Our life in words and pictures.
You are currently browsing the Noel Green.com weblog archives for February, 2007.
Celeste made a Vegan Pesto & Ricotta Pizza tonight that was AMAZING! Look at it! It was super, super amazing! She got the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, which has proved to be one of our most used cookbooks!
We ran into Shannon and little baby Quinn at Mama Jean’s today. He is so adorable! She had him wrapped in a “baby-pod”. Sort of like a sling, but a bit different.
Too bad they’re going to ruin Underdog by making a stupid movie out of it.
I mean it’s not even going to be a cartoon! And the voice doesn’t sound at all like him. And apparently (from researching it a bit) Simon Bar Sinister or any of the others aren’t going to be in it.
*SIGH*… stupid movie people.
We got to see all of Ryan Sundlie’s aunts, his mom, and his grandmother at Megan’s shower. It was a fun surprise.
We watched Barton Fink the other night. For Celeste it was the first time she’d seen it, and for me it was the 2nd time.
I love the Coen Brother’s movies. I believe they are the greatest movie makers of all time. Every one of their movies is perfect… there is nothing I would change in any one of them… even the couple I don’t like. And this is what I used to say when I’d talk about Barton Fink, Blood Simple and Intolerable Cruelty. Three of their movies I didn’t care for. Not because they weren’t good… as I said, they were perfect, but simply because I didn’t care for them.
Well… I must now remove Barton Fink from that list. It is really, really good!
I must’ve watched it late one night, before I knew what good movies were, when I wasn’t really paying attention, and when I was too tired and young to care. That’s the only way I would’ve not liked this movie.
The way the Coen Brothers pay attention to every detail. The way they use sound and color and frame to evoke palpable sensory experiences such as smell… warmth… even memory (if that’s a sensory experience)… is amazing! They put you IN the movie… in every way a film can possibly draw you in… they do it. And they do it perfectly!
Something else I like about their movies is that they span a the full gamut of genres. Comedies, dramas, period pieces, action… it’s all there. In fact the only two major genres I can think of that they haven’t tackled yet are “Horror” and “Sci-Fi”.
How cool would it be for the Coen Brothers to do a Sci-Fi movie! I can’t even imagine what it would be about… but… I’m sure it would be perfect!
We met with Adam yesterday afternoon at Barnes & Noble here in town. Adam is the son of our CPA that I mentioned in the previous post. The meeting went very, very well! He brought a TON of books and materials he owns to show. We talked about why I was wanting to learn Arabic, and he agreed that learning Egyptian Arabic (a dialect) would be better than learning “Modern Standard”. After he learned that he could then sift through the stuff he brought and show me just the books and materials that would be the best fit for the specific goal.
He first recommended “Kullu Taman! An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic”. He said it is an amazing book for learning Egyptian Arabic. It comes with a CD recording of all the dialog included in the book, and all of the Arabic transliteration is excellent as well. He said that if I spent the time and got through the book (which would probably take a couple of months) that I would most likely be a solid intermediate Arabic speaker, and would be able to hold conversations with other Arabic speakers fairly well. So, of course, I’m planning on investing in this book.
He also recommended “Egyptian Arabic Vocab Clinic”. It is a download-able program that allows you to learn vocabulary words by playing them back at your own pace, creating lists of your “learned” words, and even print out those vocabulary lists if you want.
After looking at their site I see that the “Vocab Clinic” is only available for Windows computers. If you’re learning MSA they have a “Verb Clinic” available for Macintosh, but I am not… and I am on a Mac. One resource that I have found is the Before You Know It system. It has a free download of their “basic” version, works on both Windows and Mac, and is, from what I’ve seen, an excellent way to learn vocabulary. I need to find out, or make sure, that it is the Egyptian Arabic dialect that is being used in it however before I buy it.
He also suggested getting a subscription to an “Arabic TV Package” that Direct TV offers. He said that you have to have a separate satellite installed, and then it’s $20 or $30 a month, but that it’s worth it to be able to watch Arabic TV and listen to it all be spoken. Since we don’t have satellite or cable (and don’t want it) I told him about JumpTV.com which allows you to subscribe to television stations from the Middle-East and watch them on your computer. He hadn’t heard of this and was really excited about it!
Finally he allowed me to borrow his “text books” (they are photocopied and bound packets) from his courses at the American University in Cairo. These will be good when I’m a bit further along as they’re mostly written in Arabic.
So that’s where I am now. The Egyptian Arabic Pimsleur CDs aren’t here yet… though I’ve gone through the first lesson 4 times since last week and can already basically repeat the conversation verbatim. I’m excited to feel progress… and to have a better idea of resources.
