Wherein I attempt to please everybody and end up pleasing nobody. Open a box. Any box.
Cats: Lumi ensnarled herself in a black plastic bag and tried to outrun it as it parachuted open crack snap behind her. Like the end of a fancy drag race except with a dumb little cat instead of a rocket shaped car. Yes, I freed her.
Dogs: A few weeks ago (5/10) I saw a middle-aged man walking his three corgis; a Pembroke, a Welsh, and a Cardigan. A bit envious. As I pulled away in the car I yelled out the window, “It’s not Pokémon you know."
Food: Can’t ever get the four of us to agree on all the pizza toppings so we usually get a 16” NY crust with black olives on it and green peppers on half. Sometimes we order a Detroit style as well with black olives or just cheese. Boring. Kids are finishing up recitals and shows so pizza was ordered. (5/20)
Movies: Finally watched Deadpool 2 (5/17). It was fine. Very funny moments. Realizing at this moment that I describe things as having “very funny moments” without having laughed once during the experience. See also: Harold & Kumar, Judd Apatow, Galaxy Quest, Some Like It Hot, New! as of 6/3 - Triangle of Sadness, etc etc etc. All very funny shows and movies. LOL is almost always a lie.
Math: Best movie I watched this year was Yi Yi (2000) by Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang. The number of people here who would enjoy it I would guess is around six or seven. The number of people who would even be interested in watching it… I was going to say I could count it on one hand, but I don’t need my fingers to count. At least not to three. A one and a two and a...
General complaints about people/jobs: People and jobs, am I right? Can't live with em, can't feed em into the wood chipper without maximum effort.
Health: I think the big toe on my right foot has an ingrown nail. I should see a doctor, but I’ve got some large branches to chop down to kindling with my trusty rusty axe, so the problem might just take care of itself.
Also Health: Took the kids to their annual physical and got the older her 2nd Gardasil and the younger her first. Questions about meningitis vaccine - 1 or 2 shots? - disparity between doctor (1 is enough) and school health official (def requires 2). I should trust the doctor with like, 40 years of experience, right? The nurse practitioner who saw them is around 6 months pregnant. She looked great, but there's no way that doesn't sound stupid/creepy from a rando. Kept mum.
Mental health: I’m losing the younger kid a little. Her psychologist says her depression has gotten pretty deep. She’s thirteen, and that’s a hard age for many kids so I’m trying not to overreact. At thirteen, I was already taking huge stupid physical risks because part of me just wanted to get crushed by a truck. Will keep a close eye. It’s a good reminder why I thought I should never have had kids in the first place. Honey, I thought we were moderate antinatalists? What happened?
Words that annoy (Aw- edition): ... awesome, Awkwafina, awkward… Awkward seems to be the MO for every comedy and webcomic now. Related to “Quirky!”. The next person who uses “quirky!” around me to describe anything will be unfriended in real life. I won’t hit them, but I might tell them to shut their lazy pieholes.
Weather: Jeez first it’s hot then it’s cold then it’s hot again. Sometimes rain. Plus allergies.
Books: My requested book came in at the library. I can’t wait to read it (sometime after I finish the other three I’m in the middle of).
Stealing the Show is a study of African American actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, a decade that saw the consolidation of stardom as a potent cultural and industrial force. Petty focuses on five performers whose Hollywood film careers flourished during this period—Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Lincoln “Stepin Fetchit” Perry, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Hattie McDaniel—to reveal the “problematic stardom” and the enduring, interdependent patterns of performance and spectatorship for performers and audiences of color. She maps how these actors—though regularly cast in stereotyped and marginalized roles—employed various strategies of cinematic and extracinematic performance to negotiate their complex positions in Hollywood and to ultimately “steal the show.” Drawing on a variety of source materials, Petty explores these stars’ reception among Black audiences and theorizes African American viewership in the early twentieth century. Her book is an important and welcome contribution to the literature on the movies.
Music: Older kid has had to play Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen three times for benefit concerts and will have to play it a few more times on her trip to Europe. It’s a dramatic showstopper. I've cued up this performance by then 12 yo SoHyun Ko to the most ridiculous part at the end. Simultaneous bowing and left hand pizzicato starting around 8:32.
The new piece she’s been assigned is this beautiful composition by Edward W. Hardy called Evolution. She said it seems a relatively simple piece until you look at the sheet music. All about the details. “There’s a Mendelssohn quote and flying staccatos,” she said. Here’s the young composer and violinist himself:
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