What I'm Reading Now - MWF Seeking BFF

For some time now, I've been trying to force myself to get out and meet new people, which is a hard thing for an introvert like me to do.  It's no secret that many of my friends are in a different stage of life than I am. While I still love them all dearly, I am feeling rather lonely.  Hence my search for additional acquaintances who might one day become friends.

Imagine my surprise when I was working at my bookstore a couple of weeks ago and saw a book (not quite aptly) titled MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend.

I'm through the introduction and first chapter, and so far I both love and hate the author.  Love: when she lived in New York, Rachel and two of her friends started a book group.  They were each responsible for bringing two others into the group.  If anyone left, they'd bring in someone else - always nine.  Hate (and I'm paraphrasing for the sake of brevity): "I may discover at the end of this year that I don't have time for new friends.  I'm married now."  Okay homegirl, your friends coming to this same conclusion is partially how you got into this predicament, so if you're going to have that attitude, why bother?

Regardless of the inanity of that particular comment, I'm hoping for some inspiration!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

See you soon!

Brad Paisley!

Two Fridays ago (I know, I'm behind again), T and I went to see Brad Paisley! I've seen him before and I have so much fun every time.  He seems so adorably awkward and fun and normal!  And on top of that, he's a damn good musician, which not all rock stars are!  I thought I had mentioned his mad guitar pickin' skills before, but a look back does not reveal such a link.  The one with the best sound quality I can find is here, but the video's terrible and I've seen Brad play better.  Search around online and see if you can find a better link - I'll post it!

Further evidence of his awesomeness: I'm not much of a musical biography reader, but he wrote one called Diary of a Player about a year and a half ago that I'd like to read.

Still further evidence, as if you need it: it was Brad, live in concert, who convinced the long-time country music opponent E that it wasn't so bad after all!

The show started with Scotty McCreery, whom I heard singing "The Trouble With Girls" only from the refreshments line, but who seemed to have the crowd on his side.  We were in our seats for The Band Perry, whom we also saw last summer opening for Tim McGraw. The fun renditions of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" and Queen's "Fat-Bottomed Girls," and ended with what are probably their two biggest hits: "If I Die Young" and "You Lie."  Homegirl's got some lungs on her when she's singing live.

An homage to Queen

Brad played a good show, the first on the summer leg of his Virtual Reality tour.  He's a crowd-pleaser, so he played lots of old stuff mixed in with his more popular new stuff.  The set list is available here.  Kimberly Perry filled Alison Krauss's role in "Whiskey Lullaby," Scotty McCreery came back out to help with "Celebrity," and Brad was joined onstage by a great (but unfortunately virtual - get it?) Carrie Underwood for "Remind Me."

Goofing around with Scotty McCreery during "Celebrity"

Singing to the lawn seats

 

An interlude during "I'm Still a Guy," during which Brad asserts that:

"Women, you are trying to feminize us.

You find a guy who's tough, you like him,

and you march him down to the salon to get hair highlights

and you make him get a spray-on tan or something.

That's not even feminization, that not the right word.

It's castration, that's what's going on....

We can be real men.  We don't want to pluck our eyebrows.

We have certain times, they're our times and you can't interfere no matter what:

Like (?), and NFL football, and when football season's over, NASCAR season starts,

and while I'm thinking of it, we're gonna need Monday nights too.

And Saturdays - college football.

And on those days, you can do whatever you want.

Go with your girlfriends; get together and have a pillow-sleepover-pajama fight,

whatever you do.  We won't ask any questions.

And then we'll all get back together, you'll have had your time without us, and we'll have had our time without  you...

The point is, this world would be a better place

And I'm Brad Paisley and I approved this message."

Singing:

"These days there's dudes linin' up to get facials,

Manicured, waxed, and botoxed.

With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotion on your hands,

You can't grip a tackle box.

Yeah, with all of these men linin' up to get neutered,

It's hip now to be feminized.

But I don't highlight my hair, I've still got a pair,

Honey, I'm still a guy.

My eyebrows aren't plucked, there's a gun in my truck,

Thank God, I'm still a guy."

He played a two-song encore: "American Saturday Night" and that most fabulous of songs for the drunks in the crowd, "Alcohol."

I'm glad I got to go to this show,  since I missed him when he was here last summer.  Never again!

[I have another Band Perry video and another Brad Paisley video, but I can't get them formatted properly.  If I can make that happen, I'll upload them also.]

What I Watched -- The Artist

The Artist got lots of critical acclaim during its first theater run, but I just never got my butt out to see it.  Then it won Oscars for best picture, best actor, best director, costume design, and best original score, as well as being nominated for best supporting actress, cinematography, original screenplay, art direction, and editing.

When they did another two-week theater run last month, I finally managed to get there.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get this post written.

The plot is pretty simple: George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a great silent film actor at a time when silent movies are going the way of the dodo.  Peppy Miller (the lovely Berenice Bejo) is a fan who auditions her way into one of his last movies.  She becomes a star in her own right, adapting to the talkies in a way that George cannot.  Despite their differences in fortune, they can't seem to escape each other.

I'm not much of an old movie buff, so the whole silent film experience is fairly new to me, but for the most part I enjoyed it.  Silent acting seems to take one of two forms: the energetic or angry or funny scenes are overly dramatic, with big gestures and bold facial expressions; the quiet scenes were 180-degrees opposite, with lots of extreme close-ups of subtle changes in expression.

