The Culture Vulture returns
28/09/2003 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaBusy Izzie is back for a quick squiggle concerning last week's cultural adventures. A ballet, art exhibition and wildflower festival..all in 3 days...Izzie is still dizzy from all the excitement.
But even before that a special Izzie treat was in store. En route to all these various activities, Iz made a detour to the Min of Fin with the intention of catching up with Azkaban and Diaryland gossip and making a few amendments to the decor at the Ministry homepage. Unfortunately the server was down so went away empty handed. Cheap and nasty Iz decided to get her fix at the Dursleyville city library which has free internet access. It's slow and no email allowed but it's free so that's all that matters. But have I ever left a library empty handed. There wil be a first time but it was not to be Thursday.
Found a most wonderful book that I'd seen two or three months ago with the intriguing title "The Science of Harry Potter"
It is written by a Muggle scientist from the point of view of explaining to those lesser beings how all those wonderful gadgets work.
There is also several chapters about the most interesting magical gadget of all - the muggle brain and Iz especially loved the stuff about cultural anthropologists which the author explained as Muggles who study magic. SSSSo sweet. Science has never been so much fun.
There was stuff about magic mushrooms and other hallucinogenic drugs, the truth about broomsticks, sleep paralysis and alien abductions and even fascinating explanations about the webbed feet of Kappas involving the way that cells in organisms are preprogrammed to self destruct when their usefulness comes to an end and sometimes they get a bit confused and we get stuff like cancer and aids etc.
And with chapter titles like "The mathematics of evil"....could this book possibly be left on the shelf by the likes of Izzie?
Anyway...next stop was the Art gallery followed by the Kaiten sushi bar happy hour and then the ballet which I had a free ticket for.
It's been so so long since Iz has seen a ballet. Did not understand half the time what it was supposed to be about but enjoyed it anyway. It consisted of a selection of three different works none of which I'd ever heard of before. The second one I liked best. It was sort of funny to see these folks dancing happily when now and again boring grey men in suits and briefcases meander across the stage. They just had to be a bunch of bean counters. But what really got Izzie was the music. It sounded so familiar. Iz thinks....that sounds suspiciously like something from J S Bach's "The Art of the Fugue" The more I listened the more convinced I was. Oh such memories....of being 20 years younger and listening to it for the very first time after having been made insatiably curious from reading those Hofstadter books.
Turns out it was Bach and Iz was amazed to have remembered the stuff from so so long ago. Must dust off those old tapes and listen again. So intricate and lots of intriguing levels of complexity.
The third dance had lots of music from Mozart and at one stage the male dancers were wearing little pink tutus and making total idiots of themselves in their attempts to be ballerinas. Iz thinks...such a damn pity I did not make an extra effort to see Trocaderos when they were here last year. Their whole show was a parody of famous ballets but done by absolute experts. They got rave reviews and all their shows sold out. But it would have been a rather decadent luxury.
The Art exhibition was particularly entertaining.
Mr Dante Gabriel Rossetti and friends were accused of "deliberately making ugly pictures" Ugly...well that is being extraordinarily NICE about it.
There was some extremely gorgeous frames and six or seven works that Iz would quite happily hang on the walls of the lair. But most of them seemed to have been snatched straight out of Dorian Gray's attic.
Rossetti's Lucrezia Borgia was so gross that peeping Toms would have sneeked into her house to pull down the blinds. No need to brew any poisonous potions at all.
Sidonia von Bork was an entirely different sort of girl. She was pretty but foreboding looking...something sort of sinister. But the dress...it consisted of a writhing mass of green headless and tailless but definitely snake like creatures. And Izzie wants one. The Catalogue went into some detail about this woman.
Very witchy, cruel heartless and evil. Looks like Iz has found herself a new role model.
Two more of the Rossetti girls bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the nastiest creatures that Iz ever had the misfortune to be acquainted with. Monna Vanna had the most gorgeous clothes - especially an exquisite pearl spiral hairpin but her face would sink 1000 ships.
Persephone would have been gorgeous if she didn't have such pouting freakish lips. She is rather famous as the wistful creature with the half eaten pomegranite.
But they all have very beautiful hair which is sort of flaky and fuzzy and most medieval.
There was one picture that Iz particularly liked of Joseph's brothers returning his coat to Jacob with some sad sob story about how he got killed by wild beasts. Very reminsicent of Marc Chagall or Arthur Boyd - well so thinks Izzie anyway. Would be ever so happy to decorate the lair with that lovely number.
But there were two pictures which will have to go in the Iz collection as the grossest most disgusting things to have ever graced the halls of an art gallery. Will be interesting to see if google will turn up with the goods.
Now that's what I call Fugly! She is supposed to be a 'kept woman' suddenly realizing the error of her ways! More like she has probably just seen the light and finally noticed those disgusting sideburns on the face of the saddest Pajero to ever grace the planet.
