A very touristy day in London

After finally getting enough sleep in the right time zone, we started off Day 4 fairly early. We had extra motivation to get moving since the Changing of the Guard was at 11:00. In the winter, the ceremony is only done on every other day, so it was now or never. I had actually seen the Changing of the Guard many years ago on my very first day in London. (We were all terribly jetlagged but our tour guide had her plan -- 3 or 4 different vantage points for viewing the ceremony with runs through the park in the middle so we could time it just right.) For this visit, Matthew and I just picked one viewing point and stayed put. We actually were able to get very close to the fence and had a decent vantage point. Unfortunately, we really didn't know what was going on and I didn't really remember much from that tour guide 10 years ago. Still, it was fun to see the pomp and circumstance. And now we can compare and contrast with the changing of the guard ceremony we happened to see during our trip to Madrid the previous year.

One thing I definitely didn't remember from my previous Changing of the Guard experience was the choice of music that we heard. At one point the guard band was playing show tunes, including one from "My Fair Lady" and "That's Entertainment."





Keeping with the more touristy theme of this day's adventures, we trooped off to the British Museum. I honestly didn't remember much from my previous visit to the British Museum years ago, but it seemed like a good tourist destination. It turns out the fact that I didn't remember anything but the Rosetta Stone should have been a tipoff that this wasn't a must-see on my list. The British Museum isn't necessarily things that are British, but rather are things that the British have collected through many centuries of being a world power. There's a lot of ancient stuff (mummies from Egypt, statues from Greece, pottery from Africa) and quite frankly much of the ancient history stuff at museums doesn't do much for me. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has quite a bit of this type of stuff, too, and I'm not educated enough on the topic to tell you that the British Museum's collection has better ancient stuff than what's right here in town.

So we skipped much of the museum and focued on the highlights. Of course we sought out the Rosetta Stone which was pretty impressive to see in person and to think about what it meant for our understanding of ancient languages and cultures. As we wandered a bit through Greece, we came upon something called the Nereid Monument. I don't recall anything about the historical significance of this specific monument, but what struck both of us was the fact that it was motly reconstructed, right there in the museum. Most of what you see of ancient Greek temples are pieces of the columns or sculptures, but not the whole temple.

We also wandered through the Parthenon Galleries. Of course I recognized the Parthenon as an important Greek ruin, but I didn't immediately realize that a large part of the Parthenon was in London. And I really didn't remember a "Parthenon Gallery" from my previous visit to the museum. Once in the gallery, it looked awfully familiar. Turns out I knew it by the politically incorrect name of the Elgin Marbles.

I think my favorite part of the museum was actually not an exhibit but a part of the museum building itself. In the middle of an atrium or interior courtyard that connects several older buildings is the impressive Reading Room. I have no idea how large the collection is compared to other libraries or reading rooms (certainly it isn't the largest) but to see that many books in one room (3 or 4 levels of books all the way around the round room) was impressive. It was just generally beautiful architecture!



Our final tourist destination of the day was Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms. During WWII London was, of course, heavily bombed within the city and people sought cover wherever they could, including Tube stations. Churchill's cabinet had an entire office complex and bunker underneath some government buildings near Parliament and that complex is now a museum. Much of the museum is largely as it was left at the end of the war, so you can see maps of battles and supply routes, memos, and other authentic hints into what it must have been like. Having never been in a war area, I don't think I'll ever comprehend what it's like to have bombs overhead and trying to lead a country through that, but it was a fascinating look into that part of history.

On our way back to the Tube station from the museum, we walked right past Parliament and I finally saw a decent Christmas tree. Trying to take a photo of it really doesn't do it justice, but I loved that festivity, especially since the city's tree in Trafalgar Square wasn't up yet.





