Last night I went to see my friends Jason (aka mrwhistlebear) and Karen perform at the Registry Theatre, as Gaedelica (named from a Gaelic book of poetry, Carmina Gadelica). They are both quite talented. One of their pieces was an original arrangement of The Huron Carol, which I hope they record. Great job guys!

They were followed by a Celtic band, Rant Maggie Rant, which I knew nothing about, other than the evening theme was "Celtic" and "Christmas music". If you know me well, you might know this pairing might make me apprehensive. It did, but I'm glad I stuck around. The Registry Theatre was packed to the gills; they were turning people away when I got there (20 minutes before the show). The band was talented, very energetic, and their two lead singers were attractive, too. One sort of looked like a slightly more fey version of Sting. The other singer made me want to start wearing vests- he wore his well- black vest, black dress shirt, purple tie, gray slacks. Porkpie hat.

And home by 10:30.
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This weekend's main project was cleaning my home office floor. I rented a carpet vac, followed the instructions, and hey, the carpet is clean! ...-er, at least. I'm worried about the off-gassing- my last attempt to clean carpet in this house resulted in a severe reaction from dan, and while it didn't smell like anything yesterday, today there was something like new-car smell, so I went over it again with the vac with just water instead of soap. And there was a distressing amount of dirt picked up the second time around, as well. I suppose this is a cost of dog ownership. Yeah. I'm blaming the dog. She's the main reason we still have one room with carpet- it would make her unhappy if we took it out, because she uses it as her towel when she comes in from the rain and snow (after she's already been dried off).
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Also yesterday I made fudge for today's Christmas Desert Potluck at Quaker Meeting. I was, once again, apprehensive (it's been years since I've made fudge), but it got a number of accolades, including people coming around asking who made it, so I'm happy. Meeting was good, too.
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My desk is a disaster area. I haven't gotten back on top of the scattered papers since getting back from two weekends away, and we're reaching critical density. Ack.

At least the house is otherwise clean. Except for the furniture from my office which I moved out to clean the floor. Hm, I guess I should put that back when the floor's dry, or dan will be surprised.
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Dan comes home on Tuesday! Yay!

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I finally upgraded my laptop to Snow Leopard; the "family pack" DVD has been sitting on my desk since dan did his upgrade. It wasn't as painless as I'd hoped, because when I last swapped drives, I apparently used the wrong default partition map (Apple Partition Map instead of GUID) so Snow Leopard said I had to wipe the drive. So I babysat a reformat/recopy/upgrade (in the process discovering that my backup was not, in fact, bootable as I had thought; whoops.)

Apple did an excellent thing with this release, by the way- I was still running 10.4, and the upgrade DVD jumped me up to 10.6. They didn't have to make it this easy, and in Windows and Linux, I would be looking at either a sequential two-step upgrade, or wiping the disk and reinstalling my software and data; both probably a more fault-prone process than whatever Apple had to do to make this upgrade work in one step.

And I like Snow Leopard.

(Although, chatting with dan in iChat, we discovered the graphic for :-P looks like a big smile-and-tongue, which is just wrong. I don't know if it was that way in 10.4, but NOW IT IS WRONG.)

Ahem.

After my first 24 hours in Chicago...

Friday night, we were off to Steppenwolf Theatre to see American Buffalo, by David Mamet. I hadn't known anything about it, other than it being a classic, and it turned out to be a real treat. The seats were excellent (even though they were in the back row; it was a small theatre), and the play itself was disturbing and well done. "Disturbing" because it said much about friendship and "business" (read, shady dealings). The set made me smile- the stage was made to be a junk shop in a basement, with much of a real junk shop's worth of stuff cluttering the stage, with amazing lighting coming from "upstairs" or from florescent bulbs. Very intricate, as also were the story and the dialogue.

Saturday, we went for deep dish pizza at a nearby bar and didn't pay much attention to the (American) football on the tube, except when the guy next to us at the bar made a comment in our direction about a play. I burned my tongue on some marinara sauce.

We walked around Old Town, and we saw A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant. It was very merry, indeed. Fairly self-referentially funny (it started with a disclaimer about Scientology and Dianetics being copyright, etc etc.) The players were all kids, the set was very simple, and it was a 60-minute show. We agreed 60 minutes was a good length.

Then, to a Mexican restaurant, where our dinner was overshadowed by the blind-date a table over, where the guy really needed a hearing-aid, because we didn't need to hear him strike out.

