Spitball Army

Spring, spring!  Like a mad magician flinging silks and colored rags from his trunk the earth produced the yellow and white crocus, then the fox grape, the forsythia flowering on its stalks, the blades of iris, the apple tree blossoms of pink and white and green, the heavy lilac and the daffodil.  Grandfather stood in the yard and gave a standing ovation.  A breeze came up and blew from the maples a shower of spermatozoic soft-headed green buds.  They caught in his sparse gray hair.  He shook his head with delight, feeling a wreath had been bestowed.  A joyful spasm took hold of him and he stuck his leg out in an old man’s jig, lost his balance, and slid on the heel of his shoe into a sitting position.  In this manner he cracked his pelvis and entered a period of declining health from which he would not recover.  But the spring was joyful and even in pain he wore a smile.  Everywhere the sap rose and the birds sang.

– E. L. Doctorow,  Ragtime

It sure is a good thing that most opera-goers already know the plot of the piece, because if one was planning on going to see this performance of Tosca to find out what happens in the story, there would be no surprise!

This is a really funny ad.  I laughed out loud when I got it in my mailbox.

Opera Birmingham could really top this marketing hilarity by having Cavaradossi rise from the spot of his death, a la Romeo and Juliet, after Tosca has jumped from the castle ramparts, and give a “4th wall” soliloquy about unknown unknowns.  “She never could have guessed that we’d be fooling her with a phony execution!”

Splat!!

…that is to say, those things that we have no earthly idea are insidiously lodged in our brains?

This was ripped from an issue of Time Magazine, and until today was stuck squarely in the middle of my refrigerator door, providing me with my first laugh of practically every day, even before coffee (and I am not implying that there is anything at all funny about coffee).

And it’s not like Rumsfeld had this as an original thought: this is an old philosophical maxim.  I think.  I couldn’t live another day if I knew that Rummy was the first to articulate what seems like a very obvious epistemological rule.  Anyone?

[audio:Lipps_Inc___Funkytown.mp3]
At the time it was popular, at least when it was initially popular, there didn’t really seem to be much wrong with disco music.  It served a purpose – dancing and partying and socializing – that wasn’t particularly well-served by soft rock or punk rock.  When its cousin, new wave music, came on the scene, there was a reasonable alternative available.  But, there is nothing more soothing at the end of a day of processing mathematical equations and psychological theory than a steady, relentless rhythmic beat churned out by a machine and accompanied by one-dimensional repetitive lyrics – yes, I was in college during this time.

I owned Donna Summer’s Live And More, the Thank God It’s Friday soundtrack, records by Chic and Evelyn “Champagne” King, and several others that have proven forgettable 30 years later.  I also owned a recording of “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc.

This was not the album version, but the 12″ extended version.  Imagine listening to 10 to 12 minutes of that song, over and over and over.  And imagine me dancing to it, and when you recover from passing out, imagine yourself dancing to it.  It’s just not pretty.  Without a doubt, though, the song connects to indelible memories.

So, imagine the neon flashback I encountered when I stumbled onto a website devoted to all things Funkytown.  Here is the link.  Within this imaginatively-constructed site, you can lose yourself in Funkytown trivia, videos, photos, and other cultural artifacts that – along with the visceral and sweaty thrill of wearing polyester – bring the disco era to vivid rebirth.

Be sure not to miss the “Sounds” section of the website, where you can hear cover versions of the iconic song by the likes of U2, Henry Rollins, Robyn Hitchcock and, um, Veggie Tales.

Driving eastbound on I-20, I was seduced to an offramp by a brown historical marker sign that read

LAUREL & HARDY MUSEUM

and found myself driving five or six miles to the town of Harlem, Georgia.  At the outskirts of the town, stood this sign:

On my first pass through town, I didn’t see the museum, and when I re-entered farmland on the other side, I realized that I had passed through the entire town (it’s not big).  I turned around in this driveway

although it really was too beautiful and not urban enough to call a driveway.  It was really more of a carriageway.  It looks like an engraving from a volume of fairy tales or from a 19th century British or German novel.  While standing in the road, it looked just as it does in the photo above.  I nearly expected to see Fagin and The Artful Dodger skipping arm in arm down the path, or Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow, or a pair of dingledodies.

This is the long view from the main road:

Check out that handsome and attractive dumpster.  Mmmm, lunch!

I made a U-turn back into town, leaving three barking dogs in my wake.

Passing back through Harlem, I ran into Bojangles…oops, wrong Harlem!

Passing back through Harlem, I kept a lookout for the museum.  I stopped at the traffic light in the center of town.  Ahead of me, on the right, I could see that there were still Christmas garlands hanging on the side of the police station.  One of the taller brick buildings – two stories – had a graffiti-style collage of Stan and Ollie painted on its entire southern side.  Three pairs of grinning faces kept watch over a fenced-in used car lot.

I thought that I had completely missed the museum until, almost back to the north side of town, I spotted it – a square,  hardly noticeable cinder-block building smaller than an average-sized McDonald’s restaurant.  The sides were painted black, and there was minimal signage indicating what was inside.

Since it was too early in the morning for them to be open,  I continued driving back to I-20.

[audio:Laurie_Anderson___The_Democratic_Way.mp3]
“Democratic Way” from United States Live by Laurie Anderson

Points of reference:

• Jimmy Carter’s presidency was from 1977 to 1981.
• This recording was made in 1984.
• Bill Clinton’s presidency was from 1993 to 2001.