Oh and theres lots more where that came from
But even before that a special Izzie treat was in store. En route to all these various activities, Iz made a detour to the Min of Fin with the intention of catching up with Azkaban and Diaryland gossip and making a few amendments to the decor at the Ministry homepage. Unfortunately the server was down so went away empty handed. Cheap and nasty Iz decided to get her fix at the Dursleyville city library which has free internet access. It's slow and no email allowed but it's free so that's all that matters. But have I ever left a library empty handed. There wil be a first time but it was not to be Thursday.
Found a most wonderful book that I'd seen two or three months ago with the intriguing title "The Science of Harry Potter"
It is written by a Muggle scientist from the point of view of explaining to those lesser beings how all those wonderful gadgets work.
There is also several chapters about the most interesting magical gadget of all - the muggle brain and Iz especially loved the stuff about cultural anthropologists which the author explained as Muggles who study magic. SSSSo sweet. Science has never been so much fun.
There was stuff about magic mushrooms and other hallucinogenic drugs, the truth about broomsticks, sleep paralysis and alien abductions and even fascinating explanations about the webbed feet of Kappas involving the way that cells in organisms are preprogrammed to self destruct when their usefulness comes to an end and sometimes they get a bit confused and we get stuff like cancer and aids etc.
And with chapter titles like "The mathematics of evil"....could this book possibly be left on the shelf by the likes of Izzie?
Anyway...next stop was the Art gallery followed by the Kaiten sushi bar happy hour and then the ballet which I had a free ticket for.
It's been so so long since Iz has seen a ballet. Did not understand half the time what it was supposed to be about but enjoyed it anyway. It consisted of a selection of three different works none of which I'd ever heard of before. The second one I liked best. It was sort of funny to see these folks dancing happily when now and again boring grey men in suits and briefcases meander across the stage. They just had to be a bunch of bean counters. But what really got Izzie was the music. It sounded so familiar. Iz thinks....that sounds suspiciously like something from J S Bach's "The Art of the Fugue" The more I listened the more convinced I was. Oh such memories....of being 20 years younger and listening to it for the very first time after having been made insatiably curious from reading those Hofstadter books.
Turns out it was Bach and Iz was amazed to have remembered the stuff from so so long ago. Must dust off those old tapes and listen again. So intricate and lots of intriguing levels of complexity.
The third dance had lots of music from Mozart and at one stage the male dancers were wearing little pink tutus and making total idiots of themselves in their attempts to be ballerinas. Iz thinks...such a damn pity I did not make an extra effort to see Trocaderos when they were here last year. Their whole show was a parody of famous ballets but done by absolute experts. They got rave reviews and all their shows sold out. But it would have been a rather decadent luxury.
The Art exhibition was particularly entertaining.
Mr Dante Gabriel Rossetti and friends were accused of "deliberately making ugly pictures" Ugly...well that is being extraordinarily NICE about it.
There was some extremely gorgeous frames and six or seven works that Iz would quite happily hang on the walls of the lair. But most of them seemed to have been snatched straight out of Dorian Gray's attic.
Rossetti's Lucrezia Borgia was so gross that peeping Toms would have sneeked into her house to pull down the blinds. No need to brew any poisonous potions at all.
Sidonia von Bork was an entirely different sort of girl. She was pretty but foreboding looking...something sort of sinister. But the dress...it consisted of a writhing mass of green headless and tailless but definitely snake like creatures. And Izzie wants one. The Catalogue went into some detail about this woman.
Very witchy, cruel heartless and evil. Looks like Iz has found herself a new role model.
Two more of the Rossetti girls bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the nastiest creatures that Iz ever had the misfortune to be acquainted with. Monna Vanna had the most gorgeous clothes - especially an exquisite pearl spiral hairpin but her face would sink 1000 ships.
Persephone would have been gorgeous if she didn't have such pouting freakish lips. She is rather famous as the wistful creature with the half eaten pomegranite.
But they all have very beautiful hair which is sort of flaky and fuzzy and most medieval.
There was one picture that Iz particularly liked of Joseph's brothers returning his coat to Jacob with some sad sob story about how he got killed by wild beasts. Very reminsicent of Marc Chagall or Arthur Boyd - well so thinks Izzie anyway. Would be ever so happy to decorate the lair with that lovely number.
But there were two pictures which will have to go in the Iz collection as the grossest most disgusting things to have ever graced the halls of an art gallery. Will be interesting to see if google will turn up with the goods.
Now that's what I call Fugly! She is supposed to be a 'kept woman' suddenly realizing the error of her ways! More like she has probably just seen the light and finally noticed those disgusting sideburns on the face of the saddest Pajero to ever grace the planet.
Oh and theres lots more where that came from
