Friday 5 for March 23: The Shine of a Thousand Spotlights

From here.  Questions inspired by The Greatest Showman which I recommend highly.

  1. What physical trait are you (or have you been) self-conscious about?
    It’s changed over the years.  In recent years it’s this gap between my front teeth.  It’s not quite the size of Dave Letterman’s old gap or Michael Strahan’s, but it’s noticeable.  I try not to think about it, especially since Letterman and Strahan rocked theirs so well, but I can’t help feeling everyone is staring at it even when I know nobody is staring at it.  Although now that my wonderfully long hair is thinning at a heartbreaking rate, I have a feeling my answer’s going to change soon.
  2. When did you last do something risking injury?
    We’ve been having a bit of a gecko problem at the office, and while I don’t have a problem with geckos, I do not need their poop on my computer mouse.  The problem got pretty bad, so I came in one weekend with a plan for repelling (not killing) the little grey reptiles.  I can coexist with them.  I just don’t want them in certain areas above my desk.  So I did a little bit of research and brought in some garlic, which I hung from the ceiling.  I will not share how I got the garlic up there, since I’m sure it would be prohibited by my employer, but I could really have hurt myself had I not been so nimble.
  3. Why do critics and the general movie-going public never seem to agree?
    It’s because critics see thousands of movies.  If you eat a thousand chicken parmesans all over the country, you get pretty good at telling the better from the worse, as Brian Windhorst will tell you.  Critics see so many movies that they actually know more than the rest of us about what’s good and what’s not.   They don’t know more than we do about what we’ll like, and that’s where people get all huffy when critics hate the movies they love, or love movies they don’t get.  This is why the good critics tell you why they dislike or like a movie, and we decide for ourselves if those are the reasons we would also dislike or like a movie.
  4. How do you feel about Hugh Jackman as an actor?
    He’s good.  I have always liked him as Wolverine, and I thought he was a good Jean Valjean.  As P. T. Barnum, he plays a kind of Disneyfied version of the Greatest Showman, and while that disturbs me a bit, the product is too good not to be forgiving.  I’m not sure he’s a very good singer, though.
  5. Who is the best singer you’ve seen in live performance?
    This would have to be Renee Fleming, whom I saw in performance with the Honolulu Symphony in March 2006.  It was amazing.  And I do not mind admitting that I was totally, completely in love, and if she had somehow asked me after the show to leave everything behind and come be her servant, I would have done it in a second.

3 Replies to “Friday 5 for March 23: The Shine of a Thousand Spotlights”

  1. 1. What physical trait are you (or have you been) self-conscious about?

    Petite size. On the bright side, I was always at the top of the pyramid not touching the filthy soles of the other cheerleaders’ sneakers. Ick.

    2. When did you last do something risking injury?

    Drove home during a blizzard. It was snowing so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up and I had to stop several times to clear the windows despite having the heater and defroster cranked. It was like a sauna in there. The headlights were useless. More than a few times the minivan started sliding and I thought “Why didn’t I get a hotel room?” but managed to regain control. Normally what is a two hour drive on the back roads took seven hours.

    3. Why do critics and the general movie-going public never seem to agree?

    It is believed less than one percent of Japanese silent movies exist. There were a series of earthquakes in the early nineteen-thirties and a tsunami in which most films were lost.

    Japanese movie magazines were very different from American magazines. In Japan, discussion involved camera angles, techniques, pacing, lighting, etc. rather than glamour portraits of favorite stars. Just as important as the actors and actresses in the films were the benshi (live narrators) and orchestra which is a reason silent film continued until the mid-thirties, not a lack of technology.

    I am going to disagree with the question.

    4. How do you feel about Hugh Jackman as an actor?

    Is he the one who broke up with Angelina Jolie?

    5. Who is the best singer you’ve seen in live performance?

    Mick Jagger.

    Mrs. Mick Jagger.
    勝美 Jagger.
    Lady 勝美 Jagger.

  2. Ugh. I’ve driven in fog and thought I was going to die. Can’t imagine what it’s like in blizzard conditions.

  3. During a snowstorm on a rural county road posted fifty-five miles per hour, top speed may be a brisk twenty. Usually less. Driving on an urban freeway during snow or even rain is another story.

    “Pea soup” fog while driving is more frightening to me. There was a horrific crash about twenty years ago which involved fifty cars and took the lives of ten people. Witnesses heard thuwmp, thuwmp, thuwmp and screaming.

    On a brighter note, when my roadster was brand new to me, I took him (I know, I know … cars and boats are usually girls) for a midnight spin.

    I live near a large freshwater sea (explaining a long history of shipwrecks and why a midwestern state would have a sailor on its flag). No matter the local television channel or radio station, the meteorologist concludes the weather report with “warmer near the lake” in winter and “cooler near the lake” in summer.

    So. I’m at the lakefront watching a glorious sunrise and thought “Whoa, I’d better get home to feed the cats.” I hopped on the freeway and wham! the windshield became completely opaque white. No emergency lanes; I had to navigate by judging my distance from the bridge’s guardrail separating me from a drop of one hundred feet onto a nice soft parking lot. Or maybe I’d plunge into the harbor. Hard to say. And there was a semi bearing down on me. The car was so new I hadn’t familiarized myself with the defroster. After years of Chrysler Town & Country and Pontiac Firebird controls, it was not intuitive. Thank you, BMW!

    Moral of the story: To avoid windshield from fogging up, turn on the defroster before hopping on the freeway!

    On a much more brighter side, I have seen the fata morgana (rare mirage on the watery horizon) caused by rapid temperature inversion. Appears as if you can see across the sea but is actually a strange reflected image of my city in distant fog clouds. Spooky.

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