Radio Free Lime

Puppies! OMG PUPPIES!

2008-04-23T18:58:38Z

A work friend just came charging into my office babbling about the lobby of the building across the street being chock-full'o'puppies. So of course I had to investigate-- Discovery Channel films a lot of stuff at a studio across the street from NPR and it turned out they were having auditions for, yes, the PUPPY BOWL today! Puppies! A whole roomful of PUPPIES! I'm not even a dog person but ooooo their little earses and their little noses and their soft little paws and their little tailses going slappity slappity slappity on the floor! And there were dachshunds! And beagles! And funny foxfaced ones! And little fuzzy mutts! So yeah. I've just been petting an entire roomful of puppies. What a nice way to spend my lunch break!

Misty-eyed nostalgia

2008-04-05T20:19:29Z

I was bored at work today and googled my old college radio station-- and this is it, the very 8-pot LPB board I learned to DJ on way back in the dark prehistory of 1993. It was old even then. If you've ever heard me bitch about cleaning sticky dried-up Coke spills out of a mixing board because the fucking metal DJs never followed the no-food-in-the-studio rules, this was the board. If you've ever heard me talk about being down in the station at 4am, watching the VU meters dance to Young Disciples' "Apparently Nuthin," these were the meters. I can't believe it's still in service... though given that this pic was apparently taken in 2003, it may have gone to board heaven by now. My god, I miss it!

Random desperate request

2008-01-19T00:01:41Z

Does ANYONE out there (within driving distance) happen to own Season 4 of the Highlander TV series? I, uh... well, I need it for work. By tomorrow. And none of the video places around here have it. Help!

Bat! Bat! BAT! BATBATBATBATBAT!!!!

2007-12-23T00:29:45Z

You all have probably heard me babble ad nauseam about the adorable NPR Bat-- so here she is, in full-on stereophonic SQUEEEEE-ness!

Could you not just die of the cute? Our bat rescue lady reports she has gained three grams since coming to the sanctuary, and in fact stuffed herself with so many mealworms a few days ago that she got an upset stomach. Poor little bat!

And if you HAVEN'T heard me babble about this, the gist of what happened is that our online staff noticed a bat roosting in the side of an office building right across the street from NPR, next to a busy bus stop. So we brought in a bat rescue expert to have a look. Here's the segment that we just aired-- have a listen, if it is your will: Bat Winters in D.C., to Delight of Urban Dwellers

Happy Solstice!

2007-12-22T04:56:58Z

i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday

-- e.e. cummings

To all my friends, far and near, I give you joie on this, the Longest Night.

Chinatown London beats the pants off Chinatown DC

2007-10-23T20:58:38Z

We are off to Whitby tomorrow, and SO NOT PACKED, but artnouveauho and I took time off this evening for a trip to Garlic & Shots with our lovely friend P and then a womble around Chinatown. Where I found some, erm, INTERESTING baked goods in the stores. These are for you, jessicamelusine!

Sadly, the psychedelic cake is destined to be tomorrow's breakfast on the train to Whitby. But this next product, by gum, will come home with me and make an appearance at a Bufficrucian feast:

Couque D'Asses. I, um, well... actually I'm left speechless. And on the unfortunate product front, here's a souvenir of my time in Germany. I found it it an appliance shop window near my hotel in Munich.

Anyone for a Red Dwarf marathon? Speaking of Germany, I'm sorry I've been so utterly pants about updating the trip blog. Here's a link to the blog on the RTNDA site, which is basically the same thing with less snarkiness. Scroll down to find all the installments: http://www.rtnda.org/pages/rtnda-blog.php

I've also just realized I forgot to say anything about Prague... and I hardly took any pictures while I was there either. I guess you all already know what Prague looks like-- and I don't need pics because the place is etched into my brain. It was very strange how little had changed. It's more touristy and more expensive now that the Czech Republic has joined the EU, but in every other respect it's exactly the same, to the point where I was finding it eerie to be there and not be 24 anymore. My favorite gelato stand is still there, in the Svetozor passage by the Vodickova tram stop. Fried cheese still tastes the same (and didn't I hit every stand on Wenceslas Square). My feet still remember the geography of the city (though I was sort of winging it in places). Mustek metro stop still stinks. My favorite tea room is still there and they still have the spicy tea with the milk and honey to mix into it. When they took us for a tour of Radio Free Europe, the guys I used to work with were still there in the newsroom. My friends are all still there, and when we went to my old favorite bar, the owner was still behind the bar, next to the same barfly who was always there six years ago, and they both recognized me, and we all got pasted together (that actually wasn't eerie, in fact, it made me feel mightily cool).

