| a death a few degrees away. vigée-lebrun. ufc. |
[Apr. 8th, 2007|02:01 am] |
Carin and I watched Perfume today, but so much else went on today that I think I'll save it for tomorrow.
Carin worked the evening shift; I elected to stay nearby and mill around for the evening. Shortly after I'd dropped her off, I got a call from my brother, saying that Jake and Jake's girlfriend had found Mike--the guy who booked shows for them--in his home, where he'd apparently killed himself about a week ago. The last time they spoke to him, he'd talked about future bookings, but he hadn't been answering his phone for a while, so they decided to stop by. Jeff didn't have anything else to add; Jake and his girlfriend had been spending pretty much the whole day talking with the staties who were there. Three months ago, he was married with two kids and a house; he apparently got separated somewhere along the way. Man, that'll scar you. I went back to the coffee place and told Carin, because I'm an insensitive clod and I needed to tell someone. I suppose I'll learn more about what happened when next I see Jeff.
I read in Borders for the next five hours, or most of it, gradually becoming less shook up. I'd muse on what it means that I got over it so quickly, but I'm too busy getting over it so quickly.
The confident-looking lady in the straw hat to the right is Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, though the LOC authorities file has something like a dozen variants on that name. She was a very highly-regarded painter at a time when women were kept out of art. Marie Antoinette was her patron, until the revolution came and things went all scary. She survived, however, and continued painting, voluminously. I discovered that she wrote a memoir, which I later discovered was scanned into Google Book Search; I think it's about time I submitted another book to Distributed Proofreaders.
As for the painting itself, note that she's displaying cleavage. This is actually (according to the art book I was reading in Borders, from which I got the rest of this) a sign of her power and independence; women at the time had to wear corsets, and she's very clearly not wearing one. So, cleavage is used to denote self-determination here, which is generally not what it signifies today. I like this one; she's depicted herself holding her artists' tools, as a master of her craft.
After her shift was over, we drove directly up to Ben's for his birthday and UFC. (I got him a copy of GEB, which generally makes a good present... for dorks.) She'd had a long, frustrating shift, but we made a go of it anyway. It was late in the UFC when we arrived, and my idea of the order of events is probably lacking. In no particular order, I saw Eric, who suddenly remembered that he's defending his dissertation on Monday morning, and had forgotten to invite me. I'll have to clear it with Brian now, but I'll make sure I can make it in. How often does this kind of thing happen, honestly?
I'd been looking forward to seeing Diego Sanchez fight again, but he spent three rounds doing nothing. It was as though he was waiting to start fighting, but he never did. And that was the end of his 19-0 winning streak. It was depressing. On the other hand, we got to see Matt Serra defeat Georges St. Pierre in an upset, becoming the first guy who won The Ultimate Fighter to win a UFC title. He just knocked the guy down and pressed his advantage until he got full mount and just started raining down shots. It was very, very impressive. All this, despite the Cat citing him as having "little T. rex arms".
After the Cats and Eric had left, and we were about to leave, Hillary declared shirtless o'clock, and Carin decided to join in. I noticed that she was the only one wearing one of those fashionable black bras; apparently those off-white nearly-flesh-toned ones are quite popular. I was just ridiculously happy to see Carin cavorting around shirtless. It makes me happy to see her with enough body confidence to do that--not to mention that she looked good. (I should note that as she's on the hormone pills this week, she wasn't drinking; she came by shirtless o'clock honestly.) And on that note, we rolled out.
Carin finished reading Matilda to me on the car ride back. I'd forgotten quite how visceral Roald Dahl's writings can be--there's child abuse, offscreen murder, and plenty of unfairness and oppression. I remember it as being a fun read, but it's certainly not weightless.
No comments today; I was doing a whole batch of awesome things. |
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