And we’re still testing, folks! Isn’t this FUN!!!
More tinkering
Tinkering
Your Daily Dose of Christmas
Stuff for a Sunday!
Some links before we head out to brunch in Manhattan, as people do! (I am so going to miss this city…but more on that another time!)
:: A couple of Star Wars links first. Here’s an interesting interview with Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and co-wrote Return of the Jedi, and has now returned to Star Wars to write episodes VII, VIII, and IX. Kasdan also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and Silverado, two other faves of mine.
:: Here’s an interesting history of Marvel Comics’s first foray into Star Wars comics, back before the Expanded Universe or the Prequels or just about anything else. There were some really fun stories in those Marvel comics, and I especially liked the creative team that was in charge at the end of the series’s run; I wish they’d have had more time to flesh out the story they were working on before the series’s abrupt cancellation.
:: Exploring an active volcano via kayak. Don’t try this at home, kids!
:: Many years ago — in 1980 or so — my mother took me to see the Ice Capades when we were living in Portland, OR. The chief attraction was Dorothy Hamill, of course, but to our dismay, Ms. Hamill did not perform when we went, because she was sick or something. But still, I got to see the Ice Capades! I’d pretty much forgotten all about it until a random check of the RetroSpace Flickr stream, whereupon I found that they posted captures of some of the pages from that Ice Capades program. I had this program book, and wow, does this take me back to when I was no more than nine years old!
And yes, the Ice Capades really were that cheesy, which is why it was awesome!
That’s about all…behave, folks, and regular stuff should resume mid-week! (Today’s our last full day in NYC and then tomorrow we’re on the Amtrak all day.)
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Thankfulness (Something for Thursday — Thanksgiving edition)
Wow…hard to believe it’s been a year since the last time I was thankful! There seems to be so much ugliness in the world right now, but I wonder if that’s not always the case…it comes and goes. But the beauty and the good things remain, and I am thankful to be privileged enough to be in a position to realize it.
Here is my ongoing list of things I’m thankful for, tweaked for this year. Further posting may be sporadic for a few days, as I’m on vacation with The Family in the Big Apple, the City that Never Sleeps, the Town So Nice They Named It Twice, New York, NY! Happy Thanksgiving, folks!
Bib overalls, writing, Star Wars, Hayao Miyazaki, Guy Gavriel Kay, John Williams, Person of Interest, Sarah Shahi, Lois Macmaster Bujold, Cutthroat Kitchen, Alton Brown, Veronica Mars, Enrico Colantoni, Adele, Idina Menzel, Kristen Stewart, “Let It Go”, Arrested Development, chicken dances, Freaks and Geeks, The Musketeers, indie authors, Ithaca, Cayuga Lake, the Rochester Lilac Festival, fleece pullovers, scarves, retired racing greyhounds, our new house, a room for all my books, George Lucas, Gordon Ramsay, Hector Berlioz, Sergei Rachmaninov, Wicked, showtunes, raisin bran, The Oatmeal, the Sterling Renaissance Festival, antique shopping, taking ridiculous numbers of selfies, Guardians of the Galaxy, discovering that a coworker and I have the same second-favorite Madonna song, handing copies of Stardancer to my friends, Asian Star (our favorite local Chinese restaurant), Arriba Tortilla (our favorite local Mexican restaurant), Firefly (our local cupcake joint), Firefly (the teevee show), Castle and Beckett, A Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk (thanks for the memories, Tommy!), snow, sun, learning to live with a dog, watching two cats learning to live with a dog, hiking in the woods with the dog, drinking rum, single-malt Scotch, science, the stars, new friends online and off, finding out how cool my coworkers are, Princesses Tariana and Margeth, Lieutenant Rasharri, John Lazarus (hopefully you’ll find out who he is nest year), Aeric Seaflame (someday….), being tantalized by story ideas, figuring out a way out of a plot jam, getting a pie in the face, holding The Wife’s hand, listening to The Daughter play music and video games, the feeling of getting home, the sense that I’ve figured out the plot, life, the Universe, and everything.
Happy Thanksgiving to each and every one of my readers and interactors throughout the Cyber-world! May the Holiday season be one of joy, and even if joy is hard to find, please try to take a moment and find some beauty!
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Symphony Saturday
Ooooh, here’s one of my absolute favorites. There’s just something about Russian Romantics that always calls me home. I don’t really know why that is; it’s nothing genetic or ethnic or to do with genealogy. To my knowledge, there’s not a drop of Russian blood in me, anywhere. But this group of composers, along with their post-Romantic brethren, seem to speak to my heart more than most other groups or national schools or whatever you want to call them. I don’t want to indulge too much in sweeping generalities, but there’s just something about the way the Russians can engage in lyrical brooding that appeals to me on an elemental level. Beautiful sadness, I think — or the awareness that there are things in this world that can break your heart simply by being as beautiful as they are. There must be a German word for that feeling, or some lovely phrase in French.
Anyway, up today is the Symphony No. 1 by Vasily Kalinnikov. You have almost certainly not heard of Kalinnikov, because the fates dealt the music world a cruel blow when they afflicted him with tuberculosis. Kalinnikov was a deeply talented composer who was just starting to take flight when he died at the age of 35, becoming yet another “Oh, what if!” artist.
His first symphony is full of everything you would expect from a Russian Romantic symphony. It’s full of amazing melodies (just try getting the first subject of the first movement out of your head after you’ve heard it), singing chromaticism, brooding churn in the lower registers, and cyclic construction that brings themes from the previous movements back for the finale. The delicate opening of the second movement is one of the most magical segments of any symphony I’ve ever heard, and that finale — what an astonishing climax Kalinnikov creates, when he summons that delicate love song tune from the second movement to be the main focus of the symphony’s glorious conclusion!
Maybe I’m being over-the-top in my praise of this work, but don’t take my word for it. Here’s the Symphony No. 1 by Vasily Kalinnikov.
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Bad Joke Friday
