I know, not much to say today. More tomorrow. (BTW, expect light blogging Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, because the Wife is off and you know how that is. Plus, Sunday is this year’s Taste of Buffalo, which means wandering around downtown eating ourselves silly.)
Let the Previously Plug’d, but not plug’d in a while, be plug’d again!
Longtime readers will know that I regularly plug FilmWise for all manner of cinematic quiz fun, but the newer readers may not know about it. This time, check out this one about subtitles, or this one in which you identify films where one character flips off another. Fun timewasting as always!
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An Embarrassment of Riches
Lately I’ve found myself a bit less interested in the political side of Blogistan, and a lot more interested in the cultural side. Not that I’ve stopped reading the political folks, but I don’t spend as much time following their links and I don’t comment nearly as much as I once did. The upshot is that I’ve found a slew of new cultural and musical blogs, all of which are fascinating and many of which will be going onto the blogroll soon.
And if this blog doesn’t have one of the best titles on a blog anywhere, then I’m just not looking hard enough.
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I’ll bet Beethoven was a Chevorlet kind of guy
There’s been a bit of Blogistanic debate the last few days about classical music and elitism; see Alex Ross for the starting point, and then his follow-up with relevant linkage (including a link here, which is pretty generous since this is my first comment in this space on the subject — my previous participation was in comments to Lynn Sislo‘s post). The debate seems not to center around whether classical music actually is the highest of musical arts, but whether classical music should be marketed as such in efforts to keep it from ultimately withering on the vine.
I make no secret that I fall in Alex’s camp here, in the “populist” approach to promoting classical music. I don’t like the “Listen to classical because it’s good for you” approach, as though we classical music lovers are parents trying to talk the kids into just tasting the broccoli or the Brussels sprouts. And I don’t really think of what I try to do as selling classical music, the way we’d sell a Lexus (to invoke Lynn’s metaphor). What classical music needs, in my view, is not marketing or selling, or even “populism”. What it needs is evangelism.
Now, some forms of evangelism work better than others, but I don’t think that this is the time for the “fire and brimstone” approach, which is what ACD seems to advise. But neither do I think that we need to “dumb things down”. What classical music needs right now is what astronomy once had in Carl Sagan (or, better yet, an army of them): someone who can explain in fairly accessible terms what is going on for the lay people, of course, but more importantly someone whose passion for classical music is not off-putting but infectious.
This is one reason it drives me buggy when the “classical elitists” look down on film music. The simple fact is that film music is likely to be the best way to expose large audiences to the language of the orchestral world. Over the last few months, composer Howard Shore has conducted sold-out performances of his Lord of the Rings music all over the world, and I’ve seen more than a few messages in various film music forums from fans to the effect of “I haven’t been to an orchestra concert in years before this”. If just a few of those — mere handfuls, even — get “bitten by the bug” and realize just what an amazing experience it is to hear an orchestra perform great music in a live setting, then maybe there’s a convert or two. But at each turn, I read similar messages from classical elitists complaining that Shore shouldn’t call the program his “Lord of the Rings Symphony”, since it’s not a Symphony in the traditional sense. Yeah, maybe not; but then, neither is Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliet, and anyway, there are three thousand people buying tickets to hear the thing anyway. Maybe, just maybe, a small few of those will want to come back to hear the orchestra play something else. Maybe even something by one of them dead white guys whose marble busts adorn Schroeder’s piano.
As I noted in Lynn’s comments section, my problem with marketing classical music to people who want “only the very best” is twofold: firstly, I’m not at all convinced that classical music actually is “only the very best”, and secondly, when one markets to that audience, that’s really the only audience that responds. When I look around the concert hall (and I myself go there far, far less than I should), I don’t want to look at a bunch of Lexus-drivers who are there because they’re in on the secret. I want to also see a bunch of Chevy drivers who are there because they just want to hear some good music.
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“Livin’ it up at the Hotel….something….such a something place….uhhhh….”
Lately I’ve been trying to commit songs to memory, mainly for the purpose of giving myself a pleasant way of passing the time at The Store while I’m sweeping or wandering the parking lot or whatever. (People never look oddly at a person who’s walking around singing to themselves. But just try merely talking to yourself, and you gain an instant reputation of being on the lam from the guys in white coats.) I started off concentrating on songs from Lerner-and-Loewe musicals, and now I’m moving on to folk tunes from my Irish, Scottish and Celtic music collection (starting with “Caledonia”, a simply beautiful ballad).
