Archetypes and Icons

You all know that image, right? What? You don't? Well, it's all over Rome.

For those of you in need of a refresher, this sculpture depicts Romulus and Remus, who according to legend were the twin sons of Mars and the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia (gods didn't have the same respect for the Vestals that people did) and were floated down the river in a basket to save them from being killed by their mother's uncle (remind anybody of anything?) They were protected by a river god and nursed by a she-wolf, then discovered and raised by a kindly shepherd and his wife. We found out in Rome that lupa means not only she-wolf but was also slang for "prostitute," so some people interpret the legend that way, but the 'raised-by-wolves' version holds much greater currency, and you see variations of the image in that statue repeated endlessly in the Eternal City. The legend continues, you see, with the twins growing up and killing that jealous great uncle (d'oh!) and reinstating their grandfather as king (I guess some god or other must have told them the deal.) They then decided to build a city of their own on the spot where the lupa had nursed them, but then had an argument about how to do that and Romulus killed Remus (d'oh!!) named the city after himself and established the three tribes that would populate it.

We saw this piece at the Capitoline Museum, which is one of those places that we could have blown off, but it's so good we didn't. Amazing pieces in there, including this Etruscan beauty. (Well, there's some debate as to whether the Etruscans actually made it, but for now I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.)

This is one of my favorite shots from our trip. It's the Temple of Saturn, from the Forum.



And here's the curve of the Colosseum, streetlights and all.


And finally (for now) a shot of your friendly neighborhood blogger continuing the conceptual continuity of dancing in front of churches he started more than 10 years ago in London, this time in front of the Holiest of Holies.

More on the Vatican later...

Viva Italia

Back from Rome. Miss it already.



What an amazing place. A lot that impressed me is exactly what you'd expect: the art, the fountains, the churches, the ruins, the food and wine. This all was framed by trips that were very smooth in both directions and all-but-perfect weather. And it was brought to life and shared by the fantastic people: a friendly driver named Giuseppe who gave us an impromptu tour of the city on the way from the airport to the hotel; Tiziano, the concierge who gave us our first shove in the right direction; our Roman friends Claudia and Valter, who took a huge chunk of their holiday afternoon and evening to spend with us; the many hosts and waiters and cooks and barristas at the various restaurants, trattorias, gelaterias and pizzerias we visited; Jason Spiehler, who has a reputation for being the best tour guide in Rome that just might be deserved.

It was an astounding experience. You may have read about Agrippa and Augustus and Hadrian and Boniface IV, but none of that really prepares you for seeing the ceiling of the Pantheon.



I also had the benefit of traveling with someone who's done it a lot. Cory helped me negotiate the jet lag by encouraging sleep on the way out (allowing us to power through our arrival evening.) She was a great travel partner right through the airplane movie and the two times she kicked my ass in scrabble on the way back. I'll probably post a bunch more shots and hopefully some video in the next few days, but for now I just wanted to let you know that I'm back and very much savoring the trip.

What's Opera Doc?

I'm afraid we may have to wait awhile for the next two Ring installments. Even though I saw the fourth and final installment of the Cycle this weekend, I am mightily distracted. Distracted by what is in my near future. Things like this.


Mmmmmmm... Gelato...

Baseball Blog

These days, Keith Olbermann is mostly known for his political reporting/editorializing, and for good reason. But you may remember that he started out doing sportscasting/reporting. So it's rather fitting that this season he's started up a baseball blog. Happy reading.

And enjoy the Sox/Yanks series this weekend!

The Ring, Week Two

Ok, I'm way behind on my Ring posts. Last week was totally crazy and I didn't have a chance to post. I'll try to make it up to you this week.

Practically everybody knows Die Walkure at least a little bit, if for no other reason than that it includes the Ride of the Valkyries, which has been all over popular culture for the last, oh, pretty much since it was written. You know, that music that Robert Duvall plays when his Hueys drop napalm in Apocalypse Now. You know - the tune Elmer Fudd uses to sing "Kill the Wabbit."

Well, here's where it showed up first: in the second installment of Wagner's Ring, to herald the arrival of the Valkyries, warrior goddesses who transport fallen heroes to Valhalla.

It's an amazing piece, and once again, we had a great experience. We introduced ourselves to our box-mates: Christian, a student of Epic Poetry at Bard who'll be going to grad school at USC this fall; and Mark, who was much less chatty, but brought along his own copy of the score - he claimed that he is not a musician or a conductor, so at this point I just think of him as a serious music fan.

This week was special because it was supposed to have Christine Brewer in her first Brunnhilde at the Met.

But Ms. Brewer couldn't do the cycle for undisclosed reasons, so instead we got Irene Theorin looking and sounding great in the role.

Anyway, I thought she was great. Some of the press and fan-reaction has been less than rapturous. And it was disappointing not to hear the more famous voice. But her acting (which I'm better equipped to assess than her voice) was as good as anyone's up there. And this was her first appearance at the Met, and I think her first time singing in the U.S., so that's exciting.

Also very exciting (at least for me) was the last-minute appearance of Gary Lehman, who was covering the role of Siegmund (his first time in this role at the Met, too!) I usually get geared up by performances that include understudies/covers, because they tweak everybody's attention to a higher pitch, and just add some energy to the air. The Times had an article about this phenomenon in opera last week too, by coincidence as far as I know.


This is the Ring opera that I am most familiar with, having seen it before, and listened to recordings several times over the years. It has to be the kinkiest of the four: we have the handsome and virile stranger whose name is Siegmund but who goes by the name of Woe showing up at the door, to be tended to by the kind woman whose name is Sieglinde and who is clearly cowed by her husband; she puts sleeping potion into the husband's drink and comes out to visit the stranger in the middle of the night and show him the magic sword hidden in the ash tree in their living room (they have a tree in the middle of their living room.) They fall in love. Then they discover that they are twins... so they have sex. True holy love, you see, triumphs over ALL: morals, ethics, laws, plain healthy good sense, the whole kit and kaboodle.

But this forbidden incestuous love is the one thing that might save mighty Wotan and his league of immortals: for, as his in-the-right-and-many-times-cuckolded-but-palpably-shrewish wife Fricka reminds him (after they rehash pretty much the whole plot of Das Rheingold), he is Guardian of Laws and Treaties, and he can't help his children (did I mention that Siegmund and Sieglinde are his children from an adulterous affair with a mortal?) either in battle or in the quest to regain the Ring, because that hero must be someone unaided by Wotan and the Gods. So he has to have the Valkyrie Brunnhilde (one of his other children, from a totally different adulterous affair - this one with Erde, Goddess of Nature) go disrupt the impending fight between Siegmund and Sieglinde's husband Hunding (they are planning to fight to the death over something having nothing to do with the adulterous, incestuous affair. Naturally.) take away his magic sword Nothung, and bring him to Valhalla to live with the Heroes. So she goes to do it, but she's charmed by his valor and sees through Wotan's law-abiding instructions to his true wishes to help his son and so leaves him to win the fight. Happy ending, right?

