ceci n’est pas un rêve passant

79 days until the vernal equinox


If Bill and Ted made a video game, it would be one of the Bill and Ted games. If Bill and Ben from Seiken Densetsu III designed a video game, it would be Ren and Stimpy: Time Warp because they want you to suffer.


Our protagonist, who is now named Jake, even looks like Keanu Reeves.


Japan’s Magic John had a generic plot about magic or whatever. Then the translators were all like “dude, I am like totally going to change this game to Bill and Ted! Radical! Gnarly! Dude! Sweet!” Wait, that’s a different movie. And, no, I am not going to to write this in surfer slang. If you so desire, there must be a Dude Where’s My Car website dialectizer out there.
I think what happened is that there was a focus group and they we’re like “we need to be down with the kids. Can we surferify it by 10% and put everything in more of a hip-hop context? And make him more proactive. We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm” and then the people actually working on the game decided to go all out to the point of parody.

( clickity-pok )

burning question: Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm?” Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that.

For whatever reason, it never got released in the US. I say “whatever” because there’s not a lot of text, and it’s not particularly Japanese; this game looks like an American comic strip and most cultures have flatbread and most of those cultures that have a form of flatbread have figured out the art of putting things on top of the flatbread and voila, pizza. I mean, we’re heading into “a taco is a pizza” territory here. I know they’re sandwiches in Indiana. And if you’re wondering the story behind this, a tacomat moved in to a neighborhood and the condominium association was like “we don’t need a tacomat” (except maybe with more racial slurs) but there was an exemption for sandwich bars and so the judge decided that tacos are sandwiches and there’s nothing saying that a sandwich shop has to sell American sandwiches.
This is like how the Catholic Church has determined that the capybara is a fish so that people could eat them during Lent.
Massachusetts says otherwise. Interestingly, it had the same result. Exclusivity clause.
A sub is a sandwich even though there’s only one outer piece.

( clickity-pok )

burning question: what do you want on your Tombstone?

83 days until the vernal equinox


Previously on Adventure Island, Master Higgins completed his doctoral thesis in adventuring.


In one way, it’s the Super Mario World to Adventure Island II’s Super Mario Bros. 3, that is to say, gone are the discrete worlds themed around a certain level type and instead, we’re back to a cluster of large Adventure Islands instead of Adventure Archipelago.


In other more important ways, this is the same exact game, except Master Higgins can now duck. I mean, see the burning question.

( clickity-pok )
Next time, Master Higgins discovers his true identity in Adventure Island IV: The Adventure of Doctor Island. But not next year. Next year I have something planned. The year after that. *checks calendar* That is to say, if we survive August 5.

burning question: why radically change what works?

85 days until the vernal equinox
I told Krissy that Jingle Bells was originally written as a Thanksgiving song. I bet our successors in 2124 are going to talk to each other about how Frosty the Snowman was written as a Christmas song and yes, I am aware that the song itself never actually mentions but you know what, it was paired with something called “When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter” when it was first recorded and later that year, it got paired with something called “(Isn’t It A Shame That) Christmas Comes But Once A Year.”

I heard a song with the lyric Blame It On The Mistletoe and it hits differently when you know that mistletoe is toxic and can cause things like vomiting and diarrhea or even cardiac arrest with enough of a dosage. And it’s not “we shouldn’t BUT WE MUST but we shouldn’t” it’s Vladimir Putin saying “he fell out of a window and landed backwards on some mistletoe and the mistletoe went into his mouth and he swallowed it and also the mistletoe was coated with polonium.”

A shower rod fell on Emily.
Sam described sweet and sour meatballs as “a lot of disgusting stuff goes in there and then you heat it up and it’s delicious. It's like alchemy.”

Time is meaningless, Rachel says. I can’t remember the context but no matter the context, it doesn't matter, time is meaningless. I blame the pandemic.

