For whatever reason, I've always loved a Swedish organ. I don't know if it's the power of the instrument, the understanding just how much mileage each has -- picturing the many hands that have played them over the years -- but there is something about an older organ, an older Swedish one in particular. And these organs are as powerful as they are beautiful. They can do things to an admirer that are as welcome as they are unexpected. Especially in the middle parts of this album, you are likely to find yourself roughly but soaringly transported: on Track 21, Henrik Johnsen offers six fugues that start as hard as they finish. As Ludwig Krebs plays on Track 8 (Album 2): "Ach Gott!" It's really what every part on display here demonstrates: these Old Swedish Organs are powerful stuff._
respond?
(2)
11:39:10 PM,Thursday 2 September 2010
There's an ad on the subway for NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies which reads:
Concept Art
Jazz
Movie Magic
OSHA
Emotional Quotient
Manhattan Style
Structural Steel
Tannins
K. and I saw this ad one day and each came to two instant conclusions, which we later discovered were exactly the same:
1) That is a frikkin' hilarious list.
2) The funniest one is Tannins.
Tannins!
_
respond?
(3)
06:55:24 AM,Thursday 2 September 2010
I cannot go to sleep at a reasonable hour unless I forcibly wake myself up at a point where I feel miserably less than rested. Whenever I make myself wake up at 7:00, I feel like a lump of muzzy awfulness, but I can usually get to sleep that night by midnight or so. If I let myself sleep in until I wake up naturally, feeling restored and reinvigorated, I won't be able to fall asleep again for a good 14 to 18 hours. Then I've got the choice of recharging completely with a 12-hour sleep, getting even further out of sync with the waking world, or setting the alarm for only 5 or 6 hours later, so that I'll be able to sleep that night. I've always been this way. It's very, very frustrating, because I love sleeping in and waking up fully rested in the early afternoon, but I also really hate going to bed at midnight and lying awake for four hours because my mind won't shut down. It looks like being grouchy and bleary for an hour every morning is my only option. You'd think that several days of an enforced 8-hour sleep would start feeling more natural, but it doesn't seem to work. My bodily comfort upon waking and my ability to fall asleep at night are apparently inversely proportional. Sigh.
_
respond?
02:55:06 AM,Sunday 29 August 2010
Via Roger Ebert's Twitter Feed. This is wonderful.
_
respond?
(6)
01:12:41 PM,Thursday 19 August 2010
Anyone who doesn't read Slacktivist (and that's probably not many of you who read this blog, but just in case) should.
Interesting Things I've Learned from the Internet: Show Globes.
_
respond?
12:21:54 PM,Sunday 1 August 2010
Happy birthday to my glorious K.! May she have many, many, many more!
_
respond?
(7)
07:18:26 PM,Thursday 29 July 2010
The flight information screen just suffered a BSOD. Tee-hee. Not as exciting as when the seatback screens crashed and rebooted several years ago and I discovered that they were running Linux. I love getting looks behind the scenes of glossy corporate data facades. It reminds me of Super Mario Brothers 3, where you could crouch down on a white platform for a certain amount of time and it would drop you back behind all the other platforms and blocks of the level. I love infiltrating infrastructure. Oh, now the screen's back online and they're boarding. Yay.
_
respond?
12:04:12 PM,Tuesday 20 July 2010
On the plane to Seattle, they played one of my favorite episodes of Mad Men, which features not only the hilariously clueless Jai Alai kid and the heartbreaking scenes where Betty's dad tries to undo some of the psychological damage his daughter's done to Sally while inflicting some of his own on Bobby, but also this amazing bit where Sal Romano (played by the fantastic Bryan Batt, who I've loved since Jeffrey) finally blows his cover in front of his wife. Here it is, if you haven't seen it and don't mind being spoiled.
I know I'm a horrible person, but I couldn't help thinking of this:
Hey, Italian girls are nothing if not resourceful. Also, there's a sculpture on the Pratt campus by someone named Sal Romano, and every time I pass it on the way to work, I like to imagine that Sal managed to get out of advertising and made good on his artistic talent.
_
respond?
(1)
05:23:37 AM,Monday 19 July 2010
A friend of K. and me is trying to pay for her last semester of college. Her friends have banded together and are holding an internet auction to help raise the money. I'm offering a modified Sidewinder X4 and six hours of steno lessons, either onsite in NYC or over the internet. I've already got two bids going, so get while the getting's good!
I'm at JFK, waiting to board my flight to Salt Lake City, which will take me to Seattle for my brother's wedding. I'll be there until Sunday, then drive back to Missoula with my parents, my nephew, and my other brother (Yes, all of us in one car. It should be great fun.) I have to fly back to NYC on Tuesday because I have two gigs on Wednesday, but it'll be so good to see them all, if only for a few days.
