Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
When I moved into this room, I set my bed against the right-hand wall, lengthways. When I say "bed", I mean "sheet, pillow, and dyne on top of the carpet", of course. Over the months I've been inching -- not consciously, but inexorably -- to the left, night by night. Now I'm about half a foot away from the left-hand wall, and my head is up against the door, which means I have to kick my pillow aside every time I want to leave the room.
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07:06:11 AM,Wednesday 20 November 2002
T.I.A.I.L.W.: Ernestine Schumann-Heink.
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06:52:02 AM,Wednesday 20 November 2002
In honor of The Onion mentioning the great contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink in one of their columns this week, I give you my favorite Ernestine Schumann-Heink joke:
Ernestine: "I'd like some powder, please,"
Pharmacist: "Mennens?"
Ernestine: "No. Vimmens."
Pharmacist: "And would you like it scented ?"
Ernestine: "No, I'll take it vit me."
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(5)
08:25:20 PM,Tuesday 19 November 2002
My mother called me ditzy!!
{huffing indignation}
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(4)
04:28:37 PM,Tuesday 19 November 2002
It's an experiment.
I don't need an Igor.
I'm wet but I don't shiver.
My vision's blurred for three good reasons.
Fund the National Leftist League of Voters up the steampipe over there.
Ask and ye shall get a Christmas Ham. Per. Diem.
Stew up the plums.
The Messiah never comes.
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11:37:59 AM,Tuesday 19 November 2002
And if any of you Marylandish types don't have anything particular to do on the 7th of December (a Saturday), you might wanna maybe come to the Walters Museum's Medieval Merriment festival. It's free, and it looks pretty damn fun. It's from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and my band (cornetto, sackbut, shawm, recorder, percussion, plus dancers in costume, also featuring the chick who played on the Mary Prankster album on cornetto and natural trumpet) is playing at 2:00.
There's also groovy stuff like:
* Create your own medieval crown or helmet
* Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table
* Swordplay -- Let the Calvert-Arundel Swordsmen entertain and educate you with a demonstration of medieval fighting techniques
* Medieval Fashion Show -- Take a trip back in time as fashions from the Middle Ages grace the sculpture court
* Learn the Art of Chain Mail
* Meet a 13th Century Crusader -- Meet Sir Barchan as he roves through the museum. Listen to him tell medieval tales and explain the armor he wears.
* Medieval Games -- Let 11th century scholar Curwinus Treverorensis teach you how to play traditional medieval games like Tafl, Valhalla, Nine Man's Morris, and Fox and Geese.
* Become a Knight!
* Loom Weaving -- Watch Margharita the Weaver as she creates a woven masterpiece right before your eyes.
Sugar and Herbs -- Visit Lady Olwen, Lady Cordielia FitzRobert of York, and Mistress Jeanne Tenneur DeBec and see their marzipan creations, sugar plates, and herbs on display.
* Bows and Arrows -- Discuss archers and archery of the Middle Ages with Barre FitzRobert of York as he roams through the museum.
So. Y'know, if you dig that kinda thang, it might be worth toddling over.
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(9)
07:52:32 PM,Monday 18 November 2002
If you guys are gonna send out any blogswap CDs as of, oh, a little while from now, don't send my copy to the Towson address, 'cause I'm leaving on the 8th of December. Send it instead to:
Mirabai Knight
242 E. Beckwith Ave.
Missoula, MT 59801
Tankee.
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(8)
07:42:03 PM,Monday 18 November 2002
The Downside: I managed to break both my pairs of glasses today.
The Upside: I now own a monocle and a lorgnette.
The Upside: I actually caught the bus both to and from class.
The Downside: After five minutes of the Easy Listening music they play on it, I want to swallow arsenic.
The Downside: There are two massive rips in the bum of my only clean pair of pants.
The Upside: ...
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(1)
03:53:10 PM,Monday 18 November 2002
The state of Montana is bigger than the Island of Britain.
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(2)
12:59:39 PM,Monday 18 November 2002
I love Welshmen.
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(2)
10:40:26 AM,Monday 18 November 2002
Das Johanneslied von Oskar von Grautsch.
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10:16:40 AM,Monday 18 November 2002
"If you are a large-scaled lady, owning large breast and other delights, you may face a trouble: your head may seem senselessly small, in comparison with broad (because of bats) shoulders. So you ought to be anxious about an adornment."
Ahh, I love Russians in Drag.
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08:23:28 AM,Monday 18 November 2002
Suppose I could put my Harry Potter review up, eh?
I really, really liked it. I liked the first one, too. Naw, they definitely ain't great works of art -- if I'm gonna reason objectively, the second film's probably quite a bit better than the first on that count, and I'm hoping the new director will make the third a superb movie in its own right -- but I'm more than capable of overlooking the piddly little imperfections, because I think they got the two most important things dead right. Plot's not one of 'em; I got the books for the plot. What I get out of the movie in a way that the book can't give me is a sense that the world lives and breathes, on two counts: the scenery and the people. The first one is there to a wondrous degree. There are two of those quicktime 3-d room-animation things on the official site, showing the Burrow and Dumbledore's Office zoomably all around, and they made me so happy. It's wonderful to be able to see the details your mind doesn't necessarily come up with when it's reading. The effects were marvelous, too -- all but Fawkes, as everyone seems to agree.
