Cornish hens vs. corned beef

Since I mostly don't eat things that walk, different parts and types of meat are not part of my vocabulary. Also, I grew up in a non-English-speaking household, so we didn't have things like Cornish hens whilst growing up, and even if we did, we would have called it something else.

So when people mention tripe and I don't automatically know that that is something I don't eat, it's because I didn't have it growing up.

In fact, to this day, there are a lot of flowers, plants and fish that I know in Japanese, but not necessarily in English.

Anyway, this past weekend was St. Patty's Day. I knew the Irish did something with corn and some meat type, but I didn't know which one. My first guess was Cornish hens. I asked a coworker last week if she was making Cornish hens for St. Patty's Day. First she looked confused, then burst out laughing.

"Heeeee heeeeeee. Do you mean corned beef? That's what the Irish make for St. Patty's Day. "
"Oh yeah--that. Are you making that?"

Well, I got the "corn" bit right. . .Corned beef, Cornish hens--to me it's all the same.

Besides which, I wonder if my coworker can explain the difference between chard, collard greens and kale.

Tales of the idiot who evaded service himself during the Vietnam war, but calls serving in the military a "terrific experience"

Full disclosure: I read this in Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT. However, I don't always trust Maureen to interpret my news for me, so I did my own fact-checking.

I was incredulous. Surely, the service-evading president of ours didn't just tell these people serving the front line that he was "envious"? Surely Maureen is exaggerating as she is sometimes wont to do? Surely this country isn't run by someone who is this idiotic?

Well, alas, it is.

Here is Reuters article.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks. . ."
(Bush talking to soldiers in Afghanistan)

If it is so freaking "exciting and romantic", then why did he dodge the draft when he had his chance for romantic excitement?

I'm completely against war, but these soldiers who put their life on the line and are "inconvenienced" so that we can eat, sleep, listen to music and grumble about taxes (post forthcoming) and gas prices--in peace--and carry on as though there is no war going on really deserve more than this obviously insincere patronizing statement.

Really, this infuriates me.

Ouch. . .

This isn't a complaint, since I have absolutely nothing to complain about, but it cost $60 to fill my gas tank today.

I know that in most countries, where the government doesn't subsidize our big fuel guzzling habits, it could easily cost $100 and I still think gas prices in the U.S. should be double what they currently are, but ouch. $60 still hurts.

When I was in college, it cost a mere $15 to fill the tank. For premium gas. Granted, I lived in a state where gas prices cost 30 cents less than prices here, (50 cents if you take into account that I used to fill my tank with premium gas when I was in college) and that was more than 10 years ago, when gas cost--let's see--$2.20 less per gallon, and I was driving a smaller car with a smaller gas tank (12 gallons vs. 16 gallons), but could all of these factors possibly add up to costing me quadruple what it once cost?

Coughing statistics at the SF Symphony

Apologies to my friend who hates when people listen to music as background music, but after a lovely meal on a Friday evening, I had a pile of dishes in the sink that needed attending to, and I wanted something pleasant to accompany my chore.

Thus I put on my Michelangeli Brahms CD. (And truth be told, it's more like the dish-washing is the "background" activity.)

These are live recordings of concerts he gave in 1973. There are 10 such CDs in this collection-- all are live concert recordings. Each CD ranges from 49 minutes to a little over 70. The beautiful playing goes without saying, but the other thing I've noticed in these recordings is that there is very little coughing. Maybe 3 or 4 times in the entire roughly-one-hour span, and one person at a time.

By contrast, at last Thursday night's SF Symphony concert, at one point, when I got distracted by the coughs, I noticed one cough every 7 or so downbeats.

Now I shouldn't be throwing stones in this case, because I had to cough a few times, too. But I gagged myself with a handkerchief and coughed 3 times during the entire Eroica--once during a very loud section and the other two times between movements.

I think it's unrealistic to expect an entirely cough-free concert, and often being the one who needs to cough (though I control it as much as I can help it), I'm usually pretty tolerant of a few coughs here and there, but the Thursday concert was the most coughing I've ever experienced--where people didn't even bother holding it in.

It also seemed like they put about 56 of the coughers in my section, with 5 of the loudest, most frequent coughers within a 5-seat radius.

Then there were the lovely group of 3 uber-dressed up mature ladies who kept opening their itty bitty purses, glasses cases to switch back and forth between their reading glasses and their opera glasses to look at the program and then at the orchestra, and swapping opera glasses among each other for a looksee and rustling something every few minutes.