It was all a bit overwhelming-- I had planned to go back to Prague after finishing the RIAS program, but after only a day there I felt like I'd had as much nostalgia as I could handle, so I took off for Dublin to visit with my old friend J and finally meet his wife and stepdaughter-- it was a lovely few days. He has a good life now, and I'm happy to see him settled. However, it was really, REALLY funny to see one of the most degenerate bastards I know chopping veggies for the lunchbox and dutifully initialling homework sheets. Awwww!

Well, enough rambling. I leave you with the one picture I did take in Prague:

This is a parody of the famous statue of King Wenceslas, by the sculptor David Cerny (he of the Pink Tank). It hangs in Lucerna Passage (one over from Svetozor), and yes-- it's JUST the same as it was when I lived there.

Hard to believe I'll be home this time next week!

Or at least he THINKS he did...

2007-10-08T22:52:07Z

My old friend J. called me today after way, WAY too long out of touch. "Where the hell are you?" he asked, and I shot back, "in a five-star hotel room in Dresden with no pants on."

For reals, all you out there in radio land-- I don't know where RIAS gets their money, but for these two days in Dresden we're staying at a historic pile with jacuzzis in every room and the fanciest pool I've ever seen. Whoo-ee! I slipped and fell in the sauna and nearly cracked a rib, but I can't feel sorry for myself, somehow.

I'm sorry I've been such a terrible foreign correspondent-- I STILL haven't written another installment of the official blog, and at this point I have no idea if I'll manage it. Just to give you an idea of how packed and exhausting our days are, Saturday (our last day in Berlin) was supposedly a free day, so they offered us a morning excursion to Potsdam (which is the next town over, just across the famous bridge where East and West used to exchange spies). So in one morning they carted us to the house of the Wannsee Conference (AAAIIIGH!!), then Cecilienhof, which is where Churchill, Stalin, and Truman carved up Europe (OOOOOH!), and finally Frederick the Great's palace of Sans Souci (WHEEEE!) and a quick lunch in chokingly quaint downtown Potsdam, then back to Berlin where we fought through hordes of tourists to see the ruined church they call the Tooth (SIGH). Then I spent an hour or so in the brutally crowded KaDeWe (that's sort of like the Harrods of Berlin) getting souvenirs, and at last I ran over to the Zoo on my own to meet a friend and see Knut the Eisbär for all of five minutes (AWWWW!) and have a beer in a lovely beergarden by the Zoo. And after dinner, since it was our last night in Berlin, two of the girls on the program persuaded me to go clubbing with them-- and hoo baby are Berlin clubs snotty. We finally got into the third place we tried, and drank and danced until 2am, and THEN I came home and packed. I figure if I get in trouble with the EU regulations for checked baggage weight on the way to Brussels, I can always store stuff in the bags under my eyes.

So anyways, let's skip right over the rest of the week in Berlin and get to Dresden, already. I didn't expect to like it so much-- I'd only ever come through Dresden on the train before, and from the train, all you can see are socialist slab palaces. Nicely restored, but but 'Florence on the Elbe?' Naaaah. Not after the Allied bombers got done with it. That, however, was seven years ago (my visit, I mean, not the firebombing), and since then the industrious Saxons have been beavering away, rebuilding Dresden in more or less the image of its former glory. The downtown is really very nice-- it reminds me a lot of Prague, although Prague with considerably more pretensions to culture, and unlike Prague, it's positively ringing with the sound of construction.

