Grosse Tete, LA

The birthplace of James Van Der Beek.

Ahahahahaha!!!

I played violin as well (for ten years before switching to viola), though I was full time viola by the time I hit the university symphony. The violinists were notoriously snooty about the whole 32nd note thing, so I got no sympathy there, lady. NO SYMPATHY!

But, but... I'VE never been snooty about 32nd notes! But maybe that's because I've never bothered to play the violin at the university. Mostly because the music people are all kind of snooty, actually. And I'm of the opinion that music should be fun.

Actually, the first piece we played when I hit the university was Stravinsky's "Firebird", so that pretty much took care of my "playing harmony is boring" issue. Phew, is that piece hard, no matter what part you're playing. The speed is difficult enough, but it's the counting that's really brutal.

See, speed and counting are what sucked about playing 1st violin. And I screwed it up enough times that I would never ever be snooty about it. But also, ooooh. Pretty music.

Alibelle, you can totally join the We Hate Pizzicato Club. I bitched about boring parts, but honestly I didn't envy the melody people most of the time. That stuff looked hard.

Yay! The melody was often insane. We usually just started laughing whenever we were handed a new piece. Like, "Hahaha, way to be optimistic, Mrs. Wilson." And yet, when we were second violins, we all complained about the boringness of it. Also, I think people who play harmony are infinitely better at counting, because they kind of have to be, whereas playing the melody gave me all kinds of horrible habits when it comes to rhythm. I rarely counted, because I could hear the melody, and you could sense when it was time to move onto the next note. Which is really a bad way to go about figuring out rhythm.

Oh, I liked Canon in D--yeah, yeah, I'm a plebeian--but the cellists all hated practicing it. Poor cellists. It was like they wanted to change notes every now and then or something.

Oh, I like it, too. It just irritates me because you hear it ALL THE TIME. It's at every wedding, played all the time on commercials, on TV or in movies, if some random violin playing needs to be done, it's always Canon in D. I firmly feel that Canon in D is to violin what Fur Elise is to piano, basically. And yet, our silly cellists complained about it, too. I don't know what their problem was. I mean, playing maybe three different whole notes, with ties of course, can be incredibly exciting.

I do not know what saltfish fritters are. An object breaded and fried (within reason, Mars Bars I am talking to YOU) is not a fritter, is it? A fritter is a ball of fried dough with nothing else inside it, like a doughnut, but no hole, and both greasy and heavy at the same time. And although I am informed that they come in non-corn flavors, I can reliably say that the corn flavors are yucky.

Actually, there isn't a lot you can do with corn to please me, besides corn bread and corn-on-the-cob. It always tastes the same. I think if I'd lived in Pilgrim times, I'd have starved.

Georgia has Two Egg and Climax. Climax has its annual Swine Time Festival celebrating the Joy of Pigs.

"Climax" and "Pigs" should not be in the same sentence.

Alibelle, I was purely teasing. Purely. I'm certain you aren't snooty. I was being reversed-viola-snooty in jest. Darn this internet and it's lack of teasing inflection capacity!

Edit:

Mostly because the music people are all kind of snooty, actually. And I'm of the opinion that music should be fun.

This was why I didn't major in music, actually. To be fair, I knew many non-snooty music types, too, though.

Although I prefer hushpuppies.

I like hushpuppies just fine, because NO KERNALS.

I love corn, in all its variations. I would call it my favorite vegetable, if it wasn't for the apparently-well-known-outside-of-the-Corn-Belt fact that corn is actually a starch, not a vegetable. I was brought up otherwise, though, so it's still my favorite, regardless of what ChiKat says (she's the one who broke the news to me).

ETA: Oh, and hushpuppies are just wrong, as wrong as garlic ice cream.

Alibelle, I was purely teasing. Purely. I'm certain you aren't snooty. I was being reversed-viola-snooty in jest. Darn this internet and it's lack of teasing inflection capacity!

Ha. No, I got it, no worries. I was just playing along.

This was why I didn't major in music, actually. To be fair, I knew many non-snooty music types, too, though.

Of course there are non-snooty music types. But as a group, I find that they tend to be over-impressed with themselves and their musical accomplishments, and they get very competitive about who's better, and who's been playing longer, blah blah blah. And even those people who are like that can be perfectly nice when you take away their instrument, and yet at the same time, the music scene can get very tiresome.

Fritter:

A small cake made of batter, often containing fruit, vegetables, or fish, sautéed or deep-fried.

A small, sweet or savory, deep-fried cake made either by combining chopped food with a thick batter or by dipping pieces of food into a similar batter. Some of the more popular foods used for fritters are apples, corn and crab.

small quantity of fried batter containing fruit or meat or vegetables

Looks like you just haven't been exposed to the world of fritters.