Throbert's Theatre of Thinkologizing

I don't know why it's been so hard to return to the habit of writing regularly, but I'm gonna try to get the Blinkin' Blog back into fighting shape again. Let's warm up with a little Jazzercize over in the Diskoteka, shall we?

This week's selection is an incredibly peppy Greek folk number called ''Yerakina,'' here performed by bespectacled easy-listening siren Nana Mouskouri. The song's bouncy ''droom droom'' refrain is meant to echo the thunderously noisy bracelets worn by the song's eponymous heroine, the aforementioned Yerakina, who goes and pulls a Baby Jessica whilst attempting to draw water from a well. Judging from the upbeat tempo, I presume that they manage to haul her ass to safety by the song's finish. Or, possibly, she ends up drowning, but the singer/narrator is understood to be some sort of C.H.U.D.-like ghoul who enjoys drinking cadaver-flavored water, and hence, naturally reacts to Yerakina's demise with lots of joyous dancing and droom-droom-ing. (I don't know Greek, and I'm not really up to speed on Hellenic folk traditions.) But it's a real toe-tapper, in any case.

posted by Throbert | 2/22/2003 11:17:00 PM | (0) responses

18 February 2003

This snowstorm caught me without a good-quality digital camera at hand. I briefly considered hauling out my old 35mm SLR and loading it with black-and-white film to get some dramatic chiaroscuro shots of Grand Army Plaza, but that... would've involved schlepping to Grand Army Plaza, and I'm not in the mood for long-haul schleps at present.

However, we do have two DV camcorders in the household, and between us, Juan and I managed to get some serviceable shots for posterity. Like this view of Manhattan from our rooftop. Well, under normal weather conditions, you'd see The City just beyond that big Lego monstrosity.

And here is Fifth Avenue as it looked early Monday afternoon, as I slogged step by painful step towards the Korean liquor store between 14th and 15th to pick up a tipple for later in the evening.

''It'll nearly be like a picture print
By Currier and Ives
These wonderful things are the things
We remember all through our lives!''

Er, the view up 12th Street was, indeed, nearly like a Currier and Ives picture-print, if you ignore the SUVs.

Finally, here's Poochy, doing his business -- this was the first walk of the day, when long stretches of sidewalk had yet to be shoveled, and I got some pretty good footage of him doing that weird undulating springbok-type leap that dogs use to forge through deep snow. About half a block after this shot, though, Poochy's core temperature apparently dropped below some critical level, and he goes into a pathos-inducing huddle, shivering and mewling and generally carrying on as though he's about two seconds away from becoming a Grim Statistic. So naturally I scoop him up, shove him into my parka, and zip it up so that only his head is sticking out of the collar, and the two of us continued home looking like the world's stupidest concept for a sci-fi B movie.

posted by Throbert | 2/18/2003 11:23:00 PM | (0) responses

SNOW!

There's no non-clichéd way to describe how New York looks under a good heavy blanket of snow. It started Sunday night; not big fluffy clumps of snowflakes, but lots and lots of very fine, stinging particles that you could hear skittering across surfaces like wind blown sand across dunes, as though somewhere up there God was standing around with a saltshaker the size of Mount Everest, sprinkling it over New York. By Monday morning, it had changed to fluffy clumps of snowflakes, and it kept coming throughout the day.

Speaking of snowflakes, it pains me that today's wastrel youth are not being instructed in the methodology of cutting a proper six-pointed snowflake out of paper. What you get instead are these pathetic octagons -- or worse, squares, or worst of all, 8x11 rectangles, which get taped to windows of offices and churches and schools, thereby spitting in the face of God, Physical Chemistry, and Mother Nature, and bringing disgrace upon our nation. And there's just no excuse, because making a lifelike hexagonal snowflake with just scissors and paper is so easy, a fetal kitten could do it!

Start with a square piece of white paper and follow the diagrams below. (If you don't know how to make a square piece of paper out of a rectangular sheet, you should probably ask mommy and daddy to haul you away from the computer before you accidentally look at pornography).

Carefully unfold, and Shazam, you've got yourself a snowflake! (This also works with bar napkins -- you can tear a simple design even if you don't have scissors, and maybe it'll make such an impression on the handsome guy with the broad shoulders and five-o-clock-shadow next to you that he starts a conversation. Or maybe not. But you've still got a beer-doily, in that case.)

posted by Throbert | 2/18/2003 04:45:00 PM | (0) responses