Month: June 2004

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, in which General George Armstrong Custer managed to spectacularly misjudge the precariousness of his situation (misjudging the numbers of the enemy and marching straight into unfamiliar terrain, for example), and thus got himself and every man in his command killed by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. Whoops.

I remember, incidentally, once watching a Pat Buchanan rally during one of the times he ran for President. He was going on about how horrible “historical revisionism” is, and how when he was a kid, it was called “Custer’s Last Stand”, but then in the name of “political correctness” it got changed to “The Battle of the Little Big Horn”, and by gum when he was President, it would be “Custer’s Last Stand” again! And I was thinking, “Wasn’t Custer pretty much of a boob whose ineptitude led to disaster? Why would we want to honor that?”

Anyway, if you are ever driving I-90 through Montana, stop at the monument to the Battle. It’s not hard to get to — in fact, it’s visible from the Interstate itself — and it’s a very fascinating spot. There is a museum there, a cemetery, and the battlefields themselves, bearing markers erected where Custer and his men each fell.

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Reading PZ Myers’s account of fish sex, I have to wonder just what the pillow talk in his bedroom at night sounds like. I have a feeling it involves heavy use of words like “oscillate” and “fluctuation”.

(I kid, of course! The science stuff fascinates.)

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Checking in with SDB, I see that he criticizes an article on the recently sluggish sales of French wines in the United States. The article’s basic thrust is that American wine-drinking habits, which tend to focus on varietal wines (i.e., wines made from specific types of grapes, like Chardonnay) lead them away from wines that are branded by the region from which they spring (like Bordeaux). Fair enough; makes sense to me, even from my casual following of the wine biz. There’s been a great deal of focus on wines from places like Australia and from domestic producers beyond Napa Valley (some of which are in my own backyard, here in New York State).

But that’s not what annoys SDB. He says this:

The article doesn’t contain any acknowledgement that some of the decline might be due to political backlash by ordinary Americans. It is apparently inconceivable that some American wine-drinkers might be consciously boycotting French wine because of France’s foreign policy.

Evidently he missed this bit from the article:

Part of the decline can be attributed to the surging euro, which has jumped from 84 cents to a high of USD 1.29 over the past three years, and anti-French sentiment stemming from the fallout over the US-led invasion of Iraq. (Emphasis added)

How SDB missed this is beyond me, since he cites the first clause of this graf (the bit about the euro), and then goes right on to mentioning the branding bit, which seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable approach for the wine producers, given recent shifts in the wine market apart from the political angles.

UPDATE: In the middle of this “grab bag” post, SDB admits either error or the possibility that the clause I highlight above was added after he initially read the article. Fair enough; either could certainly be the case.

I would also add that it wouldn’t strike me as odd if the article actually did make no mention whatsoever of any politically-motivated boycotting of French wine, since the article is reporting on the proceedings of a wine merchant’s expo. It seems to me that winemakers would very likely conclude that there is very little they can do to overcome any politically-motivated boycotting (what would they do? Invade Iraq on their own?), and thus it seems perfectly reasonable for them to focus on changes they can make to hopefully increase their sales again. In this case, examining American wine-drinking habits and then adjusting their own practices to more closely match them makes sense. They can’t do anything about the Euro, and they can’t do anything about France being on the “shit-list” of a great deal of Americans. They can do something about their branding. Now, whether that constitutes an example of the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic is a matter for debate, but not this one.

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OK, we’ve had the “One Hundred Books, bold the ones you’ve read” meme (which I punted), and the “One Hundred Movies, bold the ones you’ve seen” meme (which I didn’t). So it seems obvious to me that what’s needed now is a “One Hundred Classical Music Works, bold the ones you’ve heard” meme. (Although that’s a misnomer. There are more than a hundred here.)

I’ve culled the following list from sampling through David Dubal’s book The Essential Canon of Classical Music. I was basically looking for pretty representative works that strike me as being works that a person at least moderately attuned to classical music has probably heard. I am not making any claim for the greatness of these works (except for the Berlioz ones, obviously), nor am I implying any lesser stature to the thousands of works I didn’t pick. So don’t write me any nasty e-mails because I didn’t list Max Wienerschnitzel’s Concerto Grosso for Eight Cellos and a Glockenspiel, op. 46b. OK? Likewise, don’t flame me for including a handful of film scores. Always remember my Rule of Film Music: Good film music must be good music first, and good music by definition can stand alone.