But back to the coughing. . ..

Has there been an evolution (or de-evolution) in the coughing etiquette between the concert days of Michelangeli and now? Or perhaps this was just a bad evening as far as coughing and rustling older ladies are concerned?

Since today is pi day, a celebration of all things 3.141592635389793238 and by association, all frivolous statistics, please allow me to indulge and present you with some coughing statistics from last week's concert.

1853: the total number of measures in Beethoven's Eroica (According to the Breitkopf and Hartels version of the score.)

7: the rough number of downbeats that MTT gave between each cough (during the 2 minutes that I was distracted enough to actually count.)

So so far, we have 1 cough every 7 measures. 1853 divided by 7 is a total of 264.7 coughs, but there is no such thing as 7/10 of a cough, so we round up.
265: assuming the coughing-every-7-minutes went on all night (no, I didn't keep track. After those 1 or 2 minutes, I tuned out the coughing and focused back on the music.), that is the total number of coughs that transpired during the Eroica performance.

2743: total number of seats at Davies Symphony Hall.

265 coughs divided among 2743 potential active coughers (the concert was sold out and I did not see one empty seat in the balcony section.) amounts to roughly 1 in 10 people coughing.

5: 265 total coughs spread out over 50 minutes is 5.3 coughs per minute. Since coughs are discrete items, I've rounded down to 5.

That is (if anyone cares enough to read this far) one cough every 11.3 seconds (seconds are indiscrete, so it's ok to leave it as a decimal).

Happy pi day to all.

Two types of people

There are two types of people. Well, ok, there are more than two types of people, but for the purposes of this posting, there are two types of people with regard to language and grammar—A. people whose opinions I can trust without having to consult a reference book (style guide, grammar guide, dictionary, etc.), and B. the rest of you. I’m working on placing myself in category A, though I deserve to be in category B most of the times.

People who write in run-on sentences fall into category B, unless you are from a country that uses British English.

People who can’t properly use “comprise” fall into category B.

People who misuse “peruse” fall into category B.
Journalism teachers who try to tell me that “ok” is incorrect and that the proper spelling is either “o.k.” or “okay” (wrong and wrong) fall into category B------.

Aforementioned journalism teachers who try to tell me that senator is always capitalized (wrong again; according to both A.P. and Chicago, you do not capitalize, unless you use it as a title of address, directly preceding the senator’s name. Otherwise, it is a common noun.) fall into category B----------- as well.

People who write me emails and don’t capitalize the beginning of their sentences, whether it’s because they think this is cool or out of laziness or maybe because they are actually illiterate?—might fall into category B, depending on the time of month and how forgiving I feel.

• If you are sagacious broccoli, then I’ll notice the transgression, but you still fall into category A. If you are sagacious broccoli’s friends, then you’re probably automatically category A.)

• If you are some guy that I might’ve once had a crush on, but am now over b/c my fickle mind is in a fault-picking mood (i.e. “this is why we wouldn’t have worked out anyway”), then apologies for the inconsistency, but you’ll probably fall into category B.

Aforementioned journalism teachers who try to tell me that “till” is not a legitimate word and that the proper word is “til” (it’s not; check OED, Garner's and Chicago.) fall into category B.

People whose work I have to edit, because they can’t distinguish between “pass concerts” and “past concerts” also fall into category B.

So if you are one of these category B people, and I tell you that this sentence needs to be fixed because “entitled” is wrong in this context: “Our latest CD, entitled Idiotic Relaxing Music, is now available online.”

then please don’t write back and tell me that you “don’t quite agree with the word change of ‘entitled’ vs ‘titled’.”

Because, quite frankly, if I have to tell you that “pass concerts” should be past concerts, then I really don’t care whether you agree with me or not.

I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but please just make the change instead of wasting my time, because it now reads “. . . Our latest CD - Idiotic Relaxing Music” and this is just wrong, wrong, wrong, damnit. It’s one thing to use hyphens as substitutes for m-dashes on a blog or personal email or other private site, but on an official website, a hyphen should never be used as a substitute for an m-dash. Use two hyphens if you must.

Besides, Strunk and White, Chicago, AP and my Garner’s Language Usage Book all favor titled over entitled in this context.

If you had listened to me in the first place, then I wouldn’t have wasted 30 minutes blogging about this or have spent another 15 minutes firing off emails complaining about this or explaining that your “solution” is still wrong.

