Friday Random Ten

"Love" by John Lennon on The John Lennon Collection
"Solid As The Rock" by Michael English on Michael English
"Two Of A Kind, Working On A Full House" by Garth Brooks on The Hits
"Here In America" by Rich Mullins* on A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band
"Back to Where I Was" by Eric Hutchinson* on Sounds Like This
"Walkin' After Midnight" by Madeleine Peyroux on Dreamland
"Sur: Regreso Al Amor" by Yo-Yo Ma on Soul of the Tango: The Music of Astor Piazzolla
"When I Am Gone" by 4HIM on 4 Him
"All These Days Undone" by Anything Box on Peace
"Pilgrim" by Enya on A Day Without Rain

I'm really enjoying the recent discovery of Eric Hutchinson. I went and saw OAR a couple weeks ago at Austin Music Hall. I'm not a big OAR fan -- I certainly couldn't name any of their songs. However, a friend had two tickets and his +1 backed out on him, so I graciously agreed to make sure that other ticket didn't go unused. Okay, so I wasn't so gracious. I'd seen OAR before at Stubbs, and I remembered feeling really out of place. Pretty much everyone at the show was under 21 and most were still in highschool, so I was the oldest person there by about 10 years. Put that together with seeing a band I didn't know, and it was a generally awkward evening. With that experience under my belt, I wasn't real gung-ho about going, but I had no other plans, so I went.

However, this show was a totally different show than the Stubbs show. For starters, the crowd was older, and I didn't feel so out of place as the only person without an "X" on my hand. Also, somehow I've never seen a show at AMH, and it was a very cool venue. Nice lighting, great acoustics, et cetera. And it helped that the opening act came out with lots of energy and talented musicians and catchy tunes. He was pretty poppy and looked like one of the Beatles, but it was a lot of fun to listen to. We had to look him up later to see who it was (I guess we missed the introduction), but I went ahead and picked up his CD. This particular track isn't his most catchy, but I like it.

I tend to have better luck with opening bands and relative unknowns than I've had with headliners. I'm planning to go see two complete unknowns tomorrow. Maybe that will result in a few more new favorites.

* Acts I've seen live

Recommended: A Place Without A Postcard

I'd never read the novel of someone I know. Short stories, sure. Poems, sure. Blog posts, certainly. But never a whole novel, bound and sold through an actual retailer. And, while I haven't actually met James, I feel like I know him after the mutual reading of blogs and sharing of the experiences of greyhound ownership and Philippine living. As a result, I was a bit nervous to read this book and then to write about it. What if it turns out to be a dud? How do I write that, when it's quite likely the author would read the review? With all this concern, it's clear I do not have the stones to be a critic for a living.

Good thing I liked the book.

The story in A Place Without A Postcard is about a tabloid photographer who is in an accident and wakes up to find himself wanted for the murder of a police officer but no memory of why, or even who he is. And he's blind, to boot. Since the story is told from his point of view, the setting and the interactions are described through the other senses.

While parts of the story are unlikely occurrences, even in west Texas, I did find out the root of the name of his blog. But the most exciting part was a visceral reaction to the narrative. After I finished reading and put the book down, I found my sensory perception of the world heightened, if only for a day or two. It was kinda surreal, but very neat. And when a book can make you see the world differently, that can only be good.

Lost Speculation Revisited

NOTICE: Contains spoilers from last night's season finale. Come back and read this later if you haven't see it yet. If you don't intend to watch it, then you can read or not, but mostly I would expect that you wouldn't want to.

After finishing watching season 4's finale last night, I decided to go back to the post I did before the season started, and see how I did on all this guesswork.

1. Richard -- I had decided this character was special in some way, due to his lack of aging over the decades. He is still an enigma, but we know he's more important now that this season is complete. He has been recruiting John Locke, basically since birth, and he definitely seems to be the non-figurehead leader. It's like the opposite of the Queen of England who's all for look and has little to no real power. I look for him to be very important as the last two seasons progress.

2. Mikhail -- After surviving the sonic fence and a gunshot in the back, it appeared Mikhail was invincible on the island. After his hand-grenade-in-the-underwater-station trick, though, he hasn't returned this season. Is it possible that being just off the coast of the island was enough to lose the island's protection, and he finally died? Or is he just lurking out of view for a season with a return to the show still in his future?

