CDs listened to today:

• Various Artists: ProjectHuman, disk 1
• Henri Dutilleux: Tout un Monde Lointain
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever to Tell
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for Piano No. 3
• Fiona Apple: When the Pawn Breaks…
  

CDs listened to today:

• Steve Reich: Drumming
• Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years, disk 3
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting)
• Stephen Scott: Minerva's Web
• Trash Can Sinatras: Cake
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antarctica
  

CDs listened to today:

• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Gyorgy Ligeti: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
• The Muffs: Blonder and Blonder
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
• The Pixies: Bossanova
• The Distillers: Coral Fang
  

I'm just too cheap!

So I spend a lot of time ironing shirts (OK I try to wear shirts that don't need ironing, not that much time ironing), trying to look professional at work now and then. I absolutely refuse to pay for the dry cleaners to launder and press the dress shirts, it's something like $7 a week! I mean, it'd be nice if I could save the time (not that much time, I still have to drag myself back and forth to the cleaners), but hey, that's $350 a year!

CDs listened to today:

• Elvis Costello: When I Was Cruel
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spae
• Garbage: (eponymous)
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Morton Gould: StringMusic
• Kassav': Majestik Zouk
  

CDs listened to today:

• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Henri Dutilleux: Tout Un Monde Lointain
• XTC: Oranges and Lemons
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for Piano No. 1
• Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
• Alban Berg: Chamber Concerto

CDs listened to today:

• The Distillers: Coral Fang
• Steve Reich: Different Trains
• Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years, disk 2
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting)
• Salvatore Sciarrino: Infinito nero
• Train: Drops of Jupiter
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5

CDs listened to today:

• Pink: Missundaztood

When did football take over our holidays?

This Thanksgiving, there will be three NFL games, then the rest of the weekend will be filled with college games, capped off by the rest of the NFL Sunday schedule. When I was a kid, the only NFL game on the holiday was the Detroit Lions game, and I don't really recall all those Friday college games, either. I know I sound like a sad case, complaining about the good old days, but really, can't we enjoy our time together without a TV blaring away?

You know, some bands just don't get enough credit.

Here's some video of The Hives, an amusingly obnoxious and fun-loving bunch from Sweden who just deserve to be heard:

CDs listened to today:

• Elliott Carter: The String Quartets, disk 2
• The Futureheads: (eponymous)
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Henryk Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
• Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Peter Lieberson: Piano Concerto
• Bob Mould: Workbook
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

CDs listened to today:

• X: Los Angeles/Wild Gift
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for Violin
• Peter Apfelbaum and the Hieroglyphics Ensemble: Signs of Life
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
• Robert Russell Bennett: Symphonic Songs for Band
• Elvis Costello: All This Useless Beauty
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything

CDs listened to today:

• Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years, disk 1
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting)
• Joseph Schwantner: In Aeternum (Consortium IV)
• Touch And Go: I Find You Very Attractive
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Henri Dutilleux: Tout Un Monde Lointain

CDs listened to today:

• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
• Edith Piaf: The Very Best of Edith Piaf
• The Distillers: Coral Fang
• Steve Reich: The Desert Music

I have an enormous collection of vinyl.

I'd really love to digitize everything and make it easier to listen to on the go, not to mention reduce the amount of music hardware (OK, stereo equipment) I have around the house. But it's so complicated to manage the whole thing, what with connecting the stereo and the turntable to the computer, recording the sounds on the computer, editing, cleaning up the transient noise, burning to CD, and converting to MP3s. Still, I miss more than a few of those recordings.

After all that ruminating I've been doing, I was surprised to learn that a colleague of mine actually digitizes records professionally as a second job. It's $15 per disk! So maybe I'll keep dreaming of doing it myself?

(edit: Done! As of April, 2013.)

I used to love this old video.

It's from the 80s and it's before budgets were big and so only the creative ones made you notice since they were all made on a shoestring. This homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is from Landscape, and they were never to be heard from again. And yes, the song is called "Norman Bates".

CDs listened to today:

• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Elliott Carter: The String Quartets, disk 1
• Future Sounds Of London: Dead Cities
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Henryk Gorecki: Quartet For Strings No. 2
• Jungle Brothers: Done By The Forces Of Nature
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Peter Lieberson: King Gesar
• Bob Mould: Black Sheets Of Rain
  

CDs listened to today:

• Henri Dutilleux: Tout Un Monde Lointain
• World Party: Goodbye Jumbo
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Irwin Bazelon: Brass Quintet
• Anthrax: State of Euphoria
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
• Robert Russell Bennett: Suite of Old American Dances
• Elvis Costello: Brutal Youth
  

CDs listened to today:

• Frank Sinatra: The Best of the Columbia Years, 1943-1952, disk 4
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting)
• Joseph Schwantner: Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra
• Charles Tolliver Big Band: With Love
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material
• Edgard Varèse: Amériques
• Various Artists: Only For The Headstrong
  

Now that the election is over, I want to remember something about it.

