The Fredösphere

I know I'm a stick in the mud.  My knowledge of what's permissible is often behind the times.  Yet, I assert:  performing Bach's St. Matthew Passion in a thong is just wrong, wrong, wrong!

It wasn't simply the magnificent line-up of singers (including the sublime German tenor Gerd Turk) that made this a festival highlight, but Hume's inspired stage-directing. Performers were dressed casually in everyday clothes (in one chorister's case, T-shirt and thongs).

Oh, wait, that's "thongs" -- plural.  Is that Australian for sandals, what Americans call flip-flops?  Something else equally innocuous?  How do I find out?  Via Google?  Uh, no thanks.  I guess I don't need to know.

Another word Google is no good at finding is "freaka."  If you're looking for hip-hop lyrics or bad poems about a certain Central American country, then yes, Google will help you, but if you are looking for a certain musical toy that looks like a hose from a vacuum cleaner, forget it.

I want a few freakas for the musical drama I'm writing for Maundy Thursday.  A freaka makes an odd, unearthly moaning and whistling sound when you spin it around.  As you spin it faster, it ascends the notes of the harmonic series.  A few of them together make a wonderful sound effect, which I learned once when I was musical director for a production of the musical Quilters.  Well, no toy store in the area seems to know about them, and making my own was a failure.  A lot of googling turned up just one mention of the toy, a maddening claim that making a freaka is easy.  Fortunately, one of my singers suddenly announced her kids have two freakas.  Whew.