Archive: Arts & Entertainment

SMART TALK SMART TALK

By Dr. Verbos Metikulos

ENORMITY: Misuse of enormity is an indicator that English is not truly the speaker's/writer's first language. At the Center for English as a First Language, we automatically test patient for further evidence.  These patients may resist treatment, because they often believe they don't need it.

Enormity is not a nice word. It means outrageousness, atrociousness, or heinousness, as in the enormity of the Syrian government's actions. Yes, the dictionary gives, last in line, the hugeness definition. As folks often point out, "ain't" is in the dictionary, too, that doesn't mean it's correct. A dictionary describes our language as it's used; it neither prescribes nor proscribes. For the latter, you need to come to Underbelly, Texas, and sign up with us.

 

Enormity's first five letters naturally make one think of enormous, but don't be fooled. As with niggardly, which means miserly and stingy, initial sound and spelling can trip the unwary. Enormous means huge. Enormity means shocking awfulness.

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You can often find local artist, Donna Faivre Roberts, exploring the shores of Cayuga Lake at Myers Point in Lansing.  She finds peace and gifts there.  After taking a moment to meditate, to deepen her connection to this place, to take in the sunlight, the breeze, and the air, Donna asks for a simple gift.  Then she walks the shoreline searching, rooting around and there it is - a piece of soggy wood.  In a piece of wood that you or I would likely have ignored, Donna sees wondrous spirits – angels, animals, Goddesses, or birds.  “Spirit of the Wood”, the title of her show at The First Unitarian Church of Ithaca reflects the journey Donna takes with each artwork.

“In recent trips to the lake, I find that I am picking up totally different wood now.  When I arrive I sit and meditate and ask “What gifts to you have for me today? Then I set out looking.  Now, I just know what pieces I should pick up.  Often I get down on my hands and knees to find the minutiae in the lakeshore.  I let the wood tell me what it wants to be.”

The Streets Alive! Film Festival is a free public event in downtown Ithaca presenting over twenty short films about bikes, livable streets, and moving beyond the automobile.   Drawing on examples from across the country and around the world, these short films provide an off-beat and humorous take on creating sustainable mobility and great urban neighborhoods. The films are sourced from StreetFilms.org and the Filmed-By-Bike Film Festival from Portland, Oregon, and are juried for their relevance and interest to Tompkins County residents.

The first half of the evening features StreetFilms, short films that show how smart transportation design and policies can result in better places to live, work and play. Streetfilms are fun, short, smart and to the point; they package complex concepts into easy to understand and accessible videos.

SMART TALK SMART TALK

By Dr. Perse P. Cassidy

UNMANNED DRONE: At the Center for English as a First Language, we're always astonished when we hear or see the laughable term unmanned drone. Does no one know that a drone, by definition, has no pilot? Really?

If this subject comes up after hours in the Fowler Lounge, someone often remembers that newscasters also feel compelled to say two-hulled catamaran, as if we all had just arrived from the Stone Age.  Then somebody calls out experimental laboratory, genetic mutation, and on and on into the night.

Do the media think we're all that ignorant? And do they know they're committing the cardinal sin of insulting their audience? But if they don't know, who's ignorant now?

We're probably seeing ignorance hiding behind insecurity. Like the minor official who solemnly reports that "the vehicle was proceeding at a high rate of speed" instead of "the car was going fast," people who insult us with redundancies like unmanned drone and genetic mutation are desperately trying to get noticed, by using verbiage to impress -- and only the ignorant are impressed -- or by using verbiage to take up as much print space or airtime as possible. Probably both.

Which suggests a Word for the Day. Being inane while believing one is being brilliant is a perfect example of being fatuous.

 

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John wants love. He loves his boyfriend. But after a chance meeting on a train platform, he now loves his girlfriend too. What's a fellow to do when he loves both and both love him back? Mike Bartlett's smart, hilarious and provocative new play, at the Kitchen Theatre Company from February 19 to March 9, tackles this question. Perhaps the answer will come if all three of them get together for a dinner party?

Fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat dialogue takes the characters and the audience on a wildly intense, outrageously sexy, and deliciously funny three-legged race. Bartlett's play won England's Laurence Olivier Award for 2010 Best New Comedy and was the talk of the town when it made its stateside premiere in New York City. Which was great, because the real name of the play could not be in print, or uttered on air.  And, now, this unprintably named play is going to be produced at the Kitchen Theatre Company! The NY Times called it The Cockfight Play, and so for modesty's sake, and to avoid legal redress, we will call it that too. You can shorten the title and call it what playwright Bartlett intended, but however it goes, this play by British writer Mike Bartlett is going to keep things hot and stimulating in the Kitchen all of February and into March.

When sixteen-year-old Jewell Payne sings, people listen. She’s been described as having the “buttery warmth, easy sophistication, raw power, and depth of soul of a young Aretha Franklin”--yet she’s mostly self-taught because of her family’s limited financial means. So when the renowned French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts gave her a partial scholarship to their summer training camp, the Ithaca performing arts community stepped forward to raise the rest of the funds. On March 8, from 2-4 pm, nearly a dozen talented local teens will take the stage at Corks & More, 708 W Buffalo Street, Ithaca, in a cabaret to raise scholarship money for Payne.

