The Friday Five are late, but clearly not because they were enjoying Guinness yesterday

[magnetic_pole]

1. Are you Irish? Possibly a bit. (I don't know that much about my ancestors. One side of the family immigrated relatively recently (early 20c) from Sweden; the other side's history is more nebulous and might include some Irish among the Germans and Scots.)

2. Do you like Guinness? No. Don't really drink at all, in fact.

3. Do you know what the symbol of Ireland is? The harp?

4. Have you ever watched Father Ted? I haven't even heard of Father Ted.

5. Do you believe in leprechauns? No. Wow, I'm really failing this Irish quiz, aren't I?

In other, non-Irish news, the last out-of-town guest of the spring break has now departed, and the regular work week is on the horizon. Big take-aways of this last visit? If you're mid-forties-ish and you've been keeping up with someone since college, you've actually known each other for longer than you hadn't known each other, and long enough to have forgotten entire episodes in your relationship. (Or maybe my memory's just getting worse very quickly, and folks are being polite with me.) Also, the Obamas are still the hottest ticket in town. We had to wait in line to see their portraits at the National Portrait Gallery.

Comments

[spikesgirl58]

Father Ted, to my way of thinking, is very funny, although some find it offensive from a religious standpoint and others from a sexual one (I guess the creator is transphobic). How exciting that you are going to be able to discover it for the first time. All the episodes are available on Youtube.

Naw, you can't fail this because it's just silly stuff. It's more important that you had fun with it. :D

[magnetic_pole]

I'm going to give it a try. I'm surprised at how many people said they knew about it!

I love that so much tv is available now--youtube, streaming, etc. It's change my approach to tv watching, to be able to browse like you would at a bookstore.

Thanks for reading! M.

[spikesgirl58]

It was a very popular show when it was on. Good luck with it. :D

[magnetic_pole]

Thanks! M.

[splix]

Ooh! How were the portraits in person?

It’s always fascinating to examine long relationships, isn’t it? I hope you had a fun and relaxing week.

[magnetic_pole]

You know, neither portrait is the artist's best work, in my very humble opinion. The point is driven home by Michelle being hung opposite one of Kehinde Wiley's most powerful portraits, LL Cool J, and all I can think when I see them together is "Why is LL Cool J so much more successful to me than Barack himself?" Michelle is a bit too generic (she doesn't look quite enough like the actual person, who's got a very distinctive and instantly recognizable face), though the pose and dress convey her glamor and dignity and roundedness really well, and Barack's a bit too....well, honestly, too small. His personality's captured well in the relaxed position and the expression on the face and the contrast with the background, but he's got this outsize reputation that the painting doesn't seem to acknowledge. They were both *mobbed*--people posing to have their photos taken alongside them, groups standing and talking about them. It was so interesting to see!

Relationship are infinitely complicated and interesting! Wish there were more friendship fic exploring this, actually. M.

[splix]

Yknow, I didn't think that the portrait of Michelle looked like her much, so I'm glad you concur. I did like the Barack portrait immediately when I saw it, though that LL Cool J portrait is just fabulous.

I wouldn't mind teasing that idea out at some point!

[magnetic_pole]

It's funny--for me, Amy Sherald's stuff works best in a dreamy, generic sense, and while Michelle Obama doesn't *not* look like her, it's also not the intensely naturalistic portraiture that people are used to, and a lot of folks who don't look at portraits very often are going to be interested in this one and wonder why it doesn't "look like her" in that sense. That said, the dress and pose are amazing and convey exactly that quality that so many people love about her so much. (By the way, that was "groundedness" above and not "roundedness!" Darn auto-correct! Unlike me, Michelle Obama doesn't have much "roundedness" about her.)

Isn't LL Cool J fabulous? Wiley's exaggerated style is much more suited to him than Obama. I do like the Obama portrait enormously, though.

