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”…

Protected: Forced To Deal

This con­tent is pass­word pro­tect­ed. To view it please enter your pass­word below:

Got My House Back

House stippling

The house is final­ly back to its’ for­mer glo­ry. The exhaust pipes to my water heater and fur­nace have been replaced, the holes in the ceil­ings have been patched up, sand­ed, stip­pled, and paint­ed.

This means a few things of sig­nif­i­cance:

  • I get to dress based on mood again. I would come home and hang my clothes off the ban­is­ter, then put the same clothes on in the morn­ing, because my clos­et doors would be taped shut to pre­vent dust and errant paint/stipple from get­ting in there.
  • I get to sleep in my bed again. The entire bed­room was a mess, so I had been sleep­ing on the couch for almost three weeks. It felt weird to go back to a big mat­tress, like I was sleep­ing on some sort of unlim­it­ed sur­face area.
  • I get to use my photo/Tai Chi stu­dio. Almost all my fur­ni­ture was moved to the guest room. I haven’t been able to prac­tice my Tai Chi, or take pic­tures of things against a drop sheet.
  • I have the use of my main com­put­er. Playing games on a lap­top screen does­n’t cut it when you’re used to three 24″ mon­i­tors, and music sounds the way it’s sup­posed to when you have a decent sub­woofer.
  • No more time off work. I’m lucky in that I have such a short com­mute, but being there dur­ing con­struc­tion still meant that I lost two days of pay.

I spent most of the week­end wip­ing dust of every­thing down­stairs — walls, mir­rors, dec­o­ra­tions, counter tops. The splat­ters of paint were tak­en care of with a bot­tle of Varsol and a Q‑tip. A few paint touch-ups were need­ed too, but noth­ing too bad. Then the house got an over­all clean­ing, to get rid of the evi­dence of mud­dy boots, dirt, and ran­dom pieces of garbage brought in dur­ing the whole process.

My back and feet are still sore from rush­ing to get every­thing done, but it was oh so worth it to have the cozy com­fort of my house again.

Love Bias

Sometimes, she reach­es down and grabs a hand­ful of my der­rière. I laugh a ner­vous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girl­friends have been so zeal­ous in their pinch­ing, or rev­eled in such an act. My laugh is one of sur­prise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react oth­er­wise? I hard­ly con­sid­er this thin-framed body, a frail com­par­i­son to the phys­i­cal con­ven­tions of a man, as being sex­u­al or attrac­tive.

This is why I think she loves me.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.

Documentary Night

Picking vinyl

Thumbnail: Banister kitty
Thumbnail: CD rack
Thumbnail: Playing Wii
Thumbnail: Tree piece
Thumbnail: Stealing kitty
 

A cam­era to mask my shy­ness, a lens to hide behind.

At Audra and Jesse’s I felt like I was back in uni­ver­si­ty. Meeting peo­ple, learn­ing names, throw­ing in for some piz­za. Except this time, I was­n’t being dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing to the par­ty. Maybe I was just feel­ing social, because I had­n’t seen my own friends in so long.

I learned that play­ing Punch Out on the Wii is as nat­ur­al to you as it was back when you were in your room back in ele­men­tary school, cry­ing because you were no one’s best friend. That watch­ing Air Guitar Nation — when it’s hard to tell how seri­ous­ly the con­tes­tants take them­selves — is much more enjoy­able with sar­cas­tic com­ments applied lib­er­al­ly from the audi­ence.

I want to know these peo­ple.

I want to find out what dri­ves them. I want to know why they cre­ate, why they’ve cho­sen their medi­ums. Why they hang out togeth­er. Why they stud­ied what they stud­ied. Why they have the jobs they do.

They’re well-read, edu­cat­ed, opin­ion­at­ed, cos­mopoli­tan. I felt some­what out of place. Topics of con­ver­sa­tion weren’t even close to my inter­ests. Concerts aren’t my scene. Politics con­fuse me. Things are hap­pen­ing to oth­er friends I’ve nev­er met. But when there’s this much to learn, lis­ten­ing is just as good as tak­ing part.

It was past mid­night by the time I got home, but I had hard time falling asleep. My brain was buzzing, try­ing to take in every­thing I had just expe­ri­enced.