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30 November 2010

29 November 2010

fun stuff I may or may not get to: December

It’s sugarplum month, but we don’t need to let that stop us. There will be Christmas-tinged items on this list, but that’s hardly avoidable, even if I wanted to. I will proceed along my usual arbitrary and personal lines (no Nutcrackers, but the Hard Nut would be listed if it was being staged this year in these parts, which it isn’t being). There will be Messiahs! I know it’s one of the ultimate holiday chestnuts, but this is the season for chestnuts, and even though I should be tired of it I’m not. In fact I’m listening to it right now. Because I probably won’t make any of the live performances, due to conflicts beyond my control.

Thursday, December 2, the Pacific Film Archive, Paramount Theatre, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival unite to present Carl Theodor Dreyer’s astounding 1928 film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, accompanied by a live performance of Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, an oratorio inspired by the film. Information here. Go and marvel!

John Adams and El Nino return to the San Francisco Symphony December 2-4. Later in the month there’s a little more Adams and a lot more Messiah.

Philharmonia Baroque presents Messiah on December 3, 4, 5, and 7, in various locales as is their wont. And American Bach Soloists presents Messiah on December 16, 17, and 18. If the calendar or location don’t decide for you, you can compare casts and other relevant information: here for Philharmonia Baroque, here for American Bach Soloists, and here for the San Francisco Symphony.

Magnificat mixes it up by presenting Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit, which uses old French carols as its basis, along with other seasonal music. December 17-19 in various locales; details here.

Berkeley Rep revives Mary Zimmerman’s fun production of The Arabian Nights, December 11-30.

Cutting Ball Theater extends its production of The Tempest to December 19 (my thoughts here, but in case you don't want to click through, it's a recommendation). And if you want more of the Elizabethans, Cutting Ball’s Hidden Classics Reading Series (which is free), has Ben Jonson’s Epicoene, or The Silent Woman, on December 5. (Opera fans may know the play as the source for Richard Strauss’s Die Schweigsame Frau, though the opera is possibly done even less often than the play. I have actually seen the play staged, but never the opera.) By the way, can anyone explain to me why there is no good (that means affordable and scholarly yet meant for the public) complete edition of Jonson’s plays and masques? He must be fuming over how his rival Shakespeare has outstripped him.

I would be at Epicoene on the 5th if I didn’t already have a ticket for Elza van den Heever’s solo recital, presented by San Francisco Performances, part of their always worthwhile Young Masters series.

And Cal Performances has a full slate, including Christian Tetzlaff playing Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin on December 4, and Nicholas Hodges on the 12th, with the Hammerklavier and Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck X.

Haiku 2010/333

close your eyes tightly
tell yourself something will come
out of the darkness

28 November 2010

Haiku 2010/332

obscured by streetlights
the stars still burn around us
coldly, patiently

thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and sacred death

After a season of garish Aidas and bedraggled Butterflies, San Francisco Opera finally justified its existence by presenting Karita Mattila in her role debut as Emilia Marty, in Janacek’s great opera The Makropulos Case. “Emilia Marty” is only the latest pseudonym of Elina Makropulos, born in 1575 and still alive well over 300 years later, thanks to an experimental formula concocted by her alchemist father at the behest of Emperor Rudolf II, who ordered him to use his daughter as a guinea pig. She escapes and her father is imprisoned as a quack (as she notes, the Emperor couldn’t know that she would live over 300 years). She spends the next few centuries in various guises, always with the initials E.M., gathering lovers and acclaim as a singer.

The opera opens in the Prague law office of Dr Kolenaty, who is representing one side in a century-old lawsuit over an inheritance; the celebrated opera singer Marty shows up, rather surprisingly, and further surprises everyone with a supernatural-seeming knowledge of the location and contents of papers sealed and hidden decades ago. It develops that the original owner of the disputed property was one of EM’s lovers, and she has returned seeking the alchemical formula, which her long-ago lover took and never returned to her: her 300 years of youth are coming to an end, and she needs the formula to renew them.

Mattila is superlative, bringing a somewhat icy glamour and an incandescent voice to a role she seems born to play. (I’ve seen the DVD with Anja Silja and two other live productions of this opera, but it’s now difficult for me to imagine anyone else in the part.) Years of watching death take friends and lovers has left EM both cold-hearted and anguished. It’s in little asides (“they all die. . . “) that Mattila deftly and momentarily plumbs the grief of the character, before reverting to a Lulu-like aura which attracts a fresh generation of willing and would-be victims. There are moments even in the beginning when she suddenly moves in the jittery and uncertain way of an old and fragile person, preparing us for the revelation of her final monologue, in which she astonishes the skeptical lawyer and the other participants in the lawsuit with the story of her life.

The costuming also sets EM apart, from her first appearance in an elegant silken white outfit (this production is apparently set in the 1950s, but aside from this Marilyn Monroeish outfit the time change doesn’t really register; everyone else’s outfits look like the 1920s as originally specified, an impression reinforced by the Pierrot costume EM has on in Act 2's back-stage scenes; Pierrot was an artistic fashion in the 1920s, not the 1950s). The sets are elegantly done in blacks, whites, and grays (often cross-hatched in the manner of an old engraving), with touches of red (some roses, EM’s lips. . . .). It all has the air of the chic and the fantastic.

Each scene is dominated by an enormous clock, keeping real time. I have a bad habit (I think it is a bad one) of being obsessed with time passing during a performance; sometimes I think about just covering the time counter on my DVD player. Here the clocks are a constant urgent reminder of mortality, and the value of the fleeting; that’s live performance for you, vanishing even as you watch. This effect was even more powerful for me because there were only six performances scheduled and due to various conflicts I wasn’t able to get to a second one, even though this is the kind of powerful, rewarding evening you go to the opera hoping for (needless to say one is usually disappointed in that hope, however entertained in other ways; this production really is special).

I do have some complaints. One is that I wish the momentum of the piece had not been broken with a lengthy intermission between Acts 2 and 3 (though that did give the awful couple in front of me the chance to leave). Performed without an intermission, the opera would be about the length of Salome, which we all know Mattila sings; would it really be too taxing to perform this opera straight through? (I’m genuinely asking. When I’m doing something physical like exercise I tend to start slow and build strength as I go, so an intermission would throw me off; perhaps singers feel differently.)

I was thinking about Mattila’s Salome (which I saw on a Met livecast, the only one I’ve been to) because she brings a similar movement to both characters, towards a deeper understanding and acceptance of life that includes and ends in death (at least, Salome does this in Mattila’s interpretation). I thought her Salome was fascinating and individual because her final monologue became a movement towards spiritual insight, and not just towards the final grotesque expression of lurid sexuality. EM moves in the same spiritual and psychological direction, towards an understanding and acceptance of the power and beauty of life as enforced and illuminated by death. At the end, Janacek does that thing he does at the end of many of his operas, where the music, though still very much in character with what we’ve been hearing all night, lightens and spreads out and upward in a way that exalts the meaning of the final action, as well as the listeners.

Mentioning the ending leads to my second complaint, and this one is major. There's one other prominent female character in the opera: Kristina, the youthful daughter of the clerk Vitek. Kristina, just embarking on adult life, longs to be a great singer like Emilia Marty, whom she idolizes (at least until her boyfriend kills himself for unrequited love of Marty). The end as written has EM offering the formula to Kristina, partly as compensation for the death of her boyfriend; she then, having witnessed both EM’s final suffering and EM’s exhausted indifference to suffering, chooses to burn the formula. It’s an incredibly powerful moment: a youthful version of EM essentially looks at what that life has been and chooses a different path. In this production, inexplicably, one of the men (a descendant of EM’s, in his 30s) snatches the paper from Kristina’s hands and burns it. I have no idea why the change was made, or what we’re supposed to make of it. Given our time and place, this action is simply going to be read, and condemned, as a man imposing his judgment on a younger woman, without consulting her. I thought this was the one major misstep in the production, and I hope this inexplicable change is switched back to the superior original.

The orchestra, under the direction of Jiri Belohlavek, was superb. The entire cast was strong the night I went (in addition to Mattila, the performers are: Thomas Glenn as Vitek, Miro Dvorsky as Albert Gregor, Susannah Biller as Kristina, Dale Travis as Dr Kolenaty, Gerd Grochowski as Baron Jaroslav Prus, Maya Lahyani as a chambermaid and then as a cleaning woman, Austin Kness as a stagehand, Brian Jagde as Janek, and Matthew O’Neill as Count Hauk-Sendorf, a doddering old lover of EM’s who remembers her as the gypsy dancer Eugenia Montez who ruined and delighted his life. The performances are dedicated to the late Sir Charles Mackerras, who did so much to introduce Janacek to the world outside of the Czech Republic. San Francisco Opera had started a program of broadcasting some of their productions; if they’re still doing that, The Makropulos Case should be at the top of the list (once they correct the misguided change at the end, of course).