I have more productive ways to waste my time.

Beethoven's Eroica--Pretty and Pleasant?

When I first saw the SF Symphony’s description of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony as “pretty/pleasant” a là their new concierge service, I thought, “wth!?!??!”

But after listening to their performance of it last night, I think I now understand. This is exactly how they played it: the Eroica, as played by the SF Symphony last night, was beautiful, impassioned—and pleasant.

I wonder if I let Leonard Bernstein and Alex Ross influence my expectations for the live version too much. . ..

Last night, I went to go hear the SF Symphony with Peanut Butter. I was particularly excited about going to hear Gil Shaham live, but we were also both really looking forward to a live performance of the Eroica.

Eroica is one of these symphonies I never tire listening to; for the past few months, I have been courting this symphony, attempting to better understand it.

It is unbelievable that I had never heard it live before last night.

* * * *

Sometime late last fall, perhaps as part of my quest to better understand Mahler, I decided that I first needed to better understand Beethoven’s symphonies. Why Beethoven, I don’t remember, except that our director made a connection between the two composers. Plus Beethoven’s symphonies were more familiar. It’s been on one of my big “lifetime” to-do lists, along with understanding Mahler before I’m 70.

It was also around this time that one of my olderish-professor type friends told me about a Beethoven course he took in college in which the professor broke down each of Beethoven’s symphonies into parts and analyzed the structure. I was envious. My college offered no such course, so I was left to my own devices to absorb the greatness that is Beethoven.

Thus, for various reasons, I decided to try to better “understand” Beethoven’s symphonies. It seemed natural to start with the Eroica, since it is a landmark symphony that is often referred to as the symphony that marked the beginning of the Romantic Era.

* * * *

The Eroica is a mind-boggling symphony. It’s one of these symphonies that humbles me every time I listen to it. Here is someone who wrote a symphony so masterful and complex that I can but barely understand it with my tiny brain. I can but barely follow a score and keep track of everything. (Ok I can’t.) Any contribution I might ever make in my lifetime just pales—pales­—compared to just one output (of which he had many) from this composer. That anyone could write something like this is already mind-boggling. But then to think that he wrote this when he was deaf!

* * * *

Unfortunately, being awestruck with its greatness doesn’t help me understand this symphony. I can listen to it, appreciate its greatness and tell you how it’s different from Haydn/Mozart’s symphonies, as well as tell you about the intense E-flat major chords—even tell you a little about how the melody progresses—but then my musical limitations take over. I couldn’t tell you, for example, the specifics of what makes this such a landmark symphony.

So I started borrowing different recordings and comparing them to the one I have. I looked for stuff online that might help me parse this symphony and explain the details of its structure.

Then sometime in January, these SF Symphony tickets went on sale as part of a special promo. Gil Shaham and the Beethoven Eroica live for $25???? Omg. I grabbed those tickets.

Another serendipitous occurrence: discovering Alex Ross’s first blog posting, where he talks about the Eroica at length. Shortly after I purchased those tickets, I checked Alex Ross’s blog and came across this posting, in which he links back to his first post, which I had never read before. Of course, it was conveniently meant to be discovered while I was in the middle of “studying” the Eroica.

Alex Ross’s early blog posting was a wonderful find. He infuses so much personal significance into the Eroica. He extols the virtues of the Bernstein lectures and talks about how these lectures inspired him to buy a score of this symphony.

I too, bought and listened to the Bernstein lecture on how this symphony was constructed. I borrowed the score from the library and listened, while trying to follow along. Sometimes, I just listened to see if I now listened with a different ear. I listened to different versions and compared it to my Szell (Cleveland Symphony) version.

Through all of these various ways—discovering Alex Ross’s first post; listening to the Bernstein lecture; reading various things online; and analyzing the score—I learned lots and looked forward to hearing the live version.

I also listened to it a lot. Whenever I put it on, I cranked up the volume so the opening E-flat major chords would sound like hammer blows that made me leap out of my seat. I mentally paused after the transgressive C-sharp that follows, and then perhaps because of Bernstein, I imagined struggles, conflicts, holocausts, and all those things in the next few measures.

Bernstein’s recording is quite fiery; Szell conducts his at an electrifying tempo.

