Category: uncategorized

Sunday’s Post includes a rant by local high-school senior Sarah Ball about her unsatisfying experience as a prospective freshman (“pro fro”) at Stanford‘s Admit Weekend (“This Pro-Fro’s a No-Go: How Not To Woo Me to Your University”). When I was a senior, I didn’t attend the full weekend at Stanford; I visited just for a day. (If I remember correctly, my high-school musical had a rehearsal or performance that Saturday night, and anyway Stanford was close enough to Daly City that I had visited other times for me to feel sufficiently familiar with the place.) But back to the Post piece, I’m not rushing to defend my alma mater here for its own sake, ’cause if she had a bad experience, then of course she has a right to complain; it just seems she was set against it from the very beginning.

I guess it’s all about expectations. Granted, Admit Weekend is a sales pitch at root, but I took the cheesy activities in stride, knowing that this was only one part of the whole, “a brief opportunity to get a glimpse into a few of the things any campus had to offer,” as fellow alum Ben writes on Beaverhausen. Maybe my view is different from Sarah’s partly because I had less at stake? Once I had my admittance letters I was mostly sure I was going to pick Stanford, whereas I can understand if you’re flying across the country to visit a university that you’re not sure about, one that you “applied to on a whim,” you’re bound to be more critical or dismissive, or both. (She eventually chose Duke.)

[Update (14 May): The Stanford Daily has since published two responses, one from Robin Mamlet, dean of admission and financial aid, and the other from freshman Yamanda Wright, who was Sarah’s host.]

Just a note to local arts-goers: tomorrow Ticketplace, the great resource for half-price day-of-show (and some advance) tickets, moves from the Old Post Office Pavilion to its new location at 407 Seventh Street NW (at D Street). The closest Metro stop is Archives, but Gallery Place is just one more block away, if you, like me, are likely to take the Red Line from work and don’t want to switch lines to go just one stop. Hours will be mostly the same, except Saturdays will shift one hour earlier, so the new schedule is Tue.-Fri. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

I’m hoping they continue to carry tickets for the Tennessee Williams festival at the Kennedy Center. Can’t wait to see those plays.

Film scores are now common repertoire in symphony halls. But as perhaps an indicator of how video-game development these days increasingly resembles that of motion pictures (I’m no expert in the gaming arena, to be sure), the newest medium for symphony concert material is video-game soundtracks. From the Times, “Video Fantasy Replaces Mozart (But Who’s Keeping Score?)“:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, which typically plays scores by composers like Beethoven and Brahms, will perform music tonight more often heard while keeping score.

The Philharmonic’s program will consist entirely of excerpts from the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtrack music for “Final Fantasy,” a popular series of action-adventure video games.

It turns out that “Final Fantasy” developer Square Enix is producing the concert (they hired the Philharmonic and rented the hall, after convincing orchestra officials to go forward with the program), so in a way this particular concert is just as product-driven as music-driven, one of the critics in the article observes. But still, I have to admit, concerts like this–scores performed with projected scenes–are kind of cool. Related: Nobuo Uematsu website at Square Enix.

[Update (11 July): An excerpt of the concert will air on G4techTV’s Cinematech on Tues., July 13 at 10:30 p.m. EST. (Link via Sketchee.)]

This year’s Tony Award nominations were announced this morning, and the awards ceremony, hosted by Hugh Jackman, will take place Sunday, June 6. (Did we all see Hugh on Ellen last Friday? What a charmer. We simply must have him over for dinner sometime.) By the way, today’s Morning Edition ran an interview with Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell) about his inspirations; additional audio clips are available at the NPR website.

[Update (13:47): Schwartz’s Children of Eden is in town at Ford’s Theatre through June 6.]

Yesterday yours truly turned 27 years old. Mon dieu, vingt-sept! Yeah, I feign horror about the slippery slope to my thirties, but really I don’t have any hang-ups about my age. (Yet. Check back in three years.)

So while I was getting ready to eat breakfast, Thom went down to the front desk to pick up a FedEx delivery that had arrived for me–the second big package I received that morning, ahem. Seeing that the box was labeled Proflowers.com, I suspected they were from Thom–oh, he’s sly, that one–and I was right! I opened it to find a beautiful bouquet of long-stemmed pink and coral roses from my elf lad. Aww.

We spent the afternoon lazing around, and in the evening went out to see that new movie Mean Girls. We’d heard some good buzz about it (mostly of the “yes, it’s a teen flick, but it’s actually good!” variety), and decided to check it out. And yes, it’s actually good, clever even, both in acting and writing, with lots of hilarious lines. On an IMDb message board I just now came across a thread about favorite lines from the movie, and reading and remembering them had me laughing out loud. “Danny DeVito! I love your work!” You have to go see it. It’s fun. Er, “fetch.”

