In Which I Am Sociable
Feb. 19th, 2023 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreShameless Self-Promotion: I am part of an on-line storytelling show this coming Saturday (February 25th) from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. It’s free, with donations requested. The show is titled "Laughter and Humor, in Honor of Rubber Ducky Day” and you can register here.
Tucson Follow-up, Part 1: Because several people commented on the picture of the miniature sculpture done on a pencil point and I had not written down the artist’s name, I did some strategic googling. The artist turns out to be a 50-year-old Russian man named Salivat Fidai. There are many pictures of his work on-line for your viewing pleasure.
Tucson Follow-up, Part 2: I have no idea how I forgot to mention this, but it was late afternoon when I finished up at the eastern part of Saguaro National Park on Sunday. I decided I could check out the Desert Diamond Casino for a little while, I have probably said this before, but my attitude towards gambling is that it is entertainment. I expect to lose, so I just decide how much I am willing to spend on being entertained along the way. I like slot machines with certain types of themes, typically ones oriented towards either space or a movie or television show I like. This casino had few of the ones I like, but I did eventually find a group of Little Shop of Horrors themed ones. I was within about 5 bucks of reaching my allowed losses when I hit a jackpot that paid me $400. So I kept playing for a while. Eventually, the plant fed me to the tune of a little over $700. Which was enough to cover my plane ticket and rental car, but not my hotel.
NSO: Continuing on to what I’ve done since I got back (i.e. over the past week or so), last Friday night, Cindy and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra. The program included three pieces, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. I had never seen him conduct before and I thought he did a good job. I especially appreciated that he made a point of having each section of the orchestra stand for final bows during the applause at the end of the evening.
The first piece on the program was Krzesany by Wojciech Kilar This was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it. It was very dramatic, especially the percussion section. Apparently, it was inspired by a mix of Polish folk dance and a bullfight Kilar had seen in Spain.
That was followed by a Prokofiev violin concerto, which I found comparatively dull. Francesca Dego is a big name violinist and I could appreciate her virtuosity. But, as a recovering violist, I’m not a huge fan of violins and, overall, the piece lacked the level of drama that the other two in the program had.
The final piece, which is why we had gone in the first place, was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. The rawness and the emotional tension was radical at its time, but is still powerful for those of us to whom it isn’t quite as revolutionary. I have, by the way, also seen film footage of the original choreography. It’s all very weird. At any rate, the orchestra handled the mixture of frenzy and pagan energy very well.
All in all, it was a good evening.
Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The next day, Cindy and I went to see a play titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner at Woolly Mammoth. This is the American premiere of this work by Jasmine Lee-Jones and I admit we knew nothing about it, but the title was intriguing. I did warn Cindy that everything I had ever seen at Woolly Mammoth was weird. Anyway, we had lunch at Teaism (one of my favorite informal restaurants - and the only place in the area I know of to get okonimayaki) beforehand. Before the play, we read the Zine that they had available, which discussed Jenner having had lip augmentation, selected vocabulary from “the Internet & Black British Slang” (yes, the play is British), and (most interesting to me) Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African woman who was displayed in London and Paris, where she became known as “the Hottentot Venus.” There are a number of different threads here, leading to a general theme about appropriating blackness.
I am hesitant to write too much about the play because the playwright has said she doesn’t want reviews by white people. So this is a short synopsis and not a review. The gist of it is a series of conversations between two women, Cleo and Kara. Cleo tweets criticisms of white women who co-opt and profit from Black culture, but some of the things she says spill out into real life, including her getting death threats. Also, Kara can’t forgive her for some anti-gay things she has also tweeted. There is a lot of slang used and, while it may all be defined in the zine they gave out, it wasn’t as if I could reference that during the play, so I would say I understood maybe 2/3 of it. Overall, it was interesting, but I am clearly not the target demographic. Younger people might be able to make more sense of it.
Crones and Tomes: I joined a second book club, specifically for older women to read books about women. We started this past Monday night (i.e. the 13th) with Heartburn by Nora Ephron and had a good, wide-ranging discussion of it. I only knew two of the women before (they are puzzle people) and I’m looking forward to getting to know the others better.
Book Club 2 My long-standing book club met on Wednesday night to discuss French Braid by Anne Tyler. I will write more in my quarterly book wrap-up, but the short version is that the book is 241 pages long and I spent 240 of them waiting for something to happen. One person did like the book.
Dinner at Clyde’s: I went to dinner with a couple of visiting Flyertalkers at Clyde’s at Gallery Place last night. It’s not the most exciting menu in D.C. but it’s fine for typical American cuisine. The conversation was about various Flyertalk events we’d been to and upcoming travel plans and things to do in different places (including here.)
By the way, I find it very amusing that the beer menu includes brewery locations for all of the beers they sell. Which makes sense for the Port City Monumental American-Style IPA I got (Alexandria, VA) and other craft brewery offerings. But does anybody really care that their Budweiser and Michelob Ultra are from Williamsburg, VA?
Duolingo: I’m at the 111 day mark on studying Spanish. I think I’ve learned a lot, as evidenced by my ability to read ads in Spanish at various places. But I still have a long ways to go. I’m also sloppy with writing, since they let you get away with using an English language keyboard, lacking accent marks. I’ve also had a couple of times when I think a daily quest has changed after I’ve done it, e.g. something like “find Oscar 7 times” has changed to “find Lily 7 times.” They also added another achievement to work on - Nocturnal, which requires doing lessons after 10 p.m. and I have a few more levels to go on that one. At any rate, it’s still fun, although I don’t know how many occasions are likely to come up where I need to talk about an evil sheep who the lions are all afraid of. This is, however, marginally less ridiculous than my Russian vocabulary, which includes the phrase "talking cockroaches live in Asia."
