Girls

Simone

Sylvia

Virginia

Tabitha

Ada

Helena

Lucille

Ellen

Dahlia

Rosemary

Celia

Paloma

Olive

Beatrice

June

Magdalena

Mina

Nola

We had school conferences yesterday. First was David’s. He’s doing very well. His reading is a little behind, but mostly because he needs to really learn the -ed and -ing endings. He is having a few behavioral issues right now. We’re seeing it at home too. The only thing I can think of is growth spurt. He always reverts to worse behaviors during growth spurt time. Then she briefly touched on the fact that this is David’s 3rd and final year in her class. Where does time go?

Daniel’s conference was next. I was concerned about this one. I wasn’t sure whether his teacher cared that he was repeating kindergarten and already knew everything on the homework sheets. Turns out Daniel is one of five who are repeating. She is very conscious of making everything new and interesting for them. She also has time for them to be challenged in class. They are split by ability and they do work according to skill. Daniel takes great pride in being a role model for the students that can’t do as much. She loves having him in class.

And finally I had Celia’s conference. This was the first time I got to meet her teacher. I went in not thinking the best of her, and left thinking she seems nice. Gee, could it be influenced by the fact that she kept raving over Celia’s beauty and her hair? Then she told me how wonderful the book was that Celia read to the class. (Celia took in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and asked if the class could read it. The teacher allowed Celia to read it to the class.) She said the class was quieter while Celia read than while she (the teacher) reads. She commented on Celia’s grades leveling out. Thinking that Celia just needed to settle in. I confessed that I put Celia back on Strattera (her ADD med) since her class work was suffering. And you should see her report card! All A’s with one B in science. All her behavioral marks are O’s. Previous years her report cards would have a good mix of O’s, S’s and N’s. She always had difficulties finishing work in the time allotted and difficulties working with others. Now the teacher has to assign partners because there are about six girls who always want to be paired with Celia. And her final assessment: she thinks Celia should be tested for gifted. I’ve always agreed, but it seems like while off her meds, the other teachers didn’t agree. I intend to write a letter formally requesting testing for gifted next week.

Haven’t posted in a while. I’ll try to keep posting here every so often, but I doubt there’ll be any regularity to it any more. I’d rather keep posting erratically then stop posting all together, though.

So, theme today is stuff I’ve listened to recently. It usually is, actually. I’m just being a little more blatant about it right now.

First, I’ve played Who Knows Where the Time Goes being sung by Kate Wolf here before, and I tend to think of it as a Kate Wolf song, but this is Fairport Convention playing it. And, you know, the lead singer, Sandy Denny, wrote the song, so it’s actually their song.

Just a matter of where I heard it first, really. They both died way too young, and were great folk singers. Though, if you listen to Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore carefully, it’s actually Sandy Denny singing with Robert Plant, which is cool.

I’ve also been listening to Steeleye Span playing The Lowlands of Holland for some reason. It’s a great folk song that’s been covered by everyone and their mother, really. Note that the singer here is not Maddy Prior, but Gay Woods. This was actually off of Steeleye Spans first album, and she left the band before the next album.

This is sort of tangentially related to the last song, in that Steeleye Span was founded by a former member of Fairport Convention.

And when I say this songs been played by everyone, I mean it. Here is Dún an Doras playing it.

And here’s Celia from Salmon’s Leap singing it.

And lets round things off with Fairport Convention and the song The Hiring Fair.

“My trembling fingers touched her arm, and she placed them on her breast.”

Part of me thinks it’s romantic. And part of me is thinking “Damn, he’s getting lucky tonight”. ^_^

Al Gough jumped.

With that, the rules of Flash Forward changed.  People with flashforwards can actually die before their flashforward occurs. Also, this means that people who have had flashforwards might not necessarily live to see them come true.

We find out early in the episode that Celia is left a flyer on her car windshield. It is for www.alreadyghosts.com (which is a real Web site, which directs you to ABC’s home site for Flash Forward). On the back of the flyer, someone wrote “We know you are one of us.” We can also assume that Demetri received the same flyer since we see him surfing that site.

Aaron is visited by a soldier, Mike, who served with his daughter Tracy. He gives Aaron a gift from Tracy: a pocketknife Aaron gave her before she went overseas. Aaron interprets this as a sign that Tracy is still alive.

