The Oscars (奥斯卡奖, オスカー, 오스카)

 The Oscar awards are coming up in a month or so, but Oscar season is officially under way, meaning there's a whole lot of campaigning, polling, deals arranged behind the scenes, appealing to the voters.....it's kind of like election season for politics. Everyone trying to get enough votes and momentum to win the top prize, and it's not always the best film (or actors/actresses) that win it, where famously Crash beat Brokeback Mountain in 2005 in a late surge by Crash that everyone sort of disagreed with after the fact (I actually watched Crash in theaters and thought it was in interesting film set in L.A. about race relations). Last year, I thought 100% that Coda was the best film that I'd seen, but then again I didn't see Power of the Dog (Jane Campion) which had been pushed heavily by Netflix so that Netflix could win its first ever Oscar, but ironically all that pushing just made them lose, not to a traditional movie studio (MGM, Universal, etc.) but to its rival AppleTV, who did Coda. Funny how that works, but of course the actual Oscar ceremony was overshadowed by "the slap" with Will Smith and Chris Rock. 

When I was 16 I had a world almanac which listed the names of all the major categories of Oscar winners (best actors, directors, best picture) in neat little grids year-by-year, and even before my trivia-loving days I thought I'd memorize all the category winners for each year, just boom-boom-boom be able to name them for every year, like Quentin Tarantino memorizing all the movies he'd ever watched. The problem I ran into, of course, was that a lot of Oscar winners are...not movies most people watch, and sometimes movies I'd never even heard of, making the memorization of them kind of trivial. I look back at the Best Picture list and now I've changed a bit on that perspective, but 16-year-old me definitely wasn't hip to "Chariots of Fire" (1982), "Ordinary People" (still not sure what that is), "Midnight Cowboy" (1970, an X-rated movie), and for Best Actress, who was this "Katherine Hepburn" that kept winning in the earlier days of Hollywood. 

It's a testament to how deep the knowledge of different categories of knowledge can run, just Oscar winners, even though Oscar-nominated films are just a small percentage of the movie knowledge base one is excepted to know. There are some genres of movies people love that just have no chance of ever  winning an Oscar, like "M3GAN" (horror films), comedies, animated movies (at least for best picture). To prepare for Oscar season, I had to go out of my way to watch some Oscar-nominated films (which I normally wouldn't have sat through) like Tar with Cate Blanchette. That is NOT a movie that general audiences would choose to watch except for Oscar viewing for the artistry of the movie, as a half hour into a 3-hour movie it had produced 20-minute discussions about the aesthetics of Bach and other musical pieces. No CGI, no chase scenes, no jokes for comedic relief, just straight dialogue without cutting to different shots of the restaurant they sit in while talking. 

I think the Academy understands the sentiment I've presented as the general consensus of Oscar-nominated movies, though, and in order to attract more general attention and trying to answer affirmatively the question of "Do the Oscars still even matter?" have nominated more box-office friendly hits, especially this year with Top Gun: Maverick (I ain't worried bout it winning though), Avatar: The Way of Water, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. The favorite, EEATO (nice that they've abbreviated the title to make everyone's life easier) would mark another milestone for Asian American actors/directors/films in the last few years, so yay for that. I didn't get the movie; but that's OK! I don't get a lot of Oscar-winning movies. 

Oh by the way, fun fact: the name "Oscars" was coined by an Academy librarian who said the Oscar award trophy looked like her uncle Oscar. A trivial reason for a (still for now) non-trivial award. 

Toys (玩具, おもちゃ, 장난감)

 I don't really remember a time in my childhood that was dominated by toys: Sure I had a Barney doll and some animal toys as a really young kid, but I didn't do anything with them except make the purple dinosaur and the brown bear fight each other, which explains my later-in-life infatuation with mixed martial arts and combat sports. I think I just skipped the whole toy phase and went straight towards liking ball sports and board games, or cards, then video games and TV. Even now I don't see much that a kid in the 1990's could have done with toys, especially toy dolls and action figures: they can't really move, there's only so much a kid can imagine with the toys until the TV version that talks and flies around is better. And nowadays, with the Internet, smartphones, iPads, and screens everywhere? Forget it, I really have to wonder how Mattel and Hasbro can stay in business with their predominantly toy-based businesses. Even as a camp counselor at a summer camp, my job was to create games and activities, sing songs with kids as young as 4 or 5 years old all the way up to 9-10 when they'd totally phased out toys, I really didn't see toys as necessary towards having a good time for these kids. 

