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About Me 2007: A Day with SmorgFeb 18 '07 (Updated Mar 09 '08) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line An entry to Kristinafh's 'About Me 2007' write-off. Have fun decoding!
A Lazy Saturday With Smorg Recently Kristinafh, one of my favorite Epinionaters, called for an essay to tell others about myself (We Are The Sum Of Our Parts - ‘About Me’ (2007))... A most uncomfortable assignment for this Generation X'er, I must say. Anyhow... if it interests you, you can follow me around for a day. Believe me, a look at just a day with me is enough. Spending too much time with Smorg is a known mental health hazard. Saturday 17 February 2007. I woke up to the sweet sound of one of my expressively opinionated female neighbors screaming at her husband from the apartment across the courtyard. It appeared he had used one of her favorite mini-skirts to dust off his bike the previous night (hey, at least the man was actually cleaning something!). Really, the girl could almost be an opera singer. Her voice came right through the walls as if they are nothing but wax papers. Almost, I said, but not quite. She hadn’t learned how to properly support her voice yet and could only scream short bursts of expletives at a time. Real opera singers; on the other hand, can carry on for a lot longer at higher pitch and at more ear-busting decibel because they know how to make the most out of each breath they take in ... So, take my advice and don’t ever get into a shouting match with an opera diva (if you ever find yourself being drawn into one; however, ... you can always start sneezing. I can guarantee that they’ll be out of your ear-shot a lot quicker than you can say ‘Bronchitis!’). At any rate, deciding that if I was to be subjected to listening to rage arias so early in the day, then I might as well have ones that are well sung... so into the stereo went my custom CD of operatic songs of fury. Don’t worry, I won’t review them here... but the tracks are; 1. MOZART: The Magic Flute: Der Hölle Rache by Edita Gruberova http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4XbxQkO6q8 2. MOZART: La clemenza di Tito: Deh, se piace mi voi by Dorothea Röschmann http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=76yEKGvg-G4 3. MOZART: Idomeneo: Fuor del mar (Munich version) by Ramon Vargas http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kfc8zceMEwU 4. R WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Narrative and Curse by Birgit Nilsson http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UoVKiC-e65k 5. MOZART: Mitridate: Venga pur, minacci e frema by Vesselina Kasarova http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vfH9_pZ5S0A 6. VERDI: La forza del destino: Pace, pace mio Dio by Astrid Varnay http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iBRi4eTQ-mI 7. MOZART: Idomeneo: Tutte nel cor vi sento by Carol Vaness http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o6SnY-moQlw 8. MOZART: Mitridate: Va, l’error mio palessa by Vesselina Kasarova http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rzTrXr1caJU 9. VERDI: Don Carlo: O don fatale by Vesselina Kasarova http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qJPkirkcw Yes, I actually made a custom CD full of rage arias... What can I say? I share Mozart’s love for feisty women!! Feeling thoroughly chastised by various distinguished operatic divas, I had no choice but to get out of bed and try to do something constructive to justify my existence. And what could possibly be more constructive than making breakfast? Lest you try to guess my physique by the size of my meals, I’ll just say that 2 pieces of bagel with Nutella chocolate spread will keep me from starving before my favorite haunts open for business. By now it was 11 AM and the screaming couple had calmed down (or maybe they had blown out their vocal chords... but then I mustn’t get my hope up). I finally realized that I hadn’t gone out to get my newspaper yet. If you live in the city, then you know that there is no snowball chance in heck the paper was still laying around to be retrieved. So I turned on the computer and skimmed through the electronic version of the San Diego Union-Tribune instead. I had just got through reading and rating 4 reviews on Epinions when the phone rang. One of my old school pals in St Louis, Missouri had call to say how cold it was there. I’ve heard from my Missourian friends more often since I graduated back in 2003 than I hear from my San Diegan friends, to tell the truth. It’s a weird thing. I still remember that the 2nd thing I noticed when I moved to the coast was that people don’t expect you to answer their, ‘How are you?’ (the 1st thing I noticed was how dry it is here). And only 2 or 3 people you run into on the streets each day here are native Californians... let alone native San Diegans, whereas in Missouri most of the folks you see are born and bred there. Somehow the conversation got morphed into the DVD my old pal was watching with her husband earlier. That cool film The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins (by the way, the music Andy plays on the prison’s stereo while locking himself in the warden’s office is the Letter Duet from Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro). To prove my level of ignorance, I didn’t even know that the thing was based on a Stephen King novel! A recurring debate on whether Morgan Freeman is a better actor than Sydney Poitiers ensued. Really, I don’t know what else to say to convince her that Morgan Freeman is a god... I mean, he even played one in that lousy Jim Carey film, for