OF COURSE NOT! Wotan shows up at the fight himself, shatters Nothung with a wave of his spear, and leaves Siegmund, defenseless, to be killed by Hunding. Wotan then kills Hunding. Naturally.

After all of this has happened, we finally get to hear the Ride of the Valkyries as Brunnhilde meets her sister Valkyries, but bringing Sieglinde instead of Siegmund. She (Sieglinde) is so distraught over the death of her warrior brother/lover that she wants to despair and die until Brunnhilde tells her that she is carrying Siegmund's child. [On a side note, I like to think that when Mel Blanc and Carl Stalling were putting together 'What's Opera Doc' and such, they were thinking of this couple and the expression 'the rabbit died' when they decided to use the Ride of the Valkyries as the theme of 'Kill the Wabbit'] Sieglinde runs off to hide and have her baby, and Wotan shows up enraged with both his daughters. Brunnhilde knows she has to be punished, but talks Wotan down to a punishment of being put to sleep behind a circle of fire that can only be penetrated by a warrior who knows no fear. Awesome.

Speaking of fire, I wanted to make mention of this last week, but forgot: Loge, God of Fire, is one of the most vibrant characters in this piece. He loomed large in Das Rheingold, helping Wotan, Odysseus-like, outwit the Niebelungs. He is also the one responsible for building the Ring of Fire surrounding Brunnhilde. I was hoping to find a good image of him to post here, but I guess he's not a big enough character to warrant a good photo-op. Instead, have a look at his doppelganger:


That's right, he looks just like that icon of more recent popular culture, the Heat Miser. I was hoping to show the two of them next to each other, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

So what do we make of this bundle of confusion? One question that seems to come up a lot when I talk to people about this story is "SO - the twins: did they know they were twins when they did it, or did they find out after the, um, fact?" Oh, they know. They share backstories and real names and put two and two together. As it happens, they look at the consummation of their love as twins and lovers as something right, true and inevitable. A common follow-up question is something along the lines of "What the fuck?"

I don't know. I'm not a Wagner scholar. I've done a little bit of the reading and a little bit of the listening, but I don't know too many of the answers. But I think it has something to do with bringing up some of the tough questions that don't come up all that often. Is there something more important than Law and Morality? Something that triumphs over even Nature? Something beyond what people want and need? Maybe you believe there is such a thing, maybe you don't, but I'll bet you know someone who does. What would you call that thing? God? An Ideal? A nation? Who gets to decide? A Priest? A Judge? An Artist? An Ubermensch? What if, as some people say, "God is Love?" What if, on the other hand, "God is Law?" What in each case would be the repercussions? What would Oedipus have to say about it? What would some of the people Wagner was reading (Nietzsche, Engels, Schopenhauer) have to say? What would Woody Allen?

And, most importantly, let's not forget that the text (all written by Wagner himself; no outside librettist for Richard) is only a fraction of this work. The music does most of the heavy lifting. And it does so right from the top: the Prologue to this piece shimmers, it's thrilling, maybe even more so than Ride of the Valkyries. The music grabs hold of you before the curtain opens and doesn't let you go until well after it's closed up again. Die Walkure weighs in at well over 5 hours when you factor in the breaks at intermissions, and while it wouldn't be accurate to say it's over before you know it, it flies by more than you think, and feels a lot shorter than the timing would suggest. The leitmotifs that are introduced in Rheingold are developed in this piece and inform the argument, the drama, the characters, the themes. But that's another box of wine: I'll discuss the music in a some more detail in my next post, but I want to get this one out, as it's so late already (and I sense that I'm already at risk of going on too long...)

Meanwhile, did you notice all the holidays this week? Patriots' Day on Monday, Earth Day today, and (because it's especially important this year) the Founding Date of Rome yesterday.

The Return of The Singing Cowboy

It is scarcely news if you pay attention to this kind of thing at all, but Bob Dylan is releasing his new album Together Through Life on April 28. I'm guessing we'll have more to say about that then, but for now, take a gander at this interview with Bill Flanagan, which covers Gods and Generals and Presidents, and which includes one of the new songs. Good stuff.

Cory's Birthday

This weekend was Cory's birthday. The beginning of the Month of Cory. Also baseball's opening day, the end of the NCAA hoops tourney, and some lion vs. lamb weather activity.

Cory's birthday is April 4th, which is also memorable as the day that Martin Luther King was assassinated. As my sister noted, "4/4 - that's easy to remember." Of course, she then proceeded to forget it, but it's been a hectic couple of weeks for her.

The birthday celebration started off mellow enough on Friday at Midnight, with some prosecco over mashed blackberries. We didn't get too far into the bottle that night, as we were kind of tired, but we finished it off the next day over a game of Scrabble (it was a rainy day, so going out into the park or even to a cafe didn't really float our boat.)

In the late afternoon we headed to Hoboken, where we had some tea before walking down to Cucharamama, an amazing South American restaurant. I had arranged a sort-of-but-not-really surprising array of Cory's friends to meet us there, and we had some good cocktails featuring rum and pisco, and lots and lots of good food. There were squid and octopus appetizers that rocked the house, as well as a fantastic tamale and a very good spinach empanada; my main dish was a sort of chicken and beef pot pie with, among other yumminess, olives, onions and raisins - very good; the birthday girl had an excellent roast chicken dish; a whole bunch of people went for the Argentinian skirt steak, which was almost too big to handle. There was chocolate flan with a sparkly candle at the end of the meal for the Birthday song and wish-making. Very fun. Props to all the Brooklyn types for crossing two rivers for the event!

After dinner, we took the PATH back into the city and some of the crowd split off for home. But Kristin joined Cory and me at the Flatiron Lounge (which I believe I've written about here before.) Such a good place, and I elbowed us some seats at the bar. Sue B joined us, which seemed apt, as her birthday had been a week before, so we were able to treat her for that a little belatedly.

By the time we left, it was rather late, but not too bad. And a good thing too, as Cory had a spa date the next day, courtesy one of her really good friends. I was a bit envious, but Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon so that made me happy.

Cory is the Ultimate in Camera Shy, so no photographic evidence of this event. I'll have more in the way of visual stimulation next time.

iHam

In their continuing efforts to provide premium technology with a focus on contemporary style and intuitive, user-friendly interface, Shackleton introduces... the iHam 5J

Happy April Fool's, everybody.

