What a grand weekend
Feb. 19th, 2006 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philenaI finished the listening tests for my BA on Saturday, and now need only to perform them on my Russian speakers before the end of the quarter. While realizing that it is the beginning of eighth week is a terrifying prospect when the listening tests are not complete, it is lovely to contemplate that I have three weeks and change now before I head off to California mid-eleventh* week in which to perform them. I also watched West Wing until my brain ran out of my ears (I think I've finished Season 5, although there was a disk missing from Joanne's set, so I might need to raid Becca's before I can be sure), and even did laundry!
Today I woke up to Joanne baking cookies (always a good way to wake up, although I would give it up in an instant if it meant I could wake up in California without needing to remember how many more days I have before I need to get on a plane and leave again), and after breakfast I read the story for Russian, which was a great deal better than most of the other ones we have had to read this quarter. It's about a fellow who often fights with his wife, and the opening of the story shows another quarrel, in which he comes home from work and confesses that he has lost a good bit of money, and can't remember where. Of course, his wife is furious, but he promises to make it up, and works very, very hard for the next week or so, after which he returns from work bearing a microscope, which he explains was given to him as a prize for being a good worker. He quickly becomes obsessed with it, and drags his son with him--microbes are everywhere! he discovers. In water from the well, from puddles, from sweat. He even looks at his own blood and sees other microbes (different ones--circular ones, but they're all the same, he explains to his son), and hatches the idea that people are meant to live a hundred and fifty years, but the microbes that infect them lower their life expectancy by half. What is more, there's a vast conspiracy to keep the people ignorant. Medical scientists must have better microscopes than his, so they must be able to see everything, but they don't tell anyone about these life-shortening microbes. He's about to run an experiment to see how vodka in the bloodstream will affect the microbes, when a friend from work drops by and laughs at him for his obsession. His wife overhears him, and mentions to the co-worker that a microscope is kind of a funny gift for being an excellent worker--a vacuum cleaner would be more efficient, she says. And the friend laughs at her, ignores the husband's significant glares, and says that he was never given any award for being a good worker. Discovered and dejected, the husband goes with the friend, borrows money from him to get drunk, drinks it all up, borrows more money from other people, drinks it up, and returns home the next morning. There, his son tells him that his wife has taken the microscope and gone into town to sell it.
I couldn't figure out how the experiment with the vodka was supposed to run. There was talk of sharpening a needle and doing stuff with wires and batteries, but I still don't know whether he was going to inject the vodka into his blood or just drink it. If the second, then the end of the story is just another development of this rather odd, sad sense of humor that has failed to amuse me in so many Russian stories about which Radik assures us, "Это очень смешной рассказ; вам понравится." They never are; generally they're just depressing. However, since the man has probably been drinking vodka for many years, and can see clearly that the alcohol has failed to kill off all his red blood cells, then I suspect that actually he was going to inject vodka into his system, which means that his friend's interference is in fact a good thing that prevents him from killing himself. In that case, the story is genuinely funny, even to Americans, and also happy in a way. There's a moment when we can see that he really does love his wife, however much they squabble. This is just after he's started looking at through the microscope, and that night in bed he asks his wife if she has ever slept with a scientist. She scoffs at him, but then
--Будешь. И Андрей Ерин ласково похлопал супругу по мягкому плечу. --будешь, дорогуша, с ученым спать. . .
Which means,
"You're going to." And Andrei Erin blandly clapped his wife on her soft shoulder. "You're going to sleep with a scientist, my dear." . . .
All right, it's not that romantic. And I don't even know if it reads more romantically in Russian. It's just that those ellipses are so suggestive! And if it is romantic, then we can see how the fact that he's stopped from killing himself stupidly is a good thing, even though as far as everyone in the story can see it just adds to the domestic unrest. The humor perhaps tends more to a dark irony, but it's still understandable! To this day I haven't fathomed how a story about a guy jerking around a woman who leaves her husband for him, twice, after which he never shows up the way he promised, can possibly be funny--even to Russians!