But I’ve noticed some interesting things about the process of memorizing songs. Lots of people know their favorite songs well enough that they can sing them along with the CD or when they come on the radio, but if you remove that crutch, it’s much harder to recall all the lyrics. Being able to accompany the radio isn’t the same thing as knowing the song, which I find fascinating. And after watching two full seasons of American Idol and seeing contestants fairly frequently forget words (sometimes blatantly, othertimes showing enough presence of mind to toss in some variant of “ooby-dooby-doo” to cover up the error), I conclude that maybe it’s not even the presence of the accompaniment that helps us sing along with the radio. Now, what the missing “X-factor” actually is, I don’t know. This is all half-baked thinking, obviously.
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A “Mircale Worker” no more
Sad news from the world of Star Trek: James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in the Original Series, seven movies, and one episode of The Next Generation, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
The saddest thing about it is that he has a four-year-old daughter who will spend her formative years watching her father waste away.
“Mr. Scott, the word is given. Warp speed.”
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“Walk left side, safe; walk right side, safe; walk middle, SQUISH! Just like grape.”
There’s a scene that Quentin Tarantino shot for Pulp Fiction that didn’t make it into the final cut of the film. It’s actually an extension of the first part of the sequence where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) escorts his boss’s wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), to dinner. In the film, Vincent sits in her living room while she finishes getting ready, and then the film cuts to their arrival at the restaurant; but in the script, Mia first puts a video camera in Vincent’s face and tapes him as he gives answers to her questions. The scene plays out like this:
MIA (OS)
Now I’m gonna ask you a bunch of
quick questions I’ve come up with
that more of less tell me what kind
of person I’m having dinner with.
My theory is that when it comes to
important subjects, there’s only
two ways a person can answer. For
instance, there’s two kinds of
people in this world, Elvis people
and Beatles people. Now Beatles
people can like Elvis. And Elvis
people can like the Beatles. But
nobody likes them both equally.
Somewhere you have to make a
choice. And that choice tells me
who you are.
VINCENT
I can dig it.
MIA (OS)
I knew you could. First question,
Brady Bunch or the Partridge
Family?
VINCENT
The Partridge Family all the way,
no comparison.
MIA (OS)
On “Rich Man, Poor Man,” who did
you like, Peter Strauss or Nick
Nolte?
VINCENT
Nick Nolte, of course.
MIA (OS)
Are you a “Bewitched” man, or a
“Jeannie” man?
VINCENT
“Bewitched,” all the way, though I
always dug how Jeannie always
called Larry Hagman “master.”
MIA (OS)
If you were “Archie,” who would you
fuck first, Betty or Veronica?
VINCENT
Betty. I never understood Veronica
attraction.
MIA (OS)
Have you ever fantasized about
being beaten up by a girl?
VINCENT
Sure.
MIA (OS)
Who?
VINCENT
Emma Peel on “The Avengers.” That
tough girl who usta hang out with
Encyclopedia Brown. And Arlene
Motika.
MIA (OS)
Who’s Arlene Motika?
VINCENT
Girl from sixth grade, you don’t
know her.
CU – MIA
lowers the camcorder from in front of her face and we get our
first full-on look at her. When we do, we get a pretty good
idea why Marsellus feels the way he does. She breaks out in a
blinding smile.
MIA
Cut. Print. Let’s go eat.
The other day, Terry Teachout came out with his own variant of Mia’s quiz, with a whopping one hundred items, that has proven quite popular (much more so than my own attempt at blog-list creation, sadly enough). I can’t answer them all, but here I’ll answer the ones I can, using the tried-and-true “bolding” technique. (In this case, my choices are in bold. The ones unmarked are the ones I can’t answer because I don’t know one or both alternatives well enough to choose. I also add a bit of commentary, but not much.)
1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? (God, what a lead-off hitter this one is!)
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises?
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington?
4. Cats or dogs? (The former: worshipped by Egyptians. The latter: eaten by Vietnamese.)
5. Matisse or Picasso?
6. Yeats or Eliot?
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin?
