weekend: no time toulouse

[anotheranon]

D. and I went to the Toulouse-Lautrec and Monmartre exhibit on Saturday.

Conclusions - very good and comprehensive, and seeing the "famous" originals of paintings I recognize from books was a thrill as always - is it possible to be a fangirl for a piece of art? D. was not as enthused as I was but enjoyed the lithographs, particularly Tournee du Chat Noir.

I was surprised at all of the non- T-L paintings in the exhibit, including several by Van Gogh before he went to Arles and developed his familiar orange/yellow/blue palette. His were still recognizable even in paler colors because the proportions are all slightly slanted or askew. Another surprise was that Toulouse-Lautrec did a lot of his "finished" works on plain cardboard - and here I was thinking all this time that he just used a lot of brown :P

The characters of Monmartre are always fascinating to me because you see them in different paintings and start to recognize individuals. My favorite is Yvette Guilbert, the cabaret singer with the trademark long black gloves. This painting (not part of the exhibit) is my favorite; the way T-L painted her as all angles and points and long skinny arms she looks quite like an alien to me - what would an alien keep in those gloves?

Maybe I'll write a sci-fi brothel-circus story sometime, populated entirely with green-faced creatures based on Toulouse-Lautrec's art....

Saturday: in a fit of home improvement, D. had maintenance out to fix the kitchen faucet, which had calcium (or something) buildup and was losing pressure and leaking all over the counter. It is now replaced by one of those inverted "U" shaped spigots that stays nicely above the volume of the sink, so we can stack dirty dishes and still have room to fill the Brita water pitcher :P

Continuing the home improvement I went to target to replace the shower curtain - while furtively looking for dark chocolate M&Ms. Alas! The plain ones were sold out and I don't care for the peanut butter ones. Luckily, they DID have new dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses! My favorite poison in a perfectly sized dose ;)

Sunday: rapier fencing. Got my ass handed to me because... well, I'm new at this :P Also, I was practicing with a borrowed weapon made for someone far taller than me, and I lack the strength to keep holding a 49" weapon aloft for 15 minutes at a time. I need to start working out the muscles right next to my pectorals - the front of the shoulder where the arm meets the torso, whatever those are called (anyone?).

General: I'm now in constant low-key "Hermoine-mode" in preparation for my class. I'm going to try and read as much of the main textbook as possible before the class starts on 5/31 - I may not understand all of it, but at least I'll know what's coming :P

Comments

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> I need to start working out the muscles right next to my pectorals - the
> front of the shoulder where the arm meets the torso, whatever those are
> called (anyone?).

It's either the pecs themselves, which attach a little way down the upper arm, or the delts. If it's involved in holding your arm up, it's the delts, since the pecs pull the arm in and down, not up. Depending on the position of your arm the front delts can seem a bit more like "inner" delts, which don't exist. From what I imagine of fencing I'd say you're looking mainly at the front and side delts.

Also when the arm gets above horizontal, the traps often come into play. For instance in an exercise like the shoulder press aka military press, the delts are pretty much done when the upper arm gets parallel to the ground, and above that the traps pick up the work. (Approximately.)

This is probably as good as time as any to mention the principle of training specificity. If you need endurance, train for endurance. If you need speed, train for speed. As much as I love strength training, it is definitely not equivalent to training for endurance or speed, when those are what's needed. If you're just starting it hardly matters how you train, but once you've been at it for a while, your training should reflect the performance of your sport.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

This month's Smithsonian magazine has a cool article on Toulouse.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a wonderful exhibition ***sigh***. I'll have to see if anything interesting is coming to Calgary this summer. ***crosses fingers***

New dark chocolate all over the place! I can find no trace of the dark chocolate M&Ms up here (and the Web site gives me the impression that they're U.S.-only), so I guess I'll have to depend on the charity of my friends (or else wait until August) ***does best to look pitiful***

P.S. What do aliens keep in their black gloves? ... why their chocolate stash, of course (the dark fabric hides the occasional "melting accident" stains). Choccie fixes are the real reason they come to Earth ... the whole abduction/anal probe thing is just to distract us as they plot to make off with all the supplies. :p

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

is it possible to be a fangirl for a piece of art?

There are paintings that I would drop everything and fly around the world to see if I could. So I think the answer to that is yes. (I tend to refer to Vermeer's Kitchen Maid as "my girl in Amsterdam." : ) )

I have not seen a lot of Toulouse-Latrec, but the exhibit sounds wonderful.