In stark contrast to last week, I hardly did anything this week other than binge TV (I blame I surprise case of runner’s knee).
Last night, I scrabbled through my list of post ideas looking for something I could throw together last minute.
Nothing presented itself to me, but I did a growth (many more than 3) of ideas that were incoherent, outdated, or otherwise not blog post material, and the only solution was to excise them.
Here’s a selection of my premature spring cleaning.
I hope you enjoy.
Passover
I think I’m finally old enough to understand nostalgia (or something adjacent), and I can’t get enough of it.
I love hunting down videos of old VHSs or Chess computer games I used to spend hours on (if only to confirm to myself that I’m not fabricating memories), but even better are some memories that pop into my head every so often and make me chuckle to myself.
I recently remembered once growing up when we celebrated Passover (still not sure why), and we liked Karpas so much that we begged to have parsley dipped in salt water at dinner the next night.
I’m not sure this was the same year, but once my brother and I also got in trouble on Easter for melting chocolate bunnies in our tea.
Author’s Purpose
In high school English, I learned about author’s purpose, the idea that everything is written with some aim: to entertain, inform, persuade, etc.
This is information that I knew I learned.
I could correctly answer questions about it on standardized tests and everything.
But high school English also taught me that the only reason anyone ever writes anything is because someone told them too.
Every persuasive essay I wrote was actually me making up an argument that I didn’t care about going and through the motions of convincing my teacher.
So when they inevitably handed my paper back with “So what?” across the top, it felt like a trick question.
It’s one thing to expect sophomores to write persuasive essays, but you can’t expect them to make you care about something that they don’t care about.
Review of MIT’s Pippin
Last year, I watched the broadcast of MIT Musical Theatre Guild’s production of Pippin because I support my friends and the arts.
As is usual for me, I knew the soundtrack (I almost sang Morning Glow in Concert Choir before Covid), but I had never really knew the story.
It’s a Bildungsroman about Pippin, the son of Charlemagne, trying to find his place in the world and a meaningful life after graduating from some really good school.
Fitting.
It breaks the fourth wall in a clever and unique way.
The cast, headed by the Leading Player, are a troupe performing the roles of people in Pippin’s life inviting you to watch the show.
The production itself was decent, but it made me want to see a professional production.
The lead played Pippin as a bumbling stooge getting dragged through the production by the Leading Player.
The performance provided some distance.
It felt more natural to laugh at Pippin than to empathize with him which took a lot of the oomph out of the ending.
My intuition says that a more earnest Pippin totally changes the tenor ;) of the story.
Maybe if this were a full blog post I would talk about how tempting it is to excuse yourself from the room when you hear someone mention that everyone is susceptible to cognitive biases.
Everyone meaning everyone-else-and-not-me, right?
Nope, everyone meaning you, the person about to graduate from a good school and figure out what to do with their life.
Also me.
Anyway, I’d like to see how another company handled it.
The 2013 revival also had acrobatic choreography which isn’t something many colleges could match.
Bjork
A while ago I would give music recs in blog posts.
I’m not sure why I stopped because, despite that (or because) I have less strong taste than anyone I know, recommending music brings me feelings of glee and power.
It is exactly the level of irresponsibility I’m comfortable with.
I discovered Bjork by going cold into Dancer in the Dark (as if it’s even possible to be prepared for it).
I enjoyed that soundtrack, especially “Cvalda”, but I didn’t listen to much else by her until recently.
“It’s Oh So Quiet” has been helping me get through all my friends’ drama.
And while we’re on the topic of musicals, “Ever After” is an excellent Act I finale the most tragic casualty of the movie adaptation.