pity the poor lutenist

Recently I typed the word lutenist and autocorrect did not like this and suggested the following as more plausible alternatives:

Latinist
lutefisk
leanest
lateness
luteins
lustiest
luteineize

Imagine what it's like to play an instrument and have some algorithm decide that you are more obscure than Latinists and lutefisk. Flow my tears, indeed. . . .

This Victorian Novelist Knew About Buzzfeed, and It Was Everything

Conclusive evidence that '90s* kids knew all the best journalism hacks:

* 1890s

"Precisely, but the rubbish is capable of being made a very valuable article, if it were only handled properly. [ . . .] In the first place, I should slightly alter the name; only slightly, but that little alteration would in itself have an enormous effect. Instead of Chat, I should call it Chit-Chat!" . . . Chat doesn't attract anyone, but Chit-Chat would sell like hotcakes, as they say in America. I know I am right, laugh as you will." [. . . ]

"Now do let me go on," implored the man of projects, when the noise subsided. "That's only one change, though a most important one. What I next propose is this: – I know you will laugh again, but I will demonstrate to you that I am right. No article in the paper is to measure more than two inches in length, and every inch must be broken into at least two paragraphs. [. . . ] Let me explain my principle. I would have the paper address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to say, the great new generation that is being turned out by the Board schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention. People of this kind want something to occupy them in trains, and on buses and trams. As a rule they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty information – bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I not right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their attention can't sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid for them: they want chit-chat." [ . . .] 

"It would all depend on the skill of the fellows who put the thing together every week. There ought always to be one strongly sensational item – we won't call it an article. For instance, you might display on a placard: 'What the Queen eats!' or, 'How Gladstone's collars are made!' – things of that kind." [ . . .]

". . . And then, you know . . . when people had been attracted by these devices, they would find a few things that were really profitable. We would give nicely written little accounts of exemplary careers, of heroic deeds, and so on. Of course nothing whatever that could be really demoralising. . . ."

from New Grub Street by George Gissing, pp 446 - 448 (with omissions) in my Modern Library edition.

Previously: Williams Wordsworth has looked into smartphones, and Captain Ahab has pondered the advantages and disadvantages of GPS.

Captain Ahab Does Not Need Your God-damned GPS

Previously, William Wordsworth shared his thoughts on those who cannot tear their eyes away from their "smart" phones. And now Captain Ahab discusses the pros and cons of using a GPS, or Global Positioning System:

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: "Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye," lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter CXVIII, The Quadrant

Though personally, speaking as a passenger, I have found such systems to be quite useful.

the Big Apple of discord

The other day I received an e-mail from someone named Amanda Ameer with the subject line "Who is the best arts blogger in America?" With a becomingly modest blush, I opened the e-mail but before I could say, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall. . . " I realized it was some sort of contest, so I'm going to be a little vague about some details here, because though I have read (among other very long books) The History of Clarissa Harlowe in its entirety three times and am up for a fourth, if you hand me a set of contest or game rules I break down well before the end of the first page. Phrases like "four round process" do not encourage me to continue.

There are a number of set debates and discussions I find myself impatient with, because I think the premises are false. When people would debate "allowing gays in the military" I would think, this is a pointless debate, because there always have been and always will be people in the military who are attracted to their own sex; the question is, should we spend time and money rooting them out? Or when people discuss low-paying but virtuous jobs vs high-paying jobs with evil (it is assumed) corporations, I would think, this discussion is pointless, because if there's a moral imperative to do good by others, it's not abrogated just because you decide you want a 401(k); if anything, you can do more good if you have greater income and influence. Or when people discuss whether Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum will be the Republican presidential candidate this year, I think, I wonder how difficult it is to become a Canadian citizen? Seriously, what do I have to do?

What I'm getting at here in my usual hilarious but circuitous way is that the whole premise of the e-mail is false to begin with, because there are judges and public voting involved (just like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars!), so they're not looking for the "best" arts blogger in America, which is so clearly a meaningless concept anyway that it's not even worth discussing; they're looking for the most popular arts blogger in America, or at least the one who can get the most votes, as well as the approval of the judges (Nico Muhly, Douglas McLennan, and Katrine Ames, in case you're wondering), assuming of course that the blogger enters him- or herself (something tells me Alex Ross, Terry Teachout, etc, will not be submitting entries).