We wrapped up the day with yet another evening at the theatre, this time seeing Solid Gold Cadillac. Since this was a Saturday night, there were fewer choices at the ticket booth, but we thought this one sounded interesting. It was starring Patricia Routledge, most famously known as Hyacinth Bucket in the BBC TV show "Keeping Up Appearances." She was good in the play and it was nice to see a non-musical for variety, but overall it wasn't my favorite of our theatre this year. I guess that just goes to show that you can't trust the big names. Last year we saw a play starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and were very much looking forward to it. Although both of them were good, the play itself was quite boring and I can't even remember the name of it. I think we'll keep picking random offshoots for our theatre adventures as that tends to go better for us and our taste.

Reviewlets.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): B

Widely considered among movie experts as the best film on Jesus' life, and I can sort of see why: The b&w cinematography is beautiful, and Posolini makes a number of unusual yet successful choices in presenting what would otherwise be straightforward gospel story. (Best unusual choice: Having the first 10 minutes of the film -- up through Joseph's angelvisit -- being nearly entirely silent. Worst unusual choice: Having Mary age about 60 years in the time it takes Jesus to age 30.) However, that the necessary didacticism of the Gospels is kinda antithetical to the nature of cinema, and thus using the Gospel of Matthew as a screenplay, without some really creative editing (such as what Gibson did, although admittedly he wasn't any more successful), is never going to lead to artistic greatness. (Allegorical tales of the Gospel, such as the Dardennes' The Son, are an entirely different matter.) Also, I've never seen a cinematic Jesus that's this unlikely to generate passion for Him; when He calls Simon Peter and Andrew and they come a-runnin' to follow, the first thought to cross my mind was, "Why?" If you average Gibson's Passion representation and Pasolini's entirely bloodless (I kid you not) one, you're probably pretty close to the truth.

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The Lion King 1½ (Bradley Raymond, 1964): B

Better than at least half of the "legitimate" Disney 2D releases over the past decade (Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Hercules, and Pocahontas, if nothing else), 1½ follows the Warner-Brothers-esque path paved by The Emperor's New Groove and delivers a sequel that's two parts Bugs and Daffy (if on more friendly terms), and one part Mystery Science Theater 2000. (I kid you not on the latter: Timon and Pumbaa break in on occasion and comment on the film. In silhouette.) The closer 1½ stays to this WB formula, the more successful it remains, and (as in Groove, and as in the somewhat-similar Shrek, for that matter) it's only the requisite Disney happy-ending and lesson-learning elements that drag it down (here, the much of storyline with Timon's family). A bit too much recycled material from the original for my taste, but that’s the downside of self-referentialism, I suppose.

A Dave Eggers cartoon I was thinking about this morning.

This is, of course, directed at no one in particular.

I am being good.

Somewhat surprisingly, I am now almost completely done with "Hundredfold Alleluia" for the Yale contest thing, with, yes, the Soprano part singing exactly 100 Alleluias. (The remaining three voices each sing fewer, I'm pretty sure.) I originally meant for this to be a relatively accessible piece, but a combination of lack of time (difficult and weird is faster for me to write well than easy and straightforward) and the fact that they have a Charles Ives song in their repertoire this season led me to go kind of wack. The first half of the piece is in 5/4 with 3- and 6-measure phrases (rather than 4- and 8-, which are normal), and the second half of the piece is somewhere between Philip Glass and the Taizé Community -- i.e. every 3-measure phrase changes only slightly from the one that precedes it.

I am not sure I am ready to have you listen to it, because I have not yet decided whether it is kinda good or really, really bad. But I will be sending it in tomorrow, regardless.

I'm always glad to see my tax dollars are going to something useful.

Like this.

Concert review of the week.