The Ring, Week One

Think I may have mentioned this before, but this Spring, I am going to my first-ever Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera. It is a pretty major splurge for me, but I'm very psyched about it. I am not one of those "The Ring Cycle is The Greatest Thing in The History of Performing Arts" guys, but I do think it is a pretty incredible achievement that just gets better and deeper the more time you spend with it, and I'm really excited and awed to be able to experience it live. Which experience began on Saturday afternoon with Das Rheingold, which you heard live on the radio if you make a habit of following the Live at the Met Opera Broadcasts.

So where to begin? How 'bout with our seats? Carrie (an unexpected opera fan friend who dove into the Ring with me) got into the game pretty late and have fairly limited budgets, so we ended up with Balcony Box seats. We're in the first box on house right, meaning we are very close to the stage and can look down on the singers and the orchestra pit. We're in the box number 2 in the second (yellow) rung on this chart:

This graphic gives a sense of HOW high up over the stage we are. But it doesn't do such a good job at showing how much CLOSER to the stage we are than we would be if we were back in the balcony proper. This next chart does a slightly better job at that:

In this chart, picture us sitting where the number 2 is in the goldenrod 'Boxes Even" column on the left. This comes closer to doing justice to our proxmity to the performers. And sort of gives you an idea of our sightline...

You see, when you're in our particular box, there are some pros, and some cons.

The pros:

• You're really close to the stage - MUCH closer than in the balcony proper.


• You can see the conductor and the orchestra, so you can watch all the musical goings-on. And let me tell you: that adds something. I appreciated being able to see the harpists stand their intruments up when they were finished with their section; I appreciated being able to watch the incredible conductor James Levine doing his thing; I certainly have an appreciation I didn't have before of Maestro Levine's endurance: Rheingold has no intermission, and no breaks in the orchestral music, so the one guy who isn't able to take even a 3 second break in the whole 2 1/2 hours is the conductor.


• You can see some of the 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' parts of the stage magic - you can see the little slide built in behind the 'rocks' for the Rhinemaidens to 'swim' down; when the Niebelungen are getting ready to climb up from underground with their bags of gold, you see it; when Donner and Froh are piling up gold as high as Freia between the giants' staffs, you can see Freia kind of crouching down and taking a rest behind the pile. Not everyone would be into that, but I think it's a treat.


• You have your own semi-private hallway leading to the boxes. Not a big deal at all, but it does add a kind of fun approach to the experience.


• The sound is great. This is true throughout the Met, and while I'm sure we're missing out on the balance that's audible in the front of Parterre, it still sounds amazing.

The cons:

• You are WAY HIGH UP THERE. The stage is big enough and deep enough that you're not just looking at the tops of people's heads, but they aren't really singing to YOU unless they're raging at the heavens or something.


• There's no sitting back in your seat. Unless you don't care if you're not seeing anything. The angle is so extreme that you have to sit up at the edge of your seat if you want to see, and have to lean over the railing if you want to see much. At first, this seemed like a REALLY BIG CON. But as the day went on, I appreciated the way it sort of enforces active observation: sit up to see this, lean in to see that, shift over to glance at the surtitles, sit back and take a rest. I found a repertoir of optimal postures pretty quickly, and by the end of the fourth opera, I'll be playing them like a virtuoso.


• The sightline is seriously compromised. In fact, it kind of sucks. There's no way to spin this as anything but a big fat compromise to get to all the good stuff (including the relatively affordable - but still really expensive - ticket price) You can see a lot, but there's a lot you miss no matter how much you lean over the rail. You can't really see the upstage wall at all. This is a big problem. Opera at the Met is larger-than-life spectacle, and this production is an emphatic example of that. And while we can see a lot, there is a lot we miss. For instance, Das Rheingold begins with a discussion of the completion of the construction of Valahalla, the palace/fortress of the Gods, and it ends with a coterie of Gods and Goddesses walking off to the Rainbow Bridge that will take them there.

See how that gorgeous image is painted/projected onto the wall up there? Yeah, we couldn't see that. At all. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that this is going to be my least favorite thing about this whole operation.

And then there are some things that may be pros or cons depending on how they pan out. For instance: these boxes are set up for four people. There are the two of us, and two other guys. SO there's potential for that to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, or an awkward intimacy. Das Rheingold has no intermission, so we didn't really talk to the other two guys at all, but I'm guessing that by the time we get to the Valkyrie's "Hojoto Hos" we'll know something about each other.

Don't get me wrong guys: pros and cons weighed, this was an awesome event. And I am not using that term lightly - the amount of effort and artistry involved, from so many people, in service of such an amazing musical and dramatic creation, is truly... awesome.

Stay tuned for more next week...

Restaurant Racism

The results of this study of expensive (i.e. lucrative to work at) restaurants in New York were just released.

"The tests showed:

- Nonwhite job applicants were 54.5 percent as likely as white applicants to get a job offer, and were less likely than white testers to receive a job interview in the first place.

- The work experience of white job applicants was less likely to be subject to scrutiny.

- Accents made a difference — with white candidates. White applicants with slight European accents were 23.1 percent more likely to be hired than white testers with no accent. However, accents in nonwhite applicants made no difference."

This is New York? Massive Fail.

One quibble with the writing here: the reference to "white testers with no accent." No accent? What does that sound like? Are they using sign language? The New York Times should know better.

Thanks to Cory for referring me to the article.

One Economic Perspective

Paul Krugman can be a curmudgeon, but I think the points he makes sometimes deserve a lot more widespread attention and discussion than they receive at the decision-making level.

...But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization — that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely — turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption...

Much discussion of the toxic-asset plan has focused on the details and the arithmetic, and rightly so. Beyond that, however, what’s striking is the vision expressed both in the content of the financial plan and in statements by administration officials. In essence, the administration seems to believe that once investors calm down, securitization — and the business of finance — can resume where it left off a year or two ago...

Fallon Fan Club?

Well, sort of. But not exactly.

But Daniel, Maria, Rashmi and I did go to a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the other day, largely because we all love The Roots, who against all conventional wisdom took the gig as Fallon's house band. Very smart move by NBC, which guaranteed that there would be a strong, solid life force keeping this patient going, at least through the first few weeks, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, have seen our host bearing more than a passing resemblance to a deer caught in headlights.