The movie M3GAN kind of changed my understanding a little bit as to the attachment a child can have towards a toy, and how toys can develop over time. The movie is about a creepy blonde-looking AI doll (looks kind of like the Olsen twins) who can respond to how its assigned child is doing, whether the child is sad, happy, looking for advice, spout science facts, etc., but eventually the AI becomes too obsessive and controlling and intent on removing all threats to the child. It's more of a Terminator-like movie warning about the dangers of reliance on AI and future of robots, except M3GAN is much creepier than the actual Terminator, who you knew was a bad guy just from the red eyes and robot skull (and even in the human form Arnold Schwarzenegger looks pretty intimidating), whereas robot M3GAN was designed to look sweet and comforting to a child, but in the way that clowns and evil dolls (like the Bride of Chucky), it gets turned around in drastic ways. Especially with the real-life ChatGBT coming out over the holidays along with the M3GAN movie release, it's a good time for everyone to understand what the role of robotics and AI will have in our lives, and how to put limits on AI so that they don't consume our lives (a big theme of M3GAN was how AI could replace the parental role for a child where eventually parents won't be needed anymore- I haven't finished the movie yet) which I'm sure parents are already feeling now with losing the war of attention to screens, where kids can get everything they need on their phones, even emotional support and science facts as to why water forms on the outside of a cup of water even though it's not coming from inside the cup. 

Ultimately, the horror and scariness of M3GAN didn't ring 100% true to me because of the whole "kids don't have toys nowadays" thing. (Maybe different people have different backgrounds, maybe girls growing up have more inclination to bond with a toy doll). It's a good thing for the Toy Story movie series that it wrapped up all 4 of its movies last decade, because I think toys have seen their last hurrah (I can't imagine a boy nowadays loving cowboys and astronauts and slinky dogs for much more than just a year when there are real cowboys and astronauts they can interact or be like on screen). The real horror of M3GAN is the impact of AI, and the doll's villain role could easily be seen as the smartphone in our current society: when kids rely 100% on AI, will they need food? Need schools to learn? Need parents to tell them what to do? That's the real horrifying thought, scarier than the movie ever could be. 

Poker Face

In 40 years (hopefully) when I look back on my life and reflect on all the craziness that was my youth, I'll remember a phrase that shouldn't have popped up multiple ways but did: Poker face. First, when I was a high school senior, Texas Hold'em poker became a fad across the U.S. due to the World Series of Poker, and became especially popular for 18-year-old high school kids searching for excitement, competitiveness, and risk-seeking behavior like me. I learned what a poker face back then was, which was to keep one's face a blank slate no matter if you're telling the truth or "bluffing" in poker (lying about what cards you have, or at least misrepresenting it). This became a huge ego-driven contest for me through end of high school into college: I wanted to have a great poker facer and be a great liar! Great aspirations! 

Nowadays, of course, I'm totally content with not being a great liar: I just feel funny doing it, my face heats up a bit and become flush, I don't like lying to people while looking that person straight in the eye. It's fine of course when I tell the guy on the side of the road asking me for change that "I don't have any cash on me right now," but someone who I consider a friend, family member, or really anyone I've known more than 10 minutes, there's guilt and deception, and maybe after you lie to that person your relationship with that person changes. 

The other "Poker Face" that stands out is the Lady Gaga hit song of 2009.......it took me a LONG time to get that song out of my head. It kind of reminds of the "I'm Good" earworm by Bebe Rexha and David Guetta that's been a hit since last year (a remix of another earworm song of my teenage years, "Blue" by Eiffel 65). These are the songs that unfortunately define my musical tastes: instead of the sophisticated, smooth caviar-like sensations of the Eroica Symphony by Beethoven, my mind just gets drawn into the junk food Top 40 hits with synthetic and artificial-sounding beats of the latest pop song. And it all began with "Poker Face." 