27 November 2010

Zenshinza Theatre Company

Last weekend I had a double dose of the Zenshinza Theatre Company, who came to Berkeley on their American debut tour. Zenshinza describes itself as “Japan’s oldest and largest repertory theater company”; they were founded in 1931 by two famous kabuki actors, Kawarasaki Chojuro and Nakamura Kan’emon, after a 1928 kabuki tour of the Soviet Union. Ironically, this first kabuki tour outside of Japan, while hugely influential on western theater, left the Japanese actors wishing for a more realistic performance style.

Saturday evening featured two works in classic kabuki style. The first, a comic curtain-raiser called Chatsubo (The Tea Chest), tells of a drunken servant carrying a chest of fine tea home to his master, a tea connoisseur. He falls asleep in the middle of the road with his arm through one strap of the chest; a clever and desperate thief comes by, sizes up the possibilities, and puts his arm through the other strap, claiming the chest is his. A magistrate comes by and quizzes the two, who mirror each others words and movements. It’s a fun little piece, expertly performed by Fujikawa Yanosuke as the servant, Nakajima Hiroyuki as the thief, and Masuki Hiroshi as the magistrate, though it’s not really the kind of thing that makes me laugh out loud. Instead I enjoyed it the way I enjoy silent movie comedies – not so much because they’re funny as because I admire their elegance and wit of movement and invention. This story of a disputed prize seemed like something Mack Sennett might have produced. The piece was first performed in Tokyo in 1921, and though it’s an adaptation (by Okamura Shiko) of a presumably older kyogen piece, I did idly wonder if there was some cross-influence to the short comedies Hollywood was producing then. They feed the same theatrical appetite, in their different styles.

After the intermission came the evening’s main event, Narukami (The Thunder God). It is the tale of a powerful priest, Narukami (Arashi Keishi), who is angered by the Emperor’s refusal to dedicate a temple to him. He traps the rain dragons by his magic and the land suffers drought until, at the Emperor’s secret behest, Princess Taema (Kawarasaki Kunitaro), pretending to be a young widow intent on becoming a nun, seduces Narukami into drinking excessive amounts of sake, which priests are forbidden to drink at all. When he passes out, she cuts the magic rope trapping the rain dragons. Both dragons and Princess flee, and when Narukami awakes and realizes he’s been tricked, he in his fury changes with spectacular visual effects into a thunder god and vows to pursue the Princess, seeking revenge.

The bold and colorful sets and costumes of both plays were a pleasure to watch. It’s also a pleasure to watch a theatrical style that has been, as far as I know, basically unchanged for centuries (although of course the bedrock of English-speaking theater is much older – Shakespeare died about a century and a half before even the oldest kabuki plays were written – the English performance style has changed constantly).

I was in the second row for this night, which was fine with me despite the neck-craning necessary to read the surtitles, but I saw some other front-row habitués move farther back at the intermission. That might actually have been a good idea for this second play, which uses the whole stage, often to significant purpose (for example, the way the Princess, who enters from stage right, and the priest over on stage left slowly move towards each other and the center of the stage as they move closer emotionally during the seduction scene). Since this is kabuki of course the Princess is played by a man; initially his stylized falsetto caused a few giggles but anyone who wasn’t expecting that sound or thought it was meant to be comic caught on quickly. Quite a spectacular show.

We had a spectacular of a different sort the next afternoon. Though I knew that Honen and Shinran was a new play (written by Tajima Sakae to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Honen Shonin and the 750th anniversary of Shinran Shonin, two monks who developed what became the largest Buddhist sect in Japan today), I thought it would be a new play in the kabuki style.
But the incidental music sounded like bits from a 1950s Biblical epic (pre-recorded for this play, though we had live music in the traditional style for the Saturday night performances). And there were actresses playing the female parts. So, no kabuki style! Instead it was a fairly old-fashioned religious pageant. Although I wasn’t familiar with the titular monks beforehand, the general arc of the story is familiar from any number of western saints and sages – from Jesus himself to Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther to the Ba’al Shem Tov: a holy man seeks enlightenment, and finally finds it not in the rules of established religion but in simple things of the spirit. He preaches and gives hope to the poor and dispossessed, offering them a direct route to the spiritual, bypassing the established priests and their complex and lucrative rules; eventually he is persecuted by the priests who are threatened by his message of spiritual equality and by the governors who are threatened by the spiritual message’s implicit message of political equality.

Though I probably would not have bought a ticket if I’d known exactly what the play was (or, more precisely, that it wasn't in traditional Japanese style), I don’t regret seeing it, though at three hours it struck me as too long. (Saturday night’s two plays were altogether about two-and-a-half hours, including intermission.) Perhaps I was just particularly impatient, having been stressed and fairly sick the whole week. On the other hand, the spiritual message of resilience and strength in the face of humiliation and rejection did resonate strongly under those circumstances, as did the realization that we’ve cycled through this particular story many times, not that we’ve ever learned much from it.

Certainly the audience was with them all the way. At one point a curtain jammed and there was a delay while they tried to get it to rise (the whole thing was quite fluidly and cinematically staged). This is normally the type of thing that reduces audiences to excited whispers and chuckles that last long after the problem has been fixed, but instead there was a respectful and reasonable silence. During a blizzard that opened the second part, the theatrical snow (little squares of white tissue paper) fell so abundantly that those of us in the front were well dusted with it. I noticed the woman next to me carefully pick the snow-scraps off her outfit and place the little pile in her purse as a souvenir. Afterwards she said to me, “Well, we got snowed on! That was something special.”

Haiku 2010/331

never so vivid
a green as the green that greens
the rain-soaked valley

not hearing Rufus

Last season at the Symphony one of the programs I was most looking forward to was the premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s Five Shakespeare Sonnets, since I like Wainwright and love Shakespeare. The rest of the program (the ballet music from Faust, Vivier’s Zipangu, and Poulenc’s suite from Les Biches) was also well-chosen: French or French-inflected, sly and stylish. Of course Wainwright postponed his appearance, and Duncan Shiek appeared in his stead, with a song suite from Whisper House.

Wainwright reappeared on this season’s schedule, but once bitten twice shy, so I didn’t hurry to get a ticket ahead of time. By the time it was clear he would indeed show up with the Shakespeare piece, I had come to one of my periodic realizations that I spend way, way too much on performances, so I decided I should try for a rush ticket, only none were available. I did drop several shamelessly broad hints to my better-connected friends, but they had other guests in mind. This is where I would have posted about Wainwright’s piece if I’d gone to hear it this time around, so I figured I might as well post about last spring’s concert, since I never got around to writing about it at the time.

This was my first time hearing anything by Duncan Shiek. I had skipped Spring Awakening because (what a lesson to people like me who regularly praise theater pieces hoping other people will go see them) the raves really put me off. All that talk of how Broadway would never be the same since the voice of a new generation had arrived blah blah blah – isn’t that exactly what they said about Hair? and West Side Story? and, I don’t know, Babes in Arms? Also: amplified voices with a rock-inflected score: ah, the two things that have ruined American musical theater, together once again.

So Shiek came out after the ballet music from Faust to play his amplified, rock-inflected songs from Whisper House, a musical about an orphan boy during the Second World War who is sent to live in a New England lighthouse which is haunted by the ghosts of those who have died in the surrounding waters. The songs are probably very effective in context, but hearing six of them played straight through rendered them completely ineffective: the material (both words and music) was too thin and the songs all ran together. I could hear the Symphony’s strings under the amplified guitar and vocals, but they didn’t add a whole lot besides ambient buzz, so I really don’t know why they were there.

Shiek seems like a nice guy and was extremely earnest about the whole thing, which is possibly why I was cringing in embarrassment the entire half hour. He was there “to bring in the young people” as he put it in an interview somewhere (I forget exactly where; it was last spring, I can’t remember everything!). The young people failed to oblige. I’ve never seen Davies Hall so empty. When I was, technically, a young person, I was more interested in Messiaen and Mahler than in rock – that’s why I started going to the symphony. I really can’t emphasize that enough: the key to an orchestra’s survival in any meaningful form is that it presents an alternative to the music we get everywhere else.

My point here is not that the sacred temple of Art was profaned by the unholy sounds of Duncan Shiek and his rocking and rolling – it’s that you have this magnificent thing, the symphony orchestra, and it was being reduced to back-up buzz for a novelty act. You don’t survive as an institution by offering a watered-down, more costly version of what is easily available elsewhere. Orchestras claim that pieces like Whisper House bring in people who don’t usually go to the symphony, but so would pole-dancing. Are those people going to come back and listen to Bruckner?

I’m certainly not saying that symphonies should be closed off from the music of their time or content with their current audience; I think there is a real hunger out there for substantial art, though most of those hungering don’t look to the big musical institutions for nourishment. Ironically, this program had a perfect example of where orchestras should be going: in the direction of music like Claude Vivier’s Zipangu, which used the traditional resources of the orchestra to create striking new sounds. Vivier had a strange and almost too picturesque life story (his childhood as an orphan is fairly mysterious and after suffering premonitions of death he was killed in his mid-30s by a young man he had picked up – though, not to be callous, but given his promiscuity at the height of the AIDS epidemic, it’s likely he would have died young anyway; in either case, it was a tragic loss for contemporary music). There's a terrific DVD of his work, Reves d'un Marco Polo, that contains a fascinating documentary as well as a wonderful performance of several of his pieces, including Zipangu; I recommend the disc highly.