I'm happy to say that the program we saw was funny and engaging. Jimmy still seems too nervous for someone who's ostensibly running the show, but he is doing way better than he was during his first week. They may want to figure out some clever alternative to the traditional Tell-Jokes-at-the-Audience-Opening-Monologathon, because he really is working too hard for that to be as effective as it needs to be. And I think that it's well past time to set that aside as the unalterable formula for late night television.

The best, funniest, most alive moments happened off the cuff, when Jimmy was chatting with us, or his guests (which included Rachel Maddow - he had an really good bit about mispronouncing her name while shooting a local-tv promo. If NBC is smart, that made it to air on at least one of their affiliate stations.) in between the scripted segments. And when he was at his best, it was really good stuff. Keep plugging, Jimmy - we're on your side.

Oh, and The Roots were amazing, natch. A-maz-ing.

Thanks to Susan for the fun cameraphone photo, Times Square flaring up in the background!

Real Gone

Another much-belated post on a more-than-worthy event. Saw the Armitage Gone! dance company perform its Think Punk! progam at the Kitchen.



Raucus and rockin', the Armitage dancers celebrated the energy of punk culture and downtown art, and the place of their own company in that history, while creating work that is still hyper-vital today. The music came recorded from Jimi Hendrix, David Linton, Mozart and X-Ray Spex; and also from live musicians including the amazing TALIBAM! (All these exclamation points everywhere. Sigh. I think the energy of the artists is self-evident without added punctuation, but whatever.)

I loved this performance. Elegant, athletic, sexy, powerful, inspiring. Made me want to create pieces, stage them and perform them, especially in rooms as bitchin as the Kitchen.

Sis Viz Redux

Remember how my sister was visiting last weekend? And we're both fairly active photographers (she's really active, actually) but neither of us took many photos? Add to that the fact that she doesn't really like having her picture taken and we have a recipe for very very few images indeed of her enjoying her trip.

But I did get one that I like, in spite of its technical suckitude:



Kind of captures the whirlwind nature of her visit. Plus she's, you know, cute.

and then...

...right after the good news, some really bad news follows.

Suddenly, sadly, and unbelievably ahead of schedule, Natasha Richardson died. Just took a fall while taking a skiing class. We'll learn more as the days go on I'm sure, but it looks like it was a simple fall, nothing horrific or brutal or ghastly. Except...


This just hollows me right out.

New Mexico Repeals Death Penalty

Governor Bill Richardson today signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in New Mexico. This is good news for Human Rights and the groups that work to defend them, and more evidence for people who are seeing a sea change in American public opinion regarding this subject.

Celebration City

I've had a lot to post about lately, but have been too busy/distracted to get to it. Massive shoutouts needed for the Martha Clarke Garden of Earthly Delights (running through April - go see it!) and The Cherry Orchard & The Winters Tale which were performed at BAM through The Bridge Project (those have closed - hope you had a chance to see them.)

But for now, let me take another swig of coffee and recap the headlines from this past weekend.

My sister was interviewing with a company in Philadelphia. SO let's start with the first big cause for celebration: she got the job! This wasn't really a surprise (we were pretty sure it was going to go down that way) but it's still REALLY good news. And may develop into even better news if one of her future promotions brings her and her family out east.

They love Lori so much (how could they not?) that they arranged for her to fly into Philly, but out of Newark, just so she could have a chance to come up and visit me. Which brings us to the second big cause for celebration: she came up to the city and stayed the whole weekend! Lori got into town at about 8:30, and we went over to a new wine bar near where I live that I really like for some formaggio e vino. Yum! Then back to my place for another bottle of wine and more catch up.

Next morning, we met Richard and Peter at Good Enough To Eat on the UWS for brunch. Peter mocked us for calling a Saturday meal with a 10:30 start time (which he couldn't be bothered to make) "brunch." Whatever, dude. We had things to do. You better watch out - you're on my sister's list.

After brunch, Cory met us and we walked with Richard across the park to the Met. Went in and checked out the Beyond Babylon exhibit as well as parts of the permanent collection, then grabbed a cup of coffee and went out to meet Rashmi and take a bus downtown past the sights of 5th Avenue until we arrived down near Union Square Park. Then we walked West and did some shopping (my sister is a paper nut, so we went to a couple of those stationers in Flatiron) and met a bunch more people at City Bakery: Sherin, Molly, Rudy, Susan, Daniel. Oy, am I forgetting somebody? We ran the gamut of their offerings, and even had a small confrontation with a guy who wanted to steal one of our tables. Silly nastiness. Then we split off in a variety of directions, with 6 of us headed over to 5 Ninth for dinner. Mmmm... I've written about that place here, and once again, it was SO good. Try the wild mushroom gnocchi. And, of course, the pot de creme with bourbon infusion.

Pause for a moment to look at an image from the Met exhibit, from the Hittite Empire, 14th–13th century B.C.


It's a mug. Those Hittites knew how to party.


Then we went over to the Village Vanguard for the Lou Donaldson Quartet. Lori got a "let's not think about what would happen if there were a fire" kick out of how much of New York happens in what are essentially basements, and this spot was the epitome of that for her. The show was fantastic, of course.

At this point, Susan and Daniel headed home, and Rudy went back to his hotel to nurse a sprained ankle. Lori was wiped out and crashed, and Molly & I walked with Cory for what was yet another cause for celebration this weekend: Kristin's birthday! The meal part of her party had happened at a Brazilian place in Midtown, but they were at the Half King at this point, so we went over there and met them all dressed up in their birthday regalia and reveling in the occasion.

And then we put Molly in a cab, and that was Saturday.

Sunday had some of the wrong kind of drama. We went to brunch at 202, which Lori really loved for its Nicole Farhi design elements. But we had a late start, given that we still had to accomplish the acquisition of souvnenirs for Lori's kids. Dominic met with us for a small slice of time, then we did a couple loops on foot through Meatpacking, the Village and Chelsea. We were under the gun, but we managed to grab the needed "I Heart New York" t-shirts, and the snow globes, and... well, we couldn't manage the 'teeny tiny koala bear' that Anna wanted, but we got her a pretty damned cute stuffed penguin.

Then, a little later than we'd hoped, I drove Lori to EWR for her flight. Which was cancelled. Yup. We didn't find this out until I had almost found myself a parking space in Hoboken, but there was some kind of mechanical error, and the airlines being the fonts of customer service that they are these days, they offered my sister nothing to make up for her time or inconvenience. Well, that's not quite true: they offered to put her up in a motel in Newark, from which she would have been able to pay her own way to JFK the next morning in time for her 7:45 flight (this would be a $100 cab ride, for those of you who don't know the area). Gee thanks USAir!

