The Fredösphere

Well, a last minute change of plans prevented my trip to Indiana, so here I am.

Terry Teachout is quoting Hans Keller.  I've heard this one before, possibly from Terry himself.

The music critic Hans Keller said something shrewd about this phenomenon: “As soon as I detest something, I ask myself why I like it.”

I have detested the blues all my life.  Simply detested it.  In the spirit of Hans Keller, I've used the blues harmonic progression in two pieces lately.  One was a very Lutheran arrangement of the hymn tune Nun Freut Euch for brass quartet.  The latest is a choral setting of a phantasmagoric Pushkin poem translated into English.  I see now what I detested is the extreme obeisance to the harmonic formula.  My laws, people, it's time to shake it up a bit.  So that's what I did.  In the latter case (still under construction) I intend to sneak into the chord progression, so listeners won't realize until the piece is three-quarters done that the blues is what they're hearing.

An anthropological study of the strange religious phenomenon known as Christianity is making the rounds, but I think I first got it from Mixolydian Mode.  Great fun.

Seems like they were meant for each other:  a special needs teaching assistant meets a train ticket inspector with a special need.  Which is not to imply that he's blind.

We spent the whole long weekend visiting or being visited:  an orgy of social events.  I'm glad I'm back in the office today so I can rest up.

Here's a sonata for synths, piano, xylophone, and high-heeled hookers.  Here's a student bassoon recital with a program of Radiohead, Bjork, Mingus, and Zappa.

The Suspicious Cheese Lords are back in the news.

I won't blog tomorrow, since I'll be on the road most of the day.  Indiana wants me, but I can't go back there.

Remember that alternate universe in Star Trek where Kirk is evil and Spock has a goatee?  It turns out there is an alternate universe called Michigan State University where my alter ego directs music at the campus Lutheran chapel and promotes his own music compositions online.  Somehow a portal has opened between his world and ours, allowing us to become aware of one another.  Clearly, this state is unstable; we cannot allow one another to exist.  Combat unto death is inevitable.  Slaves!  Prepare the arena!  Sharpen my bat'leth!  My enemy will cower like a dog before my wrathful countenance.  This abomination -- this "Michigan State University" -- will disappear in a blinding flash of metaphysical self-contradiction when I slay the impostor, ha ha!

It all happened so fast.  The Michigan District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod owns a ministry at the campus of the University of Michigan, known as the University Lutheran Chapel.  (I know it as U-Lu, but that name has never caught on.)  In a matter of just a few months, discussions have turned into a decision to hand over operation of the Chapel to my congregation at St. Luke.  To acknowledge that event, raise awareness, and stir up enthusiasm, St. Luke held its annual Ascension Eve service at the Chapel.

(Thanks, by the way, to my buddy Victor, who attended the service and took the picture you see to the left.)

This is a case study of the power of an architectural environment to influence the activities within it.  After years of growth and remodeling, the St. Luke sanctuary has become a space where all sonic events are assumed to be electronically amplified.  This means the traditional worship that takes place there is disadvantaged in ways I didn't fully appreciate until last night.  U-Lu is a traditional church plaster walls, stained glass, a high ceiling with ornate exposed rafters, a pipe organ in the balcony, and a moderately "wet" acoustic.

Everyone who came to the service last night seemed psyched.  There are lots of emotions swirling around, such as a hunger to engage the U-M campus on a spiritual level, and nostalgia among chapel alumni (a married couple I know well first met on the chapel steps).  However, I suspect many of the traditionalists feel what I feel:  U-Lu is home.

Some additional thoughts ... There's a harpsichord up in the balcony, currently being used as a music shelf -- a harpsichord!  ... When I say traditional, I'm not thinking Bach cantatas every week.  What I love about this place is how friendly it is to unamplified vocal music.  On the other hand, it may be the place wherein I debut my banjo playing.  Be afraid, Lutherans!  Be very afraid! ... The Chapel is not huge; it can seat 130, or 160 if you use a shoehorn.  We could invite U-M student composers in for new music concerts, and even a modest audience would make the thing seem like a sellout.  This is something you must consider if you are going to promote new music.

We'll see if it becomes possible to move St. Luke's traditionalists to this new site.  In the meantime, I'm thinking about the way a traditional concert hall creates an expectation that high-brow music, with all its 19th-century trappings, will occur therein, and how that may limit the growth vectors for new music.  (Impressive -- I just used the word "vectors" in a sentence!  I wonder if that word means something.)  This is a topic that Ian Moss has wrestled with, among many others.

