Same Day. Different Rat.

A decently representative sample of my state of mind:

After brunch and a walk around the park -- undertaken more out of desire to have something I could point to and say I had done today than out of desire to enjoy anything like brunch and a walk around the park -- I drove home, pulled into the driveway, and put the car in park so I could get out and open the garage door. Then I forgot about the garage door and turned the car off. Then I sat for a minute, knowing I had forgotten something. Then I sat for another minute, forgetting I had forgotten something. Then I remembered I had a home and, furthermore, was parked next to it. This motivated me to go inside.

Thanks to Rory for coming down last weekend, taking me to a bunch of nifty short plays, and introducing me to nifty people (both short and tall). And for giving me great things to read. Let's do it again soon.

Finally, a plea to those with consummate mastery of a musical instrument: if you possess consummate mastery of a musical instrument, don't hum while you play. In a pinch, humming is preferable to choking or asthma, but it still darkens an audience's impression of your consummate mastery.

I bring this up because I went to see Alfred Brendel perform Friday night. The man can definitely play piano. What's more, he made me think I could like Beethoven. This is a difficult feat to pull off, because although I appreciate some of Beethoven's music -- especially the thing with the cartoon centaurs and pegasuses in it -- overall I don't appreciate stuff written between 1770 and 1830. It's too well-behaved, too prone to doing exactly what you expect it to do. But Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31, in the hands of Alfred Brendel, convinced me that there are some suprises out there.

Or it would have, except for the humming.

At least I think it was Mr. Brendel doing the humming. But it was hard to look at him and try and correlate the sound with his mouth movements, because he kept doing such disturbing things with his jaw. It was easier to look at the chair in front of me and hope for whoever was making the noise to realize they were making noise, and stop. Which they finally did, after someone in the balcony started snoring.

Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening.