Month: February 2004

Even if you completely despise the very idea of American Idol, you might find this funny. It’s William Hung, this year’s most notorious bad audition.

“She bangs! She bangs!”

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Here’s a hypothetical. You go to the grocery store, and when you go to buy the brand of margarine that you prefer, you discover that there isn’t any on the shelves. Thus, you decide to ask one of the helpful people working in the dairy department if there is any more out back. But there are two employees nearby! Which do you ask?

A. The guy in the white jacket who is actually putting milk on the shelves.

B. The guy in the generic black shirt who is standing off to one side, using a power screwdriver to mount a new paper towel dispenser to the wall.

If your answer is “B”, you just might be a Buffalo Grocery Shopper!

(I very kindly directed her to the other employee, and she was pleased-as-punch. The great secret of customer service is that very often, it doesn’t take all that much.)

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Lynn Sislo links a guy named Erik who says this:

I still think that those who publicly play Bach and Scarlatti on a piano should be branded and flogged.

Well, ummmmm….why? Yeah, I know, from a musicological perspective, the harpsichord is the appropriate instrument. But for one thing, pianos are a lot easier to come by these days; and more importantly, if pianists can’t play Bach, what about brass quintets? or symphony orchestras, in the case of those transcriptions Leopold Stokowski did?

Similarly, should Liszt’s piano transcriptions of orchestral repertoire be disavowed? Should concert bands and wind ensembles no longer be permitted to perform band transcriptions of classic orchestral works?

Music is a fluid art. It doesn’t do well when placed under rigid constraints.

EDIT: Link fixed, and thus rendered non-useless.

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I’ve noticed the last few weeks that the news media seem to be running more pictures of President Bush in which he is smirking. No, I don’t have any conclusive evidence of this, nor do I even wonder if its liberal bias returning or conservative bias abating or what. Just something I’ve noticed.

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I’m still enjoying The West Wing a lot, although I’m noticing a trend this year to have big crises develop that get resolved, well, within the hour. I was starting to think, over the last couple of seasons, that Aaron Sorkin’s vaunted dialogue was starting to get repetitive (watch enough Sorkin scripts in performance and you’ll see tons of reused memes, like the words “thing” and “Yeah”), but I do miss the fact that Sorkin knew that you don’t always have to resolve things. Closure isn’t everything.

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First of all, I must note that 2004 is shaping up very nicely. I already have a new job that I’m enjoying muchly, and there was the advance copy of Guy Gavriel Kay’s new novel. Now I learn that pretty much the ultimate gift will be available in time for my birthday, five days after the release date. Wow-za! Oh, man….dare I hope that this is all leading up to a really nice bonus on the first Tuesday of November?

But anyway, I noted yesterday that John Scalzi dissed George Lucas, and I successfully avoided foaming at the mouth (although there were a couple of drops of spittle that were quickly wiped up). A grim sensation began to take hold, though — as if one blogger’s voice screamed out in terror, and then was suddenly silenced. Yup, the unspeakable has happened: the AICN Jedi Council has re-convened.

Hoo-boy….here we go….I shall now fasten by steel-like grip on the corners of my computer table. Running commentary is below: I’m reading this thing and commenting on it as I do so. Just because, well, I can. Imagine me as a disembodied Jedi in their room, floating behind them and whispering, “You bunch of friggin’ wankers!”

(I’ll try to find links to my previous AICN Council rantings a bit later on.)

…OK, apparently playwright Tom Stoppard has done some script work on Episode III. I loved Shakespeare in Love, so I can deal with this. And look: more bitching about midichlorians! And whining about the giant, gaping plot hole in Attack of the Clones: the identity of Master Sifodyas! (And here’s me, thinking, “Who gives a shit about Sifodyas?”)

…And here’s some guy holding forth that Lucas sold out with Attack of the Clones and “gave the fans what they wanted”. I’m sure the fans were screaming for the Anakin/Padme love story. I’m sure that the fans wanted that love story intercut with a complicated mystery and Republic politics. Aside from less Jar Jar, I don’t know what “fanboy grievances” this guy thinks Lucas indulged — unless it was simply all the battle stuff, which pretty much had to be there, right? I mean, given that the story requires it? Ummmm….sure. Moving on.

