Five male robins were rummaging around in the dead leaves under the front porch and shrub this morning. It looked like they were looking for food. The leaves were flying left and right, and one of them made an angry open-mouthed gesture when another got too close. One guy made a brief dash toward the window where I was sitting and thought better of it. This does not look good, folks. It’s winter. What the hell are the robins doing?

My alma mater got a little cute the other day, sending out a sample admissions essay that they thought would help calm applicants down a bit as the January 2 deadline approached. While most people seemed to think it was just fine, others thought it went over the line. You decide. I think it was classic U of C.

When a big corporation does something right, we should acknowledge it, right? Way back at the beginning of 2009 my trusty Canon A95 started acting funny. Eventually the funniness turned into a permanent inability to take a picture—the image had a magenta cast and bunch of horizontal lines all over it. I kept fiddling with it, hoping it would “fix itself” (yes, I do believe in magic), but also decided to buy a newer model. I ended up with the SX10 IS, which I really like. In late summer I decided to sell the A95′s wide angle lens on eBay, but while I was researching what such things might go for and the A95 in general, I learned about a problem some A95s had with their CCD (the imager): some units supplied by Sony had an issue with the connector, which Canon eventually concluded was not caused by user mishandling, and the company was replacing them for free whether or not the camera was still covered by the warranty (I bought the thing back in 2005). Long story short: talked to a Canon rep, got a free FedEx label, sent the little guy to Illinois, and got a working A95 back two days later. So now I have a nice second camera I can carry around and not worry about anything. (My recent wandering-around-town pics were taken with the A95.) Kudos to Canon. Customer for life here.

Oh, heck: one more testimonial. The Roland Micro Cube is really nifty. I use it with a Yamaha electric violin. You can plug in your guitar if you want. Either way, you can mess around with straight amplification or an array of classic amp decks (JC Clean, Black Panel, Brit Combo, etc.). It’s a gas. Not a lot of power, but enough—it’s really a practice amp. But get this: it runs on batteries, and for a long time (I bought it over a year ago and still haven’t swapped out the rechargeables I put in it). If you need more power, get the bigger model. But this little thing is great just as is.

Okay, that’s enough. Goodbye, 2009.

Addendum 2010.01.20: Turns out the feisty robins are from up north; “our” robins have headed south.

Okay, here’s the joke, recorded ca. 1900 BCE by a Sumerian who shall remain nameless:

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.

Hey, I didn’t say it was the world’s best joke.

Speaking of farts, listen to this snippet from the second movement* of the Haydn I mentioned:

Ah, that good old south German humor. Now, Haydn’s music in general is full of jokes and surprises. But this is a doozy. I’ve heard other conductors play it safe, letting the bassoon play in the usual suave manner (well, as suave as a bassoon can ever get). After all, this is clahssical music. But in this summer of audacity, I must say George Szell got it audaciously right.
__________
*Butt-head: “Huh-huh … you said ‘movement’!”

And today: Jeff Greenfield on the American preference for presidents with unchallenging (i.e., bland, preferably mono- or bisyllabic Anglo-Saxon) last names. Could a George W. Dukakis ever have been elected? George W. Kucinich (or Voinovich)? George W. Deukmejian? A “nation of immigrants”—yeah, so what?

Addendum 2008.10.31: “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama” (posted to YouTube in February ’08) [h/t to Thomas N.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

I finally got around to reading a novel a friend gave me a while back, Beyond Sleep, by the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans. Enjoyed it immensely.

On Sunday I heard live jazz performed at a private home in Washington, DC.
The vocalist Ilona Knopfler was captivating, Steve Rudolph put on a great show on the keyboard, and my friend Victor Dvoskin brought his usual blend of intellect and passion to his accompaniment on the bull fiddle. After the first number, my hard-to-please college buddy, whose dad played jazz in New York City, turned to me and said, “We could be hearing this at Carnegie Hall.” But strangely enough, we were in the airy living room of a Russian émigré couple on MacArthur Boulevard. The afternoon more than lived up to the promise of the previous concert in January, featuring guests from Philadelphia and New York joining Steve and Victor.

