Vacation, and the world slips sideways.

Yay. vacation. All I ever wanted, when coupled with spring break. Sun is shining, the weather is sweet. Makes me want to move my dancing feet.

Paloma Faith is rocking some sweet purple shoes at the end of this video:



I'm soaking up the magic in the air. There may be wine involved.

Blissed-out Saturday morning in Dallas

Spent Friday night at my parents' house and drove into Dallas Saturday morning for a hair appointment in Lakewood. Got there early enough that I needed to kill about 30 minutes, so I went to one of my old favorite gardening stores, Walton's Garden Center on Garland Road.

I was very happy already, because the weather was dreary/drippy (my favorite!) and the local classical station was playing Mozart's Don Giovanni (my favorite!) and garden places just do something wonderful for my heart. They had some wonderful pear tree espaliers that were delightful, and they had some trained wisteria trees where the wood had been formed into an umbrella shape. These were about $600, so there was no question of one coming home with me, but it was still lovely to be there.

They also had a great selection of candles from Votivo, and I found and remembered an old favorite, St. Germain-en-Laye Lavender, which is the ultimate rendering of the best parts of lavender (pretty!) and none of the worst (old lady!). I used to burn this candle in my house a long time ago, but I'd quite forgotten about this favorite. Yum. I bought one of these candles and a lovely pencil plant, and I feel ready to tackle getting some flower beds worked up this week while I'm off school and work.

Nice to have unexpectedly restorative moments, innit?
I hope you have a great week. :)

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: bedtime!

Chuy would be the first to own that he is a colossal tart, but we really can't fault him for that, can we? He's only human!

Happy 263rd birthday to supreme librettist Lorenzo da Ponte

The libretto (dimunutive Italian term for story or book) is the text of the opera to which the music is set. The great composers of 17th and 18th century opera rarely wrote their own libretti, but instead set existing texts to music.

Lorenzo da Ponte (10 March 1749 - 17 August 1838) was in my opinion the supreme librettist of all. Three of Mozart's most popular operas were settings of texts by da Ponte, including The Marriage of Figaro(1786), Cosi fan Tutte(1789) and perhaps my alltime favorite opera Don Giovanni(1787).

Interesting side note is that The Marriage of Figaro is a libretto based on a play by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais which was considered quite incendiary in a France which was primed for revolution. If you saw the marvelous film Amadeus, you saw a hint of that disonnance which colored the Austrian emperor's reception of an opera based on text that was giving his dear sister Antoinette some teeny bit of discomfort. Incidentally, the play showed the aristocracy to be entitled idiots unworthy of such privelege, while the servant class were quite put-upon and morally and in all other ways in fact superior to the aristocrats. Touchy subject matter!

Also worthy of note-- Mozart was Austrian, but he and the popular da Ponte were most celebrated in their lifetime in the Czech capital of Prague, which was and remains a great cultural center for the arts. Mozart was the original rock star, truly. Well deserved, in my humble opinion.

Another interesting note on The Marriage of Figaro is that this story is one of a series of three, the first installment being The Barber of Seville which was penned later(1816) by the inimitable Rossini and the final installment, The Ghosts of Versailles (1991) being composed and completed late in the last century.

from Don Giovanni - for tenor Placido Domingo 's 70th birthday gala concert, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott masterfully delivers a delightful rendering of the Catalog Aria, in which the Don's servant Leporello itemizes the magnificent degree of DG's bastardy:



Below, the Commendatore's statue has come to live to call debts due on a still-defiant Don Giovanni. The scene concludes with Don Giovanni being spirited to hell by fiery demons.
Good shit!

Spitting images. Or licking.

Every once in a while when watching films or cartoons, a snippet of one character or another will make me and/or Himself shout "that's CHUY!" or "that's PRALINE!" We recently watched Tangled and lo and behold, they had representations of both in one film, and to cardinal degrees. In fact, we shouted "That's ___________" simulatenously several times, and often throughout the movie. The chameleon tongue in the ear is a classic rendering of Chuy's patented Stealth Brain Squeegee™ maneuver.

To wit, here's the Chooch made over:


And here's sweet little death-to-sqwirlz Praline:


Seriously, the physicality of the horse is eerily like Praline's. Also the determined degree of focus is her in the flesh, and the toad-stomping out on the limb, well, it looks like the animators watched her stomping toads.

Love it! I loved the movie, in general. Highly recommended.

I deserve a break today.

A couple of hours ago, I completed my General Pscyhology essay and quiz. The subject this week was Intelligence, about which I had several thoughts, you may well imagine. I composed the document and attached it on the email to the professor with this message:

My submission this week is either brilliant or a steaming pile. Still, it's my baby and I'm not fit to judge it. My heart will not be broken if I score 100%.