Also, about those entries: there are assigned topics. Look, I already have a lengthy list of entries I need and want to write, in between attending even more performances and working full time and generally trying to keep my head above water. I don't need more, especially when they're as unnecessary as Topic #1, the only one so far revealed: "New York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?" (This contest, I will point out here, is sponsored by a New York organization.)

My first thought after reading that (well, after a generalized "no fucking way") was of that old joke: "But enough about me. What do you think of me?" And then my thought was: a false premise. . . . New York has long been the media (publishing, advertising, public relations) capital of America. Who considers it the cultural capital of America? I mean, besides people who live there, or dream of living there? We still live in a movie culture, and you could make a far more compelling case that Los Angeles, the home of the film industry (and the television industry, despite the head offices in New York City), has been the most culturally influential American city of the twentieth century. (I could even entertain arguments that Detroit, home of the auto industry, has had a greater influence on American culture than either New York or Los Angeles. . . .)

Publicity, connections, all that, can help "culture" happen, or help make people aware of it, but let's not confuse the two things. What you have in New York is mostly abundance: lots of great museums with great art past and present, lots of performers, lots of connections, lots of money. That can produce art, but it can also produce conformity; I always think of Haydn's remark about his isolation in the Esterhazy palaces forcing him to become original. (And, since I'm quoting composers, it's inevitable that someone discussing this contest will quote Bartok on competitions being for horses not artists. . . .) Would Emily Dickinson have written better poems if she'd been immersed in the Boston (or even New York) literary scene of her day? Would she matter more or less to us? (Those of us, that is, to whom she matters at all. It's a big, difficult world out there.)

I assume one of the reasons this topic was chosen for bloggers is so that we can make the obvious points about the digital world breaking down these geographic barriers etc etc. But I think maybe what it's done is just create new power structures, ones which are perhaps less easy to figure out than the old "go to New York and work for the Times" sort of power structure. I'm not so sure this is such a good thing, at least for people like me who always have trouble figuring out power structures, which is why I don't like things that obscure the already shadowy structures even further from view.

Here's where I should point out that though I'm probably sounding full of imperious disdain and arrogance, in my humble heart I know that if a contest involves getting people to vote for you, I am going to lose. I'm just not that popular and never have been (and, honestly, I'm an incredibly nice guy! and I'll prove it: this whole thing is clearly designed to drive traffic to the website of the sponsors, Spring for Music, so here it is, click away, and tell them I send my love). I'm always a little doubtful about the need to import even more rejection and humiliation into my life, so I kind of doubt, given the false premises and all, that this whole thing is worth more of my time than I'm giving it here, despite the $2,500 and the tickets to the Spring for Music concerts at Carnegie Hall, which, as I've already pointed out, I'm just not going to win, under the circumstances. (I do find it a little odd that they don't tell us what the programs are; wouldn't that be crucial information for any "arts bloggers" thinking about entering? I guess the assumption is that if it's in New York, much less Carnegie Hall, it's good enough for the likes of us. Old assumptions die hard.) Look, if anyone wants to crown me with immortal digital laurel, I won't object, but you can hardly expect me to read sheets of instructions. But best wishes to all who enter. I'll just sit here, far away from the golden Apple, fiddling away while Rome burns.

the awful truth

The Kardashians are one of those pop-culture things I know about mostly through parodies, though I do also get updates from the hilariously named "Scoop!" section of the SF Examiner (a right-wing rag which I see because it is literally handed to the commuter crowds as they exit the BART stations, and which I take because it is printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks, making it an excellent addition to the home compost pile). Anyway, yesterday's "Scoop!" quoted one of those inevitable "insiders" on the bitter fall-out from Kim Kardashian's brief marriage to someone named Kris Humphries:

"He tried to control Kim by bringing her down," said the source. "He would say
truly terrible things. One time, he said she had no talent and her fame wouldn't
last."

The brute! I'm sure she's extremely talented at . . . whatever it is she does. Apparently the "insider" repeated this "truly terrible" remark without laughing.