They’re badass shrimp, says Rachel.
Mike made pavlova, which is like a giant macaron covered in strawberries as he describes it (you’re not supposed to touch the strawberries when glazing it but, really, who cares? no one! It’s rhetorical) and anyone can make it and though it’s not named after Pavlov’s dogs, it’s making Rachel drool. It’s from Australia. Lauren knows this from Bluey.

When Rachel was going to college in Boston, she went to a restaurant in which the owner believed that aliens were sending him the recipes. And one of those recipes was a peanut butter and jelly cheeseburger which Rachel says was actually pretty good so yeah. And she had watermelon with basil and feta that was pretty good and I found a recipe for a fattoush with watermelon, sumac, and feta or something but I’d have to dig it up and once I made a salad with beets (I wanted to roast them but usually roasting beets involves taking a raw beet and roasting that and all I had were leftover cooked beets), pistachios, feta, and red onions.

As a kid, Rachel was a little afraid of animatronics and a lot afraid of the Easter Bunny, probably because it was really a guy in a suit and he wasn’t saying anything.

Rachel lives in a place in Western Mass that she refers to as the Tofu Curtain that separates the university towns of Amherst, South Hadley, and Northampton from the increasingly Trumpy working class towns of Holyoke. Outside of that, there a lot of places that sell raw milk.
There are a lot of churches being convereted into apartments. One of them wanted to keep the stained glass windows and the Catholic church (that is to say, the institution, not the physical building) said no, that’s our property now.
Rachel said “imagine going to the bathroom and seeing Jesus on the cross looking down on you.” and Lauren said that would be cool and doesn’t Jesus already know when you’re going to the bathroom? Same with Santa Claus.
This is my first time properly meeting Emma, Lauren's wife.

Lauren: I must have a prime rib and gravy. And potatoes.
Emily: Lauren, you betrayed me.

Sam made a little gingerbread house with gumdrop trees for Rachel. Rachel and Ken were gingerbread fertility figures.
I said it looked like the Venus of Willendorf and Sam said she meant for it to look like that exact thing but its boobs got flattened in the process of baking.
And, hold on. I wonder if there exist a male equivalent of the Venus fertility figurines. Oh, there are fertility statues out there but they’re neither paleolithic nor European. Anyway, Ken was that. The potential children were a gingerbread figure with a bow and a gingerbread figure with a bow tie.
We all entered the room to the Imperial March. They were tootling something but Sam said that’s not right and I started the Triumphal March but that’s Syria, and then Sam was like “how does the Imperial March go? Oh yeah, that.”
And Rachel didn't have to burn down any forests.
I suggested for a name something like Cassandane or Utauϑa or Parušātiš. After all, Persia’s halfway between Italy/France and Japan.
Sassanid Iran be like "abolish gender."
Lauren and Emma are trying to learn Spanish so they can communicate with the people around them. Lauren learned French in high school so she says she'll find herself communicating in Spanish and switching to French so I said she should visit Barcelona. Or maybe learn the other Romance languages so you can mash them all together. I think that's what Interlingua is.
(yes, I know that Catalan isn't just French and Spanish mashed together. Thanks for explaining what a joke is)
She wishes she could be like our grandfather, who spoke not just English but Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to some degree.

We were watching Klaus for real this time.
“I’m Sami,” Sam says and that is actual Saami they’re speaking.
(no you’re not)

Emily has the Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy videogame for the PS2 somewhere and Rachel wants to play it.

burning question: shouldn’t you make a wish before cutting the Yule log?

I wrote this as a note to myself in 2023: If I do see the Planets again, and it’s pretty inevitable, and in fact, I'm wondering if Zander will do it.

Mars: Stravinsky
Venus: Ravel
Mercury: ? I think Bliss and Bax came later. Maybe Vaughan-Williams
Jupiter: Elgar
Saturn: Schönberg
Uranus: Dukas
Neptune: Debussy

Cut to 2024 when that exact thing happens.

