Good News for Opera Fans

I just received email this morning indicating that once again, the Metropolitan Opera will be shown on movie screens across America. Nashville residents will be able to buy tickets for live and encore performances at both Regal Geen Hills 16 and Regal Opry Mills theatres. I'm very happy to report that for the first time ever, the Met's Opening Night Gala will also be a part of the movie house experience.

On September 22nd, the Met's 125th anniversary season begins with soprano Renee Fleming performing her famous roles from the second act of La Traviata, the third act of Manon, and the final scene from Capriccio. Complete season details are at Fathom Events. Bravo to Met general manager Peter Gelb for making opera more accessible to the masses.

Repulsion

Because I finally saw Roman Polanski's Repulsion the other night, I saw this as much more than just a crack in a wall.

Three Pictures

Six miles from downtown.














Timber!














"Rain Dogs." #1327 of 2122.

Appreciate and accept.

It's gotta be weird to be married to me. A few weeks ago, Joshua asked his mom, "What is it that you love most about me?" I guess it sounds kind of cute to hear a kid ask that. It's a wonderful opportunity for a parent to go on and on about all of the wonderful things that are lovable about him or her. But I cringed a bit to hear it because I remember once asking her the same question. It was before we married. We had only recently gotten back together after a lengthy breakup and I asked her that very question. Cute from a kid, but maybe a bit needysounding from an adult, especially an adult male. "I don't ask you questions like that," came my loved one's reply. Ouch. Lesson learned. Don't question; just appreciate and accept. That's a good way to go about life. Appreciate and accept.

Of course, I'm the type who questions pretty much everything. There's a very analytical part of my brain that peers over shoulders, dominates other more important parts of the mind, and basically just gets in the way. With a smile on my face last night, I asked my wife another ridiculous question. I was joking, but there was probably a bit of truth deep down inside. Out of the blue, I wondered aloud, "Do you think it possible that I might be a jerk?"

"No," she replied, probably wondering where in the hell that came from.

"Well, I was just wondering. I mean, I know jerks who probably don't think that they're jerks. I could be one of them and not know. I feel like I'm a nice enough guy, but it's not like I have any friends to hang out with. There could be a reason for that."

We laughed about it. I made it clear that I was just being silly, but the possibility of its truth festered a bit.

A few years ago, I ran into an old friend at the airport. We used to work together and would go to bars and movies together often. It was cool to run into him but when I suggested that we should exchange numbers, he kind of blew me off. "Just give me yours and I'll call you." I got the subtle message. Still, I gave him my number, knowing that he was just being barely polite enough to keep it as it was, just a random good-to-see-you-again exchange at the airport.

As simple and harmless a moment as that was, it kind of stung, but more to the point, it stayed with me and forced me to question a whole history of relationships. Was I not as cool a friend as I remembered? I was probably analyzing this too much. He was just a guy who had moved on in life, busy with wife and kids and work and bills. Heck, I recall kind of doing the same to a buddy of mine before. We used to be very tight. We were even roommates for several years. Then I met Paige, moved in with her, and pretty much just stopped hanging out with him. It was nothing personal; I just preferred domesticity with a pretty girl to playing pool with dudes night after night.

I'm rambling. Back to the point. I know I'm no jerk, but if there's anyone who might think otherwise, I'll just say this. I'm friendly, but quiet. I'm bookish, but not snobbish. And although I'm on this current kick where I'm quite obsessed with opera, I'm not yet pompous. Maybe sometime soon, my wife and I will be in better financial shape and can spend a bit more time at parties and blogger meet-ups cultivating friendships.

Until then, I can remember to simply appreciate and accept. Too much questioning and analyzing is for the birds.

Thanks for reading. It's well past midnight and time for bed.

Listening to "Die Fledermaus" and feeling moved to know everything about it.

Enjoying some solitude this morning, listening to opera on the television and reading blogs, I perked up to hear the line, "Anything you can do, I can do better." Before today, I only knew that song from a Gatorade commercial featuring Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm in 1997.

I looked around this morning to see just when the song was written: 1946, for "Annie Get Your Gun."

How it fits into "Die Fledermaus," originally composed by Johann Strauss in 1874, I have yet to figure. Despite not knowing the story, I'm finding that this is a very entertaining operetta. It's very playful and obviously this performance I'm hearing took the liberty to take that bit from "Annie Get Your Gun."

And now I'm off to the library to learn as much as I can about "Die Fledermaus," as if Wiki, YouTube, and everything else underneath the Google sun wasn't enough. Apparently, I can get a bit obsessive about music and information.

Have a nice day.

It's what they call a blogger roundup.

Today...

There's a Citizen of the Month who cracks me up.

I visit Tiny Cat Pants to read her "one last thing about Rielle Hunter." Whether or not she's right on the money, I don't care. Everything Aunt B. writes and shares is like a gift from a big brain to a smaller brain. If she was a professor, I'd audit her class just for the benefit of attending.


