1. I know the music from everyone else's high school graduation year much better than the music from my own. I keep getting the most awful songs earwormed from your graduation years, but even the ones I know from mine are no trouble at all. Whereas you all have me mumbling along to the worst hits of my birth year, my sixth grade year, even my freshman year of high school. Sir Mix-A-Lot and Petula Clark will live together in my head for the next week. Thanks, folks. ("I like downtown and I cannot lie....")
2. The random questions meme? Ohhhh, that really, really didn't go well for me. It kept asking questions like, "Will [friend who is feeling really insecure right now] ever make anything of him/herself?" Gosh, that's a trigger-point we all need; thanks, randomizer! (For the record, I think everyone on my friendslist is already something. Some of you are quite something, but never mind that now.)
It was even worse when I did the version where I wrote down the answers and then randomized a new set of questions for those answers, because it would come out something like, "What is the sexiest thing about
markgritter?" "Absolutely nothing. I cannot imagine anything. It's just inconceivable." Which is not true and also not particualrly fun/funny. Over and over again, the cringe-worthy responses mingled with the dull. So I gave up.3. My icons are all of me. So the pairings of my icons are "me and me." We don't actually get along all that well some days, but we muddle through.
It's too bad, too, because I've been feeling like being randomly entertained by memeage.
Anyway, a couple of people have asked about "The Constant Wife" from Wednesday night.
gaaldine and the_overqual gave me a Guthrie gift certificate for my birthday, and I was poking around trying to decide on a plan when pameladean said she and dd_b were going to "The Constant Wife" and were going to have a backstage tour from one of her friends who works at the Guthrie. So we arranged to go at the same time, and the backstage tour was lovely. I've been going to the Guthrie since I was tiny, so it was particularly neat to see behind the scenes with 8-year-old me in my head. We used to go to "The Christmas Carol" when I was little, several years running. And, oh, when I got to college, I had already read Tam Lin halfway to rags, and within the first fortnight there was a sign up in the student activities office that we could take a bus up to see "King Lear." Which wasn't "Hamlet" but would do in a pinch, and then -- you remember in Tam Lin how they argued about Hamlet being of a different ethnic background? Cordelia was black and the rest of the family white, and the world had once again settled itself the way it ought to go. And then last year there was the "Pirates of Penzance" production that made me 11 years old again for a few hours. So the Guthrie and I, we've had some good times and rather few bad ones.I will be glad to see the new Guthrie. It looks like they'll do nifty things with it, and it looks like there's some chance we'll be able to take
timprov there without doing him serious harm once he's feeling a bit better, unlike the current Guthrie, which is made for people shorter than I am. The old Guthrie has done extremely well by me, and I'm fond of it and will in some ways be sorry to see it go, but I'm not one to scorn the Minneapolis of today in favor of the Minneapolis of yesterday. Cities are living things; they have to change, too.As for the play itself, it was fairly well-done. The lead actress sparkled as she was supposed to, and the play really stood or fell on her abilities. I can see why Somerset Maugham is not better known for his plays right now: the ending and theme were decidedly unconventional (I approved), but the play was fairly traditionally structured. You aren't going to get avant garde credit for doing Somerset Maugham because his stuff is too old, and you aren't going to get High Art credit because it's sparkly and funny, and you aren't going to get Traditional/Family credit because it's not that old, and also because the average kid will understand the bits that are not in line with the Traditional Family Values our culture has constructed in the last fifty (or even the last twenty) years.
Not everything has to be in line with Traditional Family Values. I'd go to see another Somerset Maugham play. I didn't laugh everywhere the rest of the audience laughed, but I laughed a fair bit. I'm still not sure what to do about the SF story that's now rattling around my head, but as the first option is "let it percolate until I'm more sure," I think we'll go with that.
It's raining and thundering like mad here this morning. Pitchforks and hammerhandles, as they say. I hope it eases off in the next half hour or so, because
missista will need to go outside when she wakes up, and while she deals all right with rain, muddy puppy can be a fair mess.I'm about 1/4 through this draft of Sampo, and I'm beginning to suspect it will be okay eventually. Not this week, but eventually. And I've got Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb down to read for revision inspiration, and until then I'm reading River of Gods (no opinion yet -- just started). Also I keep picking at bits of The Collected Jorkens: Volume One when I'm upstairs. And so we keep going.
