Sometime this month, Sony Classical is supposed to be releasing an expanded edition of John Barry’s score to Dances With Wolves, for which he won an Oscar back in 1991. Hopefully we will finally have the actual music of the buffalo hunt. Dances is one of my favorite film scores. (It’s a good movie, too, another film whose backlash I never joined. I don’t think that Goodfellas was robbed.)
SDB on Libertarianism
Here.
I’ve sometimes wondered, while reading SDB, exactly why he eschews the “Libertarian” label when he strikes me as having a fairly-strong libertarian impulse. The other day, he explained it: while he places a high premium on freedom (liberty), he does not believe that government intervention in the market and issues pertaining to “property rights” is axiomatically bad. That makes sense.
I’m quite a bit to the left of SDB, which I’m sure everyone knows. Not only do I not think that “the free market” is ideally disposed to solve all problems, I do not think that “the free market” is something so important that it must be protected at the expense of leaving unsolved those problems which it cannot solve. That’s why I consider libertarianism to be a valuable impulse, but seriously faulty as an ideology.
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Spoilers Galore!
If you happen to watch one of the nine television series tracked by this site, well — all the spoilers you could possibly want are there!
(By the way, in visiting this site I learned of an event to happen a few episodes from now on ER that may induce me to abandon the show. Be warned.)
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Another October Ritual Done!
Another October, another early exit from the baseball playoffs by the Atlanta Braves. Somehow, the fact that the Braves were denied a world championship for the eighth consecutive year, and the eleventh time in twelve years, by the Chicago Cubs — baseball’s goofiest franchise — is all the sweeter.
Of course, Cubs fans are in a state of delirium, convinced that at last their ship has come in, that this is the year, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Somehow, I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong before. But they need to win eight more games to win it all, and I’m not sure they match up well against any of the three teams still alive in the American League, which is to say nothing of the fact that the Marlins — whom the Cubbies will play in the NLCS — are no chumps either.
In truth, the Cubs are one of those teams whose national following has always mystified me. Maybe it’s their “lovable loser” image, maybe it’s the fact that WGN is on most cable systems in the country, so the Cubs are really visible. I don’t know. They’re rather like Notre Dame and the Dallas Cowboys in the way they inspire the imagination of sports fans who have never been within a hundred miles of Wrigley Field or South Bend or Irving, Texas. There’s something of a mystique about the Cubs, though, that’s quite real. But I wonder: if they do win it all, what happens to all that mystique when ninety-five years of “Maybe next year” suddenly dissipates?
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NFL Week Five: Doormats no more?!
The Buffalo Bills defeated the Cincinnati Bengals yesterday, which is the good news. What’s the bad news? They needed overtime to do it, at home.
I’m not sure what to feel after this game. There’s a certain sense of “Geez, if they gotta work that hard to beat the Bengals, they can’t be that good at all!” But then, the Bengals really aren’t as bad this year as they have been, and they may actually be making the first step up from perennial doormat of the NFL. A lot of times, when an awful franchise finally starts rebuilding successfully, they first go from being the bad team that everybody wants to play to being the bad team that nobody wants to play. The Bengals played a tough, physical game yesterday, and they showed enormous compusure in doing so.
(Incidentally, in yesterday’s Buffalo News, the amazing — meaning “stupid” — sports writer Jerry Sullivan complained about the fact that the Bills had spoken in pretty positive terms last week about the Bengals as an opponent. “They’re still the crappy Bengals!” whined Sullivan as he scoffed at the idea that the Bengals are a team on the rise. Sullivan apparently can’t grasp the idea that maybe the Bengals are improving, maybe the Bills know it, and maybe even if they do still suck, the Bills simply didn’t want to go on record in the media as saying something like “These guys suck and we’re going to kill them.” You know, part of that whole “sportsmanship” thing. Hmmmm….Jerry, Andrew….maybe it’s a “Sullivan” thing. [Apologies to any readers who may be named Sullivan.])
So anyway, what to make of yesterday’s victory? Well, I’m the kind of football fan who looks for stuff to be optimistic about. Maybe, just maybe, head coach Gregg Williams and offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride have finally realized that just because you don’t gain fifteen yards the very first time you rush the ball in the first quarter does not necessarily mean that your running game is stuffed. In the second half, when they finally decided to go back to basics and just put bodies on bodies and simply run the thing, good results happened. And their re-commitment to the run also allowed Eric Moulds to get open on a couple of very key plays, most notably a fourth-down that, had it failed, would have cost the Bills the game.
