Monthly Archives: June 2012

Weird Monday

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The Thriller is in Columbus all day, and I’m here at home. Bizarre.

I am rarely alone (good for me, since I’m what you’d call a textbook extrovert), so when I have complete solitude, I sometimes wonder what to do with myself. There’s a list a mile long — though I haven’t written it down, of course :-) — of tasks I need to get taken care of before we leave town at the end of the month, but here I sit, free and easy. Go crazy all year, running inside the small hamster wheel, then kablam — summer freedom. I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon, and I’m in endless, aimless flight.

I guess I’m so accustomed to having my days pre-populated, it’s difficult for me to deal with unstructured time. Do you ever feel that way? In some ways, I always fear summer vacation from school. Whereas most people (myself included) really look forward to it, it does hold some uncertainty, which bothers me ever so slightly. What to do with an “open” day?

Part of my squirminess comes from living in a self-imposed atmosphere of “idle hands are the devil’s playground.” In other words, nothing good can come of laziness; it doesn’t look good, for one thing, and idle time equals wasted time. Others have told me that my inability to relax and do nothing once in awhile (a pastime which, in many cultures, is viewed as healthy and rejuvenating) is fueled by fear of failure. Failure to produce, failure to succeed professionally. It’s a hamster wheel for sure.

What do you do with an open day? When you are presented with a vacation, how do you approach it? Are you able to just “switch off” the rat race and immediately relax, or do you have to work yourself into it? I’m still working, I fear…

So I guess I’ll go watch my DVR episode of The Borgias, then get to work. Work? On my vacation? Yeah, ‘fraid so. Can’t see myself doing much else today. Hmmph.

Restless Fink

Review: The Woman in Black

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Well, I know what some critics said about it. It’s not “scary” in the new tradition (astounding special effects), but in the old way, it’s spooky. In other words, you scare yourself.

Critics who said that Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Potter film The Woman in Black plays out like an old 60s or 70s horror movie were, in fact, complimenting it, in my opinion. Today’s movie-going horror fan expects something quite different than those of the past. In 2012, we want to be amazed as well as terrified. Me? If I’m going to watch a scary movie (and I definitely do not enjoy the experience, believe me), I want it to scare me from the inside. To me, that’s where the true nightmares lie: in one’s own mind. That’s why, if I have to choose a favorite category of scary film, I’ll go for a ghost story any day. They just creep me out the most.

Woman in Black, based on the 1983 novel by Susan R. Hill, tells the tale of a vengeful, menacing spirit that terrorizes a small English village. Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), a young lawyer, is dispatched to the town to sew up the legal affairs of a reclusive widow who recently died in a craggy, creepy old mansion that no one dared to go near. He finds the townspeople extremely unfriendly and suspicious. As the story unfolds, Kipps is sucked further and further into the horrifying history of the house and its inhabitants.

He sees the spectre of a woman dressed in black, and eventually discovers that every time someone sees this apparition, a child dies.

The “scary” for me in this film, of course, was largely of the “jump-out-and-BOO!” variety. I hate that. Tortured, ghoulish faces appear out of nowhere, and inanimate objects move — all accompanied by the obligatory orchestral chord jab. Scares the livin’ carp outta me. Thank goodness for my blanket; it helps me through those difficult passages.

Thing is, the obligatory orchestral chord jab is used — and used and used and used and used — until you’re almost no longer listening to dialogue or following plot. Rather, you’re just preparing for the next jump-out-and-BOO! It was distracting to me. Add to it the beyond cheesy ending (complete with one final obligatory orchestral chord jab), and I must say the experience was somewhat lacking. Less than fulfilling. Not a waste of time, but something I’d never watch twice.

Not that scary movies are things I ever watch more than once…

On the Rat-O-Meter scale of five cheeses, I give The Woman in Black:

True Confessions

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Sometimes I have to take my temperature. Am I really a singer? Am I really a teacher of singers? If so, then why do I feel this way? Behold, the confessional:

I hate reality singing shows. Hate them. You name the latest reality singing show, and I will say, “Yep. Hate it.” I guess I hate where popular music singing style has gone. The more upper-register vocal gymnastics you can do, the better (and more marketable, which is the most important thing, isn’t it?) you are. In-tune singing has taken a back seat to “can you do licks like Xtina and Kelly?” I know I sound like somebody’s grammie here, but truthfully, it saddens me to see where things are going.

Don’t get me wrong: vocal gymnastics as a style definitely has its place. It’s like many other things I’ve noticed, though. We (Americans? Humans?) take a good thing and pet it and love it, then proceed to mass-produce it, choke it to death, and pound it into the ground.

On a lark, I watched the first 15 minutes of Duets last night. The opening featured Kelly Clarkson and Robin Thicke singing something, I can’t remember. Kelly had a singular apparent goal: see how loud, overbearing, and lick-heavy you can be. Forget smoothness of line, or establishment of a melody. Just get the back handsprings in there. Try to be Aretha, except unlike Aretha, scream every lyric. It was painful, and I turned it off after hearing John Legend prattle on about choosing a previous song that was too low for his duet contestant, then watching him parade her onstage with a new song that was also too low for her. Bah.

How many singing reality shows are there on the air right now? I couldn’t even guess. Can’t find a definitive list, but I can tell you it’s too long. And the networks are laughing all the way to the bank.

I hate beatboxing. Vocal percussion to those in the know, and VP to the kool kids. I love a cappella singing — and pop a cappella singing — but I absolutely loathe the spitting-in-the-microphone, gangsta-hand-gesturing, mic-choking pretentious tragically hip look-at-me-I’m-wearing-a-fedora boompa-chick crap. Always have, always will.

sigh

So am I mental? Probably. But it’s a happy place. :-)

Hey, for all you private sector fiends — it’s Finkday!