Cuteness
Hey kiddies. I haven't made the blog rounds in a while...but luckily, I'm not the only one! This is definitely the busiest time of year. Finals, graduation (congratulations Courtney, and anyone else who is graduating unbeknownst to me).
This is also the big end-of-the-school-year orchestra concert season. I've gone to a lot of junior high concerts and heard music from Pirates of the Caribbean and/or Harry Potter at every single one. It has been exhausting. But it has also reminded me that little kids are quite cute.
Today, I gave a sectional at a school, and as I was walking through the halls, I saw this very little 6th grade boy with angelic blond hair and blue eyes, standing at his locker, singing in a very cheery voice, "We're not gonna take it/No, we're not gonna take it/We're not gonna take it anymooooooooooooore!" He made Twisted Sister sound like Little Orphan Annie. It was the most adorable thing ever.
Then, a little cello kid turned to me and said, "Hey, sometimes, my C string sounds like the noise the machines make in War of the Worlds." He proceeded to play his very scratchy, buzzy string and say "Ahhh! We're being attacked by aliens!" I didn't have the heart to point out to him that it sounded like that because his bow was horrendously crooked.
Speaking of things that are super cute, look at the AMAZING iPod cover I got for 50% off at Borders!
That is the one good thing about having a first generation iPod nano - no one else in the world has one, so the accessories are always on clearance. Woo hoo!
Jiffy Lube...is it bad that the word "lube" always makes me giggle?
Today, I went to Jiffy Lube to get my oil changed. This is always one of my least favorite activities because the waiting room a) smells like cars, b) always has the TV tuned to some sort of sporting event, and c) has no fun magazines. This time, I came prepared with a library book. Major improvement. Then, I even enjoyed myself when a mechanic called me over to suggest all kinds of services I don't understand, mostly because he was young, scruffy, had charmingly crooked teeth, and had a couple tattoos snaking out from underneath his sleeves. Just the right amount of punk rock. Also, his eyes were brown, but not dark brown like mine. They were the kind of light, translucent brown that I always find fascinating for some reason.
But then, my shiny happy Jiffy Lube experience suddenly turned dark and stormy when, as I walked away, Mr. Super Cute Car Mechanic called me "sweetie." This is maybe my biggest pet peeve ever. It's bad enough coming from grandmotherly women and guys old enough to be my dad, but I have absolutely NO patience for it coming from a guy my own age. It is too sleazy to be endearing and too condescending to be flirtatious. Plus, I just really don't like it when people don't take me seriously, which happens a lot because I look 17 and try to be nice to everyone. I guess it didn't help that I was kind of bopping to my iPod when he called me over, and I was wearing an Easter-egg-pink hoodie with a little yellow and orange sun on it, and I was wearing my emo-tastic glasses, and my car keys have a little Nemo keychain on them...not to mention the fact that I drove straight home and wrote a whiny little blog about it all. Despite all these things, I still expect to be treated like a respectable adult!
By the way, Happy Easter!
Am I here?
Do you ever fear that you may have turned invisible overnight? Or that you are like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense? I say this only because I have sent a number of emails/messages this week that have been totally ignored, or at least they have been unreturned. No, this is not a passive aggressive nudge to anyone who reads this blog, because none of you are in the club of people who have decided to deny my existence this week.
Maybe the cosmos has told everyone to leave me alone because I should really be practicing for my audition tomorrow, not putzing around...darn Cosmos, such a task master.
This is probably just a symptom if irrational pre-audition paranoia. I mean, at any other time, a day or two would seem like a perfectly reasonable amount of time in which to respond to a message. But my current state of mind - the one that has crazy fears that I will just completely forget how to play the cello, or that I somehow got the date of the audition totally wrong - keeps insisting that this is an unacceptably long turnaround time.
Okay, I have sufficiently distracted myself for 10 minutes. Back to practicing! Or, back to not actually existing....
"Apple Blossom" by The White Stripes is a fantastic song
1. I think I have mentioned before that I really don't like it when other people have my name? How I like to think that I am the only Holly? Psychoanalyze this however you will. Now, obviously, I know there are other Hollys. For the most part, they represent the name well...Holly Go Lightly (both the character from Breakfast at Tiffany's AND the indie musician), Holly Hunter, Buddy Holly. But why...WHY must there be a Playboy playmate named Holly who is now, at age 27, marrying Hugh Hefner? She is besmirching what I like to think of as a dignified name. I would expect this from a Brandi, a Chastity, even a Tiffani, but a Holly? A Holly who spells her name properly, not with an "i"?!? (PS, no offense to anyone named Brandi, Chastity or Tiffani. Chastity Bono is obviously an exception to the rule that Chastity is a stripper name)
2. I discovered two days ago that Barbra Streisand is an amazing singer. I had never really watched any of her movies or listened to any of her music because of her diva image, but I watched "Funny Girl" and I was blown away. She is like Judy Garland, only better, probably because she was never horribly addicted to drugs. This significantly strengthens the theory that I am a gay man on the inside.