(I do think that this hastily-gathered list would be a good starting point for people interested in classical music, though. Even if it is heavily skewed to orchestral music, which by far constitutes the bulk of my listening. And by the way, this isn’t an attempt to make myself seem “well-listened”. Thumbing through Dubal’s book, I am astonished at the amount of classical music — much of it quite famous indeed — that I have never heard.)

And for the purposes of this list, I take “having heard” a work pretty liberally. If I know that I have heard it at some point in the past, whether or not I own a recording of it currently or if I can even hum a tune from it, I bold it.

(And “bold” as a verb seems wrong. Better to say “embolden”, I suppose.)

Now, the List, arranged roughly in order of when the composers lived.

1. Handel, Messiah

2. Handel, Water Music

3. J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos (any of them would count, I guess)

4. J.S. Bach, The Passion According to St. Matthew

5. J.S. Bach, Toccata and fugue in D-minor

6. Vivaldi, The Four Seasons (any would count)

7. Pergolesi, Stabat Mater

8. Haydn, Symphony No. 104 in D “London”

9. Haydn, The Creation

10. Mozart, Requiem

11. Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro

12. Mozart, Die Zauberflote

13. Mozart, Symphony No. 40 in G-minor

14. Mozart, Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and orchestra

15. Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat “Eroica”

16. Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C-minor

17. Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D-minor

18. Beethoven, Piano sonata No. 8 in C-minor “Pathetique”

19. Beethoven, Piano sonata No. 29 in B-flat “Hammerklavier”

20. Rossini, Overture to “Guillaume Tell”

21. Schubert, Symphony no. 9 in C-major “The Great”

22. Schubert, Quintet in A for Piano and Strings “Trout”

23. Weber, Der Freischutz

24. Donizetti, Norma

25. Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique

26. Berlioz, Harold in Italy

27. Berlioz, Romeo et Juliet

28. Berlioz, Grande messe des mortes

29. Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust

30. Mendelssohn, Concerto in E-minor for violin and orchestra

31. Mendelssohn, Symphony no. 4 in A “Italian”

32. Mendelssohn, Symphony no. 5 in D “Reformation”

33. Mendelssohn, Overture and incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

34. Schumann, Concerto in A-minor for piano and orchestra

35. Schumann, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat “Rhenish”

36. Schumann, Symphony No. 4 in D-minor

37. Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

38. Liszt, Les Preludes for orchestra

39. Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C-minor

40. Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D

41. Brahms, Academic Festival Overture

42. Brahms, A German Requiem

43. Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen (part of it does NOT count!)

44. Wagner, Lohengrin

45. Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg

46. Verdi, La Traviata

47. Verdi, Rigoletto

48. Verdi, Aida

49. Offenbach, The Tales of Hoffman

50. Franck, Symphony in D-minor

51. Smetana, The Moldau (Symphonic poem No. 2 from “Ma Vlast”)

52. Bruckner, Symphony No. 4 in E-flat “Romantic”

53. J. Strauss II, Tales of the Vienna Woods

54. J. Strauss II, On the Beautiful Blue Danube

55. Saint-Saens, Symphony No. 3 in C-minor “Organ”

56. Saint-Saens, The Carnival of the Animals

57. Bizet, Carmen

58. Mussorgsky, A Night on Bald Mountain

59. Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition

60. Tchaikovsky, Romeo And Juliet Festival Overture

61. Tchaikovsky, Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor for piano and orchestra

62. Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker (the entire ballet, not the suite)

63. Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 in E-minor

64. Sullivan, The Mikado

65. Sullivan, HMS Pinafore

66. Dvorak, Symphony No. 9 in E-minor “From the New World”

67. Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade

68. Faure, Requiem

69. Puccini, La Boheme

70. Puccini, Tosca

71. Puccini, Madama Butterfly

72. Mahler, Symphony No. 2 in C-minor “Resurrection”

73. Mahler, Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor

74. Debussy, Prelude on the Afternoon of a Faun

75. Debussy, La Mer

76. Strauss, Death and Transfiguration

77. Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra

78. Strauss, Don Quixote

79. Sibelius, Finlandia

80. Dukas, The Sorceror’s Apprentice

81. Scriabin, Symphony No. 4 “La Poeme de l’extase”

82. Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending

83. Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 2 “London”

84. Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 5 in D-Major

85. Holst, The Planets

86. Rachmaninov, Concerto No. 2 in C-minor for piano and orchestra

87. Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2 in E-minor

88. Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini

89. Schoenberg, Transfigured Night

90. Schoenberg, Five pieces for orchestra

91. Ravel, Daphnis et Chloe

92. Ravel, Concerto in D-Major for piano (left hand) and orchestra

93. Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra

94. Respighi, The Pines of Rome

95. Stravinsky, Petrouchka

96. Stravinsky, The Firebird

97. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

98. Stravinsky, Symphony of Psalms

99. Berg, Wozzeck

100. Berg, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

101. Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet

102. Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5 in B-flat

103. Ives, The Unanswered Question

104. Milhaud, The Creation of the World

105. Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue

106. Gershwin, An American in Paris

107. Copland, A Lincoln Portrait

108. Copland, Appalachian Spring

109. Hanson, Symphony No. 2 “Romantic”

110. Korngold, Concerto in D-Major for violin and orchestra

111. Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 in D-minor

112. Shostakovich, Symphony No. 8 in C-minor

113. Shostakovich, King Lear (film score)

114. Finzi, Concerto in C-minor for clarinet and strings

115. Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time

116. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony

117. Williams, Star Wars (film score)

118. Herrmann, Vertigo (film score)

119. Rozsa, Ben Hur (film score)

120. Goldsmith, The Wind and the Lion (film score)

121. Shore, The Lord of the Rings (film score) (all of it)

There you go. Let the meme spread throughout all Blogistan, and let there be milk and bagels throughout all the land!

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Here’s another Movie Meme, stolen this time from Dave Thomas of Britain (not to be confused with Dave Thomas of Wendy’s, who is dead and would thus be a remarkable site if he were maintain a LiveJournal).

First movie you can remember seeing?

Snow White, at a very young age. It was incredibly vivid: when I saw the film again on a re-release in 1996 or so, for the first time since that first viewing, I remembered some of the visuals.

Last movie you saw that you loved?

Well, I watched Love Actually last week, and I really enjoyed the hell out of it. Before that, probably Return of the King.

First movie you saw on a date?

Three Fugitives, an incredibly forgettable comedy starring Martin Short and Nick Nolte.

Later, in college, I managed to watch The Little Mermaid with not one but two women who dumped me within days of the respective viewings (no, they weren’t the same viewing!), and my first date with the woman who is now my wife was to see Edward Scissorhands.

First movie you can remember that you disagreed strongly with the critics/reviews about?

Hmmmm. Tough one, here. I’ve never understood why Bladerunner is held in such high esteem, I guess. Cool visuals, yeah; boring story.

What movie have you dreamed about?

I have no idea.

A secret thing you did in a darkened theater:

I go to the movies to see movies. I’ve never made out in a movie theater, “did the dirty”, or any other such thing. And I get angry with people who are not of like mind. A theater is not a surrogate living room with a bitchin’ bigscreen TV and kickass stereo, it’s a theater.

Ever lied about something so you could see a movie?

Not that I recall. But I have proudly requested time off from work for movies — the premieres of the two extant Star Wars prequels, frex.

The worst movie you ever saw and the best thing about it:

Live and Let Die, I suppose. By far the worst Bond movie ever made, but it has Jane Seymour.

One person you’ve never seen a movie with but would like to sometime:

Shockingly, I don’t recall ever seeing a movie with Nefarious Neddie, despite the fact that our tastes intersect with amazing frequency and that we were in grade school together for seven years.

What kind of movie you’d like to see with that person:

Star Wars Episode III.

A movie you’re embarrassed to admit you enjoyed:

I have to admit: I enjoyed How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. The glow of Kate Hudson covered up a lot of bad stuff in that movie. (And there’s a brief scene in which she takes a big bite out of a cheeseburger that….um….)

Your favorite movie and the worst thing about it:

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, which really doesn’t have very good dialogue.

To understand something about you, people need to see this movie:

Any Star Wars movie, any Lord of the Rings movies, Casablanca, Singin’ In the Rain, and My Fair Lady. Watch these and you’ll have a pretty good handle on me.

List by title: Saddest/ funniest/ scariest/ overrated/ underrated:

Saddest: Shadowlands

Funniest: A Fish Called Wanda

Scariest: The Exorcist

Overrated: The Usual Suspects

Underrated: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

A movie you haven’t seen yet but you really want to?

Kill Bill both “volumes”.

A movie character you could really relate to, or even wish you could be like?

Richard Blaine, even though my eyes aren’t really brown.

Movie that the person you got this from reminds you of:

Howard the Duck. (Dave used to defend this movie to the hilt on Usenet. I just ended up shaking my head a lot.)

When I say the word, you say the first movie that comes to mind:

Grease. Because, you know, Grease is the word.

