Mysteries Abysmal

Ripe peach

Googling "Maxon Crumb" the other day turned up a few pleasant surprises. The ascetic, deeply troubled brother of Robert still lives in the same SF dump as he did in the 1994 film; and as of 2006, he's even mingling with a lady friend. (Although sexual contact still sends him into seizures.) You should listen to this interview with him by SF Chronicle reporter Edward Guthmann. So much intelligence and talent like the rest of his brothers, but you can tell he just wasn't wired for this world. I like those kinds of people. (photo credit: Michael Macor)

Sorta into the wild

Movie review of Blindsight, Chicago Sun-Times, April 11

Giltner house

This is spooky.  A woman writing a book about Michigan hauntings recently contacted me since she found out my family had once resided in the above Tudor. The house was built for an MSU dean in 1924 and his 25 year-old daughter was shot there five times to death by her jealous best friend. The two were apparently licking invitations on a day leading up to her (Elizabeth Giltner) wedding. Of course my family discovered this house's quaint little history after they moved in. So this author forwarded me a ghastly old New York Times PDF article dated Dec.9, 1936:

"I did it on an impulse and don't know why," Lieutenant Mulbar quoted Miss Morgan as saying. "For about a year I've had a frequent impulse to kill. I shot Elizabeth with my father's pistol." 

...

"She is definitely insane and shows no signs of remorse. She would do the same thing tomorrow if she had the chance."   

The killer, Miss Morgan, was hauled off to Detroit where she hung herself in her jail cell.  Needless to say my folks didn't last more than three years in that place. I lived there for less than a year during my transition from undergrad to grad school, and I have no desire to ever find out what room in which the crime took place.

Wednesdays 8-10pm

Cyber Classical's back yo, at least for another 10 weeks. Gerry and I then get the the summer off to mull over our hit show's future; we haven't yet decided if we want to accept syndication offers and all the sneaker deals. Many thanks to DePaul for continuing to let a couple non-students fill their airwaves with classical's latest smooth grooves.  We'll do and play anything, so shoot us an email with a request.  And if you're in the Chicago area and want to come on and talk about something on-topic, we've got a seat for you. 

LvB's rule of three

During the second game of the Final Four last night, there was a stretch of commercials all within a single hour that used snippets of Beethoven's 9th: a Lowe's Hardware advert, a trailer for the new movie Get Smart and that 50-Cent/Vitamin Water classic.  That has got to be a record, trumping the frequent uses of "Take Five" and Bocelli's "Con Te Partiro."  If one's music education came solely from primetime television, wouldn't the "Eroica" theme seem like alien obscurity compared to the "Ode to Joy" chorale?

PLOrk and Windy (city)

College networking Time Out Chicago, April 3-9. The Princeton Laptop Orchestra could very well seem like aliens to traditionalists. They're-a-comin' to Northwestern's Sonic Divergence festival this Saturday, and Bang on a Can follows on Sunday w/ Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche. Time Out's provided some various PLOrk sound samples in the link. 

Beatles in the night

SMB points me the way to this video of Luciano Berio and his wife Cathy Berberian doing a wicked version of the Beatles' "A Ticket to Ride." She starts singing after the 3:00 minute mark, but I really latched onto the shaggy editing and puppet cameos that come before that. Awesome find, Stephen. Also, Justin Davidson notes that the 20 member ensemble Alarm Will Sound will do a live acoustic performance of "Revolution #9," a project way overdue.  Since high school, I've felt that the White Album was da bestest and most colorful album ever made (And I still feel it contains more musical diversity than any of Radiohead's albums).  I may not have listened to Numbuh 9 as much as "Sadie" or "Warm Gun," but its inclusion always put the album in a different class from its rock rivals. 

Where's Shari Lewis these days?

A children's puppet TV show in the Middle East has a young boy repeatedly stabbing George W. Bush to death. I by no means supported the '03 invasion or voted for W in '04, but this stinks all around. The puppet tells the president that the White House will be transformed into a "great mosque," suggesting a mass religious cleansing.  Where children are concerned, you'd think magic tricks would be more appealing than vindictive political messages. Western media does it as well, but at least we try to hide it a little better. And I know that sitting in my comfortable chair in Chicago makes it easy to comment on a way-of-life completely foreign to me, but still. The Telegraph has more.

The O.B.

A few days ago I saw a crappy commercial for Blockbuster.  A woman walks to her mailbox to retrieve her movies when a snoopy neighbor peers over her shoulder. "Oh, I saw that one and they all die in the end," he says, supposedly ruining it for her.  She turns red hot and marches to the brick-and-mortar Blockbuster to exchange it gratis for another film. This little episode reminded me of a passage in Owen Barfield's 1928 literary manifesto Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, a favorite of mine which my grad school was too postmodern to teach. Apart from his slightly condescending tone, I do guard these words:

"The pure prosaic can apprehend nothing but results. It knows nought of the thing coming into being, only of the thing become. It cannot realize shapes. It sees nature--and would like to see art--as a series of mechanical rearrangement of facts. And facts are facta--things done and past." (Chapter 11, "Strangeness")

Dickens satirizes this through Mr.Gradgrind in Hard Times, but Barfield extends the message and is more matter-of-fact. As for Blockbuster marketing execs who assume the worst of their customers, they could use a little straight talk from Owen.    

Overheard in Lansing

Group of college kids behind me at Biggby, commenting briefly on the piped-in music. 

Girl: I do like classical and I have a Vivaldi CD I listen to. 

A dude: It's cool, but I'm more into jazz and especially older blues--like early Eric Clapton.