Rosendale, NY - Our Home Away from Home.

1850 House - Summer, 2014

We arrived at Rosendale yesterday at 3pm on the nose to settle into the 1850 House Inn and Tavern.  We went through the usual ritual of picking up our room key in the absence of our host.  At present, we are the only living inhabitants of the Inn.  I think I speak on Susan's behalf as well as mine that we are aboard some Marie Celeste or Flying Dutchman wandering from sea to sea.  There is no helmsman, just us, the ghost passengers, as we move in and out of the fog.

Or at least we did until Kyle, the inn's host, greeted us in the lounge.  We have met Kyle before during our previous visits to the 1850 House.  He is always good natured and he is always willing to swap stories with us when we settle in for a winter's afternoon that looks like the dead of night on these short December days.

Kyle told us that he - at my insistence in a previous visit - sat through all twenty three films of Marvel's so-called Infinity Saga.  From Robert Downey Jr's first appearance as Tony Stark in Iron Man, until Tony Stark's fate in Avengers: Infinity War.  He took it one film per weekend for twenty-six weeks (that included the animated shows) and said he enjoyed was quite well absorbed in this vast science fiction - fantasy universe.  I was impressed and said after all the years I invested in watching the Infinity Saga, I doubted I would see any of those films again for several years (This from a man who watched Salò once every fortnight for ten years!).

The discussion moved on to DC Comics and the DC Cinematic Universe.  Kyle was more of a DC man than a Marvel fan, but I was able to keep pace.  We discussed every DC film from the so-called Dark Knight Trilogy to Shazam!  Kyle enjoyed the childlike abandon of Shazam!, which encouraged me to watch it myself since I passed on it in theaters.

Kyle, Susan, and I agreed that Batman v Superman - Dawn of Justice was a dud, at least in our opinion and that it would be a cold day in hell before we watched the Snyder Cut of the four hour long Justice League.  Kyle saw it in Puerto Rico with Spanish subtitles.

I expressed some embarrassment of not grasping the Spanish language, especially since I, a New Yorker, should at least be bilingual.  Kyle said that he grew up in Colorado, which has a large Mexican American population.  He learned a Mexican dialect of Spanish during school.  When he went to Puerto Rico with his Spanish speaking background, he realized that the Puerto Rican dialect was radically different from the Mexican.  What's more, Kyle and I agreed that the Nuyorican dialect was as remote from the Puerto Rican dialect as Puerto Rican was remote from the Mexican dialect.

Returning to the Marvel/DC Universes, Kyle produced three thick trade paperbacks of compiled DC titles.  One was, I believe, Batman: Dark Moon Rising, which he was currently reading.  He asked which of the two remaining titles he should read next: Justice League - Identity Crisis, or Kingdom Come.

"KINGDOM COME!" I joyously erupted.  I could go into the myriad ways Kingdom Come is a masterpiece among graphic novels, but the two main reasons is the unconventional painting style of Alex Ross, whose watercolor / gouache paint sets the works lightyears beyond the standard CMYK method of coloring comic books.  Mark Waid's writing took the DC heroes out of their standard mold and made them practically into gods with human limitations.  Superman has greying temples, Wonder Woman's Amazonian beauty is beginning to show worry lines, and Batman is confined to a cybernetic mobile body cast with a neck guard that looks eerily similar to Darth Vader's.  All of this is told from the perspective of a humble Episcopalian minister who must stand witness to a series of events that could lead the Earth to, well, Kingdom Come.  The copy that Kyle had of Kingdom Come had a far more radiant cover than the shadowy black and grey edition I bought years before.  Kyle was so overtaken by my eager recommendation that he promised to read it next after Dark Moon Rising.

Our conversation turned toward the subject of the three new films that had come out in past few weeks:  Spiderman - No Way Home, The Matrix Resurrections, and West Side Story.  Suze and I had seen West Side Story while Kyle had seen No Way Home.  Suze and I avoided No Way Home due to Spiderman fatigue (eight films?).  Kyle had not seen West Side Story, but both films apparently had one thing in common, they drove us to tears.  Tony and Maria's love seemed to be as doomed as Peter Parker and MJ's.  Both couples seemed to be on a trajectory with which there was no return.

As for The Matrix Resurrections, all three of us groaned at the mention of it.  We had seen it and we agreed it was the flat tire of the whole series which, in all honesty, ended with The Matrix Revolutions, which came out in 2003.  Suze and I enjoyed Resurrections at the time of seeing it at the Yonkers Alamo Drafthouse for the action scenes, but it lacked the philosophical depth of the first Matrix film.  Kyle asked why we saw it in theaters rather than on HBO Max?  We replied simultaneously, "Alamo Drafthouse has the best pizza!"  For those not in the know, the Alamo movie chain serves top notch meals, not junk food, meals as you watch the film.  You can even make your order in advance online.  That is twenty first century service!

Don't think for a moment that I was dominating the conversation.  Far from it.  Kyle, Susan, and I talked for nearly an hour about our lives growing up in Colorado, Ohio, and The Bronx, respectively.  We discussed the ups and downs of our home towns.  I must not go into details about Kyle and Suze's background out of respect for their privacy.  They will express their experiences in their own journals and blogs.

We did have a big laugh recounting Jackie Chan's martial arts vehicle, Rumble in the Bronx.  Kyle roared with laughter when I told him how Bronx audiences roared with laughter when we saw the ice capped mountain background of Vancouver, which stood in for The Bronx (!)  Eventually, Kyle had to do his rounds, so we said goodbye for the evening.

Suze and I went across the street from the 1850 House to the vegetarian Rosendale Café.  Susan ate a Black Bean Burrito, while I had a Mushroom Tofu Stroganoff.  It was first time in my life that I ate tofu.  It was baked, so I didn't feel like a total hippie weenie.  The waitress was a short Asian American woman with a shaved scalp.  I am always fascinated by the tonsorial choices of men and women today.  As for myself, I have my trademark long, tangled, curly hair.

We finally retired to bed.  I spent the first half of the evening dreaming of being the owner of a prohibition era speakeasy complete with a sauna.  I woke up at three in the morning and had trouble getting to sleep.  I had my telltale itch to watch YouTube, to which I surrendered.  I made a point of wearing Blu-Blocker glasses so the glare of the laptop screen - the very laptop screen I am looking at now - would not overstimulate me.  I sat through a video or two until I felt the tug of sleep overcoming me.  I returned to bed, fearing I would be awake for the rest of the night.  Before I knew it, I had a dream of a departed friend, Robert DeHayes.  It seemed he was getting even with me for all the times I crashed at his house for two days in a row, by crashing at my place for an indefinite amount of time.  Unlike me, he maxed out my credit card purchasing various items of bric a brac that arrived in large, unwieldy boxes.  I was having the fright of my life until blessedly, I woke up at 7:58 in the morning.  At least my body had a good night's sleep.

More later,

- JJB

1850 House, Patio - Summer, 2014