The FBI team receives a visit from Fiona Banks (Alex Kingston). Al and her discuss their common flashforward. Alex wishes there was a way for her to help the bird that crashed into the window and ease its pain. Al leaves the room in the flashforward to take a call from his attorney uttering the words “I killed her.”

We learn that many people did not have flashforwards. They refer to themselves as “Ghosts.” It seems some entrepreneurial ghosts have set up clubs for this unfortunate group of people. Each meeting has a different Dr. Raynaud. There is an LA club meeting that night.

O.K., I need to do a sidebar here. Again, Flash Forward threw an interesting name at us: Raynaud. In medicine, Raynaud’s phenomenon (pronounced /reɪˈnoʊz/, us dict: rā·nōz′) is a vasospastic disorder causing discoloration of the fingers, toes, and occasionally other extremities. This condition can also cause nails to become brittle with longitudinal ridges. Named for French physician Maurice Raynaud (1834–1881), the cause of the phenomenon is believed to be the result of vasospasms that decrease blood supply to the respective regions. Emotional stress and cold are classic triggers of the phenomenon, and the discoloration follows a characteristic pattern in time: white, blue and red. Viola! The Blue Hand!

Mark, Demetri, and Al head downtown to check out the club. They are handstamped with a blue hand. Once inside, one of them needs to play a game of Russian Roulette with a gun. Thinking that Demetri will take up the slack here since we know he is murdered on March 15th, 2010, it comes as a surprise that Al grabs the gun and plays. Al gets to keep the one bullet in the gun which as written on it “Not Today.”

Once inside the main club area, Mark finds another artifact from his board: a matchbook with “The Blue Hand” scribbled inside.

Aaron is revisited by soldier Mike who tells him he was with Tracy when she died. After their Humvee is bombed, he sees Tracy on the ground with one leg ripped off, apparently looking dead. Perhaps she is only unconscious, but Mike did not have time to take a pulse before he had to run for his life.

Back at The Blue Hand Club, things are really rocking. I don’t know about you, but if I had six months or less to live, getting waterboarded or electrocuted would not be on the top of my list of last things to do. The guys learn that people believe that the blue hand represents “a portal. A gateway from one understanding to another. It marks the surrender to the inevitable.” They stop that night’s Dr. Raynaud from killing himself. His reason for trying to off himself can be found in Nietzsche. “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” Ironically, the potiental cliental for The Blue Hand Club are found using Mosaic.

In what will be a poignant scene after the show, we see Al making him a batch of dirty rice which was one of his favorite meals as a kid.

Demetri comes clean with Zoey about his flashforward. Zoey tries to comfort him in the fact that they have conflicting visions. They can choose which one they want to beleive in.

Aaron gets Mike a job with his company in return for giving him peace.

We wind up the episode with Al leaving Demetri a letter for Celia. We are unsure what Al did to have caused Celia’s death, but obviously it has affected him enough to end his life to save hers. His attorney says it was an accident, but Al keeps insisting it was his fault and he killed her.

So Al jumps saying “I found a way to change the game.”

The episode ends with Aaron walking in his house after work to see his daughter sitting in a chair. “Hi Dad.”

Things we learned this week

Mark Benford was wearing a The Police T-shirt to the Blue Hand Club. While there is some irony in that, I thought it was more interesting it was related to their Ghost in the Machine album.

Who is Annabelle and why does Simon have her bracelet. He was looking at it fondly with a sad look on his face. His child prehaps?

We find out that Nicole speaks Japanese. She is now volunteering at Olivia’s hospital. She knows Japanese culture too (her dad was stationed in Okinawa when she was a little girl). This coincidentally draws Bryce to her and he discusses his flashforward of his mystery girl with her. Nicole is able to help Bryce understand the symbol behind the drawing he has made of the mystery girl. The symbol means “believe.”

Back in London, Fiona puts masking tape on her office window, as Al suggested, so the bird won’t fly into the window and die.

La usa bate in miez de noapte

Am simtit parfumul tau…

Te-alint acum cu mii de soapte

Bine-ai venit, ingerul meu…

Cat mi-e de bine, lacrima imi cade

De fericire am sa plang

Cat stiu ca nu va mai fi o noapte

Sa nu fiu la tine-n gand…

(Celia-soapte)

Gender: Feminine
Origin: French
Meaning: “heaven.”
Fr (SAY-leen); Eng (seh-LEEN).

