steel away

I just wrote a post about organs for my Other Blog, and then found out that the Organ Historical Society is having its convention in Pittsburgh this year! OMG guys! This will definitely mean good concerts. For now, check out this nice website they’ve got, complete with a photo gallery of some (or maybe all) of Pittsburgh’s lovely instruments. Hmm…this or ALA…what a hard decision…

Update: I cannot believe the coincidence of this. After I wrote about John Cage’s ASLSP, I picked up a City Paper and saw that Pleasant Hills Community Presbyterian Church is launching its Lenten Concert Series with a five-hour performance of the piece, by organist Robert Morehead. What are the odds of me learning about the existence of this composition in the morning and then reading about it in the paper later the same day?!?!?! My head is exploding. It’s not like this is common fare, right? The planets must be aligning…

I think I want: Joanna Newsom’s new 3-part album, Have One on Me. Her sound is really different now, a lot gentler. I think I might like this. Amazon has previews.

NPR All Songs Considered: Guest DJ Bonnie Prince Billy (March 23, 2009). Interesting discussion and some great songs – especially “The Girl in Me”, about the feminine aspects of a man and the manly aspects of a woman and enacting/appreciating them with one’s lover. There are a few songs from his (then) new album, “Beware”, which was not up my alley. I got it from CLP and just couldn’t get into it. But the other songs in this show are pretty great. Among them is a Susanna song that reminded me I’ve been meaning to get some of their/her music.

I’ve been listening to a series of podcasts about the organ music of J.S. Bach, from a favorite radio station I discovered while studying abroad (sorry, it’s in French). When I couldn’t sleep I would listen to their program, Musique en mémoire, which features really interesting performances and scholarly discussion of classical music history. I think being able to download their podcasts has finally converted me to the world of podcasts. I discovered these from the BBC that I want to try next: Best of Natural History Radio and Excess Baggage – a travel “magazine”.

album here

a snowman in the arms of … one of those Carnegie statues.

happiness is a Pens game

I’m going to try to do a series of posts featuring clips from movies with serious underdogs, and serious inspirational pump-up scenes involving said underdogs…and, preferably, music. They might all be sports related, but maybe not.

The first is a song from the Bollywood movie Lagaan. Now before you Bollywood-haters dismiss it, I suggest you just watch the video and appreciate the craftsmanship of some of the shots. It’s cheesy, but in that undeniably heartwarming way that only musicals are.

This version has English subtitles but the song doesn’t start right away. The one below is better quality, but has no subtitles. The background story is that these underdogs have been coerced/tricked into playing a cricket match against their stinky British overlords. If the villagers win, they don’t have to pay tax (lagaan) for two years; if they lose, they have to pay double. They don’t know how to play cricket, and they’re out of shape. Hence, the pump-up sesh (led by the inspiring and ripped Aamir Khan *swoon*):

Lesson from this scene: all an underdog needs is some homies to beat the Imperial powers that hold you down.

Next week: all an underdog needs is a brave and dependable horse to overcome cheating goldiggers who wanna steal your girl.

All I’m sayin’ is it’s weird how they have TVs and radios EVERYWHERE in doctor’s offices and hospitals. Like… I will never be able to think of the song “Brick House” in the same way again.

a possible hint of progress on the job front immediately made this song come into my head:

holy overalls!

What is up:

Apparently I’m a huge sports fan. It might be more accurate to say that I was in emotional and physical turmoil for the last 3+ months and have been using sports to escape from it. Which is not to say that I don’t love sports. Last night Chomps and I watched one of the ESPN “30 for 30″ features. This one was about Muhammad Ali; previously we watched one about how the Colts snuck out of Baltimore (which wasn’t as good). I like sports documentaries a lot, when they’re well done. Sports capture the trials of the human spirit and good filmmakers know how to emphasize that. A counter-example of this could be, say, this terrible attempt at sports drama filmmaking.

I was going to do the usual end of the year posts but was too busy having doctor appointments and applying to jobs. Both of those things are done with now…kind of. Allow me to explain.