The film also stars John Goodman as a studio exec, and of course Uggie!

Bottom line: cute and enjoyable, but I don't know if it deserved all those awards.

Goal #22

Goal #22:clean the living room.

T's putting in the new front door this week, so I have to do my part and clear out some of the stuff that has been sitting idly around for a few weeks: papers, stuff that needs to go to storage, etc.  By the end of this week, it'll be organized and/or gone.

Recap of Goal #21: brilliant!  Love the two-minute rule.  I'm going to try to stick with that one.

What I Watched -- The Avengers

I'm sort of hit or miss with superhero movies.  I've really liked the latest installments in the Batman series (anyone else excited for The Dark Knight Rises?), but I can't say the same for the X-Men films. I did, however, see The Avengers (or, as it is properly titled, Marvel's The Avengers, since it's based on their comic book series).

Aaaaannnnd, it was awesome.  There were of course the obligatory action scenes and things blowing up, but it was also really funny!  The timing was great, like when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) identifies himself as "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," or when Hulk crushes Loki (MINOR SPOILER ALERT - this is late in the movie, but it doesn't really give anything away).  There were several points when the audience erupted in laughter and spontaneous applause.

Strictly speaking, I guess all the Avengers aren't really superheroes at all.  Iron Man is a regular dude (albeit a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist) with a really cool high-tech suit.  Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a super spy with mad acrobatic skills, but no super powers per say.  Captain America (Chris Evans) is a tough guy and a fighter, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has wicked skills with a bow and arrow, but no magical skills to speak of.  So that leaves us with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) as our bona fide supers.  And I guess Loki (Tom Hiddleston, recently of War Horse and Midnight in Paris fame), though he's a bad guy.  But why quibble about the details about who's super when it all comes together so nicely?

Bottom line: hooray for superheroes!

What I'm Reading Now -- The Night Circus

I first heard about The Night Circus (by Erin Morgenstern) on a podcast I listen to, Books on the Nightstand, which I've mentioned recently.  It is early in the awards season for this book, but it won an Alex Award and expected to at least be nominated for others.

I'm listening to this one on audio as well.  The first thing I noticed about it is that the introduction portion (at least, what seems to be the introduction - more on that later) is in the second person, which is something you don't see very often.

Morgenstern's sentences are well-crafted and her words appear carefully chosen.  Sometimes they can be a little bit overly-flowery though, which is perhaps appropriate for a book about the circus but can be a little tiresome.

Happy Birthday, E!

Great to see you!  I hope your massage goes better than George's!

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- Take 2

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest a few days ago, and it was definitely different from the first two.  Not really worse or better.

This one was more legal drama than the previous books, although there still was a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of sneaking around, spying, and hacking computers.

Our final installment brings to a close the investigation into the complicated history of The Girl, Lisbeth Salander.  The sweeping, conspiracy theorist's dream involves secret police, international spies, corrupt bureaucrats, pedophiles, and even more secret police.  The pacing is good; it builds to a crescendo, but ends with a predictably unsatisfying but mandatory denouement.

I enjoyed listening to this on audio because I didn't have to stumble over the complicated Swedish names, although I think the fact that I didn't have to sound them out a few times before I got rolling also made it easier to get the characters mixed up in my head.

As with the others, it's compelling reading but mediocre writing.

Goal #21

Goal #21: follow the two minute rule

I haven't read David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, but I did come to learn about one thing he has in it, so I picked up a copy and read those few pages.

It's the two minute rule, and it goes like this: if there's something you need to do which will take a maximum of two minutes, do it now.  His theory is that, at more than two minutes, the amount of time and energy you spend adding the thing to your to-do list, worrying about it later, and so on, exceeds the amount of time you would just spend doing it now.

Allen does acknowledge that the selection of two minutes as the time limit is somewhat arbitrary but seems to work well on a regular day.  If you have a longer stretch of time, maybe you can go as high as 10 minutes, or if you're super busy you can cut it down to 30 or 60 seconds.

I learned all this a couple weeks ago; it's been percolating and I've said to myself a few times, "Oh, it won't take long, just do it now."  But this week I'm really going to try to be good about it!

Recap of Goal #20:
- Sunday night: 7.5 hours
- Monday night: 6 hours.  I barely eked this one out, and I did it at the cost of a workout (although if you factor in the time it took me to fall asleep, I probably just missed my goal).  But here's my question: both sleep and exercise are good for you.  Which is more important?  In order to get my workout in, I would have had to cut it down to 5:15 of sleep at most, probably more like 5 hours even.  Is that worth it?
- Tuesday night: 5.5 hours.  So close, but...UGH!  The most annoying part of this is that I could have had my six hours (or I could have gotten a quick jog in).  I was meeting some people on Wednesday morning, and the e-mail said "5:30." To me, that meant "be there at 5:30."  But they were all meeting and driving together and I was coming from elsewhere, so their plan was to meet at 5:30, be there at 6:00.  So many possibilities for that extra 30 minutes, but instead I just sat around twiddling my thumbs.
- Wednesday night: 6.25 hours
- Thursday night: 7 hours
- Friday night: 7 hours
- Saturday night: 7 hours

So, all in all, not bad!