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Makes it official, then
1. I am very pleased that Colin Firth won an Oscar for The King's Speech. I would like it to have been a back-to-back win with last year's A Single Man, but I don't think this one was an apology; I don't mind that David Seidler won for Best Original Screenplay, either. I really was expecting David Fincher and The Social Network to walk off with the other two. How awesome is it that Shaun Tan and Trent Reznor have Oscars now?
2. I spent most of yesterday at the MIT Ivy+ Fine Spirits Showcase; I got in at a discount, thanks to Yale. Most of the spirits being showcased were whisky, meaning I now have some ability to distinguish between the numerous different varieties—I would previously have been able to tell you that I thought my tastes ran to peatsmoke and expensive, and now I know I haven't a chance of affording what I really like. That includes the Napoleon Armagnac, which I am told next time I should try with prunes. Absinthe actually tastes subtler and more complex when louched with sugar; it's a colder, thinner, more singleminded drink without. I would have bought a bottle of the Glenfarclas 1974 if it hadn't cost three hundred dollars. (I insist, however, on someday obtaining some Octamore Orpheus. I couldn't get the man at the table to tell me the rationale for the name—whether it's supposed to take you to hell or tear your head off, or whether it merely causes you to invent hexameters and pederasty—but it was my second or third favorite whisky there.) I hadn't even known about cachaça. And at no point do I seem to have lost the ability to converse in complete sentences on coherent topics, which is important, because quite a lot of what was nice about the day was the conversation. Also the singing, which started on the way from the showcase to dinner and kept intermittently on until we left the restaurant; trading songs, or merely being reminded to them. We got applause from the bar a couple of times. I've been invited to a seder. I can't remember the last time I spent an entire day simply hanging around and talking with people who knew their way equally around Welsh verbs and nigunim. And I've got an absinthe spoon.
3. The third thing is still supposed to be Cardillac, but I'm going to sleep. With the exception of a very puzzling epilogue, basically, I liked it. It's worth catching the last performance on Tuesday if you have any interest in gold masks, rough sex, or ritual murder. I'm not sure why the Inquisition keeps happening to operas I see with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharhaun and fleurdelis28, though.
2. I spent most of yesterday at the MIT Ivy+ Fine Spirits Showcase; I got in at a discount, thanks to Yale. Most of the spirits being showcased were whisky, meaning I now have some ability to distinguish between the numerous different varieties—I would previously have been able to tell you that I thought my tastes ran to peatsmoke and expensive, and now I know I haven't a chance of affording what I really like. That includes the Napoleon Armagnac, which I am told next time I should try with prunes. Absinthe actually tastes subtler and more complex when louched with sugar; it's a colder, thinner, more singleminded drink without. I would have bought a bottle of the Glenfarclas 1974 if it hadn't cost three hundred dollars. (I insist, however, on someday obtaining some Octamore Orpheus. I couldn't get the man at the table to tell me the rationale for the name—whether it's supposed to take you to hell or tear your head off, or whether it merely causes you to invent hexameters and pederasty—but it was my second or third favorite whisky there.) I hadn't even known about cachaça. And at no point do I seem to have lost the ability to converse in complete sentences on coherent topics, which is important, because quite a lot of what was nice about the day was the conversation. Also the singing, which started on the way from the showcase to dinner and kept intermittently on until we left the restaurant; trading songs, or merely being reminded to them. We got applause from the bar a couple of times. I've been invited to a seder. I can't remember the last time I spent an entire day simply hanging around and talking with people who knew their way equally around Welsh verbs and nigunim. And I've got an absinthe spoon.
3. The third thing is still supposed to be Cardillac, but I'm going to sleep. With the exception of a very puzzling epilogue, basically, I liked it. It's worth catching the last performance on Tuesday if you have any interest in gold masks, rough sex, or ritual murder. I'm not sure why the Inquisition keeps happening to operas I see with
sharhaun and fleurdelis28, though.
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if you have any interest in gold masks, rough sex, or ritual murder. --Is there anyone on your friends list who isn't interested in at least one of those things? It's a rhetorical question.
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The spoon holds the sugar; the water drips over it and into the absinthe, causing it to become much more interesting to the taste.
--Is there anyone on your friends list who isn't interested in at least one of those things? It's a rhetorical question.
I'm sure there must be somebody. It's a big world.
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Entirely awesome. And how awesome is it that I have you to tell me these things, when the blanket coverage on my radio doesn't think it worth mentioning?
