Angry Feast

Tonight was a night out at the Scandinavia House for a screening of the 1988 film, Babette's Feast. Excellent movie. If you have the opportunity to watch, I most definitely recommend. The story is centered geographically in the Jutland region of Denmark. Yes, there are subtitles, but you won't get lost in the sauce of the storyline. I promise! The synopsis is a bit similar to the film Chocolat in that the main character, with a mysterious background, arrives in a remote and insular village only to magically transform it later on. Complete with morality challenges. In Babette's Feast however, it is in the form of an exquisite meal for the community paid for by lottery winnings.

Another plus of movie night at SH is that if you order a coffee and a dessert together, showing your movie ticket, it comes out to just $2.00 total. That's surprisingly cheap by Manhattan standards. I lovingly selected a huge ginger cookie on offer from Eli's, and was immediately disappointed at how stale it tasted. However, the coffee was pure Scandinavia - dark and strong.

Now here is where it gets angry. I am one who silently (and sometimes verbally) flips out when a person's cell phone begins ringing at the most inappropriate times, especially when the culprit doesn't answer or seem to realize how much of a nuisance they are causing. So, you can imagine how much I nearly died of embarrassment when my own mobile started ringing during the film.

Normally, I keep it on vibrate and am rarely one to catch a call on time. Of course, that night was, it seemed, the one and only time I mistakenly turned the phone on and it began ringing well into the movie. Keep in mind that I was in the second row, right smack dab in the middle, and wasn't even aware at first that it was my phone. Since it sounded oddly close by, it wasn't until like, the tenth ring that I fully realized the evildoer was me. Trying to sneak into my purse to turn it off, thus hoping to conceal the evidence, all was apparent to several audience members directly in front who the guilty party was. You would have thought I had just eaten a baby dipped in BBQ sauce!

Sigh