We got to Dresden yesterday noonish, and had a free hour before our scheduled walking tour, so a bunch of us ran over to the Zwinger-- which is not, as you might think, anything to do with German suburbanites in bondage gear, but rather a lovely Baroque museum housing Old Master paintings, crazy-ass armor, and a huge collection of Meissen porcelain (which is historically interesting, since Meissen was the first town in Europe to duplicate Chinese porcelain, but I didn't have time to go look at it). The Zwinger has the famous Sistine Madonna (ever see those dopey pouting cherubs? This is the original), a Vermeer, some Holbeins, and my favorite, Van Dyck's portraits of poor old Charles the First of England, along with his wife and kids. I've seen those portraits reproduced in countless history books, but stumbling unexpectedly across them in the Zwinger was a treat. Then I ran across the way to the armor exhibit, which was OFF THE HOOK-- more crazily carved and jeweled and ornamented arms and armor than you can shake a stick with. I was longing for a reënactor to explain it all to me-- orkamedies, where are you? THEN it was time for a walking tour of Dresden, the highlight of which (IMHO) was a huge tile mural called the 'Fürstenzug,' which means, more or less, the 'Parade of Princes.' It stretches for several hundred feet and depicts every ruler of Dresden (and they were all from the Wettin family, which by the way was vaguely related to Victoria's beloved Prince Albert) from 1873 all the way back to the very first Wettin in the 12th century. The mural was originally sgraffito (don't ask me what that is, all's I know is it has something to do with scratching on plaster) but had deteriorated so much by the start of the 20th century that it was redone with Meissen tiles-- which, poetically enough, survived the firebombing of Dresden untouched, since porcelain is fired at such high temperatures.

I guess I hadn't had QUITE enough culture after that, so I hit the New Green Vault, an exhibition of more than a thousand fantastically jeweled court doodads collected by the great Saxon ruler August the Strong and his assorted relatives. OH MY FUCKING GOD. Room upon room upon ROOM of the most unbelievably gorgeous craftsmanship in gold and ivory and jewels and everything else-- hundreds of faces carved on one cherry pit! Little dancing men made out of baroque pearls that looked like someone's butt! A clock with a glass gobe containing a jeweled golden Orpheus playing the lyre for wild beasts while a little enameled cupid pointed out the time! A goblet balanced on the golden horns of an enameled stag, topped with an ivory Artemis in a bath dripping pearls! A huge sailing ship carved of ivory, even to the sails! A green diamond as big as my thumb! THE ENTIRE GODDAMN COURT OF AURANGZEB REPRODUCED IN SILVER, GOLD, ENAMEL, AND GEMS!!!! IT WAS THREE FEET SQUARE AND THERE WERE IVORY ELEPHANTS BEARING JEWELED MOORS IN WROUGHT-GOLD HOWDAHS!!!! Sorry, I'm getting a little worked up. I dug the Green Vault.

And then we had dinner in a place that's basically Dresden's version of Medieval Times. I think you probably had to be there-- but it was pretty goddamn funny hearing our guides trying to tell us that the costumed waitresses all had nice cleavage.

Today, the highlight was a trip to VW's famous Transparent Factory-- which I had seen on MeFi or Boingboing or somewhere similar, but being there was something else entirely. The whole place is basically a marketing stunt, which the plant director admitted to us-- it's designed to get people to accept the idea that VW can make luxury cars. Hence the insanely luxurious and ultramodern plant with its overhead production line (no pits! no grease!) where the cars process grandly by on their beechwood floored conveyor belt with built-in air conditioning and induction power (apparently you don't have to plug in your work cart, just park it over one of the induction points). All the workers wear spotless white suits, and they putter around the cars as big robotic parts carts glide eerily around on hidden rails.

Then we had YET another tour, this time of the rebuilt Church of Our Lady (one of Dresden's famous landmarks) and YET another meeting with a government minister (Saxony's minister for labor and economic issues) who didn't say anything real, and MORE heavy German food for dinner, and now I am VERY tired. Tomorrow we head for Prague! I can't wait. I hope it isn't TOO overtouristy and expensive... I'm so homesick for Prague, it isn't even funny. One other guy on the program lived there as well, so he and I have been driving everyone nuts reminiscing and attempting to remember Czech words. So I had better sleep, but let me leave you with a few pics.

