Secret weapon

[mrissa]

Well, this time it worked: I made all of dinner myself, except for the bits where markgritter got the hot things out of the oven and carried them to the table. If I'd been vertigo-free, I would barely have counted this as cooking: chicken breasts in the oven with bottled barbecue sauce on them, a pot of jasmine rice on the stove, and steamed broccoli in the microwave with a bit of lemon juice and butter and tarragon. This is the level of cooking that nearly slips into not-cooking...except that, hey, you do what you can do, and this is what I can do, and it was an edible and reasonably nutritious meal at the end. Take that, vertigo.

One of my friends made a locked post this week assessing her own recent actions as bitchy. I'm reading a lot of strain on my friendspage from people for various very sensible reasons, ranging from personal to international in scope. I've found myself repeating, "I'm sure she didn't mean it that way," or, "That probably didn't come out as he intended," for all sorts of people around me (and I don't necessarily mean people close to me -- the person doing the estimate on our back door replacement, for example). I have no reason to think that it's everybody else and not me, so for the times lately when you've bitten your tongue and given me the benefit of the doubt lately, thanks.

Here is my unsought secret weapon for dealing with troubled times, whatever their cause: Buddy Holly. Does he fix things? Um, no. Not so much. But really, when does Buddy Holly make things worse? Awfully rarely, in my experience. I mean, there's a good hot beverage, and there's learning new music, and there's all sorts of other stuff that's good, but much of my other stuff for dealing with trouble takes a fair amount of energy. Whereas listening to Buddy Holly is really a pretty low-energy sort of boost. You can just click a link and get to a live 1959 recording of them performing Peggy Sue, complete with totally stationary background debutantes and a brief quasi-apologia for rock music as the intro. Mostly I'm getting my Buddy Holly fix in purely audio form, but I couldn't resist throwing in the leg-twitch for those of you who are really having bad weeks.

Comments

[aedifica]

Congratulations on making dinner! Also, thanks for the Buddy Holly suggestion, because that got me started thinking of Herman's Hermits, and looking for them on YouTube. It's interesting to see the progression: at first Peter Noone just stands there smiling awkwardly, then at some point still in the 60s someone told him to stop standing there like a stick and start dancing, and by the 2000s he actually looks like he's having fun!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I have been noticing that around LJ. Tension, grumpiness, a tendency to not make allowances for whatever. I've been annoyed more or less every day for weeks. It's tiresome! I look forward to getting over myself any day now.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Oh, what fun. The intro, the bowtie, the illustration of why exactly Elvis was such a shock,and the fact that though he's not doing anything difficult on the guitar, his right hand is literally a blur on the strings - must be very slow film. I should go look on Youtube and see if they have the Big Bopper - I've never actually seen Chantilly Lace performed.

Last night we watched Music and Lyrics, in which Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore were adorable. Grant was actually charming rather than annoying in this one.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Congratulations re: dinner!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Or maybe you think I'm round to steal your car...."

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yay dinner!

I am reminded why I like Buddy Holly. Because he's a skinny glasses-faced nerd, but a rock star. In a tux.

That disjunct is just really pleasing to me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. He's like one of us, as a rock star.

One of the reasons I like the TV show Numb3rs is that if you read David Krumholtz's IMDB listing, it's like casting people for his entire life said, "We need someone to play a Jewish geek. No, X doesn't look stereotypically geeky enough. No, Y doesn't look stereotypically Jewish enough. Get me that Krumholtz kid!" And in Numb3rs, it is very plain that he is playing yet another Jewish geek -- and the way the show is written and shot, you can tell that they have absolutely no problem seeing that "Jewish geek" and "really hot" have some significant areas of overlap. I'm used to my own sort of people seeing that. I'm not so used to it in Hollywood. It pleases me. He holds chalk and dry-erase markers correctly, like someone who's done a lot of math with chalk and/or dry-erase markers, and I can watch this show knowing that I am not the only one who sees the great hotness in the guy who holds his chalk the right way.

Re: rock & roll specialists

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad it worked!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I'm amused that they went beyond having a math consultant (which only makes sense to me) to actually filming his hands writing out equations.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

For me, esp. when I'm by myself, noncooking is room temp takeout, and cooking is putting it in the microwave. Tonight I'm actually cooking myself a piece of lamb...counts as total gourmet.

When several eaters are involved, though, I do crank it up a bit.