Baking: At What Cost?

I made sticky buns today, and now the whole kitchen is wafting with the scent of cinnamon and slightly-burned sugar.  Smells like heaven, I imagine.  But it took a lot of work to make those baked goods.

What was all the fuss, you ask?  Well, I've made sticky buns on several occasions and each time I use slightly different recipes and tweak them, and I make them from scratch.  That's a lot of work and time:
1) Make the dough
2) Knead slightly
3) Let it rise for an hour
4) Knead again
5) Roll out
6) Dot with butter
7) Sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, and pecan mixture
8) Roll it up tight
9) Cut it up
[10) Fridge it overnight]
Time so far: 1 hour 20 minutes
11) Take the buns out and let them rise again for an hour
12) In the meantime make the goo that differentiates the buns from regular cinnamon buns (or make this during the hour in step 3)
13) Spread cooled goo in pans
14) Place buns in pans
15) Bake it for 30-40 min
16) Let cool for 20 min
17) Eat, finally
Total time from start to eat: 3 hours 10 minutes, plus 6-8 hours depending on how long you sleep overnight

Worth all the trouble? Yes, but this is not something to make and eat on a regular basis.  Makes an ordinary breakfast extraordinary, and a great treat for a special day.  I think I've finally perfected what recipe works for me, so unless I feel sadistic I don't have to try another version of it.  Delicious, yes, but it's going to be a while before I muster up the time, energy, and excuse to make them again.

Julian Matthias: Strung out on E (string)

Ah, the e-string, the string unique to violins.  This is the right-most string, the thinnest, and the one that yields the highest, screechiest pitches.  Whereas the g-string is nice and thick and meaty, the e-string is like cheese wire.  It can be painful to play on this string for the way it feels like it's cutting through your finger.  Aurally it can be painful because it's harder to get a luxurious sound out of the string, one that sounds like a trilling soprano and not a hoarse songbird on crack; think of this scene from Shrek:


All joking aside, when done well, the e-string can yield some spine-chillingly great melodies and will add considerable drama to the piece.  I love my d-string, but I have to admit that I get a lot of satisfaction from literally ending on a high note on the e-string; it makes me feel like a proper violinist.

Julian Matthias and I: A-string number one!

As previously mentioned, the a-string on the violin is the status quo, the string that is used to tune an orchestra.  It is the highest open string note on viola and cello.

One of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of an orchestra tuning.  I almost want to say it's not a musical sound because technically it's not music, it's not a tune that you can hum even though you can hum the pitch.  The technical perfect A pitch is A440, and depending on the oboe or the piece the a-string will be tuned higher or lower accordingly.  There are a lot of marks on Julian Matthias' fingerboard right under the a-string; it's probably the most used string as a result.  (Just reminded me that there's probably a musician-related joke about knowing how to finger properly...eh, too lazy to find one.)

I think that the first note I ever played on Julian Matthias was an open A-- I played the a string as it was, with no fingers, just the clean and unadulterated note, just to hear how the sound would carry out of the instrument.  Julian Matthias' maker was Chinese; the other violin that I was considering at the time was German (not that this information swayed my opinion on which one to choose to purchase).

Julian Matthias and I: Ain't nuthin' but a D-string

On my violin Julian Matthias my favorite string to play is the d-string.  It's the second lowest string and is positioned second from the left on the fingerboard.  If each string were a singer in a choir, the d-string would be the tenor; it has a moderately rich tone by itself and can still reach high notes in a falsetto kind of way, where you can tell that it's a bit of a strain to go up that high.  To me it's a comfort string, one that doesn't take too much strain to play on for either the left hand or right arm.  The most awkward part about playing the violin is getting the bow position correct and comfortable, and to play the d-string is only very slightly different from playing on the status quo string, the a-string.

Julian Matthias and I: G-string love

I'm a bit surprised that I haven't written a post on this topic before, so here it is.

As a joke I once sent my good friend and pen pal a used g-string enclosed with my letter to her.  A used violin string.  She's a violist, and I told her what it was.  Hahaha, musician humor!  No, actually that's a bad example of a music-related joke.  Here's a slightly better one:

Q: What's the difference between a trampoline and a viola?
A: You take your shoes off before you jump on a trampoline.

I think I'll explain this a bit more in another post.

