Me, while driving a very tricky road while taking the Red-Headed Menace and Railfan to a lasertag tournament: “Pat, slow down. You’ll definitely be late if you get us killed.”
Railfan: “And if you do, in the afterlife, we will spend eternity nagging you that you made us miss lasertag.”
I love Sherlock Holmes. I love the original Conan Doyle stories, and I love Jeremy Brett’s iconic television portrayal.
The way I coped with the first Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie was to think of it as an entirely different animal totally unconnected with the books. It worked. I enjoyed it; the plot was relatively harmless and the homoeroticism between Downey’s Holmes and Jude Law’s Watson was amusing and, quite frankly, rather hot.
Once was enough, though. This second time around I found the plot a bit confusing, and the interplay between the characters a little forced. Sadly, the eye-candy, while as pretty as before, simply wasn’t enough to hold my interest.* But what annoyed me most of all is something usually found these days in 3D movies.
I am tired of movies having with chase sequences featuring slow or stop-motion visuals that clearly exist only to show off the special effects. There are only so many slowed bullet impacts or frozen explosions I can see before I get really impatient. Guy Ritchie could have easily cut the running through the forest scene in half just by not overindulging in showy “look-at-me!” shots.
Give me storytelling over empty flash any day.
*I do want to note, however, that Jared Harris was great as Moriarty: menacing without ever becoming a caricature.
I admit it. I am obsessed, monomaniacal even sometimes. But please, indulge me. If you find this tiresome, please feel free to skip to another blog.*
I am watching Sondheim! The Birthday Celebration. Some observations:
I adore David Hyde Pierce. Even given that someone else probably wrote his material, he presented the “let’s do Sondheim in all the world’s languages” bit perfectly. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Switzerland works for me. [ETA: Actually, looking at the show, he was one of the co-writers. So he did write his own material. Even funnier.]
The reason to love “America” is not Sondheim’s lyrics, which are troubling, to say the least, or Bernstein’s music, which is wonderful, but Jerome Robbin’s incendiary choreography. There’s nothing quite like seeing a bunch of stunning women dancing and flipping their skirts.
I understand why the more risque lyrics for “We’re Going to Be All Right” never made it onstage during the original run of Do I Hear a Waltz — it premiered in 1965. I’m not sure they would have flown. The line “Lately he tends to hit her” sung in such a jaunty manner would be jarring even today. (Which was probably the point.)
The “Sweeney Todd” running gag is amusing.
A lot of songs from Follies in this program. The choreography on “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love will See Us Through” is interesting, with the brief interaction between the Sally character and the Ben character, given what happens in the play. Also, is Jenn Colella really barefoot? [ETA: No, of course not. Those are just skin-colored shoes. Can’t say I care for the look.]
Chip Zein and Joanna Gleason are just cute together. There is an obvious affection between them which shines through the original production of Into the Woods (available on DVD). (Joanna Gleason’s Baker’s Wife was the best thing about that production — even more so than Bernadette Peters’ Witch.) (And the intro comment: “[this play] explored the twisted pathways of the human psyche, and consequently is now performed by schoolchildren across America” made me snicker, because Railfan was one of those children.)
I understand that, at least in his television career, Mandy Patinkin is a diva. But man-oh-man, can he sing with nuance and meaning.”Finishing the Hat” almost makes me cry. The ache of a man forced to choose between the woman he loves and the work he is compelled to do is overwhelming. And “Move On” — such chemistry between him and Peters. When at the end of the song Patinkin whispers “I love you” to her, he clearly means it, and her “I love you too” is equally heartfelt.
And oh my God, is Michael Cerveris gorgeous. Shaved heads generally do things to me, and those smoldering eyes… He was once quoted as saying, “Anyone who finds a murdering barber sexy is someone you gotta be kinda nervous about, but I’m grateful for any attention.” Well, then, be nervous about me all you want, but he just takes my breath away.
