Thursday, October 15, 2009
Ode to a raindrop.
Hello friends. It's fall break time here at the University of Tennessee. I am lounging, listening to the rain tumble through the eaves and my upstairs neighbor play the piano. Currently, she is plinking. Plink plink plink--but I can tell she really knows how to play. There is a certain familiarity, a certain confidence with which she strikes the notes of all those little piano games we all learned as children. "Chopsticks." That one where you roll your knuckles across the black keys. Not that I have anything against "Chopsticks," but I wouldn't mind a little Vivaldi. I wouldn't mind a little Clint Mansell. Hahaha. I should tell you that I don't know anything about piano. Specifically, I don't know if Vivaldi wrote/was well known for compositions on piano. Perhaps all composers compose with a piano. If Mr. Holland's Opus has taught me anything they do.
Later, I will do homework, work on grad school stuff, and study for that godforsaken GRE. That is my break, and let me tell you: I don't mind. I also might re-watch the first four episodes of Bored to Death, since our household is getting six months of free HBO (including On Demand) or whatever the deal is...and I can. I like this show more each time I watch it. And not just because Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis are in it. Ted Danson is also in it (!)--whose commendable hair (I've recenetly been informed) is actually a commendable wig. But really, this show is...charming. It's also humorous. Those words are really dull and lame, but I can't think of better ones right now. Bored to Death is...slightly different from everything else that's on T.V. right now, in my opinion (which may not be a very good one, 'cause I don't watch much T.V.). And if I may take liberty with the essays found in Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, I'd like to quote from Charles Baxter to illustrate a point:
Scenes in Bored to Death are recognizable and unrecognizable simultaneously, and not because a large portion of the show is set among the New York literati--a world that is forgein to most of us but not hard to imagined. It's because there are scenes where Jason Schwartzman's character is talking on the phone with a Nerf dart affixed to his finger. There are scenes where Zach Galifianakis is arguing with his girlfriend at the breakfast table, suddenly standing up to reveal that he's not wearing pants, only sad, baggy, white briefs. And you smile, not because he's been in his underwear this whole time, but because the bagginess makes the scene kinda weird...and real.
Okay--I wrote the above on Thursday. It's now 1:23 a.m. on Sunday, and I think maybe I sound like a big a-hole, what with quoting books and relating them to HBO programming. Seriously though, those Baxter essays are changing my life, I think. And so is this GRE book. The Princeton Review has a sense of humor AND they are teaching me seventh grade math again.
I think I have heartburn--what does it feel like? Shouldn't I know what it feels like by now? Yes.
Later, I will do homework, work on grad school stuff, and study for that godforsaken GRE. That is my break, and let me tell you: I don't mind. I also might re-watch the first four episodes of Bored to Death, since our household is getting six months of free HBO (including On Demand) or whatever the deal is...and I can. I like this show more each time I watch it. And not just because Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis are in it. Ted Danson is also in it (!)--whose commendable hair (I've recenetly been informed) is actually a commendable wig. But really, this show is...charming. It's also humorous. Those words are really dull and lame, but I can't think of better ones right now. Bored to Death is...slightly different from everything else that's on T.V. right now, in my opinion (which may not be a very good one, 'cause I don't watch much T.V.). And if I may take liberty with the essays found in Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, I'd like to quote from Charles Baxter to illustrate a point:
The moderately strange in the middle of the ordinary is a lens for focusing the ordinary. Without it, the ordinary has nothing against which to define itself...We usually cannot recognize ourselves in a piece of fiction unless we have been taken down a path in which we find ourselves split and we meet ourselves coming in the other direction...It's like the moment when, often early in the morning, perhaps in a strange house, you pass before a mirror you hadn't known would be there. You see a glimpse of someone reflected in the mirror, and a moment passes before you recognize that person is yourself. Literature exists in moments like that.
Scenes in Bored to Death are recognizable and unrecognizable simultaneously, and not because a large portion of the show is set among the New York literati--a world that is forgein to most of us but not hard to imagined. It's because there are scenes where Jason Schwartzman's character is talking on the phone with a Nerf dart affixed to his finger. There are scenes where Zach Galifianakis is arguing with his girlfriend at the breakfast table, suddenly standing up to reveal that he's not wearing pants, only sad, baggy, white briefs. And you smile, not because he's been in his underwear this whole time, but because the bagginess makes the scene kinda weird...and real.
Okay--I wrote the above on Thursday. It's now 1:23 a.m. on Sunday, and I think maybe I sound like a big a-hole, what with quoting books and relating them to HBO programming. Seriously though, those Baxter essays are changing my life, I think. And so is this GRE book. The Princeton Review has a sense of humor AND they are teaching me seventh grade math again.
I think I have heartburn--what does it feel like? Shouldn't I know what it feels like by now? Yes.
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