Tag: NaBloPoMo

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Chess (original)

I recently went through a few weeks listening to Chess over and over again. This happens every few years when I find a new (to me) recording of the musical, and then I forget about it for a few years until I stumble on another version and the cycle starts again.

I’ve never seen the show. (Update: I finally did!) It took me years to even listen the whole way through. But it’s been on my radar forever. “One Night in Bangkok” was a Top 40 hit when I was around ten. JMS used to open his Babylon 5 convention panels with a music video set to “Nobody’s Side.” The solo songs were immensely popular in my college musical theater classes: The guys who were serious about it all wanted to sing “Anthem” (can you blame them?), and I lost track of how many times I heard “Heaven Help My Heart,” “Someone Else’s Story,” and “I Know Him So Well.”

For those unfamiliar with the show, it’s about the personal rivalry between American and Soviet chess champions and the political machinations surrounding a world chess tournament during the cold war.

Contrast

Chess (Broadway)

One of the things I find fascinating about Chess is that it’s got two very distinct musical styles: timeless classical, and glaringly 80s synth pop, sometimes both within a song. Listen to parts of “Merano” or “Mountain Duet” or even “Anthem” and you’d be hard-pressed to say what decade they were written in. “You and I” sounds like it could be part of a 1930s movie soundtrack. But “One Night in Bangkok,” or “Pity the Child,” or “Nobody’s Side?”

Totally 80s!

After listening to the concept album, the Broadway cast album, and Chess in Concert, I’ve come to realize why it’s done that way, and why it works. The show is about duality and contrast: American vs. Soviet, East vs. West, and of course the ancient civilized game of chess and the very modern lives of those who play it.

80s synth-pop is not only perfect for the time it was written and is usually set, it offers a perfect contrast to the classical sound. You could probably update the arrangement on “I Know Him So Well” if you really want to, but what are you going to do with “One Night in Bangkok?” Or going back to “Mountain Duet,” the jump from slow, beautiful melody to jarring hard rock brings the tension from the background to the front of the scene.

Comparison

Chess in ConcertMusically, my favorite is the original concept album. The overall sound just works better for me, though it’s hard to follow the choral numbers.

The best thing about the Broadway version is Judy Kuhn. She’s amazing, and the expanded role for Florence gives her plenty of opportunities to shine. A few of the orchestrations work better too – “Heaven Help My Heart” is better without the echo, for instance. But while Philip Casnoff is good on most of the recording, he just sleepwalks through “One Night in Bangkok.” Maybe it’s a character choice that works on stage, but isolated as audio it just can’t compare to Murray Head.

The concert version has the clearest story to it, and the additional songs are fascinating for the additional layers they add. Adam Pascal and Josh Groban are great, and I like that they cast two actresses with very different voices for Florence and Svetlana. (Funny that they’re both known for playing Elphaba.)  Strangely enough, Idina Menzel almost sounds too soft here (how did that happen?), but she’s grown on me as I’ve listened through a few more times.

Plus I had this great idea to do a fan video using her version of “Nobody’s Side” for Frozen.

I’ll probably never get around to it, but wouldn’t it be awesome? Or at least *ahem* cool?”

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Somehow I’ve managed to end up watching mostly shows based on comic books this year. And amazingly, there are enough of them out there that I have to pick and choose. It seems I’m able to keep up with about 3 shows on a weekly basis, and still fit in family, work and other hobbies.

The Flash: I’m still amazed that 1. there’s a Flash TV show, 2. it’s good, and 3. it’s successful enough that it’s actually been renewed. This is the one show I make an effort to watch the night it airs, and I’m enjoying it a lot more than I’ve enjoyed the comic book in the last few years.

iZombie: The other show I’ve managed to stay current with. I’ve found that as fun as the case of the week is, it’s the continuing subplots that keep me coming back: the search for a cure, the back and forth with Blaine and the zombie population of Seattle, Major’s living hell, etc.

Supergirl: This has turned out to be a lot of fun, though I’m not *ahem* super-invested in it yet.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Uneven. I’m finding the Inhumans storyline tedious, but then I’ve never liked that sort of story much. Simmons’ adventures on the other side of the obelisk, though….I’m really intrigued by that. (Note: I’m behind a couple of weeks, so I haven’t had a chance to watch “4,722 Hours” yet.) Update: “4,722 Hours” was absolutely fascinating. The Hydra/Inhumans stuff is really turning into a slog.

I am really looking forward to Jessica Jones. I was a fan of the original Alias comics, and this group did an amazing job with Daredevil. Update: It’s fantastic. Even better than Daredevil. But it’s intense enough that I only want to watch one episode at a time, when I can follow it with something lighter.