3. Ben -- I opined that Ben was a poser, and had never been special. However, now it seems likely that he was special at some point, and has since lost favor with the island for something. Perhaps it was as simple as the island getting John Locke, and therefore being done with Ben, or it might be that Ben did something to make the island mad, and he is now being punished. I may have to go dig for more details on this one to see what I may have missed on that front.

4. John -- He was, indeed, the man in the coffin. I was so excited when I saw that I'd gotten that right -- like maybe I've developed some kind of intuition on this story along the way. Regardless, now we have a new name for him -- Jeremy Bentham. This appears to be some sort of code name so that other people in the regular world don't get wind of the fact that this is another of the Oceanic survivors. We know he becomes the leader of the others in place of Ben, but we'll have to wait to see what made him leave the island to try to return the Oceanic 6 to the island.

5. Christian -- I had thought that maybe there was an alternate time stream where Jack's dad was still alive. That seems clear not to be the case. However, he'd had all these weird red-herring-style appearances before, and now he seems to be more and more of a player in this saga. And how is Claire now becoming a similar enigma to her dad. It makes me wonder if she died?

So, on these predictions, I turned out to be a big 2-3. Not so bad, but there are still so many questions remaining. For example:

We know there is a time differential, and not really a split. However, we we don't really know how that time differential plays into things, completely, so that will continue to be in the mix of stuff to be elaborated further.

We still don't know why Ben became the leader of the Others. His extinction of the Dharma Initiative folks was more of his proof that he was committed to the group, but it doesn't give us any idea as to why they gave him the chance. Just because his dead mama talked to him as a boy? That seems a stretch.

Are there any Dharma folks left? On this, I would say a hearty...well, mostly no. However, if Charlotte was actually born on the island, is that because she was part of the DI? Or did I misunderstand, and she's looking for some other mysterious place that she came from? Hard to say, but it's clear that will be more story, and she may be part of that Dharma thing.

That crazy specialness is also still a mystery. Now we have this idea that Hurley is "special", too, because he saw Jacob's cabin. That's certainly a different kind of special than I had identified at the beginning of the season, but maybe that's just because he didn't have a physical calamity to be healed from. Maybe the island made him mentally better, and that's why he's back in the institution after returning from the island.

Plus, the new characters are just questions for the future seasons. All very interesting, and keeping me ready for that next season, and wondering why I'll have to wait so long for that.

(Not) Recommended: The Corrections

Kyle, previously/currently of Eight Parts and newly of The Letter Eleven regarding his new twin girls (hey, Kyle, what's up with the numbers in your blog names??), recommended that I read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

I completed reading it several months ago, but I've had a lot of trouble writing about it. At its most basic, the storyline is about a older midwestern couple that are trying to figure out how best to interact with their three children and the life choices they've made, choices that mostly go against everything that a midwestern family would have considered valuable. On the other side of things, the book is long enough to explore each character's complicated motivations for the way they interact with their family. There's the dad, who had been the breadwinner as an engineer and now is in failing health. He isn't sure how to connect with the family that he provided for, but was otherwise mostly uninvolved with for his whole life. There is the overinvolved mom, whose entire life is in the memories she built with her family in their midwestern house that is falling apart. If she gives in to the failing house, her life must be a failure, too, and you can see the struggle as her ailing husband has more and more trouble in that house. There's the oldest son who is fighting depression in a relationship that hasn't been supportive for years. His own kids have been largely turned against him during this time. He wants to support his parents, but only in the way that he deems best. The middle child, a daughter, ran to the big city to become a famous chef, married a much older man and had a closeted (to her family, at least) lesbian affair. She seems to be the only of the kids that actually sees her parents as people with real feelings, and wants to help them where they are and with whatever makes them most comfortable. Finally, there's the youngest son whose near addiction to sex got him in some trouble in his last job, making him reckless with new opportunities that come his way. After enough badgering, he puts on a show of caring about his parents, but almost in a my-life-is-such-a-mess-and-you've-got-a-place-I-can-sleep sort of way.