Pete’s sake!! It was now 3 PM. After a wash, I finished the last of the letters I was writing (mom and dad now live abroad, and my siblings are spread out everywhere) and headed off for The Postal Place 4 blocks away by Horton Plaza. After dumping my load to the mail man and getting a few necessities from the grocery store, I made a stop at the neat little tree covered square at the corner of 4th Avenue and G St to say hello to a few pigeons. I’m afraid I’ve trained them to a bad habit of associating me with food. I had only managed to sit down and removed my backpack when one over-eager blimp with legs jumped onto my right knee and demanded to be hand fed. Really, I’ve spent years trying to get my cat to trust me as much... but then he isn’t a bird. There were about 20 of them around and I was lucky to escape with only one bird potty stain on my trousers (O heck, I’ll be doing my laundry on Sunday anyhow). 5PM... Arrived back at home just in time for Rick Steve’s Europe program on KPBS. I could have arrived 5 minutes faster, but couldn't resist stopping to pick up some litters on the side-walk. Why can't people walk the extra 3 steps to put the trash in the bin? How much trouble would the extra few steps out of the way cause? At any rate, the program was a re-run, so I popped in the CD of Mozart Concert Arias by the Slovak diva Edita Gruberova and resolved to finish writing a review on it (all procrastination must end at some point). Really, how lucky are we that with the recording technology no transatlantic travel is necessary to hear great artists like Edita Gruberova sings? She hasn’t been here since the late 1980's, I think. That said, I’d fly to anywhere in North America to hear this singer live should any American opera house decides to wise up and offer her a deserving contract. Opera singers, as wonderful as they sound on tape, tend to sound even better in a live hall... especially if they have a voice that is too big for the recording microphone to handle. Nowadays there are many venue to get acquainted with opera; from the DVD and CD recordings, to the Met radio and webcast, to Sirius radio, to occasional opera programs on KPBS... and lately, the HD live broadcast to movie theaters from the Met. It is true that one can’t miss what one doesn’t know exists, but I do wish there was some way of recording what the soprani Mozart wrote his exquisite music for sounded like. I doubt that they were any more virtuosic than the likes of today’s greats like Edita Gruberova, Natalie Dessay, Sumi Jo, Vesselina Kasarova, Dorothea Röschmann, or Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez, Ramon Vargas, et.al, however. A good look at history tells me that singers that are deemed untouchably great today had many detractors in print while they were actively singing. Maria Callas is everybody’s definition of a great singer (well, perhaps not for the Tebaldi fans), but the reviews from her actual singing days weren’t uniformly praiseful. The same treatment of hit them while they’re singing and then saint them when they retire will probably be applied to many still singing today. I’ve heard Kasarova and Graham live. I hope I’ll catch Gruberova live before she hangs it up for good. But what a long-winded fellow you’re hanging with!! Well, I did finish and posted the CD review... even managed to read and rate a few others on my notifier list as well (still woefully a few days behind, though.... have I mentioned how laid-back Californians are before?). By now it was dinner time and I’m too brain-dead to cook, so I popped this new frozen teriyaki beef bowl by Ajinomoto into the microwave. It was ready to eat 5 minutes later and after 3 bites of the thing I had consumed enough saturated fat to clog an elephant’s aorta. The thing is downright disgusting, so I threw it into the trash bin and hope a few rats would go for it and expire naturally from clogged arteries before I have to ask to borrow my neighbor's sticky mouse traps again. The good thing about living in Downtown San Diego is that when I blotch dinner this disastrously, a good slice of pizza is only a pair of trousers and a 100 meters dash away. The 2 slices of Hawaiian pizza were just about as fatty as the bowlful of frozen rice with fat and some beef thing, but at least they tasted good for it. After dinner, I read another article from my monthly Med Tech trade magazine from the ASCP (gotta keep up to what the germs are doing), spent another 3 hrs on the computer and managed to catch up with almost all the people I needed to email. Smorg actually loves keeping in touch with friends who make the effort to email nowadays. You’d think folks would write more since the advent of free email that takes a lot less effort to send than the old stamped snail mails, but they actually don’t! So the ones that do, I value their efforts very much. Read a few more very helpful Epinions reviews until now... it is 15 minutes to Sunday (yes, I know, my clock is screwed up. Night shift does that to you). I’ll post this. Wave hello to Kristinafh and pop in my favorite DVD of a documentary of a favorite singer during her runs of opera performances in Paris 10 yrs ago and have a blissfully restful night. I know, I know, I haven't really told you much blatantly about myself. This is about all y'all are going to get out of me, though. I'm not keen on being all that identifiable to any people who would want to come scream a few high C's at me for panning them on my reviews... and I don't want any flowers from the ones I've raved about either. My cat is allergic.... Have a great weekend, folks!  |
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