I have to say, though, that I'm actually very pleased with the paper I composed. I generally try to cast ahead by at least a week and ruminate the subject of the essay for days and days before I am pressed to submit my labors to for assessment. This one was relatively difficult, though,
because I think there are many ways of manifesting intelligence in this world. As a person will do, I tend to look to the example of my parents. Dad has the most sophisticated mechanical sense of anyone I've ever met. He's a brilliant man.

I remember when I was about 3 or 4, Dad sat with my brother and me while Mom took her driver's test in Memphis. Many years later, Dad told me that Mom asked him soon after if she could take the car and go to the store. He said of course, and that she didn't need to ask. Dad made a great point to me that he didn't want a robot for a wife, and he wanted his children to have an intelligent mother. What could be more evolved than that? This also set a very high bar, and when my (soon-to-be ex-) husband started manifesting the chest-thumping stripe of a cultlike clicque at his church, I ran like hell.

In that subtle way, Dad was letting me know that he sees Mom as his partner, and not his subordinate. He respects her independence of thought, and he can relish that just as he has with her, she has chosen to walk her path in life at his side.

I wish I had total recall and could relate to you the Nick&Nora-worthy banter I've heard between those two over the years, but suffice it to say, it's a very high bar, indeed. I'm glad I've had such great examples of intelligence, so I'd be able to contrast real idiocy when I encounter same. :)

*********
I think I fared fairly well in my written and lab portions of the A&P mid-term exam. In any case, that's done with for now. As of 4:00PM this afternoon, I'm off school and work until a week and a half from now, and that's a very good thing.

a touch of burnout

Spring break is almost here. I have the second portion of my A&PI midterm in the lab this evening. I'm SOOOO tired. I have an assignment and quiz to complete for Gen Psych by Friday night. I'm right at a low A in that class and I'm not too worried about it. Still anxious about A&P, but I think I fared quite well on the written portion on Tuesday. So long as I do well in indentification of specimens tonight, I'll be alright. I think I have a very high B in that class, so far, and that'll do.

I still have a bit of a cough. I took the week off work next week and I've got to go to Dallas and then if I feel up to it, I may mosey out to the Santa Fe area to visit friends. We'll see. Or maybe, just maybe, a heifer could clean her house?

Maybe not. I need a wife!

I'm just glad this semester is halfway over. Amazing that it's been two whole months already, though. *whew*

smart doggie!

h/t to Lin!

Behind the musical...

If you remember the delectable Conan The Barbarian Musical, you'll be interested in the behind the scenes studio work that made on-screen magic.

Enjoy!

In defense of entertainers and freedom of speech

I admit I really like Howard Stern. I don't listen to him these days because because my morning drive to work involves me padding from the dogfood bowl to my desk in the dining area, plus I'm too cheap to pay for satellite radio. I also understand Stern going to paid subscriber radio so he doesn't have to deal with the same FCC cavalcade of bullcorn that is attendant with the fickle wiles of the listening public on open airwaves.

That said, Howard Stern used to, on occasion, (and I'm sure now does on a daily basis) say things I find repugnant, but I also knew I could turn my melon-farming radio off if he grew tiresome. Occasionally, I'd hear some flap about some group who was offended by something he said, and I thought they were pretty much full of shit for protesting, because I knew bloody well they were not in his listening audience anyway. Hullo. He's an entertainer, and you can turn off your radio or not listen.

Same goes for Rush Limbaugh. I don't agree with everything he's ever said, and I don't listen to him these days, but used to listen to him frequently. In fact, other than my girlfriend who was on the radio Saturday and Pandora, I'm not radio-listening public these days at all.

Rush Limbaugh is not a politician-- he is an entertainer. He has a right to say what he wants, however questionable the taste of his commentary.

I cringed when Gilbert Gottfried made crappy jokes about the Japanese tsunami last year, but nearly un-hinged my eyeballs from rolling them so hard when AFLAC canceled his endorsement contract. Gilbert was an asshole comedian BEFORE they hired him and BEFORE the tsunami, and they HAD to know this. It was therefore asinine to drop him as a commercial announcer because he suddenly said the wrong jerky thing. I spit on the spinelessness of a commercial entity who whiplashes themselvesin a 180 degree turn to distance themselves from someone based on political correctness.

Same goes for Rush Limbaugh and the current flap about birth-control, video sex, whatever. I used to listen fairly regularly, and I find him entertaining, thought-provoking and -- yes-- occasionally exasperating. But again, I can exercise my ability to turn off the radio. I'm really too intercoursing busy to waste a lot of energy reading the whole story, but I can say unequivocally that I'm sure what he said was in very poor taste and I'm sure he regrets it. I can also say that in this election year, there MUST be more important things we need to decide and discuss (or is that only a valid point when the person on the hot seat is a Democrat?).

