a list for friday–things I learned singing BGVs for Larnelle Harris at TBN

You read that right.

– It takes me about 45 minutes to memorize a song well enough to sing it with occasional looks at a teleprompter. I’m not sure this knowledge will ever be useful to me again, but now I know.

– It’s a lot harder than it looks from the audience.

– Some people aren’t amused by jokes about jazz hands.

– Number of times I can patiently answer stupid or unnecessary questions before getting annoyed: 23

– Number of these questions I was asked: 87

– They like their mirrors. Even the bathroom has floor-to-ceiling mirrored walls. Because that’s …

Last week I finally saw The Iron Lady, the new movie about the life of Margaret Thatcher. Although Meryl Streep (nominated this morning for a Best Actress Oscar) was a triumph, the film was somewhat disappointing; a New York Times reviewer said it spent more time portraying Thatcher as “a widow and half-abandoned mother” than the political trailblazer she was.

There’s enough there for another blog post, but today I’ve been thinking about the movie’s title. The Soviets were the first to dub Thatcher the “iron lady” for her resistance to communism, but the term has also been used for other female heads of government.

Apparently we still find it …