Today is the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth. Here is an ideal performance by the great Waltraud Meier of what has come to be known as the “Liebestod” (love-death*)–the last music in Tristan und Isolde. *although certain friends and I refer to it as the love-frog.
Archive for the ‘Whatever’ category
Very quiet adventures in the very quiet car
Penn Station is a terrible building but it has its small charms: newsstands that carry quite a lot of magazines, an old-fashioned departure board with moving parts, and a few comfortingly familiar folkways. People stand and watch the board, for instance, and then, despite the fact that Amtrak doesn’t oversell trains, the instant the board [...]
Tripblog Always Rings Thrice
Got to the train station in San Antonio at 11:30 or something, got into my compartment, and fell asleep. Awoke to west Texas: a million cactuses which are not cacti because cowboys aren’t classicists and lots of wonderful abandoned structures and at one point something shaped like a wild boar trotting through the scrubby desert. [...]
Tripblog 2
The thing about my family in Dallas is they are family in some sense I never aspired to. They all lived along Hillcrest Avenue the last fifty years. My aunt’s kids went to school close to home and the two boys have lived there again since college though the older one just moved out last [...]
Pretty songs to get you through your winter crushes
So here it is: the second half of mixmas 2012. This is a much more easy-going set of songs. These songs, unlike part one, don’t demand running shoes and gas pedals and hurtling velocity. They feel comfortable in a living room. Or on a brisk walk with a hat and gloves. Or with a glass [...]
In Praise of Messy Lives: A soundtrack
God it feels weird getting up on this TGW stage again. It’s been a real long time since I was up here. It was May 2012. It was to share something called Farrell and Trixie’s Memorial Day mix. That was nine months ago. Just weeks before all the changes. All the conclusions. The untanglings. The [...]
My turn!
Oh, hi. I like Christmas music sort of. I bet you thought I didn’t. This one is from some awful TV special I grew up in the 80s and think Annie Lennox automatically makes things wonderful. Cute but you only have to listen to a few bars to get the joke: Best worst Christmas song [...]
Your music, let you show me it
I just got spotify! If you’re in a music recommending mood, tell me three albums from the last five years I really ought to have heard. Chances are very good I won’t have heard it. Any genre is fair game though I am likely to give a polite half-listen to dance pop/everythingcore.
Movies of 2012
2012 is more than half over. Let’s take a look at some movies that have come out this year. The Top 5 So Far (In No Particular Order) Cabin in the Woods – Joss Whedon’s incredibly fun horror/action/comedy is a movie that you should really watch in a room with other people. I guarantee we’ll [...]
Fear of Flying, Part 1 Million
Blogging is how we think now, right? How we process? How can I have a thought but that it become a status update? Well… I’m in the process of trying to talk myself back on planes. I have help from a lot of lovely people–people who have said they would fly with me, people who [...]
