life on a tandem bicycle: Boston JASC Reunion, Part Deux

Monday starts bright and early. Which is to say we all woke up around 11 in the morning and barely left my dorm by noon. The following posters grabbed our attention at the subway stop:

Yes, the first ad does in fact say, "COULD YOU SPARE SOME DNA?" And while mitosis does happen, it is really meiosis that makes reproduction with genetic variation possible. I digress. Fascinated by this fantastically-concocted ad campaign, we actually looked up spore.com upon our return and discovered, to our disappointment, that it is merely another computer/Playstation game in the take-control-of-a-civilization-and-lead-it-to-greatness tradition. It's hard to say, in retrospect, what we were expecting. But had it been advertisement for a sperm-donation service, I would have been quite satisfied.

This is a (staged though nonetheless evocative) shot of Schlachet mourning his camera. Apparently, "the flash setting cannot be changed." Both Rachel and I are technologically hapless and in no way tried to help.

Rachel entrusted her camera to me, so the first thing I did with it is take awkward self-portraits. Here we are on the subway. Rachel demonstrates how to properly make a fish-face. I fail.

I like taking pictures of produce stands. I think they are beautiful. Hopeful and reassuring.

The long subway ride takes us to Jamaica Plains, which Rachel assures us is a charming neighborhood, but we are both unfamiliar with the area, and the process of finding lunch was more arduous than we had expected. Here, we stumble into a grocery store, in which Rachel contemplates "Old Bread, Reduced" for lunch fare.

JASC never really leaves us.

We ended up at Fiore's Bakery, which exceeded my expectations and made me wish to return many times (irrationally so, as the trip to Fiore's takes a good hour or so, even on a good day). We pose for a group picture before we dive into our respective sandwiches: from left to right, the Sophia Loren, the Mobster, and the Gobbler. Yummy.

After our satisfying meal, we take a little detour to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. The sprawling greens are calming, though not quite what I would have expected an arboretum to be. In my youth (haha, I speak as if I am long past that age), I went to the arboretum with my parents several times and remembered a profusion of colors, flowers competing against each other to be noticed. It was, however, a wonderful walk, and we return to the gate for another group picture.

And this is really the highlight of our day. Rachel, by some stroke of brilliance or divine inspiration, suggests that we visit the Museum of Bad Art, which, ladies and gentlemen, does exist. Albeit in the basement of a community theater in Dedham. Where is Dedham? That's a good question. And the best answer we can give you is that it is approximately 1 hour in subway ride and another 25 minutes on a bus from Cambridge. The admissions is free. But, in retrospect, I would have been willing to pay a hefty price for a ticket, both in support of unintentional artistic failure and in appreciation of my opportunity to witness some stunning artistic failures.

Nancy: What is this?
Josh: What is this? "Mexican in Tiananmen Square"?

Point for Josh.
(Also note that the Museum Curator has accidentally misspelled "Tian'anmen".)
We saw many other pieces of artwork, so earnest and so repulsively bad. I could try to describe them here, but any attempts on my part would dilute the spectacle that was the Museum of Bad Art.

We take a walk around historic Dedham. Houses from the 1830s and earlier. We were not impressed and sought shelter in an independent coffee shop. Here, Rachel and I indulge ourselves in a moment of photographic mutual admiration: we take pictures of each other.