will you join in our crusade?

Les Miserables the movie comes out later this year. You can imagine my excitement, and then subsequent dismay; no, that's not strong enough a word. Dread. Yes, that's it, dread when I heard that Taylor Swift was going to be portraying Eponine. That one stopped me in my tracks. T. Swift as Eponine? Nowaynowaynoway. Now, I enjoy T. Swift's teeny-bopper heartsick you did me wrong now I'm going to write a song about you country as much as the next person, but there's no possible way she could pull off Eponine. The raw emotion and power that has to come from that character would be lost. Gone. Nonexistent. It would be utterly ruined.

Watch this. Commit her vocal abilities to memory.

Now imagine her trying to sing this as well and with as much emotion as the girl below.

Doesn't exactly work out, right? That's why I was beyond thrilled to find out that the girl from the bottom video, Samantha Barks, will be Eponine in the movie version. I literally jumped out of my chair and did a fist pump at the news. I can look forward to this movie now. Thank you to whomever figured out that T. Swift was actually a bad choice, and decided to hire Samantha Barks. Really. Best idea ever. I hope you get promoted. From the legions of Les Mis fans who were once dreading the movie, we thank you. A million times over.

wheels

Yesterday I got a new (read: new to me) adorable little dark blue Honda CR-V. The couple we bought it from had every single piece of paperwork from every service the car has ever had. Extremely thorough. And a midst the stack of paperwork was a newspaper clipping from an article by Click & Clack, so it was a win in my book. Knowing who Click and Clack are and telling me you love them is one way to become instant friends with me. Really. They're the best.

My acquisition of this new car meant that I had to clean out my truck so my little brother can learn to drive on it. The thought of my baby brother behind the wheel  (panic.) and out on the roads (trying to breathe.) was more heart stopping than anything I found behind the seats of the truck. But among the more interesting finds were several cardigans that I had long ago written off as lost forever, three pairs of shoes, a wireless internet router, and a Playboy umbrella. I remember that umbrella from my days living at the Plaza, and someone (Liz, maybe?) had that umbrella, but how it ended up in my truck, I'm not sure. Roommates, if you have any inclination to why we thought the best place to store that umbrella was my truck, please tell.

Tolstoy's got it right.

"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women." 

Leo Tolstoy | War and Peace

It's a beautiful world we live in, that copies of War and Peace this pretty and color coordinated exist.

caught up in a southern summer barefoot blue jean night

Although it's not quite Summer yet, it was definitely a barefoot blue jean night.

Just one of the many perks of living in South Carolina.

Walkürenritt

image via http://www.brevardmusic.org/

A little post over at my friend Grace's blog reminded me of a time, years ago, 

when I lived in North Carolina for a summer.

Yes, the summer of 2006 I lived in the foothills of North Carolina in a little town called Brevard. I spent six weeks at the Brevard Music Center having the best musical summer that's ever happened. It was ideal. Music everywhere. All the time. That may or may not have been directly related to the fact that the only place air conditioning existed on the campus was in the practice rooms. Incentive much? Aside from that, it was a magical place of the first order. Really. For a week and a half leading up to the opera company's performance of The Sound of Music, I would wake up each morning to the resounding ending chords of the reprise of "Climb Evry Mountain" floating in through the trees with the glittering morning sun.

Each morning we were awoken by a trumpeter playing "Reville" and we were sent to bed each night with an equally as talented trumpeter's performance of "Taps". It was lovely; mostly because it was slightly mysterious, as the trumpeter was always stationed far enough away by the lake that the sounds wafted in with the cooler night air. You never really knew where it was coming from. And then one morning, it was different.

One morning, as we slept peacefully in our cabins on the hill, the low brass got themselves together a little choir of about three tubas, four or five trombones, and four or five euphoniums. They planted themselves right outside of our front porch at 6:00 am, and played Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" with all the gusto and volume they could muster. I don't know if you've ever been startled awake by a full low brass choir playing at fortissimo, but they could have been playing Debussy, and I still would have almost fallen out of my bed. Moral of the story: don't sleep where there are enough brass players to conspire against your slumber.