I was going to launch my next series of themed music selections today, but I had to be up at 4am for work (an unusual early start for a special project that had to be done prior to open) and then when I got home I had to help take Carla to the vet (a likely urinary tract infection, she has meds now and is resting), so the brain power is not at its highest right now. So, today instead I share a movie theme that we heard on WNED on the way home from the vet: Rachel Portman’s lush and beautiful theme to Emma (1996). Not much else to say here…it’ll probably and hopefully be an early bedtime this evening!
Buffalo Streetscapes: Men at work
Last week I did one of my favorite things, on the last day of my August vacation: I went on a long photo walk in the city of Buffalo. I spent a chunk of that walk in downtown Buffalo proper, and one shot I took that I particularly like is this one, of two men on a crane lift working on something on one of the buildings. I had to look up the building, actually: Convention Towers, on the south end of the Buffalo Convention Center. At the end of the street, dominating the background of the photo, is the edifice of Buffalo City Hall.
This is the jpg as it came right out of the camera; I have not yet done any editing on this photo. (Or any of the day’s photos…right now I’m behind on all my editing!) So, a better version of this will be forthcoming. For now, here it is! (And for the embiggenable version, go here.)
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Sunday Stealing
Another week, another quiz! Let’s see how this goes:
The 2×4 Meme
TWO foods you can’t stand
1. Broccoli! I’ve written before of my hatred for broccoli.
2. I love potatoes in just about every form in which they can be served…except mashed. I do not like mashed potatoes. And I always think I should! Every time I see a nice serving of mashed potatoes with delicious gravy, I think, “Ooh, that’s gotta be good….” And yet…no dice. I cannot get myself to love mashed potatoes.
FOUR foods you love
1. Blueberries. They’re heavenly. One of my favorite breakfasts is a cup or so of cottage cheese with a cup or so of blueberries on top.
2. Eggs. Eggs always make me happy. And they’re so versatile!
3. Bread. I don’t think there’s a bread I don’t like, and that can be a problem, I must admit.
4. Mustard. Spicy, brown, yellow, yellow with horseradish, dijon, honey, the stuff with the big seeds in it that you dip pretzels into, the spicy stuff in the little packet that I must have with my egg roll when order from Asian Star…yeah. Mustard!
TWO places you never want to see again
1. Las Vegas. Now, given that when I saw Vegas I was 7 years old as we drove through it while moving from West Virginia to Hillsboro, OR, in 1979, a case can be made that I really haven’t seen Vegas, at least, not what it’s become. The Vegas I saw bears little resemblance to what’s there now. But still! No desire to go there whatsoever. I am not interested. I don’t gamble, and Vegas is an entirely artificial place that got plunked there for gambling. There is no natural geographic reason for there to be a city there. You can see this from aerial photos where the city doesn’t dwindle from urban core to suburbs to rural the way cities are supposed to; Vegas just stops. Now, a Vegas episode from the last season of Somebody Feed Phil did the best job I’ve seen yet of making Vegas look like a place I might like, but…no. Would I turn down a free, all-expenses-paid trip there? No! But do I have any intention of devoting any of my travel time or resources to going there? Also no. (Mark Evanier writes about Vegas. He likes it much more than I do, and his opinion has the virtue of him actually having been there since 1979.)
2. For the foreseeable future? Florida.
FOUR places you’d like to revisit
1. Hawaii!
2. New York City!
3. Chicago!
4. Seattle! (These aren’t arranged in preference, but by how long it’s been since I’ve been to any of them. It’s been 4 years since Hawaii, this December; 10 years this November since NYC; 24 or so since Chicago (and that was a drive-by); 43 or so since the last time I saw Seattle.
TWO musical artists who make you want to change the station
1. Toby Keith. I’m told his early stuff was quite good before he went all “Lee Greenwood’s Republican Country heir-apparent”, but I’ll never know.
2. It depends on the song, but sometimes Rush bugs me. “Tom Sawyer” is a frankly unpleasant thing to listen to.
FOUR musical artists you love to listen to
1. The Beatles! Longtime readers will know that I was not always a Beatles fan, but I came around quickly when I started listening to them with new ears after watching the movie Across the Universe.
2. The Killers. I missed them when they were first getting big (in the 2000s), but I’ve been listening to them quite a bit the last couple of years, particularly their live album taken from a concert they did at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I love their sound and their combination of tech-dance, pop, and even yacht rock with saxophone styles.
3. Glen Campbell. He’s a part of the soundtrack of my life.
4. Annie Lennox. Her voice is a miracle. She could turn the Alphabet Song into a work of art. She probably has!
TWO moments you’d like to erase
1. The 2016 and 2024 elections. Yeah, a two-fer, but seriously: when they write the story of how America might have done herself in and done so voluntarily, those are going to be the moments she did it.