The moral, which like most morals depends on where you're standing, is either that you should avoid your own blabbing "insiders" or that reality stars can't take too much reality.

the imperfect Wagnerite

On page 18 of the program for San Francisco Opera's Ring Cycle, Francesca Zambello says in her Director's Note:
". . . Wotan gives up an eye to build a mansion he can't afford. . . "

Uh, no, that's not what happens: Wotan has lost his eye in exchange for "gaining wisdom" at the World Ash Tree (I believe he also claims he lost his eye to gain Fricka, or at least that's what he tells her; maybe that counts as "gaining wisdom"). In exchange for building Valhalla, he actually promises to give up to the giants Freia, the goddess of love and eternal youth. This is an important difference because: (1) he doesn't make a sacrifice of his person to build his visionary fortress, he offers something (more precisely, someone) he doesn't really have the right to offer; and (2) he essentially makes the same deal Alberich made to forge the Ring, sacrificing love and youthful happiness for power and authority.

I don't want to be one of those people, but this isn't an abstruse or minor point, since Wotan's need to weasel out of his bargain leads him to steal the gold (and the tarnhelm and the Ring) from Alberich, and is therefore the engine that sets Das Rheingold and the rest of the cycle in motion. It seems like a pretty big misstatement for the director of a Ring cycle. If she had some obscurer meaning in view, I wonder what it was.

classical music is dead, Super Bowl edition

Heard during various commercials during today's Super Bowl game:

snippets of music by:
Verdi, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Rossini, Handel, Orff,* and Mozart

(perhaps we should exclude Orff because I believe it is federal law that every NFL broadcast must contain at least the opening of the O Fortuna chorus from Carmina Burana)

fun fact of the day

Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury was originally intended as a curtain-raiser for the Carl Rosa Opera Company's English premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin.

Well, both involve disputed brides. . . .

This astonishing bit of information is from Gayden Wren's book A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert and Sullivan. He cites as his source Jane Stedman's W.S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and His Theatre and duly notes that "it certainly seems an odd pairing to a modern ear." Indeed it does! There are many oddities here, one of them the thought that Lohengrin on its own would not be a substantial enough evening. . . .

the Sorrows of Young Patrick

You will be astonished, Wilhelm, to learn that I, the artless and ardent acolyte of Nature, found myself last night once again in that Temple of the Artificial, the Opera House. Dearest friend, how strange is the human heart! That I should seek truth and beauty amid the affectations of that fashionable crowd, which you know I abhor! Yet is it not the impure and the false which most set off those soul-wrenching aspirations which I seek tirelessly (yet in a modest and becoming way)? Are even our dreams free of baseness, and is it not a thought which has occurred to many people that life is but a dream?

The evening was warm, and as I passed on my way, one of the honest wanderers of that district begged me to spare a few coins. “My dear fellow!” I cried, “would I could spare you something far greater – the sublime thoughts of that noblest of poets, James MacPherson!” The good man, too modest to speak aloud to one he conceived of as a gentleman, mumbled something – no doubt a request to Heaven to bless me for my generous thoughts. How these simple people love me, and how good it is to see!

It was during the intermission that the incident occurred, rumors of which have no doubt already reached your ear, my dearest Wilhelm! I had found a rare fellow spirit among the usual crowd, and I opened my soul to him, completely forgetting that Tuesday is the night when the whole aristocratic set is accustomed to meet there. As the clique is entirely repulsive to me, I had ignored them, until a black-clad functionary, his mouth strangely scarred, intruded upon us, demanding to know where we sat. You know how upset I am when trivial commonplaces interrupt me when I am speaking from the heart. I was forced to show him my papers – my crime, my dearest friend, was to move to the empty seat A1, rather than my assigned A9! Such are the arbitrary distinctions of rank which are prized by such low spirits!

What dreadful people there are, whose minds are completely absorbed in matters of etiquette, whose thoughts and aspirations all year long turn over the single problem how to push oneself one chair higher at the table! I could see the crowd around me had already begun their whispering, which continued throughout the performance.

(a symbolic portrait of my anguished soul)

And the performance – oh, my cherished friend! To see a crowd of artists straining for the sublime, and yet to see that it is the composer himself who has failed them! For did he not take the story of our friend Werther, so well known to us both, and turn it into something conventional, something suited to that crowd? Gone is the simple nobility of Albert, now a jealous burgher, and gone is the happy innocence of our Lotte! And yet, would we have so felt the subtlety of our friend’s story, if we had not seen it so dashed upon the rocks? And is not our beloved friend’s anguish still present, though in different form? For the anguish of impossible love is too well known to us, though it still fills our eyes with tears – but the rarer anguish, the longing of the poet for that sweet land of normality, of happy domestic bliss, from which he is forever exiled – is that not the subtler and more piercing anguish?