In addition to excellent work with the Vivier, conductor Edwin Outwater made the Poulenc crisp, elegant, and witty, and shaped a really lovely performance of the ballet music from Faust – I was so grateful not to have to sit through the dances at the Opera House a few months later, because Gounod’s opera is really long enough as it is without an extra twenty minutes of dancers hopping around in a prettified and therefore inadequate Walpurgishnacht, but the music is delightful on its own. In fact, aside from the intense embarrassment of Shiek’s piece, the whole evening was quite enjoyable. Less Shiek, more Vivier!

26 November 2010

Measha Brueggergosman

I had heard Measha Brueggergosman only once before, at a strangely disappointing recital in Berkeley, but she has been so highly and regularly praised that I was eager to hear her again last Wednesday, presented this time by San Francisco Performances. I was a little concerned because I had been up late at Cyrano the night before, and worried that the announced theme, Night and Dreams, might prove all too effective, and the artists would be treated to the sight of me snoring and drooling away in the front row. As with at least some of my anxieties, I needn’t have worried; I was alert throughout and missed nothing of the enchanting recital. I was so charmed I even stayed after to buy a CD and have her and Justus Zeyen, her accompanist, sign it. The CD is also called Night and Dreams, and though there isn’t that much overlap between the recital and the record, I haven’t listened to it yet, because I want to keep for a while longer my memory of her voice without distorting the memory with the recordings.

Her voice is indeed gorgeous; none of the breath control problems I noted in Berkeley were evident. At times it reminded me of Kathleen Battle’s voice, only in bronze instead of silver, if that makes sense. Her burnished tones were perfect for the theme. I enjoyed Zeyen’s solo turns in Schumann’s Nachtstuck in F Major, Opus 23, No 2, and Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat Major, Opus 27, No 2. Nice to see them mix up the standard recital format in this way. I also liked the creative intercutting in the final set between three lied by Richard Strauss (Wiegenlied, Die Nacht, and Standchen) and four of Berg’s Seven Early Songs (Nacht, Traumgekront, Liebesode, and Schilflied). Her Wiegenlied stayed with me for days.

Brueggergosman is both glam and a down-to-earth total charmer; she looks like Eartha Kitt, only without the kittenish affectations. She wore two gowns (a deep red velvety number streaked with darker tones for the first half and then a silver gown, perhaps in homage to the moon) and she changed into a third for the CD signing. I complimented her on the performance and mentioned that she had changed again, and she said, “Well, I know how [the Bay Area is] about fashion.” I was wearing plain black wool pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, which proves my theory that the secret of elegance is long sleeves.

Oddly enough, at intermission a woman came up to me and asked if I was perhaps a singer (clearly she’d never heard me sing; as a friend thoughtfully pointed out recently, my voice still cracks) or a dancer (clearly she’d never seen me move). She was with a group from Oakland Lyric Opera and they had sent her over to find out if I was anybody. I assured her I was not. I thought it was odd only because I was asked the same question at the last Brueggergosman concert, and that is how I met Mr G/S Y (boa viagem, meu amigo!). Apparently I look extra-theatrical when I hear Ms Brueggergosman.

Haiku 2010/330

some days are filler
dirty dishes in the sink
after the party

25 November 2010

we are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at The Star

When it came time to buy opera tickets this season I had mixed feelings about Cyrano de Bergerac. In decades of opera-going I had only seen the legendary – is it too early to call him that? probably not – Placido Domingo live once before, in Massenet’s Herodiade, so I ended up buying a ticket because having that as my sole live experience of one of the great singers of my time was just shameful. My feelings kept jumping over the candlestick before I bought the ticket and continued to do so after I saw the show.

I’m glad I saw Domingo . . . but why did San Francisco get this opera, out of all the more interesting roles he’s currently singing (Siegmund, Simon Boccanegra, Handel’s Tamerlano, Gluck’s Oreste, Pablo Neruda in Il Postino)? But it does give him a chance to dominate the action in a way Massenet’s John the Baptist doesn’t. Alfano’s opera has such a bad reputation that the actual experience of sitting through it is much more enjoyable than one might have feared. But I also realized I pretty much dislike the source material. And here I thought I was just tired of it. But after and overcoming all is the thrill of seeing Domingo, an accomplished and still questing musician, with a voice still recognizably the voice of his youthful performances, decades ago.

The program book, which in previous years had more articles about the actual opera and fewer pages of luxury real-estate ads and suck-up donor profiles, features one of Picasso’s “Musketeer” paintings on the cover. Enjoy it! It’s the last evidence you’ll get all evening that something happened called the twentieth century.

Alfano’s music, though not bold or particularly romantic or even memorable, certainly gets the job done. I was going to describe it as attenuated verismo but frankly I heard the performance last week (and I'm posting this a week after I wrote it, because of my Internet problems) and the music hasn’t lingered enough in my memory for me to be sure that’s what I heard, and not what I walked in thinking I might hear. I couldn’t help feeling that the elaborate and colorful production (back-stage views! giant cakes and strutting tarts! swordsmen swinging through the air!) was meant to distract from a certain lack of substance.

It’s a fun show, but the story is perhaps by now so familiar to us that instead of waiting to see what happens next we’re left dwelling on plot holes (especially in the libretto's pared-down version of the play) and psychological improbabilities. It’s all like something Douglas Fairbanks Sr would have starred in, as a rumbustious swashbuckler who, aw shucks, just can’t talk to the beauteous damsels. In fact though I’ve seen other silent-film versions of the story, I’m a bit surprised Fairbanks didn’t star in one. It must have been a reluctance to deface the famous face with Cyrano’s celebrated nose.

Oh, the nose. His jutting protuberance. His over-bold excrescence, his unmentionable extension! I’m sure the Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature has a lengthy entry on nose (and foot) size as a euphemism for penis size. This isn’t some post-Freud weirdness. It’s deep human weirdness! Isn’t Tristram Shandy full of such jokes? Doesn’t castration anxiety haunt Gogol’s story of The Nose that disappeared? Of course Cyrano meets Christian when Christian breaks the regiment’s rule of silence on the subject. Some bodily parts are unmentionable in polite society. There is just all kinds of weirdness going on here if you stop to think too much. It’s best to keep moving.

I have to fault the make-up department on the schnozz – this is not a grotesque appendage that might scare off the finer ladies, but a much more tasteful bulge; for its role in the drama it’s a little too Nicole-Kidman-as-Virginia-Woolf, or possibly Alec-Guinness-as-Fagin – that is, it’s possible to see it, in certain lights and from certain angles, as striking and distinguished, rather than monstrous. The program showed the nose being applied for the Met production, and it looked much larger than the one we got here, and though I refuse to stoop to “size matters” jokes, or to acknowledge such conventional crudity, it’s an important difference.

You do have a problem with the Beauty and the Beast angle if the Beast is not particularly bestial. Cyrano's lovely cousin Roxane feels she must love a poet – you know, someone like TS Eliot – and apparently decides that the dreamy Christian, just joining Cyrano’s regiment, is the one. But Christian (who, far from being inarticulate, is quick enough with words in his initial meeting with Cyrano) can’t talk to girls either. Though perhaps the two fellas should have gone off together to explore their girl issues, Cyrano instead becomes Christian’s voice, though given the samples we get of Cyrano’s verse – all generic gush and jogtrot – I can’t help feeling that the muses’ bar is set rather low here, and Roxane would have gone roundheels for anyone who managed to come up with “There once was a man from Nantucket.”

We get the famous balcony scene, in which Cyrano under cover of darkness pours out his long-silent love for his cousin. She is swept away, though not so much that she doesn’t notice his voice sounds a bit different, an observation she doesn’t pursue to its logical conclusion. She apparently has never noticed that this is how her cousin talks, and you’d think by now she’d be so used to his nose that she’d barely notice it, especially in the subdued form it assumes in this production.
You’d think she’d also have wondered why, in the opening scene, he so angrily runs the famous actor Montfleury off the stage (never mind that others have paid to see him) because he dared to look at her with eyes of love, a charge that, given Martin Rojas-Dietrich’s relentlessly queeny swanning in the role, seems improbable; but then this is the kind of world in which actors portraying famous actors always flounce, just as aristocrats always mince and wenches are always bawdy. Also, not to be unkind, but a theme in this drama is the importance of appearances, so I have to point out that Montfleury resembles man’s life as Hobbes described it – nasty, brutish, and short – and he has no problem thinking he should get the ladies. So what is Cyrano’s problem? A certain amount of obliviousness on everyone’s part is necessary for the story, but it’s difficult not to wonder if this is willful blindness.

Christian, far from being a musclehead, is sensitive enough to understand that it is Cyrano and not himself that Roxane truly loves, and to suffer under the knowledge. In his anguish he rushes to the front lines and essentially commits suicide. I can’t help thinking that Roxane would have been better off with handsome, loving, awkward Christian, because Cyrano, frankly, is one of those tedious people who are always “on,” always in the spotlight, always drawing attention to himself, always showing up everyone else. Sometimes you just want someone to pass you the bread at dinner without subjecting you to an impromptu villanelle first. Cyrano is basically Auntie Mame, and just as tiresome and overbearing as she is, only with a bigger nose (it only makes it worse that the perceived inadequacy prompting his frantic cleverness is as plain as, ah, let me just say it, the nose on his face).