The huge public outcry of a bunch of people who don't even listen to his show, is therefore, pretty weak, in my opinion. What about when James Carrville said "if you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park..."??? I found that offensive to the core of my being and he is involved in our political process and was at that time. Sexism and offensive comments are not unique to one side of the political aisle or the other. I just know that we're not going to solve or resolve it, ever, and this looks like an opportunistic swipe at freedom of speech, to me.

Do I want to pay for the birth control for millions of horny coeds whose annual college tuition costs more than I earn in a year? F*** no.

Do I want to see videos of them using the birth control I paid for? Certainly not.

Playing the hypocrite card here-- I can think of many of my fellow Americans to whose sterilization I will happily contribute.

If I wait for an entertainment forum that will be 100% in lockstep with my own views and tastes, then there will be no one to entertain me but myself, and that would get old. I require amusement. I realize on a daily basis that things I've said here or there may have cast me in the light of the most inveterate jerk. When appropriate, I try to apologize and/or explain myself. Other times, my jerkiness is just like the bellybutton thing and we all need to accept that we don't always agree.

As for the hue and cry from an outraged public regarding what pretty much any entertainer ever says, well, get over it, darlings. Don't listen to him. But don't try to shut someone down because you disagree. Build a better mousetrap. Bring a better argument. Win on the battlefield of ideas rather than bringing the censorship.

And if you suddenly find yourself involved in a letter-writing campaign to sponsors of a show to which you did not listen anyway, you really need to think about your own sense of balance and fair play, or maybe you -- like myself-- are comfortable with a certain degree of contradiction. Or hypocrisy.

I have to go study now.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: Nostrildamus lives!

Amazingly, we are many weeks down the road and Nostrildamus abides, squeaker intact. So obsessed is Miss Praline with her Sacred Piggie that Chuy has taken over the beloved ball-ball. Of course, ball-ball doesn't squeak, nor does it feature the universe-swallowing nostrils, so it hardly merits notice for my fur-girlie. No matter to Chuy-- he's tucked into larking about with ball-ball with great abandon. He will haul tail to fetch the ball-ball, but he jauntily saunters back with it in an unhurried gait that will allow him to smell the roses along the way, occasionally stopping to investigate spots where merited, and to mark when necessary.

I have to say that when I wake up-- as I did this morning-- with a little furball glued to each side of me, I find myself in the most felicitous of imaginable states. No amount of wealth, success or status exists on this planet to excel the pure joy I feel with my little doggies. They are my heaven on earth.

Bless 'em! Bliss me.

GO HERE NOW to hear an angelic singer!

Click on this link to go to WRR radio station and listen to a live brodcast of The Metropolitan Opera.

My friend Latonia Moore is making her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of the opera Aida. She is filling in for the Soprano who was cast in that role, but was ill. Latonia has performed Aida at Covent Garden and is a favorite in opera houses in Dresden, Hamburg and Bilbao. Why she has not been featured at Metropolitan Opera before now is baffling, frankly.

We became friends when we trained with the same voice teacher at UNT. Latonia is a vibrant and exciting person to be around offstage, but onstage, her voice is absolutely electrifying. I think the Met will be hounded to cast her in more roles. She will be a favorite Butterfly, too. She's also a superb actress. Her technique is impeccable, and the house just went absolute bonkers during the first act after her first aria. For friends of Latonia, this is a red-letter day. SO incredibly happy for her. :)

Bravissima, Bella Voce!

Texas Independence Day: March 2, 1836

This is not my bunny nest, but it is one like it.

The bunnies seem to be doing fine. One rogue baby has crawled out of the nest several times, and we've scooped it up and popped it back into the nest. I found it about 8 inches from the nest about 7AM as I was leaving for school on Tuesday morning. I picked him up and he was all stiff and cool and I worried he'd died in the night, but he started wiggling so I popped him back in the nest and I haven't seen him crawling off since.

Mama bunny has made a nice new downy plug of her underfur to cover over the nest, and then she's covered that over with the coconut fiber, which came from the lining of a plant basket.

Trying to kind of keep an eye on them without being too present. I figure the bunnies, like the ones in this video, were around a week old when the lawnmower first exposed them. I also figure the less used they are to being around people, the better for the bunnies.

Sweet little things, though. They are incredibly lovely. :)

BUNNY UPDATE:
The nest is empty this morning, the cover pulled away. I'm hoping Mama Bunny moved them, but I'll never know. :(