Instead, she took a train back to Penn Station (it wouldn't have made sense for me to pick her up and drive her to the 'boken so we could then take a bus into the city) where I met her and brought her back down to Chelsea, where... we had a fantastic evening! No friends, no schedule, we just went out for pizza and beer (And what pizza! You can almost believe the hype about Co.) and walked around the neighborhood and went back to Cory's place to play Scrabble and have some beer and Kentucky Chocolate. It was actually kind of perfect.

The next morning, Lori got up really early to take a car to Kennedy and the rest of us went to work. All was well with her trip, and it turned out that Annie was pretty happy about her penguin. I know I haven't put much into this entry in the way of images (kind of funny that two fairly avid photographers didn't want to be bothered with taking pictures this weekend), but hopefully this one taken from Lori's cellphone will help make up for that.

So that was our weekend. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Oh, and by the way - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Depression-Era Photos, in color

Here's a site where you can see some Farm Security Administration photos. (Thanks to Jessica for the tip.) You've seen things like this from people like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, but it's almost always in black and white. These are in color, and they're more than worth a look.

Kindling

Is anyone else a little weirded out by the Kindle? The digital book-reader thing that they're pushing this week.

Not necessarily the device itself, which actually appears to be pretty cool (though vastly overpriced and somewhat underachieving, but that's pretty par for the course with new-ish technology). I'm bothered by the name. "Kindle," as in kindling; as in the wood that you use to start a fire; as in go burn your books now that we have this nifty new computerized gizmo; as in Fahrenheit 451 nightmare city.

Phhheeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuw! File under: craptastic.

Exciting News

My sister is visiting New York next weekend! This is the most exciting news I've had since I booked my trip to Rome.

She's going to be in Philadelphia for a business meeting, so I invited her to come up and stay with me for a couple days. And that's what's happening! Woo Hoo!

The thing you have to realize is: I haven't had time with Lori one on one (no kids, no husband, no parents) for... a really really long time. Like, longer than I want to admit. Like, since the first Bush administration.

So if you want to claim time with us next weekend, you better get on it!

Insanity

Yesterday, the dayjob boss proclaimed to us "Don't bring in any food tomorrow - group lunch!"

Which is really nice and generous and all that. One of the things we all really like about her.

But then she left a meeting at noon to wander the building without her phone or blackberry and was not heard from for a long, long time. (Time slows down when you're hungry.) In fact, she ducked attempts to contact her.

Meanwhile, our tempers were shortening and our mutinous spirit grew.

Those of you who know me know how I get when I become too hungry. It is a sad and unlovely part of my personality. But it's there, and people have learned how to deal with it.

Not, however, the dayjob boss. She finally came back and was making jokes. Jokes that at this point were not funny. At all. The (unannounced) meetings she had been bouncing among were not of the serious, economic downturn emergency variety. They were off-the-cuff "why don't we talk about this now" type meetings.

I walked her into her office with the menu and our food orders and told her she couldn't leave until she had ordered our lunch. Then I walked out of her office and shut the door behind me.

Yep. That's what I did. To my boss. Those of you who don't know me now have a sense of how I get when I become too hungry.

Out of my mind. That's how I get.

Just got the phone call from reception. It is now 1:50. Food's here.

New York, New Music, New Hall

The other night we went to the "New York, New Music, New Hall" program at Alice Tully Hall. The revamped hall has been getting a lot of press lately, having recently re-opened after a major mondo monster renovation that took almost two years. Most of this press has been very positive, though I did read a naysayer regarding the acoustics for large orchestras (I have read only good things about the acoustics for smaller ensembles, and pretty much unanimously favorable reaction to the visual design elements).

Now, I'm no acoustician, but I flatter myself that I have a pretty good ear. My perspective on the 'room sound' thing is that it's largely a matter of opinion, though there are certain things that most everyone agrees on (too echoey is bad; if you can't hear the soft parts it's bad; if the street noise is too audible it's bad). After that it gets a little yitzy - most everyone agrees that some resonance is good, but there can be a lot of debate about how much is the 'right' amount. And, if I may be so bold, I think that when these discussions begin, I think we start to see posturing pretty quickly. My personal priorities in terms of acoustics tend toward the realms of audibility and clarity - I do like some warmth, but I want to be able to hear the distinct instruments and voices without too thick a bassy boom or a whole bunch of mush.

But the bottom line is: the acoustics are there in service of the music. That's what we're going to the hall to hear.

Cory scored us our tickets pretty last minute, so we didn't make it to the free opening performance by the string quartet Ethel in the rather vast lobby, but it looks like it was pretty cool. We had seats in different parts of the auditorium, but thanks to the kindness of a solo traveler, we did end up sitting together. John Schaeffer was the host, providing a bit of chat at the beginning of each act. The first ensemble he presented was Alarm Will Sound.

They were the youngest group of the evening, and while I know we like to avoid cliches I will admit that catchwords like 'hip' and 'energetic' do spring to mind. More importantly, they're really fucking good. Ah, New York: a place where you can put out the word that you want to start a contemporary music ensemble and you end up with a stage full of world class players. Or you can if you're Alan Pierson, anyway. Their first piece was Derek Bermel’s “Three Rivers” which pretty much leapt off the stage and grabbed my attention. If you look for images of Alarm Will Sound on the internets, you'll run across a photo of them playing in front of a projection screen featuring a Frank Zappa aphorism. That seems appropriate, as this piece of Bermel's reminded me of nothing so much as some of Zappa's compositions - ones done by his groups, yes, but more so pieces that groups like Ensemble Modern have performed.

Their second piece, Oscar Bianchi’s “Mezzogiorno,” didn't blow me away as much, but that probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was working hard through much of the piece to stifle a tickle in my throat that was fighting to turn into a cough. That cold still hasn't gone away. It is making me lose my patience. However, I was better off by the time their third piece, Caleb Burhans’s “oh ye of little faith ... (do you know where your children are?),” began - which is a good thing, because it was lush and beautiful.

The Bang on a Can All Stars were up next. Love them - pretty sure I've written about them here before. Oh, that's a sad, small picture of them, but I didn't want to use the old out-of-date promo shot you see everywhere. They opened with Julia Wolfe's "Lick," which was amazing; moved on to David Lang's “Sunray,” which was zippy; gave us the world premier of Michael Gordon's “For Madeleine,” which he wrote for his mother and which was appropriately moving; and wrapped up with Glenn Kotche's “Mobile.” Glenn is the drummer for Wilco, and he joined the Can Bangers to perform his piece on a second drum set (amidst jokes about Little Feat, the Allman Brothers and other 2-drummer combos) - it's not terribly surprising that his piece was the rockinest of the night, and I'm happy to say that it was also a complex and wholly effective composition. Probably wouldn't give much hope to the "Give me A.M. or give me death" crowd of Wilco fans, who are in for more of the "sonic exploration" incarnation of the band if Kotche's work is any indication. After the set, Glenn came out and sat right behind us, which gave Cory some palpitations. Blah, blah, blah. Girls and drummers. Did I mention that the Bang on a Can pianist, Ning Yu, is really cute?

