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Punch, brothers! Punch with care! |
Monday, June 21, 1999 Hosanna and Harriet Salutations and greetings, O readers of mine! I'm quite happy to have you here, even if I have no idea of what I'm going to write about today...
You know, it's amazing what a difference music makes. I wasn't even remotely looking forward to writing this entry about ten minutes ago. But I didn't want to get behind again, so I dragged myself over to my text editor. Then I checked LiveConcerts.Com -- which is the reason PPP connections and the Web were invented -- and found out that my They Might Be Giants concert, which had been AWOL for a bit, was back. A few seconds after it got underway, I was ready to go out there, type away, and take no prisoners! Even if I still have nothing to write about.
One nice thing about this concert is that it's succeeding in driving out a song that's been stuck in my head for the past couple of days. See, I took out Jesus Christ Superstar from the library last week. Not bad, but nowhere near the brilliant musical which is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I suspect it'd be better if I were more than passingly familiar with the New Testament, which I've never read. (Or perhaps worse; Joseph does make a complete hash out of the actual story in Genesis. But it's done so well that I can't say I care...) But, anyway, "Hosanna" has been running through my mind on endless loop for the past little while now:
Hey sanna hosanna Hey JC, JC won't you smile at me? Sanna hosanna hey superstar... But that doesn't mean I can't spread it to you.
'Course, as a Nice Jewish Boy, I probably shouldn't be listening to Jesus Christ Superstar in the first place. But nobody's perfect, and, besides, I was curious. Curiosity has pretty much always been my fatal flaw. Well, not literally fatal. Not yet, anyway. That may have something to do with the fact that, in addition to being curious, I'm also a creature of habit, who doesn't like change very much. Given the choice between trying something new, or going with what I already know I like, I'll go with the latter at least nineteen times out of twenty. So my explorations are generally confined to what I read and listen to. And even there, most of what I select is stuff I already know I like. This explains why I saw Harriet the Spy three times, while not getting around to seeing a few other films that sounded potentially interesting that summer. I knew I liked Harriet. I didn't know how I'd like the others. So why chance it? (Besides, Harriet the Spy ruled. Okay, they deviated from the book, but they more or less had to. And while I liked the book a lot, I have to admit that I preferred the film's kinder, gentler version of the protagonist. At any rate, I left the theatre somewhat drained, but happy, each time.)
But I identify with Harriet a lot. Both because she's an outcast, and because, like her, I want to know everything. I just check out lots of books, rather than looking at real people. But within our respective microcosms, the quest is the same. We're both trying to make sense of our worlds, and gathering all the data we can get our hands on. I sometimes find it a bit depressing to know that it's an impossible task. But, on the other hand, there's more than enough material out there to occupy me for the rest of my life... so it's all a matter of perspective, I suppose. Come to think of it, we're also similar in being set in our ways in other areas. My peanut butter sandwiches and pizza meet their match in her tomato sandwiches and egg creams (the latter of which were sadly missed in the film). I'm tempted to ascribe this to a need for stability and control over our lives on both our parts, but perhaps I'm overanalyzing this. Anyway, for an entry in which I had nothing to say, I don't seem to have done too badly. Thanks for reading, come again soon, and have a wonderful day!
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