Bullyland, Part III: Fists Don’t Fail Me Now

You may not believe what I’m about to tell you, and I wouldn’t blame you. I have trouble believing it myself, nearly sixty years later.

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The Straz Presents La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème started with a feud between him and fellow composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, who’d composed the immortal Pagliacci (1892).

La Bohème. Maestro: Anthony Barrese. Singers: Raquel González (Mimi), Todd Wilander (Rodolfo), Ashley Kerr (Musetta), Keith Harris (Marcello), Jean Carlos Rodriguez (Schaunard) and Lawson Anderson (Colline). Opera Tampa Orchestra and Chorus.

Original Poster

Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème started with a feud in the early 1890’s between him and fellow composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, who’d composed the immortal Pagliacci (1892). At that time this short opera was better than anything Puccini had written, including his earnest yet muddled Manon Lescaut (1893). So Leoncavallo was no slouch and definitely a formidable competitor. Nevertheless, Puccini’s La Bohème prevailed and quickly became one of the immortals in the repertoire while Leoncavallo’s version, although successful in its day, sunk into obscurity and is rarely performed today.

Why?

Continue reading “The Straz Presents La Bohème”

STOP TYPING!

The beauty of a how-to book is not just that it teaches you what you know nothing about, but also that it nudges you back toward something you have known about but never tried.

STOP TYPING!: Write Better with Speech Recognition Speech-to-Text Software! by Keith Connes. $.99 (or free with Kindle Unlimited via Amazon).

Had I read this book six months ago, it would’ve saved me at least six hours of labor. I was writing an article that initially involved recording a phone conversation. I then had to transcribe that conversation with my nimble fingertips. Had I known more about Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, I would have not spent so much time transcribing. Continue reading “STOP TYPING!”

Review of John Coltrane’s Both Directions at Once

Here’s my review of a Blu-ray recording of John Coltrane’s “lost album,” Both Directions at Once, as it appears in Audiophile Audition (www.audaud.com).

 

Coltrane: Both Directions at Once

I don’t get to say these words very often: here’s a review of the latest killer John Coltrane album!
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“. . . the Twist, the Stomp, the Mash Potato too . . .”

Chris Montez1 had it right. “Any old dance that you wanna do.” When I was 13 at Holton-Richmond Junior High2, attending class in wooden desks with dried-up ink wells, I used to go to the school dances that happened third Friday each month. They were called “mixers,” because that’s what the girls and boys were supposed to do. Mix with adults gaping on. Of course not many of us did. The concept of a sock hop, with minimal supervision and an outta sight disk jockey, was yet to be in Danvers, Massachusetts. Continue reading ““. . . the Twist, the Stomp, the Mash Potato too . . .””

The Adventure of My Last Job Interview

To find out how I answered this, the trickiest of all job interview questions, read the following short story, which I had gotten published twenties years previously.

My last job interview occurred at Cisco Systems. I’d been working as a contractor, and soon afterwards was offered a “permanent position.” I walked into the HR office and was greeted by a chirpy young woman, perhaps in her late twenties. After some pleasantries, she settled down to serious interviewing. Continue reading “The Adventure of My Last Job Interview”

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