lauradi7dw

Today is the 35th anniversary of the first message sent on the web. I didn't have an email address for quite a while and in the early 1990s when I wanted to check in on alt.tv.xfiles or the digitrad folksong index, I took the commuter rail to Arthur's office at Brandeis every couple of weeks. Things have changed.

NPR, WUMB, WERS, and others are putting out or preparing end of year best song lists (or maybe favorite songs?). I listen to the radio a lot, mostly those and sometimes 92.5 The River (what does that mean?) which seems to be a franchise of some sort, because there is a different version in western Mass that still calls itself The River. I have heard a lot of songs this year that I like, but I don't know most of the artists or titles because the DJs don't tell me often enough, and when they do I don't have pen and paper at the ready. I know my favorite Kpop songs of 2025, although almost all of them are in English. Should that count?
It was a big Kpop Demon Hunters year for a lot of the world. Golden was my head song for months, but I like a lot of the other songs as well.
A soundtrack list starts here
https://youtu.be/yebNIHKAC4A?si=8lCWbvXx-_b_jLsY
There was a short tiktok reposted on twitter of a cute little kid singing it but I can't figure out how to link it.
Does anybody need the movie screenplay? Here it is:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26438527-kpop-demon-hunters-read-the-screenplay-2/#document/p1

J-Hope and GloRilla Killin' it Girl (not my favorite of J-Hope's releases this year, but it stuck most in my head).



Stray Kids Do it



The Do It challenge dance performed by a Hamilton cast
https://youtube.com/shorts/ytBg-BJNQPo?si=efbis9e5_g6cQQ-5

WERS played Billie Eilish's "Birds of a Feather" a lot this year. Why is the group name just her name (Eilish is her middle name) when her brother Fineas is part of every project? Wouldn't Billie & Fineas made more sense?
I prefer the cover by Kim Seungmin



Here's one that's not in English (except I only know the English title)
Hwasa Good Goodbye



There isn't a standardized challenge dance for it, but people have posted little skits of themselves to the music, often including the sort of hand-wavy part at about 2:20.

But here's Hwasa singing in English, for Christmas
https://youtube.com/shorts/prgRbO-xJ8g?si=_gO574amExfd--Yb

This is K but not pop and it's not 2025, but almost (early December 2024). I have watched it a lot this fall. I think of it as the Santa's Helpers pungmul group

One of the much-hyped Netflix movies this week is "10Dance," a based-on-manga rivals to lovers story centered around ballroom dancing. That's not a sport/art form that I like very much. Possibly it's because things have to be so both standardized and to some extent rigid to be scored in competitions that it doesn't look fun to me, and I think dancing should be joyful. But a lot of people do it, so they must find it worthwhile. There have been many interviews and behind the scenes clips as part of the promotion time. The subject line was something one of the leads said. (Ryoma Takeuchi) (Takeuchi is the family name there. I think it should probably be first?). The actors portraying dancers spent a year learning to dance in the standard/Latin ballrooms styles. I don't know what that means - lessons once a week while working on other projects? Way more? During the actual filming time, each of the two male leads had an exercise/warmup regimen (not the same one). I guess the point of it being "our own sweat" was that it wasn't something put on by the makeup people to make it look like they were working hard. They *were* working hard.
One of the behind-the-scenes videos * showed them learning in a room full of other dancers and then being coached during the shooting period. I thought of the "No dames" dance sequence from "Hail Caesar. There is footage of Channing Tatum duplicating the moves of his instructor. start at about 0:26
https://youtu.be/IbIyenSh8fg?si=QsrNsY-opPPDQVLL

I had a brief flash of the grandmother teaching the leads in "Strictly Ballroom" (1992. around the time the leads of 10Dance were born).
https://youtu.be/B4Us9Mq7GIc?si=vKrbiiBrO9ORcOhF

* This is some of filming stuff interspersed with interview footage. I can't find it with English subtitles. It was interesting to me to think about how critical the camera angles must have been - all those extra people and equipment in a room made to look like a luxurious dance studio, which means a lot of mirrors to deal with.
https://youtu.be/FWb_yeUuGu4?si=hupXq0juH9A5hTxk
After watching some of these things I spent a little while goofing with Duolingo Japanese, but then suddenly it wanted me to type the answers. In Korean and Ukrainian I use a word bank but that didn't seem to be an option for Duo Japanese. I'm not interested enough that I would add another alphabet to my phone or learn one of the three ways to spell in Japanese.

