toukokuuta 14, 2006

Happy Mother's Day

It's been a busy weekend. Yesterday we went to Svenska Teatern to see stand-up comedy in Swedish, André Wickström in "En kvälls grej". I was a little worried about being able to understand it all in Swedish, thinking that stand-up comedy would probably use a lot of clever wordplays and verbal tricks. But no, it was quite easy to follow and I only missed two or three jokes.

It was absolutely fabulous. I had never been to listen to stand-up before and I hadn't expected to be laughing with tears in my eyes. My previous experience of stand-up was from my exchange year in the States, where my first host-family used to watch a lot of stand-up from TV. I remember not liking it at all then. I experienced it as vicious instead of funny, lot's of malicious seeming jokes on the expense of minorities like gays, blacks and jews. No, not to my taste then. Yesterday though...it was completely different, funny and smart, and I can't remember when I have for the last time laughed that much.

Today we went to the movies. Woody Allen's Match Point. I'm not a huge Woody Allen fan, but this was quite a good movie. It was, I assume, trying to be some kind of modern version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. On the way home I was trying to remember which fate befell Raskolnikov and if that was an indication of what eventually lay in store for the "hero" of the film. It was such a long time since I had read the book that I couldn't remember for sure though. Thanks to Google and Wikipedia my memory has now been refreshened - leading me to wonder whether Allen is trying to say something with his movie about our time's egoism and (in)capability to feel remorse as compared to the 19th century. Maybe it's a statement about the "end justifies the means" -approach to life and, with leaving the question open to different interpretations, he is trying to force people to think for themselves. Hmm, it's perhaps a cleverer movie than appeared at first sight.

Oh, and I just found an excuse for all my sudoku playing. I was googling a word to check the spelling and I found this. We do always believe BBC, don't we?

"Doing 'brain exercises' such as watching Countdown, playing Sudoku or taking a shower with your eyes closed can make us all up to 40 per cent cleverer within seven days, according to research by a BBC programme this week."
Guardian Unlimited

2 kommenttia:

Messed Up kirjoitti...

thank you for the look in to your life. I love to read about some one with a life.

Mie kirjoitti...

Well thank you, Chuck. ;-)

Geez, now two people have told me I have a life. Does that mean I have to start believing it? Or shall I yell constructionism? Life is created, constructed as fascinating when all the boring bits are edited out and only the things that reach the threshold of a certain level of interesting make it to the blog.

Hmm, but the truly fascinating thing actually is that by constructing an interesting life on a blog one starts to believe that one's life is truly interesting. Damn, them constructionists are right: reality is, as they say, re-produced by people acting on their interpretations.