Bit of Ivory

It’s highly appropriate that I would be posting this on a Sunday, because this has long been one of our favorite Sunday afternoon movies.

“DEATH COMES UNEXPECTEDLY!!”

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Sorry for the delay. I’ve had a busy few days! I would have posted this yesterday, but I typed it up at work and forgot to e-mail it to myself. Rather than do it all over again, I just decided to wait.

“I think he did a little too much LDS”

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From Keane’s new album (I like. Different, but I like):

Better than This
<i>Is this what you meant?
Is this what you dreamed of
When you were making your plans
Shaking the dirt off?
Do you feel like you and I belong?
Just keep your eyes on the road
And nothing can go wrong

You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this

I’ve been checking my sums
Oh where did the time go?
Holding my photograph up to the window
Through the paper and refracted sun
I can see all the things I wish that I’d done

You can hang your hopes on the medicine
You can put your faith in the phone-in
You can tell yourself you’re doing your best
You can do so much better than this

Get a grip on yourself
Get a grip on yourself
Could have been something but you’re too late
And you weren’t invited anyway

Because the photographs show the wrong man
Because there is no soap star holding your hand
You don’t see yourself in the freeze frame
Must be someone else using your name

And everyone will be the same
And everyone will glow
And everywhere you’ll see your name
In every shop window

It’s better than this
You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this</i>

Yes, I can. And I’m going to try.

I actually had another movie in mind for this post, but I decided to take advantage of the fact that Pam asked me to cap part of it for her BNAT application. Since I had planned on capping the exact same moment she wanted me to cap. . . well.

This is a favorite movie of my family, especially for Sunday viewing.

“Who is this fair young god entering into the house of Pharoah?”

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I wasn’t quite sure where to go next with my series– should I go to something completely different? Or follow in the same comedic vein? And then this movie showed up on TV the other night. Ta da! It was decided.

“Is it possible he met her while doing charitable work in a mental infirmary?”

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In an effort to write something, anything (in the hopes that the writing will translate to my thesis), I’m going to be starting a new series of posts. A series about movies.

More, specifically, a series about Movies My Family Quotes. I’m starting with 31 movies. There are many more that I could add. And that’s not even counting all the TV shows and church films and cartoons (oh, the cartoons!) which I’m not even touching. I got the idea from conversations with my co-workers, where I realized that the movies that my family quotes are not always the movies everyone quotes. But when someone recognizes a quote from one of our movies, I know I’ve got a kindred spirit. So I thought I’d share my love for some of these amazing films. Who knows– maybe you’ll find a new favorite. Or you’ll discover that we’re also kindred spirits. I have no idea what my posting schedule will be, although I’m going to try to do at least 3 movies a week.

I thought I’d start off big– with the mother of all quotable movies. At least for my family. I remember one camping trip with assorted extended Bytheway relatives, we sat around the campfire for at least 20 minutes, spouting line after line from this movie. If we tried hard enough, I think we could, collectively, quote the whole thing from beginning to end.

“Propriety? Noun: Conformity to established standards of behavior or manner, suitability, rightness, or justice. See: etiquette”

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So I’m about to embark on a day-trip down to Cedar City to see Cyrano de Bergerac again (yes, it was that good), and I realized that I hadn’t posted something that I intended to post. So.

A few months back I got an inquiry about helping to co-host a radio program for KBYU-FM, which is a public classical music station originating from my Alma Mater. I’d been recommended by my thesis advisor, because the subject was Harry Potter. Karen A. Brown, who did her undergraduate degree at BYU, has written and published a book called Prejudice in Harry Potter’s World, and they wanted to interview her for it.

Due to the fact that she was in London and I work full-time, it was hard to schedule a time to actually do the interview, but we finally managed it on Saturday morning. The interview is 26 minutes long (with me providing what I like to call “color commentary”), and will air today at 11:00 AM mountain time on KBYU-FM (89.1 and 89.5 here on the Wasatch Front). It will also be replayed at 8:00 PM, and will eventually be uploaded as a podcast to the Thinking Aloud website. If you’d like to hear it live, you can get the streaming audio from the Classical 89 website. There are hints on the site that it might also be available via BYU radio, which is available on Dish Network at least, but we haven’t been able to find any confirmation of that.

So. Just in case you’re interested.

I’ll do a real update soon, I promise.

So tonight my sister and I were watching the first few minutes of Good Eats, where Alton Brown was talking about how we need to reclaim the cupcake or something like that. And neither of us could watch any more of that, because of course we started craving cupcakes, and that would have just made it worse.

But eventually the craving became too much to bear, so we headed to Barnes and Noble, because they have good cupcakes in the cafe and, of course, books. And we both got paid today.

And the last 8 or so times I’ve gone to B&N I haven’t been able to remember the authors or the titles of the books I’ve been hearing about from my online friends. But THIS time, I took the time to look them up. And so I’ve come back from B&N not only with a vanilla cupcake and a Vanilla Bean Frappucino, but also The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, and Faro’s Daughter by Georgette Heyer (which I didn’t have to look up, but which I’ve been trying to find for a while). And Lisa took the precaution of checking which of the Russell/Holmes books she still needed, so she came home with two Laurie R. King novels and the newest Artemis Fowl (which I fully plan on stealing).

I’ll have reading material for my Shakefest trip, huzzah!

Saw it at a Team Screening tonight.

GO. SEE. THIS. MOVIE.

Adorable and touching and hilarious and– there was spontaneous clapping at several points. Seriously.

Gotta see it again.

The short beforehand was hilarious, too.

Today at work, one of my coworkers (whom I really like) came to my desk to meter some mail. As she did so, she whistled 11 notes of a tune. A tune I immediately recognized.

“Kathy,” I said, “why in the world are you whistling ‘Theme From Flood’?”

She was very impressed. Especially as the 11 notes were from the middle of the song. She gave me a high five, then spread the news of my familiarity with They Might be Giants around the office.

In the meantime, in another room, another coworker was loudly singing “Yellow Submarine.”

Yeah, I like my job.

I’ve got some fic to post later tonight. After I come up with a title.