Hee hee, I love the interplay between the two Sweeneys, George Hearn and Cerveris. The latter pulling out the razor, and the look on Hearn’s face is priceless. Hearn does a lovely job as Judge Turpin in “Pretty Women,” and it would have been nice if they had done it in a production together. Patti Lupone makes a great Mrs. Lovett, and “A Little Priest” is the funniest of Sondheim’s songs.
David Hyde Pierce finally got his chance to sing in different languages. Cute. And “Beautiful Girls” is the one song that sort of works for.
All the divas on stage in red: stunning.
I have seen Patti Lupone sing “Ladies who Lunch” before, in the cinema version of Company. The way she sings it is very different from the iconic Elaine Stritch version: her phrasing accentuates the jazzy Latinate beat of the piece, whereas Stritch’s straight ahead delivery obscures it. Very different takes, but both are great. Stritch jumping up at the end to hug Lupone and say “I’m so proud of you” was heartwarming.
Again, a lot of songs from Follies — three out of the six sung in this segment (four counting the “Beautiful Girls” intro). “Losing My Mind” might just be the best song about unrequited (or marginally requited) love ever written.** Not that I have ever felt like this. Nope, not at all. Marin Mazzie [ETA: helps to get the actress’s name right] makes you feel all the pain and confusion that this state of mind carries with it. Again, stunning.
Audra McDonald’s classical training shines through. The woman is an opera singer — and while a lot of Sondheim’s songs would be overwhelmed by that, those from A Little Night Music aren’t (except Desiree’s, which were written for an actor Sondheim and Prince had yet to hear sing (Glynis Johns) and whom they assumed had limited singing skills). “A Glamorous Life” works well with McDonald’s voice.
Follies again. “Could I Leave You” may just be my favorite number from that show*** and Donna Murphy’s version is the best I have ever heard. Her performance here, as well as Alexander Gemignani’s “Something’s Coming” and Bernadette Peter’s “Not a Day Goes By” are the primary reasons I want a CD of this show. Murphy captures the bitter sarcastic humor (she had the audience laughing at a couple of points) before sucker-punching everyone with absolute rage.
Have I mentioned that when I die I want to be reincarnated as Bernadette Peters? No? That voice. That hair. That porcelain skin and hourglass, Gibson-girl figure. And that ability to convey emotion. “Not a Day Goes By” had me in tears.
Elaine Stritch doing “I’m Still Here”: incredibly appropriate. I am sure that Stritch got the standing ovation in spite of a few flaws in her performance out of recognition of how the song reflects her realities and for all she has done over the years. She is truly a beloved figure.
I am so glad they had actors sing these songs. Not only was it nice to see people who had an actual connection with and obvious warmth towards Sondheim at work here, but these songs are meant to be acted — body language is so important in conveying their meaning.
The Broadway chorus singing “Sunday” clearly affected Sondheim a lot, which is totally understandable. It is a gorgeous soaring piece, sung with feeling by a lot of people who know how to sing.
Finally: how like the honoree to say something sweet, short and on-point. In his writings, he comes across as a rather reserved (if very funny) man, and this was clearly in evidence here.
I so wish I could have been there that evening.
*Maybe I should wait on those two other Sondheim posts until later in the year. I mean there is boring and then there is booooring.
**Okay, so it is not unrequited, but she is trying to figure out exactly what it is.
***It is “my I’m so mad at someone I could kill” song. Even when it is no one I am in a relationship with where the words are at all appropriate, singing allows for the catharsis of a LOT of bitterness.
I have just returned from seeing The Artist. Lovely movie, I think. I really liked what I saw, and was very impressed with the two leads.
However, I cannot review this movie because I did not see all of it. Unlike Black Swan, where I had to leave the theater because I felt so freaked out, during The Artist I …. fell asleep.
What can I say? A large dinner, pain meds, soft seats, nice music, and no dialogue create an atmosphere quite conducive to napping.