For the last section of the night, John Schaeffer rhapsodized, at some length, about the legendary status of Steve Reich's “Music for 18 Musicians.” It's true - not many contemporary 'art' compositions have such lofty status or are so well known. I've heard "...18 Musicians" bunches of times, but never live.

Gotta tell you, folks, if you ever wanted proof that live music just exists on a whole other, better, plane than the recorded kind, you could have done worse than showing up at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday night. This piece worked so well on so many levels, and gave us things to appreciate that just don't exist in recorded form. Simple things, like being able to see with your own eyes the attention and endurance of the marimba players, and being able to see things that you have to guess at when you're listening to recorded versions (where do the voices end and the instruments begin?) But also some of the more esoteric, harder-to-define things that work 'room sound' fanatics into a lather: the clarity, the subtlety of the dynamics, that (fuck it, I'll just say it) magic that happens when you've got those air molecules wiggling straight from the musicians to your ears.

And that brings me back around to the Hall renovations. The warm appearance of the room (and the improved comfort of the seating) helps in ways that seem at first to be extra-musical, but actually add quite a bit to the experience. And that experience began pretty much as soon as I stepped out of the subway stairs and saw the facade of the building, the interior visible through huge glass wall/windows. I overheard a couple different groups of passersby murmur impressed comments, along the lines of "Wow. That looks really... great." And it looks great from the inside too, and - most importantly of all - it sounds great.

'Twas a good night out.

Weekend Update

Haven't posted one of these for a while, but this was a good weekend for a general update entry.

Friday -

was a quiet night in. Kind of perfect.

Saturday -

we slept in then went for a fantastic brunch at City Bakery. It was the last day of the Month of Hot Chocolate there. Mmmmm... The food there, while kind of pricey given that it's a serve-yourself buffet, is exceptionally good. Also, as Cory observed, if you don't have kids, it's the type of place that is apt to reinforce your attitudes toward childbearing, whatever they happen to be: it will appeal to you if you want to have kids (so many hip, elegant, interesting-seeming young families) or if you want NEVER to have kids (they are clearly a handful and a half, and it turns out they make a certain amount of noise).

Then I met Terry at MoMA, where we walked through the Martin Kippenberger exhibition. It was very very good - an ambitious retrospective of a wildly prolific artist who burned out and died way too young.

He comes through as a sort of Picasso-obsessed Duschamp disciple by way of Gerhard Richter with a heavy dose of cult-of-my-own-personality Warhol thrown in for good measure. But more original than that slapdash description implies. Also fascinating to me is that he came from a theater/acting background. You should see the show go if you have a chance.




One little note here: kudos to MoMA for overhearing what I (and surely several others) had been saying for some time and offering some audio tours online as podcasts. But why only some of them? If they're already set up for it, I'd think that all the tours (the current ones, at least) would be uploadable. I see why they'd be reluctant to post images of all the works, but it would be quite the useful convenience to be able to download the recorded tour ahead of time, maybe even listen to it between visits. They could restrict some of them to museum members, and make it a selling point. There's got to be somebody at MoMA whose job it is to follow blog alerts - got an answer for me here? Art partisans want to know.

Then Terry and I went to his studio and looked at some of his recent work. Some really good stuff. He's in the process of setting up his website - I'll be sure to link to it when it's running - and looking to get some gallery exhibitions going. If you've been to my place in the last couple years, you probably know that he's responsible for the big multi-panel piece I have up. I'll be shooting that for Terry's site, and maybe I'll post some of the images here too.

We went out and had some food as we watched Duke win a perilously close and hard-fought game against unranked Virginia Tech. Then we headed down to the Village to see Gomorrah, an Italian film which was the darling of all the New York critics last week, about the Neapolitan crime organization Camorra. Problem was, it was sold out. Sad. This is what happens when a movie gets to be the critical fave du jour. SO - we made a call and bought some advance tix at Lincoln Plaza so we could see a later showing uptown. It was good; maybe not really worth the hype, but I was in an especially Italian mood.

Have I mentioned that Cory and I are taking a trip to Rome? Well, we are. I reckon I'll be more than usually enthusiastic about things Italian for the next little while, at least.

Sunday -

I woke up early for some reason and went to the gym for the first time in over a week (I had been sick, and then had a procedure done on my tendonitis-ridden elbow) So that felt good. Then I moved Lola and ran some errands, made a good breakfast, read part of the paper, did a bunch of housework, listened to some great music, talked on the phone a LOT, including the all-important call to my sister, whose birthday was Friday (hey - I called her a bunch of times before I managed to get her on the phone). Also got to watch a good chunk of a Red Sox pre-season game: Beckett and Wakefield both looked strong, so that's good news. Whipped together what was actually a pretty fab dinner (ziti with a chicken, mushroom & artichoke cream sauce), watched a great episode of the Simpsons, did a little reading (including some out-loud Julius Caesar vocalizing - told you I was getting enthusiastic) and went to bed not too too late.

And that was my weekend. So there.

Snow Day

But not for me.

This is the last-gasp storm of the winter in New York (because I say so), and I am in the office for no good reason I can think of.

I feel like everyone else has a snow day and my school is the only one that didn't close.

Took some rather basic and uninspired photos before I left my apartment. Could have gotten some nice blizzard shots, but I had to, you know, go to work. Sad.

By the way: the boss did not make it in today. This after her 'don't come in until the roads are safe' - i.e. DO come in eventually - message. Shocking, I know.

Lou & Me

Cory and I went to see Lou Reed read from his new book of collected lyrics at the Paula Cooper Gallery. It was a good event; interesting to hear what he did with the songs without the element of music, and I really liked the moments when a line would remind him of something and he'd stop the reading to extemporize on the memory/free association. And there was a little discussion with Hal Willner afterward, where they sifted through questions that had been written on little scraps of paper by audience members and dropped in a bowl.



Then afterward a ton of people waited on line for Lou to sign their books and records (he also had some photography books for sale) and get some photos. He refused to look at the camera even when we assured him there'd be no flash (ok, I'll be kind: he declined to look at the camera), but we talked about Poe a little. A very little.

Hey - you don't go to Lou Reed for warm and friendly, now do you?

