Linklogification – 24/1/12

Linklogging, we’re linklogging, we’re what’s happening, linklogging.

~ One maze, per day. Some of these really are beautiful.

~ Agility for cats! I will believe it when I see it done under competition conditions.

~ Margaret Atwood writes about “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

From the old linklog:

~ Meet Mr Chicken – the bloke who designs the signs for most fry chicken shops in the country (originally via P’Ahston).

~ Swells’ biography of Thom Yorke

~ “How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” by Philip K. Dick. Bless him, the nutter.

My Progeny, Your Prize

My “Doing Stuff In 2012” campaign began on Wednesday the 11th, with The Royal Opera (under Sir Antonio Pappano) performing “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” at Symphony Hall (and this was actually the start of that wonderful room’s twenty-first birthday celebrations, so hurrah and hooray). This was a concert version rather than staged/costume, which is a bit of a shame in some ways given that I do like a bit of staging, but it looks like theme of the year is going to be “as many operas as possible” and so I’ll take what I can get.

There is a plot, of sorts: Pogner of Nuremburg declares that his daughter Eva will marry whoever wins the Master Singers competition, and (beyond having a preferred candidate) she doesn’t seem to mind abiding by this. From this we can conclude that there’s some sort of inherited mentalism in the family. Eva hopes that the knight Walther will win and indeed he has the invaluable support of the song-writin’ wisdom-spoutin’ loud-hammerin’ cobbler Sachs, but the clear favourite is the irritating town clark and general fussbudget Beckmesser. Both love and musical stardom are to be gained in this high-stakes singathon~! It’s Wagner though, ayit, and as such loooong. We were going for just over five hours and three quarters, although that did include two intervals that were thirty-five minutes each. For some reason. I’m very much a child of my times when it comes to attention span, but I think I held up pretty well and I certainly enjoyed it. The other typical facet of “it’s Wagner though, ayit” was mercifully avoided, with Beckmesser not being made in any way stereotypically Jewish (not that I expect that this does actually happen much, nowadays).

We were due to have the vaunted Bryn Terfel amongst the singists, but he pulled out. I have gathered since then that this is apparently not uncommon, and should probably have been expected. The cast we did have were strong, although I would liked a bit more volume from them in general (from up in the cheap seats they were all melting into the orchestra at times). I particularly liked Toby Spence’s insouciant reading of David, and Wolfgang Koch deeming to emphasise the reflective aspects of Sachs. The ROH chorus made for the (collective) hero of the night, though, bringing great power and doing a fantastic job of the ‘riot’ bit at the end of the second act.
There are a couple more accounts here and here for the detail that I’m not capable of supplying, but rest assured that I enjoyed myself. There’s loads of Wagner at Symphony Hall this year, too, so it won’t be the last time.

Linklogification – 22/1/12

Bleedin’ hell, three weeks in already.

~ ”How To Look At Billboards” by Howard Gossage – something good that I read ages ago and have recently blundered across again.

~ I quite like this timeline of “Doctor Who” – yes, I very obviously am that sad, why even bother asking? (via D-Log).

~ There exists such a thing as “The Apostrophe Preservation Society” (via the Tindal Street Press Twitter).

~ This is probably of very limited interested for anyone who isn’t from Sandwell, but I was initially surprised that the new Wetherspoons that they’ve opened in Oldbury (in what used to be the library) was called “The Court Of Requests”. Here’s the why-fore (with more photos here); the building was originally a debtors court and prison(!), and then a police station prior to becoming the library. I knew none of this. (As an aside, what sort of strange world do we live in where a town can have the lovely Victorian building be the chain pub and the ‘orrible blue/purple plastic thing be the library. “Arse-backwards” is the phrase that comes hurtling to mind).

And, from the old linklog:

~ The day that John Robb (of Goldblade/writing/etc fame) went to Congress.

~ A 45 minute interview with Noam Chomsky about linguistics, from 1977 – it’s very hard to imagine anything like this appearing on the telly nowadays (N.B. – I remember this being good from when I saw it a few years ago, but I haven’t re-watched it recently to confirm).

~ “The Meaning Of Briff” – Douglas Adams & John Lloyd’s “The Meaning Of Liff” (using the names of towns as words for concepts that previously didn’t have one) done with Birmingham and Black Country places.

Linklogification – 15/1/12

The second linklog post of the year.

~ Drinkify matches the band you’re listening to with a cocktail (via Kottke).

~ I really liked this article (that is partly) about Douglas Adams’ plotting (via Andrew Hickey).

~ Annotations for the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack (via Waxy).

Diggin ‘em up from the olden days:

~ Winders – Black Country Windows (this originally came around attached to emails, if I remember rightly, but I think it was put on Scribd by the good people at B:INS).

~ 9 corporate attempts at ‘edgy’ that failed hilariously

~ Tom Ewing’s “A Million Hearts” from 2002 – “To talk about pop the way the investors do – to say that these records are valuable, and that these are less so – is to see pop as a kind of linguaphone course in Taste. A rich and enjoyable course to be sure, one that takes a lifetime, but still a process of learning. To talk about pop the way the wastrels do is to see pop as a journey without a map – a drift, along which you stumble on remarkable beauties, which thrill you and maybe change you but which you always pass by. The way almost all of us see pop is a mixture of both, maybe”.

Linklogification – 7/1/12

The first linklog post of the year.

~ Birmingham appears at no. 19 on the New York Times list of the best places to visit in 2012 – Mancunians of a certain stripe (i.e. not most of them, we are talking about the insane ones) will splutter into their Boddingtons and complain at length about how this cannot be (via CIB).

~ How the potato changed the world (via Kottke)

~ The graffiti of the ancients (via Bookslut).

And some from the old linklog:

~ Get around online licensing agreements with your cat (originally via Bounder).

~ “My Gran Is On Twitter” (originally via P’Ashton).

~ The “Cheer Up The Chatbot” game – Have a little play and see if you can do it before reading the ‘about’ page (originally via Waxy).

2011 End-Of-Year Count: Books

I like books, I do.

2011 End-Of-Year Count: Live Music (Opera)

I have decided that I really, really like going to see an operation. I went to a few this year (even though I didn’t manage to go so far as writing about any of them), and hopefully there’ll be plenty more in The Twelve.

2011 End-Of-Year Count: Live Music (Pop)

I may well actually be getting too old for all of this.

2011 End-Of-Year Count: Theatre

Hmmm. After last year’s completely pathetic performance, I did better for about half a year before falling back into a pattern of not going to any plays. I don’t know why, given that it’s something I do enjoy, but there we are.

Linklogification – 24/12/11

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope everyone has a lovely time. There are a couple of Xmas items amongst this little lot.

~ Dexys Midnight Runners doing “Merry Xmas Everybody” – I didn’t know that they had this one in their repertoire (via We Love Bearwood).

~ HTTP status cats (via…?).

~ Ineractive YouTube singing Christmas Hedgehogs (via Chris Unitt).

And some from the old linklog:

~ All of Charlie Brooker’s “Nathan Barley” bits from “TV Go Home” in one place (originally via Bounder).

~ Half Map Half Biscuit – a map of places named in Half Man Half Biscuit songs (originally via Pete Ashton).

~ Roger Ebert’s “Perform A Concert In Words” – an absolutely gorgeous essay about good writing.