overheard (only) in Cambridge...

Random firing of synapses in idle mode brought this up to the surface from a week or so ago...

On an evening walk back home from Harvard Square, I was on Mass Ave, just getting to the end of the block w that Adidas store that seems to sell ground effects for shoes, and some chatter and shuffling in the chunky snow drew my attention down the street there that goes to Tommy's, towards the river. There were two guys in overcoats half-marching, half-stumbling down the road, kinda criss-crossing each other, and one of them suddenly stops and demands, "Where is this *bleepin* place? You don't know where you're going, do you?"

His buddy spins around and keeps on going down the road, backwards-ish, and explains, "It's right down here, I know it is. Icarus. They're gonna meet us there..."

If you're not familiar with a Harvard Square bar/lounge called Icarus, no worries. It doesn't exist, so far as I know. The name of a bar/lounge that IS in the area, and in the direction the two fellas were headed, is Daedalus. Easy mistake to make, right? Sure enough, if you've got it in your drunken head that Icarus is the son of Daedalus, both figures from Greek mythology, Daedalus being some guy what escaped his fate of imprisonment in a labyrinth by crafting wings made of bird feathers to fly out above the walls. At least, I think it was a labyrinth. Was it the Minotaur's? Frack, I'm not sure... I'll hafta see about renting some Kevin Sorbo HERCULES dvds to make sure. He meets all the big Greek myth types in his amazing adventures! =)

Right, umm... Daedalus. Yeah, so he fixed the wings to the arms of his son and himself using wax, and warned his boy Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, lest the wax melt and the wings fall apart. Once in the air, of course, young Icarus cannot resist redlining his wings, and -you guessed it!- he flies too close high, the heat of the sun melts the wax, the wings fall apart, and the boy falls to his doom.

I thought it was kinda funny... the mixing up the names part, not the falling to one's doom part...

It is funny, yeah? Kinda, sorta...?

Of course, it would take a Cantabrigian nerd to spend a half hour spelling it all out, wouldn't it?

I'm just sayin...

Keep on keepin on~