to Original Joe’s, an old timey, waiters-in-tuxedos Italian restaurant down the street from our apartment. The food was terrific, but seriously, it’s a mafia hangout right? Does anybody know? It just has to be. Those people couldn’t look like that by accident, could they?



• Before my workload went batshit insane recently, I took an afternoon off and checked out the (always free, thank you very much) San Jose Museum of Art, also right down the street from our apartment. The museum could have been bigger I thought, but it was showing three of the Nancyest exhibits in the history of art. The first was called Brides of Frankenstein, and it featured representations of body parts by female artists. That some of the body parts were robotic was but one of the pleasures. The second exhibit was beautiful photographs of people in terrifying-looking hospital rooms. And the third was a 7 foot by 20 foot light wall of enormous MRI films…of pomegranates. I actually moaned with pleasure when I saw it.



• One of the treats in our welcome gift basket here was a certificate for 2 free tickets to the San Jose Repertory Theater, which like everything else, is, I swear, right down the street. It really is; we can see it from our dining room window. I am not a huge fan of live theater but free is free, so I started looking into their lineup for this season. First up: a musical about the Winchester Mystery House. No kidding. I can’t tell if that is genius or hilarious in a Waiting for Guffman kind of way, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to see it. God help me.