I've been thinking about friendship a lot recently--something sparked by recent visits but also reading about a study that showed that a significant percentage of people who feel that someone is a friend don't have that sentiment reciprocated. Somehow that touched me and got me thinking. So much unrequited love fic and so little unrequited friendship! M.

[tjs_whatnot]

"Over half your life..." is such a weird concept and always awes or baffles me. I remember distinctly the first time I applied that to myself in anyway, I was 24 and I remember thinking, "I've worn a bra for over half my life." Now, in my 40s there are so many things I've done/haven't done for over half my life. Recently, I was shocked to discover there was something major that as of next year, I haven't done for half my life and yet, I'm totally cool without it.

♥

[magnetic_pole]

It's *such* an interesting concept! And so fundamentally subjective--the fact that you've been something doing for ages will come as a surprise, and recent events can seem totally foundational, so it's hard to believe they've happened so recently. And conversely, I always tell people I'm from California, and yet I haven't lived there since the late 1990s, and much more of my adult life has been on the East Coast. What am I really saying, when I tell people that? *sigh* Adult life is infinitely complicated.

Somehow that bra comment made me laugh. :) I think it's because the better half is a bra-hater, and while *technically* she's probably worn a bra for thirty years, in actual hours, it's much, much less than that. /tmi Thanks for reading, TJ! M.

[tjs_whatnot]

I always tell people I'm from California, and yet I haven't lived there since the late 1990s

YES! I do the same thing about Washington. I haven't lived there since I was like 23, but I still say I'm ~from~ there... but now I just say I was born and raised there because that will always be true no matter how long it's been since either of those things happened. ;)

[magnetic_pole]

Fair enough! Perhaps that's what I should say, too. I just never feel like I'm "from" the place where I current live, much as I enjoy it! M.

[therealsnape]

So true about the 'over half my life' thing. I remember a time when I was joking with one of my friends, who was at that time also a colleague, and a younger colleague looked up in a worried way - are they joking, or is this the start of an argument? (Not used to our form of humour, poor thing). So we explained that yes, this was a joke, not to worry, we know what we can say to each other, we've been friends for ...

Turned out we'd been friends for quite a bit longer than youngster had lived. We thought him a little darling, and he had a 'OMG, the dinosaurs are alive and kicking' moment.

[magnetic_pole]

Ha! Yes, yes! Similarly, a student was asking about the length my relationship with my partner the other day (he's gay, and the queer students are always super, super interested for obvious reasons, so I figure it's not as weird as it seems) and when I said we'd been together since 1995, he paused for a moment and then said, wonderingly, "I was born in 1997." Another darlings and dinosaurs moment. :) M.

[ancientreader]

LOL!

When same-sex marriage was legalized in NYS, Spouse and I heard a radio commentator remark on how many people were now able to get married after having been together for decades, and we both said AWWWWWWWWWWW and then looked at each other in the shared realization of WAIT THAT'S US. Heh. Who knew we were that old? We're that old.

[magnetic_pole]

Exactly! Us, too. Well, not "decades," but quite a while! We were living in VT when it became legal there, and we got the paperwork done immediately because we both have hostile families. (Document, document, document.) When my partner pushed for some kind of celebration, I was adamant that we call it something else--no way was I starting over at year 0 when we'd already weathered more than a decade together. M.

[ancientreader]

Oh, yeah, we still date our relationship from when it actually began, not from the date of our formal marriage -- before that, we'd been domestic partners, anyway. So we could have any number of anniversaries, not that we can ever remember any of them.

[magnetic_pole]

Same here. I always get confused when online security questions ask for the year you were married, because we've had so many answers to that over the years. M.

[ancientreader]

The only correct answer to that question, obviously, is "1895."

[magnetic_pole]

:) :) :) M.

[ancientreader]

There are probably more people queuing to see the Obamas' portraits on any given day than attended Cheetolini's inauguration.

[magnetic_pole]

Heh. Okay, I'm no Sean Spicer, so I'm not going to make claims about the numbers, but the sense of enthusiasm and respect were there x100. :) M.