A Chat about Baseball and Steroids

Here's a slightly edited version of an IM conversation I had with Sue today. For those of you keeping score at home, this would be Boston Sue, not to be confused with Williamstown Sue, or 14th Street Sue, or San Francisco Sue, or any of the other assorted Sues in my life. The discussion presupposes a little bit of knowledge about the situation, but if you've got that, we do a pretty good job of conveying my opinions on the Baseball Juicing Scandal.

It opens up with a quotation Cory sent to me today.

from the A-Rod press conference:

Freudian Slip of the Decade:
“I’m here to take my medicine.”
Alex Rodriguez, February 17, 2009



Sue: oh that's an unfortunate choice of words.
Me: hehehe
Sue: personally i think all the steroids stuff is b.s. - as far as calling out individual players.
Me: oh i totally agree
Sue: 1. mlb knew damn well it was going on, but it was filling the seats, so they were completely happy to look the other way
Me: at least for things that happened before 2004
Sue: 2. it wasn't even illegal when some of these guys were doing it.
Me: well, it kind of was, but it was awfully fuzzy until '05
Me: and a LOT of them were doing it
Sue: 3. the ones who were able to stay ahead of the testing or who were just better at hiding it will never be called to the carpet.
Sue: let the past go. set a competent testing (and punishment) policy now and just move forward already
Me: and while it's kind of fun to watch mr. rod wriggle around and try to sell the idea that he had no IDEA what his 'cousin' was shooting into his ass (other than that it was purchased over-the-counter in d.r.)
Me: it would be one of the all-time peaks of hypocrisy for MLB to punish him for it at this point
Sue: exactly
Me: what's more, i haven't spoken to a single baseball fan who disagrees with us
Me: but, of course, i live in fake america, not real america
Sue: lol!
Sue: but even what they're doing to reputations, future hall of fame chances, etc. is disgusting
Me: the sports writers are vying for attention
Me: the hall of fame and MLB record keepers know better
Me: and hopefully will act like it
Sue: i dunno. people are already saying clemens won't make the hall of fame after his debacle
Me: it's a pity that mcgwire became the poster boy for juicers so early in the discussion

Me: because i don't think that his not getting into the hall had anything to do with 'roids*
Me: clemens not getting in would devalue the hall of fame to the point of reducing it to an homage to the past

Me: it would be a HUGE mistake
Me: bonds too

Me: a-rod too
Sue: agreed
Me: and now that we've solved everything, it's time for me to go home!
Sue: woo-hoo!!!
Me: thanks once again for the brilliant and witty I-correspondence

So there that is. Let me clear up a something before people get all yitzy. I am not endorsing or advocating the use of anabolic steroids, for ballplayers or anyone else. I am opposed to them. They're bad for you. Really bad.

A co-worker of mine said something to the effect of "I have no problem with steroids. I like home runs. Baseball players are like horses - they should shoot up with whatever they want if it makes the game more entertaining for the fans." Now, I disagree with that on a whole bunch of levels. That said, I also disagree with the notion that pro athletes are a good compass for healthy living and/or ethical behavior. That ideal hasn't been particularly valid since World War II, at least not in this country. Henry Aaron, who was and is one of my all-time baseball heros, admits in his book I Had a Hammer that he 'tried using' amphetamines, as was common in his era to increase alertness and endurance over the long season on the road. We don't know for sure how much he used them. And I don't care. He was a great baseball player. If you think the fact that he took speed compromises his claim to being a great man, so be it. I actually think there's an argument to be made that Hank Aaron may be a 'great man.' (You'd have to look far and wide to find someone who'd say that about Barry Bonds.) No one is perfect. And, once again, I think one would be ill-advised to turn to Major League Baseball for models of healthy living.

To sum up:

A bunch of guys (including but not limited to Bonds, Rodriguez and Clemens) took steroids.

A bunch of guys (including but not limited to Hank Aaron) took speed.

Don't know how you'd call it a performance-enhancing drug, but Doc Ellis threw a no-hitter while he was on LSD.

Babe Ruth's regimen of high-fat food, beer and cigars is the stuff of legend.

And while we're on it, baseball's alcohol consumption has never exactly been limited to the champagne at the end of the World Series.

Let this be a reminder to the people who want to start pasting a bunch of asterisks all over the record books and bolt the doors of the Hall of Fame.

I think it's good that Baseball is getting serious about making sure that its athletes don't take steroids. (If it is in fact serious - Baseball had no trouble with steroid use when all those home runs were bringing back disillusioned fans. If you believe that the owners and coaches - and sportswriters - weren't aware of what was going on, I've got a stadium in the Bronx to sell you.) And while there's still a civil libertarian part of me that thinks that there should be a wide berth of freedom in terms of a person's right to put things into his or her own body, I think an honest and enthusiastic national education effort about the effects of anabolic steroids (not to be confused with a big ol' propaganda campaign) would be a great idea. While they're at it, maybe they wouldn't mind covering things like food additives, high fructose corn syrup, livestock antibiotics and growth hormones, and the environmental ramifications of agribusiness.

We can hope, right?

Meanwhile, the full teams are reporting to Spring Training. Can we shut up and play ball?

*For those of you who don't really follow baseball - I think the media stink about Mark Mcgwire being excluded from the Hall of Fame because he admitted juicing is just more fog. He didn't get into the Hall because his career didn't warrant it, steroids or no steroids. He was, as dad would say, a One Tool Player. He could hit for power. Period. And not necessarily when you needed him to. Argue with me if you want (by all means!) but I think that you'd almost have to admit that if they let in Mcgwire, they have to go back and let in Roger Maris.

Wrong

With a capital W.

...Judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

And people say Amy Goodman is a wacko alarmist for referring to the Prison Industrial Complex. Yes, ok - I realize this is an extreme example (though I don't think it's unwarranted, if you'll pardon the pun, to ask how many cases like this there are where the creeps responsible just haven't been caught), but it's also a symptom of a society in which Private Security is one of the fastest growing industries.

Epic fail, people. Epic. Fail.

So, Today Is Kind of Important

I mean, not important like my birthday or anything. But it is Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday. Which is pretty cool.





And, as if that weren't enough, it's also Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday.



Think about that! Two of the most important minds of the millenium (am I exaggerating? I don't think so.) born on the exact same day. That's pretty rad. I don't think they ever hung out though. What if they did? Maybe Tom Stoppard should write a play about it.

One guy from Arizona out there is trying to lump Edgar Allan Poe into the party, but I'm not having it. Don't get me wrong: Poe was great. I love him. I love that he gets claimed by New York, Boston, and Baltimore. One of the most important writers of the 19th Century, for sure. But - his birthday? January 19. Sorry, guy from Arizona: close isn't good enough. Edgar Allan can suck it. We're celebrating February 12 today.