2. I don’t want to write about the details–not now, maybe not ever–but my mother did not deserve for her last year to unfold the way it did. At all. (Though honestly, seeing the 2024 election turn out the way it did would not have done her any favors.)
FOUR moments you’d like to relive
1. 2008’s election…but honestly, with a lot stronger sense of keeping the foot on the gas. America’s progressives had a serious chance there to change things for good and for better…but they just said “Mission accomplished!” after that election and retreated to their napping chambers, allowing the Tea Party to rise up and set the stage for the transition to MAGA.
2. I’d like to have been able to see Avengers: Endgame in theaters in that first weekend. I don’t recall what was going on, but I couldn’t make screenings any of those first three weeks. It vexes me to this day.
3. OK, I’m taking these not so much as reliving the exact moments but somehow recapturing their energy and their feeling, right? There was a night some years ago, when The Wife was still working nights at the restaurant she managed, and I was home by myself (The Kid was here but playing games and whatnot), and I started watching a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 on YouTube while I ate the pizza I had bought for dinner. I’ve known that piece for years, since I was first learning classical music in my teen years, but something about that symphony just clicked in my head and in my heart that night. That happens with art: you can know a work and be familiar with it and somehow your love of it, your appreciation of it…its grip on you…just goes to a next level at some point, and you don’t see it coming. (The performance was Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela at the BBC Proms. You can watch the performance here…unfortunately the HD versions are no longer on YouTube, so far as I know, which is a pity. The performance is raw and imperfect–the Bolivar Orchestra was originally a youth orchestra–but the music-making is utterly superlative. Sometimes the energy of a good youth orchestra outstrips that of a seasoned professional ensemble.)
4. Finally? It’s silly and weird, but the best things are silly and weird, right? I’d love to relive the first time The Wife hit me in the face with a pie. It’s strange how often the key moments in our lives are ones we really can’t explain very well, isn’t it?
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Something for Thursday
Well, I don’t know how often I do this. It’s not very often. Probably the last time was something like Ravel’s Bolero.
I’m about to share something I don’t like at all.
See, there’s this thing that’s been going around social media of late, particularly Tiktok, where you share what the Number One song was when you were born. I looked mine up…and my shoulders sagged. My stomach fell. My heart sank.
I had never heard this before, so I had to go listen to it, hoping against hope that maybe it’s not terrible.
Oh, it is.
Look, I have no problem with this particular artist, but I knew upon seeing this song title that I was not going to dig this particular song. And lo! I did not.
Here, folks, is what was Number One in the land on September 26, 1971. I’m not even going to name it! If I’d waited another week, I’d have arrived during “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart’s chart-topping success. Alas!
Sigh. Here it is….
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Tuesday Tones
OK, I think we’re going to wrap up the short survey of classical works that either appeared, or were composed, in 1925, thus giving us an idea of where classical music was one hundred years ago. (I’m not bored of the topic at all, but there’s another one I’m wanting to explore, so time to move on!)
One of the great symphonists of the twentieth century was the Russian-Soviet master Dmitri Shostakovich. He wrote fifteen symphonies over the course of his prolific musical life, and taken together they form a fascinating picture of the musical and artistic life that was possible during the Soviet Union. Shostakovich, like all artists in those regimes, had to walk a tight rope of expressing himself in his art while also pleasing the masters in charge of everything, and no, he was not always successful on either score.
I always find Shostakovich’s music more appealing than his contemporary, Sergei Prokofiev’s. I’m not really sure why; perhaps it lies on Shostakovich’s tendency to a starker sound and his sometimes satirical, if not outright sarcastic, tone. In some of his works there is an outright tone of mockery going on. For some this can date his work, but for me it depicts something fascinating. Among the standard emotion there is real humor in Shostakovich’s music, even if it tends to be dark humor, the kind of humor that is whispered in the background lest someone in authority hear.
Shostakovich completed his first symphony in 1925 (though it was not actually premiered until 1926). He was only 19 years old when he wrote it, and it is in some ways a student piece. The work’s orchestration is particularly interesting; Shostakovich employs interesting instrument mixes throughout, such as starting the symphony with a duet between a trumpet and a bassoon. A piano is used in the work, not as a soloist, but as a part of the orchestral tableau. I always find something rather refreshing about listening to Shostakovich, which I suppose springs from my main temperament when it comes to Russian music: with Shostakovich you get the Big and the Epic, but not necessarily the Giant Sweeping Heart-on-their-Sleeve TUNE that you get with the Tcaikovskys and the Borodins and the Rachmaninoffs of the world.
Here is the Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich.
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One source of local inspiration
Goodness! (And an ABC quiz thing)
Wow, I haven’t posted here since last Tuesday? Oh noes!!!
