I just had a Tootsie Pop for the first time in probably 10 years. It was good. I always bite them, I love the way the hard candy gets mixed in with the tootsie roll center. I also enjoy straightening out the waxed paper wrapper which usually remains in the shape of the lollipop, it has such a satisfying crinkley texture and can be seen below. Notice the Indian shooting the star in the lower right corner, when I was little I always thought this meant you could turn in the wrapper for a free one at our local mom & pop store Coronis's Market, though for some reason I never actually tried.
My husband surprised me and took me out for what ended up being an amazing and very unique experience last Saturday night. I knew he had something planned, as he asked me to block off that night, but he didn't tell me why and I didn't ask, as I love his surprises. He told me where we were going as we arrived at the Henderson Pavillion, a very cool outdoor performance center about 3 miles from our apartment Turns out he got us tickets to a concert called Video Games Live where the Las Vegas Philharmonic was going to be playing music from video games! That's right, video games. While they were playing the music from everything from Super Mario Brothers to Halo to Warcraft to Tron, there was a screen above the stage showing the games in action. They even brought a few members of the audience up on stage to play the games live while the Philharmonic played the music to go along with what was happening as it was happening. The music played during the show sounded *exactly* like it does when you play the games, they even got the dog laughing at you after you missed the duck in Duck Hunt! It was really one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The concert tours the world and I believe that they get local symphonies and orchestras to play the music, it's not one group of musicians doing the whole tour. You can read a recap of the night here. They even have a CD coming out on July 22, which you can pre-order here if you're interested. A huge thank you to my husband for surprising me with this, it was just so neat and I had a great time.
I'm not sure how many people know that there are composers whose focus is solely video game music, but I had no idea. What a cool job. I am not much of a "gamer", my parents would never buy us a Nintendo when they were all the rage in the late 80s/early 90s. We had a Gameboy for about 4 months until it got left/stolen in Cancun (the verdict is still out on which), but for the most part had to play Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog at friends' places. So video games aren't all that intuitive to me and I don't feel particularly drawn to them, despite the fact that my husband has an Xbox, a Wii and even Guitar Hero. I have played Sonic a few times on his old Sega and like some car racing games and play Burnout every so often, but I digress. The video games of today are insanely cool, the graphics are amazing and the music is beyond epic in scale. A lot of it is booming classical music and it's beautiful. It's a far cry from the bleeps and bloops of Frogger, Donkey Kong and the original Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt that I remember growing up.
A cool bonus that those of us in Vegas got that night, was the guy who played the music from Super Mario Brothers on the piano while blindfolded on YouTube was at the show and did his thing live. Here's the YouTube video that apparently sparked quite the sensation a couple years ago:
Who doesn't recognize that music! The video isn't sped up or anything, he really does play it that fast.
A quick sidenote to the show was the water they were selling at the concession stand. It was 104 degrees when we left our house to head to this outdoor concert. It really was comfortable after the sun went down, it is dry heat after all, but that's just hot. Anyway, the bottles of water that we bought came partly frozen so the water stayed cold a lot longer while the ice slowly melted. I assume this was intentional and thought it was absolutely brilliant.
So anyway, I really wanted to write about the show because it was just so cool and unique and I'm not sure how many people know about it, so keep your eyes peeled in case they swing through your town, you won't be disappointed!
Whenever I hear Für Elise by Beethoven, I always hear the words to this in my head:
This commercial probably started airing 20 years ago...or even more, yikes! I guarantee there are lots of people my age who remember every word, which just goes to show the power of a good jingle.
I just read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and enjoyed it very much. It's been on my list for awhile now, and my mom happened to read it recently and sent me her copy. It's about a woman in her mid-30s who goes through an awful divorce, a deep depression and really just loses touch with who she is in the process. She is a writer and decides to go spend 4 months in Italy (to eat), 4 months in India (to pray) and 4 months in Bali (yes, to love...though that's not really her plan). I love to eat, I think of myself as fairly spiritual (or perhaps that I would like to be spiritual) and of course I love to love, so this book was right up my alley. I referred to it recently as the mac & cheese of comfort food books. Ms. Gilbert is a great writer and keeps things pretty light throughout the story even though she's writing about a pretty dark time in her life. I felt most in awe of her amazing 4 month stint at an ashram in India and the amazing places she was able to go through meditation. In the same way that I feel really inspired by endurance athletes and the physical places the human body can go when properly trained and nourished, I was truly amazed to read of the mental, emotional and spiritual places Liz went to during her incredibly rigorous and devoted meditation practice. Makes me feel that I could get there too, if I only find it in myself to try.