Sunday: more touring around, including The Art Institute of Chicago, which has added a large wing since I was last there in 2006. High points for me: a temporary exhibit called "Light Me Black" - the floor was drywall punched with a lot of craters, and some hundred florescent tube lights were suspended in the middle of the room. Entering, we were told, "please watch your step and don't make more holes." It was remarkably stark, and I liked that. There was also a wonderful exhibit on Arts and Crafts in Britain and Chicago; not only Frank Lloyd Wright, but Stickley furniture, Tiffany glass, and photos by Alfred Stieglitz and others. I was amazed by two finds: a self-portrait by Edward Steichen, a bichromate gum photograph which appears as a painting- Steichen manipulated the print with brush-strokes to add both white and black shades. I stood there studying it for quite a while. ...And there was a neat piece by Marion Mahony Griffin, a line drawing of a Frank Lloyd Wright house which used space and light/dark in a stylistically Japanese way. I appreciated how the exhibit called out a number of associations between Arts and Crafts and design elements taken from Japanese forms in the mid-1800s- lots of connections I hadn't known of.

In the evening, we popped off to Alinea for the most decadent dinner I've ever had. ( Twelve courses )

So that's how I ended my Chicago trip; with a hangover, pulling my bags through a new layer of snow, back through the Red Line, Orange Line L, to Midway (a bit concerned about time; the train was slow; but then my plane was late arriving), back to Toronto Island, back to Royal York Hotel, where I sat and read for an hour because my late plane meant I missed the earlier bus back, then dragged myself up to the Greyhound station to catch the 3pm bus home, which got me in the door at 5:30.

Which, I'll note, was just exactly 24 hours after the caviar, champagne, and quail eggs.

This life, it is a good one.

Oh, finally: I think Porter was a good choice, but not a great choice. I didn't pay more for the plane ticket, the departures lounge in Toronto was wonderful; but on the way back, missing that bus meant I got home two hours after I'd hoped I would, turning a 7-hour travel day into 9-hour travel. *shrug* It was a good experiment, at least.

I just attended a thought-provoking talk by Stewart Brand, on the topic of his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. In capsule form: the formerly back-to-the-land ecologist makes a strong argument for pro-city, pro-nuclear power, pro-genetically modified food, and pro-geoengineering strategies for mitigating the damage we're currently doing to our planet.

I took a few notes, but I recommend anyone with interest to watch the talk, as it is already up on the web; it's approx. 45 minutes for the talk, 15 minutes of questions. (you'll want to fast-forward to the 2-minute mark).

Things he said which struck me as interesting, though I've done no follow-up research:

- The Darfur war can be argued to be rooted in an environmental catastrophe- they ran out of water; which I knew. But he then showed a map of the Himalayas; its glaciers provide much of the water for Pakistan, through India. Hm.

- 2009 was the first time 50% of the world's population live in cities. Projection of the world's ten largest cities in 2015: only one, NYC, is in the West.

- Discussing new immigrants to cities India; "As an environmentalist, I don't want to stand in their way."

- "Megatons to Megawatts"- 10% of energy in the US is currently generated by energy from decommissioned Soviet nuclear warheads. He thinks this as one of the most amazing swords-to-plowshares stories of our time.

- Environmentalists who know the most are the most strident about the dangers. On nuclear power, those who know the most are least strident.

- 4th generation nuclear power reactors are now commercially viable; these include "microreactors" which are self-contained capsules, many designs are meltdown-proof, and one could easily power a small city. One prototype he likes uses thorium as the reactant, which is 3-4 times more abundant than uranium and produces several orders of magnitude less long-lived radioactive waste. Watch this space.

- There is now an undyed blue rose; a GM product with genes from petunias. You can buy them in Japan for $20 a stem.

- Geoengineering may be the most effective means to lower global temperatures- introducing particles into the stratosphere has been happening for Earth's entire history. When Mt. Pinatubo blew, it lowered temperatures 3 degrees for a year; and biologists talk about "Pinatubo cubs"- a population boom of polar bears from that winter.

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I'm curious what people think of his talk, and what struck you from it. I will probably read his new book.

I realize how much impact his older works have had on me. To begin with, The Whole Earth Catalog probably had big impact on my parents; some of the designs he talked about were things they tried (solar water heating, back-to-the-land-ism). I might be lucky I didn't grow up in a yurt. But I spent a long while reading the Whole Earth Catalog as a kid, and his book on the MIT Media Lab did strongly shape my high-school plans for what I wanted to study. I also realize that the flavour of much of his writing- an imperative to improve one's life with better tools; an environmentalism based on the latest science; and elements of hippie collectivism- have stuck with me. Of course not only through him as a source, but I think he does rightly hold a title of "visionary."

Also, idiosyncratic crazy guy, who puts arrows all over his annotations, but whatever.