I’m starting to wonder if Gregg Williams was recently the victim of some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion that compels him to do idiotic things on special-teams plays. This time it cropped up when the Bills had a 13-7 lead in the fourth, and the defense had forced the Bengals to punt. Fairly simple idea, right? You take the punt, and then put in your power running game to eat up as much clock as possible. Even if you go three-and-out, you still take two minutes off the clock and put the Bengals into a desperation mode. But what does Williams do? He OKs an attempt to block the punt, which results in a roughing-the-kicker penalty that keeps the Bengals’ drive going. Cincinnati scored the tying touchdown on that drive. It seems that Williams insists on doing something amazingly dumb once in each game.
The Bills’ defense has been receiving criticism lately, unfairly in my eyes. They are allowing more rushing yardage than I would like, but opposing teams are requiring a lot of carries to do it. I’d still like to see more pass rush; they only had one sack yesterday. But they are still allowing less than fifteen points per game, and they haven’t had the luxury lately of playing with a lead. The defense has kept the Bills in the game each week, which is fine by me. If your team’s offense is incapable of putting up more than fourteen points per game, which is what the Bills have averaged in the last three games, then you’d better have the equivalent of the 1985 Bears’ or the 2000 Ravens’ defenses if you expect the D to win for you.
I should also note the almost complete disappearance of second-year receiver Josh Reed. The guy simply isn’t producing right now, and it seems to me that it might have been unreasonable for the Bills to expect him to seamlessly replace Peerless Price in just his second year. Receivers tend to take several years to really blossom in the NFL, and I think fans tend to forget that even with Price’s amazing year last year, it took him until his fourth year to put up those numbers; fans also tend to forget that Eric Moulds didn’t come of age until his third season, so much so that prior to that third year, the local paper actually labeled Moulds a “bust”. Josh Reed is still on pace to have a better year this year than either of Eric Moulds’s first two seasons. Thus, I think the Bills should move Bobby Shaw into the number two spot, and allow Reed to continue to develop and regain his confidence.
One last thought about yesterday’s game: the TV play-by-play guy, Dan Criqui, was awful. He couldn’t go two sentences without reminding the home viewers of how the wind was a factor yesterday (and it was; the winds at Ralph Wilson Stadium can be treacherous), and when the Bengals scored to take the lead, he actually announced that they were going to win. Not “The Bengals have put themselves in position to win”, not “The Bengals might win”, but “The Bengals are going to win today!” Oy.
Anyway, that’s that. Next week the Bills go on the road to pay a visit to their winless division rivals, the New York Jets.
:: Until yesterday, I had never seen the “Get the field goal, recover the onside kick, get the touchdown” strategy actually work in the last two minutes of a game. The Redskins almost pulled it off, but the two-point conversion failed. Bummer. (Not that I was rooting for the Redskins, but it was such a cool comeback that I wanted it to succeed and then have the Eagles win it in OT.) It figures that Donovan McNabb would have a pretty unimpressive game the day after I insist that he’s not overrated, but hey, that tends to happen. Last year I vehemently defended Drew Bledsoe in a post, and he promptly went out the very next game and went something like 10-for-60, fifty yards, and nine interceptions. Or something like that.
:: Does Rams owner Georgia Frontiere wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats as the realization that forcing Dick Vermiel out as her head coach maybe wasn’t the best idea? I’m just wondering.
:: OK, which of these teams is the least likely to be “for real”: Dallas, Seattle, or Carolina? Yeesh!
:: It’s funny how every year in the NFL there is one division that can possibly be taken by an 8-8 team. All hail the AFC North!
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Wow!
If you’re not a regular viewer of NASA’s Astonomy Picture of the Day, well, you’re just not cool. Anyway, here’s a recent one that caught my eye (they all catch my eye, really, but this one’s particularly beautiful): the Eagle nebula.
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Warning: STAR WARS babbling ahead. Commence primary ignition.
I watched Attack of the Clones the other night, and no, I have not come round to the prevailing opinion that it’s a giant suckfest. In fact, I am more resolute than ever in my belief that I’m right, that it’s a good movie, and that the rest of the world is a giant….well, I think I’ve covered that in the past.
Anyway, I noticed something in the visuals of the film that I had also noticed before, but hadn’t really given much thought. When The Phantom Menace came out, some of the more astute commenters out there complained that in that film the Star Wars universe looked too clean. One of the charms about A New Hope was the way the technology looked used: no sterile 2001-style interiors, but ships and vehicles with dents and dirt and scuffed floors that looked like people used them. By contrast, TPM is a lot cleaner (with the exception of the Tatooine scenes, which makes sense given that world’s backwater status).
Which brings me to AOTC: the dirt is starting to show up in this film, and not just on Tatooine but elsewhere. In the nightclub scene, just after the big Coruscant chase, Obi Wan and Anakin apprehend their assassin (“Jedi business, go back to your drinks” is one of my favorite moments in Star Wars — Hayden Christensen channeling Detective Sipowicz there) and drag her into the alley…where we can see garbage and dirt accumulating in the corners. I’m interested to see if this trend continues in Episode III: The Last Shoe Drops.
