In a few hours I’m off to the airport for my trip to the Bay Area for the holidays. I’ll be out there through next Tuesday, back in time for New Year’s. My bags are already packed–quite a surprise there; I did it all last night–and I have what seems to be oodles of time, but still have to shower, shave, eat some breakfast, etc., so I suppose I should tear myself away from the computer. Le sigh.
Bon voyage à moi!
In something that vaguely reminds me of The Economist‘s Big Mac Index, PNC Advisors calculates the Christmas Price Index, “a tongue-in-cheek economic analysis, based on the goods and services purchased by the True Love in the holiday classic, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.'” An excerpt:
Indeed, the cost of the five gold rings dropped by 5.6 percent, and the pear tree is down a full 28.6 percent from last year. However, these discounts were offset by the dancers, pipers, and drummers who have seen significant increases in the cost of their services over 2002.
“The Index reflects the broader trend of productivity growth in the U.S. economy that has driven prices lower on goods while allowing prices for services to rise modestly,” said Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors. “Whereas in the mid-1980s the cost of the goods in the song dominated the Index, the trend over time has been toward lower goods prices, such as the pear tree, and higher prices for skilled labor, such as the pipers,” he said.
Heh. (Link via BradLands.)
[Update (26 Dec 2003 01:30 PT): By the way, if you ever want to figure out how many gifts your true love gave to you on any given day N of Christmas, it’s Nx(N+1)/2. We have Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) to thank for that. (Link via Arts & Letters Daily.)]
After decorating for yesterday’s party, I was still in a crafty mood, so I made a bunch of paper snowflakes. I created a variation on one of my designs at the very fun and addictive Make-a-Flake (requires Flash). I’d say it’s very French, very deck of cards. Do visit the gallery while you’re in there making your own snowflakes. Some of those designs are pretty amazing.
Yesterday was our office holiday party–each department comes up with its own theme, and our lavishly decorated “tropical Christmas” won a prize for “best ambience”; yours truly was on the decorating committee, of course–but more importantly it was also my final workday of the year (thanks to some clever juggling of leave time). So I am now on vacation!
Rajani’s and my annual winter reunion is changing host cities this year. For the past couple of years, we’ve met up in New York, but this time, she’s coming this weekend to Arlington to visit me and Thom. Good times ahead, baby.
The year-end double issue of The New Yorker has some neat stuff, including a story by David Sedaris (“Let It Snow“), and an interesting article by Alex Ross on Tolkien vs. Wagner (“The Ring and the Rings“). An excerpt from the latter:
It is probably heretical to suggest that the “Lord of the Rings” films surpass the books on which they are based. (Correspondence on this subject may be addressed to Alex Ross, The North Pole.) The books tell a fantastic story in a familiar style, but the movies transcend the apparent limitations of their medium in the same way that Wagner transcended the limitations of opera. They revive the art of Romantic wonder; they manufacture the sublime. I hope that at least a small fraction of the huge worldwide audiences for these films will one day be tempted into Wagner’s world, which offers something else again. For Tolkien, myth is a window on an ideal world, both brighter and blacker than our own. For Wagner, it is a magnifying mirror for the average, desperate modern soul.
An aside: a couple weeks ago I changed the address on my magazine subscriptions so they’d be mailed to Thom’s place (where I am most of the time now), and when the first issue of The New Yorker arrived, I don’t know, I found something cute in seeing the label with my name and his address underneath.
A quick web-design pet peeve: using scrollbar colors that make them nearly or completely invisible. (I think scrollbar colors is an IE-only thing?) Yeah, I know, it’s not a serious hindrance to navigating the page, but still. I don’t like it. I see it more on personal sites, but why did the otherwise venerable Arts & Letters Daily have to go and do it too?
Thom and I went to see the extended edition of The Two Towers last night. I have to say I like Fellowship better; I feel it’s more textured–though yes, I realize all three movies are to be taken as one whole narrative. All that war and violence in Towers gets me unsettled. It’s not so much the gore itself; it’s just that there’s so much of it, for endless minutes. For some reason, with so much large-scale violence taking place on screen, my mind starts to wander on to deeper, darker matters like what brings people to such anger?; survival instincts may be innate, but is evil?; and so on, to what I realize now is the most chilling question, am I capable of killing someone? And then the credits roll and the lights come up. Anyway.
(I just noticed that the Times review notes, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for pounding, long scenes of sword and flaming-catapult action and unsettling mystic evil.” Ha. Indeed.)
So I told myself I’d finish reading The Return of the King before seeing the movie. I still have a good ways to go, but hopefully I’ll get it done before Thom and I return to the Uptown next week. Speaking of the Tolkien oeuvre, the Times has a special Lord of the Rings section, which includes archival book reviews, by Auden and others.
Lastly, check out the Jan. 2004 issue of Vanity Fair for a cover story on Viggo Mortensen. I never really had a thing for him as Aragorn, but all clean-cut I think he looks really good.
I don’t know why, but I seem to have caught the twenty-four-hour drama bug again. This happens periodically: I’ll think wistfully upon my high-school and college theater days, peruse some of the local community-theater listings, see that I’ve missed some auditions and that upcoming ones are months away, and then file everything away in a drawer of my mind, only to be rediscovered much later when the cycle begins again. Le sigh. One group that I keep meaning to check out is Hexagon, which performs an original revue annually, but auditions were last week. Oh, well, maybe I’ll contact them about some backstage or front-of-house type work, just to get my feet wet.
In any case, I guess I need to keep up on what’s auditioning and playing on the D.C. metro community-theater scene. (Add that to the growing list of Things I’d Love To Do If I Would Just Get Off My Lazy Behind.) Gotta sing. Gotta dance. If anyone comes across any interesting theater news (musicals, especially), do drop me a line.