Just one thing in particular. As I watched the election returns on TV (in real time for a change, no time-shifting with the TiVo), it was pretty obvious how the results would turn out. So it was easy to prepare myself and pay close attention when Charles Gibson made the announcement: Barack Obama has won the election. It's worth remembering the day that America made a change this significant, electing a man with half African ancestry. It's worth committing it to memory!

CDs listened to today:

• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• Olivier Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise
• The Philosopher Kings: (eponymous)
• The Distillers: Coral Fang
• H. Owen Reed: La Fiesta Mexicana (Frederick Fennell conducting)
  

My old iPod is no longer in decline.

My precious 20 GB, monochrome-screen iPod is, oh, five years old? The battery has been performing poorly for a long while, but now the click-wheel has rapidly gone to the point of utter and total malfunction, rendering the device useless. That puts me in a serious bind. I have an ancient iMac that sports an operating system that doesn't support the current generation of iPods (and it lacks the USB 2.0 hardware that's now required to run an iPod).

And then I found out that the one iPod that has enough capacity to hold my entire music library (over 120 GB as of now) was discontinued by Apple. So I went straight to Amazon and bought one that won't run on my computer! I compounded the problem by mistakenly buying a $76 upgrade package for my operating system that requires version 10.3--and I have version 10.2. So now I've decided to let my finances breathe easily and give up for the time being. The new iPod is secure, if unused, and I'll just live with my tiny little 512 MB iPod Shuffle (which takes forever to load using my ancient USB).

It's just the part of life that happens when you're house-poor...

Here's an interesting note!

I was hanging out with T the other day and I spotted a copy of Anna Karenina she was threatening to read. As I picked it up, my skinflint side noticed the price: $5.00 for an enormous book! It's a trade-size book, so I was expecting a much higher price, but it turns out, there's a discount publishing company, Dover Publications, that prints books that no longer have copyrights. Indeed, even the translation of the Tolstoy novel is an old one that's probably not an active copyright.

Take a look, they have a lot of 19th-century novels for cheap!

CDs listened to today:

• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Alberto Ginastera: Quartet for Strings No. 2
• Jesus Jones: Doubt
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Peter Lieberson: Garland
• Paul Motian Trio: Trioism
  

CDs listened to today:

• Anthrax: Attack of the Killer B's
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
• Richard Rodney Bennett: Concerto For Alto Saxophone And Orchestra
• Elvis Costello: Spike
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Elliott Carter: Quartet for Strings No. 1
  

CDs listened to today:

• Vladimir Ussachevsky: Line Of Apogee
• Various Artists: One A.D.
• Henri Dutilleux: Tout Un Monde Lointain
• The Woodentops: Never Loved Elvis
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Bela Bartok: The Wooden Prince
  

CDs listened to today:

• Frank Sinatra: The Best of the Columbia Years, 1943-1952, disk 3
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto (Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting)
• Heinrich Schütz: Es steh Gott auf
• The Time: Pandemonium
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material
  

CDs listened to today:

• J. J. Johnson & Al Cohn: The Birdlanders
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Peter Liebrson: Drala
• Morcheeba: Big Calm
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• Olivier Messiaen: Quatre Études de Rhythme
• Sam Phillips: Fan Dance
• The Distillers: Coral Fang
• H. Owen Reed: La Fiesta Mexicana (Howard Dunn conducting)
  

I've already voted.

I actually voted a couple of weeks ago. I hate mailed ballots (I'll do anything to avoid mailing stuff--it's pathological), so I arranged to meet T one evening and physically do the early voting thing. She and I have been seeing quite a bit of each other and it seemed like a nice kind of date where we could take a stroll with her dog after. Things didn't go perfectly. It turns out she had signed up for mail-in voting and wasn't eligible to join me in exercising my franchise. But I found that, while the touch-screen machine was slow (you vote, review your votes on the screen, then review the votes on a printout), it was a snap and I felt confident my vote was clearly recorded.

Here's the other thing about why I don't mail in my ballot: I really enjoy the whole deal of going to the polls, saying hello to the election workers, the whole ceremony. I hope they never do away with it.

This is one of my all-time favorite videos.

This classic Volkswagen ad was seen by some as bigoted since it has the nerve to show someone who appears to be part of an ethnic group, but I don't see it that way. Judge for yourself!