Finally, the Poker Face that's currently in my life is the 99% Rotten Tomato-certified fresh TV series on Peacock streaming (they really need to consolidate all these streaming channels into bundles, and fast) starring Natasha Lyonne (has been used as an answer to a Jeopardy clue, so you know she's made it) as a former poker player who has the superpower gift of reading other people and being able to tell if that person's lying. It's like my entire life history with "Poker Face" come full circle: poker, lying with a poker face, and bad TV.......except it's REALLY GOOD TV! 40 years from now the greatest TV shows of so-called "Prestige television" will likely still feature some of the names TV viewers worship nowadays like The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Sex in the City (Jk, MJ, definitely not Sex in the City), without Poker Face on it (it doesn't even have the "championship belt" of being the best TV show out there right now, which most critics will agree is The Last of Us, but it is definitely high up there in the "whodunnit" and mystery categories. Artfully done by Rian Johnson, the director of "Knives Out" (another movie where the main character has a quirk of only being able to tell the truth.) It really makes me wonder about what it'd be like to know if other people are lying, aka being a human lie detector. Not the most useful skill to have and not the one I'd select if given a choice (not to mention being a common trope in movies like "What Women Want," and I suspect it's a rather depressing superpower in that you realize how much people lie and how often, which is pretty much all the time. And that's just the lies that people say out loud: there's other lies like living a lie, acting out a lie, giving out false information through the news, etc. etc. Is this world that we're living in a lie? A simulation that's not even real and we're just characters in some kind of game? Yup pretty depressing, but unlike all those "top shows ever" contenders I mentioned + Last of Us (VERY depressing post-apocalyptic world), Poker Face is actually a pretty fun show! (except for the people who get- spoilers!!!!!- murdered). 

Ballet (芭蕾舞, バレエ, 발레)

You ever feel like cracking your bone to make it feel better? Recently, whether it's because I'm getting older or some other culprit, I often crack joints in my body like feet, legs.......so far no pain or negative side effects! Scientifically, apparently this is is pretty normal as a symptom of nitrogen gas or other gases building up in the body, and cracking them just lets them out. So like a bone fart; less odorous. Because everything I do seems to be loud (like taking heavy steps, speaking loudly, sneezing loudly, etc.) (although MJ might sneeze louder than even I do) the bones cracking gets up to an almost uncomfortable volume. 

While cracking bones is the limit to my concerns about my body and the level of body flexibility I have to worry about on a day to day bases, the ballet performers I watched today perform Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Joliet are in another universe of mobility, throwing their bodies up and down, left and right, flying in the air and crashing to the ground (especially their death scenes, which were heavily exaggerated for dramatic effect). As a high school student I was often struck by the level of dialogue present in Shakespeare's plays, but apparently ballets can make perform those plays without any dialogue, just physical expression and body movements, oh and music of course from the accompanying orchestra. Or it could be everyone knows the Romeo and Juliet story well enough that no narration or conversation between characters is needed. Or is it? I found myself having a tough time recalling minor characters in the Capulet and Montague families, who was related to whom, the Friar/ apothecary's name, and who killed whom in the streets. Only halfway through Act II (2 intermissions does seem a little excessive, ballet company, and stretching it to 3 hours in the middle of the day- matinee showing does make it a little harder to keep me coming back) did I realize that Juliet's cousin Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo's friend, and then Romeo retaliates by killing Tybalt. And he later just kind of walks right over Paris, Juliet's other suitor. And Benvolio is involved somehow, although it's hard to tell in a ballet where everyone's just frolicking in the streets all the time it seems like. There were several instances that dancers executed moves of high difficulty, but I was too obtuse to notice until people in the audience started clapping. And I wouldn't want to be a ballet dancer; the tights they wear kind of accentuates their butts, for better or worse (mine would be worse) and after long dance routines on stage, the dancers representing Romeo and Juliet have to grab ahold of each other and hug deeply.....while visibly being doused in sweat. Not great. I hope they have showers in the back during intermissions. 

