It's 3 AM and I have an assignment due in my Accounting class tomorrow, so of course this seems like the perfect opportunity for procastination to update my blog. I'm taking four classes this quarter, which is more than the three recommended due to the fact that quarters are only 10 weeks long and much faster-paced than semesters. But, since I found myself with way too much free time on my hands during the fall quarter, I decided to throw caution to the wind and not only take four courses, but also select two of the most difficult courses available in the English department: Critical Theory and Canterbury Tales (all of which is read in the original Middle English). Hopefully this little experiment doesn't go too awry and I'm not headed for a major meltdown. So far, I've been handling it pretty well. I'm mostly attributing this to the fact that I'm used to taking a full load of classes while working at least part-time, if not full-time, and leading or participating in various clubs and volunteer efforts. There's nothing like attending community college while working to support yourself to give you an insane inferiority complex that causes you to severely overcompensate. In other words, even taking more than the recommended amount of classes in a fast-paced quarter system feels like a freaking vacation every single day.
I'm pretty confident that I aced my first quiz on translating Middle English in my Canterbury Tales class, today. I was somewhat intimidated when I first signed up for the class, and even more so when I arrived to the first class session to find that my professor was an Oxford-educated medievalist who seemed to have some sort of hyperactive attention deficit disorder that caused him to be easily distracted by so much as a cricket chirping outside of the window. Mostly, I was worried that reading Middle English would be like learning an entirely new language, and that I would end up struggling desperately to keep up. However, I found reading Chaucer in the original Middle English pretty fascinating, and dare I say... fun? Yes I know, groan and roll your eyes at me if you so choose. I happen to really enjoy learning different languages for whatever reason, and since Middle English is somewhat related to French, I suppose I have had a bit of an unfair advantage. Mind you, my spoken French is pretty mediocre, but I'm fairly fluent in written French. And what good does it do anyone to be good at reading a language, but not at speaking it, except in the rare case that one might take a Canterbury Tales class?
The Ellesmere Manuscript, one of the most famous copies of Canterbury Tales in existence, at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, Feb. 2012
While I often find myself horrified at how many hours of my life the internet has consumed over the years, sometimes it really comes in handy. At least three or more years ago, I was shopping in Trader Joe's one evening when I heard what I thought was a really awesome Elvis tune. It was really hard to make out the lyrics due to the noise in the store, I only knew that it sounded like Elvis with female backing vocalists, which made it that much more difficult when I tried Googling it when I got home. I even tried listening to sample clips of Elvis songs on itunes in hopes that I might be able to recognize it, but no such luck. You cannot imagine how disappointed I was; there's really nothing worse for me than hearing a song I like on the radio or out and about, and not being able to figure out what it is. I guess I'm just weird like that.
A few days ago, I was trying to think of cool songs to add to the mix CD of 50's, 60's, and 70's music that I was making as a belated Christmas gift for my sister, and I decided to download "Sukiyaki" on itunes. It's a pretty cool song and was on an episode of Mad Men that I had particularly liked, so I figured it was worth buying.
Itunes has introduced me to some awesome music in the past through the suggested songs that show up after you download a song, so I decided to listen to the samples they offered; lo and behold, the first one to come up was THE song that I had heard more than three years ago and been searching for ever since. Except that it wasn't Elvis (even though he actually did record a cover of the song), it was a guy named Terry Stafford. I have to say though, I think Terry's version is way cooler than Elvis' take.
In a way, it's a little creepy that itunes knows my musical tastes so well, but you know what, it's kind of cool, too. Thanks itunes for reuniting me with this gem. I salute you.
Winter break has unfortunately come to an end, and I have just completed my first week of the winter quarter. The break was fun while it lasted, though. Christmas and New Year's were lovely, even though the weather was unusually cold by LA standards. Daniel and I drove to Palm Springs on New Year's Day to spend a couple of days with a few of Daniel's frat brothers and their girlfriends. It was quite strange driving through miles and miles of barren desert to suddenly come upon this man-made paradise of immaculate green lawns and palm trees out in the middle of nowhere.
Apparently, there's not a whole lot to do in Palm Springs except golf or go hiking, and it was far too cold to do much of either, so we stayed pretty close to the hotel except for a minor excursion to the downtown area. I had never been to Palm Springs before, but I somehow had this image of a cool, kind of funky, retro desert resort town in my head. Stars like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Sinatra had owned vacation homes there at one point, so there had to be something worth checking out, right? Not so much... the downtown area was mostly made up of your average middle America strip malls: Petcos, Targets, and Michaels craft stores galore. Everything that the retired Palm Springs residents might need, I suppose. I was pretty disappointed. Regardless, it's still nice to get out of the city once in awhile, so the change in scenery was appreciated.
The other highlight of my break was finally getting to see Django Unchained, which I had been looking forward to for months. I hadn't been very impressed by Quentin's last film, Inglorious Basterds (I can't pinpoint exactly why, it just didn't feel like a Tarantino movie), so I wasn't sure what to expect with Django. Thankfully, the movie exceeded my expectations and then some. It's still not older Quentin, or even on par with Kill Bill, but at this point, I have accepted the fact that Quentin is evolving as a filmmaker. My favorite Tarantinto films are Jackie Brown and Kill Bill vol. 1, but I can't expect every Quentin film to be like those two; he made his Pam Grier blaxploitation and spaghetti western kung fu flicks, and now he's moving on.
I had a couple of minor issues with Django, mainly regarding how historically accurate it is (my readings from my early African American lit class were really fresh in my mind since I had just finished the course a couple of weeks prior), but I understand that that's not the point of the movie. Quentin has never claimed to be historically accurate. Django is basically a fantasy revenge western, so Quentin was going to take whatever artistic liberties he saw fit to make the film the way he wanted. I think that it would be interesting to see more films about slavery in the future... there are just so many stories that have the potential to become really great films. Frederick Douglass' "Narrative" especially comes to mind. He even has a kind of "Django" moment when he decides to finally fight back against his slave driver, Mr. Covey. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend Douglass' work.
I won't spoil any of the main plot points for those who haven't seen Django, but I will say that I found Samuel L. Jackson's character highly amusing for multiple reasons. For one, it was just totally unexpected to see him in that kind of a role since he usually plays the badass vigilante type, but secondly, it made me think of the spat between Jackson and Spike Lee back in the 90's when Jackson shot off an angry response to Lee's criticism of Tarantino's use of the N-word in Jackie Brown, to which Lee replied by calling Jackson a "'House Negro' defending the master."
Were Tarantino and Jackson taking a swipe at Lee by basically making Jackson's character a house slave defending his beloved master Candy, played by a super-creepy Leonardo Dicaprio? Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it sure made me chuckle. Speaking of Leonardo Dicaprio (or as I fondly referred to him during my tween years, Leo), Daniel does a seriously uncanny imitation of the weird Texan plantation owner accent that Dicaprio uses in the film. Considering that Daniel looks absolutely nothing like Leonardo Dicaprio or a Texan plantation owner, it's downright freaky (much to his delight and amusement).
The acting performances really were great, it's a shame that neither Jamie or Dicaprio were nominated for Oscars this year. Hopefully Christopher Waltz will win the Best Supporting Actor nom, though.