…They babble about the DVDs for a bit. Nothing about Greedo shooting first yet, but I’m sure it’s coming….and they really want some rumored scene from The Empire Strikes Back in which Vader plucks C-3PO’s mechanical heart from his chest. I don’t know, that sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?

…Moriarty says this: “Toy manufacturers have a real problem with manufacturing toys for PG-13 and R rated films.” They do? Did I hallucinate all those Lord of the Rings toys?

…Apparently Natalie Portman is a snot on the set. (According to these folks, presumably none of whom have ever been on the set with her — but then, AICN is pretty much the Internet home for “I have a friend who knows somebody who picks up drycleaning for this producer guy, and he says that Paris Hilton is in talks to play Queen Elizabeth the Second in the new World War II movie.”)

…And there it is! Greedo shoots first!

…Followed immediately by “Release the original trilogy!”

…Predictions of box office grosses abound. Gnashing over why The Phantom Menace outperformed Attack of the Clones, and I think back to an interview George Lucas gave back before TPM even came out, in which he said that he expected Episode III to gross the least of all the films. Hmmmm.

All in all, not as obnoxious as previous outings, but you can still see where most of these people are operating under the premise that George Lucas is a bumbling hack who basically stumbled into making good movies by the sheer luck that he had a couple of talented people with him. Experienced readers know that I disagree with this, vehemently…but we’ll let that dog sleep.

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Last night on American Idol, Simon Cowell trotted out this old chestnut in critiquing one of the participants: “It’s like Chinese food — I love it, but then I’m hungry again an hour later.” I don’t understand this. Whenever we spring for Chinese here, it’s usually for dinner, and I can’t begin to contemplate eating again until breakfast the next morning.

As for the show itself, well, I seem to have no feel whatsoever for what’s going on this season. First they eliminated “Scooter Girl” last week, who struck me as an incredible weirdo when she first appeared but who quickly grew on me; then the judges continually gush over Fantasia, who I admit has undeniable presence but who also has yet to sing a song that I like, so I don’t feel that I can judge her yet; and tonight, the hot blonde who did a torch-song rendition of “Orange Colored Sky” didn’t get voted to the next round. Color me baffled.

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“I’m sorry, Wes, but I’m afraid you have not been able to overtake the current leader, and thus, we have to say goodbye to you now. But we have some lovely parting gifts for you tonight: a Bunn coffeemaker, this matching set of deck chairs, and of course, all of our contestants get the Home Version of The 2004 Race Game, so you and your family will have hours of fun calling attention to the current Administration’s failures. You’ve been a great contestant, though, and don’t forget: you may be eligible for an appearance on the new show we’re working on, which we are tentatively scheduled to debut at noon on January 20. You could play a Secretary on the new show, so keep your options open! Let’s give Wes a nice hand, ladies and gentlemen!”

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Composer Jerry Goldsmith, who along with John Williams is one of the living titans of film music, is 75 today. He’s best known, probably, for his work on the Star Trek films, of which his score to Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a true classic. (The others are all superb, with the exceptions of Insurrection, which is merely good, and Nemesis, which is downright bad.)

He’s written a lot of other wonderful scores, but Goldsmith’s name tends to be in the shadow of John Williams because, well, Goldsmith writes scores for really crappy movies that nobody ever goes to see. His score to the third Omen movie, The Final Conflict, is magnificent — but who on earth has seen that movie? Who on Earth has seen The Thirteenth Warrior (an appallingly bad swords-and-brawn epic)?

Of all the films Goldsmith has scored — and there are many — the only “classics” are probably Patton and Alien (and I wouldn’t even include the latter). Since I suspect that, for the general public, film music is viewed only in the context of the film (a wrongheaded view, but prevalent), I expect that Jerry Goldsmith won’t ever have the same cultural visibility of a John Williams or a John Barry (at the height of his career, which was quite some time ago).

Anyway, happy birthday, Maestro Goldsmith.

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Aaron reports that a rare astronomical event will take place on June 8: a Venus will make a transit of the Sun. A transit, for those who weren’t paying attention in class, is when a planetary object moves across the face of the Sun, as seen from Earth. In fact, total lunar eclipses are transits that merely happen to be eclipses by virtue of the Sun and Moon having the same apparent size when viewed from the surface of the earth (this is pure coincidence). Due to differences in the Earth’s and Venus’s planes of orbit, Venusian transits are very rare.

This guarantees, of course, that June 8 will be a cloudy day in Western New York.

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