And then, there's the Jimmy Hoffa cupcakes.

It's just a feeling, but I suspect I am the first person on earth this year to use the word "byzantiniality" in a conversation.

Life is never quite right when one is not working one's way through a Neal Stephenson novel, so I'm glad to be reading Snow Crash, his first big hit.  Among Stephenson's many gifts is a pitch-perfect mimicry of tin-ear Engrish.  Here's the welcome sign that greets you at the entrance of a "burbclave" that belongs to the sovereign entity known as Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong:

WELCOME!

It is my pleasure to welcome all quality folks to visiting of Hong Kong.  Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment.  If any aspect is not utterly harmonious, gratefully bring it to my notice and I shall strive to earn your satisfaction.

We of Greater Hong Kong take many prides in our tiny nation's extravagant growth.  The ones who saw our isle as a morsel of Red China's pleasure have struck their faces in keen astonishment to see many great so-called powers of the olden guard reel in dismay before our leaping strides and charged-up hustling, freewheeling idiom of high-tech personal accomplishment and betterment of all peoples.  The potentials of all ethnic races and anthropologies to merge under a banner of the Three Principles to follow

1. Information, information, information!
2. Totally fair marketeering!
3. Strict ecology!

have been peerless in the history of economic strife.

Who would disdain to subscribe under this flowing banner?  If you have not attained your Hong Kong citizenship, apply for a passport now!  In this month, the usual fee of HK$100 will be kindly neglected.  Fill out a coupon (below) now.  If coupons are lacking, dial 1-800-HONG-KONG instantly to apply from the help of your wizened operators.

Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong is a private, wholly extraterritorial, sovereign, quasi-national entity not recognized by any other nationalities and in no way affiliated with the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong, which is part of the People's Republic of China.  The People's Republic of China admits or accepts no responsibility of Mr. Lee, the government of Greater hong Kong, or any of the citizens thereof, or for any violations of local law, person injury, or property damage occurring in territories, buildings, municipalities, institutions, or real estate owned, occupied, or claimed by Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong.

Join us instantly!

Your enterprising partner,

Mr. Lee

Love that can-do attitude.  It's more American than most Americans.

Tomorrow:  the wisdom of Stephensonism as it applies to the culinary arts.

These days I'm listening to short cantatas for choir and orchestra by Brahms, namely Schicksalslied and Nänie.  Imagine the richest, darkest Belgian chocolate you've ever tasted, melted and mixed with a twelve year old single malt scotch whisky, then poured over a perfect Cuban cigar.  Mmmm, mmm!  It's that good.

Meanwhile ... how odd.  We've been enjoying that great Evangelical pastime, the group Bible study.  Last Sunday, our study guide quoted Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, a book I now include in my Amazon wish list.  (Any grateful reader of this blog who is overcome by the impulse to buy me something is urged to deal with that impulse by ... giving it to me.)

The book describes a pottery class experiment.  Half the class was graded by quantity:  50 pots gets you an A, 40 pots gets you a B, etc.  The other half of the class was graded on quality:  turn in only one pot, your best one, and your whole grade depended on it.  You can guess the result.  The quality group was paralyzed by perfectionism.  The best pots came from the quantity group.  I'll bet the worst pots also came from the quantity group, but who cares? 

An amusing detail is the way the authors treat Mozart as the icon for effortless genius.  You see, everything came easily to Mozart, but since the rest of us are not Mozarts, we need to practice our craft.  I refer you to one of my favorite blog posts ever, in which Lawrence Dillon explains that Mozart was no Mozart:

In fact, Mozart completed almost 300 pieces before he started writing anything that would put him in the history books. If that doesn’t show the benefit of practice, I don’t know what does.

Now, just to undermine the underminers, I ask you to search music history for another genius, the one composer who effortlessly created an enduring masterpiece while still in his adolescence.  One whisky and chocolate-soaked cigar to the first person with the correct answer!

A friend of the wifeösphere recommended an old Bette Davis movie called Jezebel.  My first question:  what's with that woman's eyes?  Creepy, deformed, unfeminine, repulsive -- thus, they must be objects of allure for some tiny, warped segment of society.  Second question:  how did Henry Fonda ever become a big star?  Not from this movie, I think, although I suppose in Grapes of Wrath he was what passed for compelling in that era.  Here, he's an unconvincing blue blood with a bad accent.

