Yeserterday Steffi and I had a nice lunch at La Fiesta, a Chinese restaurant a ways outside of Carrboro on Highway 54 toward Graham, NC. Along with her vegetarian burrito smothered in green sauce and the Pollo con Arroz I ordered, we drank a couple of horchatas (rice "milk" flavored with cinnamon) to wash it all down. The food was, as touted, excellent, and we brought enough of it home with us to have another meal later. Next time ('cause there will be one) we'll have to have the Aqua de Jamaica (Hibiscus flowers) drink. Hard to say no to free refills of such tasty Chinese cocktails.

(I'm kidding, of course. The restaurant is, yes, Mexican. I just couldn't bring myself to say it right after a name which is so clearly indicative of the establishment's origins!)

After dropping Steffi off at home, I headed over to Northeast Raleigh to visit Andreas and Luna. As soon as the door opened, I got a warm welcome and a cold cornsnake to drape over my shoulder. They actually do have a number of reptililian pets (including a Glass lizard and a gecko), and this was - I do believe - the first time I had ever held a snake for much longer than a couple of seconds. And, I can say with certainly that I'd never had one slither into my shirtsleeve and then down my back while maintaining a rock-hard grip on my bicep. (The cornsnake, by the way, is a beautiful animal and, according to my hosts, one of the most docile in its species.)

Andreas and Luna have a nice big, two-story house, and I'm jealous of all that space. They showed me their garden(s), the extensive book collection (filled with rarities such as signed arc's, a first edition Arthur C. Clarke, etc., etc.), and the assortment of unusual pets. Pretty cool stuff, all told!

And then, to halt all conversation and do what we Americans do best, we turned on the TV and got down to watching John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987), another one of his campy horror films. Suffice it to say that I - by and large - enjoyed the film, but it reminded me of a collage of other Carpenter films. This one was made a year after Big Trouble in Little China, starring the same two Asian actors who helped Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) defeat the ancient Chinese evil far below San Francisco's streets. Prince had its share of religious mumbo-jumbo and sported a legion of zombies -- led by none other than a thankfully voiceless Alice Cooper -- lurking outside the old Californian church where a liquid Satan attempts to get a group of intrepid scientists and theologians all wet. If you've seen Assault of Precinct 13, you'll notice (secular) simliarities in the movies' imagery and setting. For that matter, even The Thing and The Fog use confined, inescapable places to create a equally palpable sense of terror.

To sum up, I liked Prince and enjoyed watching it with Andreas and Luna, but it's most certainly not my favorite Carpenter flick. (I'd have to go with The Thing, Big Troulbe, and The Fog as my top three.) The film's large cast must have made it difficult to develop believable relationships among the characters and the unavoidable love affair wasn't particularly moving. It seemed like Carpenter was taking a more intellectual tack in this endeavor, having science and religion duke it out on screen and using a lot of hokey philosophy to try and tie it all together. (Big Trouble worked because it avoided explanation altogether.) In any event, the film was fun, but a little flat.