Tucson Follow-up, Part 1: Because several people commented on the picture of the miniature sculpture done on a pencil point and I had not written down the artist’s name, I did some strategic googling. The artist turns out to be a 50-year-old Russian man named Salivat Fidai. There are many pictures of his work on-line for your viewing pleasure.
Tucson Follow-up, Part 2: I have no idea how I forgot to mention this, but it was late afternoon when I finished up at the eastern part of Saguaro National Park on Sunday. I decided I could check out the Desert Diamond Casino for a little while, I have probably said this before, but my attitude towards gambling is that it is entertainment. I expect to lose, so I just decide how much I am willing to spend on being entertained along the way. I like slot machines with certain types of themes, typically ones oriented towards either space or a movie or television show I like. This casino had few of the ones I like, but I did eventually find a group of Little Shop of Horrors themed ones. I was within about 5 bucks of reaching my allowed losses when I hit a jackpot that paid me $400. So I kept playing for a while. Eventually, the plant fed me to the tune of a little over $700. Which was enough to cover my plane ticket and rental car, but not my hotel.
NSO: Continuing on to what I’ve done since I got back (i.e. over the past week or so), last Friday night, Cindy and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra. The program included three pieces, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. I had never seen him conduct before and I thought he did a good job. I especially appreciated that he made a point of having each section of the orchestra stand for final bows during the applause at the end of the evening.
The first piece on the program was Krzesany by Wojciech Kilar This was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it. It was very dramatic, especially the percussion section. Apparently, it was inspired by a mix of Polish folk dance and a bullfight Kilar had seen in Spain.
That was followed by a Prokofiev violin concerto, which I found comparatively dull. Francesca Dego is a big name violinist and I could appreciate her virtuosity. But, as a recovering violist, I’m not a huge fan of violins and, overall, the piece lacked the level of drama that the other two in the program had.
The final piece, which is why we had gone in the first place, was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. The rawness and the emotional tension was radical at its time, but is still powerful for those of us to whom it isn’t quite as revolutionary. I have, by the way, also seen film footage of the original choreography. It’s all very weird. At any rate, the orchestra handled the mixture of frenzy and pagan energy very well.
All in all, it was a good evening.
Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The next day, Cindy and I went to see a play titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner at Woolly Mammoth. This is the American premiere of this work by Jasmine Lee-Jones and I admit we knew nothing about it, but the title was intriguing. I did warn Cindy that everything I had ever seen at Woolly Mammoth was weird. Anyway, we had lunch at Teaism (one of my favorite informal restaurants - and the only place in the area I know of to get okonimayaki) beforehand. Before the play, we read the Zine that they had available, which discussed Jenner having had lip augmentation, selected vocabulary from “the Internet & Black British Slang” (yes, the play is British), and (most interesting to me) Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African woman who was displayed in London and Paris, where she became known as “the Hottentot Venus.” There are a number of different threads here, leading to a general theme about appropriating blackness.
I am hesitant to write too much about the play because the playwright has said she doesn’t want reviews by white people. So this is a short synopsis and not a review. The gist of it is a series of conversations between two women, Cleo and Kara. Cleo tweets criticisms of white women who co-opt and profit from Black culture, but some of the things she says spill out into real life, including her getting death threats. Also, Kara can’t forgive her for some anti-gay things she has also tweeted. There is a lot of slang used and, while it may all be defined in the zine they gave out, it wasn’t as if I could reference that during the play, so I would say I understood maybe 2/3 of it. Overall, it was interesting, but I am clearly not the target demographic. Younger people might be able to make more sense of it.
Crones and Tomes: I joined a second book club, specifically for older women to read books about women. We started this past Monday night (i.e. the 13th) with Heartburn by Nora Ephron and had a good, wide-ranging discussion of it. I only knew two of the women before (they are puzzle people) and I’m looking forward to getting to know the others better.
Book Club 2 My long-standing book club met on Wednesday night to discuss French Braid by Anne Tyler. I will write more in my quarterly book wrap-up, but the short version is that the book is 241 pages long and I spent 240 of them waiting for something to happen. One person did like the book.
Dinner at Clyde’s: I went to dinner with a couple of visiting Flyertalkers at Clyde’s at Gallery Place last night. It’s not the most exciting menu in D.C. but it’s fine for typical American cuisine. The conversation was about various Flyertalk events we’d been to and upcoming travel plans and things to do in different places (including here.)
By the way, I find it very amusing that the beer menu includes brewery locations for all of the beers they sell. Which makes sense for the Port City Monumental American-Style IPA I got (Alexandria, VA) and other craft brewery offerings. But does anybody really care that their Budweiser and Michelob Ultra are from Williamsburg, VA?
Duolingo: I’m at the 111 day mark on studying Spanish. I think I’ve learned a lot, as evidenced by my ability to read ads in Spanish at various places. But I still have a long ways to go. I’m also sloppy with writing, since they let you get away with using an English language keyboard, lacking accent marks. I’ve also had a couple of times when I think a daily quest has changed after I’ve done it, e.g. something like “find Oscar 7 times” has changed to “find Lily 7 times.” They also added another achievement to work on - Nocturnal, which requires doing lessons after 10 p.m. and I have a few more levels to go on that one. At any rate, it’s still fun, although I don’t know how many occasions are likely to come up where I need to talk about an evil sheep who the lions are all afraid of. This is, however, marginally less ridiculous than my Russian vocabulary, which includes the phrase "talking cockroaches live in Asia."
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Date: 2023-02-20 04:46 am (UTC)