Your Eastern Correspondent poses with the Trabant, otherwise known as the Cardboard Car of the People (they weren't really cardboard, they were cotton waste mixed with plastic-- not much better)

The banality of evil: a cherub in the gardens of the Wannsee House.

Stalin's study at Potsdam, in case your taste for evil wasn't sated:

I am SO going to Photoshop this to read "Hakuna Matata"

The Zwinger, and a view of Dresden's royal palace from its roof.

Martin Luther in front of the reconstructed Frauenkirche (which, despite being named for Our Lady, is in fact a Lutheran church). The dark stones are left over from the original building, which was bombed into rubble by the Allies.

CrrAAAAZY VW plant!

The princes of Dresden, all in a row:

Berliners crack me the FUCK up.

2007-10-05T01:40:21Z

They have funny expressions for everything... I'm trying to keep a list of them but we're getting dragged all over Berlin at such a pace that I can barely think straight. HOWEVER, I wanted to share with you my new favorite German phrase (this might even beat 'arschfrißthosen!'), which is 'groß vie ein Klodecke,' or 'as big as a toilet seat.' As in, 'that wienerschnitzel is as big as a toilet seat!' Appetizing, eh?

Tuesday was pretty much a blur of meetings, including a really charming guy from Radio Berlin Brandenburg who told us all about covering Maggie Thatcher ('the only man in the British government,' he called her) and a memorable hour-and-a-half rambling rant from the head of the Central Council of German Jews, who came across like a more portly Lloyd Dobler. I'll try to say something intelligent about it over on the official blog, but don't count on it! In the evening, we were all set up on blind dates with German journalists who'd been on the American half of the program. Here's my adorable date, Vladimir Balsky. He does cultural programming (ah, I remember cultural programming) for Germany's equivalent of NPR.

Too bad he's married! We went to a nice Italian restaurant in the hip'n'happening Prenzlauer Berg district and swapped anecdotes about our jobs and various cultural misunderstandings. Which I would write about if it weren't 3:30 in the morning. It was a nice evening.

Yesterday was actually a free day, so we all took a boat tour around the river Spree, and then I buggered off the the Pergamon Museum to see the reconstructed Blue Gate of Babylon. Which was AMAZING... Suck it, D.W. Griffith! I wish some of my pictures had come out so you could see the gorgeous blue glazed tiles with insanely detailed reliefs of bulls and mythical beasts.

But I gotta say the funniest thing that happened yesterday was purely unintentional-- they took us to the central concert hall, which is really lovely, all freshly redone gilding and swags and important busts of important musicians. If only the music had been as good. I knew we were in for an ordeal when our hosts told us we were going to see the "Ensemble Modern Orchestra." You know how every stereotype has a grain of truth somewhere in it? Let me just describe to you this beautiful concert hall, packed to the rafters with rapt Germans of all ages, gazing intently (and quite humorlessly) at the world's largest orchestra (seriously-- two grand pianos, more violins than you could shake a stick at, and at least three separate setups of gongs and chimes and percussion oddments). I am really and truly not kidding when I tell you that I didn't realize the piece had started because I thought it was the janitor knocking shit over backstage. It was only when one of the grand pianos let loose with a pretentious blast of staccato flatulence (betcha didn't think a piano could be flatulent-- you'd be WRONG) that I realized the 'music' had started. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud! It was kind of interesting for about thirty seconds because of the bizarre range of sound coming out of these more or less standard orchestral instruments. But only thirty seconds... after that, I wanted to get the hell out. Our facilitator passed me a note that said 'this is VERY modern,' with a little frowny face, which made me snicker, which of course meant the VERY modern German guy in front of me gave me a filthy look. Thank god we left at intermission and went to dinner. Where we encountered the legendary wienerschnitzel toilet seat. And since this post has now come full circle, I think I'll go to bed!

This statue was in front of the concert hall-- I think he agreed with us about the music. Or she. It's kinda hard to tell.

Berlin Diary, Day 1

2007-10-01T21:14:23Z

Well, here I am, soaking up the free wifi in a hotel lobby in Berlin. Tres global glamour! It would probably be more enjoyable if I didn't feel like someone had reamed out my ears with a wire brush, but them's the breaks, I guess, when you fly slightly ill.

