Monday, March 27, 2006

Time for a Rerun

Tomorrow is election day in Israel. Here's a quiz from before.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Jail Bait to Play Porn Score


The Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra’s Winter Concert Sunday will include a performance of Ravel’s Bolero.

A sensuous exploration of the orchestral palette, Bolero’s silky and exotic themes are heard first in tender solos then gain girth as more instruments pile on. To a steady, pulsating rhythm “the obsessive repetition builds tension to an overwhelming climax.” (ASYO Program Notes.) Most famously used as get-it-on music in 10 with Dudley Moore and Bo Dereck, Bolero has long been the pseudo-intellectual alternative to Marvin Gaye, Barry White or Lorne Green's On the Ponderosa.

The Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra consists of 120 members all of high school age.

If you go, try not to look too long at the clarinetist as she moistens her reed. (Or the bassoonist who takes two at a time.)

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Protestant Work Ethic


Today is Johann Sebastian Bach's birthday. The greatest composer of post-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment Europe, Bach wrested sacred choral music from Latin--a dying language--and set it to German--an unsingable one. True to the Baroque aesthetic, his life saw a constant "spinning out" of cantatas, concerti, toccatas and kids. (20 in all. Nine of 'em lived!)

At the heart of Protestantism is the belief that neither an elaborate church hierarchy nor even a single priest need act as intermediary between an individual and God's wrath. Like Job, we are each free to offer our pleas and lamentations directly to God and experience his derisive laughter or cold indifference for ourselves.

Appalled by the corruption, sensuality and empty ritual of the Latin Church, German Lutherans venerated hard work. Soon, constant, drudging labor became the Protestant way to crush the soul.

"Wachet Auf! You must clock in!"

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Now at 7 Stages


Double Edge Theatre’s The UnPOSSESSED at 7 Stages celebrates the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote by “fusing popular and circus arts, including acrobatics, puppetry, aerial theatre and commedia, with live original music….” The small ensemble of 6 players means each in turn gets to climb and swing on makeshift trapeze, sing and play instruments as well as portray vivid characters from Renaissance Spain. It's very intimidating.

But then as one who neither sings, dances nor acts (a triple non-threat) I'm easily intimidated. I've even been know to get jealous watching
Wayne Newton play 2-bar solos (of mostly 2 notes) on "13 different instruments!"







Show off.
But can he usher on a Friday night?

Monday, March 13, 2006

The Painter of Light Casts a Shower of Gold Upon a Pile of Pooh!







From an LA Times article on Thomas Kinkade:

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

And later:

In a deposition, the artist alluded to his practice of urinating outdoors, saying he "grew up in the country" where it was common. When pressed about allegedly relieving himself in a hotel elevator in Las Vegas, Kinkade said it might have happened.

"There may have been some ritual territory marking going on, but I don't recall it," he said.


So now he's hacking Serrano? What's next, a self-portrait with sun-drentched bullwhip up his ass?

Funny, my old neighborhood had a dog who'd mark his territory with derivative, cloyingly saccharine crap that his owner'd scoop with Wonder Bread bags.
Good old Cerberus.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Cheap Computer Mic. Now with Cheesy Keyboard!

To enhance the experience, first listen to these guys:
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Playing on Conan
http://www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com)

Then this guy:
Phosphorescent
http://www.myspace.com/phosphorescent)



Andy Devine bio
Andy says "Plunk Your Magic Twanger"

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Pierre Post


They used to say that in South Dakota if you got an abortion on a Friday you could see the forceps coming on Wednesday.

'Cause it's so flat.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Texas Barbecue and Saffron Rice

President Bush offered floral homage to Mahatma Ghandi Thursday morning (overnight Wednesday GMT) despite criticism for his non-non-violent policies.

In an awkward foreign dignitary exchange Hindu nationalist Lal Krishna Advani made a last-minute swing by the King Center while on a visit to Atlanta. "We really just came to see the new aquarium but it kind of looks bad if you don't at least drive by," said the former Bharatiya Janata Party president. Asked to comment on Dr. King, Advani praised him as "a credit to his caste."