And Now For Something Totally Different...

So two men are walking their dogs and they see a bar.  But there's a sign outside the bar saying "NO PETS ALLOWED!".  "That's easy," the two guys say and they pull out their sunglasses.  The first guy puts on his sunglasses and walks into the bar.  "Excuse me sir," says the bartender, "but dogs are not allowed".  "But I'm blind and this my seeing-eye dog," says the first guy.  "All right," says the bartender.  The second guy puts on his sunglasses and walks into the bar.  "Excuse me sir," says the bartender, "no dogs allowed."  "But I'm blind and this is my seeing-eye dog," says the second guy.  "Uh...sir," says the bartender, "that's a chihuahua you got there."  And the second guy cries, "They gave me a chihuahua?". 

I have To Wait For This

I'm going to have to wait until sometime next month to see if tenor Yonghoon Lee is going to be performing at the Met next season.  If so, I hope he'll be doing it Live in HD.  I want to add him to my Top Favorites list, but I can't until I've seen more of him in action.  There aren't many performance videos of him online, and so far I have not found any recordings of him on CD. I want to hear more of Yonghoon Lee in action before he goes on my list. 

Great Snakes! Who Is This Guy?

For some ridiculous reason I decided to look up this Korean tenor by the name of Yonghoon Lee.  My snakes! I have never seen or heard anyone like him.  He doesn't have a website like most of the other opera singers I know about.  I haven't heard him much, and he doesn't appear on YouTube all that often.  He's got to be at least 38 or somewhere in that general vicinity, and so how the heck does he manage to still look 25?  If only I could find a recording of him. 

A Theory Regarding Certain Fanfiction

Slash.  The bane of any good fan's appreciation of a story.  It comes from a fan-author describing a fan pairing as So-and-So/Such-and-Such, most often a same-sex pairing.  I first came across it when I was an Orlando Bloom fangirl and looking Legolas Thranduilion online.  I would rather not say how many slashfics involving Legolas that I've seen.  

I've always wondered why people write slash like that.  Well, my sister came up with a theory a few weeks ago.  Suppose you have a fangirl who likes two hot male characters from a story.  She can't decide which one she wants to see naked so she makes up a story and pairs the two off. 

It's disgusting, it's immoral, but I think that's how slashers operate. 

Happy Birthday, Juan Diego Florez!

Wow!  Forty-years-old and he's still sexy!  And his voice hasn't changed much either. 

I remember the first time I even saw this Peruvian tenor.  It was a few weeks after the great Luciano Pavarotti died, and the BBC had decided to do a memorial documentary on him.  They were talking about Pavarotti being called the King of the High Cs' because of his remarkable performance of "Ah Mes Amis", from Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment).  After a sound clip of Pavarotti singing the aria, the scene suddenly switched to this younger tenor called Juan Diego Florez talking about his success with the aria, knowing that Pavarotti had mastered before he did.  And they also showed him singing th nine high Cs in M. Pelly's production of the opera.  By then, I had started to follow the operas during the Met's regular broadcast season.  For my seventeenth birthday the following April, I got tickets to go see the Met simulcast of M. Pelly's production of La Fille du Regiment.  Florez was singing the tenor lead alongside soprano Natalie Dessay.  That was the first time I saw him live.  It took a few months but I was a Juan Diego Florez fangirl by the time my senior year of high school started.  

I just want to say "Happy Birthday, Juan Diego Florez!".  I just want to, that's all.  

The Joke Wasn't Funny The First Time

Legolas. Thranduilion. Is. Not. A. Girly. Elf.

I don't care if his hair looks hardly out of place after a battle.  Nor do I care how feminine he  looks.  He is not girly.  

I really don't like all these jokes about Legolas using shampoo (it does not exist in Arda).  I have also heard jokes about him cross-dressing (which I never found funny).  And these jokes about him being vain and talking about how he's the prettiest?  To Utumno with that kind of joking!  It was not funny the first time and frankly, they are not funny now.  Why can't people just stop making these dumb jokes about Legolas being effeminate?  They're not funny.  

Carmen: Who Is She?

Carmen ranks number one on my list of favorite operas.  What attracts me to this particular opera, however, is not just the music; it's the way the titular gypsy girl operates.  She is a very highly dangerous woman, but at the same time she is utterly fascinating.  Who is this character? 

Carmen is a fiery gypsy girl who prefers six-month-long dalliances with men rather than a committed relationship.  And she is part of a band of criminal smugglers.  When we first meet her, she is working a temp job in a cigarette factory (she can only be working a temp job there because she never stays in one place for long).  She seduces Don Jose who leaves the army to join her, and then she leaves him for the bullfighter, Escamillo.  Jose (who by that point is crazy obsessed with Carmen), tries to plead with her, but she will hear none of it, and so he kills her.  

But why does Carmen do the things she does?  There has got to be a reason.  And with that in mind and after listening to various mezzo-sopranos talking about the character (not to mention numerous discussions with my parents), I have come up with a plausible explanation.  

First off, Carmen is a gypsy and because of that she is poor.  She has spent pretty much her whole life wandering all over Spain because she has no real place to settle down, and she appears to have become accustomed to this nomadic lifestyle.  In fact, she revels in it.  She makes this very clear to Don Jose when she first seduces him, then reiterates it during their final confrontation at the end of the opera.  And secondly, she knows full well that there are men who are perfectly willing to use her for their own gain.  So she believes that if she calls all the shots in a relationship, then she's home safe.  It never occurs to her in 65 million years That someone would actually what to spend his life with her.  Which brings me to my third point, which is that Carmen is so used to the unscrupulous men that she hangs out with, she does not gain full understanding of why Don Jose is behaving jealously.  In fact, that kind of jealousy in alien to her.  While it's true that Don Jose is really in love with an idea of Carmen rather than with Carmen herself, his passion is something Carmen isn't used to.  And she learns the hard way not to seduce men who are used to good and honest women like Micaela.  

I think that explains a thing or two about the character.