The flight was actually pretty fun-- in a mad splurge, I decided to make up for my rotten month by splashing out on a business class upgrade, so there I was sipping a Kir and nibbling mcadamia nuts, being waited on hand and foot and thinking to myself, 'darling, the service on British Airways is lovely but their champagne is just TOO too dry for my tastes.' Yes, you can all laugh now. Anyhow, I was brought rudely back to earth by the transfer from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, involving several bus schleps and a wait-on-line-to-enter-holding-pen-to-wait-in-an-even-longer-line security checkpoint. Eccch.

Berlin seems quite different now from when I was here seven years ago. The mad crush of construction everywhere is pretty much finished and it's full of fancy schmancy new buildings. Also, no more shelf toilets-- and for those of you who've been to Germany before and know what I mean, you KNOW that's a big improvement. The RIAS people dragged us from pillar to post this morning, starting with the Reichstag, then a former Stasi prison, and finally a meeting with the transportation minister-- I fell asleep, which I've been told was the most entertaining thing about the meeting. I'm going to write a more official and professional account of the day over at rias2007, so head over there if you wanna hear more. In the meantime, I leave you with this picture of me with one foot in the East and one foot in the West, straddling the inlaid line in the pavement that marks where the Wall used to be.

On a more cheerful note...

2007-09-20T16:50:02Z

...some of you may not know that I'm leaving on the 29th for a month in Europe, some of which will be vacation, and some of which will be gallivanting around the EU as part of a German/American journalist exchange program. I'll be writing about it as rias2007, so if it is your will, check it out! There's not much there yet, but just you wait...

Life Lessons. Also, HELP!

2007-08-27T21:34:13Z

I learned an important lesson today at the framing shop. Freshly cut glass is fucking SHARP. So sharp, in fact, that you can cut the holy hell out of yourself and not even notice till you see smears of blood on the glass. However, I did get some nerdly enjoyment out of it: I was framing original pages of Transmetropolitan and Preacher, and I couldn't stop giggling when I realized my fingertip looked just like Herr Starr's head after Jesse bisected it with a bullet. Hee!

And completely unrelatedly-- HELP! Is anyone in this area DRIVING to Dragoncon? I have a package that can't go via airplane (it's a long story), and if someone's willing to drive it down for me I'll kick in $20 for gas for your troubles. Email me at speedlime (at) gee-mail dot com.

Halp!

2007-08-22T22:07:09Z

Any Mac geeks out there that feel like hitting me with some pearls of wisdom? My spiff-o-licious new MacBook Pro has developed a really annoying quirk involving the Desktop folder. I migrated all my stuff over from my old Mac, and apparently that included the old Desktop folder. Now the new computer seems to've gotten confused about which desktop it's supposed to be saving things to. It keeps putting downloads in the old folder, which means they don't actually appear on the my desktop-- AND I can't get at them, since it tells me I don't have the permissions to get into the old folder (I can, weirdly, find them using Spotlight and use them that way).

I called Apple tech support where a very unhelpful guy in Hyderabad told me to re-install the operating system-- which I did, with exactly NO effect. Dick. Squat.

Sooo.... anyone out there have any idea how I can tell my dopey computer which desktop to use? Any advice will be greatly appreciated, and rewarded with brownies (or beer, depending on your preference). Thanks in advance!

Dogs Were Barking, Part Deux

2007-07-19T15:19:00Z

All Songs Considered just put up their recording of last night's Gogol Bordello show-- check it out! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11907007

There's a link at the bottom to the in-studio performance chat my show did with them last year, which includes an early, unfinished version of the song that ended up on their new album as "Supertheory of Supereverything."

speedlime @ 2007-06-01T20:50:00

2007-06-02T01:04:16Z

My new housemate has arrived! Suck it up, heptadecagram, you've been replaced with a younger model! *grin*

He's pleasant and friendly, he can cook, he's a certified EMT, he likes board games AND Firefly-- I think this is going to work out JUST fine.

Ave atque Vale, Speedlime... for reals this time.

2007-05-17T22:27:00Z

So you all know how emotionally involved I was with my old car, Speedlime the trusty-yet-cursed 1995 Plymouth Neon. Yeah, dammit, I drove a Neon. For 11 years. Towards the end it became something of a point of pride, owning such a comically crappy car, but I loved my Speedy. She was the car of my youth, the car of seven accidents only one of which I caused, countless trips to Amherst and back with a Siamese fighting fish in a Nalgene bottle balanced on the parking brake, and one epic drive across the country with a mad Bermudian who was wrecked on cough syrup.

That poor car really was cursed-- she attracted hit-and-runs like no other car I have ever known, and narrowly escaped being totalled once when a big ol' delivery van bashed most of her hinder off. Speedy and I reached the end of our road together a couple of years ago after her air conditioning broke for the third time in three summers-- but I sold her to a very nice guy in my neighborhood. He kept her running and I used to wave to her every time I saw her on the street. Today I got this email from him, and I would like you all to join me in a moment of silence for my poor noble Speedlime, who has met a really very appropriate fate.

"Dear Petra,

It's been a while, and I'm not sure if you still use this e-mail address, but it's me, Patrick Benedict, the guy who bought "Speedy" the beloved 1995 neon from you. I thought about writing you about a month ago, when she passed 100,000 miles, but didn't get around to it. You should know that she has been completely wonderful, and totally incident-free. In short, the BEST car I've ever owned, by a large margin...

It is extremely painful :( to let you know that on Tuesday this week, a very large section of a tree fell on to speedy when she was parked in the street in front of my apartment -smashing her back window, cracking the windshield, and caving in a large section of the roof over the rear seat...
If I can fix her, then I certainly will. If not, then perhaps it's fitting that she leave me this way: never having caused me an ounce of trouble and owing me absolutely nothing. Taken from me while still totally innocent :)

In any case, you might want to take a moment of silence for the car that was so good to both of us, in the event that she moves on to the highway in the sky."

*sniffle* WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

I have been mugged. By my HOUSE.

2007-04-22T19:21:06Z

Warning, homeowner grumbling ahead!

In the past month, these things have happened:

1) I made the terrible mistake of expecting my garbage disposal to actually chew up some apple peels. It had other ideas, choked, and filled my sink with black sludge. $180 to the REALLY EXPENSIVE plumber.

2) The exterminator came and discovered that carpenter ants have eaten my back door and the frame around it.

3) Some charming motherfucker broke the glass in my front door.

4) The hot water boiler light went out and refused to be re-lit until I had called the REALLY EXPENSIVE plumber, who charged me $140 to re-light it.

5) Not five minutes ago, I went to clean out the sink in preparation for an attempt to cook dinner for my parents (nerve-wracking enough as it is) and the aforementioned garbage disposal made a hideous grinding noise and died. Guess I'll be seeing the REALLY EXPENSIVE plumber again real soon now.

ACHTUNG, HAUS!! I'm sick of your shenanigans! Keep this shit up and I'll sell you to a MEAN PERSON. See how you like THEM apples.

WHAT am I doing up this late?

2007-04-20T07:08:33Z

So, artnouveauho, remember how I said I was going to make a silly LJ icon out of your amazing bruise?

Crossposted from Craigslist

2007-04-18T02:17:09Z

Y'all know this already... but since heptadecagram deserted me for the joys of connubial life, I've got to rent my spare room out. Here's the ad I posted on Craigslist, and if you know anyone looking for a spare room, send them my way!

---

I'm looking for someone to share my funky little house in Takoma Park. The room is smallish, but bright and partly furnished, and you get a private bath and run of the downstairs. I'm about a mile from the Takoma Park Metro, a few blocks from the bus, and there's plenty of parking on the street. The house has a washer/dryer, WiFi, cleaning service, and if you like gardening... PLEASE, have your way with my sadly untended garden plot (and if you don't, hey, there's a yard guy). Rent is $575/mo plus 1/2 utilities, which run between $75 and $150 depending on the season. The room is available May 1, and I require first and last month's rent.

I'm a female public radio producer in my early thirties. I don't smoke, and I'm pretty quiet, but basically sociable. These are all good qualities to have, but I'm open to just about anyone (well, except smokers). Please, no cats or dogs-- however, birds, snakes, fish, hamsters, rabbits, Star Wars figures, and possibly even hedgehogs or miniature horses are okay by me.