Happy Potomac Ptuesday, everybody!

I am finding all sorts of buried things lately, as I empty out boxes, delete files, organize and clean things and rooms.  Today I ran across this review – which is more of an evisceration than a critical appraisal, really – of a classical recording from several years ago.  It had once been posted on my company’s website, as a sort of “cautionary tale,” I guess, but it had to removed when the artist in question threatened legal action (her name has been changed to Mary below, as all other identifiable names have been changed and italicized).  I promise you that none of the acid of the reviewer’s prose has been diminished by the disguising of the details.  Enjoy! and happy wincing:

In sending her self-produced CD to Magazine for review, I’m sure that Mary took into account the risk associated with placing her fate in the hands of a reviewer who might judge her harshly, especially in comparison to the many keyboard giants and masters who have played these works. As bad luck of the draw would have it, her CD fell into the merciless hands of yours truly, who takes his Revered Composer very seriously.

Mary, the brief note tells us, was born in Anytown, and has performed solo recitals in Country #1, Country #2 and Country #3. Her formal resumé, however (which can be found on the Internet), is quite lengthy; and tellingly, it presents scant evidence of actual performance history. Her main interest, it seems, is in the area of Very Small Niche Academic Specialty Combining Social Sciences With Music. She has published such papers as Paper With Long Title #1 and Paper With Long Title #2. She has been on the faculties of a number of colleges and universities, and is presently an associate professor at the University‘s School of Music, which is a part of A Larger Academic Department.

Based on the evidence of this CD, I strongly urge Mary to keep her day job. This is bad, very bad. “How bad is it?” you ask. Without a doubt, the most incompetent, amateurish, crude, clumsy, and substandard playing I have heard outside of a junior high-school recital. Mary‘s playing is riddled with technical flaws – almost as many missed notes as hit ones, loss of coordination between the hands, unsteady rhythms, uncontrolled voicing of chords, and plain, outright misreadings of the printed scores. Examples are so numerous and so egregious, I could write paragraphs, but I won’t. The scherzo movement (tempo indicator) of Op. Number is enough. Mary manages to land on wrong notes at cadences, and in the reprise, the staggered rhythm between the two hands gets so out of sync that wrong notes fly out right and left (no pun intended). I held my breath just waiting for the whole thing to come unglued. Ditto, the last movement of the “Other Piece’s Nickname,” which, even at Mary‘s lumbering, elephantine tempo, is light-years beyond her grasp. Entire passages are mangled and mutilated almost beyond recognition. It’s like witnessing the scene of some grotesque highway accident; stomach-turning as it is, fascination with the horror of it is mesmerizing.

I can understand how a piano student would make such a recording for practice and playback study purposes, but there is no excuse for such a thing to have been sent out for review. It is a travesty, an insult to The Revered Composer and to anyone who respects this music. People have been arrested and fined for lesser acts of public indecency. Mary is the pianist’s equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins; though at least in the latter’s case we can all have a good laugh. There is, however, nothing funny about this.

If you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the recording is a disaster. It sounds as if a thick blanket has been wrapped around the piano, muffling the sound. The thought of a silencer on a gun comes to mind; maybe whoever was at the controls was trying to cover up the crime.

Should some deep, dark desire for self-inflicted pain possess you to acquire this abomination, you can e-mail Mary@internetserviceprovider.

So, here I am shuttling between rooms in the house, washing dishes, doing laundry, vaccuuming – you know, the kind of things everybody does on a Sunday night.  Um…

Anyway, in the other room the TV is on, and the channel is tuned in to the Grammy Awards.  I know, I’m a loser, and I said earlier that it would have to take something really special to get me to tune in.  In a way, I am kind of glad I did, as I got to hear Kanye West complain about getting rushed off the stage, and how he “owns” the Grammys and all.  As if some people only put out records so that they can win awards.  If you had heard him “sing” earlier in the evening (I had the pleasure of only having to hear him), you would know that he won’t be winning any awards from Juilliard (if they even give out awards for what he does) or some other such institution that knows what excellence in music really is.

I am saying this only as prologue to what just happened on stage.  Dave Stewart and Ringo Starr just presented the Best Country Album award to Vince Gill for These Days (and, seriously, how many times has he won this trophy?).  Vince gets up on stage, pauses, and says into the microphone, rather bemusedly, “I just got an award from a Beatle.”  You could tell that he was pretty pumped about it.  Then, with hardly a second beat, he leans into the mic and says (and I do not quote verbatim), “Have you got one of those yet, Kanye?”  The place went nuts.  I expected KW to jump on stage and stand back while he watched his posse beat Vince Gill to a bloody pulp but, sadly, it didn’t happen.

The only thing that could top this tonight (and Amy Winehouse’s performance couldn’t possibly do it) is if Kanye West loses the award for Album Of The Year and throws a big fat tantrum.  Again.  That’s what I’d call Great Entertainment Value.

Can you imagine actually trying to “balance the books” while spinning around on this thing? If you were writing down numbers they would most likely look like this: WWWWWWWWWWWW. What an unusual way to market a, um, device that, um, stimulates the, uh,…

Here is a clip from Ellen DeGeneres’ show, where she invites women from the audience to try out the Sex Chair Hawaii Chair.  They supposedly watched the ENTIRE SHOW while gyrating in this device.