I can't say I really liked this story. It was so bleak (some may say realistic), and depressingly sad, not cathartic-emotional-outbreak-sad, that I can't really recommend it. Originally my title had been meant to indicate that the book had been recommended to me, but I realized it could also be taken to mean that I recommended it, so that's why you have what you have instead. The characters were incredibly realistic, the individual stories were each heartbreaking in their own way, but I just came away with this overall sad feeling for the way that we move on and ignore the people we came from that I can't say it was enjoyable. I just keep coming back to "bleak". If you've forgotten what that feeling feels like, please, by all means, use this book to remind yourself. Otherwise, just try to respect your elders and continue on with your life.

Recommended: Theories of Relativity

This was another book suggested for reading by James. This one was phenomenal. It was one of those books I was happy wasn't 1000 pages, not because 230 pages was enough, but only because I couldn't put it down. I've never been able to read 1000 pages straight, without sleeping. I could have easily gobbled up anything more that Barbara Hawother-Attard had told us about our protagonist's life. He was just that fascinating.

Dylan is a 16-year-old kid whose mom has decided he's inconvenient for the story she's telling the latest boyfriend. Dylan has to go, and she doesn't really care what happens to him after that. He's relegated to street life where he befriends good and bad while learning to navigate this entirely new world. There's no time for school, what with needing to beg for money and food and looking for places to sleep that won't end up with you on the wrong side of anybody. But he's a smart kid -- he wants to use that brain of his. As someone who's never lived on the streets, it seemed to be an appropriately alternating experience for him, from destroyed trust to hunger to opportunity to lost chances to self-discovery to rock bottom to second chances. I ached with him and rooted for him and found myself hoping desperately that he would find some sort of redemption through all of this.

Pick up a copy, and enjoying this journey of the human spirit. You might just find yourself volunteering at the local homeless shelter, and how can anything that makes you help your fellow man be bad?

Recommended: Speak

Periodically, people recommend books that actually sound interesting. More often, people recommend books that sound perfectly hideous, and I tend to smile and nod and forget the title and author as quickly as I can. Every once in a while, though, something strikes my interest and I put the book on my list. At the beginning of the year, I took my list and ordered them all. I thought I'd tell you about some of the ones I read and what I thought of them.

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, was brought to my attention by James, and sounded like an easy read, if not an easy subject. It only took a couple of pages to figure out what had happened at the party last summer. So, while the story seemed to be trying to accomplish some big surprise ending, that part of it didn't work. However, the rest of the story really gets you into our protagonist's, Melinda's, head, and that makes the whole read valuable and even enjoyable.

After the "party incident", Melinda retreats into her own mind. She loses all her friends and starts to fall way behind in school. She won't talk to anyone, not to peers, not teachers, not her family. She has no one that really sees or notices how much she's changed since last year in the "before". Her only sort-of-friend is a new girl who moved in this year. She has all new teachers. Her parents are much too self-absorbed to notice anything about her personality changes. So, she is left to her own devices, and they aren't really enough. Through some caring teachers and some well-placed graffiti, she finds that she must give voice to the secret she's carried all year, leading to a triumphant turnaround in her life.

It's an interesting read, especially since so many people are the victims of the myriad varieties of sex-based crimes. I would imagine that a lot of people would draw strength to share their own stories based on a book like this. The more stories people hear, the more likely they are to see the signs of such a sad situation for what they are. Not everyone reacts to such an experience in the way our character did here, but it's one more reaction to add to your known list of "symptoms" for the sufferer.

Interesting Movies about a Lack of Interestingness

This week, we went to a screening of Helvetica over at UCSB. My husband has an obsession with documentaries, so we've seen a lot of them. Some of them are beyond boring and some of them redeem the genre. I fully expected 80 minutes about a boring typeface to fall into the former category. And while it didn't fall into the latter category, either, I learned something, so I guess most documentaries would consider that a win.

The font ended up just being a starting point from which to examine the changes in the graphical design world over the last 50-60 years. Who knew people could get so worked up about how great or evil a font is? The whole film pitted the Helvetica-is-so-clean-there-is-no-confusing-what's-being-said folks against the Helvetica-is-so-regimented-it's-akin-to-"The Man"-keeping-you-down folks. You'd think a little conflict would make for a compelling story, but it barely made a story. At least they tried to have a plot, of sorts.