It is SO way past my bedtime

2007-04-06T05:55:17Z

I have a couple weeks' worth of manicure updates. Because attempting to be smart about opera takes it OUT of a girl, so I have to retreat to fluff.

This is the current extravaganza-- airbrushed pink and purple flourishes on black, and blue stars ornamented with tiny rhinestones. Like, totally, the '80s will never die! Ohmigod!

But sometimes I just don't have the patience to haul ass all the way downtown to see my cranky friend, so I go to my local where they are very snotty about not doing airbrush because "nobody want that anymore!" I did find a really good hand-design lady there last time, though:

Out of the dawn skies, flashing our white thighs...

2007-04-06T05:37:06Z

HOJOTOO-HOOOO! HOJOTOOOO-HOOO! HEIA-AAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Man, if there was ever an opera to make a girl feel good about being fat, loud, and German, it's Die Walküre. I've just got back from the Washington National Opera's stellar production, with Placido Domingo as Siegmund (juju_bee3 dragged me there for my biennial dose of capital-C Culture, dontcha know). I'm not the world's biggest opera fan (that would be artnouveauho, and I really wish she could have seen this!) but I figured I should see some damn Wagner finally, it being such a cultural touchstone and all that. Yeah, I hear you out there murmuring "kill the wabbit, kill the WABBIT" to yourselves!

But I digress... it really knocked my socks off. The director chose to stage it in a sort of indeterminate Moderne era-- vaguely Thirties, vaguely Forties. Hunding became a beer-chuggin' redneck with a house full of hunting trophies, and Valhalla was a sleek skyscraper overlooking a panorama of midcentury Manhattan. The Valkyries were paratroopers in adorable little aviator outfits-- so cute!! Though at first, it didn't quite work for me. The first act seems, at least to this opera n00b, to be so, SO high-camp fantasy, magic swords and what-have-you, that having it take place in what looked like the left-over Grapes of Wrath backlot was jarring. But as the opera moved along it all began to pull together-- by the time we saw Wotan stalking around his Deco boardroom in the second act, the modern costuming seemed to speak of the decline and decadence of the gods. Especially Wotan, who came off quite sympathetically as a wannabe wheeler and dealer who tries to bend the laws to suit himself, but who's not as smart as he thinks he is, and ends up trapped in a snare of his own making. Fricka as well seemed much more sympathetic than I thought she'd be-- not a Hera-esque harridan, but a wife genuinely wounded and wronged. And the acting was pretty damn stellar in this sequence, which didn't hurt-- normally I have big ol' problems with people forcing modern issues onto old texts, but in this case I felt that the way they played it, you could kind of see the director's point about corporate greed and corruption ruining everything.

The production designers did a lot with the scrims-- projecting shaky forest footage to evoke Siegmund staggering through the woods, or vintage fighter planes and choppers accompanying the Valkyries. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it looked like it had been knocked together fifteen years ago by some kid playing with a 386. I thought the physical staging-- the way people moved around-- was actually a little sloppy and lazy. Particularly in the first act, Siegmund and Sieglinde did that annoying-ass high school theatrical thing of pointlessly getting up and running to another part of the stage every time they came to a new paragraph in the music. Settle down, already! And there was some just DUMB shit, as in all the Valkyries looking off in one direction and singing, "oh no, here comes Wotan, he's really pissed off," and then Wotan appears from BEHIND them. Please, people, you can do better! I was expecting him to fly in from the presidential box or something superhotshit like that.