AND - as if that weren't enough - today is also the day that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. Do you think they did it on purpose?

Maybe the Biggest Music Geek I Know

This morning I listened to the Pete Townshend album White City. One of the tunes popped into my head, and I started thinking about how I own the LP of that record, and have the tape around my place somewhere, but that I didn't have it on CD and that's just a shame, so I downloaded it and popped it onto my ipod for the commute in.



Listening to it on the bus, I began to think about the parallels between it and U2's The Joshua Tree.

Before long, I had outlined a whole presentation in my head on the subject - basically a compare-and-contrast lecture/article that I could deliver, including musical and lyrical elements, the projects' places in the context of rock music and popular culture, and the balance that the two albums struck in terms of exploration of the American Landscape and British Urban life. Then I started thinking about this presentation being a part of a course on the subject of rock and pop music seen through the prism of theater.

This was all brought on by a nice close listen to an underappreciated masterpiece of a rock record that I hadn't heard for a while.

It was a pretty good trip to work.

Then work happened for a while (as it will). And we were having lunch and one of the directors mentioned how her mother played dulcimer and is featured on a number of CDs. I asked "Plucked or hammered?" She said that her mom plays a mountain dulcimer, the plucked kind, and one of my other colleagues turned and looked at me with a look of mild astonishment and bemusement. "How do you even know to ask that?"

And I mumbled something about being into an eclectic variety of music, but I probably should have said something like - it's because I may be the biggest music geek I know.

I think we file this one under "winning and losing at the same time"

More Pix of the Hawk

Haven't seen him again. If I do, what should I name him?

Don't Fuck with Opera Fans

Last night, Cory and I went to see the HD screening of the Metropolitan Opera's Orfeo ed Euridice at a theater in Chelsea. It was a great idea - catch this Mark Morris-directed and choreographed interpretation of Gluck's piece, and be done in time to go home, have dinner and watch the Duke/Clemson game. Don't know if you're familiar with this Met Opera HD series, but it's actually pretty fantastic (and it's not New York-specific: there are screenings across the country). For a selection of Operas, there are live screenings, and then they'll repeat the screenings once or twice to give people another chance to see them. Excellent camera work, pretty good sound (weird echo sometimes), interesting features beforehand and during intermissions - it's a really good way to get to know the pieces, and you feel more a part of the production than you do in even the best seats at the Met. I mean, ok: no - you're not there live and in person. That can't be replicated. But I guarantee there is not a seat in the house with a better view of the performers' faces, or costume and set details. And the tickets cost less than all but the very worst seats in the Met. It's a very safe bet if you're in the mood for an opera.


But [you knew there was going to be a "but"] not last night.

Last night there were some "technical difficulties" which prevented the screening from happening. Man, you have never seen so many senior citizens (this was one of those occasions when I was one of the youngest people in the room) get so pissed off in your life. The theater sent up four people (count 'em - four) to make the announcement and organize the fallout. Before the first sentence was out of the manager's mouth, people were groaning and whining and shouting things. The scene at the Simpsons Premier Fail was nothing compared to this. People started complaining and would not rest.

And the people at the theater did a pretty good job of helping the situation (or trying to). They offered a full refund, a screening there and then of a different opera they had in stock, and/or a voucher for a different movie if you didn't want to stay for the second-choice opera. You'd think that would mollify people who, essentially, had no alternative at their disposal anyway.

Ummm... no.

They wanted to see this opera. Now. They wanted other choices. They wanted their choice of alternate operas to win (even when there had been a vote and it clearly hadn't won). They wanted a more accountable vote. And I suspect that if there had been another vote, there would have been a hanging chad issue to whine about too.

In their defense (I guess), this was the final encore screening of a tight, compact opera that has received all-but-unanimous raves, and which is finished for the season. Which means: this may have been the very last time in the history of ever that we had a chance to see this company perform this production. (Though I'm holding out the hope that it will be shown on PBS or released on DVD or something.) The winner of the alternate opera vote, Richard Strauss' Salome, while one that I like a lot, is not for all tastes. [Oh, and that led to more fun with disgruntled patrons: as the poor cinema employees were reading off the options and pronounced it 'Suh-LOAM' there were appalled shrieks of correction 'SA-lo-may!!!!!!' You can't really imagine it.]

It was pretty hilarious. Though not, of course, for the poor people working there, who had to wrangle the Strauss fans back into their seats and corral everybody else (Cory and I chose to take a voucher and head home - we'll go back and catch Milk or something) out into the lobby for the interminable process of crediting people's accounts (God help you if you bought your ticket with cash).

So we were sad to miss Orfeo, but hopefully we can catch it next year. And the entertainment value of the Debacle of Supreme Whininess? It was messy and not artful at all, but it was a pretty good consolation prize. The Greatest Generation making themselves heard in the most ridiculous way. Pure New York.

Props to the good people working at the Clearview Chelsea. I feel for you.

Now that Duke/Clemson disaster is another story...

Guess Who's Standing in the Window?

In the years I've lived in my place, I've gotten used to the pigeons in the window. They weren't there much when I had a cat, but in the years since, they've gradually made themselves at home there. Yes, it's a mess; no they're not nearly as cute or as happiness-making as the mourning doves who nested in my window in Illinois; no I haven't gotten around to putting up pikes or other deterrents.

Yesterday morning, though, I saw something I have not ever seen in the years I've lived in Hoboken. As I was getting ready to make coffee, I looked out the window, and saw this guy standing on the fire escape.

That would be a hawk. A hawk! Right there out my window on a snowy day.

The light was great, so I snapped a few shots. He stayed there valiantly (though he did not deign to step out of that shadow crossing his body). I'll post a tighter shot when I get back to my computer at home, but I like the composition of this one. See the hawk's shadow on the brick wall to the right?

I'm not enough of a naturalist to know what breed of hawk this is. Red Tailed, maybe? If you happen to know that kind of thing, give a shout.

So that was a good start to my day. And perhaps you'll notice that there are no pigeons anywhere in this photo. Nor were there any on my windowsill. This could turn into a real win-win situation.

Lost in Translation

Really lost.

This is a ridiculous but very funny feature showing movie posters from around the world. These are so very wrong they are tough to resist. You gotta wonder about the thinking that goes into something like this Russian poster for Star Wars...



Help us, graphic design team: you're our only hope.

NYC Legos

Ok, this is the second one of these that I've reblogged in about as many months. Christoph Niemann seems to have a pretty good track record with these online segments, this one being his Lego Ode to New York.