Monthly Archives: January 2009

Replacement Pillow

I sleep with three dif­fer­ent pil­lows.

The one for my head is reg­u­lar sized, with foam fill­ing, and rather flat because I like to sleep with my arm under there. The one on my left is also foam, but a body pil­low. The one on my right is king-sized and filled with down. I like to sleep on my side pressed between the two, and through the night, I’ll alter­nate between sides, hug­ging one.

When she comes over, she takes the king-sized one. My head pil­low is too flat, and obvi­ous­ly my body pil­low is too big.

So I lose my king-sized, and she becomes my replace­ment pil­low.

Christmas Swag

In terms of presents, the Christmas sea­son has been good to me. Even though I decid­ed not to do gifts for any­one this year, that does­n’t stop peo­ple from buy­ing me things. Along with a Mexx gift cer­tifi­cate, Eagle vs. Shark on DVD, and an elec­tric hot rod that I can build, I got some great gifts.

Christmas stocking

My first Christmas stock­ing since leav­ing home. I used to have a stock­ing that my grand­moth­er knit back when I was one (if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly), which had my name on it, and Santa bend­ing over putting some­thing down, but look­ing at the view­er as if he was caught in the act of deliv­er­ing presents.

Instead of a star or angel on top of the tree, it would be my stock­ing. Since my grand­moth­er was very much Chinese and not born into this cul­ture, I always imag­ined her say­ing, “Silly white peo­ple and their sil­ly myth­i­cal fat peo­ple”, while knit­ting it.

Continue read­ing “Christmas Swag”…

To Write And To Remember

I admit that I not only save oth­er peo­ple’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be remind­ed of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemer­al nature of blogs in gen­er­al, com­bined with the fick­le nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medi­um, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, start­ed pro­tect­ing their entries, or delet­ed their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exact­ly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, does­n’t mean they were nev­er spo­ken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

An Opera at The Met

When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­si­ty “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­at­ed by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­did­ly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

Orfeo ed Euridice

So when my local movie the­atre start­ed offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decid­ed I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spir­it, if not in the flesh.

Continue read­ing “An Opera at The Met”…