I guess there's a reason I'm not in graphic design, and I can't really recommend that you run out and watch this immediately. However, if you are interested in the design aspect of various printed materials, you could find this an enlightening little piece. I personally found this a perfect reason to dig up this old YouTube video about a different font. I found this a lot funnier, and it's certainly shorter.

Jars of Clay in an Unlikely Spot

So, I admit it. I watched the pilot of "Eli Stone" that came on after "Lost" last week. Go ahead. Get in all the comments you know you want to make about me being sucked into the marketing monster.

I probably won't watch it again. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this is no earth-shattering piece of television work. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either.

The thing that makes it notable was that while I was watching it, I thought I was going crazy. Just after the opening credits, I frantically looked to see why my iTunes spontaneously started playing. See, I heard "Good Monsters" by Jars of Clay, and who'd've thunk that would be in any mainstream TV show. But there it was.

And, of course, it makes sense. A song about people struggling to do the right thing in a world that expects the other (a big law firm in this case) would fit nicely into such a song. Jars had attempted such a foray into mainstream video media before, with a song they wrote for the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight. The scene the song was for was cut, but the song was still on the soundtrack for the movie. It was nice to see they didn't get cut this time, though I don't imagine it will be long before this show is cut. Unless the writer's strike lasts and this is all they have filmed.

Lost Speculation

Just in time for the start of Season 4 of Lost this week, I completed rewatching all of seasons 1, 2, and 3. I was looking for clues, and I think I found some interesting ones that have me onto a new theory. For example, the guy that child-Ben meets in the woods when he goes looking for his mother is Richard (the guy that gives Locke the file on Sawyer). I'm almost certain of it, though I can find no confirmation nor denial of that in the credits -- that character is entirely uncredited. Or maybe he's not, because he also appears elsewhere in that episode, so he's credited for that name. Also, I was reminded of the fact that Mikhail came back from fatal injuries twice (being pushed through the sonic wall and the speargun to the heart in the Looking Glass station).

This really got me thinking that there are people that must really be "special" people. These people are completely invincible on the island. This is why some of them actually want to stay. Richard is one of these people (no aging in the time from Ben's boyhood to adulthood -- 30ish years?), and Mikhail and Walt. John Locke is also, clearly, one of these people. Not only was he cured of his paralysis, he recovered from the shot Ben made to his chest. Those are pretty much the only ones I know for sure. Ben, however, is not special. He is aging, he got a spinal tumor, he didn't recover from that quickly, etc. He is a poser, and works very hard to keep up the facade, but he knows he isn't really one of the special people. He's even more afraid when he finds that Jacob talked to Locke -- more confirmation that Locke truly is special...and will figure out that Ben isn't, soon enough.

This also makes me think that John Locke is the man in the coffin during the flash-forward. Locke's specialness must have been revealed somewhere along the way, and Jack is now convinced that he was the only way back to the island. Of course, off the island, Locke would be without his invincibleness, and could die.

There are also a couple of unanswered questions that I have no idea how to fit into what we know. For example, in the season 3 finale with the flash-forward, Jack's dad is alive again. Does this mean time was really split before the crash event, and there's a timeline where Jack's dad didn't die in Sydney? That doesn't seem to jive with the idea that the island magnetic event caused the crash/split, which seems pretty crucial to be true. Why did the Others/Hostiles allow Ben to become their leader after the purge of the Dharma Initiative folks? Are there any of the rest of that group still around, or were they all imports that have since died? Also, it's clear that some people are "special" and some aren't. What this "special-ness" really entails is still a mystery. It's odd that Ben puts so much emphasis on having been born on the island, like that's what does it, but we can be pretty sure that 3 of the 4 "specials" weren't born on the island. Maybe the importable "specials" are very rare, and that's why they are working so hard to get on-island pregancy to work out. That's my best guess, at the moment. There are plenty more questions, but those are the big ones in my mind. What are your biggest questions? Your wackiest theories?

I'm so excited to see what transpires in the next couple of seasons. I don't have any TV reception (no antenna, no cable), so I'll be watching online the day after it airs. Please don't ruin any surprises for me, but I shouldn't be too far behind you. Happy puzzling!

AFI Film Festival in LA

Saturday, we got the chance to go to a movie showing at tha AFI Film Festival which just wrapped up yesterday. We aren't normally up on what's going on, but we knew the writer/director, Alex Holdridge, from years gone by, so we went to see In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Alex used to live in Austin, and we were lucky enough to see the premiere of his first movie, Wrong Numbers, and that was great, so we knew what sort of movie we were lining up for, and definitely had expectations.

It didn't disappoint -- it was such a great flick! The premise is simple enough. A guy is depressed after his relationship ends and his career comes to a screeching halt after moving to pursue it. His friends push him to have a date for the New Year's Eve party, so he posts a want ad on Craig's List and the story goes from there. It's a really well-written story with very human characters (no caricatures here). I'm sort of surprised it's being billed as a romantic comedy, because it's missing all the schmaltz and predictability that we've come to expect from that genre. This is more like a relationship drama with some laugh-out-loud scenes in it. We stayed for the Q&A after the film, and found that a lot of this story is autobiographical, and the whole thing was filmed in 16 days. What an accomplishment, to take a real-life tragedy and turn it into such a winning movie so quickly and on a shoestring budget. Alex's parents were there at the screening, and I'm sure his mother was crying tears of pride for her baby's obvious success.

If you get a chance to see this one, take it. Good stuff.

Good Reason for Today's Post(s) Coming Tomorrow

Today, we went into LA to go to a friend's movie showing as part of the AFI Film Festival. We left mid-morning and got home tonight at 11:30. I have now started dinner, and it will be in the crockpot all night for tomorrow's lunch, but I feel like it should count because I started it tonight before I'm going to bed.

Posts on the film and on the dinner are coming tomorrow, after I've gotten a chance to sleep.

Chris Tomlin at the Santa Barbara Bowl

Last weekend, I went to see Chris Tomlin at the Santa Barbara Bowl. The Bowl is an outdoor amphitheatre, and the primary big concert location here in town. I had wanted to see a concert there, and this was the perfect combo -- an artist I knew that I vaguely wanted to see together with cheaper tickets. It turned out to be better than just a way to see what the venue was like.

It was like going to church on Friday night for three hours with 4500 of your closest friends. I know that doesn't sound great to most of you, but for me it was just what I needed. The sermon touched me, but mostly it was just knowing that there were other folks in town that wanted to go to church on a Friday night that recharged me spiritually.

We came in and got settled in our side floor seats, and justified that they were good once we found some that were worse. As it got dark, the music started up. They put all the words up on a screen at the back of the stage, so even you only knew some of the words you could sing like you meant it. It was great for songs I'd never heard before, too, because by the second chorus I could join in. He was a worship leader before he started his singing career, and you can tell. He sure knows how to get people singing loud and proud, from easy tunes and powerful lyrics to just the right amount of repitition so everyone can feel like they have it down, these songs are designed to have you singing them in your car or while you do dishes (which I do all the time these days). In the resinging you find new insights and the music just continues to make an impact well after the concert is over.

In the middle of the concert, Louie Giglio, the pastor traveling with the tour, got up and preached one of the longest sermons I've ever heard. It was a generic sermon about how big God is with this whole universe he created, and yet he cares about each of us enough to be involved in our little lives. And yet, it was a topic that was welcome in my brain, one that made me think and re-remember the enormity of God and all the little details that are His business.

When it was all over, I wished it wasn't, and I only then noticed just how cold it had gotten in the dark. So, I think I can say it was a successful concert, and I imagine I will be back to the venue, even if not for church next time.

The Time Traveler's Wife

This weekend I read my birthday present -- a book by Audrey Niffenegger. I tend not to read very often, because good novels get into my psyche and everything falls by the wayside while I finish it. So, I don't read, not because I don't like to read, but because I like it too much. Weird, I know.

Regardless, we went to Dallas this weekend for the birthday party of some friends' kids. That meant we had lots of travel time (unguilted reading time), and we would likely need to entertain ourselves a bit while our friends dealt with their life a kids during the weekend (more unguilted reading time), so I decided to start this one.

I actually started Thursday night before we left, and that's a good thing, because this story sucked me in, and I had no choice but to stay up late Saturday night finishing it up. Of course my husband was getting annoyed with me crying with the bedside table-lamp on until 1 in the morning, but it's his fault -- he gave me the book.

