Author: Don

PSA

As Pixy points out, “There was no year zero.” Therefore, today is the “Last Day Of The Second Last Year Of The Second Decade Of The First Century Of The Third Millennium.”

Robbo reiterates, “As we all know, Wednesday is January 1, 2020. 2020 is not the first year of the next decade. It is, instead, the last year of this decade. Those failing to recognize this will be set upon by rabid honey-badgers.”

In other words, everyone compiling “best/worst/whateverest of the decade” lists is jumping the gun.

Further year-end notes:

• The Babylon Bee proposes a reformation I can get behind.

• Dave Barry’s summation and dismissal of the year can be found here — but you have to allow ads to see it, grr.

For the birds

Here’s a medley of three traditional Spanish Christmas carols, “El Cant dels Ocells,”2 “Fum, Fum, Fum” and “Campana Sobre Campana,” done with a handful of sampled instruments and soft synths. The first two are from Catalonia, the third from Andalusia. As usual, I’m not entirely happy with it, but today is the deadline for posting holiday stuff. (It shouldn’t be — properly, one should sing the carols during the interval between Christmas and Epiphany — but by December 26 most people are sick of the songs.)

Tangentially related: Christmas cards from Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.

Recovered

Oncidium Tsiku Marguerite

Oncidium Tsiku Marguerite arrived back in May in spike. June came, it got hot, and the plant went into shock. It just sat there, the spikes not developing, until October, when the weather finally cooled a little. This week it finally bloomed. The flowers are not quite an inch long, and have a light sweetish fragrance. They’re a a bit pinker than I expected, but I’m not complaining. There are a few more pictures here.

Modular chicken

I was curious to see what you would get if you took an old fiddle tune and gave it the Terry Riley treatment. Here’s “Cluck Old Hen,” chopped into little phrases, the pieces treated like the elements of Riley’s “In C.”3 All the sounds are the AAS Chromaphone.

And it’s okay, I guess. “Cluck” is not a complex tune (though a good fiddler will add some piquant slides and double-stops), mostly four-square rhythmically and only slightly odd melodically. The result of the manipulations is pleasant-sounding but not really interesting in itself, like wind chimes.4 It might be useful as background music, but it’s unlikely to hold the attention of an active listener for long. Riley’s piece sustains interest as well as it does in part because the 53 phrases it’s made of vary widely in length and rhythm, producing complex patterns when combined.

One minor point: This was the product of an evening’s work from beginning to end. In contrast, writing music the usual way, note by note, measure by measure, takes much longer. Sometimes a mere eight measures is a very good evening’s work.

For a very different version of “Cluck Old Hen,” see The Waybacks.

Miscellaneous artsy-type stuff

Many years ago, Daniel Pinkwater and Tony Auth colloborated on a newspaper cartoon, Norb. It did not catch on and disappeared without a trace. I recently stumbled over a collection of its Sunday strips, which you can view here (start with page one). It’s an absurd serial, somewhere between Terry and the Pirates and Firesign Theatre, but sillier.

Gahan Wilson, whose macabre cartoons were the best feature of many editions of National Lampoon, passed away last month. There’s a memorial here with a selection of his work. You can find much more online.

Robert Samuels’ analysis of a still life including a chessboard, carnations and a lute leads him to observe that

… both fields [chess and music] have become so professionalised that their function as social activities is easily lost or forgotten. In an age when my performance of a Bach Prelude and Fugue can be immediately compared by anyone with a mobile phone to that of András Schiff, and when my playing of a complex chess endgame can be immediately shown to be full of errors by chess software on that same mobile phone, we need (or at least I need) reminders that music and chess alike are ways of interacting with other people. They are, properly, the pursuits of friends. Our play is part of our human flourishing.

I came across a tribute to dancer Herman Cornejo, who amazed me as Puck in The Dream, Frederick Ashton’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This particular video is useful in that it slows the action down to show the viewer exactly what impossible things Cornejo is doing. It demonstrates that a good dancer is among the very best athletes of any kind.

(It also demonstrates how bizarre ballet can be. Many years ago my aunt was mortified at a performance of Le Spectre de la Rose when her then-boyfriend bellowed with laughter at the appearance of the “Rose.” I can’t say that I blame him.)

Continue reading “Miscellaneous artsy-type stuff”

Odder ends

Beware: the Social Justice Kittens have returned.

Perhaps you might prefer bears.

***

I have a nice not-so-little steak thawing in the refrigerator at the moment. I don’t think I’ll mind missing the traditional turkey dinner tomorrow. Meanwhile, a certain Roman Catholic boy for art is celebrating the holiday in his own way.

***

Miyazaki does Chesterton

Is Miyazaki’s vision fundamentally conservative? Perhaps.

