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So, apparently Mondays are also for frantically finishing all the work I didn’t do over the weekend while hacking my lungs out. Who knew?
My friend Scottie and I got the chance to go see “The Pearl Fishers” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago last Friday. For us, this was truly a guilty pleasure, since this was the primary reason we wanted to see this show:
This is Nathan Gunn, baritone and (it must be said) hottie. Scottie and I first encountered him in a very cheesy TV production of Camelot, which we watched mostly because Gabriel Byrne was in it (hm, I’m sensing a pattern). Unfortunately, Gabriel Byrne can’t sing worth a damn (sorry, buddy). But this guy stole the show, being a) head and shoulders a better singer than anyone else there, b) an excellent actor, and c) well, just look at him.
The opera itself was really lovely–an incredibly cheesy and nonsensical plot, but beautiful music sung beautifully by beautiful people beautifully dressed on a beautifully lit stage. Other than some unfortunate staging (I won’t go into it in detail, but let’s just say that the lover’s duet was slightly more suggestive than the director perhaps wanted it to be), I thought it was well done all around. It occurs to me that opera is my natural element. I like sacred music; I like Broadway; isn’t opera like the spoiled love child of the two?
What’s more, Scottie’s friend Jonathan has a friend who works in the box office there, who got us tickets to see the final dress rehearsal–for free! And in the best section of the house!! Which meant that our first taste of opera spoiled us immensely and we are a little sad that any seats we can actually afford to pay for will be in the nosebleed section. Ah, well.
Also, I just found out that he lives in Champaign-Urbana, where Luke goes to school. Yes.
*Photos courtesy of sfopera.com and nathangunn.com (his official website, where you can listen to him sing. It’s awesome.)
Today’s edition of Guilty Pleasure Monday features my new favorite dessert: Dulce de Leche. This sauce/spread/candy is popular in Latin America, and is made from slowly heating sweetened milk. It’s like caramel, but milkier and thicker and gooier. Haagen-Dasz has a Dulce de Leche ice cream that’s super good. You can also buy the sauce at some high-end grocery stores…OR you could make it yourself, according to a recipe that my sister Penelope swears is authentic, and eat it by the spoonful when you are having a bad day. Or spread it on toast for breakfast…or put a dollop of it on top of your ice cream…
Ingredients: 1 can condensed milk.
Equipment: 1 small pot or heatproof glass bowl (glass works better because you can tell when it’s done more easily)
tin foil
larger pot or pan to serve as a double boiler (I guess an ACTUAL double boiler might work too…)
Procedure: Open can of condensed milk. Pour contents into smaller pot/bowl. Lick out inside of can. Cover bowl securely with tin foil. Put smaller bowl into larger and fill with water, hopefully about up to the level of the condensed milk. Put double boiler in the oven. Bake at somewhere around 400 degrees somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours (I think there’s a specific time/temperature, but I forgot it, and the recipe seems pretty forgiving). Dulce de leche is done when condensed milk is a medium brown all the way through. Take it out, let it cool, stir it, and eat it in massive quantities.
Guilty pleasure #1: Taylor Swift’s new song Love Story. Whenever it comes on the radio (which is a lot, since it just came out), I turn it up really loud and sing aloud. I may have cried once. This is kind of silly, since it’s a song about Romeo and Juliet, but with a happy ending. Seriously. The dude makes everything all right with her dad and then they get married. And not content with mangling ONE work of literature, she also has a reference to The Scarlet Letter that makes it perfectly clear that she has NO IDEA what the book is about. (She calls herself his “scarlet letter”…not sure what she thinks the term means, but “emblem of adulterous shame” is probably not what she’s going for.) AND THEN the music video has these truly awful Regency costumes, like the new Pride and Prejudice movie but without any of the research.
And yet…it’s really catchy and sweet, and hey, the girl’s only 16 and writes all her own music. OF COURSE it’s going to be super cheesy and based on a poorly conceived ideal of romance. And I know all the words. And sometimes I do a little dance to it in the car. So there.
Also, puppy!
Clementine likes having her belly rubbed.