[THE EDITOR TO THE READER]

I should very much prefer that our friend continue his remarkable story in his own words, for he can go on like this for hours (and what happy hours those are!), and that it were not necessary for me to interrupt the sequence of his thoughts with direct narration. But we know the end – that fevered bed on which he lay is now cold and empty; and silence reigns in his modest rooms. For we must pay for our pleasures! He was forced to go to work to earn the modest wages which kept him in his immodest entertainments.

Suffice it to say that though Massenet made the story of Werther a more conventionally operatic tale of a man who loves a woman who loves him back but is plighted to another, a tale lacking the psychological background and development of the original and therefore somewhat flattening the dramatic curve of the story, there is still enough truth and beauty in the work to make it a moving evening, although the death scene does drag a bit. But Massenet does have his subtleties, though they may not be Goethe’s; the first two acts feature parties, and we see what happens before and after, with the parties themselves taking place offstage, keeping the focus on the intimate and the emotional, though we lose the sense of the social.

The cast is uniformly excellent: Ramon Vargas adds some Puccinian emotional muscle to the unhappy Werther; Brian Mulligan brings his solid presence and beautiful tone to Albert (he last appeared here as Valentin in Faust, so he seems to be making a habit of playing thankless male roles taken from Goethe); and Alice Coote, beloved by us since her piercing Ruggiero in the brilliant Alcina seen here several years ago, embodies not only the warmth and kindness of Charlotte, but the intelligence which would lead a woman like her to realize that steady, considerate, and loving Albert might make a truer and happier path for her life than the deeper, but stranger and flightier, Werther. (He is a man who responds to her tears over her mother’s death by wishing that no lips but his may ever kiss her.) Heidi Stober is all charm and beautiful voice as Sophie; Austin Kness as Bruhlmann, who seems to be moving boxes in every scene, has little to do but does it very handsomely. Christian Van Horn, Susannah Biller, Bojan Knezevic, and Robert MacNeil are all excellent as well. Emmanuel Villaume shaped the orchestra beautifully. The score made me wonder if what I thought of as my dislike of Massenet is merely a dislike of Manon.

The direction and the sets are thoughtful and attractive, though there are some missteps: when Charlotte tells the dying Werther that she will at last give him his kiss, the emotional power of the moment is undercut if we’ve just seen her not only kiss him passionately but roll around on the ground with him. Albert should not be present (silently glowering) when Charlotte re-reads Werther’s old letters and realizes she loves him; a wise and kind woman would not do that in front of her husband, and if Charlotte is not wise and kind, she is not Charlotte. But what a relief to see that San Francisco Opera has not completely given up on thought-provoking stagings, or the less obvious works in the repertory.

Finally, let me recommend that anyone moved to read or re-read The Sorrows of Young Werther before or after the opera should follow that up with Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, based on the reunion after forty years of Goethe with his original Charlotte; despite the somewhat clumsy Englishing of H.T. Lowe-Porter, it’s still a rich and ironic look at their relationship, and where life and history took them afterwards, and deepens one's appreciation of the original. As for that original, it still held up for me, somewhat to my surprise, as opposed to Abbe Prevost’s Manon Lescaut, the whole of which read to me like a parody of romantic fiction (like something from Jane Austen’s juvenilia).

back to school!

Earlier today Amazon's front page listed the five best-sellers in drama:

1) Hamlet (New Folger Library)
2) The Crucible
3) Three Theban Plays
4) A Raisin in the Sun
5) The Oresteia

If that doesn't scream "high school English class" I don't know what does, except maybe a novel list that includes To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and The House on Mango Street (none of which I've read, by the way).

I wonder how many high school readers of the Theban plays will get past Oedipus the King ("So, class -- why didn't Oedipus realize how old his wife is? Anyone? Maybe she's a MILF?") and Antigone ("So, class, Antigone: bold seeker of justice, or just kind of a pain in the ass?") to read Oedipus at Colonnus in between. . . .

occasionally one's editors, internal and external, do not rescue one from self-parody

"I searched my memory for the tastes in Mary McCarthy's stuffing."