In rehearsal we worked on the music with Andrew, who was not too mean to us (although he was awfully hard on the accompanist; he's like that) and due to Alto Power Margaretta and I figured out the notes to the very, very dramatic and harmony-full end of the Act-II finale. However, again the fellow who plays Fairfax was gone. Jamie said that it was because he was ill, but since I've never seen the fellow I suspect that Jamie is just keeping us all in the dark so that at the last minute he can play the romantic lead à la "Waiting for Guffman." Of course this will be awkward on the last night when Jamie will need to step in for our Lieutenant Cholmondely (pronounced "Chumley") as well, but I'm sure he'll figure it out.
And then after rehearsal I watched "The Apartment," which I thought would be a funny romantic comedy, seeing as how it stars Jack Lemmon and all that. Hah! Silly me! It was a great movie, but it also shocked me. I always assumed that a movie shot in black and white would be innocent: affairs?--never! That is, never explicit. Sex?--Good grief no! Heavens, this is the fifties! Loose morals?--Only by implication, and certainly never in any character we're supposed to like. But this movie had all of them, presented clearly and sensitively and in the end everything turns out well. Even though Jack Lemmon's character is weak and his love interest's character far from admirable, it's easy to like them and want the best for them, in the end they earn it. In a way this sort of story is more shocking than something more explicit, because it's so clear what's going on that we don't need to waste film time on heaving bodies, which means that the story is that much more powerful, and each part of it therefore packs that much more weight. And anyway, since we don't see people naked, we're forced to judge them only on their character, which makes both their virtues that much more appealing and their flaws that much more shocking. Certainly any remake of this movie would not spare the sex scenes, and I can see from the original that that sort of addition would be thoroughly gratuitous, however much the modern viewer wants to see Brad Pitt naked.
Yes. Bedtime now.
*Speaking of eleventh week, I rejoice to discover that I will have no final in my semantics class. This would be lovely, except that some clever person in the Registrar's office said to himself, "my goodness--look at these classes that are all in the Slavic department: Old Church Slavonic, fourth-year Russian, and Russian Morphology. I think I'll schedule them all on the same day, just to be efficient." Cute, huh? Those are the other three classes I'm taking. This of course would not be too dreadful, except that the day on which they are all scheduled happens to be Thursday, which is unacceptable. I'm going to need to re-schedule them, because I have high hopes of being out of Chicago by Wednesday of finals week.
Today I woke up to Joanne baking cookies (always a good way to wake up, although I would give it up in an instant if it meant I could wake up in California without needing to remember how many more days I have before I need to get on a plane and leave again), and after breakfast I read the story for Russian, which was a great deal better than most of the other ones we have had to read this quarter. It's about a fellow who often fights with his wife, and the opening of the story shows another quarrel, in which he comes home from work and confesses that he has lost a good bit of money, and can't remember where. Of course, his wife is furious, but he promises to make it up, and works very, very hard for the next week or so, after which he returns from work bearing a microscope, which he explains was given to him as a prize for being a good worker. He quickly becomes obsessed with it, and drags his son with him--microbes are everywhere! he discovers. In water from the well, from puddles, from sweat. He even looks at his own blood and sees other microbes (different ones--circular ones, but they're all the same, he explains to his son), and hatches the idea that people are meant to live a hundred and fifty years, but the microbes that infect them lower their life expectancy by half. What is more, there's a vast conspiracy to keep the people ignorant. Medical scientists must have better microscopes than his, so they must be able to see everything, but they don't tell anyone about these life-shortening microbes. He's about to run an experiment to see how vodka in the bloodstream will affect the microbes, when a friend from work drops by and laughs at him for his obsession. His wife overhears him, and mentions to the co-worker that a microscope is kind of a funny gift for being an excellent worker--a vacuum cleaner would be more efficient, she says. And the friend laughs at her, ignores the husband's significant glares, and says that he was never given any award for being a good worker. Discovered and dejected, the husband goes with the friend, borrows money from him to get drunk, drinks it all up, borrows more money from other people, drinks it up, and returns home the next morning. There, his son tells him that his wife has taken the microscope and gone into town to sell it.
