Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Thinking about it more, though, the substantial haunches are really only a minor detail. I've been drawing up a list of things that mi fa palpitar, and it turns out to be a bit confusing and contradictory. I'm not sure what to make of it:
I get off on lewds, I get off on prudes.
I get off on anachronisms, I get off on neophiles.
I get off on curves, I get off on boyishness.
I get off on exotics, I get off on hicks.
I get off on brains, I get off on brutishness.
I get off on arrogance, I get off on humility.
I get off on the nondescript, I get off on the grotesque.
But nothing much in the middle.
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(1)
02:22:18 AM,Sunday 12 January 2003
How doth the little Pangolin
grow scale, tail, and teat?
Or vacuum quav'ring beasties
up a snout designed for meat?
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06:42:52 PM,Saturday 11 January 2003
I like a girl with substantial haunches.
In other news, Die Fledermaus is on NPR in ten minutes, with Jennifer "Hubba-Hubba" Larmore as Prince Orlofsky. Don't miss it*!
(*unless you have a lower tolerance for cheesy drunken Viennese operetta than I do)
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(7)
01:23:50 PM,Saturday 11 January 2003
Forgive me, O blogmass. I know not what I... no, I know exactly what I do. And I do it anyway. Nyaah.
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(17)
09:48:05 AM,Wednesday 8 January 2003
Kickass webzine that I'd somehow never come across before.
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07:18:01 AM,Tuesday 7 January 2003
teticscetic@altavista.net is now defunct for good and all.
thomasaquinas@catholic.org is the best place to reach me for the time being, though I still check mknigh3@towson.edu (it won't last long), and askeladden@subdimension.com (it's a little unstable).
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01:27:20 AM,Tuesday 7 January 2003
Why do I find West Country accents unfathomably erotic?
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(3)
11:55:03 PM,Monday 6 January 2003
Ha! Vindication! I know I whined to some of y'all over AIM several weeks ago about the University of Montana's recent production of Amadeus, but now I've finally got some ammo to defend myself with. After the performance I saw, the actors and director had a question and answer session with the audience. They asked questions like "Do you think Salieri really poisioned Mozart?" "How much Mozart did you listen to to get into your parts?" and "Who designed that fabulous set?" So I thought I was within the tone of the evening to ask why they thought Peter Shaffer (the playwright) had made such a point of turning Mozart into a proto-revolutionary iconoclast, constantly railing against the Italians in general and Italian opera seria in particular. Granted, he wrote some very fine -- damnit, utterly sublime -- German opera and singspiel, and everyone knows how his genius shone in opera buffa and dramma giocoso, but I didn't think that it showed him to be against opera seria in any way, and challenged them to provide any evidence for it, outside of the play's own characterization of Mozart as a petulant, megalomaniacal brat. I offered, by way of a counter-example, my opinion of La Clemenza di Tito, his last opera, composed in pure opera seria style, and often accused by casual opera-goers as being "stiff" and "pompous" in the same way the Mozart of the play was always accusing his competitors. Why did he write it, I asked, if he was so against the lofty figures that seemed to "shit marble"? The director blew me off. "It was composed on commission. He needed the money. He only spent a few weeks on it." "Then why is it so magnificent?!" I asked. He rolled his eyes at me. "Because it's Mozart." Well, duh, dumbass. What kind of an answer is that? I sat down, though, and the guy sitting behind me asked what recordings I recommended. (The video with Troyanos and Neblett and the album with Baker and Minton, if you wanna know) Later, my nephew told me that when the cast discussed the question and answer section backstage, the director was all, "Yeah, some people just want to show off their trivia knowledge and don't really want an answer at all..." I did want an answer, damnit! I want to know why La Clemenza is still underrated, even though it's a work of absolute subtle genius and was Mozart's most-performed opera shortly after his death. I want to know where they get off (obviously the director wasn't responsible for the content of the script, but he didn't have to swallow it wholesale, either) making Mozart into some impatient jackass who doesn't like anything unless it's either celestial or hilarious.
Anyway. Phew, that was a rant. I told you I had some evidence. Maybe it's not much, but it's a thumb to the nose of people who call opera seria empty and boring and have the nerve to hide behind Mozart's supposed opinion of it when they just don't want to spend the trouble learning to understand anything without flirtatious gypsy women in it. {Glower} From an old copy of Opera News my dad picked up at the library: "The young composer two years before had written to his father that he longed to write operas, 'but Italian, not German; seria not buffa,' adding that he preferred 'French to German, and Italian to both.'" Nietzsche had it right: "What is most difficult to render from one language into another is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in the character of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average TEMPO of the assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered. A German is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language; consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited
thought." And "The 'good old' time is past; it sang itself out in Mozart--
how happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his 'good company,' his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the South, can still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT
in us!*'
Because Mozart wasn't just a German (Austrian, whatever; all the same thing, back then), and certainly not a blindly nationalistic one. He spoke perfect Italian, and fluent French and English. He had the most cosmopolitan childhood any kid ever had, and couldn't wait to get out of quintessentially Teutonic Saltzburg. When he set a grand old libretto like Metastasio's -- which had already inspired nearly 50 operas before him, and not for no good freaking reason -- he did it with his whole heart, and with a keen sense of context. No, it doesn't sound like the Seraglio. And it doesn't sound as terrifyingly timeless as Don Giovanni, either. It was its own opera, which held to old and worthy rules -- and thereby sublimated itself.