Jane Kramer, discussing her personal history with Thanksgiving, in the November 23 2009 issue of (needless to say) The New Yorker.

pursued as by the avenging furies

Amazon.com, which either does not realize that I am apparently the only person in the western world who didn’t think August: Osage County was the greatest thing since Heartbreak House or simply wants to torment me, like poking a wounded animal with a stick to watch its eyes bug out, keeps insisting that I should buy a copy of the play, because of its similarities to the following items I have already purchased: Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses (uh, no), Six Plays by Bulgakov as well as his life of Moliere (no and no), the Complete Plays of Chekhov (emphatically not), and the Mark Morris production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (WTF? Now they're just shooting in the dark).

thanks but no thanks

Ever since I stayed there a few years ago when I went to hear The Tristan Project, the Wilshire Grand in Los Angeles has sent me occasional e-mails. Today's offered a special hotel package for August: Osage County at the Ahmanson Theater. Uh, thanks for thinking of me, but I think I'll pass. But you set up a package for Die Gezeichneten and then we can talk!

you know you've been reading too much Greek tragedy when. . .

I had been re-reading some of the Grene/Lattimore translations of Greek tragedy, and I was just a couple of days in (seriously!) when someone came up to me with one of those "Figaro qua, Figaro la, Figaro su, Figaro giu" tasks that take up most of my hours, some silly thing that no one knows what to do with so they give it to me, and to which my usual response is (outwardly) a slight smile and "I'll take care of that for you," and inwardly, well, you probably don't need to know exactly what I usually think inwardly except that it involves a string of colorful cursewords but this time out of my lamenting-chorus-heavy mind like Athena from the head of Zeus sprang the thought, "Strange is the tale you tell me / And strange the terror that seizes my heart."

again with the shirtless baritones

I obviously should have added Rod Gilfry to the list of baritones of whom I did not have "shirtless/naked" pics, because just days after that entry, I received a search for "Rodney Gilfry shirtless St Francois." Since I have watched the DVD in question, I can tell the searcher that not only is Gilfry clothed throughout the long opera, even when he receives the stigmata, but his Franciscan robes are not particularly form-fitting. Perhaps one day a director will be inspired by either baroque art or the box office and strip the saint down, but until then let me recommend this DVD, a terrific production of Messiaen's wonderful opera. I'm really just posting this to recommend that people buy the set. One link is for MDT and the other for Amazon; MDT has a lower price, but since they're in England you'll need to pay shipping, which you wouldn't need to do for Amazon, so the cost might even out.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive, To Some Extent

My statcounter hasn’t been that amusing lately, not that I blame you personally; lots of people just search for my name or reverberate hills, though occasionally I get “reverberant hills” which always surprises me slightly since I’m so used to the original. Take it up with Mr Shakespeare.

My titles get me in trouble sometimes. After I used “Guys Gone Wild” I got a lot of hits from people who were, I fear, disappointed that they ended up with my entry on San Francisco Opera’s last Don Giovanni. But Godspeed, fellas, and good luck on your valiant quest to find those elusive pictures of drunken shirtless frat boys somewhere on the Internet.

I still get quite a few for Go, Lovely Rose, which I used for an entry on Rachel Portman’s operatic version of The Little Prince. I assume these are mostly from students, since they often take the form of “Go Lovely Rose meaning.” To which I have to say – you’re kidding, right? If you can’t figure out what that poem means, you should be out getting your heart broken before you try to read any more poetry. But that’s the problem with teaching literature – most students don’t really understand it at the age when they’re required to read it. You just hope they remember it’s there when they need it later on.

I assume The Bonesetter’s Daughter is now on reading lists as well, since sometimes people just type in what is obviously the teacher’s thought-provoking question. You’d think they would at least rephrase it to shorten what they have to type. The latest was “Who is the antagonist in The Bonesetter’s Daughter?” Well, I guess that would be me, or possibly M. C-.

Narwhal searches show up frequently – apparently there is a paucity of Internet sites featuring narwhals! – and I’m sorry, but I still don’t have any recipes for them. As for the person searching for “the narwhal bacons at midnight, meaning,” I hate to keep apologizing, but I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can help you, even if you switch bacons for either beckons or beacons. Though maybe it really does mean bacons, and as I said, I’m sorry – no recipes, though I imagine anything you use for walrus would also work.

