My bad

Excerpt from a review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of the Chamber Chorus' most recent concert:

...There were some tenor troubles along the way, and some soloists who didn't quite make the grade, but most of the singing was excellent.

Read:

...That one balding brown-haired tall dude in the back singing tenor fucked it up for everyone. Otherwise, most of the singing was excellent.

Yeah, that was me. Sorry about that, all. I shall endeavor to not be as craptastic next concert (which I just found out today that I'll be singing in ... it's at the Basilica, so it'll be friggin' awesome).

Actually, my guilt at being lousy is somewhat mediated by the fact that after the concert, our rehearsal pianist/composer/all-around nice lady came up to me and told me how she thought I sang really well. So that's something. Someday, I will sound like Pavarotti.

Speaking of Pavarotti, check out this tidbit from his Wikipedia entry:

His major breakthrough in the United States came on February 17, 1972, in a production of Donizetti's La fille du régiment at New York's Metropolitan Opera, in which he drove the crowd into a frenzy with his nine effortless high Cs in the signature aria. He achieved a record 17 curtain calls.

Nine. Fucking. High. Cs.

Yeah, that's whay he's the man. I can occasionally hit an A and make it sound good. If the weather's nice.

The Tookie-Brown connection

Being the curious fellow that I am, I sometimes like to read Wikipedia articles about random people/events/things that I have a passing interest in. Today I decided to focus on Tookie Williams. One of the things the Wikipedia article mentioned was that he was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize. There was a link to this LA Times article, which discusses the nominations and other actions folks had done to advocate for clemency. One of the people who nominated him was a professor at my alma mater:

Brown University English professor William Keach, who is also active in the campaign to end the death penalty, nominated Williams for the Nobel Prize for literature.

Williams, Keach said, "has a remarkable ability as a writer, with a message and a personal history that gives his writing force."

Now, I don't really have anything to say on the subject of the death penalty or whether it should have been applied in this case, but I do have a few things to say about Keach.

Keach has a bit of a reputation for being a crazy hippie-socialist-commie-pinko-leftwing-nutjob uber liberal. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it is a bit embarassing when he supports things like confiscating and destroying every copy of the school newspaper because it ran an ad for David Horowitz's book on why reparations for slavery is a bad idea (sorry, can't find a relevant link -- it happened a few years ago). To clarify, I'm not saying I agree with Horowitz's argument, but I think there might be more constructive ways of disagreeing than burning newspapers. By the by, for those of you who weren't at Brown when this whole incident happened, it was a big friggin' deal. One of those things that got national attention for 15 minutes.

One other thing I'll say about Keach -- I had a couple of classes with him. One was a seminar about 19th century lit (something like "romantic writers"). The other was a mandatory (for English majors) survey course. I pretty much hated both. Of course, I'm also not real into 19th century lit, so that probably has something to do with it.

Update: Here's a link to the Brown chapter of the ACLU's decription of the aforementinoed incident and their response. Doesn't mention Keach, but you'll just have to take my word for it when I say he supported the paper-burners. Trust me. Mikey, you'll notice that the ACLU agrees with us that destorying the newspaper was a kind of stupid thing to do. So tell those roommates of yours to STFU.

Best. Allegory. Evar.

This has been a good couple of months for children's literature. First there was the Harry Potter flick, now there's Narnia. Man, that movie kicked some ass. I totally geeked out -- to the great annoyance of those around me. I was the guy who sat there with a big grin on his face saying things like, "Ooh, this is the part where..." I don't care what C.S. Lewis thinks, Disney did a pretty damn good job with the anthropomorphic animals. Although, I must confess, I don't quite remember a huge Lord of the Rings-style battle scene in the middle of the book. I mean, I guess there was some kinda fighting going on, but I'm pretty sure Lewis went light on the bloodshed.

On a completely unrelated note, does anybody else remember the cartoon "Freakazoid"? Was it really as edgy and unsuitable-for-children as I remember it being?

I need an intervention

Okay, I've developed a bit of a WoW problem. See, I'm on a 10-day trial which means, among other things, that the ability to talk with other players (except via whispering) and trading is disabled. Which kind of puts a damper on the whole experience, I guess. So I'm really tempted to "invest" the money to buy the full version. But the thing is, see, I worry that I've become just a mite too addicted. You know how, back in the day, when everybody was playing Tetris, they'd say things about how they starting seeing Tetris blocks in real life? Well, now I look at my coworkers and wonder if they'd have any rare drops. And how much silver I'd have to invest in my job to increase my skill points. It's bad news.

On the plus side, I'm a seriously badass level 12 mage. Who can also tailor and enchant things. Sucaks.

I'm in trouble

You know those made-for-TV movies about the evils of drugs? They all kind of go like this: guy is doing fine, but a little bored with his job, so decides to try crack. It starts out okay, just one or two hits a day. Then he starts pawning his wife's jewelry. Then he loses his job. One thing leads to another, and he ends up living in a cardboard box giving head for $20.

Replace "crack" with "World of Warcraft", and you have my problem. Right now I'm at the phase where I'm only playing an hour or two a day, but I feel myself slowly getting sucked in. I think my character might be completely shitty, but I'm gonna stick with him for now. He's a Gnome Mage. Small but fierce. Make fun of his size and he'll blast you with a fireball.

Plus, thanks to my lady, I'm now also into Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms. Now, I'm not going to say that she's a bigger geek than me, nor am I going to mention the fact that we stayed up 'til 2:00 AM on Saturday wading through hordes of baddies, but I will say that all this RPG'ing is maxing out my geekometer. I may explode in a shower of cheese puffs and Star Trek references if I'm not careful. Or end up living in a cardboard box giving head for GP.

Excerpt from a conversation at work

Coworker: I got my daughter her first gun when she turned 5.

Me: Huh. Say, have you ever seen "Bowling for Columbine"?

Coworker: No, why?

Me: Um...no reason.