Default

Mama Bonk had trouble reading us with the previous theme. Therefore, I’ve switched back to default. I am still toying with what to do with it. I know the last theme was more stylized than this, but that theme did not work here as I had it customized…I could not get the style sheets to play nice. I assume it has something to do with the new host company’s configuration. But it got me to thinking that maybe if I stuck with one of the default themes, or modified it only slightly, the widgets would work in a more stable manner, and I could add all kinds of toys. I also figure that WordPress regularly updates its default themes as upgrades come down the pike. So, this might be dull, but at least it will work.

Caprica

I don’t know what the general consensus is amongst Battlestacked Galactica fans regarding “Caprica,” the prequel whose extended pilot is available on DVD. I’ve just gotten through it recently. It’s well worth watching, though it’s not going to give you the charge one gets upon hearing “nothing but the rain” for the very first time. It’s a slower story, so it takes some patience to stick with. But once you grasp what the show is meant to accomplish, that is, to chronicle the creation of Cylons and, perhpaps, of the Resurrection tech itself, yeh, you have me interested. What the hell. We’ll season pass it.

300 MB

On April 20, 2008, I started my own radio station.

I’d always wanted some way to stack up a queue of songs and to have them play. I’d looked at Shoutcast, but it seemed more involved than I wanted it to be. I didn’t want to have to fret about bandwidth and licensing. I just wanted to queue up the music and let it play.

Thus was borned Radio B.O.N.K. at Live365.

I heartily recommend Live365 for anyone who’s remotely interested in broadcasting online. It’s damned cheap: $9.95 a month (or less when you pay quarterly or better) for my current package, 200MB of storage and 5 max unpaid listeners. This is a good price for such an utterly foolish vanity project as is your own Internet radio station.

My station’s eclectic. “’70s. ’80s. AOR. Brass. Dissonance. Jazz. Ska. Zappa. Zeppelin.” Programming it is easy-cheezy, though I’m always looking for more tracks. I keep a Maxtor 250G drive as full as I can with favorites so I can always post what’s in my head. And I spend some time every month combing eMusic for those off-the-beaten path tracks.

Anyways, look out now. For no apparent reason, Live365 is changing its packages and giving me 100MB more to play with, starting tomorrow. Holy crap. I can barely manage what I have. Maybe I’ll start that “jazz at night” show I was thinking about. I dunno.

O Fortuna

“Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.”

This is what Carl Orff, composer of the Carmina Burana, wrote to his publisher upon its completion.

I was fortunate enough to have witnessed a live performance of this piece last night at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center by Choralis, a local chorale group celebrating its tenth anniversary. That I have a few loved ones involved with the group, sure, that had something to do with my attendance and my enjoyment of the piece.

The Carmina is a piece vastly underrated by society as a whole. You’ve heard it, at least, its first (and last) movement. Hollywood uses its epic power ad nauseum, often to promote horror flicks. As a matter of fact, it is used in Michael Moore’s latest flick, Capitalism, A Love Story.

This is a challenging piece for chorus, orchestra, and listener alike. It is written in lower German, Latin and some French. The meters are outrageous, and the music is rhythmic and sometimes harsh. I was in a chorus that performed it some years ago. And we had a few folks walk out on it.

When you enter a venue where the Carmina is about to be performed, and the orchestra is warming up, I guarantee that you will hear the piccolo player fervently practicing a quick, one-bar trill that begins the third movement. This odd lick may be the hardest thing a piccolo ever has to do.

Viewing a live performance of the Carmina is like watching a very good movie. Every movement of the piece is beautiful, but there are slow parts. But by the time it winds into “Ave Formosissima,” followed directly by the power of “O Fortuna,” the audience realizes an epiphany. You’ll want to stand up and yell, my gods, Dr. Crowe was dead the whole time!

Yes, Gretchen Kuhrmann and her crew really pulled it off last evening, complete with a childrens’ chorus in the balcony and three excellent solo vocalists. Bravo.

The Funniest Story in All of Music?

Quote

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers has stated in interview that Dylan offered the song [“Lay Lady Lay”] to them backstage after an appearance by the duo at the Bottom Line in New York. Phil asked Dylan if he had any new songs that they might record, and answering yes, Dylan picked up a guitar and proceeded to sing the song so quietly that the Everlys thought they heard Dylan sing “Lay lady lay, lay across my big breasts, babe.” Thinking it was a song about lesbians, Don Everly declined the song, saying “thank you, it’s a great song, but I don’t think we could get away with that.” Dylan did not question them about it and went on to record the track himself. Months later, they heard Dylan’s version on the radio and realized they’d misunderstood the words. The Everlys felt they’d missed a big opportunity and later recorded the song on their album, EB 84.

Kitchen Disaster Night

It was to have been a simple dinner.

I had frozen hammaburger patties. I had American cheese slices. Martin’s potato rolls. Broccolini. And tater tots. Red onions and maters and pickles. Duke’s* and mustard. Good old comfort food.

I opted to pan heat the tots in a bit of olive oil. I put water on the boil to steam the broccolini. I threw the patties into a skillet. Soon, I picked up the salt shaker to spritz the patties. I immediately dropped it.

The thing is stainless steel. Do not. Store a stainless steel shaker. On the stovetop. They tend to conduct heat. Ow.