It’s a tribute to Domingo’s distinguished artistry that he makes the final scene in the convent so moving. Roxane has retreated there after Christian’s death; Cyrano visits her every Saturday, and although just before dying Christian wanted to tell Roxane the truth, Cyrano does not do so, for reasons that I’m sure are meant to be high-minded and noble and romantic but which strike me as strange and perverse and somewhat cruel (and more interesting than the high-minded reasons). I couldn’t help thinking of Vanity Fair, when Becky Sharp eventually has the kindness to release Amelia from her misplaced reverence in her late husband, killed at Waterloo, by giving her proof that he was hoping to run off with Becky after the battle. But that is a cynical work, and a romantic work like Cyrano has no truck with the liberation possible once your romantic ideals are shattered.

I still remember my shock the first time I saw or read Cyrano at a young age when his dying words were not what I was expecting (and based on the rhymes used in the surtitles last week, this is a feature of the original), which was: “I still have my . . . nose”; instead, we get “I still have my . . . panache” (translated as “spirit” in the surtitles). We can let the followers of Foucault and Freud (if Freud still has any) dwell on the overriding significance of that which is deliberately not named. For myself, I will say I was expecting irony and self-loathing, which are things I can relate to, and got more of Cyrano’s endless self-glorification/compensation. The switch has put me off the story ever since, though God knows I’ve seen enough versions of it since then. But I kept regretting versions unwritten, by playwrights who would have better brought out the role-playing and underlying sexual weirdness– Strindberg? Pirandello? Wilde? But maybe the story doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to unless you ignore all the underlying questions.

Back to the production. The autumn leaves are falling, literally and symbolically, in the convent. Cyrano, ill and dying from a head wound given him by an enemy aristocrat’s hired thug, finally reveals to Roxane that he was the one who spoke the words and wrote the letters she has cherished for years. He then dies and leaves her alone, perhaps to wonder what faults in her or him kept him from trusting her with the truth. We don’t find out, because it’s all about Cyrano, and he’s gone now.

The production was all very well done; it’s a different question whether it was worth doing. Ainhoa Arteta was a glorious, gorgeous Roxane, with a voice as bright and golden as her hair. Thiago Arancam was a strong-voiced Christian, and though he is strikingly handsome it is in a sensitive intelligent way that actually skews the drama a bit – he looks a bit too fine-spirited for the lunky role Christian is supposed to play. I hope to hear both in something more substantial. I can of course also say the same about the emperor of the evening, Domingo. His voice wavered a bit at the beginning but grew in steadiness and power throughout. His suffering in the final scene, the pain in his darkening voice as death frees him from the twisted knot of his anguish, brings the indelible power of Art to the libretto’s facile romantic tricks.

Haiku 322-329

Phone and Internet service have at last been restored, for which, on this fourth Thursday in November, I am truly thankful. Now I can go back to bitching about how slow my computer is.

Haiku 329
(for Thanksgiving Day)
and for all the birds --
soaring, singing, edible --
we humbly thank Thee

Haiku 328
chorus of chirping crickets
now silenced by frost

Haiku 327
Why was I angry.
Rain patters on the pavement.
I don't remember.

Haiku 326
a self-absorbed man
leans on the wall, playing jazz
commuters rush by

Haiku 325
why do we resist
certain messages sent us
by cold wind and rain

Haiku 324
a second rain falls
as breezes shake the silver
from the curling leaves

Haiku 323
OK, so no phone
but now I've lost DSL
AT&T sucks!

Haiku 322
fallen leaves scattered
scarlet on a gray sidewalk
birds scattered in flight

20 November 2010

AT&T Sucks!

So after being without a phone for several weeks, I called AT&T and they sent someone out to take a look. And now I have neither phone or Internet. I am on an ice floe, heading out towards cold and choppy seas. Though presumably I will return at some point, and will post the backlog (haiku, Cyrano, Measha Brueggergosman, Zenshinza Theatre, Makropulos Case, and maybe more) then. Check back soon. I hope.

17 November 2010

16 November 2010

15 November 2010

14 November 2010

13 November 2010

12 November 2010

11 November 2010

10 November 2010

08 November 2010

07 November 2010

Ensemble Zellig

This afternoon I went to Ensemble Zellig’s west coast debut over at Hertz Hall in Berkeley. They are a French chamber ensemble specializing in new music (the oldest piece they played this afternoon was from 1993 and most were brand-spanking new). The group was founded in 1999 by two performers (Silvia Lenzi and Etienne Lamaison) and two composers (Thierry Pecou and Gualtiero Dazzi), and describes itself as “flexibly sized” and “fully at ease traveling through time and musical styles” – hence the eponymous use of Woody Allen’s Zelig, though the extra “l” is unexplained.

Etienne Lamaison was there, playing clarinet and bass clarinet, and so was Silvia Lenzi on cello. They were joined by Anne-Cecile Cuniot on flute and alto flute and Jonas Vitaud on piano. All were stylishly attired in black and red (of a deep brick shade). Cuniot’s dress had a chic rising-sun motif, which only added to the Japanese impression of the first number, Philippe Hersant’s Five Miniatures (1995), a solo piece for alto flute (but then solo flute music in its plangent and reedy way always reminds me of the artier Japanese films). When she left the stage the other three came out for the second piece, Don Freund’s Crunch Time (2010), which formed a nice contrast with its percussive, well, crunching, though touched with moments both jazzy and wistful.

Then we had Philippe Leroux’s PPP (1993) for flute and piano, which was more entertainingly muscular than flute/piano duos often are. That was followed by a different duo, one for clarinet and cello, Change and End (2010) by Gerald Shapiro (who was in attendance, as was Edmund Campion). There was a touching timeless quality about the piece – if you came to it with no context, it might be hard to say whether it was contemporary with us or with the French impressionists. It seemed both bucolic and elegiac (the composer’s program note mentioned that he wrote the piece while his 93-year-old mother was dying, and the piece is dedicated to her). I could see it being used for dance, the way baroque music always has underlying dance rhythms.

Next up was another collection of miniatures by Philippe Hersant, his Six Bagatelles (2007, 2010) in a new transcription for clarinet, cello, and piano. I particularly liked the second bagatelle (which I may or may not be remembering correctly as dreamy) and the fifth, which reminded me of Prokofiev’s sarcastic style. The final piece, and the first which brought all four performers on stage together, was Edmund Campion’s Auditory Fiction (2010), for flute, clarinet, piano, cello, and computer. The performers all wore earpieces connected to the computer so they could follow “in-ear click-tracks which coordinate four independent, flexible, shifting sequences of time. Each instrument in Auditory Fiction can act independently in time or join together with the quartet in perfect sync.” I’m quoting Campion’s program note, partly because I’m not quite clear what this means: does the click-track simply function as an invisible mechanical conductor? Or does it shift things around so that something different happens in each performance? The music had a very bright, clear sound, and at the beginning it reminded me of a round, where they start off together and then go off in their own directions. I was in my preferred spot in the first row, but for this piece I might have preferred being a bit further back.

These were all fairly brief, even intimate pieces (I don’t think any of them was over fifteen minutes) and the selection was both coherent and varied. I would happily have heard any or all of them over again. The performers were fabulously committed and keen. The set-up was perfect: about 90 minutes, no intermission, brief and efficient set-ups between each piece, and no talking at us, just music. Sweet, thank you!

Campion, who is a professor at Cal, had given a talk beforehand, but I didn’t go since I didn’t know about it (though I might not have gone anyway; I find such talks either vague and full of stuff I already know or could guess, or so technical that they’re distracting and don’t help my experience as a listener). I hadn’t received the subscriber e-mail about the concert because I decided to go at the last minute. “The last minute” for me is two days beforehand. There was a fair-sized audience (including Lisa), but there were plenty of seats available, and though I was delighted to be able to sit with no one around me, I recognize that the performers and presenters would probably prefer a full house.

I ended up being glad I had bought a ticket in advance, because when I woke up this morning it was raining heavily and out of the blue (the vanished blue) I had a splitting headache. Both cleared up enough so that I ventured forth, but if I hadn’t already paid for a seat I might have just bagged it and stayed home and missed out on a terrific ensemble and an exceptionally entertaining and well-run concert. I hope Ensemble Zellig will be regular visitors.

Haiku 2010/311

crooked-angled tree
bent by fierce and vanished winds
twisted tree remains

06 November 2010

I have done nothing but in care of thee

Last night I went to the first performance of Cutting Ball Theater’s new production of The Tempest, directed by Rob Melrose. It is a three-actor chamber version, but it is in a sense a very traditional production, in that Shakespeare’s plays have always been altered and adjusted to fit the mood and means of the time. I think this basic malleability of theater is the reason (in addition of course to great poetry and deep characterization) that Shakespeare became enshrined as the English writer par excellence, rather than say Spenser, whom Shakespeare's contemporaries would probably have nominated for the post; great though it is, The Faerie Queene is always going to be an elaborate, many-stranded allegorical Renaissance epic, written in semi-archaic though gorgeous language in a strict stanza.

