chillin

spring break has been pretty nice so far, and it's only been one day. i'm going to take that as a good sign. so far i have: slept past 8:00, had pho nam, cashed checks, done leisure reading, gone for a walk on an actual (50 degree and sunny) spring day, caught up on missed TV shows, and seen ladysmith black mambazo LIVE. this is the life, more or less. the concert was so crazy. everyone in the group loved doing high kicks, like foot to shoulder high, even the 60 year old dudes, it was pretty much their go to move. the picture above is of me practicing. they were also unexpectedly hilarious. not just because they were weird or anything, they actually had a whole routine that they did that was awesome. they just brought a lot of energy to the performance, and i now kind of want to see them in a more informal setting where the audience would be more willing to respond to it. but nonetheless, it was a really sweet experience, and their singing, needless to say, was great. even though they did only do about 8 songs in two hours, because they would get too distracted doing sweet dance moves to ever end the song.
in the book i'm reading about a neuroscientists study of baboons, he mentions a Sudanese boy playing what he called a plinker for him (that sounds more inappropriate now that i reread it, but i'm going to leave it). i realized what he was describing was a thumb piano like we have at home, and was compelled to do some further looking into it online. there are different versions of it, the kalimba, and mbala among them. the way he described the sound made me want to hear someone good at it play it, and it is definitely pretty cool.
check it out:
very soothing. and the ones being played by actual villagers are even cooler. it also reminded me of the singing bowl my roommate got for his birthday, which does the same thing as when you rub your finger around the edge of crystal glass. but the bowl is extra cool because it's usually made of different metals so they have different resonance frequencies and so a whole series of overtones is created, and it gets really impressively loud. i often sit in his room while he's in class and play with it for long periods of time. nobody tell him that i play with his singing bowl.
the other thing i was thinking about today was how many TV shows i watch now. it kind of bothered me, because it's seems like it's too many, but then i realized that they're all genuinely good shows. i think that there is just a lot of good comedy out there, and people are especially capitalizing on the situational comedy that TV can offer. mom also made a good point that awkward is becoming more and more funny, and really there's no end to possible awkward scenarios, so there's practically endless new material to work with. it also might have something to do with production costs being lowered, so they can afford to get lots of young, new comedians. pretty much everyone on the casts is funny. i'm thinking particularly of parks and recreation and community, but the office and it's always sunny also are up there. i suppose i should enjoy it while it lasts, but i also don't see it being something that would fade out over time. it's not as though people are going to find something more entertaining than laughing or jokes...those things are kind of the definition of entertaining. so that's pretty neat.