The name is a French feminine form of the Old Roman family name Caelinus which is related to the Latin Caelius meaning “heaven.” In this case the name Celia is related. It could also be considered a contraction of Marcéline. The name has always been prevalent in French speaking countries and has become common in non Francophone countries. In Belgium it was the 99th most popular female name in 2003, in France she came in at # 97 in 2002. In the Netherlands she came in # 272 in 2008, while in Norway she came in at # 51 in 2007. In the United States she recently fell out of the top 1000, in 2007 she came in at # 995. The name is borne by Canadian singer Celine Dion. Other forms of the name include:

• Caelina (Latin)
• Celina (Italian: pronounced chay-LEE-nah. There is also a masculine form: Celino)
• Celina/Celine (Norwegian: seh-LEE-nah; seh-LEE-nε).
• Celina (Polish: pronounced tseh-LEE-nah)

The designated name-day in France is October 21.

Desperate Housewives - 6.04 "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues"

Gabrielle: “What do you got there?”
Juanita: “Mints!”
Gabrielle: “Mints? Mints that are… ripped for her pleasure?!”
Juanita: “Yeah, we found a whole box of them under Ana’s bed.”
Gabrielle: “Ana!!”
Juanita: “Can I have them before dinner?”
Gabrielle: “No! No, you can’t eat these! These aren’t mints. They’re… balloons.”
Celia: “Yeeey!”
Gabrielle: “Grown-up balloons.”
Juanita: “Do you and daddy play with them?”
Gabrielle: “If we did, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Desperate Housewives - 6.04 "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues"

Carlos: “Sorry, Lynette, I just… I know!”
Lynette: “You know what?”
Carlos: “Your little secret.”
Lynette: “God! You know about the twins?”
Carlos: “Well, I mean, yeah! I have eyes!”
Lynette: “First of all, this was not planned.”
Carlos: “It wasn’t?”
Lynette: “God, no! Tom and I went out to dinner, he got me drunk and the next thing I knew…”
Carlos: “So Tom’s responsible for all this?”
Lynette: “Well… Who else?”
Carlos: “God, you are such a good wife! I  wish you talked to Gabi, make her jump in the band wagon.”
Lynette: “Doesn’t Gabi have her hands full with the two she’s got?”
Carlos: “They’re okay… I always thought we can do better…”
Lynette: “What!?!”
Carlos: “You know, Gabi really looks up to you. If she knew you got a boob job, she might consider it.”

Desperate Housewives - 6.04 "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues"

Carlos: “Whoa! Check out the dress! It’s fantastic! What did it cost?”
Lynette: “My dignity.”
Carlos: “Worth every penny!”

Celia Giysi Giydirme Oyunları Oyna

This time I’ll write about another female singer-songwiter. Her name is Marike Jager. I saw her perform on a dutch TV show a while ago and I got her album, Celia Trigger, that I pretty like. Other reason to write about her; I’m going to see her next week! (turns out I’m not, but OK, nothing wrong with changing plans right? I’ll see her another time) And I’ve heard that she’s pretty good!

Marike Jager (born 1979) is a ‘typical’ singer-songwriter from the Netherlands. She sings, plays guitar and plays piano. Special story: She learned playing guitar while backpacking through Australia, New Zealand, Asia and South Africa! At the same time she wrote her first song; Lizzy.

When she got home, she started to perform and quickly won the ‘Studenten Songfestival’(Song Festival for Students) in Maastricht. And that’s not the end of all the prices she won. Soon after her first price she also won the Sky Radio Talentenjacht (Sky Radio Talent hunt), the demo poll by Studio Brussel and the prestigious ’Grote Prijs van Nederland’ 2003 (Grand Prix of the Netherlands) in the category singer-songwriter.

Summer 2005, the she recorded her first album ‘The Beauty Around’, which was released on May 15th 2006. October 31st 2008 Marike released her second album ‘Celia Trigger’ which contains 13 songs, all written by Jager herself.