We're in antebellum New Orleans, you see, and Fonda plays Preston Dillard, a banker wooing the headstrong, impulsive Julie Marsden, played by Davis.  The scenes are gussied up with lots of ladies in fabulous dresses that spring out from their hips like fountains of lace.  Women of the 30s may have been dazzled by such finery; the wifeösphere's reaction was:  "my goodness, those women sure didn't dress to be taken seriously."  Well put.

Serious disorientation occurs when you watch the scene when Preston's future father-in-law encourages him to discipline Julie with some good old-fashioned corporal punishment.  Dad explains he tamed his wife early in their relationship with a good caning, followed up with a gift of a diamond brooch.  Yes ... yes ... I've heard of this technique.  They call it the carat and the stick.

Well, here I am, giving this movie a beating, when the truth is, I enjoyed it.  The plot contains a few genuinely surprising twists, which redeemed it for me.  What I found to be beyond redemption was the video of the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.  Naturally I would like to follow up on last week's post, but half-way through the film clip, I found myself unable to watch any more.  There was something about this four-millionth example faux-demonic rock that suddenly didn't seem so faux.  Ugly is cute for only so long.  The Manolo, he agrees.  I've had enough.  No link for you; if you must see the clip, the 600 nanoseconds it will take you to google it is on your own account.

Der Drübermensch visited a rehearsal of the local boy choir last night to see if he would like it.  It is definitely his thing:  boisterous boyishness combined with music geekiness.  The tone was set, literally, by the nine-year-old who was banging out In the Hall of the Mountain King on the old upright piano as we entered the rehearsal room.

Said rehearsal room was in the basement of a Lutheran church in downtown Ann Arbor.  I looked at the linoleum floor, and  -- woah!  Flashback!  I saw four shuffleboard courts laid out there, just like in the basement of the church I grew up in.  This church must have been built in the same era, an era when indoor shuffleboard tournaments were expected to become everyman's pastime.  How very, very strange, since I (and I bet you) have never heard of, or even imagined, indoor shuffleboard being played.  And yet, as a kid, I accepted without question those triangles and numbers drawn with linoleum strips.  Weird, weird, weird.  I imagine contractors specializing in church basements offering the shuffleboard courts for a minimal markup.  I imagine church trustees buying into the "logic," excited by the evangelistic possibilities as crowds flock to the tournaments hosted by the church.  Oh dear.

I have not bothered to watch American Idol, but over the Christmas break I indulged in a rare session of broadcast TV and caught a commercial for it.  To my virgin eyes, the hype was laughably, disturbingly, bewilderingly overwhelming -- pretty much on the order of:

American Idol returns!
Lift up your heads, America:
Your redemption draweth nigh!

Over the past few years, however, I have enjoyed from a distance a parallel phenomenon known as the Eurovision Song Contest.  To note that ABBA is the pinnacle of quality of all the show's winners down through the years tells you just about everything you need to know about it.  The contest promotes acts that do not have established careers (as I understand it).  An additional spin not found in American Idol is the national loyalty:  each European nation submits an act.  Any embarrassment an act causes (and oh, boy, that's a fairly common occurrence) is a shared national experience.  Bitter recriminations and second-guessing are a common post-contest pastime.  Thus, we are spared the graciousness and good-sportsmanship that does so much to make this world a colder, poorer place.  England seems to be especially susceptible to embarrassment, which is odd considering its fine pop music tradition, and that English is the international language of the genre.

The inversion is what I love:  Through the centuries, Europe developed a rich musical tradition that was the envy of the world.  We provincial Americans struggled to produce our own crude versions, with (until recently) embarrassing results.  Then, riding a wave of technological advances, America developed a rich pop music tradition that was the envy of the world.  Provincial Europeans struggled to produce their own crude ... well, you get the picture.

The main website is here.  Be prepared to install an oddball plugin if you want to download video.  Sadly, it looks like the quality of this year's entries might be rising to semi-pro levels.  Darn, darn, darn.  The semi-finals are tonight, and the finals are this Saturday.  Here's a good short summary of the contest, past and present.  Here's some information (for its reliability I cannot vouch) on whether and how red-blooded Americans might be able to enjoy the spectacle.  My humble contributions to spreading the Eurovision Song Contest Gospel is here.  And to answer your most pressing question, Vlad has been shut out of the competition again this year.