On the violin the g-string is the left-most string on the fingerboard and yields the violin's lowest note (you gueesd it: a G). The g-string is the thickest of all the string, the one most likely to make your fingers calloused.  Of course, this is the string that can cause some misunderstandings.  This didn't happen to Julian Matthias and I but to a fellow violinist:  She was giving a lesson at the house of a young beginner when she noticed and commented out loud, "My g-string seems to be slipping". She was referring to her instrument; needless to say the student's parent poked her head in and wearing a bewildered expression.  One incident that happened to me was that my g-string started to get frayed.  I know there's a good joke in there somewhere, and that there are some good violin g-string jokes out there too, but I have yet to encounter a really good one.

Commercial FTW!

Instead of typing "blogger" to get here I almost typed "bladder".  You'll see why in a minute:


This is my favorite of all these commercials.  Let me count the ways, yes?
1) Finally they show the two protagonists sitting down and actually watching a Sox-Yankees game together, and they act and react just as you'd expect. 
2)  And finally they show a Yankees cap (not that I was complaining or anything) and it's still not that close to Mr. Baldwin's head, but no matter.
3)  Great escalating trash talk that actually gets personal and makes reference to the actors' respective personas: John Krasinski is actually married (to Emily Blunt, who we never see and hasn't been referenced before), and Alec Baldwin has brothers with wildly divergent personal and political perspectives.
4)  Peeing your pants: it happens when you don't wanna miss a thing.
5)  My suspicions are pretty much confirmed: they put up these videos whenever there's a Sox-Yankees series going on.  For the record I think that whenever the Sox win in these videos they lose in real life.
6)  I relate to Alec Baldwin's unfounded superstition that doing something like leaving the room to go pee will jinx my sports team and cause them to lose.

A bit of tae kwon doe

I laugh at this not just because it's cute but because if I ever were made to fight I'd probably behave similarly.



Needless to say, I've never been in a physical fight with anyone, or physically bullied, thanks to the fact that I am a girl, a female, someone who took ballet lessons as a child.  If I were a boy I'd probably have been in the same position as one of these boys-- the red one, if I could get away with it, because it would've been my favorite color at the time.

Of course, the point of tae kwon doe isn't to fight but to instill physical and mental discipline through the use of this Korean martial art style.  I'm sure there's a philosophy to tae kwon doe but the educational mantra of kung fu and karate (from China and Japan, respectively) seem more glamourous and filmable to Hollywood execs, I guess.

Cold.

These books make me think of winter, pain, cold, and humanity.  Also, these are all books I read for the first time in the first half of this year.  Despite the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover", these covers do a good job representing the kind of story within-- note the lively color palette employed (Kidding, of course).

The Giver by Lois Lowry.

image source

I know, it's a children's classic! I had chances to read it in elementary school, and my favorite middle school English teacher recommended it to me, but I didn't read it until this year, I know.  It's shocking, to read a children/preteen book as a non-child/non-preteen.  The controversial topics that are brought up within its pages!  And the slight science-ficiton twist/quirk/turn of this story make it particularly creepy.  It's not winter througout the story but snow falls heavily and plays a big part in the story at the end.  A great read, not too long but not light fare, not by any means.  There's so much to discuss and an added factor when given repeated readings as one gets older.






Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

image source

I think the title says it all: 'winter' and 'bone'.  Protagonist Ree Dolly is gritty, tenacious, a no-nonsense kind of girl because she has to be and has no other choice.  Set in the wet, wooded Appalachia area, you get a sense of hopelessness and inertia, which makes our heroine's efforts all the more remarkable.  Comments have been made about this story as a modern day Antigone, and having read that play this year I can readily make out the parallels.  Ree has to find her crank-cooker father before it's too late, and the cards are really stacked against her.  The story is simply and well-told, with fairly short chapters that are neither titled nor numbered. 







The Road by Cormac McCarthy

image source

This book, too, has chapters that have no title or number, but they almost aren't even chapters.  The dialogue bits don't even have quotation marks around them, that's how bleak this book is.  Does that make sense?  Eh, well if you've read the book it makes sense.  Each book in this list is more haunting, cold, and bleak than the last, and The Road really takes the cake.  You don't even learn the names of the main characters, a father and son, who make slow and sometimes steady progress through the landscape of a post-apocalyptic United States.  You don't even really get a good background as to all this happened and how our characters ended up on this journey, but that adds to the whole aspect of these two survivors just trying to stay alive.  This book made me shiver.  This is not the kind of book to warm up to after a long day slogging through snow, not the kind of book that I would read by the fire with a mug of cocoa or tea, because no amount of heat will really thaw the bitter frost that this book exudes.  Devastating, this is, and a very good read.  Author Cormac McCarthy also wrote No Country for Old Men.