Did I mention that this month is use-it-or-lose-it month at my place of employment? As usual, I have accumulated many hours of leave in excess of the number we can carry over from year to year, so, much as it pains me, I am taking time off work in May to the tune of 2–3 days a week. It is so indescribably liberating to be walking down Wisconsin Avenue at 11:00 in the morning, or 2:00 in the afternoon, dropping in to the hardware store or coffee shop. It makes me wonder: What have I turned into?

I still intend to write up a post titled Rhinochromatography. I don’t know why I haven’t got around to it.

Time for a nap.

It’s another thing to use a copyrighted song without permission. And not just any song—John Lennon’s Imagine, the third-greatest song of all time, according to the bible of song, Rolling Stone magazine. By getting on the wrong side of Yoko Ono (and the Lennon boys, along with EMI Blackwood Music Inc.), the producers of the pseudodocumentary Expelled may find themselves on the painful end of a very expensive transaction.

Retribution most undivine, but well deserved.

[h/t to P.Z. Myers]

Addendum 2008.04.24: I should have noted that my natural aversion to such litigation is trumped in this case by the odor level of the product involved and, more importantly, the risk that the film will mislead the gullible on an important topic.

Repeat fifty times and go slowly insane. And what did it trigger? This:

It’s the horn call from the overture to Oberon by some guy named Weber.

Okay, that’s all. Oh, wait: here’s another version of “Welcome Table,” from a Smithsonian collection:

The melodic line is a bit more nuanced. I don’t know which version is more common.

Okay, now we’re really done. I’m gonna sit at the welcome table …

Today it was announced that the legendary British band Deep Purple will perform in the Kremlin this month as part of the 25th anniversary celebration for Gazprom, the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. Attendance will be by invitation only. Possible attendees include Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The latter is also president of the Board of Directors of Gazprom, not to mention the beneficiary of Putin’s nod to succeed him. It turns out Deep Purple is Medvedev’s favorite group, and “Smoke on the Water” his favorite song.

Meanwhile, the head of the Moscow Guild of Markets and Street Fairs, Yevgeny Chivilikhin, was gunned down in an apparent contract killing. He escaped an earlier attempt on his life at the same spot in the summer of 2006 when he stepped inside No. 4 Leningrad Prospect seconds before a bomb went off. Chivilikhin was also codirector of the trade group Timiryazevsky.

Today’s musical tidbits revolve around the Hitchcock classic Psycho. Anyone who’s seen it cannot help but be struck by the soundtrack, composed by the acclaimed Bernard Hermann. As Wikipedia notes, “The screeching violin music heard during the famous shower scene (which Hitchcock originally suggested have no music at all) is one of the most famous moments from all film scores.” Here’s what it sounds like, in case you’ve forgotten:

Now here’s a snippet from a piece composed some forty years earlier:

I think it’s unlikely Hermann would have been unaware of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which has enjoyed enormous popularity over the years. (The clip above features Berl Senofsky with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell; my best guess is that this radio broadcast dates from the late fifties or early sixties.) Hermann’s music is quite different, both in its relentless repetition and the palette of accompanying notes. And yet one can’t help but feel he must have been inspired, consciously or not, by the Prokofiev. (If unconsciously, it would be a case of cryptomnesia—another tip of the hat to Jonathan Lethem.)

For the technically curious, I offer this Q&A about the actual notes used in the Psycho excerpt:

Q: What are the notes or note being played during “The Murder” in the famous shower scene (the violin shrieks)? (from Mr. Bunderfull in Chicago Ill. U.S.A.)

A: The highest note in the violins is an E flat, but the second violins are playing an E natural, and lower voices are playing F and G flat. So basically, the highest note is E flat, but everything from E flat to G flat is being heard. (thanks to Gizm, Texas)

If you like this sort of thing, here’s something similar.

Listen for yourself—first an excerpt from the second movement of Scheherazade (The Tale of the Kalender Prince), then two snippets from the Prisoner theme:

By the way, try typing Scheherazade ten times fast. I must’ve mistyped it five times while creating this entry (I had the broken links to prove it).