a weakness for (mongolian) cowboys

I’ve gotta get out more.

I suspect if I did I could avoid scenes like the one I created tonight, weeping over a DVD – not just the climax, but for pretty much the whole duration – making enough of a mess that my sweetie, wanting to know what was the matter, and learning that I was wrecked by a movie about a blind blues man who teaches himself Tuvan throat singing and travels to the Northern edge of Mongolia where he sings by a river – was led to remark: “You’re a very odd girl.”

That may be true. But dang that was a good movie -- Genghis Blues.

More oddities worth watching if you don’t mind embarrassing yourself in front of your family members – just be sure to conceal these hokey names, because they’re enough to invite ridicule on their own – A Mongolian Tale and the Story of the Weeping Camel.

All three films are not just about Mongolia – they’re about music, and about lives and friendships that are pervaded and expressed through authentic music. (So you might not want to bother if you could care less about that kind of thing. Or throat singing -- which, depending on your mood, could come off as sounding like something celestial, or just sound like a bunch of bizarre bagpipes.)