Well, I guess “Nevaeh” is off the hook for the dumbest name coined for babies recently. It seems that there are at least four children in the United States named “Espn”, after the TV sports network.

Yeesh.

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I occasionally get search engine hits for some variant of “sad classical music”, so I figure I could at least provide those searchers with a service. Earlier today I listened to a CD I recently purchased, a collection of works by Japanese composer Humiwo Hayasaka (on the Naxos label, in their “Japanese Classics” series).

The first work on this release is Hayasaka’s Piano Concerto, which was composed in 1948. It consists of just two movements, a Lento and a Rondo. While the Rondo is fairly light-hearted, the Lento, which at more than twenty-two minutes is more than twice as long as the Rondo, is to my ears a terribly sad bit of music. According to the liner notes, the Lento is a “requiem for Hayasaka’s brother and an elegy for the victims of World War II”. It certainly feels like both of those things; the term I’d use to describe this movement is a “lament without words”.

Anyway, there’s some sad classical music for you.

(Excellent recording, by the way.)

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Hmmm…a possibly shady land deal involving a prominent national politician! Bring on the unending news coverage! Bring on the talk radio conspiracy theorizing! Bring on the independent prosecutors! Bring on the hearings in Congress! Bring on the — oh wait, it doesn’t involve a Democrat named “Clinton”. Forget it, then.

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Deepest condolences to Marc Odien, who lost his mother today. Marc is one of the “prime movers” of the Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan, being at the top of WNYMedia.net, a local firm that hosts many Buffalo blogs. He was also, along with Alan, one of the very first people to show up at Little Quinn’s wake, way back when.

“Shoulder high, we bring you home….”

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Just some short stuff this evening:

:: See, here’s why I stopped watching Lost (which premieres tonight for its third season) about six episodes into the first season: because I knew that sooner or later I’d end up feeling like this guy. I probably wouldn’t be quite as pissed as that guy seems, though.

:: Glenn Greenwald is on fire. Apparently Dennis Hastert went on the Rush Limbaugh program to defend himself:

If the term “moral degenerate” has any validity and can be fairly applied to anyone, there are few people who merit that term more than Rush Limbaugh. He is the living and breathing embodiment of moral degeneracy, with his countless overlapping sexual affairs, his series of shattered, dissolved marriages, his hedonistic and illegal drug abuse, his jaunts, with fistfulls of Viagra (but no wife), to an impoverished Latin American island renowned for its easy access to underage female prostitutes.

Heh. Indeed.

:: It suddenly occurred to me that Joe Lieberman moved into national spotlight by his condemnation of Bill Clinton’s conduct during the Monica Lewinsky affair. After all, if Lieberman hadn’t spoken out on the Senate floor as he did, I doubt very much that Al Gore, needing in 2000 to demonstrate some kind of “independence” from Clinton, would have tabbed Lieberman as his running mate.

So what does Lieberman have to say about the current scandal? So far as I can tell, as of this writing, absolutely nothing. Hmmmmm.

UPDATE: Apparently now Lieberman has said something. Is he taking a strong moral stand like he did against Bill Clinton? Nope, he’s taking a stand against “partisanship”. Jeebus.

:: In his most recent installment of his ongoing (and delightful) “DM of the Rings” series of posts (which are hilarious if you’ve ever played a D&D-style role-playing game in your life), Shamus notes that players who quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail are especially annoying, and especially common. Well, as I pointed out a couple months back, that kind of behavior doesn’t just ruin role-playing games.

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Mark your calendars, fans of Tolkien and of great film music: November 7 will see the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Complete Recordings). The Fellowship release in the Complete Recordings series of these film scores sets the gold standard for major film music releases, and Two Towers will be more of the same. Howard Shore’s soundworld for these films continues to astonish me.

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I agree that what Mark Foley’s done probably isn’t “pedophilia” in the strictest sense of the word (a point made here and here), but I’m not ready to concede that sixteen-year-olds aren’t children in at least some respects, either. There are reasons that people of that age aren’t allowed to do stuff like drink, vote, enlist in the military, work in various jobs without restriction, have consensual sex in some states, and so on.