Virginia DeBolt writes at BlogHer about a blogger who wrote of being (feeling?) scammed by a big company and got sued by said big company as a result. A similar thing happened to a local blogger a year or so ago. The BlogHer post is very informative and interesting. A must-read for those who blog.

There's lots of talk of chupacabras on the Internet today. It doesn't quite fit, but I've got Steve Miller's "Abracadabra" in my head now. "Chupa- My chupacabra / I wanna reach out and grab ya." I know. Lame.

Have a good day. I'm just hanging out in Hermitage, waiting for my ride.

Big words from little kids.

While I had fun teaching the kids the word bioluminescence a few weeks ago just because I think it's cute and funny when little kids use big words, I didn't purposely teach my three-year-old daughter the word solace recently. She did, however, casually (and correctly) drop it in a sentence today at the pool. Her mom and I are big readers, so I guess she got it from one of us. What really got me is that I didn't quite understand what she said at first and asked her to repeat it. She did just that, and followed up with its proper definition.

Yikes!

2008 Georgia Woman of the Year

My wife is known online as ugagrad1995. In the news is another graduate of the University of Georgia from that same year. Named the 2008 Georgia Woman of the Year is Natasha Trethewey. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of English at Emory University.

A nice article about her writing and her relationship with her grandmother is here.

Her books are here.

I read about this at Poetry Hut Blog.

More Van Worries

I'll try not to go all woe is us here, but here's a recent update on how things are going. Any and all advice is certainly appreciated.

A month or two ago, the van started slipping out of gear and we suspected that the transmission was going out. Although we work constantly and spend rarely, we were still caught with no money available to take care of the cost of replacing the transmission. Prices range from a ballpark of about $2,000 for a used one to twice that for a brand new one.

We did our share of worrying and stressing and were blessed and lucky enough to raise some dough from generous friends and family and then we took the van to the repair shop. The owner ran a test and found nothing wrong with the transmission, but did suggest a fix that would run us about $500. We were pretty happy to get such a relatively cheap fix and signed off on the job.

However, the van kept doing the same thing afterward. My wife would drive it and it would slip out of gear at around 30 m.p.h. or so. Now school is starting and we're feeling quite screwed if our only reliable means of transportation fails us. She's the breadwinner of the family and needs to get to her school each day. Josh is starting kindergarten and Ari attends daycare and we need to be able to get them to school each day as well. (My car is also in bad shape, but I'm fortunate to be able to rideshare with friendly co-workers.)

Assuming the van really does need a new transmission put in, does anyone know anyone who would do the job and work out a payment plan with us?

I'm also interested in finding a part-time job (or maybe a well paying job to replace my current one) ideally in the Hermitage area. I've spent the better part of the last hour looking online at civilian jobs in Iraq and I'd honestly prefer to work somewhere slightly closer to home and a tad bit less dangerous. I'm just tired of being poor. As Springsteen sings, I've "got debts no honest man can pay."

My daily view

Brodkey

I spent some quiet time this morning listening to The New Yorker: Fiction podcast. It served as my introduction to writer Harold Brodkey as fellow writer Jeffrey Eugenides read "Spring Fugue."

Hosting the podcast is The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. I'm also reading a wonderful interview with her titled People Are Nearly Getting Hit by Beer Bottles Every Day.

I stopped here on the way home tonight.

Later, my wife and I compared Tom Waits and Bon Jovi concert stories.

She was the more sober of the two of us. This is because I was drinking and she was not.

I remember stating that I wasn't too far gone because I was aware of when I was slurring my words.

Sometimes I am what is known as a loveable fool.

Magic in the Morning

It turns out that my fave New Yorker writer does the Twitter thing. His style of maybe profound, maybe just weird for the sake of weird is perfect for Twitter.

Example: "Boxing raindrops!" Kids can make bad vibes evaporate, or turn the smallest task into torture. Roll the dice, crazy humans: MAKE PEOPLE. 11:05 AM July 27, 2008 from twitterrific 

On Caitlin Rose, American Songwriter Magazine has this to say:

Much has been surmised about what attendance at Loretta Lynn's first teenaged performance might have entailed. Caitlin Rose's Dead Flowers seems answer the question, once and for all. Rose unflinchingly tackles the timeless topics of teenage pregnancy and primate love with an enthusiasm that is, if not completely infectious, to be admired. Singing in an alto at once pure yet deliciously tainted by MySpace and high school ("I make music because I hate homework," she famously opines), Rose manages to infuse such barn burners as "Shotgun Wedding" and "Gorilla Man" with the kind of brio that tends to get ProTooled out of most modern country albums and lovingly delivers a poignantly flat version of the eponymous Stones cover that is enormously effective in a patently 21st century way.

Listen to Caitlin Rose here: http://www.myspace.com/caitlinrosesongs

I've posted it once and I'll post it again.

Forget about the local pretty boy from 1986 that all of the ladies are fawning over. I was the real deal. Never mind that I didn't then (and still don't) know how to play a musical instrument. I had street cred!

And my dad paid good money to the amusement park guy who took this photo for the faux Rolling Stone cover.