Prep today. I have a temporary crown and have been told that I cannot have dried fruit at all between now and when I get the permanent crown on January 6th. I have to be careful in other ways too, but she knows that I am mostly compliant otherwise.

To avoid two posts in a row about remembering dead parents, I will just give a little travelogue of West Palm Beach, FL. I flew there on Thursday. Almost everyone on the plane was white (except the flight attendants), many but not all were older than I am, and many whom I overheard seemed too privileged to me. Am I all of those things except older than myself? Yes, but my thoughts are my own. Then I left the airport and for the next 20 hours I only talked with Black people. I had chosen WPB because it looked from the map that one could walk from the airport to the Amtrak station. I thought for a bit and then decided that while in theory there would be enough time to do that part of the trip in a single day, one can't trust travel timing, so I went a day earlier than the train I wanted to catch and stayed overnight in a motel. As it happens, while distances are short, there are no sidewalks going away from the airport, and I didn't want to walk on the shoulder of I-95 (if that is even legal). This became immediately apparent, so I walked up to a person dealing with traffic by the terminal and asked to be sure. He said don't try to walk on the highway, take an Uber. I asked about a local bus instead. He pointed to the stop and gave a rough estimate of frequency. When the bus pulled up, I checked with by-sitters to make sure it was the right one. Yes. I asked the driver what it cost, and was told that I qualify for senior fare ($1) and that there were no transfers - just pay again on the connecting bus. At the Amtrak station (I decided to get a paper version of the ticket instead of trying to figure out why I was having problems with the app), I spoke to the security person on the platform to get directions to the Amtrak office (surprising to me, there is commuter rail service there). The I spoke to an Amtrak person. Bus to the motel (almost). As far as I could tell, every worker in the Best Western was Black, from desk clerks to cleaning people to the breakfast hostess. Walked to the Chipotle. Everybody there etc.
I did not go to Mar-A-Lago, which was less than 5 miles away, but I did wonder if famous white supremacist Donald Trump is aware that he might be a minority in his area. Or maybe it's just most people I saw and whole neighborhoods I walked through the next morning. What should have been a half-hour walk to the train, based on distance took more than twice that (as Apple maps had warned me), presumably because the streets were typical of many parts of Florida, with massive numbers of lanes and a long wait for the walk light at each intersection. I saw some iguanas, though. (near a canal, not at the crosswalk).
The train left about on time, but there was nearly an hour of delay between Plant City and Tampa (my destination), sitting still, waiting for a freight train to get out of the way. Train travel in the US, man. (this was worse than normal). There were whole farming areas of Florida I had never seen, noted as we passed. It would have been a good journey were it not for the delay. Then an hour in a Lyft to get to the relatives' house.


Update Dec 20th from person on twitter whose name I don't know - another Mar-a-lago neighbor the Trumps wouldn't like

Pope Leo XIV just appointed Fr. Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez — an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen in 2018 — as bishop of Palm Beach.

The usual secondary title for Hamlet is Prince of Denmark. I am suggesting that the secondary title of Hamnet (the movie) should be catharsis, which I suppose might be a spoiler. If you want to be more spoiled, watch the trailer



When I went to a movie theater in 1991 to see Robin Hood, Prince of thieves (there it is again, that thing after the comma) I watched for a bit and then sighed, wistfully, and said "England." True again watching Hamnet. Even as I heard myself thinking it, though, what came to mind about going to England now was flaming transphobia, xenophobia, and the destruction of sensible healthcare. I can get that stuff without traveling. Then near the end, watching a play (filmed on a specifically made theater, using French oak), I wished briefly to be leaning against the stage at the Globe again. https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/523600.html
I have extremely vague plans to go in 2030 for a ringing anniversary event (if it happens).