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike?
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca?
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning?
11. The Who or the Stones?
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath?
13. Trollope or Dickens?
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald?
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy?
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair?
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham?
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? (It’s a sausage thing!)
19. Letterman or Leno?
20. Wilco or Cat Power?
21. Verdi or Wagner?
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? (God, how I miss elegance!)
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash?
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis?
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando?
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp?
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt?
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin?
29. Red wine or white?
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde?
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? (But neither over Say Anything…)
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev?
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev?
34. Constable or Turner?
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo?
36. Comedy or tragedy? (But really, which ones?)
37. Fall or spring? (October is the greatest of months.)
38. Manet or Monet?
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons?
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? (But neither over Lerner and Loewe.)
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James?
42. Sunset or sunrise?
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter?
44. Mac or PC?
45. New York or Los Angeles? (Buffalo! Buffalo! Buffalo!)
46. Partisan Review or Horizon?
47. Stax or Motown?
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin?
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello?
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? (Just because this is actually what I do. I love magazines.)
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier?
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? (Both amazing albums)
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde?
54. Ghost World or Election?
55. Minimalism or conceptual art?
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?
57. Modernism or postmodernism?
58. Batman or Spider-Man?
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams?
60. Johnson or Boswell?
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf?
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show?
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table?
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity?
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni?
66. Blue or green? (Unfair outside of a context. I can list a dozen places for each color where I’d prefer it over the other.)
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It?
68. Ballet or opera?
69. Film or live theater?
70. Acoustic or electric?
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo?
72. Sargent or Whistler?
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera?
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma?
75. Sushi, yes or no?
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn?
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee?
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove?
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe?
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones?
82. Watercolor or pastel?
83. Bus or subway?
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg?
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser?
87. Schubert or Mozart?
88. The Fifties or the Twenties?
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick?
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce?
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins?
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman?
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill?
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann?
95. Italian or French cooking?
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? (Geez, and I was trying to build up some street cred amongst the classical music bloggers. This ought to kill that outright!)
97. Anchovies, yes or no? (I’m assuming as a pizza topping. I’ve used them as ingredients in other stuff.)
98. Short novels or long ones? (Can’t answer. I tend to prefer good novels, short or long.)
99. Swing or bebop?
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”?
Some of these — Number One, especially — just killed me. In that particular case, I had to resort to asking myself if there’s any Astaire film that I value as highly as Singin’ In The Rain, and I had to conclude that there was not. But it was still damned hard. My final TTCI score is 59 percent, which means….well….I guess 59 percent of the time I’d agree with Terry Teachout? Or is it 41 percent? Who knows….
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But how does the coffee TASTE?!
Andrew Cory decided to do a head-to-head comparison of Microsoft’s most popular programs and their open-source equivalents. The results are in. Yeah, they’re roughly what you might expect, but Andrew’s not a raving-lunatic “Microsoft SUX” type of guy, so it’s an interesting read.
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Whoa! The blog’s still here!
I didn’t mean to take two days off from posting — it just kind of happened, first because I didn’t feel like updating on Monday and for some reason yesterday Blogger wasn’t letting me publish anything. Weird. Anyhow, I’m back, sort of.
(And speaking of the Mozilla loading problem, I received an e-mail from Blogger today telling me that the tech folks are aware of the problem and working to fix it. They said that the solution is to hit “refresh” a few times, but that doesn’t work within the Blogger interface itself, and in the case of the “publish” page, can actually result in multiple copies of the same post. Stay tuned.)
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IMAGE OF THE WEEK
The launch of Cassini in October 1997, on its mission to Saturn.
The Cassini probe is much in the news now, as the ship has recently entered the Saturnine system and begun returning a lot of stunning data. Jay Manifold has been blogging a lot of the developments, and it turns out that Will Duquette plays an indirect role as well (writing software for the network of Earth-bound antennae that communicate with the probe).
Of course, once Cassini confirms the existence of a Rebel Base on Titan, the Star Fleet will be dispatched to take care of them. Heh heh heh….
(Because what’s July 4th without a lame Star Wars joke?)