It was one of those new trains so I listened to Document instead of beeping. Just fits the political mood. Also The Fox and the Bird. It reached 64 yesterday. It was 83 at the end of October, 78 on Halloween, 79 on November 1st. 79 on November 2nd. 75 on November 5. 82 on November 6. 71 on November 7.

Penelope isn’t much of an artist. She could never do what I did, anyway. Anyway, I knew a goat with that name. Maria has a cat. I’m not sure what pets Lisa, who had to spell her name out because she had a fairly thick accent, has.

For lunch, I went to Sprout and made a salad with spicy chicken, baharat, crispy sticks, chickpeas, green olives, cilantro, broccoli, and pesto lime viniagrette.

Zander was thinking that this is most likely the last time he’ll perform these specific works. Still, we don’t live life like that.
He told a story about a girl who was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 15, had lost her parents already, and her 8 year old brother lost a shoe, and she snapped at him and he was taken away. And after she got out, she made a vow that she would never again say anything to anyone that she wouldn’t want to be the last thing she said to that person.
It’s rare to hear the Planets. Best space to hear it though. I’ve heard it live twice, once in my youth and once before the pandemic.
The concert is themed around English music and his childhood in England, where a judge did not like the 9 year old Benjamin Zander’s composition and told him that he should never compose another thing again and so his mother sent it to Benjamin Britten who was like “he’s NINE, he’ll do fine.”
You know where those judges are? All dead. How you doin’ down there, fellas? Eh, eh?
Anyway, he learned music and played cricket and said that Imogen Holst should be his theory teacher but she said she had too much going on and was too busy.
And after some convincing by Britten, she did it.

Henry Purcell - Chacony, arranged by Benjamin Britten. Chacony is how some barely literate 17th century Englishman thought the word chaconne was pronounced. No, it’s ʃakɔn. I don’t know why he used a “ch” rather than a “sh” but maybe in that time, French still pronounced ch as tʃ. I don’t know the history of French. Anyways, Britten took this viol work and did things with that melody.
The original work was probably written for a play. A tragic play at that.

Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto
The movements have the moods of
1. Searching/nostalgia/memories. A farewell to a world that will never be there again. This premiered in 1919, just less one year after the war ended. The performance went rather poorly. It was the last of his large scale works. In 1920, his wife Alice died. Eventually, he got over his lack of willpower and began work on a third symphony but died before he could complete it. So it goes.
2. Happiness, even ecstasy. A scherzo with one brief moment of typically English bombast.
3. A deep, intimate love song. It evokes Robert Schuman.
4. An ordinary life, a little vulgar, even.

And on to the Holst. That’s what most everyone was there for. There were a lot of younger people there, which makes sense.

Holst’s influence shows up in everything, from Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian to Black Sabbath and King Crimson to Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy XII to Billie Eilish (in her case, not The Planets but Hymns from the Rig Veda)

Holst’s influence shows up in everything, from Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian to Black Sabbath and King Crimson to Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy XII to Billie Eilish (in her case, not The Planets but Hymns from the Rig Veda)

Mars, the Bringer of War:
Elon Musk has ruined Mars for everyone. Krissy, though, says he should just go to Mars already. I watched that episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur but haven’t yet talked to Krissy and Ren about that. Anyway.
It’s a 5/4 rhythm, which is impossible to march to, disconcerting, mechanical, inhuman. A triplet, then two quarter notes, then two eighth notes, then a quarter note. It just goes and goes, with climax upon climax.
It’s likely that Holst heard the Rite of Spring by this time.
A triumphant cavalry charge that ends with them getting unceremoniously mowed down by machine guns. It’s like the Charge of the Light Brigade only, wait, that’s exactly what happened. There’s a writhing monster and a flurry of sixteenth notes.

Venus, the Bringer of Peace:
The opposite. Harmony. Repeated motifs. Celeste and harps. Since it comes right after Mars, someone likened it to the arduous process of rebuilding and knowing that there are so many who can no longer be here.