People I've seen on the train

This person sat down next to me on the train today.  He was wearing a grey three-piece suit, matching fedora, black dress shoes, AND the piece de resistance: a pocket watch, complete with gold chain. FAN-tastic.  If I were an old white man I'd want to dress like that.  Heck, I wish I could wear that outfit right now, except maybe without the hat as I don't think my head/face does well with hats.  Basically I'd like to clothe myself a la Janelle Monae:

image source

Textspeak?

I just saw this Facebook status and wanted to record it:

‎35T3 P3QU3Ñ0 T3XT0 5IRV3 4P3N45 P4R4 D3M05TR4R C0M0 NU35TR4 C4B3Z4 PU3D3 H4C3R C05A5 1MPR3510N4NT35! P0N 4T3NC10N! 4L PR1NC1P10 35T4B4 M3D10 C0MPL1C4D0, P3R0 3N 35T4 L1N34 5U M3NT3 V4 D3C1FR4ND0 3L C0D1G0 C451 4UT0M4T1C4M3NT3, S1M P3N54R MUCH0, C13RT0? PU3D3 QU3D4R B13N 0RGULL050 D3 35T0! 5U C4P4C1D4D M3R3C3 uN45 F3L1C1T4C10N35

It's in Spanish and in text-speak.  The zeroes are O's, the ones are I's, threes are E's, the fours are A's and the fives are S's.  In regular Spanish it reads as such:

Este pequeño texto sirve apenas para demonstrar como nuestra cabeza puede hacer cosas impresionantes! Pon atencion! Al principio estaba medio complicado, pero en esta linea su mente va decifrando el codigo casi automaticamente, sim pensar mucho, cierto? Puede quedar bien orgulloso de esto! Su capacidad merece unas felicitaciones

Translated into English without the use of any dictionary because I'm lazy (although translating it kind of negates the message):

This little text serves to demonstrate how our brain can do amazing things! Pay attencion! At the beginning it was kind of hard, but in this line your mind is decoding almost automatically, without thinking much, right? You should be really proud of this! Congratulations for having such mental capacity.

Amusing, to consider the layers of language, the way communication has changed so much.  The message actually rings true for me in that as I continued reading the passage it became easier to read despite the fact that it was in Spanish and had five letters substituted for numbers.  It reminds me of this "brain teaser":

Say the color of the word:

green       yellow       pink        blue       red        orange        black
purple     white         black      green      pink       yellow       blue 

Two Truths and a Lie: Sea Creatures edition

1. I've touched a (live) hammerhead shark.
2. I've gone snorkeling with turtles.
3. I've eaten octopus (before I became vegetarian).

?   ?   ?   ?   ?   ?
answer (highlight below to view)

Number two is the lie.

My grandmothers

Both my grandmothers are widows, and have those kind of unnerving grave plots with their names and their birth year with a dash and a space to be filled in when they are put to rest.  My mother's mother's birthday was yesterday, which took a little calculating.  We know her birthday according to the lunar calender, which is what Korea went by back in the day.  My mom figured out that the birthday was six days after the September full moon; I guess in Korea the first of the month is marked by the full moon, whereas here in America we start the lunar cycle with the new moon.

In other news, my other grandmother, my father's mother, just got a Facebook. I know-- an octogenarian on a popular social networking site!  And she has a cell phone, too.  And plays online poker.  We're both the same animal in the zodiac, and I hope that when I'm her age-- assuming I live that long and don't die a tragic early death-- I'm something like her.

Stuff I saw this weekend

- a Subway mascot ( a person in a giant sub sandwich costume with a face on it)
- a Rio mascot (the frog from the Rainforest Cafe critters gang)
- an amazing balloon-artist Spiderman
- a box with a kitten inside it
- six fried dough stands within a two block area
- an old colleague
- a speckled dog (I have no idea what breed it was)
- a ROTC kid buying Gatorade and two Slim Jim (breakfast of the champions! Just kidding, I saw him in the afternoon, not in the morning)

This poem reminds me of the movie "Up"

Here is the poet Naomi Shihab Nye reading her poem The Art of Disappearing

(The entire transcript of this interview can be found here, and this is where I looked for the words of the poem)
One of the lines goes "You're trying to remember something/ too important to forget."  This reminds me of the line that Russell says to Carl about something he used to do with his dad, and he says "That might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most." (That line taken from the movie's IMDb page.)  This bit really resonates in me, and that's why I instantly thought of it when I read Nye's words.

