To Spanish or Not to Spanish

Husband is tucked away upstairs for the night so Fio has parked herself on the couch to watch La Doble Vida de Estela Carrillo--but there's some dumb awards show on instead. GRRRR!
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Fiorella can translate written Spanish better now, but she hasn't made much progress with the spoken language. It's a matter of not having anyone to practice with.
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Strangely enough, trying to learn Spanish has triggered Fio's long-forgotten Russian again. She keeps saying things like myedlenuh, puhzhaulsta (slower, please) or deliberately combining the languages, like gdyeh estan mis pildoras (where are my pills?), which makes her laugh. But then as Husband has always said, Fio is easily amused.
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Fio is looking at the awards show screen now. Good grief. The "dress" that Mexican cantante is almost wearing looks like a single layer of some ultra-shear semi-fabric. Fio knows that's show biz, but she'd like to see more taste and less skin, more elegance and less "I've gone about as far as I can go." Has it ever dawned on anyone that the end of extreme has been breached and the only outfit that would be different enough now to draw everyone's attention is a something simple and in good taste?
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Fiorella has learned a lot about the Mexican-American music industry from La Doble Vida. And about being undocumented. And about drug lords and crooked politicians. Yep, it's cup runneth over.

Misplaced Priorities

Fiorella is outraged at the report that the Smithsonian is trying to raise $300,000 to repair "Dorothy's ruby slippers." In the first place, those were Judy Garland's shoes, not Dorothy's--in L. Frank Baum's book, Dorothy's slippers were silver. In the second place, "The Wizard of Oz" was an enjoyable movie, but those shoes are neither a religious not a historical relic. In the third place, and most important, $300,000 spent repairing costume shoes would be a massive misuse of resources that could otherwise be used to better peoples' lives through education, medical research, or help agencies. Let's get real here--people are more important than celluloid.

Xanadu

Fio and Husband attended the opening night of the Georgetown Palace Theater's  presentation of Xanadu, a musical based on the 1980s film about a roller-skating Greek muse who falls in love with a hippie artist on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

Opening nights are usually plagued with glitches, but not this time.  The double- and triple-cast actors were terrific, Kyle Kirkhoff and Sara Burke, the leads, were the definition of perfection, while second leads Scott Shipman and Gazelle Garcia have voices to die for.  Fio was especially drawn to dancer Leslie R. Hethcox, whose every move was grace.

The costumes were right on, the sparse sets worked, and the choreography was a knock-out.

But Fio didn't like the play, which reminded her of the over-the-top playlets she wrote in high school. And she didn't like sitting in the third row with first nighters yelling in-jokes back and forth before the play began, after it ended, and during intermissions. And she had a headache.  And she doesn't like the director, who never answered her request for a tour of the theater when WHERE THE HEART LEADS was in the works.

But, other than those things, the show was okay.

Halloween Treats

Fiorella's favorite Halloween identity was that of  a majorette gypsy.  She started with the gypsy costume (complete with gold canning ring earrings and a colorful headscarf) that her mother had concocted, then rolled up the wooly tops of her house slippers so they looked like boots.  The heavy baton she used in second grade majorette practice completed the outfit.  Don't knock it--Fio won first place in the girls' division of the playground costume contest and still has the newspaper photo to prove it.
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Fio's been noticing a trend toward extending Halloween lately.  Instead of keeping their All Hallow's Eve identities secret until The Day, kids wear their costumes everywhere and about for the preceding week, and adults are following right behind.  It's a little unnerving to have your groceries checked out by a hollow-eyed zombie.
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Every year, Fio and Husband buy bags of their favorite candies--Milky Ways and Snickers--to give out to Halloween beggars.  Every year they have several bags left over.  But not for long.

Costumery

Clothes make the woman, and Fiorella has always  tried to dress to the occasion--not going as far as a former student who wore actual costumes to every class meeting, but dressing to whatever role she saw herself playing.  Her clothes also influence how she feels.  Her gray jersey tee with the glitter across the top makes her feel slinky, and her quilted Nepalese dress jacket makes her feel like she should be commanding servants hither and thither.   

Right now she's crazy about the slippers she bought herself at Target just before Christmas.  Sure, they're warm and comfortable around the house, but they're also cute: shiny velvet-textured fuchsia bodies trimmed in a sort of aqua ribbon ending in a bow around the top.  Fiorella feels like a regency belle whenever she wears them.