There were about a dozen people (all but one appearing to be women) at the 11 AM show nearby. At least some of them had read the novel from which it was taken, because they were discussing it on the way out. The story itself was told in a very literary way (foreshadowing and the fulfillment thereof) but I am not going to read the book. I don't see how it could be as good as the movie, which included some very strategic bits of Hamlet on the aforementioned stage. It is tempting to say that (based on a couple of scenes), Noah Jupe may be the best Hamlet I've ever seen. Maybe it's because he was barely 20 when it was filmed, or because I had just been prepped by almost two hours of backstory, or (insert spoilerish casting choice here). As an aside, I think he was wearing trousers with a zipper, but I could be wrong. The only face I recognized was that of Emily Watson, although I had heard some of the other names. A name I had not heard before was Bodhi Rae Breathnach, in her first movie role.

I watched the entire credits. At the end was a statement saying that it was not to be used to train an AI. Good.

Last night I was chewing a soft prune (not so dried out that it was hard) and felt something sort of crunch between my teeth. The two likely options were a pit that hadn't been removed in the factory or a crown. It was a crown. I had cream of wheat for breakfast and a cup of milk for lunch. The dental office squeezed me in this afternoon, so now I'm counting down the hours of cement hardening until I'm allowed to eat. The dentist was sorrowful that I would do something like eat a sticky substance.* She warned me again that #18 (for reasons I don't recall) has unusually short roots and if the crown gets pulled off again, it might bring the whole tooth with it. Doesn't that actually say something about the strength of the dental cement?
They are planning to start prepping for ANOTHER crown (different quadrant of my mouth, I think it's #4) next week but the crown won't be ordered until January, on the off-chance that the insurance will pay part of it. I have more than maxed-out my coverage for this year.

* I am hypothetically allowed "nothing sticky, nothing chewy, nothing hard." I really don't feel that I can give up dried fruit. I like white bread, which sometimes is chewy. Hard can include some types of crunchy but not all. I hope. I'd hate to live without corn chips. I adapted to only having sliced almonds instead of whole ones.

in 1990 historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich took the diaries of 18th century rural Maine midwife Martha Ballard, added interpretation, and wrote a book that became well known, was dramatized in a film, and has been serialized daily on Twitter.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15594.A_Midwife_s_Tale
Ms. Ballard delivered a lot of healthy babies and did other medical care, but today's entry seems like an anomaly to me - something that I don't believe actually would be helpful.

>>6 Nov 1798. Cloudy. mrss Livermore Came to mr Dingleys for me to go and See her Sick Dagt. I find Patty very Sick. I put Black wool, wet with Brandy & pepper, in her Ears which gave her present relief.<<

I don't know what Patty's problem was, but how could that help? It's not likely to be mentioned on Pubmd.

I went to see "Fun Home" at the Huntington today. Weekday matinee, mostly old people again, but not by any means everybody was old. Again the basement restrooms were all-gender, one of them was classified as stalls only, again with a mixed set of users. Obvious paper towels this time. (references to my note about the ART) https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/990704.html

We got the understudy for the lead kid (small Alison). I don't know if it was her first time performing as the replacement, but she was great, and during the clapping at the end time, there was a bit of her colleagues pointing at her and smiling. The orchestra was visible, in a room above the back of the stage. I wasn't as distracted by them as I feared I would be, but I did watch some. Very artful sets. It did not look like a graphic novel. I don't think it needs to be adapted to a movie (I don't think anybody has suggested that, but I'm saying so just in case).

I thought we were on the rain end of the forecast line, but there is snow now. It may change.
Sandra Boynton animated this by hand, frame by frame. All vocals and instruments are from Mike Ford.