Black Swan and fondue

This weekend, some girlfriends and I went and saw Black Swan.  I don't know what to make of the movie.  I didn't like it, but I didn't dislike it.  At first, I thought Nina was schizophrenic, but then one of my girlfriends thought maybe she had continued doing drugs, which makes sense after the costume manager comments that she'd lost weight (how that is possible, I don't know).  We also weren't sure if every time Nina saw Lily and it morphed into herself, if she was really seeing Lily and imagining she was that person, or if she was hallucinating herself.  (Wow, and after re-reading that paragraph, I'm sure I just confused all of you.)

Also, there was a lot of crotch-touching in the movie.  To me, that's a really non-subtle way of expressing sexuality, which is what the black swan is supposed to embody.  However, I don't really think of ballerinas as "sexy."  For one, they have no curves.  Secondly, they move with a precision I just don't equate with sexuality. 

Okay, and one more thing about the movie: is anyone else floored by how little ballerinas eat and still have energy to do anything?  Half a grapefruit and one poached egg does not equal a meal in my world, let alone enough to sustain someone for a day of dancing!  Good Lord!  Maybe ballerinas wouldn't be so catty if they had a little more food in them.  I know I'm less pleasant to be around when I'm hungry.

Which brings me to the next part of the evening!  The Melting Pot!  After the movie, we figured the best way to recover from the horrors of watching Natalie Portman turn into a swan would be to consume an excessive amount of cheese and chocolate!

We had a reservation for 7:30, but we arrived early, so we headed to the bar, where I had a Yin & Yang martini, which comes with chocolate shavings and is fabulous, one girlfriend had a glass of the "red" wine, which was some sort of Spanish table wine, and another girlfriend had the espresso martini with a double shot.  It tasted like an iced coffee.

We started our meal with the spinach and artichoke cheese blend, which comes with three types of cubed bread, green apples, and some mixed veggies.  The cheese usually comes in an amount to serve two, and then you can add on people, which is what we did.  I think the bread/veggies/apples are pre-portioned amounts, but the staff will gladly bring you more if you run out.

My girlfriends both ordered salads.  I do not like salads.  I just can't get into them.  There's always so much lettuce and I don't know, so little of what I'd actually like to be eating.  One girlfriend had the California salad, which she seemed to enjoy, and the other had the salad nicoise.  The only complaint she made was that her olives were mushy.

And then, of course, we moved on to dessert.  We had "the original," which is milk chocolate with a spoonful of peanut butter.  But we were feeling bold and daring, and had half milk, half dark chocolate, which was great, because it was less sweet than the milk chocolate, but not as bitter as dark chocolate would have been.

The evening proved to be a bit of an emotional roller coaster, between the intensity of the movie, followed by the deliciousness of cheese and the decadence of chocolate.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night!