So what do I like about Marike Jager? Well, first of all, she’s dutch. That probably won’t mean much to you, but I think that there aren’t many good dutch artists out there, or I don’t know them, which could be true too. What I also really like is her ’style’. It’s pretty jazz, pop, folk and rock influenced, but still really singer-songwriter-ish. It’s really open and friendly, so no difficult stuff (for example St. Vincent). She also got a really nice voice to listen too, it’s a bit jazzy and hot.

I would really recommend to listen to her, especially if you like female singer-songwriters, jazz influence in pop music or if you just like to try something new. She’s really good!

Marike Jager live performing Lover(one of her most jazzy songs), sorry for the bad sound quality:

Am dat intamplator peste aceasta melodie pe You Tube si m-am indragostit instantaneu de ea,iar clipul..Ei bine,clipul mi se pare absolut exceptional realizat!

P.S.: Consider ca Celia este  una dintre cele mai frumoase femei din Romania.

P.S.2: Este balanta!

Frequent visitors to this site will have noticed that, following my viewing of Pialat’s Passe Ton Bac D’Abord (1979) and L’Enfance Nue (1968), I have written quite a bit about cinematic depictions of childhood.  Pialat’s take on the matter was almost wilfully perverse.  He cast a load of kids, gave them parts to play and then stuck a camera on them as they improvised.  The resulting performances being supposedly ‘more real’ than films such as  Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) or Shane Meadows’ This is England (2007), which deal with childhood by projecting onto their child protagonists the fears, hopes and values of the film directors.  Ann Turner’s Celia embodies a third approach to the problem of depicting childhood in that it examines the ways in which children process and try to make sense of the values and actions of the adults that surround them.

Fantastic DVD cover. The Cinema poster is incredibly ugly.

Celia (Rebecca Smart) lives in 1950s small-town Australia with her eccentric socialist grandmother (Margaret Ricketts) and her largely disinterested parents (Nicholas Eadie and Mary-Anne Fahey).  Celia’s world is turned upside down when she discovers one morning that her grand-mother has died.  Initially distraught, Celia soon cheers up when she makes friends with the newly arrived Tanner family.  The Tanners provide a sympathetic group of kids for Celia to play with and a mother (Victoria Longley) who is much sweeter, much more sympathetic and much more fun than any of the other adults in Celia’s life.  In fact, the adults in Celia’s life seem intent upon spoiling her fun.

Still from Film.

Turner presents the world of adults as a claustrophobic and brutally unfair place governed by incomprehensible rules and statements of fact that not only contradict personal experience, but also seem strangely distant and unreal due to the fact that they mostly issue forth from the same cinema screen as the detective stories the family pay to see for fun.  However, despite their distance and obvious falseness, the rules of the adult world seem to be forever conspiring to thwart Celia’s deepest desires.  She is told that she cannot play with the Tanners because they are communists and communists are evil brain-washers who steal children from their families but the Tanners are clearly not like that and nor was Celia’s granny.  Similarly, the cinema screen speaks of a great rabbit plague.  A plague that means that children must be stripped of their pet rabbits, but the only rabbits Celia has seen are the ones in the pet shop and how could anything as cute be evil vermin?

Celia's experience of rabbits

Image of the Rabbit Plague

Celia’s problems understanding the world are also compounded by the fact that she is female.  Indeed, Turner presents 1950s Australia as a hideous patriarchy dominated by a caste of psychologically damaged and ultimately ineffectual macho wankers who are forever telling other people what to do.  For example, Mrs Tanner is publicly humiliated by her husband who shouts at her for having doubts about Stalin.  Even Celia’s mother is forced to take a back-seat when a cabal of men-folk decide that Communists are evil and that rabbits are vermin meaning that Celia must be deprived not only of her only friends but also of her beloved pet rabbit Murgatroyd.

Still from Film.

This situation is then made worse by the fact that the large scale oppression of the government and the tin-pot dictatorship of the men-folk often flow into one another.  For example, when Celia’s father decided that Communists were evil, was her genuinely worried about the Tanners being evil, or was he simply trying to prevent his daughter from talking about his tendency to sexually harass Mrs. Tanner?

Depressingly, while the world of adults is depicted as cruel and incomprehensible, the world of children is not that much better.

