Just a quick entry to say that last Friday I indeed made it back to D.C. all safe and sound, and that Thom and I had a lovely New Year’s weekend at Sheldon and Gretchyn’s place, where we are always well taken care of. Lots of excellent food, drink, and merriment, and the main event was a Lord of the Rings DVD marathon culminating around midnight. Hope you all have a preciousss new year!
SAN JOSE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT–As you can tell, I’ve gotten into the whole airport wifi thing. The dial-up internet connection at my parents’ house over the last few days ranged from slow to nonexistent due to a noisy phone line, so you don’t know how happy I am to drink from the fire hydrant that is high-speed internet. I’m here in San Jose to start the next phase of my vacation. (More on the previous phase in an upcoming entry.) Tonight I’m flying south to visit Rajani in Orange County, where I’ll be through this Friday. Thus the vacation continues. Eventually. My flight is delayed. What else is new?
Good lord, this is bad muzak playing over the P.A. in the terminal. (Is there such a thing as good muzak?)
DALLAS-FORT WORTH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT–Here I am in Dallas again, waiting for my connecting flight to San Francisco. My departure gate is near the spiky sculpture I noticed when I was through here around Thanksgiving. My connection is on a 767, one of those wide-body jets I love. Flying on them domestically gives me all the feeling of international travel, without the hassles. In fact, my connecting flight today–American Airlines flight 49, appropriate enough for San Francisco–originated in Paris, and the aircraft is just pulling up to the gate. (The plane at the next gate is departing for Zurich. The gate agent is making announcements in English and German, though with the echo in the terminal it all sounds like Greek if you’re not listening closely.)
I’ll be in California through next Friday. I’ll try to write a bit while I’m out there, but in any case, happy holidays and happy new year!
[Addendum: SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT–I’m here! The flight was pretty uneventful. The inflight film was A Beautiful Mind, which I didn’t watch since I’ve seen it before; I know airlines don’t exactly show new first-run movies, but come on, A Beautiful Mind has got to be several years old. One of the features they showed afterwards was the pilot of a new sitcom that premiered earlier this season, Out of Practice. Thom and I have gotten into watching this show. It stars Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler as divorced parents of a family of physicians (save one, who is a couples counselor). I started watching because (a) the one daughter is a lesbian, and I like to keep tabs on gay characters on TV; (b) one of the sons is played by cutie Christopher Gorham, whom I fawned over on the WB’s now-gone Popular; and (c) it has Stockard Channing being anything but the First Lady (granted, she is still a doctor). It’s actually pretty good.]
Last night, after happy hour at Daily Grill with some of my co-workers, Thom and I went to see Brokeback Mountain. Going in, I was guarding against overinflated expectations, and my familiarity with the short story did make the opening exposition seem a little slow, but still one word that comes to mind after seeing it is “haunting.” This is a movie that doesn’t grab you; it unfolds slowly, drawing you in until you are invested in all of the characters’ emotions. I got a little teary during Jack’s “I wish I knew how to quit you” speech, and at other scenes of longing and desperation, of which there are many.
The story begins in the summer of 1963 and spans several years, and the movie even seems to hark back to a dying breed of filmmaking (at least among big-name movies): the controlled, forceful composition and editing, the spareness of the storytelling, the subtle but deliberate acting, etc. I’d love to see it again sometime, but like I said, it’s so haunting; it’s still with me. Even humming just the first three notes of the main theme of the score brings it all back.
“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.”
[Addendum: William Haefeli, one of my favorite New Yorker cartoonists, has a great Brokeback-related cartoon in this week’s issue. Check it out.]
Last weekend ended up being quite Christmas-y. On Saturday I went on an iTunes Christmas music binge, and bought three albums: Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (Ella Fitzgerald), A Charlie Brown Christmas (Vince Guaraldi Trio), and Let It Snow! (Michael Bublé). I was tempted to get Diana Krall’s new album too. We both love that swingin’ holiday sound; Thom’s got a huge collection of songs gathered into a playlist called “Retro-mas.” And that night we watched one of my favorite movies for this time of year, White Christmas.
On Sunday we decorated our tree, which Thom got from Jackson & Perkins. It now complements our two ornament trees on the table behind the sofa.
Random thing: Les Misérables is currently playing in D.C., and there are ads for it (with that big “One Day More” pose) in some Metro stations; last night I looked closer at it and thought the Marius looked like someone I went to high school with, who was a year or two behind me. I looked up the Les Mis touring cast online and, wouldn’t you know, it is him. We were in a couple of musicals together in high school, and my senior year, we alternated in one of the lead roles. I am both extremely happy and insanely jealous. Heh.
It may be the most wonderful time of year, but it’s also the busiest. Some of our remaining goings-on this month:
Thom and I are seeing A Year with Frog and Toad at Round House Theatre in Bethesda tonight. It’s a feel-good musical aimed mostly at children, but I’ve read such good things about it (and the cast includes some of the Urinetown folks we loved so much) that we decided to check it out. Also there are a bunch of movies out or soon-to-be-out that we keep saying we’ll see, so maybe we’ll get to one or two in the coming days.
Monday is my company’s Christmas party, renamed a couple of years ago to Festivus, complete with non-holiday food, feats of strength, airing of grievances, and a Festivus pole. Good times, seriously.
The last week of the year will be one of whirlwind travel for me. Next Friday I head out to California for about a week. For the first few days I’ll be in the Bay Area visiting my parents (and though they never get a white Christmas, we’ll at least be seeing one on stage). For the latter part of the trip I’ll then fly to southern California to see Rajani; two things on our agenda are visiting the Huntington library and gardens in San Marino, and later that night watching The Boyfriend (the production directed by Julie Andrews) at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Lastly, after I get back to D.C. at the end of the week, Thom and I will be ringing in the new year with Sheldon and Gretchyn.
2006 will be here before we know it!
Everyone seems to be talking about Brokeback Mountain, even the comic strip “Boondocks.” Last week, Granddad feels like seeing a movie, and unwittingly decides on the “manly” Brokeback. Heh. Not just manly, more like man-on-man, he discovers. Check it out (comics for Dec. 5-10) before it disappears from the archive.
The movie opens in the D.C. area this Friday. I’m hoping to see it with Thom sometime before I leave town on Christmas vacation late next week.
Thom and I had a fun time at Sheldon and Gretchyn’s house this past weekend. There was a Christmas party on Saturday evening, and as it’s a three-or-so-hour drive out there, we stayed the night, as we usually do. Earlier this year the two of them had gone on vacation to France and Italy and brought back for us a bottle of olive oil and a large bar of chocolate. Mmm! Also for Christmas presents they bought the LEGO Star Wars video game for Thom, and two books–Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff (found on my Amazon.com wishlist), and The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman–for me, all of which were so perfect! As always our stay with Sheldon and Gretchyn was great times and great food.
By the way, speaking of presents, every year around this time I look forward to PNC’s Christmas Price Index, “the tongue-in-cheek economic analysis based on the cost of goods and services gifted in the holiday classic, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.'” Two of the culprits making it more difficult to get all those gifts this year: avian flu and rising energy prices.
The results of this year’s survey indicate that the biggest hurdle for True Loves will be obtaining imported birds. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France. However, there are domestic breeders of French hens, as well as the other feathered friends mentioned in the song.
Since the large birds are bought from national suppliers, total costs are higher due to the shipping and related hikes in fuel prices. The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens reports the cost of geese almost doubled this year while the cost of swans increased by 20 percent. On the other hand, the cost of turtledoves and calling birds have not been hard hit by rising fuel costs because these smaller birds are generally available from local retailers.
Hee. More details are in the press release.