Calloo Callay! My cell was at Stanford Lost and Found. I am now reachable by phone again.
I know it seems odd to blog about this, but there are several people in my life who, thanks to RSS feeds, may well see posts from here faster than FB posts.
For anyone who needs to contact me, I have lost my cell phone. Email is the only way to get hold of me (unless I am on YM and you know my user name).
I like scientists, engineers and techie people.* On my Facebook friends’ list, I have a couple of rocket scientists (one of whom, The Rocket Scientist, is also a geologist), a former physicist, an Oxford-trained mathematician/engineer, a forensic scientist, a clinical psychologist, a research psychologist, someone who does not have a degree but who has done extensive fieldwork with NASA, another engineer who worked on the Hubble Space telescope, a former biomedical engineer, a veterinary student, and a whole bunch of computer designers/programmers/sysadmins. And a sociologist. And a paramedic/firefighter who used to work with large animals.
I think many of these friends would qualify for the Science Scouts. Created by the Science Creative Quarterly (I really need to do a post just on it), The Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physiques (OOTSSOERAAP) is composed of people** who meet the following criteria:
– not opposed to alcohol.
– fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
– mostly in agreement with the“truth.”
– into badges.
– grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
– possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
– not in the business of total world domination
– committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.
I am not sure that any of my friends possess all the criteria, but some of them come close. At any rate, all of them would qualify for at least one Science Scout merit badge.
The clinical psychologist? The “Sexing Up Science” Badge. The researcher without a degree? The “MacGyver” Badge. The Paramedic? The “Knows How to Collect Semen From More Than One Species” badge. (Note: this is species other than human; in the paramedic’s case, that would be at least horses and cows.) The Red-Headed Menace? The “Special Auxiliary Child Member of the Order of the Science Scouts” badge, for “children who are alarmingly smart about things of a scientific nature.”
Both rocket scientists would be eligible for a large number of these, especially the “I AM Actually a Freaking Rocket Scientist” Badge. The Rocket Scientist who lives with me and I were going over the list last night, and he would be eligible for somewhere between fifteen and twenty of them, including the “I Have Gone an Entire Month Without a Bath for Science” Badge.
Many of the people in my life (including all three of my children) would either already own The “Has Frozen Stuff Just to See What Happens” Badge (LEVEL III) (“in which the recipient has frozen something in liquid nitrogen for the sake of scientific curiosity”) or don’t only because of a lack of access to liquid nitrogen. (Two of the three children would already qualify for LEVEL II, “in which the recipient has frozen something in dry ice for the sake of scientific curiosity.”) Not to mention the “Totally Digs Highly Exothermic Reactions” Badge. (These same two children have at various times expressed interest in getting C-4 for their birthdays.)
Many of these badges get to the heart of what is so enchanting about scientifically-minded people: such people are, almost without exception and pretty much to a fault, curious about the world around them. They want to know not just that things work but how and why things work.*** Sometimes they are even willing to break things to figure this out or to make things work better.
Definitely deserving of a badge or two, don’t you think?
*I have hung out with scientists and engineers, and I have hung out with artists. Although there are exceptions, generally speaking, scientists and engineers are more interesting and have better senses of humor than artists. Lawyers as a group are highly variable.
**It does not actually specify people. I suppose a sufficiently advanced robot could qualify. Or a space alien.
***This is less than enchanting if the “hey, let’s see what THIS does” people do not adequately clean up after their experiments.
…why do dwarves speak with a heavy Scottish accent? I keep thinking they should sound German.
This was … a year. Not much else to say about it. Although it had its less-than-stellar moments, the first quarter was mostly filled with excitement and hope; although not everything was horrible, the last was filled with illness and sadness. (Interestingly enough, that was the opposite of the pattern of 2010.) Averaged out, it was a mediocre year. I just wish it had not been so streaky, as one says in sports parlance.