But of course, none of this could possibly be as thrilling as listening to it live. Thus PB and I went to the SF Symphony performance, ready to be knocked out of our seats and be riveted by the live version. I fully expected to be so enthralled that even before the program started, I anticipated giving them a standing ovation.

* * * *

During the first half, Gil Shaham played a Schuman concerto. No, not Robert Schumann, to my surprise, but another Schuman, who according to the program notes, didn’t even discover classical music until 20. The piece was a pleasant surprise (since I was expecting Robert Schumann). I was entranced by Shaham’s lyrical playing and enjoyed most of this jazzy concerto. Shaham has a very sensitive playing style that I like very much. (3/12: Thanks to the person who pointed out my egregious error. Robert Schumann now has 2 n's in his last name. People who can't spell Schumann should also belong to category B. (See next post for the reference.))

So now we get to the moment we were waiting for. I was so fraught with anticipation that I held my breath as I waited for MTT to give the first downbeat so the E-flat major chords can pummel me out of my seat.

The chords came and went—as did the transgressive C-sharp—so quickly, that by the time it registered that I wasn’t blasted out of my seat or stabbed by intrusive chords, the music had progressed to the part where the players were handing off the theme back and forth to each other, politely, rather than with a sense of urgency.

The playing was beautiful, but I was looking for the stab and wrench that Bernstein talks about. Where was the holocaust, famine, and struggle? The turmoil and the tug-o-war between parts that Bernstein talks about? Or the intrusive otherness?

These were all missing. The ensemble-playing was excellent, but excellence wasn’t what I sought in the music last night.

Once I got over my shock over the unshocking-ness of the opening E-flat major chords and the C-sharp, I did enjoy the rest of the program.

I liked the heart-on-the-sleeve nature of the Marcia Funebre, but the real surprise was the third movement, which I normally find least exciting. In the Szell recording, this is just ho-hum. I don’t like the horn and oboe-playing at all, which kills the movement for me. The Bernstein version is a bit better, with more contrasts, but again, still not my favorite movement. By contrast, SF Symphony’s version was electrifying and full of the tension needed to make this movement ring. In particular, I loved the really quiet repeated low notes that the viola passes on to the string bases and the cellos in this movement. The cellos and the bases played this with such bounce and at such a low volume, that you could barely hear them. (In fact, it was so low, I couldn’t tell whether the bases or cellos or both were playing the B-flat.) Ohhhh, it was lovely. It was like witnessing a very private heated conversation between the violas and bases/cellos. If they had just played this section over and over again the entire evening, I would’ve enjoyed it. It provided a wonderful contrast to the loud melody, which really made this movement work. The oboe and flute ensemble was very tight, too.

Is it silly to say that these repeated B-flats were probably my favorite part of this performance?

I am glad I finally got to hear this performance live, but the SF Symphony version wasn’t riveting or transgressive enough for me.

However, clearly I’m wrong, since Joshua Kosman of the SF Chronicle (a reliable music critic and therefore someone who actually knows what he is talking about) said that this performance was “among the most exciting renditions of this music I've heard."

Well, this is why I could never be a reviewer.

Musical Mashed Potatoes

I’m working on a piece that currently sounds like musical mashed potatoes, if mashed potatoes could actually be represented musically.

We are supposed to memorize a piece that sounds deceivingly easy if you just sang the entire piece as is, but the version we are singing has 3 of us max on a part, singing only 1 pitch (in my case a B-flat), so that every time a B-flat comes up, I’m supposed to sing the text, which is proving to be a bit more challenging than I expected. (The rest of the time, I’m supposed to hum on my note, but all the while standing next to TWO people who are each singing a half a step above and below me, which means that I also don’t want to breathe, because that means a stoppage in sound, and the increased likelihood of getting thrown off by the mesh of pitches on either side of you.)

It’s hard to think that far ahead and be like, "oh, my b-flat is coming up." and manage to come in exactly on time and with the proper amount of stress, b/c the few times I do remember to come in on time, I'm so eager to show off that "Oh oh oh, I actually remembered that I'm supposed to come in on the word 'tops' of 'rooftops'!" that I end up stressing the word we come in on, which is invariably an unimportant and unstressed word like "a" or worse yet, a non-stressed syllable, like the “on” in upon. It's appropriately called "Falling Rain" and once we get the musical acrobatics figured out, it should sound like cascading raindrops.

But at the moment. . . please pass me the gravy.

