For All Ye Robin Hood Fans...

It's been months and months since we heard from Robin and Marian and Guy in Acre, and many of us Robin Hood fans stateside have grown a bit tetchy waiting for the new season to begin.  

Because of this, my husband Richard (Armitage, in case you didn't know, and no, he's not the American) has so graciously obliged his fans by appearing as a regular in another BBC series.  During my vacation in the islands, I got hooked on a British spy show called Spooks.  I discovered it while watching my mom's favorite channel, the channel my sisters call the "old people" channel.  Mom is a huge fan of British mystery dramas, to my dad's dismay (Dad prefers a lot of stuff blowing up as opposed to hunting for murderers in lovely English rose gardens). Imagine my delight when I found out that RA was joining Rupert Penry-Jones (another BBC heartthrob -- see Jane Austen's Persuasion) in this exciting spy caper.  Well, maybe not so exciting.  They're British after all...

For a sneak peek, see below.  It starts getting hot at 5 minutes and 30 seconds...

Actually, that was exciting.  Oh dear, another set of DVDs to collect.

By the way, Richard comes home to me without the tattoos.

If you will excuse me, it's time for me to stop blogging and actually start working on those survival analysis regressions (again!).

In the Shadow of a Giant

No, I am not talking about MY shadow.

Yesterday afternoon, I was fidgeting at the back of a crowded room, shifting from one foot to another, trying to move the ache from the tired foot to the less tired one.  This has been going on for about an hour now.  No, make that an hour and a half.  Why am I here?  In fact, why are all these freaking undergrads here?

Doing your Ph.D. at a smaller university that is known for graduating teachers or corporate guns rather than researchers has its drawbacks.  And one of them is the absence of Nobel Prize winners lurking in our hallowed halls.  And believe me, our halls are quite hallowed; some of them have been built when your great-great grandpoppa was still a twinkle in your great-great-great grandmomma’s eye (she probably didn’t meet the right fraile at that time).  All the phantoms at the University are real ghosts.  So it was with great expectation that we welcomed the Phantom of Princeton, Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr.

Now, as I have said, a Nobel Prize winner would cause a great deal of excitement in our little we’re-not-Harvard-but-we-charge-as-much-as-them athenaeum.  A Nobel Prize winner who has been played by Russell Crowe in an Academy Award-winning film would cause no less than a sensation.  Ergo, plenty of ickle undergrads (with their fancy iPhones taking photos) took most of the seats in the auditorium.   And yes, I get to bitch, because I took a whole semester’s worth of graduate level game theory even before I read or saw A Beautiful Mind.  Oh, and just for the record, I thought Russell Crowe should have won the acting award for that movie, and not for that clunker-pretending-to-be-a-Roman-epic Gladiator.  Though Joaquin Phoenix was so good at being evil…

Ooooh, look at the kitty!  Anyway, moving on…

There were a couple of speakers before the main event, both of whom I heartily applauded at the end of their respective speeches.  The first one was Professor Dominick Salvatore, a leading international economist, and the chair of the Economics Department at Fordham University.  He gave an overview about the current financial crisis, and he made a couple of points that stuck in my mind.

Firstly, the current administration has taken a lot of flak for causing the crisis, but people have to remember that the last Democrat President was the one that let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac run wild to begin with.  Let’s put blame where it’s due, shall we?

Secondly, there isn’t going to be a depression.  Can you repeat that for me please?   THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE A DEPRESSION!  Governments and central banks are better equipped now more than ever to stimulate the economy.  Unless of course everyone believes everything that the media says.  Then we would be in a whole boat load of $#!&@! 

The second speaker was Dr. Charles Soludo, the Executive Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.  He lamented the situation of a lot of developing countries that have worked hard to rebuild their economies, only to see their work washed away by what is seen by many as irresponsible spending habits of the world’s largest economy.  In case any of the clueless undergrads are reading this post, yes, Dr. Soludo was taking a potshot at you.  And by God, I gave him a standing ovation.  Well, I couldn’t give him a sitting one, because I didn’t get there early enough to stake out a seat. 

Now for the main event.  By the way they all turned out in droves, people must have expected fireworks at the very least.  Professor Nash put nearly everyone to sleep with his marathon lecture on “ideal money.”  But just because he put everyone to sleep doesn’t mean that he isn’t brilliant.  The man, the legend, at eighty years old, is still pretty sharp.  His lecture on the evolution of monetary systems and the concept of “ideal money” (which, I understand from his speech, is money/currency that is more stable vis-à-vis inflation shocks.  I could be wrong.  I was almost asleep by then) is still relevant to the ongoing crisis.  Or at least, it could have been relevant if they had let him finish the section on saving behavior.  But apparently, there wasn’t enough time, and just when it was just getting interesting…ah well, Professor Nash promised to post a copy of the presentation.   (I can’t believe they stopped him!  To a student of economics, it’s like CNN cutting off the US President while he was holding a press conference!).

