T.I.A.I.L.W.: Linda Maguire.
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10:54:31 PM,Wednesday 9 July 2003
Linked now to read later: Swift's A Full and True Account Of The Terrible Fight That Happened On Friday Last Between The Ancient And Modern Books In The Saint James's Library, alluded to in that awesome lecture by Mr. Franks linked to by Moss.
Speaking of Swift, there's this famous silly poem often attributed to him (but Google and Bartlett seem to agree that it's actually some John Byrom guy instead) that goes:
Some say, compar’d to Bononcini,
That Mynheer Handel ’s but a ninny;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange all this difference should be
’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
(Bononcini was a contemporary composer, but I don't think anyone listens to him much anymore. Bully for Handel, then. Uh, and Mynheer means "Mein Herr", I guess.)
and I got this CD of recorder and harpsichord music from the library the other day. It's French, but it's got liner notes in English and Italian too, translated from the French version. So it says, "an excerpt from the London press (1720-1728) gives an amusing example, as shown by these verses, attributed to Johathan Swift in 1721:
Some say the Signor Bononcini compared to Haendel is a newborn babe. Others retort that Haendel can hardly even light a candle to him. Hard to make such a distinction between six of a kind and half a dozen of the other."
Yeah. Some pretty amusing verses, you lazy half-assed translator slacker bastard who can't be bothered to look up the original and would rather suck all the life and joy out of that poor guy's doggerel.
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(7)
10:28:09 PM,Wednesday 9 July 2003
I can hear the cheesy Wednesday Evening Concerts In The Park music from my room. There's some sort of ancient earnest warbling contralto singing something homey and sentimental right now. Eeeh, the tempest in my breast.
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10:09:38 PM,Wednesday 9 July 2003
Apparently one of the characters on the American "Queer as Folk" is an opera queen, and he and I have the same all-time-favorite aria: "Parto, parto" from La Clemenza di Tito. It's pretty silly that something so insanely trivial can make me wanna start watching the series, but... heh. What can ya do? Mr. Swanson-Chrisman (and anyone else who watches the thing -- c'mon, fess up), do I have to start at the beginning and work my way through, or can you recommend any particularly opera-laden episodes that could maybe be enjoyed in a vacuum?
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(6)
08:45:44 AM,Tuesday 8 July 2003
The Tipping the Velvet CD arrived! Glee glee glee glee glee glee gleeeeeee!!
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(12)
08:25:32 PM,Monday 7 July 2003
I'm trying to put together a swimming mix, made up of songs that sound like they're underwater, or at least complement being underwater. It's harder than I thought it'd be.
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(8)
07:59:48 AM,Monday 7 July 2003
Really really bad Dante/Virgil slash. Oh, God, the pain.
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04:47:57 AM,Monday 7 July 2003
You know what's a horrible, horrible, horrible thing? Moss's birthday was the 3rd, and I forgot it! Agggggh! This is the official post of contrition, and, Moss, a present will be in the mail tomorrow. I hope (and I bet (`; ) it was an ecstatically happy one.
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(5)
02:21:44 AM,Monday 7 July 2003
Pimpaliciousness status: Upgraded!
One of the computer speakers died, so my dad delved into his treasure trove in the garage and came up with a top-grade Sansui amplifier ($9.50 at Goodwill), two very nice big Panasonic speakers ($1.85 at ditto), and two massive JVC speakers (he can't remember how much they were, but he's sure they were 'Such a deal, hoo hoo hoo, Mr. Kitzel!') And we're hooking 'em up now. What? You're saying the neighborhood mightn't enjoy hearing Tatiana Troyanos belting out Purcell at three o'clock in the morning? Philistines. This'll teach 'em but good.
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10:10:24 PM,Sunday 6 July 2003
T.I.A.I.L.W.: Sister JuanaInes de la Cruz. And how.
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(1)
04:28:24 AM,Sunday 6 July 2003
Congratulations! You are the Countess Geschwitz from Alban Berg's opera Lulu. The most sympathetic character in an opera full of morally bankrupt ne'er-do-wells, you were one of the first openly gay characters in musical theater. You would have followed that little tart Lulu to the ends of the earth, and you deserved better than what you got. All the queer theorists love you and you're my favorite opera character. Go you!