UPDATE: OK, today (August 31) I had a hit for "narwhal kills Aquaman." Cool! When I was young, the only superhero I liked was Aquaman, mostly because he got to live underwater. I also liked that he wore a cool green-and-gold uniform, rather than the usual red, white, and blue. Having him killed by a narwhal just makes a good thing better!

My translation of Hypocrite lecteur – mon semblable – mon frère! continues to be semi-popular, but I’m embarrassed to say I can’t find it now. Yeah, I'm lazy, but it's been that kind of day – I swept the front yard only to have it covered in leaves once again by the time I finished, I did piles of laundry and immediately started filling the laundry basket again, I did the dishes and already more are piled in the sink. So I'll just figure repeating translations is part of the Sisyphean upkeep life requires: Hypocrite reader, my likeness/reflection, my brother!

Now write the rest of the term paper yourself.

I can offer answers to the person who searched for “Pace, pace mio Dio Chinese meaning,” thanks to consultation with my vast international pool of experts (muchas gracias to Mr G/S Y):

If we take the English meaning as “God, please grant me peace,” then the equivalent in Mandarin could be:

Shang-Tian (the Sky/the Heavens), Qing (Please) Tsi Wo (Give Me) He Ping (the Peace)

Now good luck with that audition.

To the searcher for “Nathan Gunn biceps” – oh, can we just call them Nathan’s guns? – I’m sure he has them, but I really don’t have any other information. I also do not have “naked/shirtless pics” of Gunn, Dimitri Hvorostovsky, David Adam Moore, Brandon Jovanovich, or any one of a number of other comely tenors and baritones – but check out this site, I think he can help you.

As for the person who searched for “shirtless Mickey Rooney,” well, I can’t help you, and you may actually be beyond help.

Don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me

And here’s a special St Valentine’s Day half-price heart-shaped box of links for my readers, starting with some hilarity from the Onion.

I had more or less forgotten the day until the Opera Company of Philadelphia sent me an e-mail urging me to “treat my Valentine to Turandot!” I sometimes wonder if Marketing Departments ever bother to look up the plots of the operas they’re trying to sell. On the other hand, maybe they’re just having their little joke: marketing + bad love choices = St Valentine’s Day! At least it wasn’t The Rape of Lucretia, which I am going to see in June, by the way.

Here’s something else to look forward to: a DVD release of Messiaen’s St Francois d’Assise! This production is from De Nederlandse Opera (which recently brought us the first official recording of Dr Atomic, thereby retaining European supremacy in recording modern operas) and stars Rod Gilfry, and I have to admire a singer who can portray both Stanley Kowalski and St Francis.

And the line-up for the next season of Dancing with the Stars has been announced, and though I realize “stars” is being used loosely (I wasn’t really expecting Brad Pitt to suit up), I don't know who a lot of these people are. That's not that much of a problem, because really, what do I care? And at this point the professional dancers are better known anyway and on the upward curve of their careers (some nights it's like watching multiple little versions of A Star Is Born). But seriously – Denise Richards? You have to worry a little when Charlie Sheen is the mature, responsible partner.

The worrisome trend to me is the boast that there are several “real-life couples” on the show, since there seems to be an increasing emphasis on "relationship drama" rather than, you know, "dancing." Maybe the ratings got a big boost when viewers were wondering if Derek Hough and his partner from a few seasons back (sorry, I can't remember her name, and all this searching and hyperlinking is wearing me out) were dating. I liked her until she had a teary-eyed meltdown over the criticism of her hip movement. I'm a weeper myself, and granted she was at a severe disadvantage next to Derek’s serpentine hips, but, you know, keep it together. And she really did need to work on her hips.

Since then we’ve been treated to an increasing number of emotional outbursts, the most inexplicable being Lacey Schwimmer’s announcement that she just couldn’t keep on trying to please Lance Bass, who seemed fairly mild-mannered and tractable. Given her announcement that he was her teenage crush, I’m thinking he was just the victim of her issues, but maybe she was reacting to stuff we hadn’t seen. Or maybe not, since he seemed as befuddled by the surprise attack as the viewers were. There was a priceless shot of his sad blank face looking slightly puzzled when she stormed out. But full points to them for dancing to “I Kissed a Girl.” Witty choice!