Also, *googles Octamore Orpheus* wow. Hyper-peated Bruichladdich. Did you have the one that's aged in Château Pŕtrus casks?
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Glad to be of service!
Did you have the one that's aged in Château Pŕtrus casks?
I think some ascii has eaten your question, but I am not sure I would know the answer in any case; I could certainly ask the people I went with, though.
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I am an idiot. One batch of the Orpheus was apparently aged in casks from Château Pétrus casks, which is also awesome.
MIsc
Cachaça is a stealth bomber. Caipirinha, made of cachaça, sugar and crushed whole limes, goes down smooth as silk -- until you try to stand up.
Colin Firth deserved an Oscar, but The King's Speech is problematic. I enjoyed it as a period piece with solid acting that showed personal overcoming of adversity. However, it whitewashes many shabby actions and people. For one, it condemns Edward not for the right reasons (he was a Nazi panderer) but for the wrong ones (he wanted to marry a commoner who might like sex instead of keeping her as his mistress). The film's Oscar sweeps are not surprising, given the perennial fascination of Americans with British royalty and upper class (Masterpiece Theater is nothing but).
By the way, I've sent you a private message.
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I had assumed the sugar was to cut the bitterness, or soften it. It does no such thing: louched absinthe is not perceptibly sweeter, but it is much more flavorful. I approved of this discovery.
Cachaça is a stealth bomber. Caipirinha, made of cachaça, sugar and crushed whole limes, goes down smooth as silk -- until you try to stand up.
Will keep this in mind. I saw it's the national cocktail of Brazil; I will see if I can get Viking Zen to make me one.
For one, it condemns Edward not for the right reasons (he was a Nazi panderer) but for the wrong ones (he wanted to marry a commoner who might like sex instead of keeping her as his mistress).
I didn't have that much of a problem with the presentation of David/Edward, since his most immediate relevance to his brother's story is his knack for getting out of his responsibilities, a state which he secures permanently with his marriage to Wallis; it is in some ways immaterial whether he is pro- or anti-Nazi, because the implications of that question belong to a world in which he has no interest, except insofar as it allows him the privileges he likes.1 That said, I wouldn't have minded more politics in the film overall; it could only have enhanced the audience's understanding of the pressures on Bertie, especially since some of what we now take as idiotically obvious in hindsight (appeasement: a bad idea) was by no means so clear-cut at the time (nearly everyone, I'm looking at you). And Timothy Spall was great casting for Churchill, but he doesn't work. Everyone else is a character; he's a cartoon. And this is not his story; it won't be until 1940. I know it's courting heresy to make a film about World War II without Winston—and his own speech impediment is the nice kind of historical filip that can't be made up—but I'd have left him somewhere back in the second draft, along with that really clever bit of dialogue that went nowhere. He may be the single real misstep the film makes for me, because of all the historical revisions that drag in his wake.
For just the scenes between Lionel and Bertie, I still think David Seidler deserved his Oscar. They are so zinc-sharp and strong, I've wondered if the play actually started life as a two-hander, just a speech therapist and his patient in a shabby consulting room. If so, I wouldn't mind seeing a stage production someday.
1. I find myself almost curious about some of the older depictions of the abdiction, when it was still considered a grand romantic gesture rather than an international catastrophe narrowly averted, but I'm not sure that almost is ever going to resolve into actually. There is an upcoming film, in any case.
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Heh. Keep in mind that I do not have the technical vocabulary for this sort of thing; neither would I be able to describe a perfume in tradesman's terms. Silky and somber and finely grained, like drinking sandalwood; not blow-your-head-off peated (although I had a whisky like that at the showcase and it was fantastic), but very aromatic, a kind of aftertaste of smoke. It had no raw edge on it at all. It went farther back the more you tasted it. I tasted two people's pours of it before I got my own, and then I nursed it for an entire conversation.
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Most interesting I've had in a while was an Oban, fourteen years of age, that Famous Box Player brought to the Comhaltas meeting last month. Very smooth, very enjoyable, but not particularly subtle.
*Of course, I'd be disappointed to hear that a whisky older than me wasn't, but never mind that.
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Hee!
Nine
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2. sounds altogether brilliant. I'm glad you had a good time. Enjoy your absinthe spoon!*
I'm not sure why the Inquisition keeps happening to operas I see with [info]sharhaun and [info]fleurdelis28, though.
Perhaps someone should warn the Inquisition that they're becoming expected?
*I don't know why I'm imagining the Tick shouting "Absinthe spoon!", but I expect it's a sign I need to sleep.