Mercury, the Winged Messenger:
Fleet on foot and tricksy. The first and second violins play in different key signatures. There are 2s and 3s.
Beethoven would be horrified, Zander said. The celeste is here too. At one point, you get a whoosh from the contrabassoons all the way up to the piccolos, and then back down to Earth.

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity:
Boisterous, exuberant, optimistic, abundant. One of the melodies became a hymn to England.
During the private performance this premiered at, the cleaners all put down their mops and started dancing.
Together, they form the four temperaments. But we're not done yet.

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age:
No one in England had ever done anything like this.
There are strange harmonies with the harp, there’s a bass flute, a bass oboe, a moment of terror where it gets faster, with menacing brass and bells.
It ends not with sadness or death but with a sense of peace and of the wisdom that comes with age.

Uranus, the Magician:
Uranus is Dukas’ Sorcerer, a Magician with a pointed hat and robe emblazoned with a moon and stars, not a stage magician in a tuxedo and top hat. The dum-da-dum-dum melody is Holst’s name in notation, with, of course, B-flat as H. An organ glissando, a quiet string chord, a violent dissonance, and a blast from the entire orchestra.

Neptune, the Mystic
A prolonged gaze into infinity. We're back to the harps, celeste, and strings, along with a choir of altos and sopranos singing wordlessly.

As for why the sea god is depicted with this, it makes more sense when you realize that Uranus is the Sun while Neptune is the Moon.

There's no Pluto because Pluto wasn't discovered yet, Holst didn't want to write a new movement anyway, and it ends perfectly.

I once listened to Isao Tomita’s Moog version of the Planets and I thought it was at its best with things like Venus, Saturn, and Neptune but didn’t quite capture the movements that had the full might of the orchestra behind them, like Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus.


We’re not going to be able to push back against Trump wrecking the economy and creating a depression so he can enrich Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos but what we can do is push back against Trump’s culture war bullshit. Reject the gender binary. Use the bathroom you feel comfortable using, as long as you wash your hands. Read banned books. Teach banned books in school. Learn Farsi. Write a bisexual coming of age novel with a second person point of view set on a distant planet and never publish it because Amazon made it impossible for midlist writers because now you can either be a bestselling author or you can compete with endless werewolf slop.
And moderates like Jerry Coyne can go take a flying fuck at Phobos and then go take a flying fuck at Deimos.


burning question: What do Democrats even do to appeal to the demographic of “I want to beat my girlfriend but I don’t even have a girlfriend?” And why would they want to? That’s just idiotic, if you’ll forgive my saying so, that’s just stupid. What is it you want? In your depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Whatever it is you want, I can’t deliver because I just don’t see it.
I’m hoping Republicans flew too close to the sonnenrad when it comes to ethnic minority outreach and they’re going to start fighting. I guess what I’m saying is that maybe without Trump in 2028, is that this populist rural/working class/southern suburban wine mom/west coast techbro/azn/hispanic/white identitarian/incel/toxically masculine/barstool dudebro/antisemitic traditionalist/pro israel/feminist coalition he’s built up will fall apart or blow up.
As for Democrats, the one bit of advice I’ll offer for 2028 is that what you just did, staying at home because you thought she was insuffciently pro-Palestine or insufficiently pro-Israel or too supportive of LGBT rights, don’t do that thing.

The train, which was one of the old ones, was rattling so hard that I thought my innards would turn to jelly. Maybe they did because I've been hiccuping all day (note to self: maybe "drawing your kness to your chest and leaning forward" helps although it doesn't do anything about the sense of dread that permeates every thought) I’m glad they’ve fixed the rails but the old trains just can’t handle it. I’m sure it was the train and not the rails because the train I took to get back home wasn’t wobbly.
I drew Lauren, who said that it's easier to draw strangers, and I said that maybe it's about not having to be perfect all the time. Lauren then drew a picture of me. She hasn't drawn anyone in a long time.
At least the pattern of her shirt means that I didn't have to worry too much about my pen wobbling with the train.

