QOTD: "The cruelest lies are often told in silence." - R. L. Stevenson
Reading: William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
Listening to: Gavin Bryars, A Farewell to Philosophy
Decluttering accomplishments: finished one stack of papers, started organizing photo negatives, threw out a few magazines
Assuming I am still at the same job next year, I am going to go somewhere over Christmas. The advantage of quiet times is that you can catch up on odds and ends and do what amounts to housekeeping. But this past week was ridiculous. Quiet is one thing; deathly still is another. Even on Friday, when half my group was in, we were resorting to reading restaurant menus to one another. I'm not expecting much more of the next couple of days, even though more people will be back.
That did mean time to catch up on some things at home, but I've created as much chaos as I've cured, as I've dragged things out to go through. And I don't do more than a half hour or so of housework before taking a nap or reading for a couple of hours or the like. There is some visible progress, though, especially since I actually finally hung the pictures I'd gotten framed several weeks ago. And I think I've finally figured out how to hang a large batik I bought a few years ago in Tanzania. Dowels are the key.
In other news, we did have a white Christmas and the snow was exactly perfect. How so? Well, it came on a day when I didn't have to go anywhere and was just enough of a dusting to make things look pretty without messing up transportation too much. It warmed up enough afterwards that I didn't really even have to expend any effort in removing it from my car, especially as I didn't drive anywhere until the weekend. It continues to delight me how infrequently I use my car - quite a change from Los Angeles!
I also used two more of my free movie coupons. Thursday night, I saw Two Weeks Notice. It was pretty much predictable chick flick fare, which was what I expected. I did wish that Hugh Grant had kept his shirt on, but I don't need to reiterate my complaint about the hairless chests of Hollywood. At any rate, it was an entertaining enough diversion, though hardly a breakthrough in film making. The new experience I had was with the theatre I went to, which is in a mall not far from where I work (and on the way home via Metro, which is quite convenient). They showed the previews before the advertisements, which is just so so very wrong. Ads at the movies are bad enough to begin with, but if they must be there, let them be before the previews, so they're easier to ignore.
Today's expedition was to yet another movie theatre, which entailed a metro trip to Friendship Heights, as the theatre there was the only one in the area where Chicago is playing. I suppose parking on the weekend would be feasible, particularly if one were willing to pay, but the metro is far less stressful. I took advantage of geographic proximity to go first to the Washington Toy and Dollhouse Museum. I got confused enough finding it from the metro station to discover that there really is a Friendship Avenue lending the neighborhood its name. I'm still a bit confused, though, as I'm not sure how that fits into D.C. street naming taxonomy. For the uninitiated, the alphabetical streets start out nicely enough with A through Z, followed by one-syllable words starting with each letter. Then they go on to two syllables through the alphabet and on to three syllable names. I'm not sure if they ever get to four syllable names. So I don't understand why Friendship Avenue is across Western from Jennifer, which is in its proper place. I suspect that Maryland has a hand in this. As for the museum, it's a private collection and is reasonably impressive, though the explanatory placards are largely inadequate. The most interesting exhibit was of "Sunday toys" which were considered to have some sort of religious or moral component, allowing them to be used on Sunday by the children of even the most Puritanical families. The museum was worth an hour or so, but I wouldn't consider it essential D.C. sightseeing unless you were taking an elementary school age girl around the city.
As for Chicago, part of my motivation for seeing it was that it has always struck me as a musical that couldn't be filmed. I'm pleased to say I was wrong, and that the movie version is successful at capturing the feeling of the show. There are changes, but they're changes that enhance the experience for the viewer. Well, except for not having Gwen Verdon, but given that she's dead, that's forgiveable. And, overall, the choreography was quite good, particularly in "The Cell Block Tango" and in "We Both Reached For the Gun." That's important because Chicago has always been a choreography-dominated show, more closely linked to Bob Fosse than to Kander and Ebb. All in all, I'd say this is the best movie adaptation of Broadway musical in a long time. Well worth seeing.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel