Secret Santa

So, I'm going to start listening to NSync's Christmas album, despite groaning at every holiday commercial I see on tv.

Call me a hypocrite, but it's Nsync! What can I do?

Watch the video of the one single from that album here. :)

Or, watch them sing it live wearing matching over-sized beige & brown sweaters on the Disney Channel! Classy.



I'm also secretly planning holiday cupcakes. lol.

A Cutetacular Introdution

Meet our new puppy!

Important opera in the history of censorship

...or so says Wikipedia.

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Shostakovich. Yikes!

Info: though it had a great reception in Russia and abroad after its completion in 1932, it was banned in Russia after an unfavorable article called "Chaos Instead of Music" in the communist newspaper Pravda in 1936. I just read the article a few times for class tonight. From the intro to the article: "The Lady Macbeth review marked an important milestone, signaling the onset of an extended period of severe artistic repression: never before had a Soviet composer been so ruthlessly and publicly denounced.

There's a sex scene on stage during this opera. Why didn't they cite that in the article that banned it other than its use of "musical noise." That would be way easier for me to write about.

Actually, they do mention the sex, but I still have to talk about the music. :)

And all this is coarse, primitive, and vulgar. The music quacks, grunts, and growls, and suffocates itself in order to express the amatory scenes as naturalistically as possible. And "love" is smeared all over the opera in the most vulgar manner. The merchant's double bed occupies the central position on the stage. On it all "problems" are solved... The author has tried, with all the musical and dramatic means at his command, to arouse the sympathy of the spectators for the coarse and vulgar leanings and behavior of the merchant woman Katerina Ismailova. (Pravda, "Chaos Instead of Music", 1936)

Watch a not x-rated version of the sex scene here. (It looks like a rape scene at first but it's not in context.)
Check the Wikipedia here.
Read the libretto here.
Listen on Naxos here.

3OH!3 ft. Katy Perry

This needed to happen. How fun!



I think I should know
How
To make love to something innocent
Without leaving my fingerprints out
Now
L-O-V-E's just another word I never learned to pronounce.

Camping At Home

We don't have electricity in half of our house. That half includes the kitchen. So despite our best efforts at saving at least some of our food using a cooler, we're left with very few condiments that made it in the fridge. We could have easily lost $75-$100 in food.

The power wasn't totally out, so we were hoping maybe it would come back full force or at least that the landlord would send someone out to look at it. But today we gave up and went shopping for food that should sustain us while we're at the house, stuff we won't have to cook, a bunch of not so healthy stuff that we wouldn't normally buy. We were the people we usually make fun of at the store.

I feel like we're camping in our own home. It sucks. I hooked up the coffee pot to heat water for tea, but other than that, everything is cold.


The new "kitchen" (we moved stuff out of the actual kitchen since there's no light.) Fruit, cereal, chips, bread, peanut butter, salsa, pumpkin seeds, spaghetti sauce (for pizza sandwiches.) In the cooler we have cheese, hummus, jar peppers, fruit spread. I think that's about it.



Poor refrigerator... :(

Vote for your fav pumpkin carving!

Holly & I are having a pumpkin carving contest between the two of us. Winner gets bragging rights. Please vote for your favorite!

Pumpkin A: "Head" Cheerleader

Pumpkin B: Haunted scene

Initial Reactions to Lady Gaga's album "The Fame"

I've listened to it once, so these are just my first impressions.

• Well, Lady Gaga is definitely not going to win any awards for lyricist of the decade, that's for sure. Not even of the year, actually. Her lyrics seem pretty mediocre (Boys, Boys, Boys) and very repetitive (Brown Eyes, Beautiful Dirty Rich) with the exception of a few clever songs (Paparazzi, Again Again.)

• I thought she was a poor starving artist before she made it big. Why was she writing about being rich & famous? (Lovegame, Beautiful Dirty Rich)
  

• Paparazzi is cute and catchy as all hell, I'll give her that one.
  

• In the quick listens I've had of her songs, I have yet to hear the evidence of her bisexuality that I anticipated hearing. Some songs are definitely about boys (Boys Boys Boys, Lovegame, I Like It Rough) but if any songs are about girls it isn't obvious. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, but I thought she was so popular in the gay community not just because of her over the top outfits and techno beats, but also because of her bisexuality.

• My music degree ears hear Money Honey as either being in the same key or having the same progression or both of Poker Face. You can sing Poker Face over the top of it and it almost matches up perfectly.