from stuff I'm reading...
From Nick Hornby’s column in last month’s “The Believer” magazine:
Maybe the best thing to do with favorite films and books is to leave them be: to achieve such an exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be re-created. Sometimes we want to revisit them in order to check whether they were really as good as we remember them being, but this has to be a suspect impulse, because what it presupposes is that we have more reason to trust our critical judgments as we get older, whereas I am beginning to believe the reverse is true....Favorites should be left where they belong, buried somewhere deep in a past self.
--at this point I was seriously lamenting Hornby’s logic, because truly acknowledging the sense his point makes would mean reluctantly sacrificing my faves in the name of artistic or philisophical integrity. I was so relieved when I continued reading the column and eventually came to these concluding sentences:
Forget everything I said! Revisit your favorites regularly!
And from Henry Adams’s autobiography The Education of Henry Adams (sorry for the error but Blogger doesn't have the underline feature on Macs, at least that I can figure out):
This problem of education, started in 1838, went on for three years, while the baby grew, unconsciously, as a vegetable, the outside world working as it never had worked before, to get his new universe ready for him. Often in old age he puzzled over the question whether, on the doctrine of chances, he was at liberty to accept himself or his world as an accident. No such accident had ever happened before in human experience. For him, alone, the old universe was thrown into the ash-heap and a new one created...his new world was ready for use, and only fragments of the old met his eyes.
What an interesting idea Adams brings to the table...that the world is working to get ready for each individual person to enter it and interact with it, and that this universe is never precisely the same for any two people.
things
1. I really like classical music, but don't know much about it. I think I need to pick a favorite composer
2. My Shakespearean knowledge is pathetically liimited. I'm going to work on becoming more educated in this field.
3. Females should not use the "Sage and Citrus" flavor of car jars. The scent is pleasant enough I suppose, but it smells like boy.
4. Music that uses acoustic guitar and violin together is really great.
5. Everyone should try sun-dried tomato turkey. It makes for a delicious sandwich, and can be found at your friendly neighborhood Kroger (among other places I'm sure).
6. I had to work overtime and so only got 1 hour of sleep. Should be a fun day :/
the weekend!!
Tomorrow is my first Saturday off work since early January. I'm soooo pumped. I was supposed to have Sunday off as well, but got roped into picking up an overtime shift. That's ok though, because I don't have to work on Saturday!!!!
Also, I'll be an aunt in approximately 10 days! WOO-HOO!!!
Hokie Nation
It’s a sad week. Clearly this situation really gets to everyone, but it’s affecting me much more deeply than I first anticipated it would, and I’m not sure why.
May God bless the families and friends of those involved, with whom our thoughts and prayers lie.
things I realized today
1. The single best gift to bring to a white elephant gift exchange is a garden knome.
2. The hamburger is hardly the best burger. Two wonderful alternative selections are the turkey burger and the buffalo burger. The salmon burger isn't too shabby either.
3. I really love jogging shorts. And I don't mean any pair of shorts that become jogging shorts because they are worn while jogging. I mean the official kind--the kind with the underwear built right in. They just make life so much easier.
movie rec
Yesterday I saw the movie “Junebug.” It’s unbelievable...another one of these great character films. Amy Adams turns in a brilliant performance. So does Embeth Davidtz. Actually the whole cast did amazing work. It’s about relationships, mostly family ones, pain, and love, and also loss. Not in the sense of death, just in the general sense of having something missing. It’s honest, and also very poignant in it’s melancholy. Watching it gave me this beautiful sense of humanity that I haven’t seen from a film in a long time.
On a technical note, hats off to the director and the DP. The whole thing was filmed in this simple but extremely moving way. Instead of using all sorts of crazy crane shots or something, they just let the locations breathe and speak for themselves, sometimes even pausing on just an empty room. It was really an effective and creative way to inform what was going on with the characters. And I think the brief scene in the parking garage towards the end of the film is my favorite shot out of all the shots from all the movies I've ever seen.
great combos
It’s actuallly true what they say...the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts. Here’s a few magical combos whose individual components I do not particularly like.
1. honey mustard. plain honey= gross. mustard= double gross. but together they stike the perfect balance of sweet and tangy-ish and other great flavorfulness.
2. root beer bombs. I generally do not enjoy beer, with the occasional exception of an original brew at a good micro-brewery. Also, I do not like root beer, and especilally do not like root beer flavored dum-dums (commonly picked up at banks and other generic public places). But this combination is particularly awesome. It’s a shot of root beer schnapps dropped into a 12 oz of beer. You’re supposed to chug it (it’s a bomb, after all) but I like the taste so much I prefer to drink it at normal-drink pace. Delicious.
3. Also delicious is summer drink classic the Arnold Palmer. Most everyone knows about this one, but in case you don’t--it’s half iced tea and half lemonade. I hate tea, iced or not, and was genuinely suprised to find out that I enjoy the Arnold Palmer as much as I do. If you’ve never had one, you should go to the store to pick up a carton in time for the warm weather to come.
my semi-brush with pseudo-celebrity
I enjoyed a brief couple of minutes of fame a few days ago. Nothing big, that’s for sure--but exciting nonetheless. One of my favorite podcasts, “Jordan, Jesse, GO” was having a discussion of the television premiere of “This American Life.” I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t love the radio show, so obviously everyone is pretty pumped to see what it looks like on screen. Anyway, in honor of the show’s debut, JJG held a contest for people to call in with their best personal debut stories. The prize is a “This American Life” movie poster autographed by none other than the endearing and much-loved Ira Glass.
Since there are literally thousands of people who listen to this podcast I knew it’d be a long shot, but I went ahead and left a message on the hotline with the story of my collegiate soccer debut. For those who don’t know, here’s a brief recap...
I had never played soccer before and so didn’t really know the rules. Anyway, I was the goalie, and in my first game ever I saved a penalty kick. For some reason I thought that after a penalty kick, saved or not, the ball went to the referee at midfield for a kick-off. So I gently rolled the ball back on the field hoping someone would give it to the ref. Instead, the opposing player who attempted the penalty kick stopped the ball, stared quizzically at me for a moment, and then gently tapped in a completely uncontested shot. I asked the ref if we could have a do-over since I didn’t know the rule, but he said no. So the goal counted and we lost.
I was completely surprised when I heard my voice on the latest JJG. Out of everyone who called in, I got third place!! There’s no prize for third, and I really wanted that poster, but that’s ok. I was just excited to hear myself make the top 3. (Also, I forgot that when I called I said I was from NYC. It sounds cooler than Cincinnati, and will be true in about a month anyway. So when I heard myself say this on the podcast it made me so pumped to move)
The second place winner was a guy who told of his friend’s “debut” coming out of the closet, and the first place winner was a guy telling the story of his junior high play. He was an overweight kid, and although not short, was still cast as a dwarf in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” He missed his cue to come onstage because he was in the prop room eating all the turkish delight, and when he figured it out he rushed on the stage with food falling out of his mouth. Pretty funny stuff, so I’m glad he won.
Anyway, that was my brush with fame, and clearly I’m using that term loosely :)