To give you the brief, no-spoilers-involved, rundown, we follow the story of a woman, Clare, and her time-traveling husband, Henry (no duh -- you get that from the title). But, unlike other time-travel stories, Henry didn't invent some crazy machine and use it to run all over the time continuum. Instead, Henry has a genetic disease that means when he gets stressed, his fight-or-flight response is extreme: he time travels. He tends to travel to times and places that are important to him, including times while his future wife is a young child and is growing up. One of the unfortunate issues with his type of time travel is that anything not a part of him is left behind -- clothes, shoes, etc. So, his young wife-to-be becomes a partner in getting him the necessities of life -- food, clothing, etc. It is a beautiful love story told from both points of view. We primarily follow Clare, as her story is easier as a linear story line, but Henry's story is woven in a very neat way, showing us his "linear" as the jumpy timeline where answers come before questions and some answers just shouldn't be given. He has a couple of great lines about 20 years ago and a few minutes ago being the same thing to him. It's an interesting take on two people being fated for each other, and as I mentioned before, it made me bawl my little eyes out for hours. Folks having trouble having kids might want to avoid this one, though I don't think any admonition of that sort would have stopped me from reading it.

And then I see that they are making a movie out of the story. I always love to see that a good story gets told to a larger audience, but I haven't decided what I think about making this particular one into a movie. Of course a lot will be lost, but I'm sure I'll have to see it -- to see if they faithfully render the duo I met this weekend when I was on a plane or supposed to be sleeping. But at least the laundry and dishes weren't being shirked while I read.

"The Clean House": A Review

Last weekend, we went to see "The Clean House" at a theatre here in SB. Great play. This weekend is the last weekend, so if you live around here, go see it in the next 3-4 days.

TCH is a new play written by a new playwright, and there's a reason that the critics seem to think Sarah Ruhl is the next big thing. The play is funny and sad and triumphant all at the same time. Plus I like a play that only has a handful of characters so I don't get lost, as that seems to happen to me way too often.

Here's the plot, in a nutshell. The main character, Lane, is a fancy doctor with a Portuguese maid, Mathilde, that doesn't like to clean -- she's searching for the perfect joke instead. Lane's sister, Virginia, loves to clean, so she secretly helps Mathilde clean the house. When Lane's husband, Charles, runs off with Ana, Lane's life becomes a mess, until Ana gets sick and Lane has a choice to make. It's a really beautiful story, and it was well done, to boot. And only 5 characters -- I can handle that.

We have more plays coming up, so I'll be keeping you posted. I'm hoping that when you buy season tickets to see a bunch of plays you've never heard of, that you end up with a few gems in there. One down, four to go!

OSF: "Romeo and Juliet" Amazing Despite...

Last weekend we had tickets to see "Romeo and Juliet" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. As part of that, I took Monday off work, and therefore have been behind all week, and thus Saturday is the first chance I have to post about it.

First, let me say that Ashland is beautiful. I'd never been before, but it's just like a painted picture of small-town America. Cute houses, cute shops, friendly people. And with fall really coming in, the colors were starting to change, and there was snow on the mountains. Good stuff.

We went because we know someone in the company and he got us tickets. I'll just leave it at that to protect his privacy and to keep him from being overwhelmed with requests for free tickets. I'll call him Pete for the rest of this post. We went up and stayed in Pete's apartment while he stayed with his girlfriend for the weekend. It was nice to stay in a place with a kitchen and where you can feel comfortable. It helps that we've known him a long time.

But after seeing the play, I can't understand why we waited so long! We're obviously dunderheads, and that's the only explanation. And if you have a chance to go to a play in any of their three theatres, please do so. They've announced the 2008 season already, so pick out the time to go, the plays to see, and get on it already! We will be seeing everything we have time to see next year, because we've been bitten with some kind of bug now.

So, on to the play. We went Sunday night, and all day it was looking like it was going to rain. Two of the three stages are indoors, but the Elizabethan Stage (where R&J was to be) is outdoor. This is neat in a lot of ways, but when it's cold and rainy, it's just sucky for everyone involved. Pete had gotten us tickets in the balcony, so we were covered by the partial roof that is there to help with acoustics. He obviously knew something we wouldn't realize as first-timers -- we hadn't brought all our warmest clothes and raingear. But, as I said, with the roof, we were fine. And I'm not too worried about the folks on the floor -- they all seemed prepared and seemed fine. The actors, however, had to perform in abysmal conditions. The rain started out light, but we were barely into the second scene before they started slipping around on the stage.