Nothing major or nefarious or bad is going on. In fact, it’s going pretty well. I’ve been on vacation since I left work on Wednesday, and I don’t return to work until Thursday. Also, my sister is visiting from out of town and we made our annual trip to the Erie County Fair on Friday. I’m swamped!
As far as this site goes, I didn’t make a conscious decision to take a posting break, it just happened. I’ve been active on Teh Socials, so if you follow me there, you’ve seen a few of my shenanigans. Just a few, anyway. More to come, especially a bunch of photos; I took a ton at the Fair, and I have others that are still awaiting editing from last week, and I am hoping to go on an all-day streetscape photography binge on Wednesday, weather permitting. (Oh, on the subject of weather? This summer has been loaded with hot-and-humid, and I’m rather tired of it. Also, this summer has not been loaded with rain, and we need some of that, too.
Anyway, let’s do the Sunday Stealing for this week, shall we? It’s a list of alphabetical prompts.
A. Auto: Buick Encore (2019). It’s in pretty good shape! Earlier this year I had to get all new brakes and tires; I could have done without those things needing done at the same time, but so be it. I also have a somewhat busted passenger-side mirror, from an errant backing-in incident.
B. Bed size: At home, Queen. When we go to a hotel, we try for King.
C. Cats: Three: Remy and Rosa, whom we adopted a few years ago, and we have added Daisy, my mother’s cat who was left behind when Mom died.
D. Dogs: Two: Carla, our pittie mix, and Hobbes, our greyhound.
E. Essential start to your day: Coffee and feeding Hobbes breakfast. Hobbes is usually up first.
F. Favorite color: If pressed, I say purple, but really, I love all colors. Brown isn’t one I tend to wear a whole lot, but I don’t dislike it at all.
G. Gold or silver: They each have their places, to be honest.
H. Hand you favor (righty or lefty): Right.
I. Instruments you play: I used to play the trumpet (very well!) and the piano (less well, though I wasn’t terrible). I have not touched either instrument in many years, sadly. My musical life is purely as a listener now.
J. Job title: Facilities Technician.
K. Kids: One. (Not by choice. Those stories are sad.)
L. Live (rural, suburb, city): Suburb. I wouldn’t mind living farther out, in a decent-sized house on a nice lot with tons of trees…but then, I also wouldn’t mind living in a nice apartment in a vibrant city, either.
M. Meal plans: Right now? As I write this, I’m not sure what we’re doing for dinner!
N. Nicknames: None, really. “Hey you,” I suppose.
O. Overnight hospital stays: For me, as of now? None. I suppose I can’t dodge that bullet forever, but I’m trying.
P. Pet peeves: Ohhhh, we do not have time for that conversation right now! Let me name just one: People who don’t utilize right-of-way properly when driving, and then do shit like sit at the STOP sign and wave at me to go when it’s their turn, or worse, when they stop at a YIELD sign while I have a stop and start that “No, you go!” shit. GAH.
Q. Quote from a movie: “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.” –Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark
R. Regrets: I’m not a big fan of regrets…but the one I wonder about most is leaving my music studies in college for Philosophy. I’m not sure that was a great idea.
S. Siblings: One. She’s actually visiting right now!
U. Underwear: Yes, I’m wearing some. Why are we asking? What are we asking? (And where is ‘T’?)
V. Vegetable you love: Corn. Though technically it’s not a vegetable, it’s a grain. Tomato! Which is a fruit. Asparagus? I’ve come to like it a lot, though not steamed, which for years was the only way I knew it. Brushed with olive oil, dusted with salt and pepper, and grilled? Oh yeah babe.
W. What makes you run late: Panicking over if I have everything. I really try not to run late, though.
X. X-rays you’ve had: Teeth and my collar bone when I was in 7th grade.
Y. Yummy food: Chicken tikka masala. We discovered Indian food this year! Why only this year? Who knows…I think we were a bit skittish to try it ourselves without someone along who was “in the know”. That turned out to be my brother-in-law. Now we love it.
Z. Zoo animal: I don’t really like zoos anymore; I find them depressing, even though I know that most of them really try to do the best they can by the animals in their care. That said, I always love seeing elephants.
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The Tones of Tuesday
Continuing my small survey of the classical music of 1925, one hundred years ago, we have a work by one of the most interesting composers of the 20th century. George Antheil is mainly known as an “avant-garde” composer, and in keeping with that label he composed a great deal of experimental music that made use of mechanistic sounds, as he was initially fascinated by the sounds of industry. He wrote a work called Ballet mecanique, which calls for, among other things, sixteen player pianos. Antheil wasn’t just about sonic experiment for the sake of sonic experiment, though; he would later find work scoring films in Hollywood, and this work required a more traditional tonal hand. How traditionally tonal he was is for the listener to determine.
