La voce to me

Yesterday, I went about the course of collecting actual Linguistic data (I know, I know living red letter). I ventured into the suburbs of Central Melbourne with a flotilla of my fellow Linguistadors and recorded a 22-month-old girl named Molly talking at us.
It was actually a lot of fun: Molly showed us her DVDs and was surprisingly film literate for a toddler, having seen Finding Nemo, Alice in Wonderland and The Little Mermaid, which is more than Esmond- although she insisted Ursula the sea witch was nice and liked Ariel. Not an interpretation I'd encountered before.

Although...

She also argued with her mother over whether a pink koala toy was a pig or a marsupial and won with the astounding display of reasoning 'koalas aren't pink', which none of us could refute (although Koala joeys are hairless.) She also brought a little of that lovely child reasoning when, upon being informed that a dentist was a 'doctor who looks at your teeth', she inquired, with some alarm, 'why?!'
All in all, not a bad way to collect data for one's subject; in fact, Barbara told us about a man who gave his children special backpacks which would record his young children speaking...and caught his wife carrying on with, as Barbara put it, 'Mr. Neighbor'.
So, practical, too.

In other news, I went to two parties this weekend, and so am just the belle of the ball, aren't I? One was a get together with the guys from B.E.S.T., who were my 24 hour play group (I meant to blog about that...oops), where we watched a bunch of movie musicals and realised just how rapey Grease is. Sadly, I had to go to bed before Les Mis was put on, otherwise I very well may have brought Gavroche back to life, nine years (what the hell?) after his untimely death.
T'other was an Amadeus get-to-know-the-cast affair, where two very promising candidates for quotes of the year were delivered. One came from Henry Shaw, director extraordinaire, and was in the manner of a film trailer voice-over; t'other came from Dave, who plays Salieri, and was a brand new species of Pokemon; both can be found on the Quotes page.

And, finally, according to Victoria Andrew, I was in tune for an entire song last Wednesday. This is a personal record.

Illiberal Arts

Have I ever mentioned how much I like animation? Especially animated feature films? Cos I do. Or, at least, I thought I did. Then I visited the Silver K Gallery in Armadale.

Where preconceptions die.

Don't get me wrong, the exhibit at the Silver K, which is an animation gallery, was lovely- but the amount of money that some people were willing to pay for cells of animation makes me realise that what I thought was a passion is, in fact, a mere passing fancy. 

Take for example this piece:

I feel this serves to obfuscate how dull some parts of both Sleeping Beauty and Fantasia are. Also, in case the staff of the silver K somehow find this blog, I did not take this picture, but found it on google.

You cannot imagine how much the colour pops in the original. It is just captivating. I stared for several minutes. Did I stare enough to be willing to pay $955? No, sir. No I did not.

But some one did. Cos that piece had been sold just this morning for that exact amount. The curator told me this with evident pity for me for having just missed out on this absolute steal in his voice and I lamented appropriately while inside I was reeling.

This was the essential problem I had with the Silver K gallery, which was otherwise a very pleasant viewing experience: they were obviously geared towards selling the pictures in their care, while I just wanted to observe them and  then leave (and possibly print out some flimsy, but cheap, paper copies later on), as I do at most galleries. I cannot afford art. This is why I have cut up comic books on my walls. Even though there was a concession price to enter the gallery, they evidently did not want student patrons. 

However, the art of Disney is so characterful that there was a lot to be got out of just looking at individual stills, and the concept art was fascinating: I wasn't allowed to take photos, but let's just say Ursula looked a lot different in the beginning. 

Anyway, if future generations of Melbourne Exchange students are reading this, I recommend the Silver K gallery to you: but maybe try dressing up like you're rich so they don't keep asking where you heard about them (they advertise on TV for heaven's sake.)