They were troopers, but six of them got hurt falling down, and one guy's hearing aid shorted out. That's crazy to expect actors to perform in those sorts of conditions. And I don't want to be at a performance that's just going on because they don't feel they can quit. By the time we got to the morning after bedroom scene with Romeo and Juliet wearing next to nothing under a soaking wet down comforter and wet stringy hair, the play had changed from being about Shakespeare's witty language and action-filled plot. It was about being in awe of these actors and what they were having to deal with. And that's all fine and dandy, but I didn't go to see a test of the human will to persevere. I think that was a different play or something.

All in all, I got a different (better) understanding of parts of the story, and it was wonderful to see it done by experts. As an artistic license thing, they tried to augment the difference between the young and older generation by dressing the old folks in traditional costumes, and the kids in modern-day clothes. Mercutio in a leather jacket and blue jeans was the perfect costume for him, for example. The kids all in school uniforms reminded us that they were really kids, even though Romeo and Juliet were played by mid-20s to early-30s actors.

We will be back. You just won't see us crying over a cancelled play if the weather's bad. Not here. And you should go, too.

Learning at Thirty

Since I purchased my bass guitar, I have been practicing as much as my little fingers will allow. Who knew you needed so much left pinky strength to play? And such big hands to reach all the frets at the same time?

At this point, I know which string is which, and I can play that bastion of musical prowess, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in the keys of D and E. I can also play the bass line to the verses of Big Bad John, but the chorus still eludes me at this point. I'm trying to have the discipline to spend a few minutes on hand strength, a few minutes on fundamental pattern learning, and a few minutes on fun stuff each practice session -- playing along with iTunes, trying to figure out which notes fit and so forth. However, my expectation is that my resolve will weaken in the coming weeks, after the initial newness wears off.

So, I'm going to be looking for a teacher. It may seem like a copout, but I figure I need to learn some basics pretty quickly, and I'd rather learn them right than spend years doing things wrong and then having to unlearn those bad habits. Being an adult looking for a music teacher is going to be a bit different than looking for one while a student. I have a couple of sources that I think I can look at for teachers, but I feel like I should interview one and figure out if I'm going to hate them before signing up. But I find I have no idea what to ask in an interview of a potential bass teacher. Any ideas?

I'm Not Usually Impulsive, But...

I have thought for a long time that it was time for Heather to learn to play a new instrument. I took eight years of piano lessons and three years of French horn lessons, all decidedly classical in nature. I don't have a French horn (do you have any idea how much those things cost??), but I love my baby grand piano. Over the last few years, I've been trying to switch my piano playing style to allow for more flexibility with what's written, and to try to improvise more to what's going on around me. This is a necessary skill to learn if one wants to play with a group of other musicians. This need came up while I was trying to play keyboard with the praise team at my church. You try playing with guitarists, drummers, bass players and vocalists of varying skill levels and tell me you don't have to improvise! I can't say I'm particularly good at it, but I have gotten better over time.

So this brings me around to the next instrument for me to learn. I thought about soliciting suggestions from my readers here, but you'll have to reread this post's title. I decided that I would learn to play guitar. It seems to be easy enough to pick up a few chord fingerings and a few strum patterns, and be able to play some common tunes, but certainly complicated enough to provide years of further learning and technique refinement. I knew I wanted one with a pickup, so I'd be able to easily be mic'd one day when I might need it, but not an electric guitar, so I'd still be able to play acoustically. This was my plan.

I went to a guitar store here in town and asked a bunch of questions and held several guitars and generally was a pest for about an hour. The folks there were very patient, answering my questions and explaining lots of stuff to me. At the end of it, it appeared I had more research and deciding to do, so I thanked them and headed home. I decided that I didn't want to mess with trying to learn classical guitar (note the eleven years of classical music training described above, and what it's done for me). After a few hours of research, I felt armed enough to dive into the craigslist waters. And what would you know, I found one that seemed to fit the bill -- a Stella blues guitar from the 1950s. I love my 1927 mahogany piano, and figured I could continue the trend of having instruments older than myself. I called the guy and found that it had been retrofitted with a pickup, and was ready for me to come check it out. I went that afternoon to a warehouse where, apparently, all the local bands practice. I walked in and picked up the guitar, and everything fell apart. See the guy is selling three guitars, and no one wants old ones, so he figured I was calling about this other one, but the one I was thinking I wanted is a parlor guitar (not full-sized) and has no pickup. While it was one cool little instrument, it wasn't what I was expecting, and I chose to walk away.