I finished yesterday's transcription work at around 4:00 am this morning, got two hours of sleep, then came here and started working on today's transcription job. After I send it off, I've got a break for the weekend, but then I have one due on Monday and two due on Tuesday.
I'm bringing my elder brother a Sidewinder X4 with the leather keypads stuck on to make it work like a steno machine. I was hoping to use it, along with Plover, to do my transcription work this morning, but whenever I press the "`" button, the auto hotkey assigned to "rewind 5000 milliseconds" in Winamp, Plover stops receiving keystrokes and I have to restart the program. That happens whenever I press any of the keys not explicitly assigned to steno strokes. I imagine it's a fairly straightforward bug to fix, but I tinkered with it this morning and didn't make any progress. I know even less about working with Tkinter than I do about non-GUI Python coding, so it's not surprising that I couldn't figure it out. But maybe my brother can help me fix it so that I can get my work done more efficiently before turning the Sidewinder over to him when I head back to NYC. (And to my girl, who I'm beginning to miss already. Also the cat, who was remarkably sweet and non-bitey this morning, despite his self-appointed nickname.)
_
respond?
(3)
08:59:07 AM,Friday 16 July 2010
Telemann is the Beatles of the Baroque era. Yeah, I said it.
_
respond?
01:42:41 AM,Friday 16 July 2010
Me and Calliope (one of K.'s mom's cats)
Photos by K.
_
respond?
(1)
05:53:55 PM,Sunday 4 July 2010
Along the lines of Garfield Minus Garfield, I think someone should publish Lovecraft Minus Adjectives. For kicks, K. and I read The Outsider to each other this morning (in the course of a long discussion involving Mervyn Peake, Susanna Clarke, Poe, Borges, fairies, castles, heroes, antiheroes, and ossification versus decay) and, I mean, just look at that second sentence:
Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft.
Now read it this way (eliminating all non-load-bearing adjectives and adverbs):
Wretched is he who looks back upon hours in chambers with hangings and rows of books, or upon watches in groves of trees that wave branches aloft.
I have to say I kind of like it.
_
respond?
(2)
03:25:19 PM,Saturday 3 July 2010
Edited to add: The new reuploaded link (with the trimmed version of On the Bus Mall) is here.
1. Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - Freakin' At The Freakers' Ball
2. Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band - My Daddy Rocks Me
3. Frankie Trumbauer - What Wouldn't I Do For That Man!
4. John Kander And Fred Ebb - Maybe This Time
5. Charles Aznavour - What Makes a Man a Man?
6. Colin Meloy - On the Bus Mall
7. The City Waites - The Female Captain
8. Ute Lemper - The Lavender Song
9. Gaye Adegbalola - Prove It On Me Blues
10. Avenue Q - If You Were Gay
11. The Wet Spots - Texas Annie
12. Two Nice Girls - I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control and Beer)
13. Magnetic Fields - Underwear
14. Spoon - Two Sides - Monsieur Valentine
15. LISP - Funky Fag Hag
16. MC Frontalot - I Heart Fags
17. Cliff Edwards - Come Up And See Me Sometime
18. Marlene Dietrich - I Can't Give You Anything But Love
19. Bittersweet - We All Wear a Green Carnation
20. New York City Gay Men's Chorus - Antiques
21. Tommy Makem - Waltzing With Bears
Album cover design and modesty-preserving photomanipulation by my lawfully and gloriously wedded K.
1. Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - Freakin' At The Freakers' Ball
This one covers all the bases. Perhaps a few too many bases. But we're all about inclusivity here, right? Also, it was written by Shel Silverstein, and you just can't go wrong with Dirty Uncle Shelby.
2. Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band - My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)
Good old fashioned sissy-man blues. Don't play this in a public place unless you don't mind a few raised eyebrows. That goes for most of this mix, actually. Be warned.
3. Frankie Trumbauer - What Wouldn't I Do For That Man!
One of those old-timey songs that probably wasn't intended to sound gay; there apparently used to be a legal restriction that didn't allow singers to alter the lyrics of songs they covered, including pronouns. Still, it comes off pretty marvelously.
4. John Kander And Fred Ebb - Maybe This Time
Why is this song gay? Let me count the ways. First off, it comes from a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood. This particular song is from the point of view of a woman who thinks she's successfully converted a gay man to heterosexuality. It was written for Liza Minnelli, gay icon for the ages. And this version is performed by the gay songwriting team that wrote it. It's also one of the best torch songs ever written, which doesn't hurt the camp factor either.
5. Charles Aznavour - What Makes a Man a Man?
Anyone who's read this blog knows how obsessed I am with this song. I saw La Cage Aux Folles probably a dozen times when I was growing up, so poignant French drag queens have a special place in my heart. This is also the first of a pair of beautiful and sympathetic songs about gay men written by straight men.