Precis summary: Go. See. Sunday in the Park with George at the Shaw Festival, playing through November 1.

d. said in his review that if you go on Sunday, it's $40 a ticket. Very worth it and the drive to get there, from here at least. (If you're in Colorado, possibly not...) d's seen it a bunch of times, sometimes well-done, sometimes not so well. But the Shaw did it justice. 

I had never seen this show; I've listened to d. singing from it, and playing the album from it, for as long as we've been together. 

The story is of George Saurat, whose most famous painting is hanging in Chicago's art gallery. I saw it in '06, and ya know what? I liked it.  A good portion of the first act takes place among the 'real people'  who Saurat is painting; and eventually we see them collected as characters within the painting.  The story of Saurat is somewhat fictionalized, as he was fairly unnoticed during his lifetime.  In this story he's got a girlfriend who leaves him for a baker, who comes to America, then in act two, her daughter is the grandmother of an artist working with video and light.

The songs, which I've heard many times over the years, become a lot less disconnected with the show to tie it together.  The pieces at the end of Act One, where things come together- are really worth seeing on stage.

The overall themes that spoke to me: from chaos, order; the march of time; the challenges of being an artist and living with an artist. But mostly: the joy and wonder of creation. 

The production was well done. The costuming was wonderful: mostly the florid 19th century France in act one. 

The set was properly realistic and also "cardboard cutout" where appropriate. (In act one, there were a pair of soldiers; one was an actor, and the other was an identical painted cutout. Which got played for laughs when they went on double-dates). The sound was fine: as d. mentioned, the players were un-miked, which was a joy.

Mostly I want to say, yeah, good show. And have those of you who haven't seen it, to be on the lookout for good productions of it where ever you are!

We drove to Toronto last Sunday to see a friend who was visiting town. Seeing Wendy was delightful; it had been over a year and we had some catching up to do.

We found Simple Bistro when we were walking along Mount Pleasant Rd. from where we parked to where Wendy was staying, and it looked from outside like Our Kind of Place.  And Wendy was game, so we walked back to scope it out again. There happened to be a table (it was otherwise full- very noisy at the start) and they fed us terrific food.  I think it's the best restaurant dinner I've had in quite a while. I had an asparagus / heirloom tomato salad, Wendy had a wonderful fresh pea soup, and d. had sardines, which were so good he didn't share.  For the main courses, I had muscovoy duck with a cheesy dumpling concoction on the side that was really complex in flavour; d. had red snapper in a lobster sauce; and W. had char. We had many moments of silence, just being happy with our lots in life. 

The waiter, who was quite cute, was also quite attentive. I wish I had been able to take a photo, but at one point, he and a cook were each sharing a moment with a cocktail, both of them framed in the bar/kitchen doorway...

Desert for me was chocolate mousse, and for both d. and W., a rhubarb strawberry shortbread.

Highly recommended if you can get to that part of town... We had never been in the Mt. Pleasant area before- but if someone else were wanted to meet us there for dinner, we might be convinced! :)

Just got back from Toronto, seeing Williiam Finn talk about his shows and listen to songs from Falsettos, A New Brain, Elegies: Song Cycle, and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Makes me glad to be alive, hearing his work. As good show tunes will. ...Not at all fluffy, this show; nearly all the songs were ballads, sad ballads at that. Of the pieces I'd never heard before, I really liked two from Elegies, both which gave me a lump in my throat: "14 Dwight Ave." and "Infinite Joy", both sung by Barbara Barsky, who at the end thanked Mr. Finn for writing excellent songs for middle-aged women.

Thank you, Mr. Finn, for writing excellent songs.

I did say thank you to him, and he gave a very polite "thank you for coming." Just before a kid came up and begged for a photo, which he got.

And now, bed awaits, because tomorrow's a full day too.

We went to Toronto last night to see A New Brain, a musical put on by Acting Up Stage- which closes tonight. (Hey, there are still tickets! Go see it! I'm thinking of a few Toronto friends who would enjoy this- particularly metalana & amaryllis...)

Music and lyrics are by William Finn, who also wrote Falsettos and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It's mostly autobiographical; he wrote it after he had a brain aneurysm. Gordon Schwinn (not Finn) is a songwriter for a kids' TV show with a tyrannical frog for a boss (Mr. Bungee is the TV personality; he shows up in a number of scenes, via hallucinations and in Gordon's imagination. He's always in a frog suit.)

There are songs about calimari, sailboats, craniotomy, genetics, and horse-racing. There is an unsympathetic doctor who is very excited about his patients' diseases. Roger and his Jewish mother have a messy relationship; Roger and his seemingly upper-crust boyfriend have a complicated relationship that seems a bit sketched-out instead of properly developed.

