Comments on: 5 items

By: Roxanne S.

Roxanne S. — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:19:01 +0000

Alison,

Thanks for posting the link to the interview here! It got such great traffic immediately after you did so! I’m glad your readers enjoyed it!

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the discussion about the photos, but those in the interview were taken by a close friend of mine, Lokchi Lam, an independent Chicago photographer. Glad y’all enjoyed her pics!

Roxanne

P.S. We didn’t have to do anything to get Alison to “look smart”; she exudes intelligence without cue!

By: Kate L

Kate L — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:08:45 +0000

Here's an interesting story from another not exactly liberal area of the country. Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson has vetoed a restrictive anti-abortion bill that the state legislature had approved and sent to him for his signature. This comes two days after the governor of Nebraska signed a restrictive anti-abortion bill into law. Parkinson, a former chair of the Kansas Republican Party, became a Democrat to run as former Governor Kathleen Sebelius' lieutenant governor in 2006. Sebelius is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama Administration. Here is the link to a Topeka Daily-Capitol newsstory on the veto.

By: Kat

Kat — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:04:29 +0000

Yeah, it’s at Cal State Sacramento…Sacramento’s not exactly a liberal area…

Well, hey, throwing fruit onto the stage would be historically accurate!

Jealous of your beautiful spring day. It’s raining and cold here. Sick of it.

By: hairball_of_hope

hairball_of_hope — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:29:50 +0000

@Kat (#44)

It was Act 2, not sure which scene #, I was listening to the live broadcast over WQXR, so I’ll assume you’re correct that it was scene 9.

Palin as Queen of the Night? Depending on one’s political persuasions, there might be a very interesting reaction in the house when she is revealed to be evil. No surprise to the lefties, and the righties might start throwing fruit and veggies at the stage.

(… goes back to another beautiful spring day, ACHOO! sniffle, sniffle …)

By: Kat

Kat — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:49:59 +0000

Hairball, was it Act 2, scene 9? I checked the libretto, and actual food items are not mentioned at all. Julie Taymor apparently took quite a few liberties with visuals and such in that production….Which is fine, because all directors do, with Magic Flute. It’s almost incomprehensible, and lends itself well to adaptation.

My voice teacher is currently directing it, actually, at the university where he works, and is setting it in modern times with the Queen of the Night as a kind of Sarah Palin-esque character.

By: jessez

jessez — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:44:38 +0000

I liked the interview–very smart, very funny.

I do however resent the implication that people who are smarter / more ambitious / more together in college go into academia instead of becoming lowly HS teachers

(WHICH is what i do–not for the intellectual glamor, but because i really love the energy, insight, & humor of 14 yr olds)
(& I am not so interested in quoting my interpretation of foucault’s opinion of minutiae)
(which maybe is not the same reason alison’s parents became teachers)

By: hairball_of_hope

hairball_of_hope — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:24:28 +0000

@Kat (#41)

Today’s performance of Zauberflöte was in German, and that’s why it was especially funny when the flying food puppets were tempting Papageno and Tamino, and Papageno (who can’t keep his mouth shut for either talk or food) named all the food floating by and pined for “spaghetti… [pregnant pause] …al dente.” The audience laughed. For all I know, the spaghetti reference might have been in the libretto for this production, Magic Flute productions have taken lots of liberties over the centuries.

It was a good comic performance, the operatic equivalent of a screwball comedy.

By: Kat

Kat — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:38:28 +0000

Hairball–ad lib.

(ad libbing in english translations of spoken dialog of Mozart’s “sprechstimme” operas has been happening a lot lately. At one of the performances of “Abduction from the Seraglio” at SF opera a few years ago, the woman playing Blonchen broke the 4th wall and declared “Here I am, and English girl, speaking to a Turk in German. It’s NO WONDER we can’t understand each other!!!”

By: Kate L

Kate L — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:42:29 +0000

Ever since I returned from the future (the future of May 1st, 2010 to be precise), I've been seeing ways in which this time-line is not the one that I left when the CERN supercollider began operation and dragged me through a rip in the space-time continuum. Did you know that in this world's version of recent history, George W Bush became president after the 2000 presidential election??? There's no trace of President Gore's Green Society programs, and America never became the leader in environmentally-friendly energy and in the fight to reduce global warming. In fact, it's like some politicians here don't even want to admit that the fossil fuel-enhanced greenhouse effect even exists! That's just crazy! Even worse, in this time-line, America seems to be involved in not just one but two wars overseas! Where I come from, America is at peace, and is prosperous and respected around the world, just like when President Hillary Clinton completed her third term in office.

By: hairball_of_hope

hairball_of_hope — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:32:42 +0000

(… off-topic opera alert …)

Hey Therry, were you at the HD broadcast of ‘Die Zauberflöte’ today? I was wondering if the reference to the spaghetti being al dente was in the libretto or if that was an ad lib. I can’t imagine Mozart or Schikaneder writing that in the late 1700s, but maybe they did. The audience laughed at it, modern addition or not.

(… goes back to a glorious spring day with pollen thick in the air …)