I couldn't figure out how the experiment with the vodka was supposed to run. There was talk of sharpening a needle and doing stuff with wires and batteries, but I still don't know whether he was going to inject the vodka into his blood or just drink it. If the second, then the end of the story is just another development of this rather odd, sad sense of humor that has failed to amuse me in so many Russian stories about which Radik assures us, "Это очень смешной рассказ; вам понравится." They never are; generally they're just depressing. However, since the man has probably been drinking vodka for many years, and can see clearly that the alcohol has failed to kill off all his red blood cells, then I suspect that actually he was going to inject vodka into his system, which means that his friend's interference is in fact a good thing that prevents him from killing himself. In that case, the story is genuinely funny, even to Americans, and also happy in a way. There's a moment when we can see that he really does love his wife, however much they squabble. This is just after he's started looking at through the microscope, and that night in bed he asks his wife if she has ever slept with a scientist. She scoffs at him, but then
--Будешь. И Андрей Ерин ласково похлопал супругу по мягкому плечу. --будешь, дорогуша, с ученым спать. . .
Which means,
"You're going to." And Andrei Erin blandly clapped his wife on her soft shoulder. "You're going to sleep with a scientist, my dear." . . .
All right, it's not that romantic. And I don't even know if it reads more romantically in Russian. It's just that those ellipses are so suggestive! And if it is romantic, then we can see how the fact that he's stopped from killing himself stupidly is a good thing, even though as far as everyone in the story can see it just adds to the domestic unrest. The humor perhaps tends more to a dark irony, but it's still understandable! To this day I haven't fathomed how a story about a guy jerking around a woman who leaves her husband for him, twice, after which he never shows up the way he promised, can possibly be funny--even to Russians!
In rehearsal we worked on the music with Andrew, who was not too mean to us (although he was awfully hard on the accompanist; he's like that) and due to Alto Power Margaretta and I figured out the notes to the very, very dramatic and harmony-full end of the Act-II finale. However, again the fellow who plays Fairfax was gone. Jamie said that it was because he was ill, but since I've never seen the fellow I suspect that Jamie is just keeping us all in the dark so that at the last minute he can play the romantic lead à la "Waiting for Guffman." Of course this will be awkward on the last night when Jamie will need to step in for our Lieutenant Cholmondely (pronounced "Chumley") as well, but I'm sure he'll figure it out.
And then after rehearsal I watched "The Apartment," which I thought would be a funny romantic comedy, seeing as how it stars Jack Lemmon and all that. Hah! Silly me! It was a great movie, but it also shocked me. I always assumed that a movie shot in black and white would be innocent: affairs?--never! That is, never explicit. Sex?--Good grief no! Heavens, this is the fifties! Loose morals?--Only by implication, and certainly never in any character we're supposed to like. But this movie had all of them, presented clearly and sensitively and in the end everything turns out well. Even though Jack Lemmon's character is weak and his love interest's character far from admirable, it's easy to like them and want the best for them, in the end they earn it. In a way this sort of story is more shocking than something more explicit, because it's so clear what's going on that we don't need to waste film time on heaving bodies, which means that the story is that much more powerful, and each part of it therefore packs that much more weight. And anyway, since we don't see people naked, we're forced to judge them only on their character, which makes both their virtues that much more appealing and their flaws that much more shocking. Certainly any remake of this movie would not spare the sex scenes, and I can see from the original that that sort of addition would be thoroughly gratuitous, however much the modern viewer wants to see Brad Pitt naked.
Yes. Bedtime now.
*Speaking of eleventh week, I rejoice to discover that I will have no final in my semantics class. This would be lovely, except that some clever person in the Registrar's office said to himself, "my goodness--look at these classes that are all in the Slavic department: Old Church Slavonic, fourth-year Russian, and Russian Morphology. I think I'll schedule them all on the same day, just to be efficient." Cute, huh? Those are the other three classes I'm taking. This of course would not be too dreadful, except that the day on which they are all scheduled happens to be Thursday, which is unacceptable. I'm going to need to re-schedule them, because I have high hopes of being out of Chicago by Wednesday of finals week.
