Tonight and Sunday evening I'll be performing Mahler's 2nd Symphony with the Apollo Chorus and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, University Chorale, and Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble.
If you've never heard this piece, you have to come to one of the performances. Tonight's 7:30 p.m. performance, at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on the Northwestern University campus, will have the best sound. But Sunday's 6:30 pm performance, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago will be free. Also, the weather forecast for Sunday night looks great.
Based on Wednesday's orchestra rehearsal at Pick-Staiger, I think this will be one of the most exciting performances of my career. Here's a performance with Claudio Abbado; skip to 1:09:18 to hear the choral portion:
With perfect weather and a D&D-themed pub crawl today, posting will be...suboptimal. I promise at least one photo later this weekend.
Bullet the Bison takes this folk song literally:
The Dallas NBC affiliate has more.
A feature film based on a wicked creepy Neil Gaiman story from his anthology "Fragile Things" will be released later this year:
Director John Cameron Mitchell brings Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman to a seedy east London location for his latest feature, a punk-alien love story.
[He] looks to be in his element. It is December 2015 and he is on an industrial site in Wapping, east London, surrounded by aliens, punks and Nicole Kidman in a spiky white wig. The US actor-writer-director is instructing teenagers on how to dance, asking for the music to be turned up loud. He looks thrilled to be in the middle of it all.
The set-up is for Mitchell’s fourth feature as a director, How To Talk To Girls At Parties, which he adapted from a Neil Gaiman short story alongside Little Ashes screenwriter Philippa Goslett.
Set in 1970s suburban England, the story is about Enn, played by Tony award-winner Alex Sharp, a shy young guy who sneaks into an underground party with his punk-loving friends, where they meet a group of mysterious young women. Even after they discover the girls are part of an alien colony with sinister intentions, Enn cannot stop himself falling in love with Zan (Fanning). Kidman plays a fashion and music impresario who is worried she is losing her influence and sees Fanning’s character as a potential protégé.
It's one of my favorite Gaiman stories as well. I'm looking forward to seeing it in theaters.
Last night, the Colorado Rockies beat the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park 17-7, scoring 13 runs on 9 hits in the 5th:
For 37 long minutes in one-half inning Thursday, the Rockies sent 17 batters to the plate against the Giants at AT&T Park, starting with Trevor Story's home run and ending with DJ LeMahieu's groundout in the top of the fifth.
In between, the Rockies collected four doubles, five singles, two errors, one walk, one hit-by-pitch — and 13 runs. They shattered records. Nevermind Coors Field. The pitcher's haven in San Francisco busted open like a pinata.
And, eventually, the Rockies outlasted the Giants 17-7. The Rockies set a club record for runs scored in one inning, topping the 12 they scored at Coors Field against the Chicago Cubs on July 30, 2010.
It was the most runs scored by any team in one inning since the Arizona Diamondbacks notched 13 in the fourth against the Pirates on April 11, 2010.
Despite that, the Rockies are in a 3-way tie for first in the NL west at 14-14, while the Chicago Cubs top the league table at 21-6. I can't remember the first time the Cubs got to Mothers Day without losing at least 10 games. This year is unbelievable.
Despite being a long-term .NET guy, and despite thinking Java has lagged significantly in language features and power over the years, and despite the ludicrous claim that .NET isn't portable, I laughed very hard at this Norwegian video:
Sometimes there are odd coincidences.
Three unfortunate events in the English-speaking world happened on May 4th. Here in Chicago, 130 years ago today in 1886, the Haymarket Riot occurred near the corner of Desplaines Avenue and Randolph Street.
Forty six years ago today in 1970, four students were killed at a nonviolent anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...
And 37 years ago today in 1979, Margaret Thatcher took office as the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, jolting the country rightward, destroying traditional English industries, and unsuccessfully trying to disenfranchise the poor and underclass.
But today, let's forget all that. May the Fourth be with you. And in honor of May 4th, it looks this morning like George Lucas has decided to stop beating his head into a wall, and is taking his museum somewhere else.
The Argentine national football team is messing with us in this hilarious promotion:
TPM explains:
“They’re coming from South America. These are total killers. These are not the nice, sweet, little people that you’d think, okay?" Trump continues. "We have no protection, anybody can come in. It’s very easy and it shouldn’t be that way. We need to build a wall and it has to be built quickly.”
Trump's comments about a border wall play over clips of Argentine soccer players scoring a goal and cutting past a defender.
The promo closes with the caption: "The truth is the best they can do is not let us in."
Heh.
I mean, it's only funny until someone loses an election.
I didn't participate in the challenge this year, but one of my favorite bloggers, Deeply Trivial, did:
I think the biggest indicator of success, for me, is that I didn't miss a scheduled blog post. There were days when the post came really late, and on those days, I seriously considered just waiting until tomorrow and writing two posts, or just moving a post to a Sunday. But I made myself do it, and it worked. I guess I should apply that same perseverance to other things in my life.
Some lessons learned that I'll applying for the next blog challenge:
- Having a theme was a huge help! I can't imagine having to come up with 26 topics on the fly.
- Relatedly, writing up a schedule with each topic already identified before April was an even bigger help. I think the problem I encounter with blogging regularly is coming up with a good topic, and I tend to depend too heavily on momentary inspiration to put together a blog post. It might be a good idea to identify certain topics I'd like to cover, and perhaps tie them to certain days or times of year.
- I should have written more of my posts ahead of time. Though I did a little of this, most days, I wrote the blog post the day it was supposed to be up, or at most one day in advance. This created a bit of a time crunch. Once I finally did start writing, it was easy to keep the momentum going - I just usually didn't have the time because I had to squeeze writing in between other tasks. Having an evening I devote to writing a few posts wouldn't be too hard if I just make a writing schedule and stick to it.
All good habits in blogging.