I don’t think I have the energy or time this evening (I am going out for New Year’s in the first time in years — wearing The Corset) to write up the year that was. I may save that task for tomorrow. Or not, as the case may be. I am certainly not going to write new resolutions: last year’s were really good, and I left so many of them unfulfilled, I am going to recycle them.
Goodbye, 2011. Hello, 2012. Here’s to you being the best of all possible years. Or at least better (and more consistent) than this one.
Why is Sondheim: The Birthday Celebration from 2010 not on CD? I can’t watch it in the car or when I am doing something else.
I am currently reading Look I Made a Hat, by Stephen Sondheim. It is the second volume of an annotated collection of his lyrics; this volume covers 1985 to the present, and includes not only Broadway shows but pieces written for film, and odds and ends such as the song he wrote for Leonard Bernstein’s 75th birthday.
Sondheim allows readers inside his mind during the creative process. Even more so than in the first volume, he is talking to those who are – or want to be – artists. The hat makers. His prose is clear and wryly self-reflective, and a joy to read. It is in many ways all that I aspire to as a writer.
This volume allows me to learn the songs I try to sing along to in the car. As a singer I am quite limited, with problems in phrasing, only a mediocre range, and a tendency to sing flat. What I lack in talent, however, I make up in enthusiasm, and many of the songs I love to sing are Sondheim’s. As difficult as I find him to sing alone, I can sing along with them if I know the words.I particularly love his patter songs, but the speed at which they are sung often makes discerning the lyrics difficult, at least for me. (Also, lately I have had trouble distinguishing sounds and words, disturbingly so.) The first volume allowed me to learn the words to “Not Getting Married Today” fromCompany, and even better, “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me-Oh-You-Do-I’ll-See-You-Later Blues” from Follies. This volume allows me to learn all the words to “Putting It Together” from Sunday In The ParkWith George* and “Into the Woods” from Into the Woods.
I find the thoughts for posts springing from his lyrics. I am trying to find the time to put together and polish a post on the care and feeding of muses, and how much one quatrain from “Finishing the Hat” defines the relationship between the two main characters in the First Act ofSunday. (It will also contain a reference to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” It makes sense in context, I promise.)
There will hopefully be a post about the artistic drive and the ways in which it can be damaged from very early on. I too want to be able to say “Look I Made a Hat,” but all too often put obstacles in my way. Or how maybe what I do here is my art, as well as my passion.
There will also be a post about “A Moment in the Woods” from Into the Woods aboutwhat those moments actually mean.
This post is a bookmark, to be sure, but in its own way it is also a love-letter. Mr. Sondheim, you are quite the hat maker.
*Sondheim also includes the different versions of “Putting It Together” which he has written for variousoccasions and differing artistic occupations. It is really a song about the cost of Art, not the price of art. Of course, the entire musical is about that.
Fulton Street in Palo Alto does things fancy for the holidays: much like Willow Glen in San Jose, every house is decorated, many of them extravagantly. Each house has its own small Christmas tree at curbside bedecked with familiar oval shaped Christmas tree lights. Even the streetlights — built to look like early twentieth century streetlamps — are decorated. It is an impressive and cheering holiday sight.
That said, it is perhaps unfortunate that they choose to color the streetlights red.
On Friday, the Resident Shrink, the Rocket Scientist and I went to see A Dangerous Method, starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen in an account of the relationship between Carl Jung and a young woman who was his patient and became his mistress and protege, and Sigmund Freud.
Eh. It was a bit long for my taste, and I found my mind wandering. On the other hand, if you are into spanking, this may be the movie for you. Not a lot of scenes, mind you, but several… and besides, Keira Knightley is gorgeous even when being spanked.
It was a good Christmas, more or less. I spent most of the day in my room with a migraine (courtesy of the woman in front of me at church with the perfume containing bergamot oil) and I tripped and rebroke my little toe (which is now swollen and purple again and sticking out at a strange angle), but everyone else seemed to have a pleasant holiday.
