Somusing

I picked up this memoir of a former restaurant critic on a whim at the library. Much of it is detailed, self-centered reminiscences about the author's relationship with food and his weight throughout his life, probably only interesting as far as you can relate directly to his struggles (many of which I could not). Probably good that it's out there for some readers. There is great stuff about his mother's cooking habits that I related to: if there are four baked potatoes left after a huge meal for extended family, does that mean some people didn't take one because they thought there weren't enough to go around? Must make more next time!

My favorite part of the book is the last part, after Bruni has settled at a good weight (through plenty of exercise and portion control). He becomes the restaurant critic for the New York Times, and his account of what that job entails is fascinating.

Ivy told me this was not a good movie, but we watched it anyway. There are some very funny parts. Very funny. The idea of a world where nobody lies is interesting and provides some great humor. But that kind of world would look so much different than the one we know, and how it might be different isn't well-explored. There are a couple of stabs at it, but they don't make any sense to me. (Why would total honesty produce a bunch of people who value genetically ideal mates? Or is it supposed to be our society if suddenly everyone told nothing but the truth? No, that's not it, either.) Anyway, definitely some hilarity, but I'm not sure it's worth the time.

This was not great, but the kids liked it.

It's well worth seeing Inception in a theater, and if there were any IMAX theaters 'round these parts, I'd go see it again in one of those. (Is it worth a trip to Salt Lake, do you think? Hmmm... something to think about.) The cinematography and special effects are gorgeous, and there's a little Fun with M.C. Escher that was delightful. As far as I know, nobody's messed with M.C. Escher in a movie before, but that's only as far as I know, which isn't very far. Also, it's nice to see a movie that makes you think a little.

My dad gave me a great gift a few days ago. At the Deseret Industries second-hand store he found this English-Russian and Russian-English dictionary (словарь = something like "wordery") published 1991 in Moscow, just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and he picked it up for me:

(Click on the photos to see a larger version.)

I have a few books in Russian but don't have an English/Russian dictionary, so just on that account it's nice to have. But there are a few other interesting features to note:

Above you can see that it has an ISBN (5-200-01121-3), something I don't remember seeing often in east-bloc publications. Maybe dictionaries like this were more likely since they may've been sold internationally more often than other books.

It's also funny to see that the library cataloging information abbreviates Moscow as merely "M."

But here was the biggest surprise for me:

Halfway down the right-hand page, see:

оригинал-макет изготовлен ... использованием программы WORD® Microsoft.

That is roughly: "Original model by [3 names] and made using the program WORD® Microsoft." Wow! I guess Microsoft Word was being used in the Soviet Union in 1991. That's a surprise. It seems most likely that would've been the MS-DOS version, before Windows 3.0. Perhaps Word had better support for mixing Russian and English than other word processors of the time? Anyway, that was a fun surprise.

Thanks, Dad!

So, my mom wanted me to write about this on here. Yeah. Anyways, I went to a camp at BYU called Startalk that was really awesome. It was a 3-week long Arabic language camp equivalent to a year of high school Arabic or a semester of college Arabic. It was really cool. There were about 27 students, I think, and they had us stay at the Heritage Halls dorms there. So our days went like this usually: wake up at 8 or so, get dressed and stuff. then we had class from 8:30 to 11:30. After that we had lunch at the Canon Center. At 1:00 we had class again until 3:00. Then it was Language Lab until 4:00, in which we did homework and DVD stuff. After that, we had Language Recreation for another hour. That was playing games with Arabic words and stuff. Then we had dinner, which was made by our counselors. Then Fun With Arabic, which was like soccer and stuff until 7:30. After that we had Study Hall (oh joy!) for TWO WHOLE HOURS until bed. We had a TON of homework. But I'm not complaining! We learned a freaking ton in just three weeks. Anyways, on Thursdays, we had field trips to a restaurant. Then on Saturdays we had no class and a field trip all day to either a lake or river and we had dinner there. On Sunday we pretty much could do whatever after church. There were a lot of non-LDS people there. I thought that was kinda funny, since it was BYU. The first three days we learned the alphabet and greetings and stuff like that. After that it was new verbs, nouns, and grammar stuff. It's all really cool! Anyway, here's some Arabic for you. اهلا ازايك انا كؤايس جدنز انا اسكؤن في المدينة درجز That says, roughly: Hi!, How are you? I'm very good. I live in the city of Driggs. I can say a lot more than that, but I don't know how to spell most of it, and I probably spelled most of that wrong anyways. I'm gonna go now. My mom will probably make me write more later, but Im' done for now. It was awesome!