Celia and her gang at prayer

Celia is a hugely imaginative child and a born leader.  Initially a lonely child, she has an intense rivalry with her cousin Stephanie (Amelia Frid).  Where Celia struggles against the strictures of the adult world, Stephanie surrenders to them.  We frequently see her using her policeman father and “the law” to get at Celia.  When she turns up to throw rocks at Celia and her friends she uses not the language of the child’s world but that of the adult’s : “Dirty Reds!” her gang scream.  We also see Stephanie trying on the dress that she will wear for her first communion, an  act not only of spiritual maturation but also supplication.  Stephanie cannot grow up and embrace the patriarchy quickly enough.  Celia, in contrast, has no time for religion.  When asked what she thinks about Stephanie’s dress she says that white is the wrong colour as a yellow dress would better match Stephanie’s teeth.  In fact, instead of surrendering to the adult world, Celia constructs her own religion in an attempt to make sense of it and control it.  A religion that elevates found objects and personal treasures are elevated to the status of religious icons.  Spells are fashioned around masks and rabbits as the children chant into the flames their desires for revenge against the adult world.  The metaphysical backbone of the religion is provided by the story of the Hobyahs.  Having had the story read to her at school, Celia soon transforms the Australian night into a disturbing realm peopled with blue slimy creatures.  However, as the film progresses the Hobyahs start to merge with the patriarchal powers that control the lives of Celia and the other females.  In one wonderful moment, Celia takes down a picture of the Prime Minister and adorns it with a warty blue nose and blue ears.

The blurring of the line between Man and Hobyah

Hobyah

What ultimately makes Celia such a satisfying film is the fact that it in no way seeks to justify the beliefs that Celia adopts.  It shows us the pressures that Celia is under and it shows us how she is prone to hallucinating visitations not only from her dead Grandmother but also from the Hobyahs.  If judged by the standards of the adult world, Celia is a deeply disturbed little girl.  A violent psychotic who is as much a danger to herself as the people around her.  However, because Celia is such a sympathetic figure and because the forces she fights against are so undeniably awful, we want to overlook the nastiness that is in her.  In the film’s final scene, she taunts and mocks a little girl who has just lost her father.  A father who was once a pillar of the male adult community is reclaimed by Celia’s world of myths and symbols.  The little girl runs away in tears, Celia smiles.  Who could deny her her victory?

Against the Man

Celia is also a film with interesting feminist tendencies.  Aside from presenting its male characters as, at best, lackeys to feminine power and, at worst, brutal thugs, the film also stresses the importance of the relationships between women and little girls. Celia begins the film by losing her grandmother.  She then replaces her grandmother with Mrs. Tanner and, when Mrs. Tanner goes away, that bond of friendship between woman and girl is transferred to Celia’s mother.  In a way, the film could be seen as a lament over Celia’s home life.  Celia’s mother allowed her idiot husband to take too much control over the raising of her child and as a result, Celia had to find her own way.  Turner seems to be suggesting that both women and children are subjects to the whims of stupid and authoritarian men, and as such they need to stick together.  A fact ably demonstrated by the film’s opening scene in which mother turns a hissing Hobyah into a small fluffy possum, so the film is also about the abandonment of children by self-involved parents.

Mother and Celia. Awwww.

Celia a lansat în cadrul emisiunii Danutz SRL noul său videoclip realizat la piesa “Povestea mea”, un produs  Costi Ioniţă. Celia a prezentat la emisiunea postului public de televiziune varianta în engleză a piesei. Noul videoclip a fost realizat în Bulgaria, filmările având loc în Sofia la Palatul Regelui Simeon II al Bulgariei, la începutul lunii iunie. Piesa va fi lansata în 12 ţări din Europa şi Asia. Echipa Top Românesc vă prezintă varianta românească a piesei şi, dacă doriţi, o puteţi propune pentru cel mai longeviv clasament de muzică românească trimiţând un e-mail la topromanesc2009@gmail.com.

Echipa Top Românesc, 4 octombrie 2009

Nancy ficou sem palavras, assim como nós, no final do episódio.

*lembrando que o texto pode conter spoilers*

Estou boquiaberto com o fim de temporada de “Weeds”, mais uma vez essa série se mostrou imprevisível e altamente dinâmica.