Pierce Pettis with Chris Lucas (January 21st, 2005), B

Always a good sign, of course, when Mr. Pettis starts of his first of two sets with "This is a song by Mark Heard," and goes, sans break, from "Another Day in Limbo" to "Satelite Sky" (although, yes, Ed is still right that there's never been a great version of this great song). Concert went slightly downhill from there, partially because Pettis is no Mark Heard, partially because there was nothing off of his best album (of the four I've heard), Chase the Buffalo, and partially because his overagressive guitar playing style -- "power strumming" is the phrase that comes to mind -- doesn't really mesh with the Harry Chapin-esque storytelling in his latter albums (as evidenced by the songs in the concert, at least; I haven't heard his last two). Also, some subjects do not need songs written about them, thank you kindly. The concert was still enjoyable, since Pierce is an obviously accomplished songwriter, but I was slightly disappointed. Local opening act Chris Lucas is obviously a far-superior acoustic guitarist to Pettis -- a poor man's Phil Keaggy, nearly -- but while his songs were well-done musically (and with plenty of maj7s, min7s and 9s), lyrically they were eh to ugh. (e.g.: In his final song of the concert, which was admittedly musically intriguing, he used about nine different rhymes for "float" -- which was making me surprisingly tense.)

Woo hoo!

Virtually no Oscar expert had Mike Leigh making their list of the ten most likely nominees for Best Director. And yet:

Martin Scorsese for The Aviator
Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar [sic] Baby
Taylor Hackford for Ray
Alexander Payne for Sideways
Mike Leigh for Vera Drake

Similarly for Best Original Screenplay, where Mr. Leigh also received a very out-of-the-blue nomination. (The third Vera nod was for Imelda Staunton in the Best Actress category, but that was widely expected.) Good job, Academy.

Also, nearly as good, my man Michel Gondry received a Oscar nomination, although he pretty much backed into it.

Oddities.

So toward the end of last year, a local sports talk radio host made a deal that whichever school's fans donated the most bikes to Toys for Tots by the end of the year, he would sing their fight song every day for a week. For reasons unknown to me, U. of Kansas was the big winner, so a couple weeks ago, I got to hear this (tone-deaf) host attempt to sing the Kansas fight song. I'll admit that the music is pretty okay, but not only are the lyrics strange for spending more time on the other (then) Big 8 schools than on Kansas itself, the song mentions all other seven schools except the Cyclones. Are we not owed just a little of respect, Kansasians?

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I know, I know, there's a whole lot of competition, but...
...I'm still convinced that the new Spike Jonze-directed Bjork video is the wackest Bjork video ever. And the wackest Spike Jonze video ever. I'm serious. Christopher Walken flying in the air makes a whole, whole lot of sense compared to this.

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Thought that never crossed my mind until yesterday.
I'm pretty confident I've never seen any of the Carson-era "The Tonight Show", except for the dozen clips that are played over and over again.

Sundry.

I had a job interview yesterday (which went quite well, I thought) with a Episcopal church to be their administrator. I mention this primarily to relay this question I was asked: "So, Matthew, I see that you're a film critic. What did you think of The Passion of the Christ?" (They seemed pleased enough with my not-completely-positive answer, or at least with my defense of it.)

This is the third interview I've had at a church during my on-and-off searching for a different job, and it's always a little odd for me to not know where the congregation I'm interviewing with falls in the fundamentalist-to-Unitarian spectrum. (There are conservative churches in liberal denominations and, although more rarely, vice-versa.) In this case, though, I had a pretty good idea that this congregation was conservative-to-moderate (as I am), just because no ultraliberal church (and certainly some Episcopal churches are) would have this on their marquee: "BE AN ORGAN DONOR -- GIVE YOUR HEART TO JESUS." (That's one of the better of those pithy one-liners, I must admit.)

Also, one of the interviewers mentioned offhandedly that some of other candidates they'd interviewed didn't know what a liturgical year was. Um.

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Weather permitting, this is what we are doing tonight.

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And you thought Richmonders couldn't handle an inch of snow.

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Ed, thank you for your offer of scanning in 300-odd pages, but I have a better solution. I hope. We'll see.

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I am looking for a text that is (a) religious (specifically Christian; not specifically from the Bible), (b) not copyrighted (e.g. the NRSV would be a no-go), (c) could be set to music (without necessarily being poemic), and (d) has not been set to music two million times prior.

A return to the London Tripologue -- Day 3

Let's see if I can remember what we did on our trip to London...