After the movie, we had a tasty dinner at Bonsai (in the Village at Shirlington), and then went to Freddie’s for drinks. The karaoke was so-so, but there were a few cuties around–some of them were buzzing around the guy on the other side of me at the bar–so that made for good man-watching. After a few drinks, we’d had our fill, so we called it a night.

In all, a great day celebrating another trip around the sun.

P.S. Shout outs to my good friend Caroline (we go way back), whose birthday was last Thursday; and to John, whose birthday is on May 8, just like me! Any other May 8-ers (or thereabouts) out there?

Yesterday, according to Danielle, was my “birthday (observed),” so some co-workers and I went out to lunch at Jaleo in Bethesda, where I once again had the Visca el Barça (named for the Barcelona futbol team?), a great sandwich that consists of “fried chicken breast stuffed with Spanish ham and cheese, with red-pepper mayo, bacon, greens, and tomato.” Yum. Afterwards we went to Häagen-Dazs across the street, and I had a scoop of mango sorbet, perfect for a hot day.

After work I got off the Metro at Dupont, and met up with Thom at Best Cellars, where they were having a wine tasting and raffling off a pair of tickets to the opera. We entered our names into the drawing, and proceeded to taste some of the wines. It was hit or miss, but perusing the shelves we did see a lot of other interesting-sounding wines. It was also the first Friday of the month, which is when a consortium of Dupont art galleries coordinate opening night receptions, so after the quick browse at the wine store, we walked to R Street. One gallery, in particular, caught our attention (and not just because they were serving wine and other refreshments). Studio Gallery is showing an exhibit of Micheline Frank’s gorgeous series of mixed-media works inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, entitled “So she waited ’til the moon came full…” The title piece, which presents two very different representations of Medea, is amazing (a small detail of this piece is available on the gallery website). The exhibit runs through Sunday, May 16.

Thom and I rounded out the evening with dinner at Bistro du Coin. We arrived on the early side of the dinner rush; a good thing too, since the place was packed by the time we left. This was our first time there, and it was excellent. We sat upstairs with a nice view of the restaurant, and it wasn’t hard to imagine ourselves somewhere in Paris. I had the mesclun salade and the steak maison (their version of good old steak frites). Oh, it was tasty. The steak, thin and tender, comes with a creamy, buttery sauce that is pure pleasure. Seriously, it had me moaning for a little while. Oh, you saucy tease, you.

Note, this entry may contain one or more of the following allergens: nuts, dairy products, or predictable finale spoilers. So it’s over. Though Friends jumped the shark ages ago, I thought I’d tune in for the series finale just ’cause. I first got into the show my freshman year in college, when gathering in the dorm lounge and bonding over Must-See TV was the thing to do. (The Simpsons was another favorite; on weeknights we’d bring in our dinners on trays from the dining hall to watch the regular back-to-back reruns at 6 p.m.) In the years since then, once the Friends started to settle down, I gradually stopped watching–then stopped caring that I wasn’t watching–and only caught reruns in syndication now and then.

So it was strange to jump back into the show and have Monica and Chandler having a baby, and Rachel going to Paris. What is going on? (Rhetorical. Please don’t write me e-mails starting “So, you see, a couple of seasons ago…”) But it’s Friends, so the one thing you can count on is the Ross and Rachel just-get-together-again-already plot. We got the predictable chase to the airport (the wrong airport at first), the predictable declaration of love at the gate area–really, there must be a separate sub-class of romantic-comedy character roles encompassing disagreeable airline gate agents and flight attendants who get in the way of the leads declaring their love to each other or otherwise getting together, whose dialog is inevitably something droning along the lines of “Sir, you’re going to need a boarding pass” or “Miss, you can’t get off the plane” despite the impassioned pleas of the lovebirds–and the predictable Ross-and-Rachel-forever ending. Though, to back up a bit, when she got back on the plane, I honestly thought that would be it, end of story. I should’ve known better. This is sitcom-land, where all loose ends must be tied up in a shiny, happy bow.

Adiós, amigos.

I’ve been fiddling around with SignMaker (link via Michael at Boulevard St Michel). If I can’t be outside in the gorgeous weather having fun, I might as well try and have some fun indoors.

California Interstate 280 is the major freeway closest to my parents’ house in Daly City. My final quarter at Stanford, I didn’t live on campus, so I commuted every day, driving on the very scenic 280, which runs alongside San Andreas Lake and Crystal Springs Reservoir.

Speaking of the scenic Bay Area, there’s an amazing collection of photos at the California Coastal Records Project. In a few photos you can make out my old high school in the Sunset district of San Francisco (shown in the central photo on this page as a few of the buildings and open space taking up a few blocks slightly right of center). This photo, which includes Ocean Beach at the bottom, makes the school look steps away from the Pacific, but it’s a long walk. Trust me.