This Side of Lost

Post that you got married and the only person who comments is Senor Cardgage.

I guess I shouldn't complain, seeing as the frequency of my updating has fallen off considerably. I guess I'm busier than I thought. My apologies for this. I should institute some sort of self-punishment for going too long without an update...

What have we done recently:

• Seen a few more shows. We saw Arcadia, the opening show for the IU Theater Department's season. I admit to being mostly unfamiliar with Tom Stoppard's work, but it was about what I expected -- smart, literate, and hilarious. Highly recommended. We also saw Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, the second opera of the year. And we were both pretty disappointed. This is my favorite Shakespeare (kind of by default, as it's the play I'm the most familiar with) and it was pretty torn apart by the adaptation. The music was gorgeous - lush, Romantic stuff that I'm a sucker for -- but had few redeeming qualities beyond that. One of the worse productions I've seen here. Sad.
• Things are gearing up for my first concert with the Bloomington Chamber Singers. Apparently have already become an important member of the bass section, as I am singing in a small group for one of the Tallis pieces, part of a solo group for the Walton, and the baritone solo for Wexford Carol. Yikes. Come see me do my first real choral solo next Saturday.
• The SLIS Halloween party was last weekend. Paul Betty and his girlfriend Maria hosted. He and Pete ("The Apostles") did their DJ thang. Samantha and I went as a devil and angel respectively. Good times, definitely. There are pictures all over the SLIS pictoblogosphere (I just made that word up right now) for the curious.

Gah. Am hungry. May post more later. Will try to post more often... f'real. We'll see how that goes. Peace.

I like singing. In case you didn't already know.

For ten straight years now, I've been singing in a choir of some kind. In high school, I sang in the choir. At St. Olaf, I sang in three of the faculty directed choirs and a variety of side projects (lab choirs, Russian choir, pick-up a capella groups). After college, I sang in one of the seemingly dozens of semi-professional choirs in the Twin Cities. I spent last year with one of the groups in the IU School of Music. Now I'm singing with the Bloomington Chamber Singers (somewhat inaccurately named, as the group is 60 members strong).

Needless to say, I've got a bit of singing experience. I am not and have never been a music major, but I have been very frequently mistaken for one. I've been called an "honorary music major" several times. I've been told I missed my calling as a conductor. I've been called a choir snob (the only snob title I will wear proudly).

All this is well and good. But I've never really felt like all my experience has amounted to much. I always felt out of place when hanging with the "Twin Cities choral crowd" -- the collective body of music educators and choral singers in the Twin Cities. I usually feel inferior to people with degrees and people who have made singing their vocation. I usually see them as more talented or more valid, somehow. I can sing, yes, but only because I've been doing it for ten years. I wasn't born with much talent -- what I have, I've developed through lots and lots of practice.

But last week I got the first unsolicited comment that has changed how I feel about this. Gerry Sousa, the director of the BCS and a man of clearly very high musical pedigree and talent, told me that I "have a very nice voice" and selected me as the baritone soloist for a carol in our fall concert.

The choir is not great (there's that choir snobbery again) and there probably won't be more than 150 people that hear me sing. But this is a first. It's a serious solo -- the choir's just backing me up. I think I'm gonna be nervous. Have I made it?

Drum roll please...

I've got my own subdomain! Thanks, Steve!

http://wick.fomps.net/

Please change your bookmarks, adjust your blogrolls, modify your links, etc...

Dennis Hopper (star, director, co-screenwriter) and Peter Fonda (star, producer, co-screenwriter) bring us this slice of 1969, in the form of a "biker flick" about two long-haired hippies and their trip from LA to... well, we're not exactly sure where.

And not exactly sure why, for that matter. And hardly even who... we don't get Fonda's character's real name until the movie is almost over. This is not a film that has much in the way of definable plot. Or really much dialogue, even. So what's left, you ask? Mood. And it's all mood.

I did a little more research in this review than I have in the past. What I found was mostly what I find everytime... people talking about what makes the movie great. This time, it's the fact that it apparently encapsulates the feel of counter-culture America in the late '60s close to perfection. I can't really say that I completely understand that, given that I wasn't even a glimmer in my mother's eye at that point.

But I get an idea of what it's about, which was helped by a review I found that ran in the New York Times the day it opened. It isn't a bad review, but it is pretty clear that the reviewer doesn't "jive." He's not counter-culture (how can he be, he's writing for the NY Times), and he doesn't quite get it.

The mood of the film is hard to describe. It is, at once, free-wheeling and trapped, fearless and scared stiff, righteous and completely wrong. It is misunderstood, disappointed and sad, sad, sad. The pretty desert settings and rollicking rock & roll soundtrack only serve to sharpen this dystopic sense. I wish I could talk about more good things about this movie (like Jack Nicholson's scene-stealing role), but all they do is to serve this mood-setting that is incredibly jarring... but quite effective.

If this film is the mood of 1969, I think I'm glad I wasn't there. 'Cause I woulda gotten a haircut.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

When I sit down and try to check my e-mail, somehow it's two hours later and I find myself looking at a website about a man who calls a payphone in the middle of the Mojave Desert for kicks, and I'm wondering how I managed to get there from an e-mail from a librarian listserv. The wonder of the Internet, ladies and gentlemen.