To me this poem is all about treasuring the ordinary, seemingly mundane stuff of life.  Sure, it's easy to remember the big moments, the ones that come with fireworks and parades and musical tributes by today's hottest artists.  I think that every day there are moments or events that are both ordinary and miraculous/special; last week while I was on a bus there was a man sitting behind me who got up a few minutes before his stop (the bus was pretty empty) to tell a young mother that he'd had a lousy day but seeing her baby (couldn't have been more than 9 months old) cheered him up, what with his smiling and cooing.  That was kind of a Precious Moment to me, and I found it notable but at the same time it's only a little anecdote within the annals of Stuff That I Witnessed On The Bus Ride Home. Not that the ride is always exciting or eventful-- this was a pretty eventful bus ride for me-- but every ride is the same route but it's a different experience.

Oh!-- also I really like the first line of this poem.

Language, Part III: An idiom analysis

It’s all Greek to me.

It’s what we Americans say when confronted with something that we do not understand.  Most of us here don’t speak Greek but we’re massively influenced by it, just look at our language, art, architecture, politics, I could go on and on… Ha, I’m reminded of this scene from a lovely little indie movie that could: My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

It’s all Chinese to me.

From what I was told, this is the European equivalent to the aforementioned phrase.  Think back to Marco Polo times and the Silk Road that connected the “Orient” to the “West”.  Through this connection Europeans started to season their food (thank God!), use utensils to eat it, learned and adapted different military technologies (guns, fireworks); I don’t know the extent of its impact on language, though.  The “Chinese language” is vastly different from most other languages (maybe hieroglyphics compare? I don’t know, I’m no historian or linguistic expert) because they use characters instead of letters.  And Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese—they’re all different variants on the spoken Chinese languages but to my ear they sound so argumentative and angry, with all their different inflections, where SHirr is different from shuRR and it’s so hard to type out the differences because this English language I am using is not conducive to demonstrating the tricky phonetics of those languages.  Anyway: Europeans were impressed and confused by Chinese and learned a lot from them.

It’s all the language of the gods to me.

Aaand finally this is the equivalent phrase in the Chinese languages.  We Americans look to the Greek, the Greek/Europeans look to the Chinese, and the Chinese look to deities.  I don’t want to infer, per se, that the Chinese are such pompous people that they consider themselves second only to the gods.  Still, there’s something to…consider, when the two other phrases referred to other cultures/countries and this case doesn’t refer to any other nation.  Another read into this phrase might be that the Chinese are humble in admitting that they can’t quite understand what the gods are up to and why they act the way they do.

Cannoli

Not too long ago I had a burning food craving that I never got to sate.  I had a craving for cannoli.  I just needed to have one-- I never need to have more-- because that was all it would take for me to be satisfied.

A week or so before that a friend posted in his status the question of when/where you would go back in time; I commented that I would go back to March 2007, to relive my first cannoli.  Yes, it was that good.  And you never forget your first...

(Also there are so many complications with time travel.  There are so many historical events that I would like to witness but I'm sure that would have enormous repercussions on the new future that would result from my presence in that particular past.  Better to stick with something not too long ago, and some time in my own past.)

Scarred my childhood

These are some of the movies that terrified me as a child:

ANACONDA

the whole thing.  Now it seems absurd.  Owen Wilson was in it?! And first time seeing J.Lo.  Jon Voight is a much better actor thant to have to be in that movies, but has to make a living.  It was so terrifying to me, yet I couldn’t look away.  I remember sweating while watching the movie and my cousins sort of teasing me for it, that I had gotten so into it.  Shortly afterwards, when talking about it with a friend it became less frightening and more of an interesting anecdote, esp. the part where the snake swims past the camera and skeleton bulges out of the body, the view accompanied by dramatic music.

The Empire Strikes Back

Luke gets his hand cut off; also blends in my mind with Darth Vader getting his mask taken off.  When I first heard of the phrase “back of the mind” that hand slicing scene comes to mind; it was years before I realized that right after that came the famous (and misquoted) line “No, I am your father” because that scene was so traumatizing and when I thought of the scaries thing I had ever seen it came to mind.  Now Star Wars V is easily one of my fav. movies.

Nightmare before Christmas

Don’t remember much except that I was terrified.  Yes, it is a much beloved movie but to this day I still have a kneejerk queasiness.  I should see it again, I know.  I just couldn’t handle the humorous-macabre style of the animation and songs and visual effects.