Although this was Day 3 of the vacation, last night was the first night we had slept in London. Neither of us got any appreciable sleep on the airplane so when we finally did get to sleep last night we did plenty of it. I think we skipped right past breakfast today and went straight to lunch.

We again picked up theatre tickets at the Half Price Ticket Booth and planned our evening before we had planned our day. Today's production was "Romeo and Juliet" -- got to get some Shakespeare into a London trip, right? This, however, was not to be typical Shakespeare. More on that later.

With our morning well behind us and our evening all planned, we set out to be good little tourists with our afternoon. We decided on the London Transport Museum over in Covent Garden. I had seen a brochure for a special exhibit on the Covent Garden Flower Market. If you've seen "My Fair Lady" at all (and if you know me, you know that I love that musical) the opening scenes take place outside St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl at the flower market so of course this exhibit piques my interest. Turns out the exhibit was a very small gallery of some photos and history of the flower market along with a video from the '50s or so. While I had been hoping for a larger exhibit, I spent quite a long time in there reading all the history. Matthew spent a long time on the bench in the middle of the exhibit.

The transit museum itself is also kind of fun and interesting so we wandered around there a bit, too. The little kid in Matthew came out as he played with all the exhibits, including driving a bus and collecting stamps for all the checkpoints on our map.



On our way out from the transit museum, we saw a carousel in Covent Garden for the holidays. I really don't remember where my love of carousels came from, but I'm a total sucker for them. While this one wasn't as artistic as the antique ones I so adore, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride a European carousel. (Here's a quiz question: which direction do European carousels turn?) I had actually passed up this opportunity during my semester in London. During Easter, there was a carousel in Covent Garden (probably the same carousel) but as a starving college kid in an expensive city I passed on riding. This time I promised myself that, even though the pound exchange rate was hideous, I wouldn't pass on things like that because they were relatively expensive. So, I bucked up the 4 dollars and left Matthew on the platform to take photos.



With just a couple of hours until our theatre time, we headed off to Oxford Street to do a bit of shopping. We hit the other big department stores -- Marks & Spencer and Debenhams -- as well as a few smaller stores along the way. Again we took in the Christmas decorations. Most of the good lights were on Regent Street, one of several upscale shopping streets in the area. Apparently this is the big place to see Christmas lights in London, and has been for years. The display was based on "The Incredibles" so it felt a bit commercial, but it was still fun to see the different style of Christmas decorations.



I would have liked to look at the lights longer, but alas, it was time to head off to the theatre. We knew from reading the reviews that this would be an unusual production of Romeo & Juliet. After all, the troupe performing it was Icelandic (although we were assured it would be performed in English) and it would include the trapeze. However, it was a bit more out there than we had expected. The characters continually lapsed into Icelandic and the other actors would shout "English!" It was kind of funny at first, but grew quite old. They predominately did this whenever the characters were particularly emotional, especially angry, which actually worked well at first; it just continued too long. For Juliet's nurse, they had an overweight man play the part in bad drag and at one point he came out on stage buck naked with only his hands covering himself. Not quite what I'd want my children in the front row to be seeing.

Now lest you think I dislike everything avant garde, I thought the trapeze and acrobatic stuff worked well. I've actually seen several Shakespeare productions that used similar devices and they can be good. After all, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter can get a bit burdensome and the acrobatic artistry brings you into feeling the action more than focusing on catching all the words. Overall I walked out of the theater thinking it was an interesting evening. But it was definitely a weird Romeo & Juliet.

Contest of the week.

Hello. I am going to quote a few grafs from today's Richmond Times-Dispatch. You are going to guess just how many inches of snow it was that caused these problems. Thank you.

"A fast-moving midday snow transformed Richmond-area roads...causing scores of wrecks and paralyzing traffic....

"Afternoon traffic was stymied on and near Interstates 95 and 64 and the Downtown Expressway, with more than 300 accidents reported between noon and the evening rush hour, Virginia State Police said.