There was a guy playing a melodica in the Public Garden.

There was a rally for Palestine. I have no idea what they’re planning to accomplish now. I mean, even if the powers in Israel listen to us, which they won’t, Gaza’s been rendered unlivable for the rest of my lifetime if not the rest of the century, and to the West Bank, they’re all like “Dalmasca is the property of the Empire now. And to think, we intended to let you keep some of your sovereignity, out of respect. But now you’ve gone and ruined that.”

Arnold Schönberg, Ein Stelldichein (A Rendezvous) for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello & piano.
There are plenty of fragments out there but none quite as close to completion as this one. Schönberg probably lost interest in this work in favor of the Chamber Symphony.
There's a finished version but they chose to play only what Schönberg wrote.

Ernest Bloch, Three Nocturnes for violin, cello & piano
Part one is ethereal, part two is a folk lullaby, and part three is a late night dance party - one of the guests is face down in the punch bowl with multiple stab wounds.

Earl Kim, Exercises en Route for soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello & 2 percussionists
Eul Kim aka Earl Kim was born to Korean immigrants. He was born in 1920 so all of Korea was a pretty terrible place to live. Worse than modern day North Korea even.
It’s too hardcore for only one percussionist. One of them had what looked like a goblet drum.
I though the theme was exile but the theme is in fact this and the composers that influenced it. This one is based on the singing in Pierrot Lumaire.
The four texts set to music are "dead calm" from Addenda to Watt, "they are far out" from Malone Dies, "gooseberries, she said" from Krapp's Last Tape" and "rattling on" from "The Unnamable," all by Samuel Beckett.

Franz Schubert, String Quintet in C Major, Op. 163, D. 956
This was an hour long and had a few false endings to movements and a few false endings at the end.
It was finished in 1828 during Schubert's terminal illness and premiered long after Schubert’s death.

Gabby and Jillian have a black shih tzu Maltese mix and also cats while Sabrina (I brought this up because once I met a dog named Sabrina) has a shih tzu. Or maybe it was a chihuahua shih tzu mix because they said Drake looks like he could be part chihuahua. If only he wasn’t larger than a typical shih tzu. Sabrina likes to draw people when she’s on an airplane. It’s usually the stewardesses, which Marge Simpson taught me is a gender-neutral term.
Gabby and Jillian both have teal in their hair. They rode a new train the day before. They didn’t notice the windows, or I should say the lack of them. They brought up asparagus.

burning question: and just what do Palestinian supporters think voting for Trump/Stein is going to accomplish? Turning Lebanon into the world's largest golf course?

At the front desk, they were doing a Lord of the Rings themed word search.


Igshaan Adams - Lynloop
It’s based on aerial images of some footpaths south of where he grew up in, I assume, Cape Town, South Africa. I mean, he was born there. He was born in 1982 so it was the last days of Apartheid.


Zoe Pettijohn Schade - Attempts at Self Organization: Prevailing Bonds
This was on the third floor lobby, where some rarely go. It’s made of gouache with silver, aluminum, copper, gold, and palladium on marbled pape (sic).

Art by Firelei Baez
( Firelei Baez )

( Gun Violence Memorial Project )

Tau Lewis - Spirit Level.
This is not The Procession, which was at the Watershed in East Boston which closed before I could get there, which is closed until next spring/summer and it’s not by the same artist.
( Tau Lewis )

Wordplay.
( Wordplay )

Kaju Barfi was playing near the steps outside. Kaju Barfi is a mashup of mellow vibey shoegazey stuff and dancey Bollywood music with a beatboxer in lieu of drums. Sometimes they have a violinist but not today. Sometimes he runs his beatboxing through an array of distortion petals. Aside from one song in Spanish, they sang in at least one Indian language. Tamil already sounds a lot like beatboxing. Otherwise, I can’t tell Gujarati from Kannada from Meitei from Nicobarese from Ahom from Nihali.
One of the songs had a chorus of “ikatara” or something.
I had West African meat pies with potatoes and dipping sauce of red pepper and crispy okra on the side.
Of course, the people who were probably there to drink were chatting with each other rather loudly.
And I met a few doggos.

burning question: what do people who live in techno-utopias do for fun?

