Performances!

Oh, graduate school... how you suck up all my time with books, papers, and more books. I'm not surprised really, but there's definitely a quick clip to all the words I've been cramming into my head.

That's why it was so fun to go see The Rover by Aphra Behn. This restoration comedy is full of disguise and identity play as everyone shakes out to get with the person they'll marry. Plus it's Carnival - lots of great masks. The language is playful, the double entendres plentiful. Put on by ACT's MFA program, this production had minimal sets used to great effect as well as great acting (including some fantastic British and Spanish accents). Was quite entertained - it closes this week, so if you have $10 and are in San Francisco, go check it out!

Sunday Martin and I went to see SF Opera's production of Xerxes. A rarely performed Handel opera, this was also a fun comedy with a love quadrangle and plenty of gender play. The king is sung by a woman, the king's brother by a counter-tenor (who sounds like a woman), plus a fiancée disguised as a man who's come to see the king (her intended) only to find he's fallen in love with another woman... Yep, totally straightforward is not a description that works here.

Since I'm taking an opera and literature class, it was fun to actually understand some stuff the pre-show talk addressed and explain some conventions, like recitative. The costumes here were fantastic too with the chorus all in grey, watching the action like they were watching a play (complete with programs for every activity). The slow motion clapping and stylized action really added to an already visually interesting production. I loved when the general is singing and his soldiers lawn bowling behind him, moving the balls so that he wins.

There's a love aria sung to a tree too. Check out some clips here on the SF Opera site.

Yosemite!

After hearing students mispronounce Yosemite for months (they say it Yo-see-might (yes, those are fake phonetics. I don't care much for phonetics in a general way...)) finally I got to go see it for myself! Martin and I went for his birthday, leaving Thursday afternoon and driving into rush hour traffic, extending our together time in the car perhaps just a bit more than ideal. I hate the stop and go of rush hour; and then it was quickly dark with nothing much to do and miles to go.

Luckily, Martin isn't only good-looking, he's also smart. So he suggested we play a game: someone picks a letter and then we both look for words beginning with it. I was skeptical, but quickly became very good at it. It was a theme of the trip, with a new letter either in the morning or after a long time being out of the car. There are lots of words that start with c, for example, along highway 49. Who knew? It was a fun way to watch the road as I navigated our way on twisty bits of highway and byway.

Because it was a last minute trip, we ended up staying in Sonora, a very tourist trap looking town with some nice people in it. Our Days Inn even turned out to be in a historic hotel building on the main drag (the soundproofing was less than ideal). It was a little over an hour's drive to Yosemite itself and then lots of time in the car once you get inside the park... I'm truly tired of sitting down.

Thankfully there was lots to see outside. We took some mini-hikes, enjoyed looking at incredible configurations of rocks, trees, and waterfalls that were endless in their combination, yet never boring. It's a magnificent place. I felt like I was in an Ansel Adams photo album pretty much the entire time (but in color!). There was a frightening moment when we were debating lunch options at the food court at Yosemite Lodge. Suddenly, a busload worth of European (mostly French) tourists comes flowing in like a torrent, swarming over trays and working to get into lines in a layout that is not well-designed for traffic flow. We were slightly scared, and so got out while the getting was good, fighting against the stream for the door and then outside to comparative safety. Unfortunately the next lunch possibility was a 20 minute walk back to where we'd just been, but the deli at the end made it all ok.

This weekend adventure means that I've not quite gotten my reading done for classes tomorrow, but look for a post with photos soon! Summary sentence: Yosemite is gorgeous beyond belief, though one acclimates after a few hours. Kind of. And then it gets dark... incredible stars at night too.

It even defies a summary sentence. How's that for a plug?

Cool San Francisco Maps

I heard this story on NPR the other day about maps and thought it sounded cool. Folks have found old fire insurance maps from 1905 and put them into digital format with the idea of overlaying them with current city topography. It's amazing to see what was where (I found my current block used to have a billiards factory and some hotels as well as a stable). Worth checking out if you're into maps and random cartography fun!

Story podcast?

Idea struck me today as I was recounting the plot of this cool Aphra Behn novella The Fair Jilt: what if I did a podcast retelling this kind of classic literature in under 5 minutes? Perhaps with puppets made out of popsicle sticks or something very low budget and tech. I've been summing up literature for people since high school like Macbeth (there's this dude and his wife really wants to him to be king. So they make this plan...) or Hemingway (dude likes drinking, fishing, bullfights. He goes to do these things...) (yes, that's The Sun Also Rises).

Perhaps I'll try to recreate my epic retelling and post it up for a listen. But would people want to subscribe to such a thing? That's my real question.... Also, what would it be called? Not like I need another project at this time, but it's an idea.