Ballet, figure skating, and other graceful performance art seem to be losing out in America at least to......well, bigger bodies. The people I saw on screen were incredibly agile, nimble, and graceful, all of which is required for ballet dancers, but those skills seem increasingly lost on today's society, where fat shaming/body shaming is strictly taboo and it feels like from watching TV that people actually WANT a bigger butt. Dancing/skating is one of those last vestiges of an earlier world, maybe like the 1990's when I was growing up, where it was still generally accepted that there was an ideal body shape that most people should maintain, and that in some sports/activities you really CAN'T be fat, your body would weigh you down. Someone playing Juliet's role must be light enough/ small enough for Romeo to lift her up seemingly every 3 seconds while Juliet is also performing 360 spins with her arms in the area. So my point I guess is that even in today's body-positivity world, there are still good reasons under than just your mundane health reasons (you know, where good health is what keeps you alive) to get fit and maintain one's figure. Oh it definitely could help your neighbors when sitting in the theater watching too: the seats are cramped and share an armrest with your neighbor; it's best not to leak over the seat into other's territory, just like on an airplane. 

Mushrooms (きのこ, 버섯, 蘑菇)

 Mushroom is one of those rare words that sounds NOTHING alike in CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), likely because each culture already had their own terms for mushroom as a food item and didn't want to adapt the Chinese Kanji, unlike other words that 1.) sound the same in all 3 languages (example: library) or 2.) sound the same in 2 of the languages, with one outlier). In the Romance languages there's more commonality, "champignon" in French and "champinon" in Spanish with a tilde I'm too lazy to add (both to champinon and to the actual tilde). 

As a kid, I didn't notice mushrooms much: it was just a bunch of meats, rice, and shove down the green vegetables as much as I could without tasting it. Mushrooms were just kind of there, without any distinguishing tastes. My parents would sneak into some Chinese dishes like Mapo Tofu, chicken (with mushroom and black bean sauce), etc. I never even looked at the mushroom aisle at grocery stores; mushrooms don't look that appealing anyway and I always had a aversion towards them due to some growing in our front yard as a weed; it always made me shudder in that 친구로 feeling (word that MJ uses a lot meaning gross). 

Little did I know that a decade later, mushrooms would be a large component of meals that I make, even replacing meat as the main protein. Indeed based on the instructions of the meal service we use called "Hungryroot" (I joke that it's named because it leaves people hungry even after you eat) I ate a taco with black beans and portobello mushroom as the main "meaty" ingredient.....and it was good. Amazing feeling to recognize food for its positives of low-grease, low-fat. Eleven Madison Park in NYC made their menu completely vegan, and MJ and I really savored the elegance of the meal designs without having to use any meat (especially duck, their previous signature dish). Unfortunately not everyone feels this way, as the restaurant got some backlash. 

Apparently there's quite the science to eating mushrooms and types of mushrooms. The instructions today alerted me to the need to scoop out the black "gills" or a portobello, something that I wouldn't have thought to do... there are also ways of cutting mushrooms, nuances lost to the novice chef like myself who just cuts them like a pizza, into 4 equal pieces from the top, sometimes eliminating the stem if I'm feeling fancy. 

Oyster mushrooms, Enoki mushrooms, shiitake, porcini... I find the most efficient is just the button mushroom that is the most common, although it feels the dirtiest, as I have to wash once before cutting, then again AFTER cutting them as the grime oozes out of the mushroom....it's not for the faint of heart, seeing all the grime that comes out. I guess that's the beauty and "humanness" of mushrooms: they're closer to human beings than plants. The elegant curves of mushrooms, the meaty texture, the sense that mushrooms are always growing, and negatively the dirt and imperfections of mushrooms, so well encapulates human beings. I could definitely see some people getting grossed out by mushrooms; they're not exactly the best looking food items unless you want rich mixtures of brown and white on your plate; but I just like the unsung hero role it plays in a lot of dishes, especially in the taco I made with them today; the first bite of that portobello hit the spot as much as any T-bone steak I've ever had. 