I shouldn’t give the impression that Cutting Ball’s production is an outrageous variation; by and large, if you wanted, it’s possible to see it as a fairly straightforward telling of the story, with the virtuoso twist of using only three actors. The central idea here is a triangle between Father, Daughter, and the Young Lover who takes her away from him, and in the opening and closing scenes Prospero is presented as a therapist and Miranda his patient, subject to both hypnotherapy and classic lie-on-the-couch talk therapy. The whole idea works surprisingly well, with surprisingly little alteration necessary to the play, particularly in the long back-story scene between Prospero and Miranda at the beginning, after the opening tempest, when he tells her who she is and how they came to the island; and it creates fascinating resonances among the characters and situations.

The idea of the father struggling to give up his control sheds an interesting light on some scenes; for example, when he denounces Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda, we can see that she is instead a willing participant, and the scene becomes about a father’s fear of (which includes his repressed fantasies about) his daughter’s growing sexual awareness, and how those feelings will lead her away from him. The advantage to using three actors is that as they become other characters, you see their basic situation in a new light: for instance, Ferdinand and Miranda are both losing their fathers, and when the father is played by the same actor, that brings the point home; when the father becomes Stephano, the drunken leader of Trinculo/Miranda and Caliban/Ferdinand, you get another lurid funhouse twist on the triangle.

David Sinaiko plays Prospero, Alonso, and Stephano; Caitlyn Louchard plays Miranda, Ariel, Gonzalo, Trinculo, and Sebastian; and Donell Hill plays Caliban, Ferdinand, and Antonio. Though occasionally, as I always do when I see Shakespeare performed, I wanted something a little more or a little different (perhaps a little more majesty from Prospero, a little more unworldliness from Ariel) I’m going to give all three a big compliment, which is that they speak the lines as if these were things the characters would actually say in this way, and as if they knew what they meant – many’s the Shakespeare performance I’ve heard where the actors have memorized the lines, and they come out sounding only like lines they’ve memorized. The performers distinguish clearly among the characters, using different voices as well as adjustments to their costumes (though perhaps they should rethink the short green tunic dress for Ariel, since it comes off as a bit Peter-Pan-like at times, and I think the use of an Italian accent for Alonso is a mistake; it sounds too much like a vaudeville funny voice and it raises the question why no one else from the same town has an accent).

Donell Hill is black, which lends an interesting resonance to his Ferdinand/Caliban function as The Other (as well as to moments like the one when he as Sebastian denounces Alonso for giving his daughter to an African and thereby losing her in that distant land). When Prospero says "this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine" he points to his own heart rather than to Caliban, to whom the line officially refers; it's an interesting twist and a nice example of the fluid identities among the characters, and it completes the father's process of giving his daughter away. I'm glad they avoided the recent fad of presenting Caliban as a representative of native victims of European imperialism. I’m not saying there’s no element of that, but as a through-line interpretation it just doesn’t work for me: for one thing, Caliban is clearly servile by nature, as evidenced by his ready submission to Stephano as his new master when he’s fed up with Prospero. He also (in the standard interpretation) tried to rape Miranda when she was a little girl, which I think we can all agree makes him basically unsympathetic, and he is lazy and can’t be trusted with liquor – for me the notion of Caliban as aborigine just gets too close to minstrel-show racist stereotypes to be considered true to Shakespeare or the character or the themes of the play. It seems obvious to me that Caliban is basically an earth spirit (in contrast to Ariel), so like the earth he is often dull, heavy, and dirty, though also capable of moments of astonishing beauty (the most famous example being his speech in Act 3, scene 2, "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises . . ." and ending "when I waked, I cried to dream again"). Shakespeare did that thing that makes him Shakespeare: he overwrote the part so that the richness of the character bursts through any thematic framework; and as with Shylock, the character has grown richer and more unanswerable with our current experience of history.

As usual with Cutting Ball, the set, the videos, and the ambient sounds are stylish and appealing. The raised stage looks like the bottom of a swimming pool, and there is a desk (holding the chess set and a model of a ship) and a couch such as you might find in a therapist’s office. The backdrop is a large engraving in the style of Dore of the sun setting over the ocean; surrounding that is a thick border of shiny silver foil. (Michael Locher is the set designer, Bessie Delucchi did the costumes, Heather Basarab the lighting, and Cliff Caruthers the sound.)

Personally, I’d much rather see an inventive take like this than a more straightforward production; nothing against such productions, but at this point in my theater-going (and my life with Shakespeare) I’m just not going to see a production of one of his plays where I think they’ve nailed everything. So I might as well spare myself the time and money and wait for shows that cast a different light on what I think I already know.

The movement of the play as an inner psychological struggle to allow one’s child (and her spirit, her Ariel) her freedom makes the effect of this production surprisingly elegiac; though The Tempest is often presented as Shakespeare’s farewell, this is the first time I really felt it that way.

The production runs through November 28 at the Cutting Ball's home stage, the Exit Stage Left.

Haiku 2010/310

sitting on her stoop
selling off her extra stuff
dark-haired and laughing

05 November 2010

Haiku 2010/309

ill-set summer days
dropped among the early frosts:
crickets chirp, leaves drop

04 November 2010

03 November 2010

02 November 2010

fun stuff I may or may not get to: November

This is a chockfull month, and that’s not even counting roasting the turkey on the fourth Thursday. . . . Good luck getting to even half of this list. I don’t know when I’m going to get the laundry done or the pies baked.

American Bach Soloists begin a collaboration with choreographer Todd Eckert November 5-7 at Dance Mission Theater, where he will premiere Sinfonia (to ABS recordings), the first part of a three-part piece that will culminate in live performances next July. The November performances also include works by Nol Simonse. The program details are here.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players open their 40th season with music by Glass, Cage, Combier, and Vanoni (the latter will be there in person) on Monday, November 8, at Herbst Theater.

Cutting Ball opens its season with a three-person chamber arrangement of The Tempest.

Volti opens its season November 5-7 with another enticing collection of new pieces, in a different location each of the three nights. Unfortunately for me, none of the locations (click here) is convenient for an East Bay nondriver. Geez, what’s up, guys? Was it because I refused to sing along?

ACT offers Marcus or The Secret of Sweet, the third part of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Brother/Sister Plays. The first two parts were at the Marin Theater Company and the Magic Theater (in keeping with this month’s theme of inaccessibility to East Bay nondrivers, I’d like to note that the former is completely inaccessible and the second requires a major effort). I have been told that the plays can also be seen separately, though the experience is enriched if you see them all.

ACT is also collaborating with Nicole Paiement’s group, Blueprint, to present the Tom Stoppard/Andre Previn work for orchestra and actors, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, at the Conservatory of Music on November 20, with performances at 7:00 and 9:00. Call 415-503-6275 for tickets.

San Francisco Performances presents Measha Brueggergosman and Justus Zeyen on November 10, as well as the return of Japanese butoh dance troupe Sankai Juku on November 11-14.

Cal Performances presents the Zenshinza Theatre Company in two different programs: on November 13, Narukami, an eighteenth-century kabuki play, and on November 14, Honen and Shinran, an contemporary play in kabuki style. And I will probably not be able to resist a ticket to Ensemble Zellig’s afternoon of new music on November 7.

Shotgun Players has extended its run of Mark Jackson’s adaptation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart through November 14.

Philharmonia Baroque offers Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, along with contemporary works by Corelli, Pergolesi, Durante, and Zavateri on November 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10, in several different locations (click here for details).

The Paul Dresher Ensemble presents “new music and invented instruments” by Ryan Brown, Paul Dresher, and Bruce Pennycock on November 12 and 13 at the ODC Theater.

San Francisco Opera presents the great Placido Domingo in Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, as well as this season’s most eagerly anticipated opera (at least by me), The Makropulos Case with Karita Mattila.

Berkeley/West Edge Opera presents Handel’s great Xerxes, conducted by baroque specialist Alan Curtis and starring Paula Rasmussen, on November 13, 19, and 21.

The San Francisco Symphony presents a solid line-up of soloists (Nicholas Phan, Keith Phares, and Joelle Harvey) in Carmina Burana, along with works by Schnittke and Haydn, on November 3, 4, 5, and 8. The week after that, Rufus Wainwright is scheduled to appear for the premiere of Five Shakespeare Sonnets which was postponed from last season, along with Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major (per SFMike's comment below, this has been switched to Milhaud's Creation du Monde) and Weill’s Symphony No. 2. On November 17, 19, 20, and 21, you can hear Elza van den Heever singing Strauss’s Four Last Songs, along with Schubert’s always delightful Music from Rosamunde and a perhaps less delightful traversal once again of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

Chora Nova presents an all-Haydn concert on November 20 at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley (right by the Unit 3 dorms, my old home).

The New Century Chamber Orchestra features the Goldberg Variations (arranged by Sitkovetsky) and three pieces by composer and violinist Mark O’Conner, November 18-21 in four different locations (click here for info).

