If this weekend was any mellower or more pleasant, I’d probably be dead or in a coma. I good kind of dead or coma, mind you.

Whilst most my family, those folks I grew up with back about 3,000 miles due east of here, celebrated the youngest of my nephews graduating high school, we enjoyed the loveliness of North Californian spring-time, almost summer weather, and used some of the disposable income we have. M. discovered a Cajun restaurant not far from here. He also discovered one of New Orleans’ famous beverages and that it is usually pretty fucking strong. I bored him with my story of running out the backdoor of Pat O’Brien’s on Bourbon Street into a back alley with Patty to drunkenly elude an amorous and kind of creepy young man.

M. also discovered that alligator meat is not on the list of his favorite things. What a shocker. I mean, what’s more appetizing than a reptile?

In the ultimate kindness in a boy-girl relationship, he took us to the ultimate chick flick, Sex and the City. It was great going with him, since he works with a slew of women who had been talking it up, but I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a little wistfulness about seeing it with some actual chicks. I imagine if I were in Cambridge still, I might have called up Liz and/or Dot and/or anyone else we could have conjured and made a night of it.

(The beauty of this bit of nostalgic female bonding, I don’t have to actually worry whether they would have agreed to go. Or whether they would mind my getting liquored up for it.)

Anyway, the movie was surprisingly pretty good. There was a lot of the banter that made the first couple of seasons funny, rather than the deeper story lines that evolved. I fully admit I like the comedy and dialogue over any presumed sociological message or post-feminist agenda. Nah, I don’t believe there ever was that in the show; I think that was crazed media navel gazing, because like, you might otherwise have to admit your mom, sister or daughter likes to get her nub rubbed every now and again.

There were a few laugh out loud moments, and the audience of mostly women was digging it. M. laughed.

Like a total nerd, I’m pretty sure I heard correctly the silence in the theater, as I alone laughed aloud at one line. Candice Bergen (a favorite and feminist-y role model from way back) in her role as the editor of Vogue said to Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw, “Forty is the last age a woman can be photographed in a wedding dress without the unintended Diane Arbus subtext.”

Say what you want, but you gotta give a bit of credit to a supposedly, unapologetically, shallow show without redemptive qualities apart from fashion worship, with a good Arbus reference.

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