20-Year Nostalgia

 I read a book by Chuck Klosterman which made a great observation, that all of us reminisce on the generation 2 decades ago and look up on it fondly: for example, in the '70s people looked fondly back at the '50s, in the '90s people looked back fondly upon the '70s, and so on. Certainly for me during the 2010's I looked back at the Nineties with longing and wish for it all just to back to those glorious times, and now, firmly in the 2020's, I look back and wish it was the 2000's (Naughts?) Nah, 2001-2005 were my high school years, not much to look back on with fondness, only a lot of homework and wasted effort on my part writing essays that no one cared about, all so I could get into a state school and find out I wasn't really an especially smart person. Klosterman's book about the 1990's is spot on, though, about some of those events I was way too young to remember, like the Gulf War (against Iraq who had invaded Kuwait) was actually a win for the U.S., but a loss for George H.W. Bush in popularity, who had hihertho been a VERY popular president, the role of Ross Perot in turning the election for Clinton. Perot was a nobody with a lot of money who suddenly gained massive support in a time when TikTok and social media or even the Internet was even around yet, and did the unprecedented thing of getting 19% of the vote as an independent. Conversely, George H.W. Bush seemed invincible and well on his way to winning a 2nd term in office in early 1991, only to lose it all and be voted out of office by November 1992, to Bill Clinton who had sexual allegations buzzing around him already then, who the Democrats ran against George H.W. Bush because they didn't want to waste a better political prospect against the juggernaut Bush! (imagine that, Clinton was a sacrificial lamb!) The same thing happened for Donald Trump, just a billionaire reality TV host in early 2015 (everyone thought him running as a president as a joke, with doubters every step of the way that Rubio would beat him, Bush would beat him, he wouldn't get the Republican nomination, and when he did get the Republican nomination that Hilary would easily beat him.....until he won in December 2016. 

Kind of going along with my patience (see previous entry), it is worth noting that most things in life seem so miniscule in possibility before they happen, but then after they do happen they seem so obvious to happen because well, it 100% did happen. Kind of like the Nelson Mandela quote, "everything is impossible until you do it. Perhaps MJ and I can apply this to our efforts to have a child: we've faced a lot of obstacles and failures in this endeavor and it's been frustrating, but when we do get pregnant it will seem like it was also going to happen. 

Right now it's early 2023, and we have another presidential election in November 2024: someone like Trump or Perot could emerge from nowhere as a dark horse candidate and become President by then; it's possible on both parties (and also independents too)... Democrats aren't guaranteed to run Biden again, and Republicans have this internal war within their party between Trump and DeSantis, but will someone else come out of the fray there? 

It's hard to believe, but in twenty years, in the 2040's, if I'm still alive, (if human beings are still alive) we'll look back upon the 2020's fondly as that time right before the 2024 election, before it turned into chaos, or even look back fondly at the pandemic years, remember that time we all sat home and had all the time in the world.....even now I see everyone outside and getting back to "normal" life. 

MJ and I hosted one of MJ's friends who's a decade younger than us (boy did that make us feel old) who said she also remembered people singing Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" back in the Naughties, and it just took me back to college days, late 2007, drunk students at 2AM singing "My best friend Leslie said oh she's just being Miley...." those were the days. 

Patience (耐心, 忍耐, 인내심)

 Ever since I was a kid, I've lacked one of the key virtues of human life: patience. I've never been able to wait calmly for anything that I wanted, whether it was a TV show, pursuit of an idea, getting into the college I wanted to get into, I've always wanted it NOW. When MJ is getting ready to go out together, it takes awhile, and I have no patience to wait, I want to get out there NOW. When garbage is lying around to be thrown away or dirty dishes sitting in the sink, I need to clean them out NOW. It funs in the family: my dad always had problems waiting to pick me up after school, getting upset if I kept him waiting even if it wasn't my fault. To be fair, he didn't have the internet or i-Phones back then, it was just idle waiting. 

Patience is also another name for solitaire, that pesky computer game that came packaged with most Windows computer software back when people still used personal computers, along with Hearts, Freecell, and my favorite non-card game: Minesweeper. Solitaire's a game of patience; so is baseball, fishing, and long term stock investing; no wonder I am not good at (or show little appreciation for) any of those. Which is also why I didn't enjoy an outing at the local pub trivia night at a bar.....it was too slow. For someone attuned to getting 61 trivia questions in rapid succession compressed in a roughly 20-minute window (without commercials) every weeknight for the last 2 years, pub trivia is just way too much of a slow drip for me; it's designed for teams to go out to the bar and sit at a table and spend money slowly, pay for more drinks, stay at the bar as long as possible, etc. it is NOT designed for getting as much knowledge in that time as possible. The first question tonight was what flavoring sits atop a Basked Alaska to preserve its flavor; a solid trivia question in the food category, answer being the very tasty meringue..... then all the teams submitted their answers, songs played, and we waited, we waited......and finally the answer was revealed. Then another pause for the next question; I could envision this being fun filler for lulls in the conversation if I was with a group of friends, but I had arrived as if I was there to play patience/solitaire: big mistake. 