And a late addition . . . Feldman's Rothko Chapel will be performed at the Berkeley Art Museum this Friday, November 5, at 7:30, along with works by Ashley, Mitchell, and Harrison.

Haiku 2010/306

lying half-asleep
a branch scratches the window
am I half awake

01 November 2010

Better luck next year to everyone else. . .

I'm already receiving merchandising e-mails!

Above is the Ferry Building at dawn, lit orange for the team.

Haiku 2010/305

blue skies of late fall
warm days give way to chill nights
a clear moon rises


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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Drama review- Hotaru no Hikari season 1&2

Hotaru no Hikari is a popular drama starring actress Ayase Haruka and actor Naohito Fujiki in the main roles. It is based on a popular josei manga of the same name. It has a second season too.

Ayase Haruka starring as Amemiya Hotaru is an average office lady with a decent amount of elegance. She works very hard at office and most of of co workers consider her a mature and elegant lady. But when Hotaru gets home, she changes into her jerseys, sits on the porch and drinks beer from cans. Furthurmore, she keeps her house in a terrible mess, sleeps wrapped in newspapers and eats preserved food. Her lifestyle undergoes some change when her manager (bucho) movies into the house with her. The house is the manager's father's property. Bucho (manager) is in the process of divorcing his wife but does not tell Hotaru about this. They make a cohabitation treaty and decide to stay together. Hotaru can be her true himono onna (dried fish woman) self with bucho. She also develops a liking for Teshima who wroks with her. The manager helps her make her way to his heart which trying desperately to hide the secret of their staying together.

The drama has lots of comedy with Ayase Haruka doing goofy expressions. Ayase Haruka is at her best here. Her acting skills fitted very well into the character. I saw Naohito Fujiki's G@me earlier in which his acting disappointed me. Here however, he shows me a completely different side. His acting is just as good as Ayase Haruka if not better. The characters fit well together. Even if the pairing didn't have much chemistry, it went on well. The house and many other backdrops are beautiful.

Most actors and actresses act well in the series. The comedy is refreshing with a unique storyline. Hotaru's personality is unique and even though different from Bucho's, it fits well with him. Ayase Haruka is mostly kawaii (cute) with a sweetened voice and lots of clumsiness and comic dialogues. Her monologues are entertaining.  Along with the protagonist's romance, the side characters' romance stories go on as well. In the first season it is Yuuka and in the second it is Yamada nee san.

The second season focuses on Hotaru's marriage. She comes back from Hong Kong after three years. During these years, she never once phoned or wrote to Bucho. He is angry in the beginning but towards the end of the first episode, proposes marriage. However, Hotaru doesn't know what marriage should be like. In this season Yamada, Hotaru's senior and Seichi's Takano's friend get married after a rocky relationship. There are new characters in the second season with Yamada, Takano and his friend being the only ones from the previous season. Hotaru faces many difficulties and Takano even withdraws his proposal for marriage. But in the end, they get married.

The second season was as good as the first one. Both had the same problem- They beat around the bush too much. In the first season, Hotaru was busy with Teshima and confessed to Bucho only in the last scene of the last episode. Much like that, in this season too she focuses on work and daily life and gets married only in the last episode.

The second season had more merits than the first one. While the first season is entertaining, it is disappointing since Hotaru beats around the bush and never confesses to Takano. In the second season however, their romantic relationship is given more importance. They clear hurdles and progress together. Takano manages to pick up some of Hotaru's habits like sleeping on the porch with newspapers in place of bedsheets. In the end, he leaves for Taiwan but Hotaru doesn't accompany him. He comes back and gives her the marriage paper after one year but she leaves it in her room and the cat poops on it. She promises to bring another one the following day. The drama ends at that but it didn't leave any ambiguous ending. Knowing Hotaru, she'll probably get another marriage paper and of she fails Takano is there for her.

The music for both the season was horrible. The first theme was Yokogao by aiko and the seocond one was Kimi ga iru by Ikimonogakari. I couldn't even hear the second one, it was hardply featured. The first one though genric was played in the last scenes of the first episode so, it has some sentimental value. But overall, the songs were terrible.

The first season is more or less incomplete without the second season that is why I watched them continuously. The first season ends with confession and leaves a question about their future together in the viewers mind. If you want to complete the journey and be satisfied, I recommend the second season too. The pros for the second season are much like the cons. Hotaru remains a himono oonna with too many monologues and clumsiness till the end. Her senior Yamada says it is okay to be a himono onna as long as she remains cute. Even though after the second season, you feel like you've got an overdose of Hotaru, it is still fun watching.

Overall, one of the best romantic comedy dramas. I enjoyed the comedy. The romance was quite slow but okay. The actors and actresses acted well with proper script, direction, story and backdrops. I have started to like josei dramas. Nodame Cantabile, Kimi wa petto, Hotaru no hikari, Gokusen and many other wonderful dramas have been adapted from josei mangas. Viva josei manga!

Script- 4.3/5

Characterisation and development
Second season that completes the story

Might get repetitive after the second season
Beats around the bush too much especially in the first season

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Science Unit 5: Question Preview (ID: 29533)

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All of the following are non renewable EXCEPT
a) coal b) water c) petroleum d) natural gas
Crop rotation is
a) planting different crops to help the soils nutrients b) turning the crops upside down c) planting different crops because you want different foods d) Reducing insects on crops
All are ways to conserve resources EXCEPT
a) recycling different objects b) picking up trash on the playground c) reusing cups and plates d) buying brand new furniture made of wood
Many stores make you have your own shopping bags. This helps in all the ways EXCEPT
a) They take up less space b) they help save resources c) they limit the amount of trash we have d) they give you a choice
We are doing an experiment on soil and water pollution. You have to.
a) wear goggles b) wear open toed shoes c) stir the polluted water really fast so it spills d) Mix a bunch of things together just to see what happens
What type of gas is renewable?
a) natural gas b) air c) petroleum d) propane
Which of the following is a nonrenewable solid?
a) coal b) plants c) water d) natural gas
Trees are renewable
a) all the time b) only if your replant them c) never d) false, they are nonrenewable
We can reduce waste by doing all EXCEPT
a) reusing things b) buying used items c) buying brand new in a single use container d) recycling glass
All of the following are renewable EXCEPT
a) water b) air c) trees d) natural gas
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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Karel Takes Bets on Terrorist Attack at Sochi Olympics on KGO Radio Show

Displaying photo.JPG
 Taking bets on a possible terrorist attack? Questionable taste but that's just me. Several of you think thought Mr. Karel may have gone overboard on this one Saturday night on his KGO show.

  1. If he's 'being summoned' to see his boss this Fri., then they're probably going to let him go & Karel thinks he has nothing to lose. Good Riddance, Karel.

  2. He's a fool and small minded. He's only interesting, (as are a lot of media folks), in getting lots of attention. It's kind of like that little annoying kid we all remember 'back in the day' when we were going to school, who used to shoot his or her arm up with the answer to any question a teacher had. "Look at me! Look at me!" Obviously, Karel didn't have much attention focused on him growing up, so he's trying to make up for lost time. The fact that KGO puts this cretin and others like him Tim Montemanure...(who is now thankfully outta here), and 'the NY Witch' Maureen Langden, shows you how desperate some radio stations are to try and pump up their ratings. I can listen to Karel for about 30 seconds, and then I start getting a headache from his annoying diatribes and whining.

  3. If this is true, Karel should be done. Disgusting to even encourage something like this. Perhaps we should take bets on how he'll be skewered out of KGone. Eye for an eye.

  4. Stations don't tell people they're firing they have a meeting in a week. Doesn't work that way. Sorry. He is awful though. As for the desperate for ratings comment, that doesn't make sense either. You don't hire crap talent if you're trying to get numbers.

  5. Hey Rich, I have listened to Karel in a very long time -- he's a show-boatin' misanthrope -- but do you know what his ratings are? I can't imagine him staying on the air unless he has great ratings. How do you look up ratings by day and hour?

    1. Yeah, the moron known as Karel somewhat sheepishly talked about a meeting "at the tower" that he was summoned to at the end of the coming week. Funny that Pat Thurston brought it up, Saturday, at the close of her show. "Were you summoned, too?" "Oh, yes, I was." came the reply.

      Companies who are hurting, as Cumulus / KGO are, often put decisions off to the end of the week.

      Karel's ratings are bad. With a pitiful 1.2, his PPM numbers, no matter the demographic, aren't overshadowing the prime numbers. Karel would then not be banished to the lowest dayparts for ratings in any market.

      He'd be doing Ronn's shift or 10-1 Saturday, a higher rated daypart. Karel isn't well liked, respected or admired inside the tower.

      His press is non-existant in San Francisco and his "I'm over 50 going on 17" isn't playing. He's not radio's Justin Bieber.

      The station needs a format change. Putting young talent with attitude on an AM blowtorch isn't working. Cumulus just bought expensive FM properties in Chicago which it must leverage.

      More administrative "threats" from Atlanta? Probably. .

