The Holiday Rolls On
The bad news is I’m not getting a lot of work done. (I think I’ve written about two pages today). The good news is I’m having a lot of fun. Wednesday night we went out to dinner and a movie with George, Parris, Raya and Wanda June. We shared dishes at Santa Fe’s terrific Chinese restaurant, Chows, and then went off to see Sweeney Todd. I wasn’t all that keen to see the movie, I don’t like Sondheim, but I wanted to hang out with my friends.
The direction was terrific — what else from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp was wonderful as was Helena Bonham-Carter. The art direction was dark and brooding and lovely. And I thought it would never end. It seemed to just go on and on and on, and I kept seeing everything coming from twenty miles away, and I kept trying to appreciate the music.
It was Carl who summed up Sondheim better than I ever could. We were driving home, and he said, “There really wasn’t that much singing in the movie.” I did a cartoon double take, and said, “How can you say that? I’d be surprised if there was more than two or three pages of actual spoken dialogue in the whole show.” To which Carl replied, “Well, most of it just didn’t sound like music.” I nodded in hearty agreement. I know I will get howls from folks who love Sondheim, but taste is a very personal thing, and I just don’t like his musicals. I’m old fashioned, I want to leave the theater or the movie humming something.
Friday night we played in a Vampire: The Masquerade game that Daniel Abraham is running. We had a lot of fun and laughs, but I was twitching because Vento was due to arrive between midnight and 1:00 am. We headed home at 9:30, got changed into long johns and fleece lined jeans, and went to wait for the truck. I had a thermos filled with hot water, and a bucket full of bran, corn oil, carrots and apples so my pony could have a hot bran mash when he arrived.
We were pleasantly surprised when the truck arrived at 11:30 pm. We lead them to the barn, but the road to the barn was a sheet of snow and ice and this was a giant semi so we had to unload him on the road. He was a bit nervous, and he slipped on the snow when he came down the ramp. We then had a quarter mile walk to the barn. He was an amazing sight, a glistening white horse against a field of snow with a waning moon overhead. I was terrified he’d be silly and slip, fall and break a leg forcing me to put him down, but nothing horrible happened. We got him to his stall, got a heavy blanket on him, I fed him the mash, and scratched his neck while he ate. Then home to try and sleep and dream about the morning when I’d get to spend time with him.
Today I unpacked all my tack, and took the Iberian prince for a walk in the indoor arena. When I arrived his barn neighbor had been taken away to be ridden so Vento was neighing and piaffing in the stall. It is going to be so easy to teach this horse the piaff. I took him into the arena, and he was a bit “fresh” in the beginning. Some horses just keep working themselves into a frenzy, but after a bit of spinning around me he calmed right down, and just went strolling along. The sweetest moment was when he saw his reflection in the wall of mirrors, and trumpeted to himself. He wanted to see that other white horse so I took him up to the mirror. He tried to touch noses with the other horse, but it was thirty degrees so his breath fogged most of the mirror and the other horse disappeared. Vento then turned and looked at me with this accusing expression in his dark eyes like “this is your fault, you made my friend go away.”
Tomorrow I’ll lunge him lightly just in the halter. I don’t want him to work too hard until he acclimates to the cold and the altitude. He’s come from sea level to 7000 feet.
So, now I’m going to go back, sit in front of the fire and write on my novel.
Melinda
December 29th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
welcome to the prince, a long and happy career and life for the two of you!
Looking forward to meeting him soon.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Must be the after-effects of the V:tM game. I’m fairly certain you didn’t give your new horse a “bucket full of brain….”
December 30th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Oh, my typing, my lamentable typing. BRAN! BRAN! Though there are moments when you wish you could feed horses some more brains. Time to go edit the post. *sigh*
December 30th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Glad to hear Vento is here! Congratulations!
I’m with you on Sondheim. He’s not my cup of tea.
Happy New Year!
–Kathy H.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
What Parris said.
Except the last part. Though should I ever come to the US, I’ll stop by and have a look, to be sure.
December 30th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I was wondering, given your music background, whether I could vent about how awful Sondheim is. And now I know I can! As I said about Sweeney Todd over at LJ - I love Burton, Rickman, Depp, and Bonham Carter, but I really, really hate Sondheim.
Evil always defeats good, unfortunately.
Congrats again on Vento’s arrival!
December 31st, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I grew up on musicals. The Sound of Music. West Side Story. Gypsy.
When I was around 15, I saw a local production of Follies. I really liked it. It was quite different. A few years later, I heard the album of Sweeney Todd and was struck by how dissonant it was compared to a typical musical.
I thought the casting of Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd was interesting. Len Cariou (the Broadway star of Sweeney Todd) was a large, imposing man, and the same cannot be said of Depp. But Depp is very, very creepy, and it’s possible to imagine him slicing and dicing people he didn’t like. We just bought the original Broadway CD, and I have to admit that I prefer the music from the Broadway show more than the movie music. Helena Bonham Carter has a pleasant enough voice, but you needed a reedy Cockney voice like one Angela Lansbury sang on Broadway for Mrs. Lovett.
Interesting bit on the original Broadway cast - Victor Garber, now probably best-known as the father on Alias, played the young Anthony Hope (Joanna’s would-be lover) in the original Broadway show.
December 31st, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I’m glad your boy got to his new home in good shape. I had to move Ace (unexpectedly) last week and I’ll give you all the details when next we speak. It’s costing me another $100 a month, but he’s back in a beautiful in and out and has settled right in. The place is directly across the street from the first place he lived out here, but the digs are so much nicer. My farrier will be back this weekend and he’ll get his new shoes and Gayle will get him out on the trails again.
I still haven’t seen Sweeny Todd. I’m sure it looks great, but it is definitely on my list on Sondheim I don’t like. My favorite Sondheim is Assassins. I like Company. I hate Into the Woods. Give me Rogers and Hammerstein any day.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I am so happy to hear how Vento is settling in. Congratulations, much fun and enjoyment to you both.
Brain mash features heavily in our Cthulu game, but from now on it will be associated with carrots and apples for me .. suitably random I feel.
I had been hedging my bets with Sweeny Todd, swinging from Sondheim, meh, to, but it’s Tim, Helena and Johnny - there is no bad here. I am encouraged, I shall go. Having been over exposed in the extreme to musical theatre as a child, working in the evil business with a family of luvvies, I am picky at best. My sisters and I all enjoy a good Andrew Loyd Webber bashing and have been known to react violently upon hearing Memory from Cats * shudders *. We were made to sing that song every wednesday of term time for_nearly_four_years. Thank goodness we learned to play musical instruments and were allowed to pick our own songs in the end. I think it says something that we did excepts from Tommy; The Pinball Wizard and, Do you hear the people sing ? from Les Mis