***

Being a major 20th-century American poet was a hazardous job — in one anthology on my shelves, of the forty poets included, three (Berryman, Plath, Sexton) and possibly a fourth (Jarrell) were suicides, for 10% fatality rate. Apparently, being a K-pop star is also a dangerous occupation.

***

Addendum: Don’t read this out loud. (It is a good alternative to lorem ipsum, though.)

Cue the dancing chibis

I wrote this seven years ago:

Joshiraku — Nobody is ever likely to license this. Five girls, practitioners of a peculiar form of Japanese comedy, sitting in a dressing room talking about random things is unlikely to strike most Americans as comedy gold, but Joshiraku was probably the funniest show of the year. Much of Koji Kumeta’s wit will fly over the head of English speakers who don’t have a detailed knowledge of Japanese culture, but enough does survive translation to make Joshiraku worth watching. It helps that the girls all have well-defined, idiosyncratic personalities. Download an episode to see if it appeals to you, and also to see the opening and ending. Both are engagingly lively, and the latter is one of the best of the year. It features dancing chibis.

Let’s start by ripping the fourth wall to shreds.

To my astonishment, I discovered Joshiraku was recently licensed. It apparently hasn’t sold very well, for it’s now on sale for a very good price at the other anime dealer. It’s not for everyone, but if you have a slightly cockeyed sense of humor and an interest in Japanese culture, it might be worth checking out. While it’s much milder than the other Koji Kumeta anime, it’s still not for children.

Update: The Joshiraku discs arrived, and if the first episode is indicative, this may be another case where the fansub is preferable to the legitimate version. Whichever version you watch, you will probably find the fansub’s translator’s notes useful.

Also on sale is the complete edition of Dennou Coil, which is #3 on my list of the best anime series, as well as a couple of Mamoru Hosoda’s movies, The Girl Who Leapt through Time and The Boy and the Beast, and Kenji Nakamura’s exploration of economics.

Continue reading “Cue the dancing chibis”

Mysteries of the internet

While checking to see where my visitors come from, I discovered that some arrived here 18,207 days ago, almost fifty years in the past. This is curious, since I have been online for maybe twenty-five years and launched my first website a bit more than twenty years ago. I’m too lazy to do the arithmetic, but I have a hunch these early visits occurred on January 1, 1970.

Pretty ones, weird ones

Epicattleya Veitchii

The first batch of pictures from the orchid show are up. Although I spotted two Dracula plants, neither was in bloom. However, there was a Habenaria medusa in flower, which will probably be in the next batch. You can see the pictures here.

Bulbophyllum Walnut Valley Jersey
Cymbidium Vanessa Amorosi

Continue reading “Pretty ones, weird ones”

Looking for Dracula?

You might be able to find a Dracula orchid plant for sale at the Kansas Orchid Society’s annual show and sale, held this weekend at Botanica here in Wichita.

Maxthompsonara Bryon Rinke

You might also see Maxthompsonara Bryon Rinke, a multi-generic Zygopetalinae hybrid bred at Sunset Valley Orchids, first flowered by Bryon Rinke of the KOS and named for Max Thompson at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. You might even see Max and Bryon.

There definitely will be several tables full of blooming orchids, plus plants for sale. I’ll be there taking too many pictures, as usual.

Halloween playlist

Planning a Halloween party for the weekend, or want something to listen to while distributing candy to the little extortionists next week? Here are some tunes for you.

Laika and the Cosmonauts, “Psyko”

Fredösphere, “Abraham Lincoln Was an Invader from Space”

Yuki Kajiura, “Sis Puella Magica”

The Pretty Things, “Baron Saturday”

Hedningarna, “Räven (Fox Woman)”

Gjallarhorn, “Hjaðningaríma”

Raymond Scott, “New Year’s Eve in a Haunted House”

Oingo Boingo, “Pictures of You”

Don Ross, “Dracula and Friends, Part One”

The Klezmatics, “Beggar’s Dance”

Brave Combo, “People Are Strange”

Procol Harum, “Juicy John Pink”

Split Lip Rayfield, “The High Price of Necromancy”

Tonio K, “How Come I Can’t See You in My Mirror?”

Van Der Graaf Generator, “Killer”

Steeleye Span, “Elf Call”

Haystacks Balboa, “The Children of Heaven”

Denki Groove, “Mononoke Dance” (The full-length version is here, but I think it’s better shortened unless you’re dancing.)

Oingo Boingo, “Little Guns”

Onmyouza, “Onikosae no Uta”

Procol Harum “The Devil Came from Kansas”

William Bolcom, “Poltergeist Rag”

Mayumi Kojima, “Poltergeist”

Tom Smith, “I Had a Shuggoth”

Don Ross, “Robot Monster”

Hedningarna, “Tina Vieri”

For more suggestions, see Eve Tushnet, here and here.