Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 9:51 pmLust by KMFDM. (Which is in German, aside from the single word baby as in baby sei mein.)
Baby ist richtig Neudeutsch.
I started reading Atwood's Oryx and Crake over the weekend and am finding it equal parts engrossing and annoying. It's too bad half of it takes place when the protagonists are school age given that the prose reads like she hadn't spoken to an actual teenager for at least thirty years before writing it.
Regarding Quiet Flows the Don: it's ridiculously grimdark.
I mean, I thought that when it began with a pregnant woman being trampled to death by xenophobes, it was establishing a tone. Turns out, it was just giving us a bit of light amusement before things got dark.
Recently, for example:
- one of the heroes raped a young woman
- as a result, she was publically shamed and humiliated (as the characters all agree, if a bitch isn't willing, a dog won't mount it, so there's no such thing as rape)
- the rapist demanded that the victim's father hand her over to him because not even the dogs would take her now that she's degraded herself - he's offended when this isn't recognised as the generous gesture of remorse that it's intended as
- the victim's father chased the rapist out of his house, and then set the dogs on him. Because this is QFtD, the dogs are brutal savages who habitually try to tear off the legs of passing women
- as a result, the rapist has had to strangle a dog to death with his bare hands.
This isn't a gradually building cycles of violence, either - it takes up less than a chapter.
Over a hundred pages in, and so far there's no discernable plot. It's just detailed descriptions of people being horrible to one another for no particular reason (mostly involving rape).
Rewatched a bit of a terrible Malayalam movie called Manjil Virinja Pookkal to try to make sense of the villain's character. It makes no sense whatsoever. Got disgusted with the ridiculously pathetic plots of most Indian movies, now watching and listening to an old Malayalam movie song called "Ragendu Kiranangal." It's from a movie that I hope has a more realistic plot, even though I don't really expect to watch it anytime too soon either.
[when I tried doing this over on the old board, I found that #4-#~25 was pretty difficult to sort out. Any serious list needs to have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. But the other seven could be anyone out of Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Dvorak, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Shostakovich or Vaughn-Williams... assuming that he hasn't opted for Ravel, Satie, Grieg, Lully, Boccherini, Ives or Purcell, and that he hasn't gone with a post-common-practice 20th century composer (Cage, Reich, etc), or a classical/jazz composer (Gershwin, Ellington), and assuming he hasn't gone for anyone prior to the common practice (Leonin, Perotin, Machaut, Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Tallis, Palestrina, or Gesualdo). Or someone I've missed?]
Any time I try to make a list of favorite composers (or God forbid, a list of favorite classical works) I find myself running out of places on the list. So many of them are "indispensable" in my mind, although I admit I am less familiar with classical music from the last 50 years or so (this book specifically focuses on 17 composers from Monteverdi to Bartok).
HourouMusuko wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 12:51 pm
Any time I try to make a list of favorite composers (or God forbid, a list of favorite classical works) I find myself running out of places on the list. So many of them are "indispensable" in my mind, although I admit I am less familiar with classical music from the last 50 years or so (this book specifically focuses on 17 composers from Monteverdi to Bartok).
Oh, Bartok, I knew I'd forgotten someone in that list. Also, of course, Brahms. And Mahler.
Oh, the write-up I'd seen said it was his top 10.
Top 17 from Monteverdi to Bartok I'd guess he'd say... Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Debussey, Mahler and Bartok? ...Marks out of 17? [I'm assuming Stravinsky and Schoenberg are after Bartok in this chronology]
[Most likely deviations from that: drop the more populist Schumann, Chopin and/or Tchaikovsky, in exchange for Rimsky-Korsakov or Scriabin? Or (if he's really pleased with himself) Ives? Drop Vivaldi for the less popular Lully or Telemann? Or, contrariwise, maybe drop Liszt to find space for Dvorak?]
Listened to the beginning of the first video here and here and tried to identify words I don't already know in the transcript. Dari is so much fun to listen to!
Been reading a lot of JLA comics this week (the late 90s-early 00s series) and remembering why I have such mixed feelings on Grant Morrison. All of his stories are weird, which can be fine--the Justice League needs to run into the cosmic periodically--but sometimes his stories are just weird for the sake of being weird, and that doesn't inherently make them good. And I'm not sure Morrison has ever realized that.
I've been on a classical music binge lately. Salmoneus's piece about classical composers is my main guide, and I want to thank him again for all this work. For example, Beethoven's Egmont Overture is great (it's more condensed than a symphony, and more easily accessible to a beginner), and I would never have heard it without him.
I've re-watched Amadeus, and grabbed Mozart's Requiem on CD. I know, I'm starting from the end, whatever. I love the first half, but my interest seems to decline after the "Lacrimosa"... is it because it wasn't in the film? or because I know it's not actually by Mozart?
Last edited by Ryusenshi on Tue Feb 05, 2019 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:23 am
I've been on a classical music binge lately. Salmoneus's piece about classical composers is my main guide, and I want to thank him again for all this work. For example, Beethoven's Egmont Overture is great (it's more condensed than a symphony, and more easy accessible to a beginner), and I would never have heard it without him.
Thank you! And well done!
I've re-watched Amadeus, and grabbed Mozart's Requiem on CD. I know, I'm starting from the end, whatever. I love the first half, but my interest seems to decline after the "Lacrimosa"... is it because it wasn't in the film? or because I know it's not actually by Mozart?
Probably both, but also - don't worry, that's what everybody thinks. The later movements have grown on me, but they don't have the same inspiration.
Of course, this is a little weird/unfair. The Lacrimosa is mostly by Sussmayr, probably, whereas the offertorium movements are probably mostly by Mozart, and of course the final movement is just mozart's first two movements with new words. Nonetheless, while Sussmayr did a good job with the orchestration and with finishing the Lacrimosa, I have to think Mozart himself, if he had finished the work, would probably have somewhat rewritten his early sketches for the offertorium and done something more interesting with the sanctus etc.
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:11 pm
Meanwhile: I've been binge-re-watching the first season of Veronica Mars (since S4's coming out soon, with added JK Simmons and Patton Oswalt).
It's... still really good.
OMG there's a new season coming out?
Good to hear that it's still good. I remember absolutely nothing about the plot, though I remember that I loved that show back in the day.
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:11 pm
Meanwhile: I've been binge-re-watching the first season of Veronica Mars (since S4's coming out soon, with added JK Simmons and Patton Oswalt).
It's... still really good.
OMG there's a new season coming out?
Good to hear that it's still good. I remember absolutely nothing about the plot, though I remember that I loved that show back in the day.
Yup, Hulu, sometimes 2019 (probably autumn). Coincidentally, Hulu were showing off a teaser clip at some industry convention today. Don't think it's online, though.