(*Um... I don't really get the whole 'Chinese' thing either, but Nietzsche was kinda like that. Y'know.)
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(8)
07:23:22 AM,Saturday 4 January 2003
The Professor!
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11:00:52 PM,Friday 3 January 2003
Last night I dreamed I met Janet Baker in a cafe. She was very gracious, and I called her "Dame Janet" and we got on very well indeed. God knows what Janet Baker would ever be doing in Montana, but that's the function of dreams, I suppose: to give us a measure of satisfaction so we don't go around tearing up the world to sate ourselves. Compare Diogenes (the Cynic), and his novel method of curing hunger by patting his belly...
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(3)
10:47:51 PM,Friday 3 January 2003
EeeEEEeeEEEee! Wiebke Hoogklimmer wrote me back!!
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10:03:30 PM,Friday 3 January 2003
I wonder if people can have an instinctive perception of a language's coherency without being able to understand a word of it. Like, say, you set up a trial of five obscure human languages, three artificially constructed languages, and two randomly constructed (according to a few rules of pronunciation and, perhaps, vocabulary, but none of grammar or syntax) ones. Five minute samples of each are piped in to test subjects of many nations, and it's up to them to pick out the two false ones (and even, if they can, the three artificial ones) out of the rest, though they're bound to be almost entirely ignorant of the meaning of it all. The real ones would be recorded by native speakers; the artificial ones by their creators, or, say, in the case of famous ones like Elvish and Esperanto, by scholars; the random ones by prestigious actors given time to come up with convincing accents and inflections for their gibberish. I wonder if people would be able to tell, somehow; if the rules of human language which allow any infant to internalize them effortlessly leave traces in our unconscious which can be clearly felt, if not comprehended. But maybe Babel suckered us too hard...
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(1)
08:57:42 AM,Friday 3 January 2003
And the award for Best Pouty Crybaby (aka "Werther") goes to... Tito Schipa!
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05:56:47 AM,Friday 3 January 2003
So I'm cleaning out the bureau in my room, untouched since high school. Mainline nostalgia, as you might expect -- some of it sort of unnerving. For example, I just found, and have absolutely no memory of writing, a torn-up sheet of notebook paper reading thus:
Anacolouthon: Armor Hot Dogs make me want to -- heh-heh...
Anaphora: I scarf a mustard-laden hot dog; I scarf a shred of saurkraut
Anastrophe: To me give pleasure the hot dogs!
Aposiopesis: You kiped my hot dog, you little -- ...!
Apostrophe: O little piggy, virtuous piggy, your entrails surround my sausage most gracefully
Asyndeton: Mustard is spooned; ketchup is squirted
Chiasmus: Both Glorious True Armor Company Provides Salvation Hot dogs And.
Litotes: The filling is fashioned from not-unslippery hog guts.
Metonymy: There was Oscar Meyer, before our eyes -- we devoured him.
Paraleipsis: Who notices merciless slaughter and cruelty? I don't ponder vegitarianism.
Pleonasm: I lifted the dog with my fingers, chewed it with my teeth, with peristalsis swallowed it.
Polysyndeton: The bologna and the sausage and the wieners of Armor are sainted.
Prolepsis: The chewed up hot dog made me slobber.
Synchysis: Smelly relish on my sausage green fell.
Synesis: The hot dog man are here!
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(1)
05:21:56 AM,Friday 3 January 2003
"You think you know marmite? NO YOU DON'T! All the time Marmite has been in the little jars, it has been secretly making a plan to take over the world. Finally marmite has perfected it's plan and put it into action. Unfortunately the plan has been a success and marmite is ruling the world. The only way to bring marmite under raps is to collect all the mushrooms. They have built hundreds of little dog things and flying things to patrol the planet. You have found that the flying things cannot be killed but the little dog like things can be killed by jumping on their heads. With this information you set out on an adventure to save the world! The world is counting on you. Good luck."
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(1)
03:23:18 AM,Friday 3 January 2003
Et in terra pax pax pax, pax hominibu-us!
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03:06:21 PM,Thursday 2 January 2003
I got a job!!
I'm gonna be working the graveyard shift, 40 hours a week, at a group home for developmentally disabled adults on Easy Street by the Broadway overpass. Get the house clean, cook breakfast, tidy 'em up, hang out with 'em, keep things mellow... can't wait. Exactly the job I wanted -- way better than a nursing home. I'm a gainfully employed citizen at last!
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(9)
02:38:46 PM,Thursday 2 January 2003
Sometimes I can't distinguish my mom speaking in her bedroom from the pigeons cooing on the roof.
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11:20:29 AM,Thursday 2 January 2003
Why didn't I hear about this before?! They made a movie out of Chicago! Hallelujah! Man oh man. I can't wait to see it. Bloody brilliant musical. And Queen Latifah is playing Mama Morton. Yum.
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(1)
06:45:25 AM,Thursday 2 January 2003
I scraped my knuckles against the cheese, and now they are bleeding.
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(2)
05:16:18 AM,Thursday 2 January 2003