"About 22 motorists were injured in those crashes, though none of the injuries was serious, Sgt. Kevin Barrick said....

"Henrico County police reported about 1:30 p.m. that they had still not been able to respond to about 60 accidents because of road conditions and the volume of accident reports.

"One of the southbound lanes on the Boulevard, between Norfolk Street and The Diamond, remained closed last night after a pickup truck struck a fire hydrant. The crash caused an underground water main to rupture, leaving the section in danger of collapsing."

Music contests.

They're updated on the right-hand side of this page. And supposedly I'll be finding out tomorrow how I did in this one.

Speaking of music selling and such, I've sent off another piece for submission to my contact at GIA. This one's an arrangement of "I Need Thee Every Hour," which, since the music's always sounded a bit cheery to me for the plaintive, longing lyrics, I minored it. (The second verse is more chordally normal, although the key signature is messed up, and the third verse is a combination of the normal chords and the minor chords I invented.) Anyway. I like. And so better you. (Normal MIDI-related problems abound, such as ignoring my fermatas in the first two measures and not rit.ing and a tempoing when it ought.)

Cars.

Best Concept Car at the Detroit Auto Show:
Toyota FT-SX

Concept Car at the Detroit Auto Show Most a Ripoff of the Element, Which Means That Yeah, I Like It:
Ford Fairlane

Concept Car at the Detroit Auto Show So Wack That Even I Wouldn't Buy It:
Ford SYNus

Actual, Non-Concept Car at the Detroit Auto Show that I Would Most Consider Buying, Despite Not Being a Truck Person:
2006 Honda Ridgeline

Five or Six Cars I Am Most Likely to Purchase When I Replace the Accord in a Year or So:
Chrysler 300
Dodge Magnum
Honda Accord
Honda Element
Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix

Seven More Cars That Are Not Yet Out of the Running:
Chrysler PT Cruiser
Nissan Altima
Pontiac G6
Scion XB
Suburu Legacy
Toyota Camry
Toyota Prius

Garden State (that guy from "Scrubs," 2004): C-

(Spoilers, but you don’t want to see this film anyway. Except I think Lisa already has. And I think liked it. Sorry Lisa.) "If a gun is on the mantle in the first act," the great playwright Anton Chekhov once supposedly said, "it must go off by the third." What this film is is 125 guns onstage with none ever being fired. Every 30-to-60 seconds Zach Braff introduces some quirky or unusual fact about one of his characters (invented "silent velcro," collects Desert Storm Trading cards, had a pendant with a try-to-get-the-ball-in-the-hole game as the "jewel," made a quadriplegic because a faulty dishwasher, drives a WWII motorbike with a sidecar, wears a suit of armor to work -- and I'm only scratching the surface here, people). Nearly all of these could have been interesting if looked at in some detail and thus had some impact on The Story At Large, but nearly all of which are dropped 30-to-60 seconds later, never to return, and replaced by Next Idiosyncratic Fact. I mean really. Braff’s early emotionless lethargy (as an actor) is explained, but it’s still daft; I can’t stand dramatic acting that requires being completely emotionless in the face of, well, everything (see also everything Clive Owen’s ever done, except maybe Closer, which I haven’t seen). Peter Sarsgaard wasted (he’s better in just the previews for Kinsey [which I don’t intend to see] than he is here). Jean Smart good in a stupid one-scene role. Natalie Portman makes the main woman protag more three-dimensional than she has any right to be by accentuating both her quirky attractiveness and the fact that she is totally, completely messed up, which leads to a big problem when the okay bittersweet ending is superseded by a completely happier-than-happy ending which, given the states of the two leads, c’mon. I did not like this movie.

The cutest baby picture ever.

I mean it.

"Good for you, not being bound by the recommended age" (or "Girls, Lisa, boys kiss girls").