      Changes comng? I'd bet on it before terrorist plots at the Olympics. Karel plays the act of "instigator". More out of fear of losing a gig? Maybe. He doesn't resonate with the audience that KGO or sponsors are dependent. In changing to the "Karelcast", it's an indication of failure again than "reinvention".

      There looms, soon, major change at KGO. It will start with the dire problems on weekdays.

      Karel acts like there is nothing to worry about, yet, he worries a lot and it shows. The show is stale, non-compelling and he's really "pressing" more than anything. Something is on the horizon.

      This isn't some congratulatory party. Or Mike Amatori's birthday bash. It may be termination warning before the boom is lowered. A contract renewal is in the balance.

      When KGO can't pull a 2 share in a beauty-contest "Holiday Book" is still very telling. The devil's in the details. Going back a year or more, the story isn't shaping up to be a fairy tale at KGO Radio..

      The Neilsen ratings (which replaced Arbitron) is unavailable in breakdown form except to subscribing stations, advertising agencies and large corporate interests who pay heavily for that information.

      Even talent doesn't know, nor do other staffers, usually, outside of an overview. Talent agents may get a glimpse of them, but there are very heavy fines, sanctions and actions against those who share information in any way, shape or form. Only the insiders really know what's up. The rest is pure speculation. The rankings and 6+ demographic numbers mean absolutely nothing. They are not used by sales, by ad agencies or businesses. Only the demo breakouts in particular gender mixes by specific hours and dayparts are used during the week or in lesser form on weekends.

      Been studying ratings books for years and know the technology and methodology well.

      As the late great Sam Cooke said, "A Change Is Gonna Come" and it will be sooner than later, and probably not in the order many would like to see. Give it time, measured in weeks, not months.

      Could Cumulus sell KSFO and, for all intents and purposes, KGO as well? Yes. Possibly moving a newer, hipper, Karel-less talk format to an FM property, as it should have done before? Yes.

      The burden of an under-performing 50,000 flamethrower is great. KNBR has life, still, as the sports voice with association. KGO does not. Cumulus' FM properties need major help and, hence, why AM is standing on its last tower leg in the Bay Area.

      To prove his worth and credibility, I do hope Rich works this story to it's conclusion, starting this week.

    2. "The end of the week" (Friday) is also the last day of the month.

  6. There's no story.

    Cumulus hired a new head of talk. That person, I'm told, is meeting with all the hosts. Maybe this person will impart some wisdom from up high, but it doesn't seem like anything more than that.

    None of this takes away from how awful Karel is.

  7. Randall Bloomquiest of Atlanta (running his own consultancy) was named in November 2013 to the post of "National News / Talk Program Director" by Cumulus One who "revitalizes" waning talk stations and brings new "insights" to talent is at the helm of Cumulus weakest news / talk station and it's most "troubled" cluster..

    Bloomquist has experience at WGST Atlanta (leaving in 2009), and programming stints at WMAL Washngton (now owned by Cumulus), WBT Charlotte, NC and WRVA & WRNL Richmond. He also was DC Bureau Chief for the now extinct "Radio & Records."

    Bloomquist has a reputation for "developing talk radio personalities."

    His Facebook page has a spray painted word across the page that says, "Boring".

    Hopefully, in the two months plus of his corporate stripes by Cumulus, he's heard enough of Karel and the looseness of what KGO is to this market. Good luck.

    Karel is a not-to-be-developed non-asset.

    Important or significant -- it is surprising it's taken this long for the newly appointed corporate news/talk PD to pay a visit to have a meeting with the hosts. He'd have been better off saving Karel the trip from Long Beach and terminating his happy ass by phone.

    There's more to this meet-and-greet than kissing the new corporate PD's ring..

  8. A great new program for KGO would be 'Rothmann & Sons'. John has said one, or both Sons are very interested in politics, a Father/Son team could be quite interesting. Rothmann has such a wealth of knowledge and great old political stories...he's really a San Francisco treasure! KGO is missing a golden opportunity by not using him...and we're missing a political treasure.
    If KGO went to only night-time Talk...they'd see their ratings go way up.

    Is there any way to know KGO's week-end Talk Ratings vs. Week-Day Ratings?

    1. In sure he'll be perpetually available.

    2. The idea of returning some talk to nights is interesting. As I understand the people meter ratings, the "drop in listening" nature of the all news daytime programming SHOULD be working. But evenings/overnights probably hold listeners longer...I know I would listen to a full hour of talk in the evenings. What if the All News format went noon to 10pm, M-F, then another three hour block of talk 10p to 1a? Keep the Bloomberg content in the wee hours, then start all over again at 5a with the morning news and Ronn???

    3. At night, KGO's tremendous North/South bandwidth can be heard clear as a bell...from San Diego to Canada.

      Does KGO mgt. ever read here?
      If so...
      Put Pat Thurston on week-nights and your ratings will sky-rocket!

    4. Yes, there is a way to know KGO's talk ratings vs. weekday ratings -- but you, Rich, me, anybody outside the castle walls will never know. Cumulus won't share because there are monetary fines and broken contract litigation for sharing such information.

      KGO cannot and will not bring John Rothman back. He has legacy in the market and at KGO and he costs lots of $$$ which he does not need. KGO wouldn't consider such a move, especially at night, when the listener levels drop huge after 7 pm Same with all night - providing a union-mandated engineer, a producer/screener and a host all cost money and Cumulus is in no position to proivde this when ad levels are so low evenings, nights and overnight.

      They should dump Bloomsburg. It's stupid to hear "New York time which is three hours ahead of Bay Area time in the middle of the night. The programming means nothing and is a fill only.

      As for talk at night, a great idea, but, again, talk costs money and doing three hours in early evening then going back to news would be cost prohibitive. They'd be better off carrying syndicated talk at night but there is none in the Cumulus arsenal worthy of putting on the air - even if it could be automated without board ops.

      Will be interesting to see how this meeting with Randy Bloomquist pans out with all hosts late this week. Heard that even Maureen Langon is flying in from New York to attend the festivities as Bloomquist is charged with "talent development" and some "revitalization" of the news format -- if it, or the talent behind it, stays. I don't think it's all about a "greet and meet" as reported. Maor change needs to be made to stop the hermoraging.

      A pretty expensive "party" for a "meeting of the minds" between new corporate news/talk program director and talk hosts on KGO and KSFO.

  9. The KGO bloodbath has always reminded me of the final episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." All of the quality veterans were fired, while Ted Baxter (Karel) got to keep his job.

  10. The story of Karel is sad...

    I was a dedicated listener back in the KFI days - Karel and Andrew's show was good, interesting and fun! I always thought the problem is that Karel just wasn't any good alone - not funny at all, and the "over the top" act is very very old.

    It seems as if he was never able to recover from personal issues. Not to make light of things, but we all loose family members - sometimes under terrible circumstances as well however not many of us continue to talk about it 10 years later. He has let his personal life leak out too much into his professional life. I really do not want to hear about his lack of money, his mortgage issues, his dogs illnesses and his struggles with morbid obesity.

    All those issues aside, the fact remains that he is just not interesting, talented nor funny... He's loud, bombastic, and abrasive instead (and not in an entertaining way). I say these things not to be mead, but its tragic. Its a tale of how not to let your life fall apart when personal tragedy strikes. You must move on, and maybe realize that its time to choose another path - professionally and personally.


text:
Saturday, June 11, 2005

Colored metal bowls

A party in every bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats.

Blair said...

I love how you deal with light, just love it and am so envious... I just can't see light until it is over and done with... but I only take a few pictures and just for pleasure... I sure enjoy yours though... many are every day objects made beautiful!

Rick Lee said...

Thanks Blair. I think I'll write up something about looking at light. I think about that a lot.

TallDave said...

Cool bowls, cool picture.


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In infield of NASCAR race, Police investigate death from “self-inflicted injury”

April 14, 2013

Strange  ….

A man died of a “self-inflicted injury” following a verbal altercation in the infield during a NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday night, police said.

Police spokeswoman Cpl. Tracey Knight didn’t specify how the man died, and said he was believed to be in his late 30s or early 40s. She said alcohol may have been a factor in the incident, which occurred late in the Sprint Cup race.

via Police investigate death in infield of NASCAR race.

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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada

Ardentown, Delaware

Nearby Census Genealogy
Cemeteries Tidbits &
Other DE

 The location of Ardentown

Click for Interactive Map

Click for Interactive Map
(Location provided by the GNIS)
Click here for an interactive map for Ardentown
and the surrounding area.
Learn About
The Commemorative
Quarter for
The Commemorative Quarter for Delaware

Welcome to Ardentown ...

The village of Ardentown is located in New Castle County.

From the  Census Estimates for 2015, Ardentown has a population of 272 people<1> (see below for details).

Ardentown is 220 feet [67 m] above sea level.<2>.

Time Zone: Ardentown lies in the Eastern Time Zone (EST/EDT) and observes daylight saving time

Ardentown is located in the (302) area code.

Population Details ...

At the time of the 2010 Census, Ardentown had a population of 264 people. This makes Ardentown the county's 12th most populous community.

The population of Ardentown represents 0.03% of the population of Delaware (which has 897,934 people), making it the state's 45th most populous community.