6. Colin Meloy - On the Bus Mall
This section of the mix is sort of the obligatory "Wow, it kind of really sucked to be gay back then, huh?" That goes double for being a gay teenage hustler.
7. The City Waites - The Female Captain
The 17th century street song that gives the mix its name. It's about a woman who dresses as a soldier in order to marry the daughter of a rich man. It went off surprisingly well, thanks to the help of "a strange instrument for generation" cleverly employed by the bridegroom, but the scheme was revealed one morning, and the song ends: "The bedclothes she tossed, showed the beard of the beast, and pulled off the politick play-thing!" (complete lyrics here.) Since I feel like we queers have been treated as a bit of a politick plaything by both parties in the last few election cycles, I thought the title was apt.
8. Ute Lemper - The Lavender Song
Another historical song, this one from Weimar Berlin. Ute Lemper's translation takes a few liberties, but even so it's a remarkably defiant gay rights anthem from the 1920s. Lyrics and machine translation here.
9. Gaye Adegbalola - Prove It On Me Blues
A classic queer blues sung by a classy queer blues woman. Background on the song here.
10. Avenue Q - If You Were Gay
I love this musical. That is all.
11. The Wet Spots - Texas Annie
The Wet Spots are a fabulous bisexual polyamorous Canadian novelty songwriting duo. We've seen them live twice, and they're just wonderful. If you're the sort of person who's amused by gleeful, wholesome smut, they're just tops. Go to their website and watch their videos.
12. Two Nice Girls - I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control and Beer)
I have my ex to thank for learning about this song, and I have this song to thank for learning about Queer Music Heritage, which I originally found while googling the phrase "birth control and beer". I have QMH to thank for a number of other songs on this mix, as well as for hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. It's such an extraordinary historical resource. So, um, thanks!
13. Magnetic Fields - Underwear
A little love for the bisexuals who walk among us.
14. Spoon - Two Sides - Monsieur Valentine
Ditto! (Also, thanks to Remi for sending this to me.)
15. LISP - Funky Fag Hag
As an FFH myself, though not of the more traditional heterosexual variety, I wholeheartedly endorse this song.
16. MC Frontalot - I Heart Fags
More love from the straight boys. Woo! I actually got the chance to remonstrate with Mr. Frontalot for not singing this song when he played the Village over Pride Weekend a number of years ago, but he apologized very politely, so I forgive him.
17. Cliff Edwards - Come Up And See Me Sometime
Listen to this song a few times. Do you find it vaguely, inexplicably sexy? Does the voice sound familiar at all? If so, you might not want to unscramble the following rot13 passage: Ur nyfb cebivqrq gur ibvpr sbe Wvzval Pevpxrg va Qvfarl'f Cvabppuvb. Lbh'er cvpghevat uvz fvatvat vg frqhpgviryl abj, nera'g lbh? V nz fb fbeel.
18. Marlene Dietrich - I Can't Give You Anything But Love
Oh, Marlene. Your voice has all the sensitive dexterity of an 18-wheeler doing donuts on a frozen lake, but somehow you sell it all the same.
19. Bittersweet - We All Wear a Green Carnation
From a musical by Noel Coward, but you'd probably guessed that already.
20. New York City Gay Men's Chorus - Antiques
Inspired by the works of Noel Coward, but ditto-ditto-ditto. My favorite line: "A knife in the back of the bric-a-brac claque in black tie at the Met".
A desk in the flex space, though not one of the ones I usually work at. I'm not sure why, since it's freaking awesome.
The roof garden.
_
respond?
(7)
12:50:59 AM,Monday 21 June 2010
I just shared this on Google Reader (found it via Ectoplasmosis), but I think it's also worth blogging: A bunch of comic artists attempt to illustrate every song in 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. My favorites so far:
Jeffrey Dooley is my new nerdy countertenor podcast boyfriend. I knew he was a great singer, but when he talks? Adorable! So erudite and passionate and obsessed with musicological minutiae. Heart heart heart.
The best part of waking up is rat bacteria in my mouth!
_
respond?
(5)
09:59:15 AM,Tuesday 8 June 2010
Why I like my transcription gig:
Last night in my ASL class, I got to describe, using classifiers and mouth morphemes, the zoological origins of a component in some commercial eye drops (fermented rooster combs!) and the superficial resemblance of a punctal plug to a golf tee. (Needless to say, please don't click that link if you suffer from eyeball squick.) This was after another student mentioned that coffee instillations were sometimes used as a home remedy for eye infections. It hasn't been mentioned in the several hundred ophthalmological interviews I've transcribed, so I'm gonna recommend consulting your physician before trying that one.
Also I learned today that there's a ophthalmic ointment called FML.
_
respond?
11:23:15 AM,Thursday 3 June 2010