ET

A little bit.  I remember eating rice krispie treats while watching this movie for some reason.  I cried at the end, but some scenes are really terrifying—i.e. when ET has technically died and is mummified and chalky?!

Raiders of the Lost ark

End scene when everyone melts except Indiana Jones and Marion.  Temple of Doom not as much because I saw it when older and could stomach it better.

Newsies!

Newsies came out in the early nineties and was a box office flop a placed a moratorium on live-action Disney musicals for almost two decades.  Curiously enough, director Kenny Ortega was the one responsible for this movie and the seminal Disney Channel hit that made musicals "cool" (read: profitable) again.  Yes, I'm referring to the High School Musical trilogy, which bears the singular accomplishment of having its first two movies broadcast on television and then make the leap to the big screen with the release of the third and final film (High School Musical 3: Senior Year) in theaters.

I love Newsies.  I didn't see it as a kid but I've probably seen it enough times to make up for the time that I never saw the move, let alone know that it existed.  This movie is responsible for:
1) reigniting my love of theater
2) getting me to really love movies and movie trivia
3) my slight obsession with Christian Bale
(I'm not a fan of the trailer but it's the only one I could find)


Newsies was never converted into a live theater version in the way of Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King but that didn't stop hundreds of schools and musical camps from putting on shows of this story.  This week the official Alan Menken-approved musical production of Newsies will be presented to the world, and from the few clips I've found of it I am optimistic and excited to see how it goes and gets reviewed.  Understandably there are some changes to the plot, characters, songs, but the heart of the story seems intact.  Unlike the two aforementioned film-to-theater adaptations, this production isn't set to show on Broadway but in a theater in New Jersey.  Oh, if only I muster the time and money to go down and see this production...

What to Wear to Church

Q: What do my church and Nirvana have in common?
A: The sentiment that you should "Come as you are" (as a friend/as a known enemy...well, maybe not that last bit)

My church even has part of this phrase written under one of it's signs; it reads "Come as you are.  Come to God".  I go to church every Sunday, but that doesn't automatically make me a Christian any more than standing in a garage means that you're a car.  But I'm not going to go into my personal theology, but I wanted to state that I agree with what that sign says: I attend church not because I think I'm a swell person but I accept that I'm hopelessly flawed and I come as I am to try to better myself.  It's in the same way that a hospital is a place for the sick to get healing.  Anyway, every week I'm faced with the challenge of figuring out what to wear to church.

I went to Italy in 2005 and visited many duomos and even went to the Sistine Chapel.  In Italy (okay, and the Vatican, too, I guess) they have strict rules about what one (specifically women) are allowed/not allowed to wear inside the church.  Most of the time it required that the shoulders and knees were covered.  I went over the summer so most of the trip I couldn't wear shorts (not that I wear shorts often).  After that trip I started to base my church-going wardrobe guidelines in a similarly conservative way.  I still dress like who I am, but a more polished version.  Often I feel like I look like a kindergarten teacher, with my ironed skirt and cardigan and ballet flats.  In middle and high school this issue of finding appropriate church attair was a weekly groanfest because I couldn't wear just my everyday school clothes and I was absolutely opposed to wearing anything I'd wear for a school concert or from attending a bat mitzvah.  I don't know where I was going with this...

Anyway, yeah, dressing for church isn't as hard.  There isn't a dress code, perse.  I see women wear nice jeans to church and really nice heels, and mini-skirts, and shirts with weird things written on them that might seem anti-Christian.  But I've finally found a way to come as I are and still feel like I'm appropriately dressed.

Numbers

Today is September 11th, 2011.

Yesterday was the 10th, or, as Americans also write it, 9/10/11.  It doesn't entirely make sense as to why we in America put the date as month/day/year; I'm sure there's some fascinating (to me, anyway) story about why we do it this way but it's still not logical.  I think that in Europe they go from smallest to largest (day/month/year) and I can't speak for Asia as a whole but in Korea the date is listed by the year first, then the month, and finally with the day.

Nine, ten, eleven.  Most of the world uses base 10 in counting, and makes a big deal about anniversary years that are multiples of 5 and 10.  But we all start with one.

1: the beginning.  Everyone wants to be number 1.  Number one also refers to urination (why?)

2: can refer to defecation (again, why?).  Silver medalist, not bad at all.

3: good things come in threes?  Bronze medalist, just made it to the podium.

4: in Chinese this number is bad luck because it sounds like the word for "death". 4-1-1 refers to info.

5: halfway to ten! Number of fingers on a hand, toes on a foot (usually).