With a 2010 count of 264 people, the population of Ardentown decreased 12% from the 2000 Census (that had a count of 300 people).

Taken from the 2015 Census Estimates, Ardentown had an population of 272 people. This is an increase of 3.03% since the 2010 Census (or a decrease of 9.33% since the 2000 Census).

More information can be found on the Census Page for Ardentown.

Communities near Ardentown ...

The following is a sample of nearby communities. Please note that when we give a distance, it's a 'straight-line' distance and not the distance if driven.<3>.

Community   2015
Newark   [Map]   33,817   SW   17 miles [27.4 km]
Wilmington   [Map]   71,948   SW   5 miles [8 km]
Woodbury (NJ)   [Map]   10,020   E   17 miles [27.4 km]
Brookhaven (PA)   [Map]   8,078   NE   6 miles [9.7 km]
Chester (PA)   [Map]   34,092   NE   6 miles [9.7 km]
Darby (PA)   [Map]   10,687   NE   14 miles [22.5 km]

To learn more about neighboring communities and counties, please visit the Nearby Page for Ardentown.

See Our Genealogy Helper Page ...

We have a couple of sections that should be of interest to those chasing their genealogy.

  • We have a list of cemeteries that are in the area around Ardentown. We make it easy to see an overhead view of the cemetery.
  • Using the information from an 1895 Atlas, we've created a list of communities that were in the area of Ardentown. Our list includes information such as whether the community had a post office or railroad service in 1895.

These sections can be found on our Genealogy Helper Page for Ardentown:

TripAdvisor Tourism Pages for Ardentown ...

Looking for more information about Ardentown? A wonderful source is the TripAdvisor website. We always start with the TripAdvisor Tourism page, where you get an overview with links that will help you to find lodging, restaurants and attractions.

Looking for more information about Ardentown? A wonderful source is the TripAdvisor website. We always start with the TripAdvisor Tourism page, where you get an overview with links that will help you to find lodging, restaurants and attractions.

While we are unaware of a Tourism page that is specific to Ardentown, there are neighboring communities that do have Tourism pages. A map of those communities can be found with our TripAdvisor Tourism Map for Ardentown.

Search for Local Businesses ...

Google's 'Search-by-Location' is a very useful tool for people who might be planning visits to this area. We have prepared the following searches to help you find businesses, travel and vacation activities that are in (or close to) Ardentown. It's likely that the search results won't include all of the businesses that are in this area, but the results should give you a good foundation for further searches.

LodgingGas StationsBanks
Bed & BreakfastTruck StopsATMs
RestaurantsAuto RepairReal Estate
 RV RepairRentals
PharmacyAuto PartsChurches
 RV PartsCemeteries
AttractionsMotorcycle Parts
 DentistsPost Offices
Auto RentalChiropractors
Auto LeasingVeterinarians

Business Owners: To appear in the above search results, your business will need to be listed with the Google Places service. Please use the below link to learn about and register for the free service.

If you find an error or if your business wasn't included in the results, please contact Google to register your business or report an error. We simply link to 'Search-by-Location' and have no control over their results. Only a registered owner/operator can add their business or correct mistakes - we can not do it for you.

Other Roadside Stops ...

Search for a Delaware Community

About New Castle County

About Delaware

Off-the-Road Links ...

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Ardentown. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for New Castle County:

The official website for State of Delaware:

Footnotes ...

<1>Population counts have been provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. For more detail, please visit our Census Page for Ardentown.

- Return to Citation

<2>The elevation is an estimate for the area around Ardentown - it will be higher in some places and lower in others.

- Return to Citation

<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance starting in Ardentown. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Ardentown) to Point B.

If you need the driving distance, we recommend that you use one of the Mapping Services listed on our Map Page for Ardentown. Since we usually use Google Maps for our own planning, we've provided the following link: Google Map and Driving Directions starting from Ardentown

Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Ardentown. The point that we are using is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 39.8090, Longitude: -75.4821     [Map].   In this case, the coordinates for Ardentown have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

- Return to Citation

<4>All Quarter-dollar coin images from the United States Mint.

- Return to Citation

For additional information, please visit our Glossary for Ardentown.

Tidbits &
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Please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

If you've found an error or have additional information that you would like to share, please don't hesitate to write. Click here to contact us.

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All Rights Reserved
This page was last modified: 22 Feb 2017
By John Hall


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ABC Store Offenders

 Incident Number  Date
 15-103625  Black Female.  Short black hair  15-103625  9/29/15
 15-103233  Black Male.  Facial hair.  Black hat and sweat pants.  15-103233  9/28/15
 15-098787  White Female.  Dark brown hair.  Heavy set.  15-098787  9/16/15
 15-082398  Hispanic Male.  Black hair with a mustache/goatee  15-082398  8/7/15
 15-111771  White Male.  6'1".  180 lbs.  20 to 30 years old  15-111771  10/21/15
The Roanoke Police Department is working with the Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control to identify and apprehend shoplifters from ABC stores in Roanoke. Below are the pictures and case numbers of the offenders detectives are seeking to identify.

Submit a Tip
If you recognize any of these people, please call the Roanoke Valley Crime Line at 540-344-8500. Tips are kept confidential. Please identify the case number in which you are referring if you call in a tip. You can also text an anonymous tip to the number 274637 (CRIMES).  Please start your text message with the keyword RoanokePD: to ensure that it's properly sent.


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Monday, January 21, 2008

#7 The Worthing Saga

Book: The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card
Pages: AudioBookEntertainment Rating: 2/5
Snooty Rating: 2.5/5
Total Rating: 4.5/10
Books Read Total: 7/50
Pages Read Total: 1630/15,000

This book was hell. So violent, dark, angry and depressing. Somehow I couldn't stop listening, despite the anxiety it caused me. I think had I been reading it myself I would have put it down a long time ago, but having paid for it and spent the time downloading it I felt like I had to hear it out. The storytelling is pretty good, not as wonderful as Ender's Game, but it's fairly well done. I just wish it wasn't so unbearably oppressive. There's a bit at the end from the author about how the book came about, and how it's a collection of stories he wrote when he was first beginning. It's a very angsty, fire and brimstone collection.

I really don't recommend this one at all.

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I temporarily reopened Middle Earth Journal when Newshoggers shut it's doors but I was invited to Participate at The Moderate Voice so Middle Earth Journal is once again in hiatus.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Losing In Iraq

Over at Chuck for... I spent some time on the issue of "Winning" as an unconvinced sort, this over here is the other side. What is it that constitutes losing in Iraq? The Republicans are pretty clear that if the Democrats prevail and we withdraw, we lose. Withdraw = defeat. I can get the metric of leaving when the Republicans don't want us to is a Republican defeat, but they evidently want us to take it as something more.

Sainted Gen Petraeus was willing to put Al Qaeda in Iraq numbers at something in excess of 1,000. That is quite a few trouble makers with access to military hardware and munitions. It is not a credible fighting force, it cannot take and hold ground. It is really no more than a police matter. Whatever else it is, Al Qaeda in Iraq cannot take over the government. Nobody paying any attention could manage to "lose" to that bunch.

There is talk of our exit leading to a failed state. This is actually said with a straight face - failed state - as though what is in existence now is somehow successful. The government in Iraq is rated one of the most corrupt in the world, Republicans can rightfully point to that success The government is representative of a fraction of the country, some self-excluded, some excluded but it is not a government of Iraq. We have now armed and trained Sunnis, those at most danger of genocide, so they will now be somewhat difficult to just eradicate.

An explosion of violence is possible. The question being whether such a spike of violence would be in fact worse than the steady drip, drip of violence today. It is an unfortunate sort of measure to take, but factually the difference between 5,000 victims over 5 years and 5,000 over a month is immaterial. The pile of bodies at one time certainly looks worse in a short period, it is still the same pile. I have a natural aversion to being heartless in expression, but dammit, dead is dead.

The very latest version of loss is Iran having great influence over Iraq. I have a news flash for those making that argument, they already have it. Our President sneaks in, the Iranian President roams the streets to cheers, flowers, and kisses. A failed Iraqi offensive against the Sadrists is saved by a ceasefire mediated by the Iranians - not us. The plain fact is that Iran has sheltered the Shia from Saddam and from us, now. We opened that door thrice, once by invading Iraq, once by failing to secure the country after Saddam's fall, and once again by poking the Iranians. There is finally the fact that Iranians are Persians and Iraqis are Arabs and despite some physical similarities they are not anything remotely the same nor particularly fond of each other. Iraq will not become an Iranian colony.

If the Republicans must declare leaving a loss, then I'll go along with it. I'm much more fond of reality than the words used to describe it.


text:
Ronnie Fitzgerald

" The inspiration for my work is all around me. The streets and laneways of the town where I live and work Clonmel in County Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland. The mountains that surround me the villages and towns that I ride through each day just observing and recording in a place that I love"
Ronnie Fitzgerald exhibits regularly and has had a number of solo shows as well as taking part in group exhibitions.He has been commissioned in both the public and private sectors,and has work in public and private collections throughout the world.

Image Slievenamon from the Comeragh Mountains (Diptych)
Oil on Canvas