I don’t have anything serious wrong with me, and I think my stomach and I are becoming friends again. I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to drink more than one beer at a time though. That’s a little bit tragic. 2009 was definitely the year of health issues. I started off strong with panic attacks and stomach cramps. Then I started yoga and now I have visible muscle tone! I quit smoking completely, finally. I think that at last I’ve overcome my sophomoric detest of breaking a sweat. Being active seems like a good way to pass the time I used to spend drinking and carousing and being emo. This fire might have been flamed by the revelation that my dad had prostate cancer. He’s okay now. I think that definitely made me finally quit smoking, even though I uh..don’t have a prostate or anything. Anyways. To round out the health explosion I am taking an aerobic boxing class that meets twice a week. If, in April, I no longer get grossed out by feeling my butt fat bounce up and down when I jump rope, I will consider myself accomplished. Maybe the butt fat will even disappear? I don’t care about that so much. It’s just the nasty feeling of flesh moving up and down that I can’t stand. I think that’s part of why I hate running. In addition to the fact that it makes my bones feel jarred. I would really like to play some sort of team sport but it seems kind of hard to break into that sort of thing. If anyone made it through this entire paragraph and knows about fun team sports to play in Pittsburgh, lemme know.

Job/career stuff was the other thing that sent me into hibernation in my pit of despair. I got my MLIS. Whoopee now I can feel extra overqualified for my job that I can’t possibly quit! I am at a dead end unless I happen to be the lucky candidate (out of thousands of applicants) who gets an interview for one of the jobs I apply for. I don’t feel very inspired. I don’t have the free time to do anything to “build my skill set”. If I’m still working here in a year I’ll probably go get some other degree or something, like in computer science or art history or who knows what. For the past few months this situation was really getting me down. And making me super angry and resentful and any sort of bad emotion you can think of. But then I realized all those feelings were based on my assumption that I was somehow entitled to have a good paying steady job, and I was indignant that the world was denying me that. I don’t know why I always thought my life would go a certain way, and when it doesn’t I get pissed. Maybe because I’m middle class? Give me my privileges, damn it? Yuck. So I’ve crossed over and am just grateful that I have a job that pays my rent and buys me groceries and gives me a tiny bit of spending money. I realize that these things are privileges. I don’t like things about my job but it’s not miserable so I really, really shouldn’t complain. I don’t know if it’s the economy’s fault that my dreams are deferred or if I was just always naive in thinking I could achieve the sort of life where you can take real vacations and maybe even own a small house. Now that I’m not really expecting those things to happen, it will be much nicer if they actually do.

Maybe 2010 will be the year of blogging bluntly. I don’t know if I mentioned that I have another blog where I pretend to care about librarianship. j/k. I actually do care, most of the time. You can find it by googling my real name. I’m not linking to it because that would create a trail and this is supposed to be as stealthy of a blog as possible. I’m planning on doing some sort of epic post about my favorite sci-fi books of the last 10 years, and I’ll probably post it there and not here. So if you care about that, go there.

Other things that changed in the course of 2009, or, uh, like in the past two weeks:
I no longer kill houseplants. I am capable of nurturing them!
I have hair!
I have glasses.
We got a freakin’ plush new mattress and box spring that normally cost $1100 on sale for like $450 or something. No more back pain!
I changed my blog theme today.
We had a couples photo shoot because our families are begging us for pictures. Here’s a sample. Chomper and snaggletooth vs the world. FUCK YOU 2010 WE OWN YOU.

I am going to see the PENGUINS VS. CAPITALS TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“When these two squads were last seen on the same ice surface, it was the Penguins putting the end to Washington’s season with a 6-2 victory in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals at the Verizon Center on May 13. Pittsburgh went on to capture their third Stanley Cup championship in June while Washington’s offseason began sooner than they would have liked.” (penguins.nhl.com)

I’m sad that Fleury might not play. It’s just like the last time I went to a sporting event at Mellon Arena and neither Triple H nor the Undertaker were “playing”. :-(