Pristine Angie’s Good Homemaker Adventures at www.d332.com

Majestic Dialogues - The Brightness of Brass
The exuberant brass & strings of Spiritus Collective join PARTHENIA for festive music of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli in all of its surround-sound glory! Other works, large and small, by Frescobaldi, Legrenzi, Neri, Marini, and Merulo.
PARTHENIA, Beverly Au, Lawrence Lipnik, Rosamund Morley, Lisa Terry
With

SPIRITUS COLLECTIVE, Kris Kwapis Ingles, cornetto; Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz, & Mack Ramsey, sackbut; Daniel Swenberg, theorbo; Vita Wallace, violin.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008 AT 8PM CORPUS CHRISTI CHURCH 529 West 121St. Street, Manhattan

TICKETS $35 Preferred Seating/$25 General limited $10 RUSH tickets at the door Call 212.358.5942 or go to parthenia.org to order by credit card.

Parthenia is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Parthenia’s concert season is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

I know it’s mildly geeky, but at the tender age of seven, there was only two things I wanted more than anything in life: My mother’s bottle of perfume (that had two mysterious interlocking C’s, which I later discovered to be Chanel No.5) and Lego Set 901: The Universal Motor Set.  At the time of my purchase, it was $49.95.  Quite grand for the late seventies!
Sure, it was a boxy unit that was only made more natural by the fact that Lego men and women at that time looked like blocks with eyes and smiley faces.  One was supposed to use the remote control to move this little “tank” about.  More creative kids could envision and go on to construct their own Lego mechanism using one of the motor wheels to drive some essential gear.  Although I didn’t have the know how to build anything complicated, I was able to imagine the possibilities of grand constructions utilizing this motor as its heart.

I believe those mental exercises helped me later on in life when I started to put together dance music and clubby tracks.

So thank Lego, and Happy 50th!

When people asked me to recommend an interesting book, I have mentioned Paris Hilton’s Confessions of an Heiress. If one sets aside his or her unfounded hatred of Paris, they’ll realize it’s an updated format of the etiquette books from as far back as the 19th century. In this day and age, even Peggy Post’s attempt to update Emily’s Miss Manners’ tome has resulted in a long list of do’s and don’t with one’s cell phone and PDA. Do the folks these days even know who the Vanderbilts were? I say if it teaches the raunchy young girls of today to be nice and abstain from casual sex and booze, why not?

But, if you really can’t stand Paris’s one pose mug for 200 pages, then I recommend a light reading of Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem. A book so well written, even a mathematically inept individual such as I can easily grasp and follow the cliffhanger that spans several hundred years.

Of course, for pure style, Hitch’s Why God Is Not Great is almost as entertaining as his buddy Martin Amis’s Money, the hilarious novel to end all novels about a drinking rampage through Manhattan.

Don’t worry. They are all books on being the perfect, obedient Stepford Wife and the skill of keeping a future husband well-fed, content, comfortable, and happy. So happy 2008! Here’s to a new year of more pictures and less words!

After all , a woman like myself is meant to be seen, not heard. I only speak when spoken to. I let the man do all the talking!