The food was good, if excessive. We will be eating turkey, dressing and sweet potatoes for the next several days. We still have some roasted parsnips and carrots left, but sadly the cranberry-goat cheese tarts are all gone.
Perfume aside, church was a moving experience. The pastor at All-Saints’ Episcopal Church in Palo Alto gave one of the most thoughtful — and thought-provoking — Christmas Day sermons I have ever heard. As soon as it is posted on the website (the Christmas Eve homily is up, but not that for Christmas Day) I will link to it. It is well worth reading.
As predicted, we did not open gifts until 12:30, to the annoyance of Railfan but nobody else. Everybody got things they wanted, with the most well-received being Railfan’s X-Box and copy of Halo Reach. He and the Red-Headed Menace have spent most of yesterday and today trying not to accidentally kill each other (electronically, that is).
I got the second volume of Stephen Sondheim’s collected lyrics, and his observations on them (as well as so many other things), Look, I Made A Hat, which was listed on my Amazon wish list as “what I most want for Christmas.” Continuing the Sondheim theme, I also received Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, by Ted Chapin, who was a production assistant (i.e., gofer) for the show. I also got Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark. I am hoping to learn from the last one ways to write more compellingly.
I am still feeling melancholy, with a strange sense of loss and homesickness. Christmas is the time I most feel out of place in my adopted home. I don’t long for a white Christmas, having never had one, but a warm and green Christmas would be nice. The Christmas song which keeps running through my head is not a religious carol, as in most years, but “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” (That would be the version sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, with its strangely bittersweet lyrics: “Someday soon we all will be together, as the fates allow; until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”) Not going East this year, even though I know it was the right decision made for the right reasons, didn’t help.
The unmooring of the holiday from its spiritual roots which has been occurring the past several years hit home. The religious symbols of the season, which as the result of a crisis of faith had come to feel vaguely fraudulent, were also a comforting link to the past, to my past, which seems distant and out of reach. There was no Advent wreath, no Lessons & Carols service. I have become that most mocked of Episcopalian stereotypes, the Christmas and Easter church attendee. The words and visuals of the season, which help make it a season rather than simply a few weeks at the end of the year much like any other except with better food, were missing.
For very complicated family and other reasons, I have had limited contact with many of my friends recently. Yet another person I care about moved away earlier in December, leaving for the Sacramento area. I do not make friends easily or comfortably, and losing those I have hurts. Friends did invite me to go see A Christmas Carol with them, and I had lunch with another, and that was lovely, but underscored how I isolated I have been feeling lately. One of my current goals is to change that: two friends and I are meeting for lunch later this week (not my suggestion, although I was more than happy to follow up on it). There is a whole world of people out there: I just need to meet some of them, and see the ones I already know more. As I grow older, I need connection with other people in ways I never did before.
My writing has suffered. My hope — to write more than I did in either November or October — proved beyond my reach. I am seriously thinking of taking a formal hiatus from blogging so that if I am not writing at least I am not feeling guilty about not writing. I am kept from doing that by the suspicion that doing so would have a negative impact on my mental health, and the belief that the unseen readers of this blog are in some sense my friends too: I need to feel that there is someone out there, as delusional as that may seem sometimes. Not so delusional, though: there are a number of people who tell me that they follow this blog through either the RSS feeds or Google Reader. That carries its own frustrations, sometimes: my friends know a lot more about what is going on in my life than I do about theirs, even those I follow on LiveJournal or Facebook. Communication needs to run two ways in order to be meaningful. A particular need of mine lately is to feel that I can be of as great support to my friends as they are to me.
Time to move on. Time to think about the new year, and what I need. This year, which started in hope and excitement is ending in somber reflection. This is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. Looking over my Eleven for ’11, I achieved so few of them that I am going to simply list them as my resolutions for 2012.
After all, if the world is going to end in twelve months, it would be nice to have something to show for it.
The Wild Winds of Fortune 