I've had Too Fat To Be a Rockstar's "Allright, allright" stuck in my head for at least an hour now. Yesterday, I had the "...with benefits?" part of that one Fat Seth song stuck in my head for bloody ages. I think I need to hear some new Remi music.
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(3)
10:30:37 AM,Saturday 5 July 2003
Composers labeled "facile": Telemann, Rossini, Tchaikovsky. What it means. Whether it's unfair or not. Why I adore the first two and hate the last. Expect a lecture, in some depth, coming to you as soon as I get my thoughts together. You lucky devils.
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(1)
10:04:18 AM,Saturday 5 July 2003
I wish my mom still had her scanner, 'cause I wanna show you guys the package of balloons I picked up in the 24-hour grocery store this morning. It says: "4 Feet Tall! Monster Balloons. Contents: 1 - Snakesaurus [tm], 1 - Humungusaurus [tm]" And the picture's of this dark-eyed pubescent girl regarding the camera with a warily toothy grin, both arms wrapped around a massive peach-colored balloon angled at a diagonal to her pelvis (where the picture cuts off), and emblazoned with a fiendish smiling serpent with its tongue sticking out.
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10:01:07 AM,Saturday 5 July 2003
I wonder what it means that Aschenbach dies of "dry cholera" in Death in Venice (I trust it's not too much of a spoiler to reveal that he dies. It's called frigging Death in Venice, awright?). There is no such thing as dry cholera. I looked it up. It's an oxymoron, in fact -- cholera, by definition, is a disease that kills you by dehydration; your body, trying to flush out the microbe, either succeeds or exhausts itself. It can be either quick or lingering, but it's invariably pretty disgusting. But this guy, after wandering around (sound if slightly delirious) in a fever for a few days, just sits down and dies quietly in a beach chair, with no mess or fuss. I can't think of any infectious diseases that kill you like that, but cholera sure as hell wouldn't. "Dry cholera". "Chaste lust". Both oxymorons? Was his love disgusting, or wasn't it? What does it mean if his death wasn't? I'm just saying... Hell, I dunno. Two things I remember vividly (I read it last summer, and saw the movie -- awesome movie -- right after. I'm thinking of renting the opera from Netflix.) are the two overarching disgusting smells of the book -- the stench of the sirocco, and the reek of carbolic acid.
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(2)
09:55:47 AM,Saturday 5 July 2003
Mmmm. Apple beer and Monterey Pepper Jack potato chips. Mmmm.
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(5)
09:42:56 AM,Saturday 5 July 2003
Strange how disconnected you can feel when you've got a fragment of a thing outside its context. Like, a few days ago, this guy emailed me asking if I knew the origin of "Hey, Joe, whaddaya know -- I just got back from a Vaudeville show". I'd heard it in both a Danny Kaye and a Spike Jones song, and my dad says he remembers it from the Vaudeville and Burlesque shows he used to go to, but what's it really all about? And now I was just playing backgammon with my mom, so I had that weird bit from The Pie and the Patty Pan by Beatrix Potter about that magpie doctor who wouldn't say anything but "Gammon" and "Spinach" and "Gammon and Spinach". So I looked up "Gammon and Spinach", wondering what it was all about, and got entries from "A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go", which I imagine must be related in some way to the song I was just thinking about the other day, "Froggy Went A-Courting", because when I wrote "One, Two, Ombra Mai Fu", I had to look up all sorts of obscure songs which I thought might fit the rhyme, and "Froggy Went A-Courting" was the only one I found that rhymed with "fourteen", though I've never heard it. And the other thing that comes up in the google is stuff from Sylvie and Bruno, argh, which just reminds me that I still haven't memorized the Gardener's Song, and I still have no idea why Gammon and Spinach go together, or why they're used in this baffling way -- my Superior Person's Book of Words tells me that gammon can mean "a leg or thigh, a smoked piece of bacon, to talk misleadingly and deceitfully, the words used when gammoning, the game of backgammon, a particular way to win at backgammon, and to fasten a ship's bowsprit to the stern". I mean, maybe gammon and spinach is just a common sort of dish to have for lunch. But would it make any more sense for a magpie to say "Peanut Butter. Jelly. Peanut Butter and Jelly"? It's all of a tangle. How am I supposed to understand any of this stuff?
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(4)
11:40:38 PM,Friday 4 July 2003