My Internet life is spiraling out of control. I haven't gone through my e-mail inbox in three days. I haven't checked all my usual sites in forever, it seems. And I haven't updated this site, though I said I would. Sigh. A lot of things have been pressing for my attention, I guess.

It occurred to me early last week that next week (well, this week now) is Thanksgiving and I wondered where the semester went. It seems to have flown by even more than those in the past have. I think this is because I go to work more than I go to class and work never really changes, and my classes haven't felt like they've had much for direction or a destination until recently. Well, they do, now, and the destination isn't that far away. Yikes. So I may be updating even less frequently (if that's even possible).

My choir concert went well. The solo went fine, although I biffed a few words -- but I covered it up well, which I think is the sign of a decent performer. So there. Many thanks to Kate Molyneux and Samantha's uncle Jim who came out for it. For my next act... it's The Messiah! Woo. At least that will be easy. And you can sing along!

Speaking of singing, we've been privy to some more lovely singing. We saw Marc Broussard a couple weeks ago (you may have heard his single "Home" on the radio), which was great fun, as he seems to enjoy singing as much as everyone there enjoyed listening. We also saw the third opera of the season on Friday -- Benjamin Britten's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were expecting a more faithful adaptation than the last one we saw, and we did get that, although both Samantha and I are quite familiar with this play, so we has fully-formed ideas about how it should be presented, and those didn't always go well with what we saw. Oberon as a counter-tenor? Can't say I really agree with that one. And Britten's music seems to suffer from modern opera syndrome (a lack of definable melodies, "creative" orchestration, etc). All-in-all, though, the source material is too strong for all these things to bring it down, and we found ourselves enjoying it by the end, almost despite ourselves.

What else is new...

• I have, against my better judgment, started reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series again. I'm on the third one right now. Fascinating thing about these books -- there's, like, eleven of them, and everyone seems to have read some of them, but very few have read them all. I think I only know one person who has. Ah well... the Wheel weaves as it will...
• We saw the new Harry Potter movie. At midnight. Hee. It was fabulous. We were dead the next day.
• Yesterday we took a whirlwind shopping trip to Indianapolis. We didn't find a whole lot, but we learned a little bit more about where to go, so we will be more successful next time. If you have good gift ideas for us, now's the time to make suggestions. :)

So it's a short week this week. We will be celebrating Thanksgiving with two other couples from SLIS -- four of whom are vegetarians. Which weirded me out a little at first, until I realized that sweet potatoes are much more important to my Turkey Day than turkey. Mmmmmmm, sweet potatoes. May you have a yummy one too. Talk with y'all soon -- peace!

Hey, it's the Feast of St. Andrew again. Check last year's post for more information than you really wanted to know about this marvelous day.

I'm back in the thick of all things graduate school related now, after a brief respite for the annual Giving of Thanks. It occurred at the house of Wray -- Dale and Christina, to be specific, who were gracious enough to donate their house, kitchen and several delicious foodstuffs (green bean casserole, lemon meringue pie, pumpkin pie) to the day. Davin and Mari brought the infamous "tofurkey" (interesting), stuffing (pretty good) and vegetarian gravy (different, but good). Samantha and I brought mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes (my favorite), Scholar's Inn Bakehouse bread, and the meat -- a small turkey breast basted in honey apple glaze. All good and all heartily and thoroughly enjoyed.

Now is the last push to the end of the semester. Since I only have two classes, this won't be too bad. My project for the web course, Gary's website (or websites?), is underway, though far from complete -- I give a presentation on it in a week and a half. There is a final project for cataloguing, I think... *shrug* Whatever. I'll get to it eventually. The web site should -- err, I mean, will -- be taking up most of my work time until then.

Did I tell you that my internship is a go? Well, it is. :) I'll be at DePauw University, which is about an hour away in Greencastle, IN, spending some time in the science library doing... well, things that science librarians do. Cool. To this end, I've been trying to nail down a schedule for next semester. And as near as I can tell, I'm going to have to quit my Tech Services job (that's the "glorified mail opener" job) effective January. Which is okay, really -- the job was fine, but I was getting tired of selling 16+ hours of my week for $6/hour. Gary (that's the $10/hour one) will hopefully be upping my hours anyway.

Other Things of Note™:

• We saw Pride and Prejudice (the movie) last Wednesday. Having never read the book, I can't rightly say if it did justice, blah blah blah, but I really liked it. And so did Samantha (who took an entire class on Jane Austen, for goodness sakes). So there.
• My choir had some caroling gigs over the weekend. I don't like Jingle Bells. That is all. Oh, and Samantha came along for one of them, and was marvelous. Apparently she's been singing carols since before she can remember?
• I picked up an interesting book that came through the library mail a month ago. It's called The Pirates! In An Adventure in Whaling. Clearly the title is what sold me. I have since been stumped trying to figure out exactly what is up with the book, as it does not seem to fall into any easy genre classification. About the best I can come up with is this: it's a pretty funny little read (and I do mean little -- the book is pint-size both in dimensions and in page length). Check it out. (It is known by a slighly adjusted title on this side of the pond, apparently.) I've picked up the first one too, which I'll get to when I get tired of Wheel of Time #4.

Back to work. I hate Wednesdays. Come soon, 9 pm. Peace!