When in Rome (I Do As the Romans)

 

When driving us to the nearby town of Gandolf’s-finger (truth be told I can’t for the life of me remember what it was really called but it sounded something like that) our host mother took us by an ancient Roman temple built for the god Apollo.  Edith Hamilton would be so proud!!

 

Me: Pretending I’m hiding from a camper.  Carole: Pretending the column is her husband (she got married the week before going on tour!!)

 

Artist: Barbra Streisand/ Album: People

Sniff, Sniff

 

Over the period of a couple of years when I was in high school and my undergrad I amassed about ten different brands of cologne. Some I wear for certain seasons, some with certain colors, and some for certain moods.  (If you ever get a whiff of Dolce and Gabbana then watch out… I’m probably not in the best of spirits.)

In a response to a friends compliment on my musk one day:

“Oh, thanks! I’m actually kind of a scent whore.”

“What?! A centaur? You know, Joseph, sometimes I really don’t get the punch lines to your jokes.”

And, although we all know I love a good bit of half human/half beast mythology, that’s not exactly what I had in mind.

I wear Burberry cologne on the 25th and it is the only time in a year I do so. My bottle only has a couple of spritzes left (I think I’m covered through 2015) and for some reason I associate that scent with Christmas. Perhaps it’s because it has an “aromatic, woody, fougere fragrance […] with dry down notes of amber, cedarwood and tonka beans*.”  Or more likely still, perhaps it just SMELLS LIKE FRIGGIN’ CHRISTMAS.  Needless to say, with limited supplies I save it for that day and that day only.

And no, this isn’t my trying to subtly hint about a Christmas idea… As I mentioned, I have about plenty of different colognes… so I’m covered. (And most likely in too much cologne.) Ba-dum-ching!  Also my hints are not so subtle.  I STILL WANT THAT WATCH!!!

 

Artist: Martin Short/ Album: Fame Becomes Me

Myths and Hymns

 

This last Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting up with my old youth director from First Baptist Crockett, or as I like to call people like this: those who are allowed to call me J.D.  Jeff is now located in Houston working for Jersey Village Baptist church and he and his wife Marcy were kind enough to take me out to lunch and catch up.  I’ve gotten to see them randomly over the years but it’s nice to know they are so close!

As I don’t really know any of the restaurants in the area (starving artist, remember?) they suggested Yia Yia Mary’s, a de.licious Greek restaurant that is part of the Papa’s family.  Now, for those of you who aren’t aware, Papa’s family of restaurants includes, but is not limited to a Tex-Mex restaurant (Papasito’s), a sea food restaurant (Papadeaux’s), a steak restaurant (Papa’s Bro’s) and a Papa’s Bar-B-Q. YUMMM!

 Look how excited they are to serve me food!

 

I also thought this would be a great opportunity to retroactively blog about my trip to Greece when I was studying abroad.  During our Fall break from classes in Florence I decided to take a trip to Athens, Delphi and the buh-eutiful island of Santorini (or the Greek Pompeii as it is often called).  When I was younger I was extremely enthralled by Greek and Roman mythology and must have read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology at least a dozen times, and there I was in the midst of it all!

Athens:

The Temple of Zeus with the Parthenon in the background

 

At the Parthenon! (Btw… someone stole that scarf while I was living in Michigan and I’m still bitter.  I got it in Maastricht when I went to visit Mallory.  BITTER I tell you!)

 

The Porch of the Caryatids

 

The Athens Olympics were just a couple of months before I went to go visit!

 

 

Delphi:

Temple of Apollo

 

 

The “prophets” would suck on natural gas being released from holes in the ground like this and then use the hallucinations they had to tell the future.  You know… and base wars on them.

                                               Olive tree near the temple for Athena                                              

Wikipedia: Athena competed with Poseidon to be the patron deity of Athens, which was yet unnamed, in a version of one founding myth. They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and that the Athenians would choose the gift they preferred. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a spring sprang up; this gave them a means of trade and water but the water was salty and not very good for drinking. Athena, however, offered them the first domesticated olive tree. The Athenians accepted the olive tree and with it the patronage of Athena, for the olive tree brought wood, oil, and food

 

Temple of Athena.  She was always my favorite goddess

 

Santorini:

The overnight boat ride from Athens to the island

 

 

My hostel

 

Greek chirenz

 

A church near the center of the crater

 

Me at the top of the crater…

 

This crater!

 

Album: Myths and Hymns (admittedly this isn’t song name but an album name.  I thought it was perfect for the post, though, so deal.with.it!)

A Falling Through

After Clue, the next movie I usually force invite my friends to watch comes in the form of a wildly visually stunning fairy tale of sorts: The Fall. Just LOOK at these amazing stills, and the first three minutes alone (with a little help from the second movement of Beethoven's 7th) are, in my opinion, completely worth the rental fee.

I was going to try and write a synopsis of it, but just watch the trailer instead:


The director, Tarsem Singh, is mostly known for his television commercials but some of you might know his earlier forey to the silver screen, the 2000 Jennifer Lopez movie The Cell. Actually, it is exactly because of his abundant work on TV commercials that The Fall was even able to be made. Due to an extremely small budget (he financed the film himself in order to maintain his vision throughout) he managed to piggybacked on his other corporate jobs and carted the cast along with him to a total of some twenty different countries over a period of four years. Amazingly, the entire film is made without the use of computer generated effects-- a fact made even more astonishing when you see the final product!

The only mildly recognizable actor in the film is Lee Pace, whom you might remember from the sadly yet not surprisingly cancelled Pushing Daisies and the even lesser known gem Wonderfalls.  I'll refrain from getting on my high horse about how wonderful that show was... instead I'll let my sister-in-law do it here.

The standout of the film, however, is Cantica Untaru.  You will literally want to pull a Christian missionary in Haiti and steal this child from her home country of Romania. I wouldn't recommend it though because, you know, it's illegal and all. A complete unknown, Cantica's performance was a mixture of loosely scripted material mixed with improvised dialogue with the other actors. In fact, the entire cast and crew spent the whole shoot having her belive Lee Pace was actually wheel chair bound in order to get an untaintedly genuine performance. Welllllllllllll it worked.

Next up for Tarsem is Immortals, set during the time of Greek mythology.  Basically I couldn't be more excited because I went through a phase when I was younger where all I was interested in was mythology.  God bless Edith Hamilton!

So anyway... GO WATCH THE FALL!!

                                              "Tarsem... has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it."

Roger Ebert