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In comments to yesterday’s football post, Mary notes that because I dared express pro-Viking sympathies as far as the NFC goes, she’ll be rooting for her own boys, Da Bearz, to grind my Bills into the dirt. Fair enough!

Funny thing is, though, that I pretty much like the entire NFC North. Yup, I like ’em all. There’s just so much great football history there, and all of those teams come from the Upper Midwest, which outside of Buffalo is my favorite part of this whole country of ours.

I went to college in Iowa, which meant that I was generally surrounded by three types of football fans: Viking fans, Bears fans, and Packer fans. This was when it was the NFC Central division, not the North as it is now. It was also when the Buccaneers were in the division, and perenially played doormat. (I don’t recall any Detroit Lions fans in college; I guess Detroit was too distant to have a presence on my small Iowa campus.)

So there I was, a Buffalo Bills fan, watching entertaining games between all those NFC Central rivals, and it was always just a great time — although all of those fans of the various teams would invariably look at me as though I’d sprouted a second head when I dared note that I didn’t absolutely loathe the other two teams in that Upper Midwest NFC Triumvirate:

ME: Man, I like that Favre kid.

SOMEONE ELSE: Hey, weren’t you rooting for the Vikes last week?

ME: Yeah, but the Packers are OK too.

SOMEONE ELSE: What?

ME: I like the Packers too.

SOMEONE ELSE: [head explodes]

You really have to love NFC North fans. They’re hardcore. Liking the Bears equals hating the Packers and Vikings, and so on with the others. Not so AFC East fans. Sure, the Bills fans hate the Dolphins, but generally, we don’t seem to really despise the Jets, and even though I personally hold the Stupid Patriots as the greatest force for evil in the football world, few others in these parts seem to do so. If anything, the StuPats get a respect from people I talk to around here that makes me want to vomit, but hey, maybe I am the deranged one.

Anyhoo, go Bills!

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I see that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is digging in his heels, refusing to resign over his increasingly obvious “see no evil, hear no evil” policy regarding Mark Foley’s indiscretions. I can’t help but recall the circumstances that led to Hastert ascending to the Speakership in the first place: he was handpicked by Tom DeLay after Speaker-designate Bob Livingston resigned when, during the debate over the possible impeachment of then-President Clinton, his own extramarital affairs came to light.

Rise by the sex scandal, fall by the sex scandal.

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I don’t have a whole lot to say about the Bills’ victory over the Vikings yesterday — just some quick points.

:: JP Losman continues to show that he’s not just a guy with promise, but that he’s growing. Let’s hope this continues.

:: The Bills’ O-line continues to be less-than-stellar at getting defenders off the line of scrimmage, but they seem to be OK at pass protection. Strange.

:: At the time, I had no problem with the Bills letting Pat Williams go. I figured that at his age, the downside to giving him a big contract was too big. I now admit that I was full of bird poop on that point.

:: I hate rooting against the Vikings, and I only do so when they play the Bills. They’re my favorite NFC team.

:: The TV announcers for yesterday’s game were a disaster. We’re talking Joe Theissman-level stupidity here. A couple of relevant examples:

:: After that short kickoff that the Bills recovered before being flagged for the phantom “interference with the free catch” call, one of the announcers said, “The Vikings are lucky that [the Bill who recovered] didn’t get up and keep running with that ball!” Except for the fact that the kicking team cannot advance a kickoff. Everybody knows that, I thought.

:: Referring to Andre Reed, who was inducted onto the Bills’ Wall of Fame yesterday: “Andre Reed is one of the most prolific receivers in Bills history!” Ummmm…no, Andre Reed is the most prolific receiver in Bills history. Jee-bus.

:: Toward the end of the game, inside three minutes bure before the Vikes got the ball back this exchange took place:

ANNOUNCER 1: The Vikings still get the two-minute warning, and they have all of their timeouts.

ANNOUNCER 2: Yes, and the Vikes can still stop the clock!

Those guys were awful.

Next up for the Bills: on the road at Chicago. Maybe the Bears fall victim to a “trap” game, having blown out the defending NFC champs on national television. We’ll see.

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