Ann and I had a pretty eventful Friday night. We pretty much did everything Arlington had to offer. We started off with a dinner at Punjab, an Indian restaurant in Arlington Center. Then we headed over to the fireworks at Spy Pond, part of Arlington's town day celebration. The fireworks were pretty good, and in fact the whole experience reminded me of the 4th of July fireworks in Concord, NH where I grew up. This shouldn't have surprised me too much - both towns have about the same population and probably about the same fireworks budget. Before the fireworks Ann and I saw an amazing display of pubescent hormones - it seemed every middle school student in town had a can of shaving cream and they were all smearing it on one another, with particular attention being paid to the opposite sex. From a purely sociological standpoint, it was downright primal. The smell of shaving cream filled the air for at least a 200 yard radius around the kids. Crazy stuff. Ann also saw some of the first graders from her school - they had a great look on their face that said "What are you doing here? You don't live in the school?" - it truly freaked them out to see her in that context.

After the fireworks we went to the Boston-area premier of the movie "I am trying to break your heart" at the Regent Theatre - a movie about the band Wilco. Wilco is a band that Ann and I have been really digging lately - we've bought up all of their albums except one in the past couple of months. They're genre is called alt.country. If that doesn't really help you figure out what Wilco is all about, think of them as a country Pavement. Anyway, the movie was great - it chronicled the making of their latest album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," (which has won acclaim from critics all over the place) and the fact that their label dropped them after they gave them the album. Bad idea - it later debuted at #13 on the Billboard charts. Anyway, I think the sign of a great documentary is if you come away from it saying "I didn't know...but now I do." If you want to really lose respect for the corporations running pretty much all of the American media see this movie.