Good day!
Had a lovely, lovely day today!
I went to an amazing art show at a fabulous gallery I'd not visited yet, courtesy of my friend Gretchin. She's friends with the (also fantastic) gallery owner, and managed to get it opened 30 minutes early, so we'd have time to really enjoy the show before the second half of our afternoon kicked in.
The show was book art, inspired by science and math. To my amazement and delight, most of the books were available to be picked up, touched, and really explored. It was so cool. I keep rewriting this section, trying to explain some of my favorites, but I can't do them justice. But I will say that one of my favorites involved metal and lodestones and magnatized hemitite. Another was one of those sets of puzzle cubes that fold and fold and fold in on themselves forever, with words and beautiful colors. Another had crystals grown on it, and had been bent and worked into an organic shape, and looked so natural, but with words peeking through. One was full of bottles and keys and labels saying secret things in old old spidery scrawl. One was all moon phases and astronomy and math, and could fold out into three different giant diagrams.
My only regret is that the show is only up for another week. Well, that, and that some of the ones I loved are out of my price range.
And then we grabbed a quick lunch, and met up with Sven and some of their other friends to see The Hobbit. I need to preface this by saying I'm not actually much into Tolkien. I thought the movie was fine. Very pretty, and it didn't feel as long as it was, though it did feel long. Particularly when they were doing yet another drawn out, too long, ridiculous chase/fight scene.
There were things I liked (Andy Serkis' physicality with Gollum, the storm giants themselves (though not any part of that scene that involved yet more people and cliffs), the general beauty of the film), and things I didn't (Ratagast, the need to interrupt everything to go back and show us all of the lead up to it, 80% of the escape from the goblins, 70% of the gazillion orc attacks, most of the filler).
But afterwards, the 5 of us hung out and discussed the film, which is something I have just missed doing. My brother and I can on occasion, but we don't tend to watch things at the same time (both of us being generally disinclined to go to the theater), and when we have both watched a thing, we tend not to talk about it overly much around H if she's not seen it.
One person was big into Tolkien (borderline too into it for productive conversation, but), and could speak with authority of what was and wasn't in the books (I haven't read The Hobbit in something like 20+ years. Lord), or rather, which appendix various other things were in. Sven is very versed in film (he heads up the animation festival for which I'm on the jury), and had a lot of really neat points about various more film-ish aspects of the movie, which was neat to bounce some discussion off of.
It was a good group, and it's nice to have people to rant about my hatred of comic relief characters, hear someone else rant about Peter Jackson and his love of cliffs, and agree with me that a given movie only gets a single zoom-in-possibly-slow-motion-'NOOOOOOOOO!' scream, and that that is, in fact, a solid rule for movies (or will be when I rule the world).
I also got to hear about an upcoming 10 day theater festival out here, full of new plays, so that is very exciting. I shall have to get myself a pass for it, I do think.
And then I came home and did a chapter of studying. All in all, a productive day. Even if I didn't clean house. And I'm picking up my parents at the airport soonish. And they're staying here. Oops.
I went to an amazing art show at a fabulous gallery I'd not visited yet, courtesy of my friend Gretchin. She's friends with the (also fantastic) gallery owner, and managed to get it opened 30 minutes early, so we'd have time to really enjoy the show before the second half of our afternoon kicked in.
The show was book art, inspired by science and math. To my amazement and delight, most of the books were available to be picked up, touched, and really explored. It was so cool. I keep rewriting this section, trying to explain some of my favorites, but I can't do them justice. But I will say that one of my favorites involved metal and lodestones and magnatized hemitite. Another was one of those sets of puzzle cubes that fold and fold and fold in on themselves forever, with words and beautiful colors. Another had crystals grown on it, and had been bent and worked into an organic shape, and looked so natural, but with words peeking through. One was full of bottles and keys and labels saying secret things in old old spidery scrawl. One was all moon phases and astronomy and math, and could fold out into three different giant diagrams.
My only regret is that the show is only up for another week. Well, that, and that some of the ones I loved are out of my price range.
And then we grabbed a quick lunch, and met up with Sven and some of their other friends to see The Hobbit. I need to preface this by saying I'm not actually much into Tolkien. I thought the movie was fine. Very pretty, and it didn't feel as long as it was, though it did feel long. Particularly when they were doing yet another drawn out, too long, ridiculous chase/fight scene.
There were things I liked (Andy Serkis' physicality with Gollum, the storm giants themselves (though not any part of that scene that involved yet more people and cliffs), the general beauty of the film), and things I didn't (Ratagast, the need to interrupt everything to go back and show us all of the lead up to it, 80% of the escape from the goblins, 70% of the gazillion orc attacks, most of the filler).
But afterwards, the 5 of us hung out and discussed the film, which is something I have just missed doing. My brother and I can on occasion, but we don't tend to watch things at the same time (both of us being generally disinclined to go to the theater), and when we have both watched a thing, we tend not to talk about it overly much around H if she's not seen it.
One person was big into Tolkien (borderline too into it for productive conversation, but), and could speak with authority of what was and wasn't in the books (I haven't read The Hobbit in something like 20+ years. Lord), or rather, which appendix various other things were in. Sven is very versed in film (he heads up the animation festival for which I'm on the jury), and had a lot of really neat points about various more film-ish aspects of the movie, which was neat to bounce some discussion off of.
It was a good group, and it's nice to have people to rant about my hatred of comic relief characters, hear someone else rant about Peter Jackson and his love of cliffs, and agree with me that a given movie only gets a single zoom-in-possibly-slow-motion-'NOOOOOOOOO!' scream, and that that is, in fact, a solid rule for movies (or will be when I rule the world).
I also got to hear about an upcoming 10 day theater festival out here, full of new plays, so that is very exciting. I shall have to get myself a pass for it, I do think.
And then I came home and did a chapter of studying. All in all, a productive day. Even if I didn't clean house. And I'm picking up my parents at the airport soonish. And they're staying here. Oops.