Ao assistir esse episódio, me dei conta de que um tema que vinha sido desenvolvido discretamente, como pano de fundo das peripécias de Nancy, acabou sendo a chave para a conclusão desse arco. Afinal de contas, tudo culminou com a degradação completa do caráter de Shane Botwin.

Depois de conviver com o deturpado capanga Ignácio ao longo desta temporada, além de levar um tiro e ter adquirido um gosto pelo consumo de álcool, Shane mostrou que não ficou muito daquele garotinho do início da série. Com um martelo de críquete na mão e uma frieza assustadora, ele eliminou a grande antagonista de Nancy, logo quando achávamos que ela ia ser a grande vilã do ano que vem. Parece que Pilar subestimou os Botwin, como tantos antes dela.

Além disso, tivemos a criação do grupo que ajudará Celia na sua nova fase de “Nancy wanna-be”. Um grupo cheio das mais diferentes personalidades e que, com certeza, servirá de base para a parte mais leve da história da próxima temporada, o que é bem vindo, já que os dilemas de Nancy tornam-se cada vez mais sérios.

Então, teremos 9 meses de uma longa espera pela continuação do que foi uma cenas de maior impacto que vi nesses últimos anos no mundo das séries. Enquanto isso, aproveito para ver as 4 temporadas anteriores e torço para que o sexto ano não decepcione.

Lily- Apollina, Polly, Verity, Lucille, Calliope, Delilah, Lillian, Felicity, Mildred, Rosalie, Sally, Caroline, Gigi, Lulu, Willa.

Emma- Sasha, Ayla, Raya, Magda, Zora, Nina, Pippa, Imala, Esme, Flora, Nala, Tula, Taja, Electra, Elsa, Rhea, Wrenna, Clara

Emily- Millicent, Zilla, Violeta, May, Yulia, Cicely, Penelope, Briony, Edeline, Harriet, Queenie, Mimi, Tallis, Bridget, Cassidy, Celia, Demi, Eloise, Minnie.

Jessica- Jemima, Jerusha, Joby, Juniper, Katriel, Zeta, Katherine, Jewel, Kezia, Julep, Astrid.

Grace- Faith, Honora, Frances, Greta, Gaia, Heather, Jane, Peace, Geneva, Opal, Cora, Dove, Enye, Fern, Grainne, Carys.

Marcia Layton Turner & Robbu Hess.

Didn’t manage to get to the end before had to go back to the library but heres the ones stood out for me.

Which do you like? any similar suggestions for me?

Girls

Demi, Bette, Greer, Winona, Elle, Tatyana, Sally, Deva, Mattea, Paloma, Rowan, Scout, Tallulah, Cordelia,

Nora, Lucille, Willona, Thea, Vivianna, Dahlia, Calliope, Iyanla, Alice, Felicity, Lily, Edie, Ambrosia,

Belle, Rosanna, Sage, Oprah, Tyra, Claudia, Greta, Molly, Soledad, Sibila, Dorothea, Frances, Annie,Belinda,

Cleotha, Etta, Dottie, Faithm Reba, Albertina, Cassietta, Cece, Evie, Inez, Mahalia, Maude, Polly, Nina, Adia,

Arabella, Guinevere, Iris, Josephine, Mabel, Ophelia, Clementine, Daisy, Mairead, Sojourner, Zelmer, Kaisha,

Augusta, Lovelace, Celia, Caroline, Clemence, Dorotea, Maud, Nettie, Sadie, Sethanne, Themista, Willamina,

Beulah, Carol, Grace, Harriet, Lillian, Margaret, Sibilla, Virginia, Claudie, Ester, Kalpana, Leda, Valentina, Willa,

Amaris, Ara, Indu, Soleil, Vega, Venus, Orea, Ivria, Kaveri, Naiyah, Rhea, Ryo, Allirea, Hazel, Olivine, Opal, Pearl,

Prunella, Ayala, Jemima, Paloma, Aurora, Dora, Josie, Lilo, Demetria, Farrah, Lucy, Penelope, Ione, Sistine, Pandora,

Lucine, Tabitha, Leonora, Elfriede, Grazia, Olympia, Bebe, Florence, Enya, Oksana, Milena, Aurelia, Tatiana, Fifi, Lella,

Beatrix, Amelie, Anke, Leta.