Kylie is studying studio arts in school to be a teacher. She has a plush that looks a lot like a zombie pikachu and after she mentioned Pokemon, that’s what I thought. Disclaimer: I’ve played the original gameboy Pokemon game for maybe 30 minutes at my cousin’s house and don’t know much about the series aside from the Simpsons’ “Pokey and the Mon and the guy who comes out of the thing and makes a fra fra fra huuh huh huh.” Also I know what Team Rocket is and what the Team Rocket of various things are.
Kayley has tattoos of two koi fish that may or may not represent Mateus the Corrupt and a silver butterfly wing necklace. Kylie pointed out that they have similar names. Kylie posed the question what’s the craziest name I’ve encountered in my travels.
There was a guy at the MFA with a drawing of a cat clock on his jacket. I actually have one of those and I have it because the Simpsons do. It doesn’t have the overbite though.

For dinner, I had a half roasted chicken with whipped sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichoke, which are from the Americas and are not artichokes), chimichurri, baby carrots, and rosemary & garlic roasted potatoes.

The MFA borrowed some Dali paintings so you don’t have to go to fucking Clearwater, which is a city owned by that diuretics guy and his cult, and paired them with art from their collection.
He’s not just famous for his art. He’s famous for his pet anteater, his mustache, and his tendency to make provocative statements.

Sur- means above or beyond. Surrealism, therefore, means above or beyond reality. I think the Worcester Art Museum described surrealism as realism but assembled in an unrealistic way.

It, uh, worked. Maybe. Imgur actually made an improvement to their upload system, that is to say, it’s as good as it was ten years ago.

( Dalí: Disruption and Devotion )

Flowers of Summer and Fall - a collection of paintings and artwork depicting flowers. No, me, Spring and Autumn (春秋) is something entirely different.
On the other hand, Imgur didn’t like these ones. Or maybe the capcha just failed to work properly, as it’s wont to do. And oh yeah, maybe I don’t want to help self-driving cars. I’m glad they’ll never catch on in Boston.
All these paintings are anonymous unless specified otherwise.
( Flowers of Summer and Autumn )

burning question: have you ever been so tired that you can’t sleep?

Sabo (no, not that Sabo. This Sabo has pine green and rust orange dreadlocks) is an artist as well.
I was wondering whether I should take the chance with the train I was on. Because I got on the train, another train arrived and the other train left. And nobody announced this or anything. I made the right call at least.

I got a sandwich with chicken kebab with grilled peppers, onions, and cherry tomatoes, along with some lettuce and hot sauce. I should’ve bought a can of Guarana Antarctica but maybe next time.

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart Trio - in E-flat major, KV. 498 “Kegelstatt”
I arrived in the midst of Benjamin Zander's speech and I was trying to eat my sandwich. All I remember is that Mozart was a cheerful fellow and that this work uses a motif a lot lot lot.

Mikhail Glinka - Trio Pathétique in D minor
When you play chamber music, you play what's available.
Unfortunately, a bee decided to harass me. And they're aware they can sting because they just hover over your food or try to get in your eyes.

Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110
Dedicated to the victims of war and fascism. This means your victims as well, Stalin. It was composed in three days and when it premiered, Shostakovich was weeping at it.

Ludwig van Beethoven - “Eyeglasses Duo” for viola and cello in E-flat major, WoO 32
It showcases his lighter side.


