Sunday, 23rd of December, 2007
It's always nice to hear great Bach tunes like Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light sung in German, as well as the other works from that era that they performed. A couple small pieces from the 20th century provided some other perspectives for this performance, I suppose, but I'm glad the last piece, Die Weihnachtsgeschichte by Hugo Distler, was extremely good in spite of it being modern. I liked how it was pretty much in the form of Lessons and Carols that you would get at a good Christmas worship service - but the fact that all the Bible verses were a) chanted and b) in German made it four times as interesting. I've hear those verses many times each Advent season so hearing them in German definitely allowed me to review German vocabulary from high school. In between the Christmas lessons, they performed arranged verses from Lo, How a Rose (in German, of course). The arrangements were very good - applying the voices, often in a fugal pattern, in an extremely effective way.
I have not enjoyed a vocal music concert like this in a very long time!
Friday, 21st of December, 2007
I went to the Moolah Theatre for the first time tonight. It is known in town for being the hip theatre with leather loveseat and couch seating, and being generally a very pretty building inside and out. All that is true, though we sat in the balcony and found it to be really nice too, and with the screen angled the way it is you probably get the best view and sound from there.
Speaking of sound, I believe this is the only theatre in town with a proper sound system - probably enhanced by the natural acoustics of the Moolah. I've almost got used to the junk they put in the big chains here. It's doubly fortunate for me tonight because we were watching Sweeny Todd - and now I insist you have to watch that movie with good sound, since it's a musical. And yes, Johnny Depp can sing.
Speaking of the movie, my first comment is that there is a potentially disturbing amount of blood in this movie. It was further enhanced by the absence of red everywhere else in the dark movie - just one of many very elegant artistic touches. If you can get over the blood, I think it's an excellent movie, and I liked the implementation of a modern musical movie, though I have never actually seen the real musical so I may be missing out. I liked what I saw though.
Wednesday, 19th of December, 2007
Monday, 17th of December, 2007
Thursday, 13th of December, 2007
Thursday, 6th of December, 2007
Tuesday, 4th of December, 2007
Every time I have tried to log into Facebook to pull someone's contact information for a manager, I get a nasty "Blocked" screen from the corporate firewall, indicating that it is a "Personals/Dating" website. Please - I have yet to even hear of anyone getting hooked up on Facebook. Though I will admit that opening up Facebook in the workplace could result in significant productivity loss for certain people. However, I find it strange that people never seem to have a problem pulling up Sports Illustrated.
Smart managers would use Facebook to research job applicants. Recruiters should use it to find candidates before they even graduate from college. Until that becomes a bit more accepted, I guess I'll just have to do all that at home.