If you were a movie what genre would you be filed under at the video store?

“Special Interest”.

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I saw this on Lynn Sislo‘s blog. It’s simply the current list of the hundred highest grossing films (not adjusted for inflation, I think), with the ones I’ve seen in bold.

(Oh, and anyone who doesn’t like The Phantom Menace is a booger.)

1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824

2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665

3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459

4. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444

5. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375

6. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) $377,019,252

7. Passion of the Christ, The (2004) $370,025,697

8. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000

9. Shrek 2 (2004) $356,211,000

10. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) $340,478,898

11. Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367

12. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196

13. Lion King, The (1994) $328,423,001

14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) $317,557,891

15. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) $313,837,577

16. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) $310,675,583

17. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,125,409

18. Independence Day (1996) $306,124,059

19. Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) $305,411,224

20. Sixth Sense, The (1999) $293,501,675

21. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) $290,158,751

22. Home Alone (1990) $285,761,243

23. Matrix Reloaded, The (2003) $281,492,479

24. Shrek (2001) $267,652,016

25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) $261,970,615

26. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) $260,031,035

27. Jaws (1975) $260,000,000

28. Monsters, Inc. (2001) $255,870,172

29. Batman (1989) $251,188,924

30. Men in Black (1997) $250,147,615

31. Toy Story 2 (1999) $245,823,397

32. Bruce Almighty (2003) $242,589,580

33. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) $242,374,454

34. Twister (1996) $241,700,000

35. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) $241,437,427

36. Ghost Busters (1984) $238,600,000

37. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) $234,760,500

38. Cast Away (2000) $233,630,478

39. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997) $229,074,524

40. Signs (2002) $227,965,690

41. Rush Hour 2 (2001) $226,138,454

42. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) $219,200,000

43. Ghost (1990) $217,631,306

44. Aladdin (1992) $217,350,219

45. Saving Private Ryan (1998) $216,119,491

46. Mission: Impossible II (2000) $215,397,307

47. X2 (2003) $214,948,780

48. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) $213,079,163

49. Back to the Future (1985) $210,609,762

50. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) $205,399,422

51. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) $204,843,350

52. Exorcist, The (1973) $204,565,000

53. Mummy Returns, The (2001) $202,007,640

54. Armageddon (1998) $201,573,391

55. Gone with the Wind (1939) $198,655,278

56. Pearl Harbor (2001) $198,539,855

57. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) $197,171,806

58. Toy Story (1995) $191,800,000

59. Men in Black II (2002) $190,418,803

60. Gladiator (2000) $187,670,866

61. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) $184,925,485

62. Dances with Wolves (1990) $184,208,848

63. Batman Forever (1995) $184,031,112

64. Fugitive, The (1993) $183,875,760

65. Ocean’s Eleven (2001) $183,405,771

66. What Women Want (2000) $182,805,123

67. Perfect Storm, The (2000) $182,618,434

68. Liar Liar (1997) $181,395,380

69. Grease (1978) $181,360,000

70. Jurassic Park III (2001) $181,166,115

71. Mission: Impossible (1996) $180,965,237

72. Planet of the Apes (2001) $180,011,740

73. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) $179,870,271

74. Pretty Woman (1990) $178,406,268

75. Tootsie (1982) $177,200,000

76. Top Gun (1986) $176,781,728

77. There’s Something About Mary (1998) $176,483,808

78. Ice Age (2002) $176,387,405

79. Crocodile Dundee (1986) $174,635,000

80. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) $173,585,516

81. Elf (2003) $173,381,405

82. Air Force One (1997) $172,888,056

83. Rain Man (1988) $172,825,435

84. Apollo 13 (1995) $172,071,312

85. Matrix, The (1999) $171,383,253

86. Beauty and the Beast (1991) $171,301,428

87. Tarzan (1999) $171,085,177

88. Beautiful Mind, A (2001) $170,708,996

89. Chicago (2002) $170,684,505

90. Three Men and a Baby (1987) $167,780,960

91. Meet the Parents (2000) $166,225,040

92. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)$165,500,000

93. Hannibal (2001) $165,091,464

94. Catch Me If You Can (2002) $164,435,221

95. Big Daddy (1999) $163,479,795

96. Sound of Music, The (1965) $163,214,286

97. Batman Returns (1992) $162,831,698

98. Bug’s Life, A (1998) $162,792,677

99. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) $161,963,000

100. Waterboy, The (1998) $161,487,252

It astounds me that some of these movies made as much as they did.