[lash_larue]

I like LL Cool J, both as a musician and an actor, but why is his portrait hanging in the same place as the Obamas? I thought that was a "President's Place". Not that I wouldn't much rather have LL as pres than shithead.

L

[magnetic_pole]

Ah! Good point to clarify. He's in the same room with Michelle. (Hee! "Michelle," as if I know her): the contemporary gallery in the National Portrait Gallery. LL Cool J is in the same room, along with Toni Morrison, Maya Lin, Henry Louis Gates, and others. Barack is in the presidents' gallery, adjacent to numbers 37 to 43. Clinton is nearby and HUGE (as big as his ego, of course), as is W, (which to me shows an ordinary man who was not especially well qualified to be president and did not do a very good job of it). /spurious opinions

I really love the National Portrait Gallery. There's something so powerful about seeing people's faces, and the museum does a great job of getting portraits of folks from all walks of life. M.

[lash_larue]

Agreed on W, but he seems like Lincoln next to what we have right now.

He's a pretty good artist too.

L

[magnetic_pole]

He is! I've been so interested to see his painting career develop, particularly because he seems to be grappling with the aftermath of the Iraq war.

Ugh. There are no words for how disastrous the current presidency's been. M.

[delphi]

I was kind of relieved to have St. Patrick's Day fall on a Saturday this year, because I work with many people who are really into it and every year someone insists that I must have some Irish ancestry, everyone has some Irish ancestry, if your ancestors were English or Scottish there's always going to be—what do you mean you don't have any British ancestry? And then cue a long and awkward interrogation about my ethnic origins. It's been eight years and I still haven't entirely adjusted to living in a city where someone like me is considered "exotic."

Also, I'm not at all sure how Father Ted holds up, but seeing that question made me smile. It used to play late at night on public television when I was a kid, and it was my gateway into staying up and watching strange offerings from abroad. Definitely formative to my sense of humour. :D

[magnetic_pole]

Oh, oh! Sorry I missed this earlier!

Yikes. I'm sorry you face that on St. Patrick's Day. I'm always surprised/horrified by how often white people make non-white folks' accent/ethnic background/family histories the subject of small talk or intrusive questions. I've watched it happen over and over with the better half, who's Asian American with an name that suggests another race/ethnicity, and folks who have just been introduced will often say "That's an interesting name," in the way that implies they think it doesn't fit and are waiting to hear an explanation. (If they haven't said things like "Where are you from?" or "You speak English really well," of course.)

Funny how watching things at a certain age imprint them on the memory! M.

[delphi]

Honestly, to my own eye I'm as white as you get in every sense except for the fact that one of my grandparents wasn't - but there's something about seeing black hair and a hard-to-place surname that makes a certain kind of person refuse to rest until they know exactly how to mentally categorize you. I get a lot of "So are you...Italian?" or "Where is your family from? No, originally. No, originally-originally."

[magnetic_pole]

I get a lot of "So are you...Italian?" or "Where is your family from? No, originally. No, originally-originally."

There was period back in the 90s when you'd come out to someone and they'd ask you about your sex life, right there, to you face, with no shame and the clear expectation of getting an answer. There's something horrifying/fascinating about what aspects of each other's privacy we feel entitled to violate. M.

[secretsolitaire]

Ooh, I'd love to see those portraits! Just from pictures I like Barack's more than I like Michelle's -- are her colors as washed out in person as they seem?

[magnetic_pole]

No, they're not! It's a vibrant portrait with grey-scale skin tones, which is one of the artist's trademarks. Better in person than here. Actually in person Barack's portrait seemed a bit washed out by the harsh light (and honestly, probably also my own sense of overwhelm at the sheer number of people clamoring to be near it).

It was really fun to see them in person--more so than I'd expected. It was a very social experience. If you ever make it down here, let me know, and I'd visit them again with you in a heartbeat! M.