Through the inquisitiveness of a child...

Aug 19, 2006 12:24

For as long as he has been able to sit up, Brendan has been obsessed with film credits ( Read more... )

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Comments 14

eldritchhobbit August 19 2006, 18:13:48 UTC
Oh wow, I've never heard of her before! Amazing information. Brendan is a genius, you know.

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melissagay August 19 2006, 18:28:16 UTC
Thank you. :-) You know... I know every mother thinks her child is a genius, but I suspect mine really is!

It still doesn't get him out of helping me clean the house, though. ;-)

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eldritchhobbit August 19 2006, 18:56:06 UTC
I think he's the real deal. Put it this way, if he lived on Naboo, I bet he'd be elected King before he graduated from preschool. :)

(I am such a geek.)

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melissagay August 19 2006, 19:13:13 UTC
:LOL: Brendan would SO love to be King of Naboo!

(Yes, you are a geek, and we love you for it.)

Oooh, I forgot to tell you-- my little niece and nephew have just started watching the Star Wars movies, and my mom had to call me on the phone 'cause the boy asked her, "What do Jawas do?" I told her to put him on the phone, and I explained to this sweet 5-year-old how Jawas were like used car salesmen. I feel my existence on this planet is now justified. :-)

(I accidentally typed, "Star Wards." That would make a great introduction to Wicca for sci-fi geeks. :))

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Nuns and Nazis.... a short history.... carpdeus August 19 2006, 19:29:20 UTC
The (quite possibly apocryphal) story behind Sound of Music is that some woman named Julie Andrews was starring on Broadway as some flower girl who, on stage, urges a horse to "Move his bloom arse," or words to that effect. The musical is a great hit, Hollywood comes knocking and decides that Andrews isn't really the girl for the role... Hepburn would be better, even though she can't carry a tune. Which is why Marni got to sing for her. (Actually, it was one of Jack Warner's decisions, but that'd be a whole nother post on Mr. Jack Warner)

course, Julie Andrews wasn't gonna take this lying down (though she did thank Mr. warner for denying her that role and forcing her to take the role of Mary Poppins... she did that in her Academy Award Acceptance speech). She marshalled forces to take the broadway hit to the big screen and, voila, a very popular movie.

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Re: Nuns and Nazis.... a short history.... melissagay August 19 2006, 19:46:43 UTC
I've got MFL on DVD with one of the special features being Audrey Hepburn vocal versions of two of the songs. Her voice isn't as good as Marni Nixon's by a long shot, but it isn't as bad as I feared it might be.

Indeed, I always wondered why they didn't cast Julie in the film version of MFL. And it is sad that Hepburn got passed over for the Oscar nomination even though she didn't do her own singing, as she did do a tremendous job acting the role.

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Re: Nuns and Nazis.... a short history.... hermdawg August 20 2006, 05:58:36 UTC
"Forbidden Hollywood" did a parody of her singing "Show Me":

"Though I'm all throat
My neck's too thin,
Call Marni in -
Dub me!"

And to mention Audrey vs. Julie - Forbidden Broadway says:

"If the lady's proper but tawdry,
And can break a glass when she sings,
If she stole an Oscar from Audrey
Flying on umbrellas and strings..."

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Re: Nuns and Nazis.... a short history.... melissagay August 23 2006, 15:20:49 UTC
Heh. Nice one.

Could Julie Andrews really break a glass with her voice??

Can't wait to show Brendan Victor Victoria, but I suspect I'll wait until he's a bit older. :)

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sanba38 August 19 2006, 20:47:48 UTC
I knew a 3-year-old in Taiwan who was obsessed with octupi and calendars. In fact, much like the Masaai of east Africa believe all cattle rightfully belong to them, he believed that all those one-day tissue paper pages (that kind of calendar was still popular in Taiwan in the 1990s) belonged to him.

He was also obsessed, not with film credits, but with the stock market quotes that were regularly run to music in a similar way to film credits. His mother said he liked the music, but I don't know... If Brendan were growing up in Taiwan, there would be subtitles on almost all the TV programs to help him learn to read, and to understand other Chinese dialects.

Do you think you could stand to watch English-language DVDs with the subtitles on? I do it because I can't hear as well as I used to. My landlady would get so irritated when I left the close-captioning on the TV, though. But I think Brendan would probably build up a repetoire of sight words fairly quickly if you did, depending on how much TV he watches.

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melissagay August 19 2006, 21:09:49 UTC
Well, he already knows how to read, he just likes me to read to him. Plus cursive and weird fonts slow him down. But, yes, that's a very good idea for building up a words-on-sight repertoire for him, and I bet he'd love it! Subtitles don't bother me a bit, so that's no problem.

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hermdawg August 20 2006, 05:52:40 UTC
Yay, Marni! I'm glad to see someone else is as musical-theatrically corrupted now as I am. I have a friend who actually met her, and I was very jealous. She went through hell, btw, with West Side Story.

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melissagay August 23 2006, 15:23:09 UTC
Ahhh, man! I'm jealous, too!!! I'd love to meet her, but I'll settle for reading her book. :)

It's your fault he's all musical-theatrically corrupted-- I've been singing songs from "Singing In the Rain" for him since he was a tiny baby!!

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Genius sojoy August 21 2006, 06:57:48 UTC
The moderately gifted have easier lives than geniuses do. The higher the IQ, the smaller the peer group. I've seen too many really bright students get into drugs and alcohol in order to numb out and feel the way they think others do and/or flounder through life with no direction or focus. I want him to be well-adjusted and to be enthusiastic about learning all his life. I agree with that quote that "to those to whom much is given, much is expected." While it's wonderful to be intelligent, what's important is how we use it.

A professor of gifted education, who was a speaker at a TAG conference I attended, said as far as she was concerned, the two basic skills for the gifted are: (1) to learn to be bored politely and (2) to suffer fools gladly.

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Re: Genius melissagay August 23 2006, 15:24:30 UTC
I'm still working on (2). We'll see if we can't raise Brendan with better coping skills!

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