“I was so glad to hear of her plans to attend French Woods , as it seems like the next natural step for a performer as gifted as she is,” says Jesse Bush, Associate Artistic Director at the Hangar Theatre; he cast Payne in the Hangar’s “Once on this Island” in 2009.

Jen MiddaughMore than a dozen Ithaca area musicians will bring a sensational evening of song to the Community School of Music and Arts on Saturday, March 8 for the 5th Annual Joni Mitchell Tribute Concert.  The concert takes place in the 3rd Floor Performance Space of CSMA starting at 7 pm. Suggested donation is $10, with all proceeds benefitting CSMA’s scholarship program.

Jeannie Burns, Terry Burns & Ron Kristy, Joe Gaylord, Shauna Guidici, Colleen Kattau, Molly MacMillan, Sue Tierney McNamara, Nate and Kate, Sally Ramirez, Alice Saltonstall & Dana Paul, Elisa Sciscioli, Richie Stearns, and Maggie Whitehead will perform.

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by Dr. Perse P. Cassidy

UNDERBELLY: We at the Center for English as a First Language aren’t singling out our municipal host. Honest. That would seem ungrateful to a fine little town that has accepted our campus and the economic activity it generates with good grace. Besides, for Texas, Underbelly isn’t such an strange name. Texans are used to outsiders laughing at their town names, such as Toadsuck, Ding Dong (in Bell County, of course), Looneyville, and Uncertain.

But ours may be the only town whose name is a one-word redundancy. Why do we speak of an underbelly but not an overback? Both are about equal in silliness. But one-word redundancies seem rather special to me, and I’ve become the on-staff collector of these oddities.

How about eyesight? What’s wrong with sight, or vision? What other organ do we use to see with? If we say eyesight, why not earhearing?

And seagull. Ever try to look up seagull in a bird book? No such critter. You’re no more likely to find seagull in a bird book than you’ll find a hot water heater in a plumbing supply store. They’re gulls. Herring gulls, ringneck gulls, but not seagulls, any more than waterfish. But we do say tunafish for some reason, even though it says tuna on the can.

Then we have wintertime, springtime, and summertime for those who didn’t know seasons are times, and downfall to aid the directionally challenged.

I’m surprised Texas, unlike several other states, has no Glendale. Glen means valley. Dale means valley. Makes you wonder. I’m sure they have taxicabs in those towns, too.

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By Dr. Shirley Glibb

DOOMED TO FAIL: Here at the Institute for English as a First Language, we often wonder why people seem to enjoy misery. To do so seems perverse to us.

Misery makes me miserable, not happy, and I don't like to dwell on it. That's why I say doomed and not doomed to fail. Why drag it out, especially with a redundancy, which is bad usage? We like to tell patients, “That’s twice as sad, and twice as bad."

Of course, doomed to failure is the same mistake. Double verb redundancies belong in a class by themselves. Imagine saying try to attempt, or drop and descend. Doesn’t that sound foolish?

 

Lawyers commit this type of foolishness all the time with boners like cease and desist instead of stop. But then, at the hourly rates some of them charge, any extra word, however useless, is another dollar. That must be it. It can’t be fatuousness brought on by an overheated sense of self importance. The lawyers I know are very nice folks.

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They’ve performed for audiences around the world and now the internationally known dance sensation, Galumpha returns to The State Theatre of Ithaca on Saturday, February 15 at 3:00 p.m.  This show is the next installment of the CFCU Community Credit Union and Gateway Commons State Series and is scheduled during Ithaca Loves Teachers Week and The Great Downtown Ithaca Chili Cook Off. 

Galumpha combines acrobatics, visual effects, physical comedy and inventive choreography for their performances.  The troupe is a triumphant mix of art and entertainment, offering world-class, award winning choreography (Edinburgh Festival Critics' Choice Award, Moers International Comedy Arts Prize) that is equally at home on the concert stage, at a comedy club or at an outdoor festival.

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by Dr. Parley Speake

FIRST MET: At the Center for English as a First Language, we regard first met and first started as symptoms of Temporal Retentive Disorder. Temporal Retentives feel the need to use  time-related redundancies, such as plan ahead and prerequisite.

We try to act patient and polite with these patients, because they’ve never thought about what they’re saying. A gentle awakening usually works better than getting snarky. But oh, the temptation.

So many of their stories begin with “When we first met…” Just how is that clearer than “When we met?” First met and first started are appropriate only if the story leads to a second meeting or start. It hardly ever does. The listener is let down virtually every time.

We’re proud of our former patients. After treatment, they say “I met Chowderhead here in 1980, and we’ve been together ever since,” or “I started pole dancing for a movie role, honest.”

Fine citizens all.

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The Hangar Theatre's Spring Break-a-Leg program is a one-week musical theatre camp from April 14−18 offering 4th- through 6th-graders the chance to experience all aspects of performance in a fast-moving, fun, and professional theatre environment. By week's end, participants will create an exciting, original musical theatre piece to present in front of friends and family on the Hangar stage!

Spring Break-a-Leg features enriching workshops and hands-on musical theatre classes that young participants will remember for years to come.