I assume the “relationship counselor” who came to talk to the finalists was just a joke that didn’t quite work. Poor Cody Linley, bursting into tears. I was both amused and creeped out to hear him mention that there was a website dedicated to his eyebrows. I do know people with an eyebrow thing. Not to mention any names, of course. His Hannah Montana co-star Miley Cyrus is seriously creepy – she was shown greeting him at her "Sweet 16" birthday party in Disneyland, and I thought I was watching a 45-year-old divorcee trying to pick up her son’s naïve high-school teammate.

Another thing they need to stop doing on that show: having the little kids dance. Yes, these kids know it’s a competitive field, which means sometimes they lose, but no one that age needs to lose on national TV before millions of viewers, especially if they’re not just watching, they’re deliberately choosing to reject you. (Or maybe the viewers don’t vote on the little kids – I always leave the room during that part, so I really don’t know. I should probably get Tivo.) It’s the difference between playing sandlot baseball and playing in the Little League World Series on ESPN.

Another thing they should never do again: Cloris Leachman. It wasn’t so much her limited dancing skills as her constant need to be the center of attention that really annoyed me. My jump-the-shark moment with her was when Cody and Julianne were being interviewed after their dance (poor Cody! that kid was abused a lot) and Cloris came over and started pawing him. Possibly she just thought he was a camera. I’m sure the audience would have been equally delighted if those had been, say, Mickey Rooney’s liver-spotted claws caressing barely-legal flesh. But we all know that old women aren't rude, self-centered, or camera hogs: instead, they’re feisty. That's a pretty absurd and condescending attitude, especially toward a woman who made movies with Mel Brooks, but she certainly took advantage of it. When she finally left she announced to Carrie Ann, “I know you didn’t mean what you said” (referring to her comment from the week before that it was sad to see Toni Braxton leave when she was starting to improve, just so that Leachman could continue flopping around, though she phrased it more gently than that). Guess what, Cloris? She did mean it.

But the most painful moment of all was when Carrie Ann made Susan Lucci stand up and say, “I’m a good dancer!” or whatever empowering you-go-girl nonsense she made her repeat. I thought this was an incredibly degrading thing to do to a woman of her professional standing and, how shall one say, life experience. But improved self-esteem (justified or not) was a leitmotif with several of the other women. Strangely, the only man who was treated to these little confidence-building discussions was Lance Bass, which of course had absolutely nothing to do with his position as the only openly gay contestant.

Well, I do really enjoy the dancing. And I even like the Superstars of Dance segments; most of them, anyway. I think I was a little misled when they started off with Alvin Ailey. I wasn’t exactly expecting Pina Bausch (though that would be fun) but maybe Mark Morris. . . . But I’m very naïve about these things. When I heard that there was a movie coming out named Gigli, I assumed (as one naturally would!) that it was about Beniamino Gigli. I thought Ben Affleck was kind of odd casting. In my defense, there have been movies about Caruso, though it’s not much of a defense since Caruso is a very different sort of cultural figure; it's like Carreras and Pavarotti.

In any case, here's one more sweet link for you, before we toss the empty heart aside (empty except for the sour quince log, of course): Defamer’s pairings of the upcoming DWTS cast and some of the great choreographers. That's entertainment!

Please select only one! Which of the following do you consider wiser: (a) the tigers of wrath, or (b) the horses of instruction.

There are those near and dear to me who love taking personality quizzes. Me, I keep searching for choice (c), which would be does not apply, or maybe sometimes, or yes (or no) but with reservations more or less severe.

I had to take Myers-Briggs today. The results will only be revealed in a long, drawn-out session, as if reality has become a reality television results show. But I've done this before, often enough to know that "Introvert," on which I score about as high as you can go, doesn't necessarily mean shy and withdrawn; it means you are energized by solitude and drained by company, which I basically knew anyway, because being in company is all about being inundated and irradiated with nuance, and that's exhausting. Besides, sometimes people actually disagree with me! You see what I put up with.

