Loud bouzouki is LOUD!

[annathepiper]

Today has been a day of general awesome, in the following chronological order:

1. Went to have me a nice chiro appointment, even though I was told by my chiropractor that my insurance had denied me coverage for the orthotics in my shoes
   
2. Had a nice little breakfast at Caffe Ladro and started working on the Millicent character vignette I'll be doing for this month's Drollerie Blog Tour
   
3. Had a nice massage
   
4. Scampered downtown to meet mamishka and jennygriffee to see State of Play, the new Russell Crowe movie; more on this below
   
5. After the movie, solarbird came to meet me so she could drive and I could have a pomegranate margarita with Jen, and we all had a pleasant hanging-out
   
6. And after that: Dara and I went and got her a shiny, shiny new BOUZOUKI!

The movie was good. Very solidly acted all around; Russell was as usual quite competent, and he was nicely paired off against Ben Affleck and Helen Mirrin, and the girl playing his young partner at the newspaper was good as well. Nice understated sort of thriller, and if you have any connection to the newspaper industry at all, particularly timely.

I particularly liked the dynamic between Russell's disheveled, crufty print-side reporter character, and the bright-eyed young blogger girl who teamed up with him on the story. They had good professional chemistry and some decent potential romantic chemistry as well; nothing's ever stated outright, but there's one amusing bit at the end where he tells her not to tell him how old she is, because it'll make him sick. ;) Also, Helen Mirrin was suitably awesome as their editor, upholding the tradition of being a hardassed bastard (or in this case bitch) when playing the part of Editor at a Major Metropolitan Newspaper.

But all of that was really almost incidental for me given that in the very first scene, we see Russell's character Cal McCaffrey driving along in his beat-up car and singing along with... wait for it... Great Big Sea. Jen, Meems, and I all lost it when we heard "The Night Pat Murphy Died" and Russell singing along with Sean McCann! <3 I loved that. I loved that SO MUCH. And we hung out watching the credits roll after the movie was over, just so I could have the pleasure of seeing "The Night Pat Murphy Died" and the all-important words GREAT BIG SEA in the soundtrack credits.

Which ties in very nicely to the aforementioned bouzouki purchase, not to mention my icon. Dara's been very much in love with this Trinity College bouzouki that they've had at Trading Musician, and we finally went and got it for her tonight. It's the same maker of instrument as my octave mandolin, and in fact looks a lot like the instrument played by The Doyle in this icon. And while I have acknowledged that this instrument is Dara's, I've demanded visitation rights. Because BOUZOUKI.

So far our mutual impression of it is that LONG BOUZOUKI IS LONG, because dear god the neck on this thing. Dara's done a bit of Interneting and has read that Trinity College makes the longest-necked bouzoukis you can get without going to a luthier for a custom job. Also, LOUD BOUZOUKI IS LOUD. It's much louder than my octave mandolin. It'll be fun to find other differences, too!

Dara has named the bouzouki Kohaku. It seems appropriate, as it does have a bit of a River-Dragon-y feel about it.

Comments

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[raise-a-jar.livejournal.com]

I had heard that Russell wanted to use that song in one of his new movies in a scene like that, but I wasn't sure if this was the movie. Yay!! Good on ya, b'ys!

[annathepiper]

It was awesome. I started bouncing in my seat along with the music, out of sheer delight. To this day I still can't get over the general ZOMG of my favorite actor loving my favorite band. ^_^