Editor’s Note

Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring,” wrote Richelle E. Goodrich in a poem about the holiday. Sadly for us, this applies to northern souls only. Southern souls are getting their first taste of chilly air and shorter days as we head en masse towards the locations of our family gatherings this long weekend to hide or seek in bushes and in shrubs, till eggs and bunnies cross our paths.

I’m a summer lover, so the prospect of the coming cold seasons doesn’t fill me with happiness — which is why, I’ll have to put to good use all the tryptophan from the Easter eggs I’m going to devour today, not to mention the bulking that will soon follow, needed to make it through the winter months. Tryptophan is an amino acid found in chocolate and linked to the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that produces feelings of happiness. So there you have it — scientific evidence that chocolate is good for you. Hilary Biller and I found that out the easy way when we tried out Beyer chocolate’s new Chocolate Factory and the Jack Rabbit bonbons respectively. Take our advice and stock up on their offerings. You’ll thank us later.

But the Easter weekend isn’t only about chocolate, big family lunches and crazy traffic jams on our national highways (meaning hours getting through toll gates). For many, the holiday recalls the story of one of history’s most influential figures. Singer turned director, The Bullitts, otherwise known as Jeymes Samual, who made the excellent film The Harder they Fall, retells the New Testament story in his own, inimitable way — using much of the same cast from his previous film. It’s an apocryphal tale of someone who’s wasn’t originally in the story at all: Clarence — and it brings the best of both sides of the holiday, the irreverent and the sacred, together nicely. Read all about it in this week’s edition.

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