Field Trip

My mom and stepdad helped celebrate my mom's birthday on Sunday by taking my husband and I out to dinner and a movie ("Mr & Mrs. Smith"), and serving us tea and slices of cake (cheese and carrot) then sending us home with the leftovers.
You'd think it was my birthday! All we had to do was get ourselves and the gifts we'd purchased across the river (the other river) to New Jersey. Not a bad deal.
Victor was feeling adventurous (and parsimonious), so he suggested we try to catch a bus from Penn Station in midtown Manhattan to Edgewater, which is located-you guessed it-on the eastern edge of New Jersey. For the bargain price of $2.60 apiece, we rode from Penn to one of 2 stops in Edgewater, which, unfortunately, was about 2.5 blocks from the movie theater where we were meeting my parents. Though we are New Yorkers, and I probably walk at least four times that distance every day at a minimum, it felt suddenly strange to stroll with my husband along a winding, weed-strewn sidewalk in my heels while Beamers and Benz's whizzed by us. Not to mention it was really, perspiration-provoking hot. And I was wearing a thin jacket (well, for about the first 10 seconds till I decided to carry it instead) in anticipation of the air-conditioned theater where we'd be spending the next 2 hours.
But it was a quick walk. And the A/C in that theater felt good. While we waited for my parents, I hit the candy bins, filling up a bag with Swedish fish and Skittles (my favorites--and lunch!). My parents showed up soon after. They'd already bought the tickets online and they ushered us into the theater "to get good seats." There were 5 people in the theater. The movie (or the pre-movie commercials) weren't scheduled to start for another 20 minutes. So we settled in. Then my mom opened the straw shoulder bag she'd brought along and pulled out baggies filled with dried cherries (tart and crispy) and bottled water. They like to come prepared. We all spent the next 15 minutes munching on our snacks, discussing Doubt (a play about priests and pedophilia that they had seen the day before and highly recommended--it just won the Pulitzer and a handful of Tonys), and debating the merits of anonymous sources in journalism (I'll just say I am a proponent in general, with some notable exceptions).
Then, just as we got to the mind-boggling phenomenom that is Paris Hilton, the ads kicked in. "Mr & Mrs Smith" was sort of like one long ad too--for homeowner's insurance. Not that most of us would have to worry about the problems that plagued the Smiths: The "houswife" and "high-level contractor" are actually highly skilled (and highly paid, judging from their suburban Mcmansion) assassins who have been ordered to kill each other. When they're not trying to kill each other, they're trying to elude pesky teams of highly trained assassins (with remarkably bad aim) and to reignite the spark that brought them together "five or six years ago" in Bogota.
[Spoiler alert!] Needless to say, both of them--and their marriage--survive, while their house and their would-be killers do not. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie share some amazing chemistry and even some witty banter. But their most impressive accomplishment is that they manage to survive being shot and stabbed, having their home blown up, and their getaway car (aka the minivan they stole from their neighbor) shot up, and still look beautiful throughout.
My mom, stepdad, Victor and I concluded after the film that there is no other actress today that has the same sexual appeal and screen presence as Angelina Jolie. ("If I was Jennifer Aniston, I never would have let me husband do this movie!" my mom announced). The only other star we could come up with that might hold her own against Angelina was Sophia Loren (or maybe Brigitte Bardot?)--30 years ago.
Next, we went for an early dinner at a nearby restaurant where smoking was still permitted (in the bar), my stepdad talked the manager into lifting (at least temporarily) the policy of charging for iced tea refills and I sucked down some savory scallops in a rich cream sauce (all I'd eaten that day was candy and some dried cherries--I was starving). Then it was back to my parents' place for cake and tea. And Victor and I were off. This time we took the ferry back across the river. The sun was just setting and it was still warm enough to stand on the top deck. The wind felt good in my hair. The New York skyline sparkled with thousands of twinkling lights. It felt magical.
Then we were on a bus and a subway (back under the other river) and home by 9, ready for a second slice of cake.