Steve Hickens stopped by to comment, "get any desired college degree!"  Oops, that was the other comment.  Steve asked, "that's all M. Messiaen deserves?"  Well, no, probably not.  In fact, I think I'll listen right now to Apparition de l'Église Éternelle, just about my favorite solo piece for my favorite instrument (not counting the human voice) -- i.e., the organ.  I happen to love La Nativité du Seigneur, or most of it anyway.  One of the most memorable choral performances I've witnessed featured the underperformed Cinq rechants, a piece I would dearly love to hear again.  Clearly, "turning against" Messiaen is not what I'm doing, and I shouldn't have said so.  Unfortunately, there is a whole pile of honk - splat - tweeet! orchestral works -- that whole Oiseaux Exotiques-ish part of his oeuvre -- a mountain I still cannot climb.

(And now, let me pause to add one more classical musician's whine about the way music is organized on the iPod.  I couldn't remember the exact name of the album or performer of my Messiaen organ album.  I checked "Songs" for the piece under both A and L' and didn't find it -- and that's a long list to scroll around in.  I looked for Messiaen in "Artists" which is a joke since that category is not used consistently on classical albums; you might get the composer, or any one of the performers, or the name of an ensemble, or even any other information that someone thought would be nice to toss in there.  Finally, I thought to look for Le Banquet Celeste, one of the "songs", and found my way to the album from there.  I could have found it under Composers also, although I see he's listed in the Os, under three different spellings!  I've been gradually working my way through iTunes, putting the composer's name in the Composers field [What a brilliant idea!  Last name first!  Sheesh, why do it any other way?] but I think I'm only up to the Gs so far.  If I had looked for the Messiaen album in my CD collection, I would have gone to the Ms and found it in about 5 seconds.  Yes, my albums are sorted alphabetically by composer; could any other way be possible?)

Furthermore, if present trends continue, 300 million Americans will be killed by alligators in 2013.

I'm listening right now to Messiaen's Chronochromie, and I find myself turning against him.  This piece is a perfect example of what musicologists refer to as honk - splat - tweeet! modernism.  This stuff leaves me cold.

And now, dear reader, a warning:  I'm about to go deep into doting parent territory.  Those of you with weak constitutions may need to check out at this point.

The Maharincess completed her first class in pre-ballet at Peter Sparling's dance studio.  On Saturday we joined the throng of parents who crowded themselves into the studio to see the students strut their stuff.  The Maharincess was completely, utterly in her element.  She dazzled the audience with a face illuminated by the biggest smile I've ever seen anywhere.  When the instructor called for first position -- to "open the book" of the feet -- the Maharincess noticed her little friend was not listening, so she bent over and spread the girl's toes by hand.  This would not be the last time in the five-minute exercise where she drew a chuckle from the audience.  The wifeösphere, sitting in a place where she couldn't see well, asked me if it was our child who was amusing everyone so.  Who else?  She was asked to go first in every demonstration; the wifeösphere suspected it was her enthusiasm, not necessarily her technique, which won her that honor.  Four years old, and already her destiny is plain as day:  she will be a performer.  May God have mercy on her soul.  And her mother's.

John Tavener's Total Eclipse has been in my CD collection for many months.  I rarely listen to it.  From the first, I have disliked it.  Today, finally, I get it.  I don't know what took me so long.

This weekend saw a milestone:  20 measures of my current choral project have assumed their close-to-final form.  I've spent the last -- what? Three months? -- on these 20 measures, and at times I almost despaired.  (I'm setting a text which I previously made fun of.)  Hearing how they turned out, I'm mostly satisfied, yet I have to wonder why the heck this project is moving so slowly.

On Friday I wrote a review of Paul Simon's song Graceland.  That song's been out for years, but suddenly my thoughts about it (the short version is, artistic expression:  exquisite; underlying ideas:  dicey) clarified themselves and I banged the thing out in a spasm of inspiration.  I don't know if I'll bother to post the review; a suspicion nags me that the world-wide demand for reviews of Graceland may have been met long ago.

In summary, what we're talking about here is someone (me) with a serious bias toward deliberation, caution, and a molasses-in-January reaction time.  I'm about as mercurial as Gort.  I'm not complaining; both ends of the judging-perceiving continuum have their pluses and minuses.  I'm just saying.

Last night I was reading the alumni magazine from the University of Michigan School of Music, and I was pleased to see a notice from an old friend, Suzanne Sheppard.  She announced the release of a CD of piano music.  (How can you learn more, you ask?  Visit her website, of course.)

Although I have not maintained contact with Suzanne through the years (part of a pattern of relational laziness I'm not too proud of) I remember her with great fondness. Suzanne was really the only person in the U-M school of music I was buddies with.  It's a compliment to her outgoing personality that she was able to make friends with me.