The songs have made me chuckle ever since dan got the audio recording of the show a few years ago. But seeing them acted was a real treat- there is overall flow to the story when you see the players interact; and they do an excellent job constructing story-scenes from Gordon's memory.

My favourite example, I think, is all the medical professionals put on patient clothes, come out with walkers and saline drip poles, sing the beginning of the song about Roger's father- which segues into a horse-race, where the three walkers turn into the wall of a racetrack and the players are all super-slow-motion bettors at the track waving on the horses, as Roger sings about how his father lost their family fortunes but claimed it was worth it; sometimes joy is expensive. It really worked for me.

There were also great dance numbers on Gordon's Laws of Genetics ("why is the smart son always gay?") and a dream scene when he's convinced he's brain-dead and he'll never get to finish his best songs.

The overall tone is "madcap," which does fit the off-kilter medical emergency side of it. But there are places it doesn't quite flow properly (some parts with the boyfriend seem sketched, and the parts with a homeless woman who never seems to exactly have a place).

I'd give it 3 of 4 stars, where 2 stars is "go if you like musicals." (And I suppose 4 stars is "even go if you don't like musicals...")

I apologize if you haven't seen it, because the next paragraph is probably not going to make much sense.

I can't believe I hadn't seen this movie until now. A sentimentalist like me. I liked it. A lot. I mean, aside from agreeing with the lesson that erasing someone's painful memories wouldn't be the easy right answer; aside from the two leads which had amazing chemistry and the well-done production which used effects without feeling trite; and apart from the sheer "what the hell just happened". Something through this made me quite sad and also grateful. I'm guessing it might have to do with the connections of memory-loss and life-loss. And loneliness. Joel's re-imagining the beach-house with Clem, forcing himself to reinvent a memory he could keep, with her in it- felt like a fairly major assertion about the best of our stubbornness, fighting giving in to despair. And again the motif of learning something different this time around the loop, this time regarding relationships revisiting the same emotional ground again.

So, what did you think of it?...

Ironically, after I rented this but before I watched it, dan and I were talking about what to do with ephemera such as old audio tapes. So my plan was to go through my box of cassette tapes and decide whether I need to send my mix tapes off to these folks to record them digitally at ~$6 a tape. I got far enough to realize I kinda didn't have the wherewithal to deal with that at the same time as watching the movie.

melted_snowball and I went to see the Met production of Doctor Atomic, a John Adams opera set just before the first atom bomb test at Los Alamos.

It was at our local Cineplex, which made for a surreal "brave the hordes of afternoon children's matinees to sit down and see the Metropolitan Operahouse live in front of me in High Definition video." d. saw a Britten opera (Peter Grimes) in the same theatres, earlier this year, but this was new for me.

I consider myself a poor opera watcher- I've never gotten into the form, partly because it's so darn expensive, and watching opera on video has just never turned my crank. This experience was neat. Probably not as neat as seeing it front-row-centre at the Met, but it was a fine afternoon activity (instead of a weekend NYC trip such as bats22's experience last month.)

The opera?

I *loved* the set: we first see the periodic table projected on the curtain; which goes translucent to show a rough mountain landscape made of suspended fabric, and metal junk dangled from the ceiling. The curtain goes up, and two three-story walls come in from either side- each with pictures projected in a 7x3 grid. The grid elements turn out to be window-shade curtains, which are raised to show people working in individual cubbyholes, sitting at tiny desks doing math. And there we have the setting of much of the first act; the scientists at Los Alamos stressing over their as-of-yet unproven (and decidedly scary) atomic bomb.

The music was neat- staccato, rhythmic- d. said it sounded too much like a film score, but I liked it, admittedly not as much as his orchestral work (indeed I don't think I know any Adams by the sound of it other than that linked piece. More to explore!)

I feel poorly qualified to judge the performers; I didn't see any faults, certainly.

The only false note in the opera, I felt, was the very end. The program describes the conclusion as: "the triggering circuits begin to fire. 'Zero minus one.' There is an eerie silence."

They ended the opera with a bright light behind the stage, lighting up the metal junk and the suspended fabric mountains. This didn't feel eerie; it felt like an attempt to evoke a nuclear blast, and it fell short.

There were wonderful eerie moments- in the second act as the scientists are revealed turned every-which-way in their cubbies, many upside-down and looking like they got scattered like toys. Then, minutes later, the top row of scientists are replaced by other figures, which I won't describe in case it's a spoiler.

The best background info I found was an annotated synopsis by The Exploratorium, though it's a few steps to find on the site ("enter site" -> skip intro -> "annotated synopsis"). Lots of depth there- the Muriel Rukeyser piece they used for Oppenheimer's wife Kitty's soliloquy (Easter Eve 1945) is set just months before the events in the opera, with the narrator exhausted of war...

