Watching: Cast Away. I liked it, I really did. I'm in the Tom Hanks fan club, and I did not get bored during the hour in the middle where it's nothing but him on the island.
What I am telling you, however, is that this is not the movie to see the night before you get on a plane. The crash scene in the movie is by far the most graphic I've ever seen. I'm normally a very complacent flyer and the thought of crashing rarely if ever crosses my mind. But not Wednesday. During my flights from Harrisburg to Chicago and Chicago to Kansas City, I thought it was all over. Every little flicker of turbulence, every change in the sound of the engine, it was all over.
Also Watching: SportsNight. I heard that snappy little theme song come over my television on Thursday, and I was ever so happy.
So, there's a little less than two days left in 2000.
And frankly, I say, good riddance.
2000 was a stressful year for yours truly, quite bi-polar. It had the highest of highs, two days in particular that I will never forget: May 26, law school graduation day, and September 27, passing the bar day. But there are a few days in there I would rather forget. My cat getting sick, moving, studying for the bar, taking the bar, finding a job, my recent back incident.
Feh. I much prefer a calm, consistent, middle-of-the-road kind of existence. Bring it on, 2001.
Okay. Remember how I mentioned a while back that Santa might be bringing me a DVD player?
Unfortunately, Santa visited the wrong room. A DVD player showed up at my house, but for my brother.
Actually, Santa didn't give it to him, or then I would have actually been a little upset that I didn't get one. No, this one came from Elena, my brother's girlfriend.
Elena is just about the sweetest thing on earth. In case you don't remember, we first met Elena in August, when she accompanied mon frère, Derek, to our cousin's wedding. She's from Venezuela, and has only been in this country about nine months. Her English is better than I thought -- I think she was just really overwhelmed in August, meeting our entire family in two days, so she wasn't as talkative. She's more so now, and although I think she was still shy about starting conversations, I could tell she was getting more comfortable as the vacation went on.
She was very cute in that from-another-country way. While we were getting ready for dinner, she walked up to Derek and just took his arm, then jumped back and said, "There is something going on with you today!" Turns out that they apparently don't have a lot of static electricity in Venezuela, and she kept getting shocked and thought there was something wrong with him. We showed her how to really get it going, shuffling around the carpet, and she just laughed and laughed.
Anyway, she got my brother a DVD player, and my brother just happened to get her a six-DVD set of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, because she loves musicals, especially The Sound of Music which is her very favorite. So we hooked up the player and watched it while we waited for the turkey to cook.
Of course we had to play around with it. Elena likes to put the English captions on because it helps her learn, but first we had to make it so they were speaking (and singing!) in French, then subtitled in Spanish, etc. etc.
I was actually in it in high school, believe it or not. I was a nun at the beginning and end (sang a lot of Latin, a cappella, in four-part harmony, no less), a guest at the ball (I had two lines, I believe) and the third place contestant, the one who keeps bowing and won't leave the stage. (Only in our version, the director had me grab Uncle Max's face and plant a big old smooch right on the lips. That was kind of fun, considering it was maybe the third time in my life I had ever kissed a boy.)
So anyway, I'm no expert on musicals. I love them, but I don't have enough expertise to say anything critically relevant about them. But I just happened to see two of my favorite song and dance numbers over Christmas. My most favorite of all is "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man (which is really more song than dance, I suppose).
But for all the sugary sweetness of the song, I love the "My Favorite Things" scene in The Sound of Music. From when Liesl climbs in the window to when Maria decides to make clothes with the drapes, I can't help it, I just adore it. (Which is good, because I think my least favorite in all the world is the scene just before it, that "I am 16 going on 17" horror.)
I saw my other favorite just by chance, which is the "Moses Supposes" song in Singin' in the Rain, which happened to be on television. Watching Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor dance together (no, not in THAT way, you freaks) is just amazing, and the song is hilarious too.
Despite the lack of a DVD player, Santa was quite good to me. Lots of books, two beautiful 14K bangle bracelets (one for my birthday and one for Christmas), and a Swatch watch that I had seen on a poster ad in Caeser's Palace but they didn't have in the store, so my parents found it somewhere. It's from the Irony collection, so it's, uh, silver, and the strap wraps around the wrist twice. Very cool.
No new music, though, so I'm going to use a teensy bit of my bonus money to pick up a couple new ones.
Off to do that now, actually, and run some other errands before going to see Billy Elliott tonight with my friends. My New Year's plans are so lame, I'm not even going to tell you about them.
So instead I will wish you a happy and safe one, and I'll see you on the other side.