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John Scalzi posts about the development of a digital bugle, because the demands for buglers playing “Taps” at military funerals has outstripped the supply of same. I caught wind of this in November of 2002, and here is what I wrote then on the subject.

—

Last week I was watching The McLaughlin Group on PBS, a political show that for some reason I’ve always liked — especially the Saturday Night Live parodies of it, in which McLaughlin (played by Dana Carvey) would let his commentators get halfway through a sentence and then bark, “WRONG!” before moving on to the next thing.

But there was a fascinating segment, toward the end of the show, on a problem facing the military. Veterans of World War II and Korea are dying at a pretty brisk clip these days, pushing up the number of funerals with full military honors — but the military only has something like five hundred buglers worldwide, which makes the playing of “Taps” at each funeral a difficult or impossible proposition. The military’s solution is to use an electronic doohickey to sound “Taps” while a member of the military holds up a bugle and, well, fake it. I’m thinking, in the event of a funeral where there can be no actual bugler, why not just have a civilian trumpeter play “Taps”?

I played the trumpet in high school and college — pretty well, too; I actually majored in it my first two years of college before I switched to philosophy — and I had the high honor of playing “Taps” for several military funerals while I was in high school. They weren’t official military funerals, actually; they were done under the auspices of the American Legion, which I’m sure is a different matter requiring a different protocol. But the men being buried on those occasions were veterans or former servicemen, and I was immensely proud to be able to play “Taps” for their funerals — a small way for me, as a civilian, to pay tribute to the service they had done for their country. If there aren’t enough official buglers around, then I suggest that civilian trumpeters are the way to go. I doubt there is a community anywhere in the country where one trumpet player can’t be found, and believe me, playing “Taps” for a funeral is a surprisingly moving experience.

I don’t know the first thing about the military regulations for such things, but surely they could be changed so that a civilian could sound the call for a departed veteran. At the very least, it seems to me that having a non-military person actually playing “Taps” is preferable to having a military person who can’t play the instrument “acting the part” while the call is sounded electronically.

—

ADDENDUM: Someone in John’s comments thread suggests that “Taps” is really very easy and that someone could be taught to play it in half an hour. Believe me, this is such a wrong-headed suggestion that it’s pretty breathtaking. It would probably suffice to reflect what that band sounds like at the very end of The Music Man, the one comprised of kids who have no idea how to play their instruments. The ability to produce a pleasant tone on any wind instrument is the result of lots of practice, and in the case of “Taps”, the bugle — or trumpet — is required to ascend, with control, into a register that is quite frankly beyond the ability of any beginner. “Taps” may sound easy to play, seeing as how it only uses notes in the C-major arpeggio played very slowly, but believe me, it is not. And I can promise that any family seeing its beloved veteran buried to the strains of “Taps” played by a person who has played the bugle for “half an hour” will not feel honored by the occasion.

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Jimi Hendrix, playing on his right-handed Fender Stratocaster.

This past Sunday’s edition of The Buffalo News contained an article (linked by the photo) about the fiftieth anniversary of the Fander Stratocaster, the dominant guitar of the rock world which made its debut in 1954. Here is a list of prominent musicians and bands who have played the Stratocaster and used it to bend legions of pliable youngsters — myself included — to their will.

Here’s to fifty more years of Stratocaster goodness.

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John Scalzi reveals his breakfast: Diet Coke, a multivitamin, and four Twizzlers. The problem, obviously, is twofold. Problem A is Diet Coke, which is nauseating stuff. He should switch to Diet Pepsi. The other problem is limiting his Twizzler intake to just four pieces. To get the full nutritional benefit of Twizzlers, one must consume at least half of a one-pound package, and then dispose of the wrapper by shoving it way down in the kitchen garbage can so the wife won’t see it when she goes to toss some leftovers or whatever.

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Paul Riddell links this article on Creationists who dig up dinosaur bones. There are a lot of nifty howlers here, but this stood out:

“We think dinosaurs were part of the normal Creation and were just big lizards. Noah took some of them on the Ark, probably babies, when the floods came…Throughout history, there are stories of people killing the animals that survived but they called them dragons.”

Yup, that’s right. Had the Arthur legends played out as Messrs. Lerner and Loewe envisioned, when Lancelot sings about how a Knight of the Table Round should “cleave a dragon in record time”, he was talking about a T-Rex. Yup. That’s the ticket. But I also envision Noah, telling his charges: “Grab a couple of the baby ones, but don’t let their mother see you do it. Big teeth and all.”

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