Eclectic, quirky, and sometimes edgy…this is how things look from my front porch.




Friday, June 27, 2008

Mystic Pizza







I guess you’ve figured that I’m not at the house at 256 right now, but sharing my view from the road. I’m traveling with Farmer Boy, who works for Really Big Defense Contractor. I’m from Connecticut, so I come with him when he drives up to review work completed. I get to drive around, visit with my family, study and enjoy myself. Thanks, Farmer Boy, for inviting me to come.

Last night we went to Mystic Pizza in Mystic, CT for dinner. Contrary as always, I had a roast beef grinder. For those of you who are not informed about correct terminology, a grinder is incorrectly referred to as the following in other parts of the country: hero, submarine sandwich, po’ boy or a hoagie. But it’s a grinder.

Mystic Pizza is also a favorite movie of mine. Released in 1988, it was Julia Robert’s first big break and has become something of a cult classic. It runs on a continuous loop at the restaurant while people are dining. The director was spending the summer in the area in the late 1980’s and decided to set the screenplay about the lives of three waitresses right in Mystic Pizza.

Farmer Boy was just saying to me, “Did anyone else in this movie become famous?” In the midst of saying “no,” I realized that my favorite Vincent Donofrio from Law and Order: Criminal Intent was right on the screen. Detective Robert Goren himself, but I never saw him. I’ve seen that movie many, many times and never noticed that he was in it. Which goes to show you that we are frequently not fully present in our lives and miss a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSbrULyuyAw

After dinner, we walked across the picturesque old draw bridge that runs through the center of Mystic. I have a bridge thing: they scare me. Really big, high bridges particularly scare me. I have nightmares about the George Washington Bride in New York and the Coronado Bridge in San Diego. This bridge is small and accessible, in addition to being not very far up off the water, so it didn’t bother me at all.

Just as we were crossing, a loud bell began to ring. A sailboat with a very tall mast was about to pass, so the bridge was opening. Danger, Will Robinson! I sprinted across; my nightmare horror of a bridge opening underneath me about to occur in real life.

Everyone had pretty much cleared the bridge when a couple, seemingly oblivious to the red lights, lowering bars as at a railroad crossing and the loud horn sounding, sauntered very slowly across the bridge, hand in hand, seconds before it opened.

What a metaphor for life! How many people are wandering into very dangerous territory, onto the shifting ground of sin, oblivious to the peril? How many warning bells and barricades are trying to alert us, but our focus is elsewhere? Get back to the solid ground on the other side as fast as you can!

On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.