shits and giggles

“This is a super-hyphen. BAM.”
-Byron Tau

Today I saw the OSM perform via closed-circuit television, lulled into a catatonic state by the tantalizing swish of many bows in sync with the tantalizing swish Kent Nagano’s luxurious tresses. That man has the greatest head of hair in Montreal, but all anyone ever kvells about are his conducting skills! Geez. Judging by the appallingly feathered ‘dos I see walking all over this town, it kind of figures.

When I used to think of closed-circuit television it reminded me of public executions, but now closed-circuit television makes me think of Beethoven! Thanks, Kent!

… … …

***Compulsive Purchase Alert***

One of my favorite podcasts interviewed Carl Wilson, a critic and editor for The Globe and Mail, who has published a book called about musical aesthetics called Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, for which he immersed himself in Celine’s music exclusively for several months. Another interview with the poor man:

(the whole thing:) http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/01/10/Celine/

“Celine seemed like a very good example to use because she’s very, very commonly mocked and insulted by the ‘tastemakers’ while having this enormous global audience, millions and millions of people who love her. I wanted to understand what was setting these two groups of listeners at odds with each other and whether that conflict had any bigger social meanings.

“I wanted to know if taste is really innate or if it’s maybe a bit more subconsciously chosen. I wanted to understand viscerally as well as intellectually what’s at stake in taste.

“Because I’m Canadian and lived in Montreal for many years, I’ve always taken Celine’s success a bit more personally than a lot of Top 40 music — I’ve found her a bit more specifically embarrassing and hard to take than most pop stars. So that personal edge seemed to me to give the whole enterprise a bit more grounding than if I’d chosen someone else at random.”

“Someone who seems too open and sincere, I think, is assumed to be unsophisticated. Celine and her songwriters and producers are reaching for a model of sophistication that’s a much more pre-1960s show-biz model, out of the days of supper clubs — although pumped up with modern production techniques. These are matters of taste but they’re also matters of social position. Not necessarily the performer’s social position — because art is such an all-encompassing concern for most artists, it’s completely possible for a self-taught creator to appropriate all the available techniques and tones — but that of the listener.”

I feel pretty old-skool getting my breaking news off of the radio, despite the fact that it’s streaming off the internet. Jim Lehrer’s smooth, sexy voice is running off the tounge-twisting columns of stats and digits with nary a hitch, soothing manic campaign-director nerves. One of the best things about the radio is you don’t have to know what the broadcaster looks like. Ever since I google imaged Ira Glass, I quit messing around with that business for good.

But enough with this democracy shit for a second. The real question: if you could be BFFs with one of the presidential candidates, who would it be?

The guy out there for me is Ron Paul. I’d never vote for him in a million, but if we went out together for a beer we’d hit it off famously. We would have great discussions about deregulation and nonintervention, I would ask him how it was going with the whole gynecologist thing and if that angle was working well with his campaign (and those pro-abortionists! nudge nudge), and then we would burn some bills together to help the value of the dollar go up! Then we would pound some shots.

I would visit Ron up at his country house on Jake Jackson, Texas (where he goes most weekends to avoid “Potomac Fever”). Ron’s wife, Carol Paul, would fix me up a favorite Texas-style family recipe from the fifth edition of the Paul family cookbook that was created for 14th district constituents, or a “Recipe of the Week” from the collection created for his congressional campaign*. We’d try out the infared communication features on our Blackberries (Ron probably haven’t figured out that that baby can do yet) and bleep each other from across the room! I’d end up voting for Obama or Edwards anyway, but Ron would just chuckle and tell me to go back to Canada.

What a dork! lol!

I suppose that if I really wanted to get in on the political social sphere, I should cozy up to Chelsea Clinton. Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton is boring and lame. We would talk a little about her career in hedge funds** and then there would be some awkward silences. The ballet thing (she used to be a professional) would maybe keep us going for a while, but then she’s ask me about my plans after graduation and I’d mistake her for demeaning me and get pissed off.

This is exactly how it’d go.

* This is totally cite-able!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
** What are those things, anyway, really?

Am I the only person who thinks that all of the Nestle Drumstick ads in depanneurs look like eggs?

Delicious frozen eggs.

Some people like to talk about how if they didn’t have to go to work, they wouldn’t know what to do with all of their free time.

Folks, that’s just ridiculous.

For example, here’s my personal list describing how I would fill my time during the day while everyone else was at work:
-cook complicated recipes in preparation for extravagant dinner parties my friends would appreciate after a harrowing day at their jobs;
-prepare impossible and fantastic concerts/performances with to be presented in exciting concert venues to critical acclaim and an adoring fan base;
-Mod Podge all of the flat surfaces in my house/other people’s houses;
-maintain a garden/bonsai tree collection;
-keep up with every periodical in existence (crossword puzzles included);
-take loads of classes in fine arts and textiles;
-read post-modern literature about people in the middle of quarter-life-crises who I could identify with;
-read non-post-modern literature;
-work on my growing mental cache of esoteric information through the study of fencing, origami, harmonica, et cetera;
-see every museum exhibit, concert, play and movie that caught my fancy.

Places that I would frequent, according to season:
-spring: warm benches in the sun in Central Park next to (a) the pond with the toy boats or (b) the Alice in Wonderland statue;
-summer: traipsing the Earth’s distant climes;
-fall: cozy tea nooks with picture windows;
-winter: Straight Down South.

Straight down south. That’s right, kids.

It’s not that hard!
What’s on your list?

Since I don’t have a trust fund or a penchant for rich men, here are my potential get-rich-quick-and-run-while-being-in-denial schemes:
-edit copy (this should be a pinch after growing up in a grammar-Nazi household);
-write articles about things I like and print out 100 copies then send them to 100 different magazines;
-sell foot-fetish paraphernalia over the internet;
-round up as many unsuspecting flute students as possible and teach them until they are blue in the face;
-be the cool substitute teacher (very short term);
-make crafty things and sell them on etsy.com.

I would include my dream of being a waitress, but that has been quelled after my unsuccessful pan-New York search last summer, in which over 60 restaurants rejected my amorous advances.

I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions because coming up with them would require that I think really hard about 2007, which I would rather not do in all of its less-than-greatness. In fact, 2007 was pretty bad. 2008 hasn’t gotten off to the most promising start either. I would like to be positive regarding this situation, but it’s hard for one to concentrate on that during the present moment if you’re losing momentum in your career goals and you have dry skin and no boys love you and it’s winter in North America’s epicenter of whirling icy gusts.