My only really notable meditation experience took place in July of 2002 when I was on a 5 week post-college graduation trip to Europe with my family. I was sitting in Westminster Abbey in London, alone in the middle of one of the long wooden pews. My mother, grandmother and another friend were exploring the cathedral, but I just wanted to sit for a while. I am not sure what happened, but as I was sitting there, I suddenly felt a profound sense of peace. It was a fairly noisy, bustling afternoon, yet I couldn't hear any of it. I just sat, my mind empty and totally content. I have no idea how it happened and have yet to experience something similar, but I have never forgotten it. It does make me think that if I could only get myself to start, to try, that meditation could be something very powerful for me.
So anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an interesting, fun, quick read, particularly if you are interested in Eastern religions and world travel. I am going to end with a passage from the book that details a Zen concept that I truly enjoyed (from the last chapter, pages 329 and 330):
"My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well--the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born."
My Honda = black 2003 Honda Civic LX, 4 doors. Totally plain vanilla, but has served us well. Here are the top 5 reasons why I love this car.
5. If I hadn't bought it when I did in mid-2003, I doubt Alex and I would have moved to Las Vegas when we did (late 2003), or at all. We didn't own a car for most of the time that we lived in Boston. I finally bought one because I could, and because I hated feeling trapped in the city. Vegas has shitty public transportation, so we definitely needed a car to move here and I'm not sure we would have bought one just so we could move, but since we already had one, the decision was easy. And life is good here. Though if I'd known we were heading to the desert, I wouldn't have chosen a black car, that's for sure.
4. It's a standard and so I can do a lot of coasting in neutral therefore saving gas. Which I do.
3. The person who filled up at the gas pump before me the last time spent $80. I only spent $42. And I only have to fill it up about once every 2 weeks because...
2. I got 36.394 miles per gallon on my last tank of gas.
And the number one reason why I Heart My Honda....
I just found out that NBC News' Washington Bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, died today at age 58 after collapsing. This makes me very sad, not just that he died at such a young age, but because I have enjoyed his political commentary for years now, on the Today show and elsewhere. I started watching Meet the Press this year, during the primary season, and he was just like a kid in a candy store each Sunday, especially in light of all of the crazy stuff going on. He loved politics more than any analyst I've ever seen and all in all, he truly seemed like a good guy. I'd set our DVR to record all new episodes of Meet the Press starting in January and hadn't been watching them lately, I've just deleted them after about a week. I still have the episode from this past Sunday saved though, I'm so glad since it turns out it will have been his last one. In light of what will be an historic general election season for President, his voice, insight, knowledge and boundless enthusiasm will be sorely missed by me and millions of others, I'm sure. I'm just so bummed that he won't get to see how it all plays out. Rest in peace, Mr. Russert, and wherever you are now, I hope it's always an election year.
Caught an edition of the Unger Report on NPR the other day, called Finding a Way to Evolve: "Oprah Winfrey isn't changing — she's "evolving," the media mogul recently told a magazine. And our humorist Brian Unger is following suit as he examines the path of personal evolution."
It got me to thinking because I recently made what felt like a big change in my life. For the past 11 years, I have used the exact same toothbrush, no not the *exact* same one, but a clear, plain vanilla Oral B brush. I have no idea why I latched onto this particular model, but I would literally buy out a store's supply when I could thinking maybe I could use the same model forever. Very weird, but I prefer to think of it as quirky. Anyway, this model has been discontinued for about 3 years, or at least I could never find them, and I ran out of the soft bristle version in my stash about a year ago and the medium bristles are pretty rough, so I decided that maybe it was time to step out of my comfort zone, bite the bullet and try a new toothbrush. My husband is the King of the Bargain and gets free-after-rebate stuff all the time from drugstores, I don't think he's purchased a toothbrush, deodorant or shampoo in the 7 years that I've known him. One of the recent free toothbrushes was an Oral B Cross Action, Soft Compact Head with a bright pink handle and so the other night, I tossed the clear one and went for it. All I can say is that I am sure I have been missing out on some pretty innovative toothbrush technology over the years! The cross action bristles, the ergonomic handle that just fits so well in my hand! Thank you Oprah, for helping me to feel alright about celebrating this strange yet momentous change in my life. Odd? For sure. But an evolution nonetheless.