I have now seen this twice and I really like it. Jon and I saw it first and then I made my three oldest boys (ages 11, 13, and 14) study up on King Richard the Lionheart, King John, and Robin Hood, and then I took them to see it on Monday. It was fun to do some reading in advance of my second viewing. I learned some stuff! Hopefully the boys did, too.

I love the relationship between Robin and Marion. It's sweet and slow, a nice change from the usual Hollywood fare, even though the circumstances created in the script might have justified the usual quick leap into bed. (She's been without her husband for ten years! He's been fighting wars for ten years! And they're supposed to be acting like husband and wife!) Also, I like Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett.

• Paul Dukas, Fanfare pour La Peri
• Francis Poulenc, Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone
• Claude Debussy, Prelude No. 8, La fille aux cheveux lin
• Maurice Ravel, Selections from, Ma mère l'oye
• Darius Milhaud, La crèation du monde, Op. 81

This was the first of GTMF's free "Inside the Music" Tuesday concerts this summer. It was fabulous, of course. These events are hosted by the very funny Roger Oyster, principal trombonist of the Kansas City Symphony, who usually tells a little something about the composer and/or the piece. The concerts are about 75 minutes long and the music is generally varied and accessible.

I was especially eager to hear "La fille aux cheveux lin" ("The girl with the flaxen hair") because I've played it on the piano. I thought maybe they'd be playing an arrangement for a small group, but it was the original piano piece, and it was played beautifully by Deborah Moriarty. She was doing amazing stuff with the pedal that I've never even tried to do. I loved it.

My other favorite piece was Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose). This was originally written as a piano duet and Ravel later orchestrated it. But this performance was an arrangement for string quartet and piano, and it was stunning. I'd like to find a recording somewhere, but I'm not sure where I'd find it. Might be worth learning the piano duet with my son, though it sounds hard.

I took Phin and Lillian to the Jackson Hole Symphony's open rehearsal ($10 for adults, free for kids 6 to 18, or something like that) on Friday. Here's what they performed:

• Tragic Overture, Op. 81, by Johannes Brahms
• Violin Concerto by Alban Berg
• Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 by Ludwig van Beethoven

They started by playing the National Anthem, because they would be playing it for the 4th of July, and then they went through each piece, only short-changing Beethoven's 5th towards the end, because they were running out of time. They would play through the entire piece and then go back to certain places in the piece at the direction of the director ('cause, you know, he directs). There was a guest violinist for the concerto (Akiko Suwanai, playing a 1714 Stradivarius called "Dolphin"), which was a 20th century piece, not super easy to listen to.

The rehearsal lasted about three hours, and this is what I learned:

• I like Beethoven's 5th very much. Of course everyone is familiar with the beginning, but I don't think I'd ever listened to the whole thing, or if I have, I wasn't paying attention. Unfortunately, I think they skipped parts of it during the rehearsal.
• It was too long for kids! Although Phin and Lillian did pretty well.
• I loved watching the rehearsal--it's cool to watch and hear a group that actually listens to and responds to their director--but it's very different from watching a performance, and I felt kind of frustrated that I wouldn't be seeing the performance later that night.
• But tickets are $52 for the weekend symphony performances. $10 for students, though! Which makes me want to send my kids in without me.

Grand Teton Music Festival has free events every Tuesday night for the duration of the festival (end of June to August 14), though, and my goal is to go to every one that I'm capable of attending. I'll blog about those, too.

In an earlier post, I speculated that maybe I was about to enter a Mystery phase, a phase I've never experienced before. So I gave it a go. I don't think it really took, but it was kind of fun.

The Cat Who Went Underground by Lilian Jackson Braun. These are well-known, but I'd never read one before. I liked the main character pretty well, but the cats were uninteresting. I'm not really a cat person, unless the cat is asking for a cheeseburger. (Don't be mad, cat-lovers! I'm not a dog person, either. Or a pet person. Or even a kid person, actually.) Also, does it always take so long to get to the mystery part?

B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton. Another famous mystery writer. This was pretty good. There was plenty happening and the characters were fun. I liked it pretty well.

Deadly Décisions by Kathy Reichs. I love, love, love the TV show Bones, and since it's gone for the summer, I thought I'd try to get my fix this way, since the show is loosely based on Kathy Reichs and her books. (Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist who writes novels about a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan, and Bones is about forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan who writes books about the fictional character Kathy Reichs! That's just the kind of silly, clever trick that I love.) There's not enough similarity between book and show to get me my fix, but I liked it pretty well and I might read more of them. I guess it might not technically qualify as a mystery.