So I'm zipping along, being dissatisfied with all the choices, but I tend to pick all the "yes, I prefer facts/the down-to-earth/reality/pre-planning" answers, because although I know I'm going to look like Mr Practical Realist Who Must Follow A Schedule, I also know what they're talking about when they talk about imagination and spontaneity: it's not William Blake enraptured in his garden, it's some way overpaid schmo who is Thinking Outside the Box As Part of the Envisioning Process. In a job long ago and far away, I had been listening to one of these blowholes gassing on about how he was going to save the world with his suggestions on how we should do our jobs which he by the way and you probably have already guessed this knew nothing about, and I finally couldn't stand it anymore and said, "Well, that's a very interesting idea, but it would require having a second [expensive piece of equipment], and right now the company won't even buy us paperclips." (That was literally the case, by the way: we were scrounging on the floor for any that might have fallen onto the carpet.) He looked at me as if he had just noticed a fly buzzing around his salad. "I'm just coming up with ideas," he said. Sweet Jesus on Sunday morning. You know, I'm not even sure I want to put up with William Blake in his garden. I'm already hyperemotional and oversensitive. Give me a midwestern farm gal anyday.

Anyway, I continue zipping along in the test today, and I hit this question:

In reading for pleasure, do you:
(a) enjoy odd or original ways of saying things, or
(b) like writers to say exactly what they mean?

Does this mean something in somebody's world? Form follows function, people: the odd or original way of saying things is the direct result of someone trying to say exactly what he or she means. What does this even mean?

Good thing I had small faith in psychologists to start with. I've been disillusioned enough already.

my bosom swells with pride

A thoughtful friend with a suspicious amount of free time on her hands (may I just remind her, and you, that idle hands are the devil's workshop) informed me that after I posted my last entry, there was at least a twenty-four hour period in which googling "crack whore in the back alley" turned up your Reverberate Hills as the #1 destination, among all of the undoubtedly numerous mentions of crack whores and back alleys across the seedier districts of the Interwebs!

I felt a glow of pride and accomplishment, and this time it might even have been unironic.

the crack whore in the back alley will consider interviewing you, but would like to see some higher-class personal references

I’ve been baffled by Cal Performances’ fund-raising methods in the past; several years ago, for example, they actually sent out a letter with a glossy brochure asking me to look for an upcoming phone call in which they would ask me for money. I guess that faux-personal touch works for some people. I never pledge money over the phone, because I figure that’s the best way to discourage people from calling me and asking for money. I couldn’t be the only one to feel that way, so I don’t know why the glossy brochure and letter didn’t offer the choice of just sending in money in response to said letter (and glossy brochure).

I would have thought that an arts group, particularly in these parlous times, would not be too proud to accept money any way they could get it. But then I got their latest request. As I was filling it out, because even in my own financially parlous times I like to satisfy my Medici delusions by giving to arts groups, I noticed that the form was labeled “Membership Application.”

What’s the matter, Cal Performances? My money not good enough for ya? Too proud to beg for it? Bitch!

I assume the rigorous application process pretty much involves making sure the check doesn’t bounce/the credit card isn’t declined. And I didn’t even notice the silly label at first. But it still irritated me. A lot.

Is anyone seriously going to give, or give more, because of this sort of embarassingly cheeseball luxury-vehicle-with-fine-interior-leather tactic? Because I’ve been sitting in their audiences for years, and believe me, the club is not that exclusive (you can supply the relevant Groucho Marx quip, I’m sure; even that is commonplace).

But what really bugs me is that this trend is both antiquated (does anyone seriously rent a box at the Opera for social reasons anymore? I mean, anyone who doesn’t have a weird Edith Wharton fetish?) and inimical to art (those who truly and deeply respond to such lower-class beings as singers and musicians and even, God help us, actors, tend not to be the sort of people who take high-society-veneers seriously).

One of the things I love most about theater is its democratic nature: given a credit card and an interest in going, anyone can attend, end up sitting next to a CEO or a student, and see the same performance. This whole “pay the extortion fee for the right to buy premium seats” disgusts me on a deep and somewhat irrational level (because these forced “donations” are tax deductible, whereas a higher-priced ticket is not). And over the years, I've seen Cal Performances move unofficially towards the official policy of the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet that reserves subscriptions in the premium seating for big donors. And while I realize such tactics are necessary in a country that has plenty of money for bombing Iraqi children and bailing out spendthrift bankers but pennies for arts funding, I hate to see companies wallow in it more than is absolutely necessary.

Cal Performances, you’re better than that, or should be. Examine yourself: Would Walt Whitman respond to an “Application for Membership”? If not, why should I, or anyone else?