Live and Let's Give

So this weekend, we mixed some business in with our pleasure on date night, attending the "Live and Let's Give" charity event at the Lichtenstien Center for the Arts (quickly becoming our favorite haunt). It was a charity art sale for Charley's Fund (which supports research for curing Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy), and wall overstuffed with art and crafts. It was also, we're not ashamed to say, a great networking opportunity.

We hunted down all the artists whose work we enjoyed, and chatted them up something fierce. I'll tell you, there's a drastic difference between the artists here and the Cape Cod artists. They actually were keen to discuss their art with strangers, and seemed genuinely interested in a stranger's critiques. I turned for a moment, and Becca started a conversation with a man who edits Rural Intelligence, a Berkshire-based arts and news website. He took our picture for the site, and we felt special. Although, having seen it, I must ask if anybody has any tips on how not to look like a crazy person.

I bought Becca a necklace from Good Charma (www.goodcharma.com), and on our way out, a woman at the desk- we later discovered her to be the aforementioned Charley's mother)- gave us a DVD documentary about a kid with Duchenne's. She was very nice, too bad this was all past Charley's bedtime.

Having shown remarkable restraint at the complimentary snack table, I coerced Becca into dinner at Brix. Those of you from the area should go if you haven't. It's a unassuming but excellent french restaurant that we'd been hearing we simply had to try, so try we did. Our waitress was sarcastic and funny; the owner came over to talk to us (I'm assuming that he tries to visit every table, it seemed like that sort of place). Becca had... some french word I don't remember (it had a Monsier at the end), which equates to the best ham and cheese sandwich in the world. I had the mussels, and I learned (note: collective failure on the part of Cape Cod for not telling me this) that you're supposed use a mussel shell to scoop all the other mussels.

We had a nice conversation with the couple at the next table about secondhand clothing, formerly living in Falmouth (small world, eh?) and the reception we were just at, when we discovered that our waitress had made some of the croched objects that were in the show.

Of course, the dogs were far less amused by our date night, and let us know as much when we returned home. They were strangely unmoved to the fact that I might have the opportunity to collaborate with a jewelry maker and that we're starting to insinuate ourselves into the culture of the Berkshires. But the most upsetting part to them is that the french secret to eating rich foods whilst staying rail thin is portion control. Ergo, no doggie bags.

Night at the Museum

So your favorite sickeningly sweet couple went out on a proper date last night (yes, Irupe, married couples do sometimes have dates, though not often enough). We wanted to catch the last Third Thursday of the season here in Pittsfield.

We stopped into the Lichtenstein Gallery, to absorb some culture, and there was a performance/video/installation art piece going on called "Apollo Risen" by Julia Morgan-Leaman. In some windows, short films were playing on a loop, and in others, people were performing (some dancing, one boy playing the Baritone, a woman in a hammock, etc), their silhoettes (sp?) projected onto sheets covering the windows.

We ran into the only three small children we know in the Berkshires at the gallery, having met them while taking our dogs for a walk in a field while house hunting in August. And we chatted with their babysitters, following them upstairs (they were regulars) to the studios where the performance art was being conducted. We stopped in to talk with the boy with the baritone (Becca still has that band geek radar going...), and the artist came up so we found ourselves talking with her.

She came to relieve the boy for the night, she'd just finished taking photos of the installation. She then decided that we were positively adorable, and had to have us dance in the window for her exhibit/performance. We obliged, happy to finally be part of the Berkshire art scene we'd been drawn to in the first place.

All that dancing made us hungry. We were over to Mission, the local trendy tapas bar. We couldn't get past the solid wall of pretension, so we left in search of Trattoria Rustico, a tiny hole-in-the-wall bistro.

The were closed. So we went to the Malaysian restaurant next door, I forget the name... Being a Malaysian restaurant, they of course had a bluegrass band playing. Why not? We sat at the bar to order some takeout (we're old & it was almost nine), and enjoyed the music. They play "Man of Constant Sorrow" from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and some other fun numbers. We had some homemade ginger ice cream that a server had accidentally brought out (the order was cancelled, but we swooped down on it), and paid for our food.

As we were leaving, the band finished a song and Becca shouted (she does that sometimes) "Play Johnny Cash!" They laughed, then looked at each other, and broke into "One Piece at a Time" (which is a fun song, look it up...), so we of course had to sit back down.

Then we went home & ate some Orange Ginger Chicken & assorted Malaysian fingerfoods and agreed to do this every Thursday.

Stop pretending to wretch, you're just jealous.