6: Sixth is "sexto" in Spanish.  From Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, the toughest tongue twister: the sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick"

7: Lucky number in American/Western lore.

8: Homophone of "ate".

9: Almost at ten.  Why do the digits 9-1-1 refer to emergencies?  Why these three digits?  I wonder what the number for emergencies is in other countries. Which reminds me of this silly little clip from another one of my beloved BBC/Channel 4 sitcoms...

10: Back to seriousness.  The big one-zero, the first of the double digits if we go by Arabic numerals.  A decathalon is ten events, a decade is ten years, December is the...twelfth month.  Again, things don't always make sense. 

Again, it's hard to make sense of this world.  But there's still hope...

Stream of consciousness: embarazada

A cognate is a word that sounds the same and has the same meaning in different languages.  Examples: in Spanish the words medicina, dormitorio, chocolate mean medicine, dormitory/room, and chocolate in English, respectively.  But, I think I've mentioned before, there are false cognates, or words that sound or seem the same but don't directly translate.  One case that's brought up often and used to comic effect is the Spanish word embarazada.  You would think that it means "embarassed", right? Wrong: it means 'pregnant'.  Can you imagine the hilarious accidental situations in which a novice Spanish speaker might misuse this false cognate?

But why is it so?  Why does the Spanish word for "pregnant" sound like the English word for "deeply ashamed"?  For generations, eons, woman's purpose in life was to procreate (after having been legally married, of course); it would only make sense that showing signs of pregnancy would be cause for happy emotions and celebrations, and not shame...unless it were an "illigitimate"/"bastard"/"unexpected" birth.  That's the explanation I can think of right now.  Today we see female celebrities dressed very stylishly throughout pregnancy, showing off the progress of their baby bump.  There's even a show called "Pregnant in Heels" that, to my knowledge, features a pregnancy concierge to help an expecting mother look fabulous throughout her term.  But it's only been recently that the pregnant woman was seen as beautiful or remotely sexy.  There's a lot of negativity directed at female bodies in general.

Take the word "hysteria" too.  Another word with the same suffix: hysterectomy, which is the surgical removal of the uterus.  Coincidence? No; I think it was in Victorian times that it was thought that the womb/uterus floated around a woman's body, and that this movement made a woman so disturbed that she was hysterical, experiencing hysteria.  Recently the trailer for a movie of the same name came up, and I have high hopes for it.  Not a serious-face period drama, but that's what makes it enticing, to me: it's a comedy-- a sex comedy at that-- which is set in a traditionally stuffy time period, and it focuses on an...interesting subject matter.

42253

September just started and it's only begun to feel like autumn outside.  Christmas is a long way away, right? Well it's around this time of year that my ballet school would hold auditions for roles in the second most famous ballet of all time: The Nutcracker.  In my nine-ish years of ballet I auditioned three times, and thrice I was cast in a different role of this production.  But this post will focus on just one audition process.

42253 was the number I was given to pin to my leotard, the way runners have bibs in races.  The 4 was for my level, the two 2s the class number, and 53 for my height.  We young dancers were made to audition by level and lined up in order of height.  Our judges were high level ballet teachers and the choreographer and his/her assistant, and we were all terrified of them. They never smiled, and sometimes would converse with each other behind their hands and point to a girl and make notes.  In my mind's eye they are all white, an even balance of male and female, all dressed in form-fitting black clothes, and carrying themselves like dancers even as they were sitting in their chairs.  Of course I was nervous.

Also, that year, I missed my audition time.  I don't know whether the blame lies with me or my mother, who was to chaperone me that day, but I arrived while my peers were auditioning.  Luckily it wasn't as big a deal as I thought it to be and they let me go in with the level 3 girls.  Oh, but that still left me shaking like a leaf when I entered.  Each level wore a different leotard; level 3 was forest green and level 4 navy blue, which are both pretty dark hues, but I definitely stuck out and it was obvious that I wasn't meant to be there.

Whatever steps we were asked to perform, I executed them to the best of my ability.  Despite my nervousness I must've done well, because I did end up receiving a callback for auditions the next day.  The role that I secured that time was the most fun out of the three I did.  This is the only audition for which I remember my ID number, because I had it for so long.  I can still hear the choreographer calling my number, and how happy and relieved I felt to hear it.  I don't think that this experience is a metaphor for my life, nor do I feel that this is a turning point or huge moment in my life, not in the least.  But just as my birthday and cell phone number are numbers I won't easily forget, so is 42253 memorable.

the end.