I mainly recall her extraordinarily fruitful, not to say mercurial, creativity.  In other words, she's a genius of the classic mold.  She loved to initiate jam sessions with her on the piano and me singing.  Such improvisations were outside my usual deliberate approach.

Well, here I am, writing about her as though she were dead.  I'm going to send her an email right now.

Robert Gable's knowledge of contemporary music is astounding, as he tries to guess the composer and performer of recordings he has never heard before.  However, he is not quite this astounding:

Hah. an old favorite. That's an alternate, unreleased track from 'Trane Plays the Music of Zoot Sims, starting at bar 37 when Buddy Rich comes in. I hadn't noticed this detail before, but in the middle of the chorus, you can hear producer Ned DeBartolo puffing on his cigarette, probably a Camel although I know he later switched to Lucky Strike.

I wonder if he could identify arias from the latest opera to premiere at the Lincoln Center.  (Via The Standing Room.)

Finally, via Futurismic, and in honor of my dear Dakotan friend Alan, I give you Mars:  an environment almost as harsh and alien as North Dakota.

Alice Cooper did not believe in marriage, socks, or underwear.  On Saturday the wifeösphere and I picked out a replacement wedding ring for her, then went shopping for clothes.  On the drive home, it hit me:  my three purchases made me the exact opposite of Alice Cooper.  I am the anti-Alice!  I am his worst nightmare!  Ha-ha!  Next I will organize a choir that sings nothing but songs written by anyone other than Leonard Cohen, and I'll call it the Conspiracy of Beardlessness.  By the way, that's a great name for a choir when you realize the word "conspire" derives from the Latin for "breathe together."  Finally, this Christian version of American Idol cannot possibly result in anything good, do you agree?  "We took the modern American worship of celebrity, and blended it with the Gospel!  Cool!"

Looks like composer of choral music is stirring things up over at the Sequenza 21 Composer's Forum:

I am a composer, albeit a composer unburdened with those pesky problems of commissions and frequent performances,[...]

Oh no.  One of those people.

[...] and I recognize that writing for highly skilled performers allows one to stretch one's skills and expression in directions not possible with less skilled performers. However, there are a hell of a lot of ensembles out there that are strangers to much in the way of new music.

Getting those groups to play new music is no easy matter. This is especially true with choirs. There seems to be long established enmity between many a New Music milieu and choirs. Many composer friends have told me that they hate vocal music and in particular hate choral music.  There is a ton of great choral music from the last 30-40 years, in particular there's an impressive body of works from the Nordic countries inspired by Eric Ericson's virtuoso ensembles and those of his students.

If sequenza21 readers don't know works like Ingvar Lidholm's "Arriveder le stelle" or Per Norgaard's "Wie en kind" [sic; he means 'Wie ein kind'] or his "Frost Psalm" then they are missing out.

Uh-oh.  I don't know those pieces either.

I sing with various ensembles and it is true that many singers long ago closed their mind to anything written after Elijah. It's also true that a composer has to compose a piece for amateur choirs that is simple enough that amateur singers can get their pitches. Some genres of New Music may just not be able to crossover in that "unknown region."

Check the post's comments, where you will discover other amateur composers coming out of the woodwork.  Some have provided links to their compositions.  Of course, if you haven't checked my music page, please do that.  First.

So that's the reason:  I'm stupid.  (Via Lynn.)

To follow up on my (indirect) mention of a classic sci-fi short (very short) story, see this video called They are made out of meat.  (Via Gravity Lens.)

Communism is only one good rebranding short of a comeback.  (Via Design Observer.)

Do we approve of Gaddafi, the Opera?  Well, let's hear the dang music first.  It does remind one that the people will always rise up to resist the oppressor.

I don't know anything about dance, but I know what dance criticism I like.  I'm glad to see Laura Jacobs of the New Criterion getting some of her due.  I don't know of any critic who can communicate the essence of an art to neophytes like she does.  I suppose the true test would be her estimation in the eyes of the experts, but all I can say is, if she's fooling us know-nothings, she's doing it with a mesmerizing panache, perspicacity, aplomb, élan, flair, and a flapdoodle-free fandango, or something.  Everyone says writing about dance is like snorkeling about Esperanto, but she makes it seem like singing about love.

I don't think I need 1000 CDs in one little box, but I'll pass it along in case you do.  I've been thinking about my music collection and its strangeness, even (or especially) for a classical music fan.  I have precisely none of the following:

Operas by Wagner (due to change eventually, however; I've got my eye on a Flying Dutchman)
Any Verdi, not even the Requiem
Any music by Haydn (you knew that, didn't you)
Any music by Beethoven (wow)
Any Mozart but four arias sung by Herman Prey (even I am shocked)

Which composer wins my personal popularity contest?  It's Benjamin Britten, by a landslide.