And in spite of the bitching I did earlier, the main reason that I was there was pretty much the same that of those undergrads I was ranting about.  I wanted to be in the presence of greatness.  I wanted to stand in the shadow of a giant.   Maybe listening to him would inspire me to work harder on my dissertation, to take pride in my research, to throw myself body and soul into what would be perceived as my life’s work.

Or not.

Short Cuts: Apple Picking, Equus on Broadway, and Linda's

Shortcuts...where you get three posts for the price of one, hahaha!

Autumn in New York has become a romantic cliché, associated with montages of Richard Gere and Winona Ryder walking through the glorious riot of color in Central Park (to tell you the truth, I invented this, as I cannot remember anything from that movie, except that he was her mother’s boyfriend – ack!). 

In the Bronx, however, fall just passes by.  October brings in the first exams of the semester, and by the time you are finally done with grading that evil Statistics exam, the leaves are no more but a mushy carpet on the damp gray pavement.  And if you are really lucky, you would have to walk under a gingko tree and step on the foul smelling seeds that are rotting on the ground.  

So sometimes fall isn’t that beautiful.  Then one day, I find an email from a cousin wondering if I would like to join the family for a morning of apple picking.

The drive up to the apple orchard took about an hour (including wrong turns :)) from the city, but I wasn’t really paying attention.  The leaves along the parkway were just starting to get showy, and for the gazillionth time I cursed myself for having forgotten my camera (borrowed my cousin's for a few shots).  

The main event was short and sweet (we only needed to fill two bags of apples…unfortunately, each bag cost about $24) with lots of “Adam and Eve” photos and ooh-ing and aah-ing  over the nice shiny apples.  It was a bit crowded at the orchard, but being out there in the sunshine and the crisp country air with nothing but apples and trees and good company was a Saturday morning well spent.

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The other night, Roomie and I went to see the highly-anticipated Peter Shaffer play Equus playing at the Broadhurst Theatre (see Roomie's post here). Although I am a fan of Amadeus (probably Shaffer’s most well-known work) this play is probably not something that we would have thought of seeing if not for the fact that everyone was fighting for tickets during its West End run.  One of the main reasons Londoners went bonkers over this production can be summed up in two words:  Daniel Radcliffe.  Yes, the actor playing that famous boy wizard was making his Broadway debut (oh please, don’t pretend that you haven’t read or seen Harry Potter).  And, yes, he will be waving his wand (no, it’s not holly with a phoenix feather core).

This is supposed to be a short cut,  so I’ll try to make this quick.  The production itself was excellent, with minimal sets that allow the people (and horses) in the play to produce maximum impact.  By the way, whoever ordered the air conditioning on full blast was a genius...it certainly helped produce the chilling atmosphere in the theatre.  

Richard Griffiths, playing a child psychiatrist unsatisfied with his work, was funny, sympathetic, restrained and totally comfortable with the role (as usual – see the History Boys for reference).  Still hate his delivery though.  Repeat after me girls and boys:  E-nun-ci-ate!  I missed a lot of good jokes.  But then, that could be because I’m old and deaf….

Daniel Radcliffe (in my head, I still call him Harry) has improved much since the early Chris Columbus Potter movies, though he still carries himself very stiffly onstage. Though, if I were playing a 17-year-old boy who blinds six horses with a hoof pick, I would be walking around like a big block of cement, too.  It’s time for Mr. Radcliffe to play a less tortured role.  (His stint on Ricky Gervais’ Extras was hilarious – is it too early for him to make a Dancing with the Stars appearance?)  

None of the secondary characters were particularly engaging, except for T. Ryder Smith, who plays the patriarch of the little dysfunctional family on the prairie.  And kudos to the “horses” who were walking around on those heels/hooves.  I wore kitten heels that night, and I (like the old lady that I am) can still feel it in my joints.  I regret not reading the play ahead of time, because I had to concentrate hard to hang on every word (damn Mr. Griffiths and his mumbling!).  I probably won’t see it again as Broadway tickets are too rich for my blood, but if there’s a film version, I would probably see it (paging Nicholas Hytner!).

Now that I've seen my first Broadway play, I'm kinda tempted to watch Frank Langella as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.  If only the tickets weren't so damn expensive.

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Anyone who’s remotely interested in fashion has heard of Tim Gunn.  Anyone who’s heard of Tim Gunn has probably seen his makeover show.  And anyone who has seen his show has seen Veronica Webb bring the willing "victims" to Linda Becker’s Bra Salon.  Intrigued by the statement that 8 out of 10 women wear the wrong size bra, I made an appointment with Linda herself.  She was very gracious and helpful, and seemed amused that she was known even halfway around the world.  

 

She did find that I was wearing the wrong size, but she was able to rectify that in the hour that I spent in the shop.  Needless to say, I came out an extremely happy camper.