The Fredösphere

I don't know what comes to your mind when you read the line about "the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" in the poem The Second Coming, but I think of Build a Bear.  Admittedly, a toy company is probably not what Yeats had in mind when he spoke of the "worst", but I am continually amazed at the incongruously disciplined energy that goes into making a manufacturer of mere teddy bears successful.  So I was surprised to see, among the Elf Teddies and the Snuggly Snowman Dimples Teddies a description of the Rough Beast Teddy: 

This cuddly cutie has a lion body and the head of a man, with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, and makes the pawfect gift for a friend having a beary cool sleepover.  It even slouches towards Bethlehem (batteries not included).

Meanwhile ... if you are between 1 and 100, I offer you (via Well Sung) NYPR's report on Florence Foster Jenkins (another member of the passionate intensity club), complete with sound snippets.  If you are "hovering around 40," relive the psychedelic worlds of Sid and Marty Krofft, including Sigmund the Sea Monster.  Here's a guy who could use a sea monster right now.

In the CD player right now:  Les Béatitudes by César Franck (by Armin Jordan conducting the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique).  Franck is a composer like Russia, in that he is never as strong, or as weak, as he appears, and unlike Russia in that he does not sprawl across eleven time zones, although were he a polar explorer, he could have.  Okay, now I'm babbling.  Maybe what I'm trying to say is that Franck is lacking only a wee bit of subtlety to be completely satisfying.  I expected this piece to be dull because of its obscurity, but it's flows along rather nicely, really, with well-managed climaxes.  The soloists have that slightly tense French vibrato that, at its worst, can sound like the French-accented bleating of sheep ("bœu, bœu"), but fits perfectly with the romantic Franco-Catholic sound needed in this case.  The next time you have a choir, orchestra and eight soloists sitting idle and in danger of rioting, consider making them perform this thing.