(EDIT: Upon re-reading of this post, I discovered a mind-numbingly bad sentence that I had written. That sentence has been recast.)
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Mostly Mozart…Tchiefly Tchaikovsky…Basically Bach…but, Rarely Rachmaninov
Yar asked me, in comments, to provide some “essentials” or pointers for people who want to get into classical music but don’t really know where to start. That’s a pretty big task, and I’m still considering my thoughts there. But I do plan to get to that, maybe later this week. Or early this week. Or tomorrow. Or something.
I do want to point out a couple of classical music purchasing strategies, though. I’ve mentioned the Naxos label before, and for the classical music lover, Naxos is a godsend. First, it’s a budget-price label, with their CDs generally going for eight bucks. The real worth, though, is that Naxos combines low price with adventurous repertoire. It’s a lot easier to be adventurous in exploring composers whom one has never before heard when it’s eight bucks a pop, as opposed to full-price. Naxos records its share of “the warhorses” of the repertoire, but it’s also virtually the only place you’ll find a lot of lesser-known composers whose works really don’t deserve to languish unknown.
(I should note that classical music tends to fall into a three-tier pricing system: full price, which is $18 or so these days; mid-price, around $10; and budget, generally $7.99.)
Naxos isn’t the only way to get good music cheaply, though. The bigger labels are doing a lot of repackaging older recordings, frequently of the “warhorse” repertoire, on midprice or budget imprints. A lot of times, in stores, all these imprints will be gathered in the same place, which is immensely convenient. Even better, the labels have been issuing two-disc sets containing connected works: shorter operas, for example, can be found complete on such sets (many operas are too long to appear on just two discs, but many do actually fit); likewise, one can find things like the complete Scriabin symphonies on a two-disc set from London/Decca, or the complete Mozart violin concertos, and so on. Generally these sets retail for the price of one full-price disc, which is a huge bargain when you consider how quickly one can put a nice classical library together by doing this.
Store organization is also something to consider. Here in Buffalo, the best classical sections are at Borders and Barnes&Noble. First there is the largest section, where things are arranged alphabetically by composer. This is where you will find all of the full-price recordings, as well as many of the mid-price ones. Generally, all of the budget-price labels, including Naxos, will be kept separately, where each label will be shelved separately, and then alphabetized by composer within each label. (In other words, all of the Naxos CDs will generally be in one place, followed by all of the London/Decca budget CDs, and then all the Philips ones, and then the DG ones, et cetera.)
Then, after all of the “single composer” discs, one finds the compilations. Compilations are, almost always, CDs which feature works by a bunch of different composers, the purpose of which is to showcase either a specific performer or ensemble. Thus, a CD of Richard Stolzman playing pieces for clarinet will be found in the compilations section. These tend to fall into a number of different categories, and thus the way they are shelved differs from store to store. But generally, compilations will generally be grouped in logical fashion: vocal compilations will be together, probably grouped by performer; likewise with instrumental compilations. So in these cases, you’ll need to know specifically what performer you’re looking for. But not always, though: if you want a CD of Yo Yo Ma playing cello works, there will certainly be a section of his CDs; but if you specifically want Yo Yo Ma playing the Saint-Saens cello concerto, you’ll probably have to look under Saint-Saens in the composer section. After a while, you’ll learn where to look first.
One last note about compilations: frequently if you want to find a specific piece of music that’s fairly short, you’re more likely to find it in the Compilations than under the specific composer. A good example is Schumann’s lovely piano piece “Traumerei”, which runs about four minutes. You can probably find a disc or two of Schumann piano music in the Schumann section that contains “Traumerei”, but then again, you may not. The next recourse would be to go over to the compilations, and then find all the compilations of solo pianists, which will all be together, and look through the individual CDs for the piece. This can make shopping for a specific piece take a lot longer at first, but this is another case where experience pays off: as you get more accustomed to the rhyme-and-reason of the classical section, you’ll know where to look.
So there’s your road-map to the classical music section. Sometime soon I’ll get into actual destinations on that map.
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Crow and Tom Servo could not be reached for comment.
Aaron points out a place where you can make your own space-based telescope. Turns out, though, that it’s just a little model; it’s not really a space-based telescope. Sigh.
For no reason, I’m suddenly reminded of a TV show that lasted for one season, back when I was a kid, called something like Salvage One. The story was that a guy who owns a junkyard, played by Andy Griffith (in between Mayberry and Matlock), decides to use all of the scrap in his yard to build a rocket to the moon. I seem to recall the capsule was built from the mixer on a cement truck.
And oh wow, looks like I’m not the only one who remembers that show – – it’s got its own tribute site! And apparently you can make a model of the show’s rocketship, too!
(If I have not just conclusively established my geek credentials for all time, I give up.)