Commercial analysis: Tresor Midnight Rose

My thoughts on the following perfume commercial:

- Emma Watson looks darling, gamine.  In other news, grass is green.
- As with most (all?) perfume commercials, this one essentially is a silent film, an art-y short story in video form.  It's cute, a little mysterious, and (thankfully) not as explicitly sexy (or sexxxyyyy) as perfume commercials go.  There's not that much tension in the storytelling, which is why I am indifferent to this commercial.  It's not too hard to figure out that she "accidentally" left this hat and will reunite with it through him, etc.  It's not that mysterious.
- But this ad actually does a good job at getting me interested in the perfume.  To me, the company that produces this perfume, Lancome, is a rich housewife's brand; it's not youthful like Emma Watson.  Is the scent Tresor Midnight Rose therefore a lighter and more youthful scent, perhaps not so heavy and musky as befitting a woman of a certain age?  I wonder, and actually I will keep this in mind the next time I walk through the Macy's beauty department
- I was wondering what book Emma Watson's character asked the bookstore clerk to fetch, and at 0:47 the title is briefly shown.  It's rather blurry but I'm pretty sure that the cover reads "Midnight Rose".  No author byline is shown.  The first hit of the online search "midnight rose book" revealed that there is indeed a book by that name but it does not have the same cover.  Quelle suprise, it's a harlequin book and one of the love interests is a vampire.
- This commercial is over a minute long; many perfume commercials get cut down to the regular TV commercial length of 30 or 60 seconds.  I think this commercial would be more effective if it were well-edited down to that amount of time.  Sometimes cutting a commercial down renders it confusing, as in the case of this commercial:
edited version

full length version

Concluding thoughts: Not a very engaging commercial, esp. as perfume ads go.  But not a complete waste of 105 seconds.  I liked the purple tint, and intend to look into this scent.

I can't help but include here my favorite (and quite absurd) perfume commercial so far:
Oh, actually this perfume doesn't exist.

Eyebrows!

Eyebrows-- did you raise them when you read the title of this blog post, wondering what I could possible have to say about eyebrows?  Or did they furrow, perhaps? Or maybe you just chuckled, probably inwardly, and let your eyeballs express your emotion for you by letting them roll.  Yes: eyebrows.  They are important.

Eyes may be the windows to the soul, but the eyebrows frame the eyes and are important, too, because:
- they work in concert with the eyes to express various emotions
- they help stop sweat from rolling directly down the forehead and into the eyeballs (usually)
- they are defining feature in the landscape of a face.  Groucho Marx and Brooke Shields are just two people (the first names I could instantly draw from memory) who are known in part for their distinct brows.  In the early days of the Obama administration, FLOTUS Michelle Obama was perceived has having "angry-looking eyebrows" for the way they were (and are?) very arched; I think that since then her eyebrows are not as arched or curved or sloping ( I can't figure out the most apt adjective so just choose one of those and pretend I got it right in one go).

Going back to the first listed point: considered the plasticine character Gromit, of the many "Wallace and Gromit" films, short and feature-length.  He doesn't speak at all but conveys exactly how he feels through the use of his motions, especially with his brow (singular).  Just look here:



Fantastic, yeah?  The Power of the Brow!  Often you hear or read about people raving about a celebrity's gorgeous eyes or full lips or curvaceous body but less often is there admiration given to eyebrows.  I don't regularly wear make-up but recently I've been filling in my eyebrows before going out.  Technically that counts as make-up, doesn't it... but it doesn't look like I'm wearing anything on my face (apart from my glasses, of course).  My eyebrow hairs are dark but they are sparse, so I draw short strokes wherever there are balder patches; to me the end result is noticeable and improves the balance of my face, but I wonder how much a difference it seems to other people.  It's a subtle effect, but I like the way it looks when I take the time to do it and do it properly.  I can't be bothered to alter any other facial feature on a daily basis but I do feel like it's worth giving my eyebrows some special attention, important as they are.

On a 9/11 musical, sort of.

In an earlier post I professed my love for the UK television program "Skins".  I've only seen the first two of three seasons; the last season features an almost entirely different cast.  Anyway, the second episode of the second season features a 9/11 musical, with the cast occupying various roles on and off stage. 