So then I tried to open the pickles, forgetting that most such jars have a plastic lining that you need to break first. I finally got the jar open. But not without a hell of a lot of effort.

In the meantime, the plastic collander I was using to steam the broccolini had caught on fire.

Fortunately, whatever polymer it was constructed of scraped off easily from the stovetop once cooled. Still. It is not good when things catch on fire. That is = epic kitchen fail.

The meal turned out and was an excellent accompaniment with which to watch tonight’s ep of Dexter. But still. As good as you think you are en la cocina, sometimes, the shit just hits the fan. (Which is not a good thing to happen in the kitchen.)

I did enjoy a nice Mondavi Meritage 2007 with the meal, though. I am not generally a fan of Mondavi. I think they’re just sort of “eh.” But $11 was a good price. And it is a pretty passable wine. Nothing I can come up with any adjectives for. But I reckon that’s the point of a Meritage.

*The official mayonnaise of the Sure Why Not Web log.

P.S. I think no comma in Sure Why Not. What do you think?

P.P.S. Oh, crap. Duke’s Chocolate Cake.

Pomplamoose

I may be late to the party, but I have just stumbled upon something called Pomplamoose. If you check them out, I promise you, it will be the coolest thing you do today.

Pomplamoose is Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, a couple of crazy kids who met at Stanford. They formed Pomplamoose and are pioneering a damned cool way of creating and disseminating their music: The videosong.

The videosong is the WYSIWYG of popular music. They vid themselves performing live. They dub the audio. They mix a hell of a song. They create a video out of it. But every word, every strum, every drumbeat is caught live on video. It’s quite an honest way to work.

And, they can afford the honesty. Her voice is just crazy good; while their sense of arrangement is just lovely. So, go. Watch Pomplamoose.

George and SuperGeorge

I famously watch television like I’m a 13-year-old girl (that is, when I’m not watching Keith, Rachel, Hardballs, or The Group.) I am trying these days to compensate for this fact by putting a Redskins game on every Sunday. But, still.

So you can imagine that this is a pretty exciting day. “Grey’s Anatomy.”

(Spoilers may abound, depending on if you followed last season or not.)

I love this show, I’ve even loved it after it jumped the shark, which most I think would agree happened when Christina was impaled with a stalactite. I have another idea of when the show jumped the shark. It’s when George and Izzie smooched and drunk-kerbanged.

George is why I’m such a rabid fan. I’ve been accused, in fact, of having a man-crush on the character. That’s plain silly. It’s just that it’s his story that got me loving the show in the first place, the man who screws up an appendectomy and becomes known as a 007 but then who really shines when the guy everyone assumes is the class stud freezes up.

But I think they screwed the pooch on George. I know that common wisdom among TV writers is that you can’t ever let a character be happy (the Joss Whedon principal), but my theory has always been that the show would have benefited from allowing O’Malley every happiness and success in the world, primarily so that one could watch Meredith perpetually eat crow, perpetuating her tendency to be “dark and twisty.”

O’Malley was always at his most interesting when he was defying expectations. When he takes the scalpel from Alex and performs heart surgery in a stuck elevator. When he grabs the picket sign and proclaims himself to be a “union guy” (still the best George moment ever). When he tells a Nazi patient to his face to fuck off. When he passionately sticks up for his new wife. That’s the Superman George, and he was imminently more interesting than the feckless wussy the show’s creators insisted on pummeling him into.

They should have kept Georgie married and blissful with the hot tamale Calliope Iphegenia Torres, should have had her spoil him sick with her mysterious daddy’s money, should have allowed him to become the most brilliant surgeon in the world, should have given him many, many more chances to exhibit Superman George.

And, they should have had children. You’re telling me that in a crew of this many attractive folks, only one of them squeezes one out? And that she’s (formerly) married to a grumpy sourpuss who seems perpetually surprised that he married a late-working surgeon? That’s just not realistic. None of these people are allowed to be married and happy and well-adjusted?

If they had to make someone miserable and to kill off someone in a grotesque manner, why not Mark Sloan? Sure, the majority of the audience (13-year-old girls) would never forgive the show, but it would certainly be interesting. And, he being one who would screw his best friend’s wife, one could even argue that he would have deserved it.

From the time she met him, Calli was the one who saw Superman George, while everyone else just saw Bambi. Why not make good on that storytelling premise and allow her vision of him to be tranformative for George? Instead of dooming George to ambivalence and misery in love, why not offer him a steady, loving woman whose influence molds him into a great man? That wouldn’t have been interesting? No? You have to have him recruited and then killed randomly and gruesomely?

(Admittedly, my theory is partially due to the fact that Sara Ramirez makes me weak in the knees. But still. I think they messed up regarding O’Malley.)

So, we’ll see how a “Grey’s” without George manages. I think it was a mistake. But, still, “Grey’s” does do a hospital drama like no other show. I tried “Trauma” last night. It has many actors whom I like, but it just doesn’t create a universe as effectively, and it’s missing the strong thread of humor that runs right down the middle of “Grey’s.” Not to mention that it smells a little bit like “Nurse Jackie,” which does it a hell of a lot better than “Trauma.”

I told you. Like a 13-year-old girl.