for the love of Newark

By anders pearson 20 Jan 2001

today, i went, with mimi and about 8 of her friends to Newark.

three of us took a train over and were meeting the rest at the train station there. we got there early and spent some time wandering around a bookstore reading trashy astrology books, connect the dot porn (don’t ask), and Oprah’s magazine (we learned how to “walk like a goddess”). for the most part, the train station was horrid. well, it wasn’t that bad except for the mind-numbing, soul-crushing muzak; but that was enough to ruin it.

when everyone finally got in, we walked down to a brazilian restaurant and stuffed ourselves on good food and sangria while a Xuxa episode played on tv. afterwards we went to a bakery for dessert, then descended upon the Newark Museum.

as soon as we got into the museum, one of the guards decided that we looked like we were up to no good and followed us around the whole place telling every other guard, in a whisper loud enough for us to hear, to keep an eye on us because we were some kind of vagrants or miscreants who were just there to cause trouble. naturally, we were a little offended. at first, the other guards who had been warned were also a little hostile to us but they got over it once Haydn started reading the Chinese calligraphy out loud in perfect chinese and was explaining to them the translation and the meanings of the poems. toward the end, we were in this replica victorian house and the evil head guard woman who hated us was there trying to shoo us out.

Haydn says “Wow! look at that ceiling!” pointing out the nicely decorated cieling about 20 feet over our heads.

the evil guard woman screams out like we were little kids on a field trip “Don’t TOUCH anything!!”

Haydn gives her a distateful look and says “I can’t touch the ceiling.”

you had to be there i guess.

all in all, Newark isn’t that bad a city. rather pleasant actually. just stay out of the train station and don’t touch anything in the museum.