The Librarians: Fun popcorn adventure with a literary bent to it. Not sure I’m totally sold on Prospero and Moriarity as the villains, but if they follow last year’s pattern, they’ll mix things up.

Heroes Reborn: It was a lot better than I expected, but not enough to keep me.

Meanwhile, I’ve given up on “Once Upon a Time” completely. It just slowly turned into a parody of itself. “Castle” was still fun last I caught it, but too far down the priority list to keep up with it.

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VAPE COMPUTERS

This sign pairing has been there for years, and we finally picked up enough round tuits to snap a photo of it.

Usually we try to catch funny signs like this as soon as possible. You can bet M’hael’s wasn’t up for very long. But sometimes, as in this case, it’s not something broken, it’s just something odd, and it sticks around for a while.

Even so, we’ve missed a few.

The one that started Katie off on this was a demolished restaurant with only a port-a-potty left standing…and a sign saying “Ask about our banquet facilities.”

I drove past “Victory Foam” every morning for a year and never stopped for it.

Someone scrawled “Life is full of bumps” in loopy text inside the Sepulveda Tunnel under LAX, and I spent months trying to decide if there was a good way to stop safely, or walk in on foot.

KFC swapped out their “Hot & fresh breast meal” really fast, but at least we caught the Hot & Fresh Strips meal!

On a similar note, there was a car billboard on the freeway advertising “The four-crotch crotch rocket.” And a restaurant called “Seaman’s Inn” that Katie saw on a family vacation and couldn’t even comment on it.

It took a decade to catch another “ELF STORAGE” after missing the first one.

Just last month I missed the local Round Table’s Back to the Future reference by a day. (It was a week before the actual date, and I figured they’d keep it up that long. I came back the next day and it had been replaced by a new quote.)

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When I was a kid, motels still advertised “COLOR TV!” on their signs to entice weary drivers to choose their facilities over the next one down the road. I’m pretty sure color TV was standard by then, but the signs remained.

These says, every motel I drive past has “Wi-Fi” on the sign, for the same reason.

Except it’s not quite the same. I mean…can you imagine if color TV was included with every room at the Motel 6, but you had to pay extra for it at a business class or nicer hotel?

That would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it?

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Over the past year I’ve found myself using my camera less and less, and my phone more and more. I used to carry both and try to take “good” photos with the camera, and quick shots intended for faster sharing with the phone, but several things have combined to change that:

  • In bright daylight, the phone’s quality is comparable to the camera’s. (I used to tag phone pics with “cameraphone.” I stopped when I got the Galaxy S4.)
  • Half the time, I find that I composed a better shot on the phone than on the camera.
  • It’s one less device to carry around.
  • I can edit or post online immediately, without taking time to transfer photos from a card.
  • Dust got into the camera, and when I finally tried to get rid of it with compressed air, I made it worse.
  • The two photos I’ve had featured in Flickr Explore were both phone shots.

For the first time I used only my phone at this year’s Long Beach Comic Con, and on a trip to Boston. And for a while I didn’t miss the camera, but…

Have you tried taking pictures of a four-year-old indoors with a slow shutter speed and flash? Good luck!

I’ve also found myself severely limited in what pictures I can take at sunset, or standing near a drop-off.  On two occasions I’ve spotted rainbows at sunset, and they’ve been too dim for the phone to pick up any color.  That’s right, there’s a faint white arc in the picture instead of a spectrum.

Faint Sunset Rainbow

And forget the photos I tried to take at a wedding! I’ve thought about running a watercolor filter on them so the blurriness will look intentional.

It’s time to admit that I have to do something about the camera.

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It shouldn’t make any difference that Twitter renamed Favorites★ as Likes♥. It’s a coat of paint. But labels do matter. Just like “friend” and “follower”, “like” and “favorite” (and hearts and stars) conjure up different expectations.

Twitter says, “You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.” Paradoxically, I find “likes” to be more specific. The star-and-favorite model comes out of Internet Explorer*, and modern browsers still use stars for bookmarks. This made “favorite” seem a little more versatile, anything from a stamp of approval to a simple check-back-for-later.

“Like,” on the other hand….

After years of requests for a “dislike” button, Facebook finally admitted that “like” isn’t sufficient to respond to everything, and will be expanding to multiple reaction buttons. I know Twitter keeps trying to be more like Facebook, but c’mon — even Facebook knows people don’t want to “like” sad news.

*Microsoft didn’t want to call their bookmarks “bookmarks.” Nobody wanted to use the same terminology as anyone else back then. They tried to call links “shortcuts” too.