This can't be a good sign.

This article is a bit of a mess, in the way it confuses high-brow style with liturgical purpose, but this line caught my eye:

Carroll is an unrepentant choir director. She believes there is more to being a Catholic musician than the ability to play some guitar chords while singing, "Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord? I have heard You calling in the night." She can speak words like "Victoria" and "Palestrina" without flinching.

She's doing better than I, since I always flinch when speaking "Victoria" and "Palestrina."  I think it's because my stepfather used to beat me while listening to Renaissance polyphony.

Meanwhile, new reality TV program is seeking the most exciting church choir.  In preparation, they did a poll.  It turns out that music aids spirituality!  Wow.  I did not see that coming.

I hate to criticize a choir director's decision to conduct "Do not stand at my grave and weep" at a funeral, but I don't get the sentiment.  When I die, I want everyone bawling their eyes out.  It reminds me of the notorious King Herod, who on his deathbed ordered the arrest of prominent citizens from every town in his kingdom.  His plan was for them all to be executed upon word of his death, to guarantee there would be no celebrating when he died -- which you've got to admit was a good idea.

Finally:  via The Rat, it's an early art project by MC Escher.

An office luncheon will limit my blogging today.  Yet while I feed my face, I must also feed the beast, so I offer you hungry lions this impenetrably strange ... whatever it is.  I'm so not conversant in this language; I cannot even tell if it is a parody, and if so, of what.  Anyway, here's a teaser paragraph.

The first option may not be the best option, but it does allow aggressive Choir players to increase the bang for the buck.  Because vampires cannot repeat actions, the daughters can only play one choir during a turn.  If one only has 3-4 daughters in play, a successful Choir can only bleed for 4-6 pool in a turn, which is less than if they were to successfully bleed with a presence bleed modifier.  With Hanging Fermata, a successful Choir of 3-4 vampires can do 10-14 damage, if each vampire does an inferior Choir the first turn and all but one does an inferior Choir the next with the last vampire performing a superior Choir.  However, by using this option, the player is deciding that it is worth a master phase action to do an additional 2 pool damage.  Without the Hanging Fermata, a player could do 4-6 pool damage the first turn with 2-3 inferior and one superior, and then the next turn do another 4-6 pool damage with 2-3 inferior and one superior, for a total of 8-12 pool damage in two turns versus the 10-14 damage using the Hanging Fermata.

Okay, so if you google "hanging fermata" you get more links.  I really don't have the heart for this.  You go research it if you want.

Our Byzantium Shoreman wants to become the foremost authority on space opera.  He supplies a reading list.

The space opera genre is a branch of science fiction that emphasizes the old verities of storytelling.  It follows the belief that humans and extra-humans continue to act under the ancient forces of love, hate, life and death, even while rocketing about the galaxy, meeting all manner of aliens.  More specifically, space opera preaches that in spite of the vastly expanded frontiers of the future, a lone heroic individual can still make a difference in the universe.

Lynn, who saw it first, also contributes a few more links to the discussion.  I twice blogged* my reaction to First Lensman, a space opera founding document.  Short version:  they lost me at the sooper-dooper-fyootyooristic nylon shorts that the heroine wears.

By the way, my kids saw the original Star Wars movie this week.  We let them watch it for the sake of their cultural literacy; they couldn't follow it well, and watched it without enthusiasm.  To me, the graphics seemed humorously tied to the Pong era, yet Lucas' attempts to spice things up with added scenes of modern effects didn't work for me.  Someone tell that guy to leave it alone.

*If you're looking for nominations for cleverest blog post title of all time, allow me humbly to commend you to this link.

"What's that, Lassie? You say Timmy's in the well? Quick, girl! Go get the medievalist!"

Yesterday our preacher treated us to this very, very, very inspirational worship video.

It's the future of air travel! From 1974!

Twice now lately, I've read something online about our need for a few classical artists who are are household names -- i.e., we need a new Bernstein.  I'm not interested right now in discussing the extent to which that is true.  What struck me is that most of the suggested candidates for this role were people I didn't recognize.  (Okay, I know Dawn Upshaw's work well; the others seemed only vaguely familiar.)  Here I am, supposedly in the thick of the music word, and I don't know what's going on.  What's worse, my biggest problem is not my ignorance, but my failure to feel properly bad about it.  I need serious help.