23 Frimaire CCXV (December 13, 2006)
A Lunch-Hour Current-Events Commentary
I'm not exactly an opera fan, but I couldn't help catch the news about French tenor Roberto Alagna storming off the stage following a booing at Milan's La Scala opera house.
Now an opera singer throwing a hissy-fit over something like that isn't exactly that interesting. (Opera singers over-react? Somebody cue the Claude Rains picture.) What makes this all noteworthy and amusing (in my mind) are his comments to reporters afterwards.
To wit:
"I went there to sing, to give the audience joy and pleasure. But what was I supposed to do when some people started booing? What if they had thrown stones at me or some crazy person had attacked me? La Scala should have protected me, the show should have been suspended.
"Instead they carried on as if nothing had happened. After all, John Lennon ended up being killed."
That's right, being booed on stage is now comparable to being stalked and murdered by a crazed loner. Of course, there is at least one major difference between people who booed Alagna and Mark David Chapman — the latter at least appeared to be a fan of the entertainer he became involved with.
To commemorate this (Alagna, not Chapman), CBC has put up a list of other memorable moments when performers left the stage. There are a few obvious ones (Axel Rose's 1992 Montreal performance, Ashlee Simpson's Saturday Night Live lip-syncing debacle), plus others including this one:
"Are there any Nickelback fans in Portugal?" the band's frontman, Chad Kroeger, demands of the crowd at the Ilha do Ermal festival in August 2002 after being dinged by a water bottle. "It's up to you. Do you want to hear some rock 'n' roll or do you want to go home?" Kroeger perhaps means it as a rhetorical question, but an audience member responds by drilling him in the back of the head with what looks like a large rock. The Alberta band counters by quickly exiting the stage.
Excuse me, I think I'm tearing up.
Posted by g026r at
12:38
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22 Frimaire CCXV (December 12, 2006)
R.I.P., My iPod
It's held up through thick and thin, near-consistent use through what was surely the world's longest Masters degree, and more. Sure, the battery life has been crap for a good year now, the Firewire connection on the top is getting loose and fickle, and it doesn't come close to holding as much music as some of the newer models. Nor is it as stylish, with it's comparatively large size, monochrome screen, and physical scroll-wheel. But it's my iPod, and I love it.
I just don't think it's supposed to make a grinding noise when it powers up.
Posted by g026r at
21:35
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13 Frimaire CCXV (December 3, 2006)
Books
For a variety of reasons, I decided to keep track of the books I read over the past year. Since I'm the type of person who posts these kind of things, I'm posting it. I'm at least being nice enough to put it behind "the fold" so as to not make the page too long to scroll along.
If you're curious about a given book then feel free to ask and I'll try to comment on it as best I remember.
Continue reading Books
Books finished since Dec. 3, 2005 (likely minus one or two I forgot to insert into the list):
- Lord Dunsany - Don Rodriguez: The Chronicles of Shadow Valley.
- Robert E. Howard - The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.
- Norman Spinard - The Iron Dream.
- Harlan Ellison - Approaching Oblivian.
- Douglas A. Anderson (Ed.) - H.P. Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Stories.
- Lin Carter (Ed.) - The Spawn of Cthulhu.
- Mordecai Richler - Solomon Gursky Was Here.
- Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote.
- Joseph P. Allen - Don Quixote: Hero or Fool?.
- Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter.
- Ambrose Bierce - The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce.
- Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
- Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy.
- Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth.
- Robert Graves - I, Claudius.
- H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines.
- Lewis Carrol - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
- Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita.
- Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising.
- Michael Young - The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870-2033.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems.
- Robert Graves - Claudius the God.
- George MacDonald Frasier - Flashman.
- Raymond Chandler - The Little Sister.
- Isaac Asimov (Ed.) - The Hugo Winners Vol. I & II.
- Scott Rice (Ed.) - It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.
- Fritz Leiber - The Three of Swords.
- Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man.
- Fritz Leiber - A Specter is Haunting Texas.
- Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness.
- Mordecai Richler - Cocksure.
- Leonard Cohen - The Favourite Game.
- Eric Frank Russell - Wasp.
- James Randi - An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.
- Terry Pratchett - The Colour of Magic.
- Eric Frank Russell - Next of Kin.
- H.P. Lovecraft - The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Tales.
- Sax Rohmer - The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu.
- Lord Dunsany - The Gods of Pegana.
- Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
- Cotton Mather - Decennium Luctuosum.
- Terry Pratchett - The Light Fantastic.
- Franz Kafka - The Trial.
- Charles Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
- Cotton Mather - On Witchcraft. (aka Wonders of the Invisible World)
- Simon Pearson - A Brief History of the End of the World.
- Arthur Miller - The Crucible.
- Raymond Chandler - Killer in the Rain.
- Fredric Wertham - Seduction of the Innocent.
- Robert M. Price (Ed.) - Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos.
- Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte d'Arthur.
- Cory Doctorow - Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
- Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore - The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
- Richard Overy with Andrew Wheatcroft - The Road to War, Revised and Updated Edition.
- David A. Neiwert - In God's Country: The Patriot Movement & the Pacific North-West.
- Raymond Chandler - Playback.
- Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise.
- Richard Woodman - A Brief History of Mutiny.
- Philip Warner - Passchendaele.
- Terry Pratchett - The Dark Side of the Sun.
- Raymond Chandler - The Simple Art of Murder.
- Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac. (Burgess translation)
- Friedrich Max Müller (Translator/Editor) - The Dhammapada.
- Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot.
- Louise Guiness (Ed.) - The Everyman Book of Nonsense Rhymes.
- Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
- Leonard Cohen - Stranger Music.
Books started but not finished (for a variety of reasons):
- Martin Halleck and Barbara Karasek (Eds.) - Folk & Fairy Tales, Second Edition. (Just had the essays left to read, but Becca needed it back for a paper she was writing.)
- Cotton Mather - Paterna. (Cotton Mather's life in his own words. Sounds interesting, right? Well, except that he leaves all the interesting parts out which results in roughly 300 pages consisting of little more than tortured 17th century prose and holier than thou attitudes.)
Books started and still reading:
- J. Edward Chamberlain - If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?
- Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle. (I've read it before, this is merely a re-read.)
- Iraj Pezeshkzad - My Uncle Napoleon.
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