But the actors are what make me dig these movies so much. The kids are very good kid actors, definitely, and that's not to say there weren't a few lines brought off awkwardly, in both movies -- but that didn't matter, because they're plainly as good, and brave, and complicated as the characters they play, and that's what gives them such solid conviction. Daniel Radcliffe, particularly, blows my mind. He's perfect, through and through. Harry's an amazing kid, though most of it's below the surface. But everytime the movie showed us his eyes, I could see it richly. The grown-ups are a bit more hammy, but they're that way in the book, too. Rowling doesn't mind mixing caricature with realism, and the movie doesn't either. I think Branaugh's Lockhart was more credible than the book's.
The only thing I hate about both movies is the score. I mean, I've always loathed John Williams, but he usually only scores movies I'm pretty indifferent to. It's a funny coincidence, though, that only the bits of the movies which are tainted by Columbus's formulaic habits are gifted with the most drippy godawful music. It's like a little vacuum-packed thirty seconds, every time -- the music swells up, and you know you can ignore the quasi-emotional cheese on screen until it dies down and the movie gets good again.
Ok, I had one plot piddle. The scene in the chamber in the books was exciting, but more than a little deus-ex-machina. Riddle's apparent triumph, as Harry was dying and Fawkes was crying over him, "Even the bird knows you're doomed, Potter. Ha ha ha ha!" was the one detail that saved it from being completely contrived. But they changed it in the movie, for no good reason, and I think that was a pity.
I also had one tiny minuscule characterization piddle. Tom Felton, who plays Draco, does it to the nines, but in moments of passion, his voice takes on a fairly broad middle- to lower-middle-class accent, which is raw-thuh inappropriate to his station in life.
I liked very much how Dobby was worked in. He always made me uneasy in the books, though I got to like him better in Goblet of Fire. But noticing the crowd laugh when he first started beating up on himself -- because, of course, small squeaky objects in pain are quintessential Hollywood comedy -- and then go quieter by degrees when they realized, the second, and third, and fourth time, that it wasn't all that funny once they thought about it. And then they applauded him at the end when he was finally free. Good on 'em.
Speaking of the crowd, it was so great -- all these little kids whispering and yelling at the screen, including the little (seven year old?) girl to the right of us, who affected a British accent the whole time, and, after the spider scene (which whupped UNBELIEVABLE snout), declared in the poshest tones, "I say, if I ever see another spider again, it shall be far too soon!" Not to mention the company, whee! I got to meet the splendid and marvelous Jeannie, and hang out with Martin and Anne and Tania and Rob too, which is always scads of delight, especially after four days of sitting in my room gibbering to myself. And we played groovy video games and ate sardine-flavored jelly beans and capered and frolicked and it was the best weekend I've had in a long time, even if it did take me five hours to get back to Towson, which almost meant that I missed my dress rehearsal and got so discombobulated I was in rather a spindly state for the concert. Definitely worth it, though.
So. Hell of a lovely movie. Professor Sprout was indeed a babe (though McGonagall, mmmm... as always). The spiders made me ecstatic. Vernon and Petunia made me want to watch Gormenghast again. Neville is the most adorable little Scouser. John Cleese had the most gratuitously pointless role ever. I wish I spoke Parseltongue. And other well-satisfied musings... (`8
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(3)
07:21:28 AM,Monday 18 November 2002
In honor of my having just read a new translation of Sappho, and of being about to go see a certain movie of which a certain scene is bound to fill me with pleasure, I invite you all to wonder at the splendor and majesty of the Dappled Queen.
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03:56:13 PM,Saturday 16 November 2002
T.I.E.T.B.I.L.W.: Miriam Margoyles. Horticulture is hot-cha-cha.
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(3)
02:23:04 PM,Saturday 16 November 2002
I'm in the library, and I'm gonna go down to the basement to read some comic books, I think. Thing is, I might fall asleep in one of those lovely bottomless armchairs, 'cause I've been up since one in the morning. So if I don't show up in your room spit-spot at 4:00, Tania, send someone over to kick me in the head and I'll come running. I've also got the Vivaldi CD, so remind me to hand it over.
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(1)
02:19:55 PM,Saturday 16 November 2002
Xerxes Live! Starting in five minutes! And I can't hear it 'cause I'm in Annapolis. Fooey.
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01:46:56 PM,Saturday 16 November 2002
Better to sit at the waters' birth,
Than a sea of waves to win;
To live in the love that floweth forth,
Than the love that cometh in.
Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
Flowing, and free, and sure;
For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
Keeps not the spirit pure.
-- George MacDonald
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01:07:33 AM,Saturday 16 November 2002
T.I.A.I.L.W.:Googoosh.
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08:09:06 AM,Thursday 14 November 2002
