Saturday, October 03, 2015

And it's Saturday

* This weekend is Homecoming, and I realized this morning that means random streets will be blocked off, both for the parade and for tailgating, and also there will be more people on campus, so I decided to stay home today. (Also, my neighbors to the south apparently are having a yard sale. This puzzles me ever so slightly: they moved in about 8 months ago, already had one sale. I tend to be anti-doing-yard-sales: it seems a very inefficient way of getting rid of stuff OR raising money; the few I have taken part in wind up with a few people showing up an hour before you're ready and want to buy the few good things you have at a very steep discount from the low price you've marked them at (pickers). And then you sit FOREVER and get very few people coming, and usually wind up with lots of stuff left over and very little money to show for your time.

Honestly, when I want to get rid of stuff, if it's still "good," I will donate it somewhere. If it isn't good enough, I'll just recycle it or throw it out, depending.)

So going out to do stuff is less attractive today.

* I did write next week's exam this morning, and read the next chapter of the textbook in the class where I need to renew the lectures. But I'm not going over to enter data (then again: I have Wednesday morning open this week - testing day - so I can do it then)

* So I have a bit more piano to practice....oh, and my lessons have ended for now (teacher is taking a break and hoping she can get a few more students for srping) but I am going to keep up working on it to try to improve on my own. (I admit I'm slightly sad the lessons are over, and the teacher says unless she can get more students - I was the only one at the end - she's probably not going to continue. I can probably find another teacher but I like this one... I will give it a little time)

* But then I'm free. Not sure what I want to do. If I weren't trying so hard to economize I admit I'd consider going antiquing in Sherman. (Then again, they're having a Fall Fest - so, again, Too Many People.)

I might start Moondancer, I don't know. Or continue on one of my ongoing projects - a couple pairs of socks, a couple of sweaters.

* And this week's Pony: at first I thought I might not relate to this one as much, because the opening showed Big Mac being sad because Apple Bloom was now looking up to Applejack more than she seemed to look up to him. And coming from a family with only one sibling, that's one thing I never rejected: the "you like your sister more than you like me" feeling. (My brother and I, while we weren't close in the way some siblings are, we also were not unusually adversarial. I think we got along better and played more when we were smaller, and I do think he looked up to me more; for example, he wanted a sticker collection when I was making one (I was about 10 so he would have been about 5) and a few years later he had no interest in doing what I did because that was "girl stuff")

But then the very end was, again, kind of right in the feels for me. The whole silly masquerade Big Mac got up to - dressing up as "Orchard Blossom," a southern-belle type who is supposedly a second cousin. (Of course, no one is fooled for an INSTANT, not even the CMC, not even the judge-ponies who might not know Big Mac. Well, except for the one who is necessary for the classic cartoon trope of short-sighted guy falling in love with the "new woman in town" who is actually a guy in a dress....)

This is so Apple Bloom can participate in the Sisterhooves Social (this episode takes place in the same timeframe as last week's - so Chekov's Gun about the Sisterhooves' Social had a delayed firing) because Applejack is out of town.

But really, it's because Big Mac feels neglected, and he wants Apple Bloom to look up to him again - he wants to feel important.

Yeah. I think that's actually a really common feeling. I feel it a lot, I feel taken for granted a lot and admit that if the world were as simple as where playing a different "character" would get me some recognition I might be tempted to. I think the secondary message though - and maybe the message aimed at kids - was "Tell the people you look up to that you look up to them." I think the thing is, some people figure, "They know I respect them" or "They know I value what they do" but sometimes, people just get tired, they forget that people feel that way. And maybe they shouldn't, but they do - and so they need to hear those words. Or they need to hear that they're loved, even as hard as I know it is for some people to say that to someone else. (I have a hard time being demonstrative myself).

So it was a nice little slice-of-life story again, with a nice moral to it. And it got to use some of the "classic" cartoon tropes (guy in a dress, someone in disguise who thinks everyone is fooled but everyone really isn't, someone getting hypercompetitive and then being disqualified)

I will also say, though secondary to the main story, the Rainbow Dash/Scootaloo "honorary sisters" interaction was cute and sweet. I think Rainbow Dash has 'grown up' a little during the series and it's nice to see those changes in characters.

* One of these days I need to photograph the quilt I finished binding, and get the binding sewn down to the second one.

1 comment:

CGHill said...

I looked at that would-be suitor of Orchard Blossom's, and I saw the guy from Some Like It Hot who was crushing badly on Jack Lemmon in a dress. So did the animators, I suspect.