I think there was an off- Broadway or off off-Broadway musical on the same topic, titled "Clear Blue Tuesday" or something of the sort.  I believe that the musical in this show is called "Osama: The Musical!" (or, again, something of the sort).  Oh, the show is available to view on Hulu. I haven't the time or energy to rewatch it but I clearly remember how incredibly tasteless it was...and that was sort of the point.  In the show, the school's director wrote the musical himself, and though he is British he claims that he's a New Yorker at heart.  Yeah, right.  One of the lines from the main song is "Then came the day Osama blew us away/oh yes he blew us away", and in the opening number "hey girl" is made to rhyme with "bagel" (it works better if you try on a British-ish accent).  Like I said it's incredibly tasteless, tactless, and therefore hilarious in a sort of twisted way.  Don't get me wrong, I find little humor in the events of that day, it was devastating to say the least.  The musical as produced in this show is deliberately cartoonish and exhibits the worst of all the cliches and hallmarks of cheesy jazz-hands Broadway musicals, and that is what makes it darkly, bitingly funny.  It's nevertheless haunting, though, to remember the events of that day, even in this setting.

I bring this up because September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday in the second full week of the month, just like today.  But today was mostly overcast.

End of summer

Right before Memorial Day I posted a list of five resolutions that I wanted to accomplish by the unofficial end of summer, or today.  They were moderately challenging but doable.  I felt optimistic, realistic about the goals...

I forgot three out of five of them.  Oops.

I have technically read more than four books, and if you spread out the miles I've biked this summer it'd average to about two miles each week. But I didn't even touch my clarinet this summer and I think once or twice I played around on my guitar and attempted to look up tabs for Dream a Little Dream of Me but couldn't find play all the chords in the few versions I found.  And I'm too ashamed to even attempt to do 20 pushups in one minute.

But-- I've decided to challenge myself again, with the similar goals.  Except the one about biking once a week, as that will get very difficult.  I resolve to:
1.  Practise an instrument once a week
2.  Read four books (includes graphic novels, classic children's books)
3.  Do 20 push-ups in a minute
4.  Take a break from the computer every 45 minutes

These goals apply until December 18th.  That last one doesn't really correspond to any of my previous resolutions but I figured I should throw that in there to remind myself.  It's embarassing the amount of times I've realized that I've sat in front of my computer for hours, just visually-digesting God knows how much actual Important Information and complete drivel.

I'm thinking of a book...

I’m thinking of a popular book, one that was recently adapted into a movie.  It is set in the South around the 60’s and features a young white female protagonist who forms a strong and loving relationship with older black females.  No, it’s not The Help; I’m referring to The Secret Life of Bees.

The Return of... (more commercials)

Alec Baldwin's squeaky shoes!

Oh, the lengths people go to annoy other people...I should know, actually, because I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.

Still funny: jokes about how Alec Baldwin is rich and John Krasinski is not (as rich as Alec Baldwin, obviously, if he didn't know what '912' was).

Winner of this round: Alec Baldwin. He may have burnt precious Red Sox tickets and his apartment building, but he has no regrets and has made John Krasinski suffer (or probably will) from having to move into said Red Sox fan's home. 

That's show biz for you

Every few shows there's a man who sits near close to the stage and laughs a booming laugh.  Like Jabba the Hutt but genuine and not menacing.  Whatever's happening on stage might not be funny, but just hearing that genuine big-bellied laugh makes me laugh reflexively.  Even when I've heard the same joke told for the 27th time.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of show biz for you.

If the world were an enormous nudist colony...

I've never visited a clothing-optional beach, nor have I ever been to a nudist colony/community.  I'd just like to take this time to consider what it would be like if everyone in the entire world were made to not wear clothing.  Before I continue I want to acknowledge the obvious and/or silly problems with this scenario:
1) it's not warm enough everywhere to merit going about without clothing.
2) it's not practical/sanitary to go about without clothing, especially when performing certain tasks such as operating machinery or cooking/baking or jogging, etc.
3) you can't make everyone go clothesless.  And Fashion Industry Is Powerful.

Having gotten those three broad categories of concern out of the way, here are some of the hypothetical beneefits of my aforementioned scenario:
1) there would be less sexual harassment and rape (the reasoning behind this is that, in many instances, rapists claim that the person/people they raped were "asking for it" due to the way s/he dressed)
2) pornography, as commonly defined today, wouldn't exist
3) there would be more body acceptance and acknowledgement of what the human anatomy looks like without any non-surgical enhancement
4) the world would be more conscious/concerned about cleanliness
5) you get the point?

This is where I would try to make some transition into the argument for letting women walk around topless, just as men are allowed to walk about in public without shirts on.  But that is a topic for another day.  And this topic would easily transition to the tangentially related issue of bras; alas, a subject for yet another separate post.