baby, what's in that satchel?

so zoot and i woke up at 7.15 (ok maybe 7.20) yesterday to catch the 8.20 train to st. james to go to st. mary's cathedral for easter mass at 9. we got there at 9 on the dot and lots of people were standing around, mostly because whole sections of pews were under renovation for world youth day (114 days left! proclaims the digital countdown outside).

so anyway, one of the greeters greets us with a very gloomy "happy easter" (zero eye contact), gives us each a sheet of paper and and promptly forgets we exist. then we head into the church and oh they're singing! but oh it's in latin. then zoot points out that it's not a choir we've got going on here but the st. mary's singers, performing a repertoire consisting of mozart, haydn, aichinger and ley compositions. great. we give it 8 points out of a possible 10 for the wankiest mass we've ever been to.

after mass some serious questions were raised. why were the choir (sorry, singers) and altar servers wearing black? why wasn't anyone celebrating? jesus is meant to be risen, not dead again. we all know catholics do very good funerals but they really shouldn't apply that same skill to every single occasion.

on a more chipper note, the ends of the arches at church were decorated with the decapitated heads of saint, which i thought was really fun.

anyway, these (semi-lapsed) catholics came home for some proper easter feasting. we baked pizzas and had beer and ate lots and lots of chocolate.