I have not just spent my entire lunch break playing what must be the funnest Internet game in the history of Internet games, in which I did not complete all eight levels with a score of 1210. Because of course I would not have played a game that is on the website of the Lifetime Network. Because that would not be at all manly. Even if it were the funnest Internet game ever.

Fun women's basketball fact of the week.

Excluding the game that they played against each other early in the season, the Iowa and Iowa State women basketball teams are a combined 23-0. The wrestling teams, on the other hand, and again discounting the head-to-head contest, are a middling combined 11-0.

Handbellists please explain.

So I am at the mall (the Apple store, obviously), and Kim and I just came out of a department store. In this store, we saw the following sign:

BELL RINGERS
The Perfect Holiday Gift
50% Off

Below this sign were...no, not handbells. Bracelets. Later we saw the same sign, and it was above...socks.

We do not understand. Help please.

Poor headline of the week.

I mean really.

Sundry.

For the past three years, I haven't had any trouble deciding what was my favorite music single of the past 360-odd days (listed on the right-hand side of this page, although the musical link for the first song is wrong): "Hey Ya!" is a pop masterpiece, "Fell in Love with a Girl" is a perfect rock haiku, and "Frontier Psychiatrist" is undoubtedly the greatest song ever built entirely off samples.

This year, though...I don't know. Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" has a wonderful melodic chorus and a lovely wack opening couple dozen bars (in that it's a completely different tempo than the rest of the song), but it's kind of repetitive. Also, the bridge is kinda eh. And other than "Take Me Out," I can't think of any pop song from this year that I've fallen in love with. (I couldn't even manage my annual guilty pleasure with Eminem's latest single, as I wasn't fond of either of his songs to hit this year's airwaves.)

So. Help. Point me to singles I may have missed that are awesome.

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This is an important article for all who are concerned about race politics and the future of America.

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Ha ha. No, somewhat more seriously, at a legitimate publication, George Will (o'er here) makes an interesting argument about mathematics and Roe v. Wade. The money paragraph: "How is that demarcation [of trimesters] grounded in the text, structure or previous construings of the Constitution? Ask yourself: What would constitutional law pertaining to abortion be if the number of months in the gestation of an infant were a prime number -- say, seven or 11? That the court spun different degrees of abortion rights from the fact that nine is divisible by three reveals that whatever the court was doing was not constitutional reasoning."

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Um. So a little birdie told me that Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans made the year-end top ten albums list in (of all places) GQ. Not to mention the top ten list of one of the Rolling Stone critics (fourth down). I am not sure what I think of this.

Elf invasion

Normally when I take advantage of my more generous vacation policy and leave Matthew home for a few days while I travel, he watches a few foreign films, plays on the Game Cube, and washes the dishes about an hour before I arrive home. This time, however, I think Matthew got together with a few Christmas elves and together they invaded our front yard. I have always loved houses decorated with Christmas lights and here in Richmond we always go on part of the "Tacky Lights Tour". Now, I have a small slice of that right here at home!!!



Of course, driving up to the house after a week away and seeing random stuff in the yard (not lit up) is enough to give someone a heart attack...



Matthew and his elf friends also ensured that I had a bit more Christmas inside the house (as if I needed more, but I always want more) with a train to go around the tree. We had always had LGB trains growing up (actually, they were all my brother's, but I played with them too at Christmastime) and now I have my very own to go around the tree. What a very Christmasy set of Christmas presents from Matthew!

Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004): B

Hi. So I am going to try again to write reviewlets of films I see. But it probably won't last long. But here is my first for 2005. But anyway, Soderbergh, as always, does such a masterful job at flow (no one is better at getting timings right) and creating the requisite vibe -- good thing, as the same sucky screenplay directed by almost anyone else would be a C (or probably a D+ if you ditch the awesome celebrity cameo(s) at the three-quarter mark): the events on screen fall apart the moment one slightly considers their plausibility, and Roberts/Clooney giving their version of the story at Toulour's house -- ick. (It does not remotely make the sense.) Like last time, Mr. Grace almost steals the movie in a 20-second role; good job, Topher.