Toivo Kuula - Piano Trio in A Major, Op. 7
(excerpt)
A composer Zander has never heard of before putting this together. He was a promising composer, a student of Jean Sibelius, until he was shot in a drunken dispute. And because all history will one day become comedy, his name means bullet in Finnish.
Maurice Ravel - Piano Trio in A Minor
(excerpt)
It's a very subtle work from Ravel.

Karen looks kind of like Kyra and even has a name that is almost the same but doesn’t quite dress like Kyra did, that is to say, eyeblisteringly bright nuclear orange rave clothing or hippie clothing for the fin de siecle. That is to say, this siecle, not the previous one, although the previous one could be interesting.
Her skirt was iridescent rainbow but not eyeblisteringly so. She has a pin on her bag of a clownish face with a star for an eye, a raccoon with three eyes that she thought was a cat, and Frankenstein’s Monster. Her nose stud is a crescent moon.
She’s not much of an artist.
The name Karen conjures up a middle aged white woomud/wimpund/wumben from the Midwest or southern California and so has fallen out of disuse. As for woomuds, I’ll never know why they named that place Killiechassie. It will be called Castle Imane, of course, and no one will dare forget it.
Mackenna is not an artist at all. She has a tattoo of a flower on her wrist that I didn’t depict because she had her hoodie draped over her arms.

burning question: why are they shutting down the main part of the Red Line if they're ostensibly only fixing slow zones between Charles MGH and Park Street and between JFK and Broadway? Wouldn't it be better to pick one area?

A guy I was drawing got off the train when I wasn't expecting him to and in response, I asked "who gets on and off at South Station? Oh, right, the answer is everyone."

Sophia Griswold was playing trombone and singing (I’m not sure what the first song was, something about LA, but the second one was Valerie by Adele) and wearing neon fuchsia M.C. Hammer pants.

For dinner, I had an Italian sub from Pauli's.

To the tall chair brigade: I overheard that one of you is named Jen. Since your name is Jen and not Lady Hrrub or Overseer Domaroth, you don't need all that leg room.

Ye Who Seek The Truth - I forget who arranged this but it's an arrangement of a hymn.

Richard Meyer - Ghosts of Brandenburg
It runs the gamut from I to VI but with twists and turns. This has nothing to do with Ghosts of Versailles.

George Gershwin - Girl Crazy Overture - I swear this was used on something I've seen. Or maybe I've just heard it before.

Jessie Montgomery - Freedom Songs
Four arrangements of spirituals. In the first two, the cymbals on the drum kit drowned out the rest of the orchestra.
Randall Thompson - Symphony No. 2
Thompson had a reputation for conservative choral music, but this symphony is anything but.

George Gershwin - Summertime - It didn't rain much but it stayed foggy. I was sweating like Roger Ebert on the way here but along the river, it was cool and clammy.
It was the coldest day since June. Way to jinx it.

John Williams Olympic Fanfare and Theme - Because the Olympics is happening.

Williams - The Cowboys Overture - One of John Wayne's last films. It reminds me of Copland.

Williams - Music from Jaws
Du-do. Du-do. Dundundundundundun
We also got a very jaunty hornpipe for At Sea and a fugue for when the guy’s in the cage and it doesn’t go well for him.

Williams “Viktor’s Tale” from The Terminal
He was tasked to write an ambiguously Eastern European theme for an ambiguously Eastern European (and currently stateless) character based on the story of an Iranian who lived in an airport terminal for 18 years.
The main melody is played on clarinet and it sounds a lot like klezmer. Obviously John Williams or whoever told him to write the music doesn’t consider the Balkans to be Eastern Europe.

Williams “Flying Theme” from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
I haven't forgotten my promise.

The encore was a medley from Star Wars. Mostly from A New Hope, I'll assume because I didn't hear the Imperial March. Makes sense because there were people dressed as Star Wars characters.

Also, today is Drake's birthday. He's 11.


burning question: What kind of dumb birthday gift is a bath anyway? Grr, woof woof, grrr.