My husband suggested eBay, but after my experience, I decided I didn't want to buy a guitar that I couldn't hold in my hands first. Down, but not out, I went back to craigslist. On a whim, I searched for a bass guitar, instead. I found a lovely bass, being sold by someone who obviously needed the cash. I had thought, flippantly, in the past about learning to play the bass, but I had lots of excuses. It's hard to sing along with at a campfire. I'm not cool enough to play bass. I would be relegating myself to playing harmony. My husband won't be able to fight off all the drooling men when I become one of those hot bass playing women. Oh well. I called the dude selling the guitar, played it a bit in a park, and walked away with a sweet new instrument to learn to play. Oh, and I got a good deal, so maybe I'll still get a regular guitar one day.

And now I just have to figure out how to play it. And I have to get an amp. Anyone have any pointers they can give me to good information for learning to play this little four-stringed wonder?

"We Bleed Maroon"

I'm not a big fan of country in general, but I did go to Texas A&M. That means if you want to go out, you'll have to listen to country music. And I have to admit that I like a good two-step with a good strong dance lead. I have one country CD in my collection, and it's a Garth Brooks collection. When my husband and I started overlaying our CD collections, this was the only duplicate -- and his only CD in the country genre as well. It's one of those silly coincidences that seems more important than it really is.

So, country music always intrinsically reminds me of A&M. And then a friend sent me a link to a song called "We Bleed Maroon" by Granger Smith who recently graduated from A&M. He's, apparently, already an established country singer, and this was his tribute to A&M, the kids that died in the bonfire accident a few years back, and to the Aggies that have fought and died in various wars. It's the most overtly Aggie song I've heard since I quit living on campus. I really enjoyed it in a sentimentally sad sort of way, and I hope you like it, too. I can't say every part of the song will make sense to folks who didn't attend this institution, but I think parts of it are universal.

Let me know what you think. I'm curious to know if it translates to non-Aggies.

300...Eh

The folks have raved and raved -- 300 is (apparently) the best movie out there. It's done well at the box office, and people are talking about it. Heck, I'm writing about it here. I'm doing this, though, as a public service to you, my readers. Ignore the hype.

If you like plot and character development and touching moments, don't go see this movie. If you like blood and shiny things, feel free to spend your money -- or go see a jewelry store and hang out in an emergency room.

The whole point of this movie is gratuitousness. Gratuitous voiceovers, gratuitous nudity, gratuitous gore, gratuitous monster makeup, and gratuitous use of the slow-motion camera. I was so underwhelmed by a movie that just tried too hard to be The Matrix. Sorry -- this one is no ground-breaking film. And if they'd just made the slow-motion parts go in full speed, I'd have lost a half-hour less of my life.

Consider yourself warned.

Really, *Really* Bad Movies

You know how sometimes you're in the mood for a bad movie? Well, sometimes I really want to see an absurdly bad movie. They are generally good for a laugh, and they don't make you think about broader social issues, and that kind of relaxing movie can be nice.

This sounded just the thing necessary after a few weeks of seemingly non-stop housework. We went to see Ghost Rider. Let me just say that we were expecting a bad movie, and it exceeded all our expectations. This is one terrible movie. I can't even figure out why they finished making it. It would seem some bigwig would have sat there looking at all that CGI expense and forbidden this thing from being completed. I have to say that I'm completely flabbergasted that this was the top-grossing movie of this past weekend. And I helped that to happen with our two tickets. I feel so dirty.

What was so bad about it? The character's motivations didn't make sense (why would the devil create a being that fights evil?), the guy finally gets the girl and rejects her, the CGI stuff was really bad, the acting was really horrendous, the lines were atrocious, and there was obviously some stuff I was already supposed to know from the comic books that I didn't know, so the story was even more disjointed. Other than that, it was great.

Maybe our next bad-movie-venture will be more of what I expect. On the other hand, I went to see a bad movie, and it surely delivered.