A Jazz Symphony is Antheil’s work from 1925. The work, which premiered at the same concert as Ballet mecanique, created quite the stir in 1925, but to our ears now it sounds like exactly what it claims to be: a work for orchestra that is deeply steeped in jazz. American music was at the time starting to embrace jazz as more than just a “Tin Pan Alley” kind of thing, and Antheil was part of the first wave of such composers.
(An interesting footnote on Antheil, who is mainly known as a composer: he worked during World War II with actress Hedy Lamarr to co-invent a new radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that would not be subject to Axis frequency jamming.)
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“Mr. Looper? Where did YOU come from?”
Maybe I’ll make Monday the day I post something new and kooky that I’ve learned lately…kind of like the old “Sunday Burst of Weirdness” I used to post back in the old Byzantium’s Shores days.
Anyway, here’s something I didn’t know, and wow, did kids in 1986 dodge a bullet: there was actually discussion about having Big Bird fly on a space shuttle mission.
Yup. That space shuttle mission.
Imagine if that had come to pass. An entire generation of then-children would still be in therapy.
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“YOU OVER-OFFICIOUS JERK!” (or, Happy 100th Birthday, Marv Levy)
Marv Levy, the great football coach who guided the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990-1993 during his Hall-of-Fame career, is 100 years old this day.
Those Bills teams hold a strong place on my emotional life, even now that the last Super Bowl appearance is more than 30 years in the past, and at this point we’re nearing the entire run of Coach Levy’s time with the team being 30 years in the past. Those Bills teams were my touchstone for home when I was in college, nearly 1000 miles away from home; when I got homesick, there were the Buffalo Bills. Watching Levy on the sideline, occasionally laughing and more often shouting (and there were times when his lips were very easy to read). Levy’s erudition was always a matter of note and humor around the team; he was noted for including lengthy discourses on historical battles in his gameday pep talks. He would give a long story about a battle and then he’d sum it up by noting that the guy who lost the battle “couldn’t win on the road”. But he also clearly knew some much shorter words, and was not afraid to use them sometimes, even if he was on camera.
Levy also attended Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is an hour and a half south of Waverly, Iowa, where I went to school at Wartburg College. I don’t recall Coe being one of the schools Wartburg played on a yearly basis…but we drove right by Coe several times a year when passing through Cedar Rapids while on the long drives between home and school.
No, Levy never did manage to get the team over the hump to win the Super Bowl. Did that say something about him as a coach? Maybe a little…but as those years and those teams have passed farther and farther into memory (and some of those players have even left us entirely), the question of “Why did they lose all four!” fades farther into memory as well. All that really matters is the good times of watching those games. I remember the moment in the AFC Championship Game in January 1991, where the Bills earned their first trip to the Super Bowl by beating the Raiders 51-3. At the end, in the last few minutes, quarterback Jim Kelly (who had left the game already, since it was a blowout) was chatting with Levy on the sidelines…but in actuality, Kelly was the straight-man, the distraction to keep Levy from realizing what was coming from behind: the inevitable dumping of the Gatorade. Levy’s look of “Oh, come on, how did I fall for this!” is classic Marv Levy. (You can see the whole moment, including a slow-motion analysis by Dick Enberg, at the 1:55 mark here.)
The best tribute to Marv Levy that I’ve seen came a few years ago, courtesy of former wide receiver Andre Reed, who included this passage in his speech when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame:
There wasn’t a better teacher than our head coach Marv Levy. He was the definition of ‘speak softly, but carry a big stick.’ He became our father figure, very much of a father figure, and he became even more of a father figure to me when I lost mine. In 1996, when I lost my father, he told me just take as much time as you need. Marv, I’ll always remember those words, your compassion you gave me when I needed it the most. You had to deal with so many egos, I don’t know how the heck you did it. [At this point, the cameras caught Levy on stage, muttering “Neither do I!”] Those big words you used, yeah, we needed dictionaries. We actually needed a thesaurus, too. But one thing we admired about you as a coach was that word respect. We respected the heck out of you. When you respect your coach, you’ll do anything to win for him. I love you, Marv.
I thought about titling this post with the quote that Levy is most known for, something he has made his trademark phrase, which he has used time and again over the years, especially when addressing fans at the stadium: “Where on Earth would you rather be than right here, right now?” But I suspect that chestnut is getting a lot of work today, so I decided to go with another at least quasi-famous Levyism. This one’s from when he coached the Kansas City Chiefs (another reason I can’t totally hate the Chiefs, even if they’re close to 2010s-era Patriots levels of annoyingness):
And finally, I don’t want to allow the 100th birthday of a great football coach to pass without also noting his other great skill, which makes one wonder if a great Broadway composer and songwriter was lost when he decided to go into coaching football instead:
Well…maybe not.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Coach Levy! I’m glad you’re still right here, right now.