HOWEVER... The singing made up for any flaws. The voices were uniformly amazing (except for some of the Valkyries, who were merely very good-- but I think they were all baby singers). I don't have the technical know-how to analyze everything, so I'll just say that during Sieglinde's farewell in Act III, the word "clarion" came to mind and for once it WASN'T a cliche. I even managed to forget the soprano's tendency to act with her elbows, and just got lost in the music. As for Placido Domingo, well, I've never actually heard him before (I know, it's unbelievable-- and here you thought all NPR employees were strapped down and subjected to the Three Tenors all Clockwork-Orange-stylee) so I don't know what he's SUPPOSED to sound like, but as far as I'm concerned he's got it goin' like the proverbial turbo 'Vette. A bit fogey-ish in the body language for a young hero, but he IS a bazillion years old, so I guess it's forgivable. And of course it's Wagner so there has to be a fat blonde Valkyrie, as in fact there was-- Brünnhilde was adorable, very swaggery chum-chum jolly hockey sticks in her swoopy leather coat and aviator scarf. She eventually got serious, and managed to pull that off quite well, but my favorite moment was when we first heard her off-stage doing the Valkyrie yodel, and Fricka gives Wotan a :rolleyes: and says, "here comes your brave daughter, yelling all the way."

So yeah, I'm fuckin' CULTURED! And don't you forget it!

Sing Hallelujah!

2007-03-20T21:46:13Z

MY HOUSE IS CLEAN! ALL CLEAN, FROM ITS TOP TO ITS TOES! NO MORE COBWEBS! NO MORE CLUTTER! NO MORE DUST RHINOS! NO MORE LIMESCALE! NO MORE SPIDER POOP!

*gasp*

Oh my! This is so exciting! Hello equinox, I'm ready for you! I've spent today and yesterday spring-cleaning with a vengeance. Or, rather, spring reorganizing, since I finally caved and hired a cleaning service to do the ACTUAL dirty work. Yesterday I spent 14 hours hauling load after load of junk out to the curb, pruning the butterfly bush, getting a new lawn guy in, hanging new shower curtains, installing new storage shelves, a new toilet seat in the second bathroom, a DOORBELL (what luxury!), shuffling stacks of books around, moving (and occasionally pulling apart and reassembling) furniture, sorting and storing clutter, and in general getting the place ready for human habitation. Today the cleaning service came, and if there's such a thing as a cleangasm, I think I just had one... everything smells deliciously of lemon floor polish and fresh air, the crusted-on dust and cobwebs are gone, the smudges have vanished from the walls and the grot from the sinks. This is the best the place has looked since I moved in. It is GLORIOUS. I have things to do and errands to run, but really I just want to flop out on the couch downstairs and absorb the cleanitude. Mmmmm...

But! Here's the important thing: how shall I celebrate the new fabulousness of my house? I want to have some kind of swingin' soiree, but you all will have to help me decide.

View Poll: #950590

Separated at Birth?

2007-03-18T05:28:43Z

So I was over at jessicamelusine's house this evening watching highlights of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (and can I just say that I'll die a little happier having seen Dean Martin sneakily ash in George Gobel's drink on national TV). Tiny Tim was on, natch, and a disturbing comparison occurred to me:

I can't be the only one who thinks this.

Back by sort-of-popular demand

2007-03-08T00:37:06Z

Yes, folks, it's the dreaded Manicure Update! Believe it or not, there are people who have asked me to start doing this again, and having just experienced a truly transcendent moment of airbrush artistry from the one and only Cranky Vietnamese Guy, I just had to show off...

I really love the way he managed, with only paint and glitter, to make it look as if a My Little Pony blew up all over my fingertips.

Helleeeeeeeew!

2007-02-17T21:33:52Z

And another big ol' LJ howdy to the fabulous fatbuttsheep! I think artnouveauho would agree-- she's the veritable hypoteneuse of our Triangle of EEEvil.

I have, in fact, just got back from a restorative weekend in Nueva Yorque with fatbuttsheep and her DH. I love New York! It's like sticking your finger in a socket; an electric rush of life and color and impossible things that you'd never see in DC. Also, FUCKING good Brazilian barbeque. Mmmmm... meat. And dim sum! I love going for dim sum with Madame Sheep, because it's always so incredibly impressive when she speaks Chinese to the waiters.

Anyways, hello to fatbuttsheep! Maybe if you ask her nicely, she'll tell you where the name comes from.

Happy bloody Valentine's Day

2007-02-15T00:38:28Z

...because nothing says love like having to push your car out of a snowdrift by yourself, IN THE DARK.

I mean, really! I *know* I'm alone tonight, but does the universe have to be rubbing that shit in with SUCH exquisite precision?