Apr 7th, 2009
Life update
Reveling: In the arrival of spring!
Watching: Tropic Thunder. This film was very poorly marketed, I think. When I first saw a trailer for it, I thought, “Robert Downey Jr. wears blackface and pretends to be a black man? Huh? Totally not interested in seeing this one.” As it turns out, there’s a lot more than that to this film. Believe it or not, along with some clever parodies, there’s actually some social commentary in here, too.
Reading: We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher, by E. C. Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith. A memoir about being a cowboy during the golden age of cowboys in the USA, the 1870s and 1880s.
Watching: Birds visit the two different feeders we’ve hung in a dogwood tree just outside the dining-room window. The goldfinches are gradually turning from brown to yellow again.
Being amazed by: Muscle memory. This morning I played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” for the first time in a few years. I had worked on this piece a lot when I was a kid, and today I was surprised to see how good it sounded when I went through it. I couldn’t play this piece from memory to save my life, but interestingly enough when I have the sheet music in front of me I barely need to look at it—my hands know just what to do.
Eating: Lots of melted cheese. We had two raclette dinners within a month, and now that the weather is warm we’ve packed away the raclette grill until the cold returns next fall.
Wow! Wish my busy-ness was akin to yours! After all’s settled (sooner rather than later I hope) I hope to be there!
I wish we had spring. *sigh* Hee hee – I think Fur Elise stays with one FOREVER. I can still play parts of it, 25 years after taking piano lessons.
@JD: This isn’t as much busy-ness as it seems—all of this stuff has been spread out over the past few weeks. Just a little bit here and there…
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@Chris: I think “Fur Elise” is the paradigmatic if-you’ve-ever-taken-piano-lessons-this-song-will-stay-with-you-forever song!
I’m not a fan of Robert Downey Jr. but I thought he was brilliantly funny in Tropic Thunder. However, the best part of the movie, to me, was the compilation of fake trailers at the beginning, especially Satan’s Alley.