Patience is definitely in short supply in modern times with phones, texts, and a million possibilities for life...I can't be the only one who wants to cram everything I can do all into one day (Everything, everywhere, all at once) and dislike when time is wasted because it's keeping me from doing the 14 other things I could be doing. A little extreme when drivers behind me can't wait an extra half-second for me to respond to the light changing before laying on the horn. It's like everyone forgot what they taught you as a kid about things that you've anticipated for longer and wanted for such a long time taste sweeter/ are better experiences. "Good things come to those who wait." Patience does eventually pay off if you're a viewer, as I have been the last week or so with my freshly minted HBO max subscription, of the series "Station Eleven," which unlike the stimulating zombies of "Last of Us" and "House of the Dragon" (the Game of Thrones spinoff, so you know it has dragons, nudity, and other flashy attractions) doesn't have anything that makes a huge splash, just an end-of-the-world virus and some people in Chicago living through pandemic times like us, but viewers have to wait for it...be patient and watch the TV show until the end to get big payoffs. Once bitten, twice shy after Lost promised us all that over the course of 7 seasons, but turns out some TV shows do actually reward patience. You just gotta devote hours of viewing and not doing other stuff. Shudder. 

Black History Month

 MJ and I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture today in D.C., and it's a rather exquisite building, everything from its location just across the street form the Washington Monument, to it step pyramid shape of each floor being a layer of the pyramid, to the Yoruba style-crown that it resembles (Yoruba being an African ethnic group in Nigeria and Benin, NOT the Yuba noodles that MJ likes to get, which are originally from Japan and quite delicious. 

I've been to the National Mall plenty of times (including working there in the summer of 2016) and never felt the urge to go to inside this awesome building (completed in 2016), but inside is a waterfall, an old Tuskeegee Airmen aircraft from World War II times, a pre-Civil Rights train with whites-only and black-only sections, and LOTS and LOTS of TV's. A lot has changed in the world since 2016, but the style inside the NMAAHC still seems pretty high-tech. If I were to start a podcast where I do reviews about museums (since MJ and I go to so many of them), this museum would get a lot of stars. The African American entertainment stars section really resembles the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with exhibits of famous performers and gear they played as well as their best hits pumping in the background. And if one was to try to learn more about African American history in honor of Black History Month (February), one could do worse than just spend the day at this museum, plenty of information packed in with not just entertainers and sports stars (plenty of those whom I can name off the top of my head from basketball, football, jazz, soul, and hip-hop) but also political leaders and historical leaders like Mary Bethune (she is like, a big deal), Shirley Chisholm (one of her speeches was playing on a loop from her 1972 presidential candidate run), John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, poetry by Phyllis Wheatley and Gwendolyn Brooks, inspirational quotes and famous speeches, and tragic deaths like of Trayvon Martin, the lynching of Emmett Till, and most recently the death of Breonna Taylor (depicted artfully by painter Amy Sherald). 

I learned a lot from the NMAAHC even as a fully-grown "educated" American citizen, which begs the question, does America teach enough African American history? I remember in 5th grade spending many months on Native American history and doing various class projects with Shoshone, Navajo, Cherokee, Seminole, Iroquois tribes, but there wasn't a distinct time I could remember which was dedicated fully to learning ONLY African American history, the events just weave into American History as a whole. Which, I think, is the right idea: the history of black people in the U.S. IS American history, with so many events happening that affected all Americans. I knew the key figures like Malcolm X, MLK, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglas, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks (deep dive there), and like other parts of history I didn't learn or remember learning in history classes (such as the Space Race, specific Civil War battles) I had to fill in the blanks on my own and self-educating on more specific people like Medgar Evers, Million Man March, Greensboro Sit-in, Montgomery Bus Boycott, etc.) So yes, while a special museum dedicated to just African American history and culture is warranted, I do think schools put out the basic material for students to get a general sense of major events of black history, and then if they feel more interested about it they could read on their own or.....go to the NMAAHC; there's plenty to learn. 

Oh and we also watched the Menu (movie) this weekend.....it's like a cross between MJ's favorite cooking experience restaurants and "Parasite"( the 2020 Oscar winning movie I gush about all the time on this blog and to friends)…best to know nothing going in. 

