oscar night

well, i managed to stay up til 5am and watch the entirety of the oscars.  some things:

~  the billy crystal opening was truly fantastic, and i hope they show it in the highlights tonight so i can tape it... :)
~ lord of the bloody rings got 11 out of the 11 it was nominated for.  i stand by my opinion that they should just have a whole nother category for it and vote on everything else.  there were plenty of other decent movies that might have had a chance otherwise, and lord of the rings is blatantly going to win everything...
~ johnny depp didn't win best actor, which i am sad about.  though i do agree with those who were saying that perhaps he shouldn't have been nominated this year just because it was a successful comedy performance, when he's been doing fantastic things for years... nevertheless, he should have won on principle and for being johnny depp and therefore fantastic...
~ pirates of the caribbean, incidentally, was nominated for three things, and didn't win any of them.  but for two of those it was against LotR, and for the other, master and commander...
~ the "in memoriam" section never fails to make me sniffle.  and somehow, in another fifty or so years, i really doubt they'll still be doing that for today's hollywood people.  they just don't make 'em like that any more. also, the tribute to katherine hepburn was lovely, and wow, i didn't realise so many people were dead.  like gregory peck (though i think i did almost know that) and hume cronyn.  if that name means nothing, he's the old man who appears in everything, and always alongside jessica tandy (like batteries not included and cocoon...) in fact, when his name came up, i actually went "oh!!" in a very pained way (though it was, admittedly, about 3.30am by that point and i'd resorted to shouting at the screen whenever LotR won something...)
~ mickey rooney's actually still alive...
~ johnny depp has ceased his scary cowboy-hat-and-greasy hair phase, for which i am deeply grateful... actually - and this may just be my inner fangirl speaking on my behalf - he looked damn sexy last night.  there's probably pictures somewhere. go find. rawr.
~ robin williams is wonderful.  and i always seem to forget that until i see him doing something.
~ so is jim carrey, though the lack of hair was somewhat disturbing...
~ either of the two songs nominated from cold mountain should've won, but obviously weren't going to when up against annie lennox for LotR; they were both far nicer.
~ same goes for danny elfman and big fish for best original soundtrack... though it's probably just as well seeing as he wasn't actually there...
~ jonathan ross' break-filling sections were actually bearable and amusing this year (as opposed to last year when he had various annoying guests) and wow, how much does alistair mcgowen look like adrian brodie?

right, i think that's my cue to stop being a big geek and go and read othello and try to learn this bloody music for tonight...

post-taizé writeup.

okay. i need to join a choir or something.  i mean, seriously.  just for the fact that practicing using my voice is a good thing...

it was okay.  not fantastic, not abhorrently awful.  mediocre, i guess.  i think i only made one mistake, but since it was just missing the entrance i managed to fix it so it ended in the right place and it still sounded okay.  the only problem was, due to the fact i'd never sung the damn things before, that i managed to wear out my vocal cords entirely in the bloody rehearsal, thus meaning that my actual performance was somewhat warbling.

also, when i've been singing too long (though admittedly it used to be longer than ten minutes...) it's impossible for me to sing anything below middle C, and even that's a struggle.  i have sarah brightman syndrome; everything sounds an octave higher than it really is...

other than that, i think the final one that was in a round went well because it sounded pretty, but other than that, it was so-so.

i ended up talking to some random clerical person who asked if i was going to taizé or if i'd been, plus the usual "so, where are you living/what are you doing/where's home?" conversation... and i hurled the suggestion at anne of doing something choir-like for easter, but need to email her or go to see her to discuss it further.

and obviously, anne praised me and inflated my ego and thanked me profusely, but she has to do that... :P

meh. definitely going to join something when back home.  need to.  more to the point, need singing lessons, but i've been lamenting that fact for the past five years...