Anyhow. Glad we went. Now I think I see a dog who needs a walk...!

Friday night we saw the movie Diabolique, which was one of Hitchcock's style-influences. It was an OK (but merely OK) suspense/horror story.

Which I bring up now because it ended with a spoiler warning. Something like, "Don't be diabolical! Keep the surprise ending from your friends who haven't seen it yet!" ...And fifty years later, I won't say more about the surprise, out of respect for that.

This week, I've also seen a two-part Doctor Who episode from the new Series 4, which involves the Doctor meeting another time-traveller- she knows him very well; he's just meeting her for the first time. The show handled the interpersonal dynamics quite well. She'd tell him something impossible, he'd ask her incredulous questions, and she said, "Sorry, spoiler." The look on his face...

I like the dance in this show, between the Doctor being omniscient yet not- compared to men, he's like a god; but his omniscience usually turns out to be experience over his amazingly long lifespan, being very clever, and having good instincts for how things ought to turn out.

And this makes a story. True omniscience and omnipotence only make good stories in short doses (or maybe as acquired tastes).

(Of course in Doctor Who, he also treads the line on omnipotence; I know some people find it overly deus ex machina, but there seem to be a lot of things in science fiction that I'm willing to suspend disbelief for when it otherwise feels like a good story...)

I was recently thinking about these: would I be happier to know how something will turn out, with 100% certainty? How about probabilities? It seems to me that's the difference between a spoiler and a coming-attraction; it's all in the mystery.

And if I may get a bit theological in my journal; if there's a word for what God means to me, it might just be that: mystery.

So: bring on all the predictions through any human filter you like. But if we get to the time where we've got scientific instruments that can map a person's life with 100% certainty, or if I were to suddenly discover I believe in a God who doesn't respect free will... I expect then I'll have problems.

I finished the audio-book version of Stumbling on Happiness on the drive back from my parents' place.

I wrote about Daniel Gilbert last August when he was interviewed on Tapestry, the CBC radio program on faith and spirituality (and so did d., which I link to from that post). Re-reading my impressions at the time, I conclude his book made a much better impression on me than it appears his radio-interview and TED lecture did. In no small part because he was able to set out his arguments completely, not constrained to 30 or 20 minutes. (Good gawd, he sounds strident and pressed for time in the TED talk.)

I took out of the library both his book and the unabridged audio version (read by Gilbert). The book copy was recalled so I only read a few chapters in print. I recommend either, or both. It made a fine accompaniment to driving many hours on the 401.

The book is pleasantly engaging, with a very accessible style that I only occasionally wish had been more terse. He mixes in with his psychology research a smattering of jokes I actually found funny- occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.

I'm torn on how much I'd like to say about the content. Others will have written better than I can. I think Gilbert writes most effectively about unexpected psych research results. For example (and this isn't an exhaustive list of the good stuff, it's just off the top of my head) :

* People overestimate their emotional reactions to future events. Our psychological "immune system" kicks in when awful things happen, making them feel... bad, but not as bad as you'd expect them to.

* However, the psychological immune system won't kick in under a certain threshhold. So a slightly bad event can fester in your mind worse than a really bad event.

* We, obviously, edit our memories; and we do so in a way to self-validate our beliefs. The fascinating thing to me is that we also edit our predictions of our feelings from before-hand, so we can self-validate the way we ended up feeling. "We remember feeling the way we thought we would feel, whether we felt like that or not." We're really a mess when it comes to accurately remembering feelings, and Gilbert mentions a few "emotional blind-spots" which consistently trip us up.

I liked this interview with him; it gives a fair sense of his writing style.

Something else I appreciate: when I got to the end, I wished I had a study group to help hash out my thoughts on the book. It turns out, and I think I read this last year, that Gilbert posted a study guide to go along with the Harvard frosh class he teaches based on the book. I can probably get access to most of the articles he cites.

So I'm pondering whether to try and find a dozen other people who just read this book and see what we might do with it.

Friday night, d. and I headed out to Drayton to see A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

It was a fun show, and I was impressed at how well it's stood up. It was probably quite scandalous for its initial run in 1962: we've got under-dressed courtesans, a bawdy house, lots of double entendres, a dirty old man, a tender virgin couple, and... well, you get the picture.

The story was simple enough as a carrier for the wonderful physical comedy and musical numbers. The only character who felt any more than two-dimensional to me was Pseudolus the slave, who was also the narrator; he's a scoundrel who drives the plot, but has second thoughts near the end about whether he should stay a slave or go through with trying to become free. The players were fine- particularly the male leads, who all did a fair amount of slapstick. The female leads, perhaps by design, didn't have as much to do in the first half, though the female love interest, Phila, carries off the role of naive well. The second half has an extended scene where everyone is running in some direction, and given the cast of almost 20, it was fairly impressive. The musical numbers had an element of, "oh yeah, that's from this too:" "Comedy Tonight" (which for me is permanently tied to the Muppets), "Pretty Little Picture," "[Isn't She] Lovely", and "Everybody Ought To Have a Maid." (which had a wonderful double encore, adding an additional performer each time).

The set was clever: three fairly ho-hum Roman stucco houses, but for emphasis the columns lit from the inside, sometimes with chaser-lights, sometimes all three houses at once.

My only complaints? The horn-player in the orchestra seemed to distract me more than the horn should've. Maybe it was just too loud. And 20 minutes intermission is too long for a show that starts at 8, especially if they hold a raffle at the end of it. But no matter, it was a fun evening with d. We've seen one other show in Drayton, Man of La Mancha last year, which was also well done. The Drayton run ended yesterday but if you're up for a drive, they're playing at the Huron Country Playhouse through the end of the August.

Elora Festival Singers put on a sequel to their concert last year, "Paradise Lost," which was a lovely program of Pärt and Whitacre. (melted_snowball reviewed that concert here).

The Festival Singers were in fine voice, but the program wasn't as stunning as last year's. They played two Latin masses, Cantus Missae in E flat by Joseph Rheinberger, Messe En Sol Majeur by Francis Poulenc. They played an arrangement of Kein deutscher Himmel from Mahler's 5th Symphony, and Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine by Eric Whitacre.

The first mass soared with great harmonies. The second didn't do much for me, but I'm fairly convinced I just don't like any Poulenc.

The Mahler was sung to "Excerpts from Sennette aus Vendig (Sonnets from Venice)," and it was gorgeous and well-sung. But it had an "Off Stage Soloist," a feature I spent too much time trying to figure out when I should've been listening more closely, and now that I'm home I haven't been able to track down why they did it. It wasn't a particularly ethereal piece, and it wasn't the "funeral march" movement of the symphony. I dunno. Also, they flubbed up the program, merging the beginning of the Whitacre with the translation of the Sonnets from Venice. (Da Vinci didn't live in Venice!)

The Whitacre was beautiful, and the piece seems well-represented at youtube in case you're curious.

Leonardo dreams of his flying machine
tormented by visions of flight and falling,
more wondrous and terrible each than the last...

[I think this treatment of the piece is better than the one we heard today; which isn't too surprising because it was conducted by Eric Whitacre himself. The one we saw had a bit too much percussion in the last minute; it felt gimmicky, where the version Whitacre conducted just feels upbeat. ]

All in all, a good concert, just not a great concert.

But the company was wonderful- persephoneplace and I kibbutzed about life and such on the drive up and back. And we had cucumber sandwiches and punch served to us by clergy.

And then for something different, after we got back to town we stopped downtown at the Craft Beer and Ribsfest, which hurt our ears and sensibilities just a little. (Both of us wanted to go tell a young woman to pull up her damn pants; and the Blues musicians seemed to be slightly soused.)

Oh, and we have a photo we'd like your collective wisdom as we try to figure out what the hell it is...

Earlier this week when I was working on my paper d. got Pat and Mike to keep him company. Well I'm glad he didn't watch it then, because this is a Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movie I liked more than Adam's Rib.

Kate plays a "girl athlete" and Spencer plays her manager; the inevitable happens, but not quite as you'd expect given the standard formula. There's a handshake, near the end, that had me nearly dying with laughter.

Oh, and there's the scene where Kate shoves Spencer aside in order to very effectively beat up a pair of mobsters. Then we get the reenactment for the police, where she does it again, very prim and upper-crust.

And there's the jealous other guy, and the other jealous guy, who happens to be the very attractive young boxer who Spencer still manages but isn't paying attention to, now that he's got the "girl dynamo." Great chemistry all around, and fairly real characters, if a bit flat.

But I wish they still made movies with as much overall panache.

I should start a collection, top-notch feminist movies from the 50s. This, and Adams Rib, and... hm.

The Geographer's Library is Jon Fasman's first novel; I will probably read his second when it comes out in October.

It's rare for a mystery novel to draw me in. Successful points: a likable but somewhat unreliable narrator, wide-ranging storylines (Moscow, Siberia, Estonia, Turkey; 1200 through modern times) and just a bit of magic.

The narrator is a small-town New England weekly newspaper reporter, newly graduated from school. One of the profs of his school turns up dead, and he's asked to write the obituary. Paul feels like the story isn't adding up, especially after the town coroner is murdered, and the more he digs, the less sense it makes. Apparently the prof was twice arrested for shooting a firearm on campus, but the police were convinced to squelch the investigations.

Add a love interest, a professor who knows a bit of the story but wants to know what else is happening to his department, and a gung-ho police-person, and you have a fairly standard potboiler. (Ho hum).

But what makes this story work for me is that chapters alternate with a history of the court geographer of Sicily from 1200 who gathered a library of alchemy instruments. The stories of these 14 instruments as they pass from hand to hand through the ages is what does it for me- there's a gradual sense of fate about it, but also the work of a shadowy hand in action. The eventual denoument for Paul feels a bit... cheap, as he really shouldn't have survived it, but that he does. I guess somebody hsa to live to write the story.

It feels a bit like a less intense Cryptonomicon with less math and many fewer pages (375 or so). If you like Neil Stephenson, but don't mind a bit of alchemy, it's possible you'll like this. It was a quick read.

This book came from the remainders at a book-sale last fall; I flipped to a random page and the writing style drew me in. Something made me think it would be a good choice for melted_snowball's dad for Christmas. He liked it enough he wanted to give it back so I could read it. And I'll give it back to melted_snowball's mom when she's here next weekend, for his dad to give to someone else to read. I'm not sure it's as successful a novel as all that, but it was a good find on the remainders shelf.

Nachos, cheeseburger,
cheddar in sushi. One of
these does not belong.


Contemplations on the Guelph Roll, Fuji All You Can Eat Sushi, in (you guessed it) Guelph.

And I hope the next table over was as amused as we were when we realized we had to write haikus over dinner.

(I brought work home with me; I was going to write this review tomorrow, but the work turned out to be an easier read than expected, so this becomes an earlier review).

This evening was a DaCapo concert with the Guelph Chamber Choir, rescheduled from nearly a month ago when we got plastered with snow. The theme was two choirs and two versions of some texts. The first half saw "Lobet den Herrn," a motet by Bach, paired with "Lobet de Herrn" by Sven-David Sandström; the second had "When David Heard" by Thomas Weelkes and "When David Heard" by Eric Whitacre, and "Agnus Dei" by Barber and "Agneau de Dieu" by Rupert Lang. It's clear DaCapo is the stronger choir; but I thought the Guelph Chamber Choir did fine in the second half. Roughly half the pieces were conducted by each choir's conductor; Enns did more of the talking, which was fine with me, because he's a charming guy.

The first piece was written by Enns, "Te Deum Brevis", opening with a big sound though the piece didn't do much for me. The second piece, Bach's motet, was... a bit ragged in singing (and so I also overheard from a few people who thought the same).

DaCapo's conductor, Leonard Enns, took time to deconstruct the Sandström, which has two choirs singing in harmonies but different tempos, which was fun to listen to. There was a Kyrie & Gloria Mass by Frank Martin with 12-tones, that also didn't do much for me, though I think melted_snowball would've liked; and there was a piece by Knut Nystedt, "Immortal Bach" which takes the first three phrases of Bach's Come sweet death (Come blessed rest, Come, lead me into peace) set for five choirs, each singing a different tempo. The intent, according to Enns, was to make the rest/sleep feel timeless- it worked for me, except the piece was surprisingly short, considering it was supposed to feel timeless. I wanted the patterns between the five choirs to play a bit more! Never mind how f'ing difficult I'm sure it was to sing! ;)

After the intermission, we had an introduction of Past Life Melodies (by Sarah Hopkins) from Gerard Yun, a local music prof, who demoed a digeridoo and two kinds of vocal overtones. It turned out I'd once heard a recording of this piece, and I'd liked it; the overtones worked much better in person, which isn't such a surprise... (the link above is the piece played by Chanticleer.) K., who came with me to the concert, said afterward that this piece alone was worth the price of admission. I've never heard overtones sung by 50 voices before!

Then two pieces just by DaCapo's 22 voices: "When David Heard" by Thomas Weelkes was written in the early 1600s, and had great runs and harmonies. But the Whitacre piece by the same name. God. I've heard DaCapo perform this piece three times, and it continues to put a lump in my throat. Of the 13-minute piece, the majority of it is singing the four words "O Absalom my son." I think it is the choral piece I know that most concretely embodies grief- it rages, it murmurs, it holds the refrain for many minutes, it finishes with a powerful many-part harmony of the text, "when David heard that Absalom was slain he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept, O Abaslom, my son, my son." It's chillingly beautiful.

They ended with two pieces for both choirs. "Agnus Dei" is the text Samuel Barber used to set the eight-part choir version of his famous string quartet. I hadn't known, until I read this program, that the Adagio for Strings came over 20 years before the choir version. They did a wonderful job with this. They ended with "Agneau de Dieu" by Rupert Lang, a Canadian composer, who set the Agnus Dei prayer for a solo quartet along with the choir, a quieter ending.

K and I stayed a bit for refreshments, and while she caught up with old friends who sung with DaCapo, I took the opportunity to finally thank Enns in person for so consistently bringing us such exciting music.

And now, to bed. :)

The weekend was fun. Conveniently, the chest-cold I've acquired didn't show itself until last night late- well *after* the Easter dinner out with melted_snowball and his colleagues. But last night I went to bed with a tight chest and woke up at 5ish this morning feeling pretty icky. Today was blah, but manageable.

I'm drinking tons of fluids and hope I can get over it quickly- if I'm still likely infectious on Friday, I'll scuttle my trip to NYC to see my grandmother... ("Happy 100th Birthday! I brought you a cold!")

Anyhow. This weekend: I slept in (till 8am! wow!), did more paper-sorting in the closet (getting down to the end on the left-hand closet!) did some art-wrangling [1] (three more framed pieces in my study: one by catbear of d. [2]; one an odd-sized matted piece I bought and promptly stashed in the closet when I realized it would cost a mint to get it properly framed, but catbear's advice gave me the proper $30 solution; and finally, I bought a frame for the LP album fuzzpsych gave me when I became a citizen) [3].

[1] Ugh, apologies for the dreadful sentence structure. I bet you can guess what my excuse is?

[2] which looks like a much wider view of this:

[3]

We also attended the baptism for tbiedl's youngest, who's young enough that neither d. or I had met her yet. It was a sweet welcome to her; though the church service was long- it included four readings, three skits, an outdoor portion, two candle lightings, and communion. Whew! :)

We also saw the Phil perform St. John's Passion, with surtitles and projected art. I don't have the oomph to properly review it, but I'm glad we went.

We shared two quite enjoyable dinners. One with catbear, dawn_guy, and Boy; it included scads of double-entendres, talking about games, food, and favourite stories. And the miracle of the Uncovered Pie. The other dinner was with colleagues of dan's, plus other academics at the Other University. It included no double-entendres, some French, many bottles of wine, shop talk, favourite stories, and a Devon Rex kitten who looked much like this. (Awwww!)

Hm. It's probably a good idea for me to go thud now. Hopefully I will wake up well-rested and less sick than today.

Because I'm lazy: Cribbed from here

NUMUS Presents... REVOLUTIONS: Turning the Tables on DJ Culture
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Start Date: Thursday, March 13, 2008
End Date: Saturday, March 15, 2008
Description:

A Three-day mini-festival of turntablism.

March 13-15, 2008

Starlight Social Club
47 King Street N.
Waterloo ON
519-885-4970
http://www.janebond.ca

Concert 2 - March 14, 2008 - 8pm
(Un)settling the Score: DJ Olive and Friends
Gregor Asch, better known as DJ Olive, is a turntablist and improviser active in the free improvisation and "illbeint" idioms. He has worked with a remarkable array of musicians including John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Medeski, Martin & Wood and many others. For the past six years, he has been developing a concept that he calls "the vinyl score" - compositions made specifically for the turntable. For his NUMUS appearance, DJ Olive will perform a solo set on turntables. Additionally, one of his vinyl scores will be performed by several of KW's finest turntablists.


Concert 3 - March 15, 2008 - 8pm
Subliminal Strings: DJ Spooky meets the Penderecki String Quartet
This concert will feature highly acclaimed DJ and conceptual artist Paul D. Miller - better known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid - in a world premiere collaboration with KW's own celebrities of contemporary music, the Penderecki String Quartet. Incorporating cutting-edge live video mixing technology, this performance promises to be an unforgettable evening of sound and image.

We just came back from seeing the musical Children of Eden put on by the Grebel Student Council.

I love the show; it was composed by Stephen Schwartz (who also did Wicked). It's loosely based on Genesis, with nuance and colour added to form a touching story of people disappointing their parents, falling in love with the wrong kind of people, doubting their roles in life, and so on. I think it makes wonderful overlays on top of those dusty allegories from that book.

We saw this when we lived in Boston, in an excellent production at Emerson College. And I've listened to the soundtrack a million times. This production, unfortunately, had a few problems. Biggest was tuning. I'm somewhat pitch-deaf and I was wincing a bit. There were some good moments, and with my mind's ear, I was also listening to the soundtrack version to make the harmonies work better.

I can't decide whether to recommend seeing this production; but if you like these songs, eh, give it a shot (also showing tomorrow and Saturday). :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GAJ7Gy8Els - Ain't it Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEgm0pBweVs - Title Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKS_jy5zVV4 - Generations