Oh and I also binge-watched Station Eleven on HBO Max and the Last of Us. For whatever reason, post-apocalyptic shows have been so good since the pandemic happened, whether it's because the showrunners had more real-world experience, whether the shows resonate more with viewers due to our shared experiences of the pandemic, or just incredible writing and acting and money thrown at these shows; we've all certainly been prepped pretty well for the next pandemic/mass-extinction event, should it happen in our lifetimes. Covid was just a dress rehearsal. 

Musical Instruments (乐器, 楽器, 악기)

 There are a lot more musical instruments in this world than I thought there were when I was a kid.  

Similar to most other children (from what I gather), I didn't select the music instrument I would play; my dad did. My dad played violin as a child and by some accounts even used violin to woo my mom and begin a long loving marriage; so of course I would play violin. (This was back when I didn't question things, and did what I was told). I do also remember in 4rd grade going into the band teacher's office and "selecting" an instrument to play should I join the band. Violin wasn't available (no orchestras yet at our elementary school, or high school system for that matter) so I was a free agent; I had put a few instruments that were interesting on a sheet of paper, and Mr. Blasius let me try out the different instruments. First up: flute. Let me try to trill with the flute, hold the instrument up to the side, but ultimately reject it. Next up, trumpet, let me blow into it, and I personally didn't think there was anything wrong, but he came up with some reason why it wasn't a good match for me. Then my 3rd choice, ah, this is the instrument we've been waiting for! (and likely the one that others weren't that interested in, so he wanted to push me into choosing) The Clarinet! You get a put in an odd-shaped reed every time you play, connect the pieces of the clarinet, and sometimes deal with the spit valve. Great! (I didn't really understand how gross it was to have so many instruments with spit involved and people emptying their spit valves onto the ground during band practice. It strikes me as pretty unhygienic nowadays, especially post-Covid) Again, this was back when I didn't argue, so I officially became a member of the clarinet section, up until 8th grade. 

I don't necessarily regret playing clarinet in the band and subsequently violin in the orchestra; they're unique in their own way and both in pretty high demand in all forms of bands and orchestras; every orchestra needs 2 sections of violins, and clarinets don't make too distinct of a sound so they just blend into the background; I was perfectly content during my band-playing days to do exactly that: blend into the background, act like I knew what I was doing, and make sure I didn't stick out like a sore thumb. I do wonder, though, about other instruments: I do know in higher levels of music education (and something called music performance) that students learn all the different instruments in their section, like violins learning viola, cello, even bass). I never even learned piano, where the old joke is, "my mom thought there was really only one big decision in my life as a kid: piano or violin." Tonight  MJ and I went to an orchestra performance where the cello soloist was very expressive and really got into the spirit of cello: you could say he played the $%^& out of it. Cello: large instrument and tough to haul around, but no need to tuck it under my chin all the time while playing, and I liked the deep baritone sounds it could make. 

I guess my main point is this: variety is the spice of life, and for a kid variety is the driver of innovation, the generator of creativity, the opening of different doors. I kind of wished I had tried to prop open as many doors as I could as a kid, because later in life every day is kind of just a peanut butter-and-banana breakfast (Elvis's breakfast special), and going to the same job. Jeopardy also has a recurring category of different instruments from different cultures, not just the staple orchestra ones like percussion, brass, woodwinds, and beyond even the "exotic" ones the orchestra wheels out sometimes like the harp or the triangle or keyboard, we're talking lute (a pear-shaped guitar), sitar (plucked string instrument from India/Pakistan), castanets, vibraphone, zither (another stringed instrument), flugelhorn, kazoo (buzzing instrument that looks like an inhaler), ocarina (made famous by the hit video game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time), and the one from Australia that has the best name to say: The Didgeridoo, the longest wind instrument I ever saw. And those are just the instruments made for music; the vuvuzelas at the 2010 World Cup were just noisemakers but still qualified as an "instrument." So many instruments to have tried out! Luckily unlike sports, where my age 35 body has already peaked at almost everything, I can start musical instruments at any time and still get better at it (with the possible exception of lung capacity which will decrease for some of the woodwind instruments). I still have hope to one day be a world class clavichord player!