3. Did anyone else watch Eddie Izzard's new show Riches on FX? It was so good. When did Eddie Izzard get so hot? He has always been attractive, but never like this!
4. "What is the What" by Dave Eggers is a fantastic book.
5. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Celebrate safely.
Misanthrope McGee
If I can finish this post by midnight, I will be sticking to my new year's resolution (the one about updating my blog more than once a month). I can't help it if the month of February was uneventful! The highlight was definitely my trip to Milwaukee, and most of the people who read this were there.
Uneventful does not exactly equal boring, though. Deferring grad school for a year was the most educationally beneficial decision I ever made. Instead of going to school this year, I've been doing nothing but practicing, taking lessons, teaching, listening to music and reading library books. Horrible February weather only enhanced my singularity of purpose. In the past few weeks, I have become more and more certain that I am learning more independently than I did in all four years of college. This has been extremely rewarding and enjoyable, but it is not exactly good for my disposition. By the end of high school, I was already cynical about most of society's institutions, but now I'm pretty much convinced that they are pointless and evil. But they are a necessary evil. When it comes down to it, I have to get a master's degree, but after this year of musical utopia, going back to school is going to be unpleasant if not unbearable. Maybe I could try to overload credits and get it over with in one year, like ripping off a band-aid....
What do you all think after graduating from college? Is it all it's cracked up to be? Is it worth the money? (obviously it is in the sense that you make more money with a college degree than without one, but is the cost of a private college vs. a state school worth it?)
I have no segueway for this, but what is with people who still talk to teachers from high school? I think anybody from Wheeling would agree that I was one of the world's biggest teacher's pets, but you don't see me emailing and going out for coffee with them 5 years later. How do high school teachers even remember students for more than a year? I suspect that I am maybe not a good person in this respect. I really only worked hard in high school to get A's. I could not have cared less about 90% of the material. And I acted nice to all the teachers, but in retrospect, I really did not like or respect more than one or two. Does this make me hollow? Phony? Machiavellian? One of my students told me she gets into arguments with teachers all the time, and my advice to her was, "Well, you just have to act fakely nice, but then get your mom to complain to the school." Was that bad? Whatever, I'm not going to tell her that she has to respect her teachers, especially not now that people I went to high school with who are kind of stupid are now teaching in high schools. (Obviously, Katie is NOT one of these people. Any kid who gets Katie as a teacher should thank Jesus at least 50 times a day.)
Have a lovely day!!
Man Love
First off, know that the content of this post does not live up to the potentially salacious nature of its title.
Having just read "Of Mice and Men," I felt compelled to write about something that, like Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl III, "Jupiter" from Holst's "The Planets," and tri-cornered hats, delights me to no end: man love. Of the platonic variety. Isn't is just the cutest, nicest thing ever? When two guys are BFF, and they totally love each other, and they don't care who knows it?
"Of Mice and Men" presents a pretty serious and tragic version of such a relationship, as does "Midnight Cowboy." On the opposite end of the spectrum would be J.D. and Turk on "Scrubs," who sometimes refer to themselves as a couple and call each other "Brown Bear" and "Vanilla Bear." Somewhere in the middle would probably be Red and Andy from "The Shawshank Redemption." I also believe that, lately, Jim and Dwight on "The Office" are begrudgingly coming to terms with their man love for each other. I'm sensing more brotherly joshing than bitter rivalry between them lately, and I'm loving it.
So the question is: what is it about platonic man love that is so lovable? Methinks it tickles the fancy because such a relationship shows guys being sensitive without the possible motivation of sex. So you KNOW the love is pure.
Why?
How come tri-cornered hats are so hot? I know they are NOW, what with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom swashbuckling away, but I have always thought they were oddly appealing, even when I knew them only from Revolutionary War illustrations and "Amadeus," neither of which feature any hotties. So why do I keep hoping someone on Project Runway will bring back the knee-length knickers/tri-cornered hat look? *Sigh* I can only dream.