Three things that made me smile today

1. Returning home from work and being greeted by these beauties: 2.
Actually smile is an understatement. I was laughing so hard, I was in tears. Thanks to Yv, a new-found blog-amie for posting it on her site and providing me with such comic relief.

3. I'm in! Woohoo! I'll be participating in this SF mini-game.

My compulsive Bach-buying disorder

Damnit. Damnit. I found another version of Bach’s Chaconne played so beautifully that I need to get it.

Here I thought that I already know my favorite version of Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas and was set with my Menuhin version. Over the past few years, I’ve listened to several recordings and own a few, but I keep coming back to Yehudi Menuhin’s 1934 version recorded when he was but a teen. Yes, it has more intonation issues than his later recording and other versions played by Perlman and many others, and Kremer and Hahn play it beautifully and with more technical verve, but flaws and all, the Menuhin recording was my first “Chaconne love”, and I still find it powerful enough to move me to tears. Even the Szeryng version, which is quite good, doesn’t move me quite as much as Menuhin’s.

Unlike modern recordings, you can tell that this recording wasn’t recorded in a studio with fancy acoustics or high tech recording equipment, so the violin doesn’t ring as much as later recordings by Perlman, Hahn, et. al. nor does his violin have that vibrant zing to its tone. But the unmediated sound sounds so honest and refreshing; the tone is warmer and much more intimate.

Thus, despite the razzle dazzle of newer, more polished versions—some of which I own, I’ve been faithful to this one for the past ten years or so and have not been tempted to buy any more beyond the ones I already own.

Until today, that is.

Today, I heard a version played by Grumiaux (on my favorite nonclassical radio station, no less.) that sounded so beautiful that I actually stopped what I was doing for 15 minutes to finish listening to it and give it my undivided attention. It’s very different from Menuhin's, but alluring and sensual in its own way.

A few years ago, I swore off buying any more Bach unaccompanied violin stuff until I had a less lopsided collection (it’s currently very “B”-heavy), but darn it. I think I might need to break my Bach-fast and get a recording of the Grumiaux.

Because you know, it's not like the 3? 4? I already own are enough.

Phone sex and other things I don't get that defy logic

Sorry to tease you with such a tantalizing title and potentially disappoint, but actually, the contents of this post will not be racy because it's about logic.

There are lots of things I don't get, but here are the three that are currently on my mind.

1. Piano quintet-- when I first heard the phrase "piano quintet", many many years ago, I imagined 5 pianos clanging along. After all, a string quartet means 4 strings playing as an ensemble. So by parallel logic, shouldn't a piano quintet mean 5 pianos playing as an ensemble? Ditto guitar quintet?

And why is a trumpet quintet composed of 5 trumpets, but an oboe quintet composed of an oboe plus 4 other non-oboe instruments?

Ok, granted, I've never seen 5 oboes perform together. But I've seen an oboe duet. Maybe a trio, too? And ditto guitar. A guitar trio is an ensemble with three guitars, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is composed of 4 guitar players (I think), but Boccherini's guitar quintet is for guitar plus 4 other instruments.

Is there some sort of unspoken elusive rule among musicians that they automatically know if it's x instrument, then an x quintet means x+4 other instruments, but if it's y instrument, then it means 5 of y instrument?

Or in the case of the guitar, at what number threshold, we switch from x-______tet meaning ____ of instrument x, rather than x plus other instruments?

Is there a manual that explains all of this?

2. Phone sex--ok, it's not that I didn't know what this is, but again, based on purely logical reasoning, I wasn't 100 percent sure what this meant. But Titus set me straight.

So it was what I suspected it was, but according my pedantic adherence of logic, phone sex really ought to be called phone masturbation, b/c that's what it really is. According to Titus, it's called phone sex rather than phone masturbation, because the former sounds more "exciting".

Exciting, but not logical. But then, when is sex ever logical?

3. The American convention of putting periods and commas inside quotations--this is a hobby horse of sorts for me, and regular visitors know of my befuddlement with this grammar rule, so I won't belabor the point here, except to express (again) that it's totally illogical and I refuse to abide by such rules that make no sense. (After all, what is a personal blog, if I can't express my own artistic or grammatical style, so long as I'm consistent?)

Perhaps I'm rigid like that, but all I'm asking for is consistency.
If
Did you read "encore"?
is legit, then
I read "encore".
rather than
I read "encore."
ought to be legit.

(Omg. Did I just compare piano quintets to phone sex to grammar rules??)